rw 6_1 book file.indb reviewer acknowledgement open accesshttp://www.rw.org.za page 1 of 1 the editorial team of reading & writing recognises the value and importance of the peer reviewer in the overall publication process – not only in shaping the individual manuscript, but also in shaping the credibility and reputation of our journal. we are committed to the timely publication of all original, innovative contributions submitted for publication. as such, the identification and selection of reviewers who have expertise and interest in the topics appropriate to each manuscript are essential elements in ensuring a timely, productive peer review process. we would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who provided scientific and logistical support for this issue of the reading & writing: arua arua boitumelo t. ramoroka candice livingston coby visser-wiegel dan kasule debra p. price douglas fisher e.g. seeco eileen m. scheckle eleni griva johan anker kathy headley ketsitlile lone lisa zimmerman margaret a. hill monica hendricks peter rule restytuta nalyazi robin irey sharan badiger titi j. fola-adebayo we appreciate the time taken to perform your review successfully. in an effort to facilitate the selection of appropriate peer reviewers for reading & writing, we ask that you take a moment to update your electronic portfolio on www.rw.org.za for our files, allowing us better access to your areas of interest and expertise, in order to match reviewers with submitted manuscripts. if you would like to become a reviewer, please visit the journal website and register as a reviewer. to access your details on the website, you will need to follow these steps: 1. log into the online journal at http://www. rw.org.za 2. in your ‘user home’ [http://www.rw.org.za/ index.php/rw/user] select ‘edit my profile’ under the heading ‘my account’ and insert all relevant details, bio statement and reviewing interest. 3. it is good practice as a reviewer to update your personal details regularly to ensure contact with you throughout your professional term as reviewer to reading & writing. please do not hesitate to contact us if you require assistance in performing this task. publisher: publishing@aosis.co.za tel: +27 21 975 2602 fax: +27 21 975 4635 reading & writing journal of the reading association of south africa entire issue.pdf editorial welcome to the �rst issue of reading and writing: journal of the reading association of south africa. !is new journal aims to bring together research, �eld reports, discussion pieces and critical commentary that will contribute to our knowledge and understandings of reading and writing and that may help us to better grasp the complex, dynamic and changing nature of literacy practices in education and in contemporary social life. !e idea for reading and writing grew out of the meetings of the reading association of south africa. rasa started on a small scale in cape town in 2004 and these origins are still faintly discernable in the roughly table mountain shape of the books on rasa’s logo on the front cover. rasa quickly outgrew its ‘mother city’ origins, however, and is now a larger national body, a"liated to the international reading association, with branches in kwazulu-natal, gauteng, eastern cape and western cape, and with active participation from literacy educators and researchers in neighbouring countries around southern africa. one of the initial aims of rasa, as set out at the inaugural conference, was to promote research into all �elds of literacy in south africa. !is is just one direction in rasa’s broader mandate to engage with teachers, educators and academics in developing and promoting literacy work, and in particular, contributing to the development of better teachers of reading and writing, in schools and throughout the system of educational provision. but research is the primary business of this new journal. !e importance of developing a sound and sustained research tradition around reading and writing in southern africa hardly needs to be stressed, despite and probably also because of the lack of dedicated research outlets in this �eld. !ere is no doubt that the educational challenges around reading and writing and the societal issues around literacy and language are at least as big a concern in south africa as elsewhere in the world and much attention has been drawn in recent times to how poorly large numbers of children in south african schools are doing on standardised literacy tests. !ere is also an adult literacy campaign underway in the country costing several billions of rands, but there is very little sight of it in research journals, let alone in newspapers rw& 6 reading and writing and little evidence at all that it is making a di#erence. reading, writing and language concerns challenge universities in south africa as they confront evidence of widespread failures and drop-outs amongst designated social groups. we are also in a situation where there is not a clear and informed consensus nor an informed debate amongst educators and researchers from varying backgrounds and disciplines as to what counts as literacy and how reading and writing should be taught for particular purposes. !e impacts of information communication technologies, with screen-based, multi-media reading and writing, game-playing and internet activities such as e-mailing, social networking and mobile phone-texting are just some areas where literacy practices are dynamic and changing. we therefore welcome the participation, both as readers and writers, of a broad range of practitioners and academics who are interested in exploring how literacy is de�ned, enacted and promoted in a range of institutional, sociocultural and disciplinary contexts: from early childhood literacy; early school literacy; middle school literacy; high school literacy; academic literacy in tertiary institutions; workplace literacies; family and community literacies; digital literacies associated with the new communication media, technologies and practices; transnational and translocal literacies associated with migrants and mobile people in african settings and with children of migrants and refugees in schools; reading and writing across various kinds of multilingual settings including schools and workplaces; to the reading and writing practices associated with government, local government and formal as well as informal civil society associations. !e journal will present contributions from colleagues writing and researching in any of these relevant areas. we welcome papers that provoke debate about literacy interventions of various sorts, whether directed at children, adults or both; in schools, homes, workplaces and elsewhere. we encourage contributions from a range of di#erent disciplines and across disciplinary boundaries. while literacy studies have come more from some disciplines than others in the past, from psychology, linguistics and education, the growing contributions of sociologists, ethnographers, literary, cultural and technology theorists have broadened and enriched the �eld. in addition, interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary approaches can stretch and invigorate our sense of what concepts and approaches are productive in our �eld. besides its primary commitment to publishing original, relevant, peerreviewed research across all sites of literacy studies, the journal can also provide a forum for information and exchange amongst various sectors in the �eld, including government and ngos, as well as contribute to the growth of teachers of excellence, in the long run. individuals will not at all need to be members of the reading association of south africa (rasa) to write for or to subscribe to the journal but we will not mind if the journal encourages growth 7editorial in rasa membership. while the journal will be published by rasa, it will be run by an editor and editorial board who will have an identity independent of rasa decision-making structures as regards content and selection. !e journal will also need to �ll a developmental role where new researchers are given detailed and helpful feedback from review editors that gives them support in their struggles to turn their e#orts into publishable research. we include in this issue a review of some aspects of the international pirls testing of primary-schoolchildren that happened south africa in 2006 and is scheduled to run again next year; we invite discussion on this research. !e paper, by surette van staden and sarah howie is written by key participants in the south african wing of this in$uential comparative international programme. we also include a study of an intervention at school level, by sally currin and lilli pretorius, which tries to make a di#erence in one school. both of these papers present instances of exemplary practice of particular kinds and we would hope that they stimulate responses and research studies that engage them productively. we start with a paper that is based on kate parry’s keynote address at rasa’s second national conference, outlining her innovative and in$uential approach to library development in rural kenya, and the �nal article is by daniel kasule and violet lunga on their reseach from botswana into the practice of self-editing as a strategy for academic literacy development at tertiary level. we are pleased to have a report from snoeks desmond on the innovative family literacy project from kwazulu-natal, and a short opinion piece from james paul gee, well-known internationally as a stimulating, accessible and innovative thinker on literacy, language and learning. as we welcome you to this �rst issue, we ask you to imagine what could be done in future issues and to participate with us in broadening and sharpening the scope of work presented in these pages. at a more mundane but no less important level, we urge you to get your institutions to subscribe to the journal, using the details available on the back pages. we need these subscriptions if the journal is to prosper. mastin prinsloo article information author: elsemieke wishart1 affiliation: 1department of library and information technology, university of the fraser valley, canada correspondence to: elsemieke wishart postal address: 33358 knight avenue mission, bc v2v 5k8, canada dates: received: aug. 2011 accepted: 30 oct. 2011 published: 11 sept. 2012 how to cite this article: wishart, e., 2012, ‘libraries and information provision for african relief’, reading & writing 3(1), art. #20, 4 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v3i1.20 note: proceedings of the pan african conference held in botswana, july 2011.this article was presented at the 7th pan-african conference on reading for all, in gaborone, botswana, 2011. copyright notice: © 2012. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. libraries and information provision for african relief in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • what are africa’s information needs at the present time? • the issue of funding • facilitating reading through technology • acknowledgements    • competing interests • references abstract top ↑ this research article explores the concept that libraries as communication centres in sub-saharan africa can play a vital role in bringing poverty relief by providing greater access to information through modern technology. it discusses the patrons who can benefit from community information centres and explores their particular needs. i have researched how modern tools like the internet, computers, e-readers and cell phones can bring valuable information to impoverished citizens. my research was conducted through reading research papers using article databases, books and internet websites. the future for libraries in sub-saharan africa is bright, as new technology opens up vast opportunities to share information in a way that is accessible, affordable and adaptable to the needs of the african people. i recommend that librarians and relief organisations in southern africa seriously consider using modern technology to provide information that will empower its citizens. introduction top ↑ libraries in sub-saharan africa can play an important role in poverty relief, by providing access to information through modern formats. information can facilitate freedom from oppression and protection from exploitation. however, books alone have not been able to solve the resource deficit for the poorest people in africa. there is hope for poverty-stricken people who have had no access to information, since through modern technology like the internet, cell phones, laptops and e-readers, libraries have new options. many africans come from an oral culture and do not connect with books as readily as people in the western culture. african society is quickly adapting to technology and is now on the threshold of an information explosion. an information famine has existed that is ‘as disastrous for africa’s long-term future as the catastrophic absence of food’ (crowder 1986, as cited in sturges & neil 2004:5). meeting the resource needs of impoverished people can have tremendous potential to reduce the destruction wreaked by poverty and disease. librarians must adapt to meeting the needs of african society in a modern context by using advanced technology. as custodians of information centres, librarians can help africans ‘access the knowledge they need to enable them to realise their potential and act as agents in their own development’ (harrity 2008:209). what are africa’s information needs at the present time? top ↑ the demographic make-up of africa has been altered by the devastation caused by a pandemic of hiv-related diseases over the past 20 years. the needs of a society that has been adversely affected by hiv have to be taken into consideration when planning a library in africa. (the region of africa addressed in this article is sub-saharan africa, and the library users are those impoverished people earning $1 − $2 per day.) over 24 million people in africa have died as a result of aids, making it the most affected region in the world (allemano 2008). this has resulted in the traditional family structure being broken, leaving the fragmented lives of vulnerable children and grieving grandparents. today, africa has 12 million orphans, many of whom live in child-headed households with no adult caregivers to raise or protect them. in addition, numerous of these orphans live homeless on the streets. orphaned and vulnerable children (ovc) are open to exploitation such as human trafficking, sexual abuse and criminal behaviour. a grandmother who has buried her own children may be caring for an average of 10 grandchildren. adults living with hiv find it difficult to feed their families. it is not unusual for students to attend schools that have few books and no library. for example, baluba basic school in kitwe, zambia, has 1200 students but no library. children who cannot afford school fees remain uneducated and illiterate. yet people in poor communities also have the fundamental right of access to information. a library as a resource centre for ovc, impoverished adults, grandmothers and students can bring hope and life-sustaining information. in her book there is no me without you, melissa fay greene (2006) asks these haunting questions: … who will parent 12 million children orphaned by hiv/aids … who will tell 12 million bedtime stories? … who will offer grief counselling to … 36 million children? who will help them avoid lives of servitude or prostitution? who will pass on to them the traditions of culture and religion, of history and government, of craft and profession? (pp. 22−23) for more than 12 million children who have no parents, perhaps librarians must take a step towards providing a safe place for children to gather information and to find hope for a better life. sturges and neil (2004:158) emphasise the need for librarians to be ‘as engaged as, or more so, than the parents’. a library that serves a society severely impacted by hiv has to adjust to the changes that the virus has brought. a functional library that meets the needs of african society can play a key role in helping the united nations reach the millennium development goals (mdgs) for reducing poverty: ‘ngo’s working on different projects of the mdgs can collaborate with libraries to enhance the effectiveness of their activities to achieve the mdgs’ (iya 2009:100). past organisations that have established libraries in africa used a western ideology in their planning and implementation; as du plessis (2008:45) states: ‘libraries have not become responsive to [the] african context.’ for a sustainable library plan, the diverse african cultures and the needs of individual communities must be studied and understood. needs assessment surveys have to address the question as to how information can be formatted to make it useful and understandable to the user: ‘effective libraries in any context begin with a thorough understanding of the individuals to be served, their needs, and the … general cultural context in which they operate’ (meyers 2009:6). when people’s needs are taken into consideration, they feel respected and will respond to the project with a sense of ownership. according to dent’s article (2006:20−29), kitengesa community library in uganda questioned 1000 residents about their needs. the library was planned with the aim of offering information in a transferable format. today it is established as an intentional information service provider to the community, serving teachers and students of the nearby schools and residents. in january 2010, 1147 people were registered as members of the library, even though they pay a small user fee. illiteracy is a huge issue that cannot be ignored. a family literacy project serves illiterate members. there are rooms for reading, computers and a community hall. kitengesa’s library is a vibrant model of a community centre that serves the diverse needs of its members. it is an excellent example of a relevant african library that has become a model for similar projects being established in other rural communities (dent 2006:20−29). africans who live in one-room mud brick homes have a great need for a quiet place to read. sturges and neil (2004:180) state that ‘for many people it is the struggle for quiet that is most important’. raseroka (1986:288−291) says ‘students’ need for public libraries stem from … the need for an environment which is supportive of studying … a quiet area of study, a well lit place of study…’. most people in the developed world have comfortable homes that provide quiet spaces; in underdeveloped countries homes have no place for quiet study, and a library can fill that need. when users have a quiet place to read for pleasure, the community will develop a ‘reading culture’ (dent 2008:523). jane meyers recognised the need for vulnerable children to have a place to read, and founded the lubuto library project in lusaka, zambia, which was built for street orphans as a reading centre: ‘lubuto works within the culture rather than imposing an outside perspective’ (meyers 2008:6). books are not checked out, but the library is open for long hours and accommodates users such as street children and those who live in child-headed households. children can enter a peaceful environment where they escape the harshness of life on the streets. on the other hand, libraries must also be a noisy place for the community to gather and exchange information. this makes the library a centre for socialisation, conversation and communication. to become relevant in meeting the unmet need … the public library in africa has to break the traditional ‘silence’ in information transfer … associated with a library. it has to transform to give way to ‘noise’, allowing the creation of a public sphere where people can exchange information and share ideas relevant to their context and needs (du plessis 2008:48). a library can be a central meeting place for people to connect, learn and share. a community centre can provide education for micro-enterprises, industry or agriculture relevant for the region. offering health education is necessary and life-saving, as people are informed about sanitation, availability of medicine, disease prevention and maternal health. it is clear that because of their pressing physical need for food and the means of producing food, clothing, shelter and health care, people need information to help them find assistance (sturges & neil 2004:183). timely medical information concerning hiv-related diseases, malaria and tuberculosis can take years to trickle down from reliable sources to rural areas. community centres can receive current and authoritative health information, which they can pass along to their members. the issue of funding top ↑ the question arises as to who will pay for libraries in african countries, when most of their own governments have no money to subsidise them. non-governmental organisations (ngos) have provided billions of dollars in assistance to alleviate poverty in africa, and need to provide funds to also bring relief from the information famine. as nyana (2009:13) states: ‘without support from 1st world donors, it would be difficult for libraries in africa to exist.’ yet du plessis (2008:44) believes that ‘excessive reliance on donations appeared only to lead to increasing dependence’. he says that poverty is a reality that cannot be ignored, and libraries must keep this fact within the framework when planning a resource centre for the community. the poorest people do not earn enough money to support a library. outside help will always be necessary. sturges and neil (2004) state that ngos support the distribution of information, but still need to recognise that this support can be provided well in the context of a library. communities must acknowledge the need for a library and become involved in its establishment if they are to have a sense of ownership. john wood, founder of room to read, has successfully built 10 000 libraries in developing countries. a main stipulation is ‘community ownership’ and ‘strong local staff and partnerships’ (room to read 2010). the community must become intrinsically involved in establishing and maintaining a library. if the library is successfully empowering people, their ability to earn more income will increase along with their potential to contribute funds. mchombu (1986 as cited in du plessis 2008:48) states that ‘standards of information services must be tailored to the economic ability of a country’. funding for a library in africa ought to be a combination of donations from the west and commitment from the community. kitengesa community library has come up with innovative ways to bring in funds. members must pay a small fee, one room has a sewing business, there is a small tree farm on the property, and charging up of cell phones all bring in funds. libraries can come up with creative ways to bring in extra funds that can still fit in within the library model. facilitating reading through technology top ↑ as africa embraces the technological age, sturges and neil (2004:229) predict that the continent will advance faster in technology than the developed world. information literacy is a need that can be met by the library, so that the users can become adept at accessing information in a digital format: ‘the world over, libraries have to adjust to the digital era. libraries are not about books, but information’ (du plessis 2008:50). conventional thinking suggests that africa has to catch up with the western world in its evolution of information technology. there is talk of the digital divide, and that newer technology will leave the poor further behind in the dust. the fact is that africa has ‘leapfrogged’ into the technology age and is adapting quickly to modern technology (keller 2010 as cited in davis 2010:33). in africa many people never owned landline telephones, but in 2004 cell phones were introduced – and now have a strong presence at all levels of african society. someone who cannot afford electricity or running water owns a cell phone. this is a combination of clever marketing, good infrastructure and fierce competition amongst providers: ‘in the cell phone the developing world has confirmed its preference for spoken word communication, delivered by affordable technology’ (harvey & sturges 2010:157). the shuttleworth foundation in south africa uses new technology to encourage reading amongst teenagers by sending e-books via cell phones. two books have been read 34 000 times: ‘for the foreseeable future the cell phone … is the e-reader of africa. yoza aims to capitalise on that to get africa's teens reading and writing’ (m4lit project 2010). the organisation one laptop per child designed laptops made to withstand rough handling in adverse conditions: ‘digital books and textbooks can be downloaded onto these laptops making it possible for each child to have a small library in his or her hand’ (keller 2010 as cited in davis 2010:32−33). another visionary organisation, worldreader.org, conducted an e-reader trial at orphanaid africa school in ghana. worldreader’s directive is to provide digital books (kindles) to all people in the developing world. in their report sundermeyer, risher and mcelwee (2010) state that the trial was a success. the community already had internet infrastructure in place and students were familiar with cell phones, so quickly learned how to use the kindles. the students said that they loved the dictionary option to help them find the meanings of new words, and became so engaged in reading that they forgot they were using a digital device. thousands of books are now available to children who used to share a few books. the ‘text in speech’ function was useful for illiterate parents to listen to a story (kitengesa community library 2010). libraries must think of the future, and about how they can provide for users in africa. with wireless infrastructure in place, more information is made available to the most disadvantaged people. libraries in africa have to consider setting up internet stations and linking with libraries in the western world to share information with their members. shipping books by container to africa takes months and thousands of dollars. providing digital information in sub-saharan africa presents challenges due to poverty, availability of electricity and wireless capabilities, but with determination and a willingness to work alongside the challenges there is potential for resources to reach thousands of people who never had access to them before. by providing information in a digital format, costs are decreased and the impact is greater. the charge of bringing information to impoverished communities in new ways is not a task that can be accomplished by one person or one organisation. organisations that have a successful model must share what they have learned with the worldwide community. they must provide manuals about building a library, training staff, obtaining funding and using resources in order to help other organisations. they can use modern resources via the internet to pass along information so that the community library model can be used in many places to bring information to people. books will always have a place in libraries, but technology is providing new formats to cross the digital divide. william kamkwamba writes how one book in a small, disorganised library in malawi changed his life. kamkwamba’s father could not afford school fees, so instead kamkwamba studied at the local library. when he came across a book with instructions on how to build a windmill, he read it and built a windmill out of spare parts. this windmill brought electricity to his home, and eventually a scholarship to attend high school (kamkwamba & mealer 2009). how many more stories of hope will be repeated across the continent as more information becomes available in easily accessible ways? perhaps the very people that are provided with modern solutions through digital information will one day be needed to bring solutions to the western world. libraries can join in the movement of providing new technology to poor people. technology through the conduit of libraries can bridge the digital divide between developed and developing worlds. this makes the potential for the future bright indeed. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationship(s) which may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references top ↑ allemano, e., 2008, ‘hiv and aids: responding to a threat to education for sustainable development’, natural resources forum 32, 142−151, from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1477-8947.2008.00188.x/abstract davis, m., 2010, ‘devices deliver learning in africa’, educative week 29(26), 32−33, from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/03/18/26international.h29.html dent, v.f., 2006, ‘modelling the rural community library − characteristics of the kitengesa library in rural uganda’, new library world 107 (120/122), 16−30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03074800610639003 du plessis, j.c., 2008, ‘from food silos to community kitchens: retooling african libraries’, international information & library review 40, 43−51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.iilr.2007.09.001 greene, m.f., 2006, there is no me without you, bloomsbury, new york, ny. harrity, s., 2008, ‘working partnership to build knowledge societies’, in a. macharazo (ed.), librarianship as a bridge to an information and knowledge society in africa, pp. 197−209, viewed 30 october 2010, from lista full text database, http://www.amazon.ca/librarianship-bridge-information-knowledge-society/dp/3598220316 harvey, j. & sturges, p., 2010, ‘the cell phone as appropriate information technology: evidence from the gambia’, information development 26(148), 157. http://dx.doi.org.10.1177/0266666910367866 iya, j.a., 2009, ‘the role of libraries achieving the millenium development goals’, the voice of teachers 1(2), 100, viewed 18 october 2010, from http://voiceofteachers.org/index.php/vot/article/view/52/51 kamkwamba, w. & mealer, b., 2009, the boy who harnessed the wind, harpercollins, new york, ny. kitengesa community library, 2010, ‘about us’, viewed 05 november 2010, from http://www.kitengesalibrary.org/users.html m4lit project, 2010, ‘press release of yoza mnovel library’, viewed 18 october 2010, from http://m4lit.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/press-release-launch-of-yoza-m-novel-library/ meyers, j.k., 2009, ‘the lubuto library project creating excellent and sustainable libraries for vulnerable african children and youth’, focus on international library & information work 40(1), 4−8, viewed 18 october 2010, from http://www.lubuto.org/inthenews/lubutoinfocus.pdf nyana, s., 2009, ‘creating a library system that serves the needs of rural communities in africa south of the sahara’, journal of pan african studies 3(1), 9−22. http://www.jpanafrican.com/docs/vol3no1/3.1%20library%20system%20africa.pdf raseroka, k.h., 1986, ‘relevant library services in developing countries’, ifla journal 12, 288−291. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/034003528601200407 room to read, 2010, world change starts with educated children, viewed 18 october 2010, from http://www.roomtoread.org/page.aspx?pid=209 sturges, p. & neil, r., 2004, ‘the quiet struggle: information and libraries for the people of africa’, 2nd edn., viewed 18 october 2010, from http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~lsrps/quiet%20struggle%20e-book/the%20quiet%20struggle%20small%20version/the%20quiet%20struggle%20pdf/the%20quiet%20struggle%20electronic%20edition%202.pdf worldreader n.d.,taking action the trials: learning what’s needed for deployment, viewed 13 october 2010, from http://www.worldreader.org/trials.php article information author: fetson kalua1 affiliation: 1department of english studies, university of south africa, south africa correspondence to: fetson kalua note: proceedings of the pan african conference held in botswana, july 2011. postal address: po box 392, pretoria 0003, south africa dates: received: aug. 2011 accepted: 30 oct. 2011 published: 08 aug. 2012 how to cite this article: kalua f., 2012, ‘reading for empowerment: intertextuality offers creative possibilities for enlightened citizenry’, reading & writing 3(1), art. #21, 5 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v3i1.21 copyright notice: © 2012. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. reading for empowerment: intertextuality offers creative possibilities for enlightened citizenry in this original research... open access • abstract • understanding textuality • reading and literacy • utilising multiple literacies • conclusion • acknowledgements    • competing interests • references abstract top ↑ julia kristeva coined the term ‘intertextuality’ to explain her utter belief in the mutability and movement of texts, in contradistinction to the time-honoured popular idea that a text is an autonomous and self-evident object. for kristeva, any text implies the existence and embedding of other texts, also known as sub-texts, within it. this has far-reaching implications for the way we read, engage with, and interpret various texts. this article describes the concept of intertextuality as a model of reading which puts the reader at the centre of the reading process. it goes on to link intertextuality to other domains of literacy, notably the notion of ‘spheres of literacy’. central to intertextuality and spheres of literacy is their privileging of the reader, as opposed to the author, in the reading process. finally, the article explores the ways in which our awareness and use of intertextuality can help to develop a literate and free-thinking citizenry who derive utmost autonomy and empowerment from various cultural texts accessible to them. understanding textuality top ↑ reading (or literacy in general) is something that calls out for attention in our society today, because the reading process invariably opens up worlds and expands one’s horizons. if one cannot read, one’s life effectively becomes a dead end, a cul-de-sac, in a manner of speaking. the compelling force of kristeva’s notion of intertextuality, this article argues, provides profound insights into the concept of reading that leads to enhanced literacy and empowerment for the reader. for the 21st century citizen the notion of reading for empowerment denotes one’s ability to experience the world in its diversity and multiplicity as a result of exposure to various forms of literacies and proficiencies. in other words, to fulfil one’s destiny one must learn to adapt and translate one’s life to broader functions and applications through reading and literacy. to that end, this article foregrounds the ideas of kristeva, gagostino and carifio in an attempt to answer, amongst other things, the following questions: what is a text? what is reading? what is literacy? what reading (and literacy) approaches can we put in place in our societies in order to deliver the kind of empowerment the people need at all levels? let us start by defining the term ‘text’ or ‘textuality’ in a rather conservative, restricted and limited sense to mean a word. thus when we encounter a word such as ’mother’, for instance, the underlying assumption is that the meaning of the word is consistent with what the word’s symbols denote, that the word stands still and refers, that what it says is what it refers to, that as a signifier ‘mother’ gestures towards some self-contained totality, which as a formation will stand for the same thing in all places and at all times. the same could be said about other related texts such as a sentence, a picture, a drawing, a paragraph, a chapter, a book, and so forth. however, kristeva’s theory of intertextuality calls into question the existence of such a hermetically closed and autonomous text or narrative by proposing that, by its very nature, a text is in fact ‘a network of fragments that refer to still other narrative texts’ (boje 2001:74). put another way, the theory of intertextuality maintains that a text is an embodiment or the coalescence of disparate, intertwined stories, voices, or discourses which are knit together in ways that often imply or suggest that the narrative is singularly coherent and homogeneous; and yet, this seeming coherence veils or masks a whole range of intertexts or layers of other stories that lie beneath the original. such a text is nothing less than a web of complex, sometimes interlacing discourses in which the text becomes the centre of the creative process of reading, with its author having no last word on his or her text. the nature of discourse in this case is such that whilst much information in the text is obviously stated in most explicit terms (through information dissemination, persuasion or as offering an opinion about the world), other bits of information remain unstated, or understated even. in such cases it is the reader’s active stock of knowledge of the world that comes in handy if any full comprehension of the text is to be realised. allen (2000) explains the process of reading succinctly, as follows: reading thus becomes a process of moving between texts. meaning becomes something which exists between a text and all the other texts to which it refers and relates, moving out from the independent text into a network of textual relations. the text becomes the intertext. (p. 1) at this point it is important to point out that, understood in a wider context, kristeva’s expansive idea or principle of intertextuality is not her brainchild per se, for the concept (and its application) was not uncommon in classical times, particularly amongst the greeks and the romans, who are famed to have told stories which had built-in dynamics of interconnected and intersecting stories. in the twentieth century intertextuality gained currency in the 1960s, initially being associated with a number of philosophers, notably bakhtin (1957), who came up with the concept of the carnival, and barthes (1977), who made a rather unsettling announcement about the death of the all-knowing author in any text, or indeed jacques derrida’s memorable notion that it is difficult to tally or fit language to the world. this was expressed in his famous statement that ‘there is nothing outside the text’, which paradoxically suggests that that there is something outside the text. other linguists and philosophers, such as saussure and foucault, have contributed to the debate about textuality in various ways and degrees. what is relevant, even groundbreaking, about kristeva’s understanding and use of the global idea of intertextuality is that the concept challenges conventional, hypothetical ideas about what constitutes a text – if one thinks of the time-honoured idea of a text as being a string of words and sentences, and the punctuation that goes with it. it is this rather conventional, if conservative, conceptualisation of text that kristeva’s notion of intertextuality calls into question. as cohen puts it (1997:xvi): ‘[n]ow texts may be verbal or nonverbal or a mixture of both, and forms are not restricted on marks on paper’. thus the meaning of a text is distended to include semiotics, that is, signs and symbols and how they relate to meaning and interpretation. in short, contemporary thinking and scholarship about textuality, which (for kristeva) is both linguistic and semiotic, considers a text as unstable and multiple, and therefore meaning is always a fluid and shifty entity. texuality is linguistic to the extent that any word (such as ‘mother’, as opposed to a no smoking symbol) is essentially a text in the sense that it has been fashioned out of the signs (or letters) of language. the story does not end there, for cultural symbols, shapes and patterns and representations of all kinds, such the highway code symbols or a no smoking sign, are also genuine texts. for kristeva a text is multiple, and thus its meaning ever shifting, because it is entangled in a web of several other texts going back to the past or stretching into the future. this is often possible because sometimes texts are products of power or power relations in society, and this power could be political, ideological, or institutional. what is crucially important to bear in mind with regard to kristeva’s idea of intertextuality is her conviction that every text has associations and cross-references with other related or different texts. in short, every text is not as original as readers often deem it to be, since it alludes to and is a commentary on various extant texts. in his essay titled ‘readers as authors’, linguist courts (1991) echoes kristeva’s idea of intertextuality by making a strong link between reading and writing, arguing that being involved in one implies active participation in the other at the same time. crucially, courts situates the reader at the core of the reading and meaning-making process – a process whereby the distinction between author and reader has been levelled down, consigning the reader more prerogative in decoding the symbols and representations inscribed into the text. courts (1991) says that: in the moment of reading, the reader is re-writing the text that the author has previously written. using the totality of his non-visual information (background knowledge, past experience, cognitive schemata, mental theory of the world, or the ’all’ that is), the reader makes meaning of ‘that which is there’ (texts) from ‘that which is there’ (reader). (p. 110) in short, courts argues that the reader makes use of intertextual signposts of his or her entire life to make sense of the world through the signals available on the printed page. this sense-making process blurs the boundary between reading and writing in such a way that the reader takes control of the reading process by not treating either in isolation. reading and literacy top ↑ if texts are so complex, it is important to consider the implications for reading. immediately two questions are pertinent here: ‘what is reading?’ and ‘why read at all?’. conventional wisdom tells us that we read for various reasons, the most fundamental of which is to obtain vital information. however, this is not all there is to reading since beyond this basic need there are other reasons why we engage with texts of various nature, such as the need to expand and reinforce one’s vocabulary and grammar, or develop one’s reading skills and generally achieve the kind of literacy levels that ensure full citizen empowerment. it is precisely the imperative of reading or, to put it broadly, literacy for empowerment, that calls attention to the notion of ‘spheres of literacy’, as expressed by dagostino and carifio in the diagram below. in evaluative reading and literacy: a cognitive view dagostino and carifio (1994) use the model (figure 1) to explain diagrammatically their understanding of the dynamic of literacy in its multiple constituencies, stating that it ‘represents the different kinds of environments, or spheres, that the reader must master and function in to participate fully in the modern, or composite, world’ (1994:2). figure 1: the spheres of literacy. dagostino and carifio’s diagram, a schema spelling out the different spheres of literacy, is premised on the idea of natural progression (of an individual) as he or she moves from functional literacy, whose byword is the ability to survive in the infinitely harsh world, through various spheres which call for, amongst other things, the special expertise, cultural knowledge or critical acumen that come with a good command of the language, to the composite domain of literacy where the individual’s thorough and comprehensive understanding of the world enables them to master and play a meaningful role in it. of interest in these stages is how the notion of intertextuality is built into the above model. as the reader moves across these spheres of life (from functional literacy to the composite world), he or she is exposed to various functions that reading or literacy plays. for example, there is no doubt that functional literacy is the nominal or minimum level of reading proficiency for any citizen anywhere, to enable him or her to make sense of the world in which he or she lives. in other words, the writers place special emphasis on the importance of empowering readers or citizens, who are made to go through the various spheres of literacy in order to function optimally in the world. in fact, the various spheres are the multiple texts and sub-texts located in the domains spelt out above, namely functionality, knowledge specialisation, culture and meaning, critical thinking and, finally, (adopting) a mature view of the world that takes into account and fuses all of the spheres into one.all of this calls for radical rethinking of our pedagogical practices. theories of methodologies need to be revisited, particularly traditional theories in which a text is seen as a self-standing unit with a stable meaning or meanings, to communicate. such a rethinking would entail introducing in our teaching a combination of both verbal and non-verbal forms of texts, instead of the usual heavy reliance on the traditional method where a text is invariably a written document which is seen as a unitary and self-contained entity. thus a text is anything and everything that one sees around in one’s vicinity and which has a life of its own, is a voice to be listened to, can be described, and so forth. other pedagogical changes have to do with transformation of curricula to reflect the concomitant changes in the modern globalised and globalising world. living in the 21st century with its deluge of technological advances makes it imperative that we make use of technology (such as mobile phones, computers, television, and so forth) as the starting point. of course, knowledge of the principles of how the language works is vitally important. it is important to realise that built into a sentence are often other texts which can be analysed. clearly, reading at the very basic level of functionality will involve imparting specific mechanical skills which do not put demands on the students’ critical thinking skills. dagostino and carifio (1994) make the following observation about the nature of the skills: students will be able to read street signs, newspapers, and instruction manuals a well as follow directions. students will be able to comprehend the basic messages of straightforward writing. this is a world of minimal competence, a world of survival, a world of plugging along with a minimum of intellectual stimulation or pleasure. (p. 4) utilising multiple literacies top ↑ the argument of this article is that such limitations (as pointed out in the above quote) can be circumvented if our education systems are prepared to promote and foster all five domains of literacies as laid out by dagostino and carifio. in the final analysis the learner or reader has to shoulder some of the responsibility for appreciating some of the spheres, especially those that are coterminous with life, notably reading for pleasure. it is suggested in this article that the reader be exposed to a combination of reading or literacy spheres even at this early stage. this means rethinking the idea of a text beyond the written word to include ‘other texts’. anything that a teacher can see in her or his vicinity as having a life of its own, and can be described, is a text. thus the teacher could bring into class and introduce various symbols and signs (traffic signs, anti-smoking symbols, etc.) for the students to describe and analyse. by working individually or in groups the students could be asked to take different positions in their responses as they examine and describe the symbols and signs. such an exercise could be useful in helping the students to begin to make meaning in and of the world, by being able to perceive the different layers of interrelating texts in the texts (in this case, the symbols and signs). in a very practical way, the students would be encountering texts as intertexts, both semiotically and linguistically. other than using symbols and signs, introducing local knowledge in the form of fiction (such as short stories which have been handed down the generations) would be ideal at this stage. the most important thing is for the teacher always to get the students involved in some kind of problem-solving, say by explaining the moral of a story. getting the students to write as they read helps them to make sense of the text. such activities are critical in that they deepen the students’ comprehension of the texts they are grappling with. there is a need to rethink and move away from traditional, text-bound comprehension with all its assumptions of textual explicitness and literalness. the goals of this type of comprehension were, amongst other things, searching for the most important idea, vital details and related cause–and-effect patterns, often followed by an inferential question or two. of course it is an important skill, but reading that is directed towards achieving literacy looks at meaning as being secondary. what is of the essence is to perceive the text as being open, rather than closed. this entails a kind of thinking that is at odds with conventional reasoning often associated with the traditional type of comprehension. as dagostino and carifio (1994:46) put it, ‘[o]pen, divergent thinking is a style of processing text that multiplies the directions the reader takes in drawing conclusions or establishing explanations and interpretations of a text’. thus there is room for imagination and creativity. what this means is that teachers need not be enslaved by the texts in terms of what type of questions to ask the students. comprehension ought to promote the spirit of curiosity and inquiry amongst students. in order to sustain such a mindset amongst the students, teachers need to move away from the age-old practice of asking questions that simply require the students to merely explain towards those that explore, or from those that are factual and explicit towards those that are tentative, questions that invite reflection. in addition, comprehension need not be limited to a passage that is given to students to read. literacy now includes interactive technologies which could be made use of in a classroom situation so that students are given opportunities to participate in contemporary culture. digital literacies such as mobile phones provide an intersection between the local and the global, and can thus be used as texts in a classroom situation to develop communication skills and opportunities that enhance literacy. there is also a need for a marked shift regarding our understanding of the theoretical structure of literacy, which has traditionally been used to mean the ability to read (a language). the new structure would have to take the form of what dagostino and carifio call ‘spheres of literacy’ – the kind of framework that fuses the two concepts of reading and literacy into one integrated model of tackling texts. perhaps personal experience is in order here. those involved in higher education in south africa will agree that most young people enter south african universities with their proficiency in english way below the minimum standard required for university entrance. at the university of south africa, for instance, many students spend a year doing what are known as ‘access modules’ in english. these are students who would have failed english language at matriculation level. in order for these students to register for their degrees, they are expected to obtain a grade of 50% in the access modules they do. some of these are english for science language modules, reading and writing skills, and thinking skills. incidentally, the provision of access modules at the university of south africa is not limited to the discipline of english; many other disciplines have developed such modules for students who are ill-equipped to start their studies. what all of this means is that, in terms of dagostino’s and carifio’s ‘spheres of literacy’, most of the students seem to have been stuck in the realm of functional literacy. what is suggested here is the introduction of a broad-based, integrated discipline taught from the foundational phase of schooling all the way to university, with every sphere of life incorporated into the discipline every step of the way. thus, whilst fiction may be encouraged during formative years of schooling, other proficiencies and competencies (especially in the realm of mathematics and science) need special emphasis and attention. this would entail broadening of instruction in english education to subsume or include the broad field generally referred to as academic literacy – the ability to read and respond appropriately to all information on any subject. over and above the process of acquiring skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing, learners would be exposed to topics such as mathematics proficiency or literacy, where the language of mathematics would be fully dealt with. the same would apply to various content subjects on offer in higher education. at the same time, genres should be extended to include biographies, sociology, geography, history, astronomy and science, newspapers, and so forth. in a scenario where teachers decide to teach literature, getting the students to write responses to a particular novel or text constitutes dealing with intertexts. in other words, what the students produce are intertexts and thus the students become authors in their own right as they express their various opinions. this process is essentially empowering; once the students have had the opportunity to proffer their personal responses, they should always listen to other responses (other texts) from other students. this process promotes full literacy and empowerment because the students get to appreciate positions different from theirs. conclusion top ↑ in closing, it is only by acknowledging the intrinsic instability of texts – in this case as posited by kristeva and expounded by various literary and literacy scholars and philosophers – that we can begin to imagine various ways to empower our citizenry, who have to confront and grapple with thorny issues of what constitutes truth or reality in a modern world awash with all sorts of texts. to that end, the concept of textuality gives the modern citizen (and reader) some latitude or leeway to think of a text in ways that allow for empowerment, given that the concept now transcends the rather restricted and conservative understanding of the term – an understanding which hitherto privileged the author and his intentions as far as the meaning of a text is concerned. the concept of intertextuality challenges the notion of the author’s authority, and hence the text’s autonomy, allowing the reader to become an active participant in the meaning-making process, thereby opening up possibilities for productive empowerment. thus, kristeva’s notion of textuality ties in with dagostino and carifio’s broadened and integrated view of literacy as exemplified in the schema of ‘spheres of literacy’. in short, what can shape the imagination of the modern citizen is the realisation that textual production is often bound up with conflicting realities, notably ideology or institutional imperatives which are located within power, and often render texts liable to gaps and hiatuses in knowledge. the concept of intertextuality, as a dynamic textual system, takes care of such gaps, in that citizens or readers are accorded the context in which to creatively and productively engage with the gaps or other layers of the text which are communicated in all forms of echoes and resonances. such an engagement is a veritable and sure-fire way of empowering citizens. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests i declare that i have no significant competing financial, professional or personal interest that might have influenced the performance of the work described in this manuscript. references top ↑ allen, g., 2000, intertextuality, routledge, london & new york.bakhtin, m. [1934] 2004, ‘discourse in the novel’, in j. rivkin & m. ryan (eds.), literary theory: an anthology, pp. 674−685, blackwell publishing, oxford & malden. barthes, r. [1971] 1989, ‘the death of the author’ in p. rice & p. waugh (eds.), modern literary theory: a reader, pp. 116−118, edward arnold, london. boje, d.m., 2001, narrative methods for organizational & communication research, sage publications, london/thousand oaks/new delhi. cohen, p. (ed.), 1997, texts and textuality: textual instability, theory, and interpretation, garland publishing, new york & london. courts, p.l., 1991, literacy and empowerment: the meaning makers, bergin & garvey, new york & london. dagostino, l. & carifio, j., 1994, evaluative reading and literacy: a cognitive view, allyn & bacon, london. introduction why imagination and literacy? imagination in the context of literacy education the place of imagination in literacy education in south africa the articles in the special issue imagination, agency and voice resources and repertoires divergence or convergence conclusion references about the author(s) karin s. murris school of education, university of cape town, south africa catherine kell school of education, university of cape town, south africa citation murris, k.s. & kell, c., 2016, ‘imagination and literacy: introduction to the special issue’, reading & writing 7(2), a136. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i2.136 editorial imagination and literacy: introduction to the special issue karin s. murris, catherine kell copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. introduction the book the little prince by writer, poet and aviator antoine de saint-exupery (published in 1943) has delighted readers of all ages and continues to fascinate and enthral until today. the story draws on saint-exupery’s own experiences as a pilot who crashed his plane in the desert in 1935, but in the novella he recounts this moment as involving a meeting with a small and surprising interlocutor (the little prince). much of the book consists of their conversations and of the narrator’s experiences of being reminded through the dialogues with the little prince what he had lost in becoming adult. like many young people in our classrooms, the little prince might not give the answers adults want to hear and instead asks the questions adults believe are of no consequence. the narrator takes us back to his own childhood when, at the age of six and inspired by a non-fiction book on the primeval forest, he drew a picture of a boa constrictor who had swallowed an animal, which appeared as the outline of a hat: i showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them. but they answered; ‘frightened? why should anyone be frightened by a hat?’ my drawing was not a picture of a hat. it was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. but since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, i made another drawing: i drew the inside of a boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. they always need to have things explained. (de saint-exupery [1945] 1994:5–6) consequently, he was advised to refrain from drawing boas from the inside or the outside and to focus instead on geography, history, mathematics and literacy. reflecting on his life, he observes that he has had countless encounters with many people who are concerned with matters of consequence, but: whenever i met one of them who seemed to me at all clearsighted, i tried the experiment of showing them my drawing number one, which i have always kept. i would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding. but, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say: ‘that is a hat’. then i would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars. i would bring myself down to his level. i would talk to him about bridge, and golf and politics, and neckties. and the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man. so i lived my life alone, without anyone i could really talk to. (de saintexupery [1945] 1994:7) in his very first encounter with the little prince after the plane crash, the tiny person asks him to please draw a sheep, with no reason or explanation for his curious request. after several attempts to make representational drawings of a sheep, rejected by the little prince as inadequate, the narrator draws a box with three holes in it and explains: ‘this is only his box. the sheep you asked for is inside’. i was very surprised to see a light break over the face of my young judge: ‘that is exactly the way i wanted it! do you think that this sheep will have to have a great deal of grass?’. ‘why?’ ‘because where i live everything is very small…’ ‘there will surely be enough grass for him’, i said. ‘it is a very small sheep that i have given you’. he bent his head over the drawing: ‘not so small that – look! he has gone to sleep…’ and that is how i made the acquaintance of the little prince. (de saint-exupery [1945] 1994:10–11) the novella is thus a potent meditation on imagination and the ways in which it is expressed, communicated and evaluated, as well as being a poignant reminder that growing up not only has its gains but also its losses. in this, the writer prefigures kieran egan’s strong proposition that ‘maturing’ for many can involve the gradual demise of imaginative, metaphorical, embodied and original thinking (see for example egan 1988, 1992, 1993, 1997). egan, an educationalist who has published extensively on imagination and curriculum, was one of the sources of inspiration for the conference on imagination and literacy held in cape town in 2015, at which he delivered a keynote address and from which some of the articles included in this special edition are drawn. why imagination and literacy? some people associate the imagination with romantic ideas about young children and not with the real business of knowledge acquisition and communication. the imagination is often associated with aesthetic, playful, creative modes of being, knowing and re-presentation and viewed as belonging to creative subjects and disciplines such as the arts. but egan (1992:3–4) argues that it is ‘a common misunderstanding to regard the imagination as merely the capacity to produce images’ – images as visualisations or the act of ‘seeing in the mind’. egan points out though, that while the latin term imago does mean ‘image’, it also means ‘re-presentation’, that is, a flexible rehearsal of possible situations in the mind and that it therefore involves reasoning. in its prospective sense it is about the capacity to think of the possible rather than just the actual. greene (in gennrich, this issue) describes it as the ‘awareness of leaving something behind while reaching toward something new’. greene (1995) also cites dewey who describes imagination as ‘a “gateway” through which meanings derived from past experiences find their way into the present’ (also in gennrich, this issue), the ‘conscious adjustment of the new and the old’. we can conceptualise imagination as a central part of becoming literate, of reaching for something new in both expression and communication. and we can also conceptualise it as a central part of thinking differently about literacy education, about the literacy narratives and discourses we inhabit about our teaching and its effects. recent changes made by the reading association of south africa (rasa) to the definition of literacy in this journal (reading & writing) are an expression of a profound rethinking of the nature of texts in literacy education and the emergence of socially just pedagogies that include the majority of our children who do not have instruction in their ‘home’ language. the definition now reads: … the material form of texts is changing and … literacy involves the ability to ‘read’ and ‘write’ more than just words. literacy should therefore be seen as the ability to consume and produce texts in and across a range of semiotic modes such as, oral, visual, gestural, spatial and written. hence, this important rephrasing of the definition of literacy acknowledges the importance of other modes of expression and communication, like the visual, aural, gestural and the convergence of these modes in digital technologies. each of these offers affordances for the work of the imagination. imagination in the context of literacy education the theme for the conference and for this special edition of reading & writing arose in the first instance from noticing that, in the context of literacy education, the imagination as a meaning-making faculty receives remarkably little attention. standardised national curricula are premised on assumptions about how people’s minds develop and therefore how literacy should be taught – a focus that is mainly on cognitive development. aristotelian philosophy, cognitive psychology and certain strands of sociology have informed a curriculum that includes pedagogical instruction from the ‘simple’ to the ‘complex’, the ‘concrete’ to the ‘abstract’, the ‘familiar’ to the ‘unfamiliar’, and moves from active manipulation to symbolic conceptualisation and from perception dominated thinking to conceptual freedom (egan 2002). the ‘essay-text’ form of writing is viewed as the epitome of such moves and literacy instruction is geared to its achievement. these western educational philosophies and orthodoxies have informed literacy curricula, the texts we choose for literacy (reading schemes, children’s literature, adult education primers, comprehension tasks, the production of essays), sequencing and pacing of classes, how we make room for the body and for affect and emotion in teaching. the place of imagination in literacy education in south africa a range of complex explanations and solutions have been advanced for the continued poor performance of south african students at all levels on national and international literacy and mathematics benchmark tests. pointed out elsewhere (e.g. murris & verbeek 2014), one argument that is increasingly gaining traction is that the country’s teachers are deficient in content knowledge and that greater emphasis should be placed on ‘the basics’ of developing teacher knowledge (needu [national education evaluation and development unit] 2013). while this is clearly a central problem, certain effects arise from this perspective, including a curriculum with highly prescribed, specified, sequenced and paced guidance regarding the content that should be taught in schools (see the national curriculum statement: dbe 2011). in addition, teachers’ guides for textbooks as well as materials produced by the department of education provide teachers with scripted lessons in an attempt to address the lack of teacher content and pedagogic content knowledge (murris & verbeek 2014). these textbooks on the one hand represent the world to learners, presenting language as almost the sole mode of communication. on the other, they encapsulate and privilege what is called a referential or denotational ideology of language in which the function of language is seen to involve simply its reference to things out there in the world, rather than other functions of language as identified, for example, by jacobson (cited in sebeok 1960), such as the poetic, the emotive, the phatic and the metalinguistic. in addition, this view marginalises other modes of communication such as the visual, audio and embodied. the resultant curriculum seems to leave little room for embodied and experiential learning, communicating and expressing in other modes such as the visual and does not foreground pedagogical relationships, all of which would be key to learning which involves the imagination. the words and concepts constituting disciplinary knowledge are in turn reproduced in standardised large-scale tests and exams, with the claim being made that systemic tests can be useful to measure progress and possibly lead to improvement in teaching and learning (hoadley & muller 2016). while many other explanations are advanced for educational failure, one common claim is that teachers often reproduce the pedagogies they themselves were exposed to, and that the dearth of reading materials in a wider range of genres in their own lives leaves them with little capacity to imagine and experiment with new literacy practices in their classrooms. this results in utilitarian perspectives on literacy based on the denotational view of language mentioned above, accompanied by skill and drill approaches and emphasis on the code-breaker role, as opposed to the text user or text analyst roles. the approach outlined above obviously attempts to address these ‘deficiencies’, but instead it provides a curriculum that fills the gaps and leaves minimal space for teacher initiative. the publication of this special issue seems timely in view of the government’s agenda to develop a standardised curriculum for the training of literacy teachers in higher education. funded by the european union, the department of higher education and technology (dhet) is currently organising seminars in pretoria bringing together teacher educators from across south africa to develop materials, programmes and research projects (teaching & learning development capacity improvement programme) to improve initial teacher education (ite). taylor (2014:3) points out that it is not the idea that ite is ‘the next bashing boy, but to attempt to theorise its full educational function and, most important, to try to understand its role in the systemic reform required to close the apartheid gap’. we hope that the articles in this special issue can spark debate on the importance of imagination in teaching, learning and research to improve the quality of (higher) education. the articles in the special issue the theme of this special edition invited contributors to interpret, interrogate or deconstruct what imagination means in relation to literacy in the context of literacy education in the broad sense and across all phases of education. we did not receive many articles in response to our open call for papers that addressed the theme of imagination directly, but the ones we selected for this edition represent a spectrum of ‘takes’ on imagination and its place in teaching and learning literacy. four of the five articles focus on imagination in relation to teacher education initiatives: one in a rural village in uganda (tembe and reed), one in nairobi (shank) and two at the university of the witwatersrand in johannesburg (gennrich and mendelowitz). tembe and reed also discuss the african storybook (asb) initiative, which they claim is an imaginative project in which reading materials in a wide range of african languages are produced and disseminated digitally. the only paper we received that reports research with children in classrooms, murris and thompson’s paper, focuses at a micro level on the interactions between teachers and children in a classroom, in which imaginative responses to child-generated philosophical questions were elicited through drawings. drawing in particular on egan’s work and inspired by paulo freire’s critical pedagogy, shanks’s article, imagination, waldorf, and critical literacies: possibilities for transformative education in mainstream schools, reports on her work of integrating imaginative waldorf-inspired approaches into mainstream nairobi schools through a teacher-support programme. she takes up the difficult task of showing how the divergent thinking implied in critical literacies and imaginative waldorf-inspired approaches can work in a government curriculum that demands convergent thinking. ‘i got content with who i was’: rural teachers’ encounters with new ways of practicing literacy by toni gennrich examines efforts within a teacher education programme at the university of the witwatersrand in johannesburg to expose teachers to working with different genres of text in order to challenge deeply entrenched ways of thinking about and valuing literacy, imagining the possibilities such genres afford for creative literacy practices, rather than operational and technicist ones. mendelowitz’s article, you’re in fundzaland: pre-service teachers (re) imagine audience on a creative writing course, shows how teacher students at a south african university engage with creative writing for a digital platform and in the process re-imagine the concept of ‘audience’. amidst calls for writing tasks in education that engage with real-life contexts and audiences, the intervention described here shows the intense imagination involved in such writing, and the conflicts and tensions that arise as different groups take up this task. focusing directly on the question of orthographies of literacy in a ugandan language, lunyole, whose orthography was only developed in 2003, tembe and reed’s paper, languaging in and about lunyole: african storybook materials as a catalyst for re-imagining literacy teaching and learning in two ugandan schools, charts the developing agency amongst teachers as they engage with stories written in their own language. in this process they start to imagine that it is possible for them to teach their learners in their own language and to position their language alongside other powerful languages in uganda. tembe and reed’s paper also introduces the asb initiative, which they claim is an imaginative response to the africa-wide shortage of texts in readers’ primary languages. the asb directly addresses the challenges of literacy development in contexts where reading materials just do not exist in the languages with which children are familiar, through the production of open access digital fictional and non-fiction stories that can be sourced from, translated, downloaded and uploaded onto a website. at present the project has resources in 65 african languages. murris and thompson’s article, drawings as imaginative expressions of philosophical ideas in a grade 2 south african literacy classroom, shows how children’s drawings can be regarded as material-discursive manifestations of young children’s developing philosophical ideas about death. the articles also invite readers to examine the following key themes, amongst others. imagination, agency and voice if imagination is about the capacity to envisage the possible, then agency must be implied. relevant here is appadurai’s concept of ‘the capacity to aspire’ which he defines as ‘a navigational capacity nurtured by the possibility of real-world conjectures and refutations’ (2004:36). central to this capacity to aspire is the concept of voice, which appadurai counterposes with the concepts of ‘exit’ and ‘loyalty’ (following hirschman 1970, in appadurai 2014). basically, this means that people exercise loyalty (and this often involves compliance), or if conditions are unfavourable, they choose exit. voice is a capacity that intermediates the options of loyalty or exit, therefore linking closely with what we suggest is a key feature of imagination, the engagement with the possible, with the not-yet thought. the accomplishment of voice however is closely linked with the stock and the richness of the resources available for its articulation. both gennrich and tembe and reed foreground the concept of agency in their papers. they each have a different ‘take’ on the concept. gennrich grounds her theoretical framing in bourdieu, linking the concept of imagination to a shift in habitus and questions whether shifting a deeply entrenched habitus is actually possible. she links this with greene’s (1995) idea that agency is one amongst four elements which are necessary for the release of the imagination and becoming ‘wide awake to the world’. the two teachers who were the subjects of the intervention to ‘shift habitus’ certainly demonstrate their capacity to imagine new possibilities for their own personal literacy practices and in the teaching of their young learners. tembe and reed focus more on how agency should be conceived less as a quality of actors but rather in its achievement in concrete settings through engagement and intention to ‘bring about a future that is different from the present’. the ugandan teachers they work with demonstrate new and previously unthought-of possibilities in their engagement with debates about lunyole orthography and the possibilities for teaching in lunyole. murris and thompson engage with a notion of agency that moves beyond containment by the individualised body. their paper deals with the theorisation of voice and is suggestive of what this might mean for agency that includes the force of the material – the notion of the environment as the ‘third teacher’. drawing on loris malaguzzi’s metaphor of the hundred languages they argue how voice is not bounded by the human subject traditionally positioned in humanism as the knower (through symbolic systems such as language). in their take on philosophy for children, voice takes on a different ontological dimension that moves beyond identity, power and agency (murris 2016). a perspective that is different from shanks’s paper in which the role of imagination in relation to identity is discussed, with imagination being seen as a ‘conduit for identity formation’. resources and repertoires as mentioned above, imagination and its articulation in voice are closely connected with the accessible and available material-semiotic resources and their configuration into repertoires. the papers here present a range of ‘takes’ on resources and repertoires. with regard to literacy, a well-known model is freebody and luke’s (2003) four resources model, which works to enable teachers to think of literacy beyond the teaching of discrete skills and sequenced programmes. in this model being literate is seen as engaging in four roles each with their own set of necessary resources for meaning making – being a ‘code-breaker’, being a ‘text participant’, a ‘text user’ and a ‘text analyst’. when it comes to resources and repertoires that extend beyond the linguistic, kell (2009:134) draws on the vygotskyian concept of mediational means, which includes semiotic resources with their histories as modes and genres of communication, material objects and/or artefacts, as well as tools and technologies. gennrich’s paper addresses the four resources model explicitly and shows how engagement by teachers in training with the genres of drama scripts and poetry frees up the teachers’ own writing, their expression of affect and their sense of pleasure, signalling the space for imaginative work on the roles that are often neglected in our classrooms, those of text user and text analyst. when it comes to linguistic resources, the availability of home language as a key resource in schooling has been identified as a crucial factor. tembe and reed’s paper addresses this head on, showing the difficulties of building up curriculum and pedagogy in a language with a newly developed orthography. shanks also mentions that waldorf schools prefer their medium of instruction to be the home language. murris and thompson’s paper reveals how a focus on the visual in combination with an emphasis on philosophy enables children to engage intently with their own meaning making in relation to questions which go way beyond the normal comprehension questions required by formal schooling. the act of visualising frees up the children’s space to develop and test their own theories about important questions and to negotiate these in engagement with others in the community of enquiry. in her description of how the waldorf curriculum works, shanks’s paper carefully outlines the repertoires and resources that children are exposed to at waldorf schools. these include a strong emphasis on the story, on poems and songs, on the construction of objects and a preference for home language as a medium of instruction. mendelowitz’s and tembe and reed’s papers both draw attention to new resources in the form of digital platforms for producing and spreading stories in different languages. mendelowitz’s study outlines how students are set a task to write a story which is uploaded to the fundza website for reading by its (potentially) vast real-life audience. the asb project described by tembe and reed also enables users to upload and translate their own stories, which are then accessible for all. divergence or convergence if the imagination is a thinking that resists closure and opens up unexpected lines of thought and new ideas (i.e. divergent thinking), then what are the tensions with a national literacy curriculum that assumes convergent thinking? globally, curricula tend to focus on the production of right answers (known by the teachers and others in authority). what are the implications for how comprehension is conceptualised and the resources we use to teach it? in this regard, shanks’s discussion of how mainstream teachers can engage with waldorf approaches is instructive. she carefully lays out the ways in which waldorf education specifically encourages divergent thinking, counterposing this to the pedagogic practices to which the mainstream teachers are habituated. murris and thompson also argue for divergent imaginative thinking through the practice of children asking philosophical questions about a picture book in a community of enquiry – the pedagogy of philosophy for children (p4c). conclusion in concluding, we turn to the little prince again as he gets us to entertain the thought that if we question our own cherished views we might open ourselves to completely new vistas on the landscapes of our lives, ones which draw in and on our own personal histories, memories, affect as well as cognition. we feel the narrator’s own sense of surprise as the little prince challenges him yet again, helping him to find a secret space that meant much to him in his own past: ‘the desert is beautiful’, the little prince added. and that was true. i have always loved the desert. one sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams… ‘what makes the desert beautiful’, said the little prince, ‘is that somewhere it hides a well…’ i was astonished by a sudden understanding of that mysterious radiation of the sands. when i as a little boy i lived in an old house, and legend told us that a treasure was buried there. to be sure, no one had ever known how to find it; perhaps no one had ever even looked for it. but it cast an enchantment over that house. my home was hiding a secret in the depths of its heart… (de saint-exupery [1945] 1994:73–74) references appadurai, a., 2004, ‘the capacity to aspire’, in v. rao & m. walton (eds.), culture and public action, stanford university press, stanford. department of basic education (dbe), 2011, national curriculum statement. curriculum and assessment policy, foundation phase grades r–3. english home language, government printing works, pretoria, viewed n.d., from http://www.education.gov.za/ de saint-exupery, a. [1945] 1994, the little prince, transl. k. woods, heinemann, london. egan, k., 1988, teaching as storytelling. an alternative approach to teaching and the curriculum, university of western ontario, ontario, london. egan, k., 1992, imagination in teaching and learning; ages 8–15, routledge, london. egan, k., 1993, ‘the other half of the child’, in m. lipman (ed.), thinking, children and education, pp. 281–286, kendall/hunt, montclair. egan, k., 1997, the educated mind: how cognitive tools shape our understanding, university of chicago press, chicago. egan, k., 2002, getting it wrong from the beginning: our progressivist inheritance from herbert spencer, john dewey, and jean piaget, yale university press, new haven. freebody, p. & luke, a., 2003, ‘literacy as engaging with new forms of life: the “four roles” model’, in g. bull & m. anstey (eds.), the literacy lexicon, pp. 52–57, prentice hall, sydney. greene, m., 1995, releasing the imagination: essays on education, the arts, and social change, jossey-bass, san francisco. hoadley, u. & muller, j., 2016, ‘visibility and differentiation: systemic testing in a developing country context’, curriculum journal. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585176.2015.1129982 kell, c., 2008, ‘“making things happen”: literacy and agency in housing struggles in south africa’, journal of development studies 44(2), 892–912. murris, k., 2016, the posthuman child: educational transformation through philosophy with picturebooks, routledge, london. murris, k. & verbeek, c., 2014, ‘a foundation for foundation phase teacher education: making wise educational judgements’, south african journal of childhood education 4(2), 1–17. national education evaluation and development unit (needu), 2013, ‘home’, viewed n.d., from http://www.education.gov.za/needu.aspx pahl, k. & rowsell, j., 2010, artefactual literacies, teachers college press, new york. sebeok, t., 1960, style in linguistics, mit press, cambridge. taylor, n., 2014, ‘thinking, language and learning in initial teacher education’. presentation to the seminar academic depth and rigour in ite, university of the witwatersrand, jet education services, 30–31th october 2014. abstract introduction presentation of the programme programme aims participants implementation of programme results ethical considerations reading programme 2015 survey conclusion acknowledgement references appendix 1 appendix 2 about the author(s) dianne shober department of english, university of fort hare, south africa citation shober, d., 2016, ‘promoting literacy through reading programmes for first-year university students’, reading & writing 7(1), a117. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i1.117 original research promoting literacy through reading programmes for first-year university students dianne shober received: 18 sept. 2015; accepted: 29 sept. 2016; published: 01 dec. 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract university lecturers share a concern for incoming varsity students who lack the literacy competence to succeed in their courses. given the strong correlation between reading and literacy, the english department commenced an innovative and effective reading programme which witnessed positive and enthusiastic results. by engaging students in reading select works of fiction, we were able to increase their comprehension, build their vocabulary and inculcate an individual interest in reading literature. this paper discusses the resultant voluntary reading programme that was organised for first-year students enrolled in english language classes, the theoretical methodology of the programme, its implementation and positive results, especially in the students’ improved english course marks. it also explores ways to configure this programme to extend beyond university boundaries into effective community engagement. introduction literacy is a paramount concern for academics teaching in higher education. although south africa may boast a youth literacy rate of 98.8% (literacy rate – youth total in trading economics 2015) with women being slightly higher at 99.27% than men at 98.50% (south africa literacy rate 2015), this rate may only reflect those individuals with the ability to read and write in simple sentences for everyday comprehension, as the strict definition of literacy implies. kelly long, literacy programme coordinator for gadra education, counters that ‘to truly be literate one must be able not only to decipher the symbols which make up words but also to interpret text or read for meaning’ (pretorius 2013). research has shown a clear correlation between literacy and reading. carole bloch, director of project for the study of alternative education in south africa (praesa), asserts the importance of reading in developing literacy skills: storytelling and reading expose children to a special form of language that is holistic, rich and complex. this allows them to tune into the rhythms and structures of language and broadens their conceptual worlds and their vocabulary to express themselves. (2012:11) additionally, studies have long supported the connection between reading and academic performance (aitchison & harley 2006; caskey 2008; falk-ross 2002; livingston et al. 2015; nel, dreyer & kopper 2004; pretorius 2002). nel et al. (2004:95) argue unequivocally that ‘reading is the skill upon which success in every academic area is based’. bharuthram (2012:205) supports this statement by adding that: ‘poor reading skills lead to poor academic performance which in turn adversely affects student’s overall development’. reports from the national benchmark tests confirm that students entering university lack proficiency in reading and writing. this may be understandable as 2014 witnessed an increased failure rate for students writing home language and english papers for matriculation (saba 2015) with eastern cape students scoring the lowest with only 64.5% passing matric (iol news 2015). therefore, many students may be entering university underprepared for the reading and writing levels at which they are expected to perform. in a study examining the relationship between reading ability and academic performance amongst undergraduate students at the university of south africa (unisa), pretorius (2000) found that urgent attention needs to be given to improving the reading ability of students at tertiary level, for ‘reading constitutes the very process whereby learning occurs’. pretorius explains that: reading is important in the learning context not only because it affords readers independent access to information in an increasingly information-driven society, but more importantly because it is a powerful learning tool, a means of constructing meaning and acquiring new knowledge. (2000:169) given that students entering university must now decipher and decode meaning in an academic discourse with which they are unfamiliar at best and unprepared at worst, it is understandable that they are struggling. a student’s limited reading ability is further exacerbated by the sheer volume of reading required at university although programmes targeting reading speed and comprehension appear efficacious (livingston et al. 2015:1). further, a student’s ability to make meaning out of texts through the process of intertextuality enables him or her to gain empowerment in the meaning-making process, opening further doors to literacy (kalua 2011:5). boakye (2015:1) also argues that a higher level of self-efficacy, defined as ‘the belief about one’s ability to perform a task successfully’, also influences reading proficiency. studies have also shown that learning may be further enhanced within a gender-based, single-sex environment (hughes 2007). with all of these key areas of learning enhancement in mind, the english department at the university of fort hare, east london campus, designed a reading programme to assist in improving students’ academic performance by developing their reading skills. presentation of the programme the department’s reading group initiative originated in 2010 as a voluntary programme for commerce and social work students who were enrolled in a compulsory career-oriented english language course. given the apparent success of the programme and the need for students to improve their reading skills, the programme was made mandatory for students enrolled in these courses. in comparing the students’ english scores from the first semester to the second semester, a remarkable improvement was noted in the results of students participating in the reading programme with 70% of the students increasing in their final grades of their compulsory english courses, one by 35%. lack of funds and facilitators resulted in the programme lapsing until the second semester of 2014 and 2015. with the assistance of a department of education grant funded through the university’s teaching and learning centre, the english department was able to re-initiate the reading programme. positive evaluative and academic responses from the students’ validated the reinvigoration of the project with special attention to changes in the selected texts. programme aims the reading group project was designed to allow first-year students, who do not engage with literary texts, an opportunity to critically read and interrogate a selection of literature. many first-year university students who enter specialised degree programmes are required to enrol in english instruction courses specific to their career field. generally, their english course also has their career track in mind such that students completing degrees in commerce and social work take a course that develops career-oriented writing and oral presentation skills. hence, these students often express frustration that their english courses do not allow them to study literature (lindfors 1996). while the main motivation of this reading initiative is to improve students’ reading, vocabulary, comprehension and conversational skills, another of the objectives is to allow the students the opportunity to read a text at leisure and for enjoyment, instead of for formalised assessment. it is believed that allowing students to develop their reading skills in a non-punitive, pass or fail environment assists them in building confidence in reading silently as well as aloud to an audience of their peers. in addition to developing reading confidence, the programme aspires to improve the students’ reading and analytical skills, motivation to read, and reading comprehension. analytical thinking is defined as ‘developing the capacity to think in a thoughtful, discerning way, to solve problems, to analyse data and recall and use information’ (aymer 2005:1), all skills that are recognised as crucial for success in reading comprehension which bharuthram’s (2012) research indicates enhances student performance. in this reading programme, the students are exposed to the concept of literary analysis which requires them to search for and interpret the author’s intended meaning as well as their own critical response to the text. this skill has the potential to be transferred and applied to their other course work in which critical reading and analysis are pertinent, thus enabling their enhanced reading and interpretative abilities to positively impact their entire academic experience. when students are reading the novels, they are encouraged to examine specific elements of the text such as its purpose, characterisation, dialogue, and lexis and syntax. the aim here is for the students to further develop their analytical skills which are not only necessary for success in this reading programme, but also within their extended academic and social context. thus, one should note how this programme aims to accomplish much more than just allowing the students the opportunity to read leisurely in the academic environment. it is designed to build student confidence, improve their analytical skills and enhance their vocabulary and fluency in english as a language of instruction. with this said, by allowing each student the opportunity to individually read aloud, they should become more fluent in their reading as well as broaden their english vocabulary. moreover, this additional reading can help them become more effective readers. when reading, the students are actively engaging with the text; they are not only reading the words on the page, but they can see how these words are used in grammatically correct sentences. in this way, the students can improve their conversational skills and also learn how to use the language accurately when speaking and writing in the academic environment. therefore, another goal of this initiative is for students to learn the meaning of english words that are unfamiliar to them and to incorporate these ‘new’ words into their personal vocabulary when both writing and conversing. with the provision of specific text-based glossaries, providing the definition of words potentially outside the scope of the student’s understanding, students would further be able to broaden their vocabulary (mbulungeni 2010). additionally, they may be able to recognise the value of discovering the meaning of unfamiliar words, a skill that they could translate into their other course work in which the academic discourse may be new and daunting. in light of these multifocal factors, this reading initiative is designed to assist students in developing the necessary skills to achieve academic, career and personal successes. participants the participants in the 2015 english department reading programme encompassed 44 first-year university students who were enrolled in the english language class (english for career purposes) prescribed by their social work department. their english module is a course designed to develop the skills essential for social work graduates and emphasises written and oral communication; hence, it does not involve instruction in or the reading of literary texts. all the participants were second-language speakers whose mother tongue language is mainly isixhosa. implementation of programme recognising the value of small groups for shared learning (shober 2008) each reading group was limited to 10 people to ensure quieter, less confident students felt that they were in a safe, participatory environment. this smaller number also enabled every member to read a page aloud as well as afforded time in the 1 h weekly sessions for them to engage in consequential group discussions regarding the text and its meaning. the groups were also gender-based. research (gurian & ballew 2003; herr & arms 2004; swain & harvey 2002; vail 2002), as well as teaching experience in a number of academic and community settings suggests that reading confidence is stifled when men and women must read aloud in front of one another. the lack of reading confidence (loveless 2015), gender rivalry and fear of recrimination often affected students’ performance, what mael (cited in herr & arms 2004) calls the distraction of the ‘dating and rating culture’. hughes (2007:9) supports this evaluation stating in her research on single-sex education that ‘attendance improves, distractions decline and student participation increases, all of which serve to maximise student achievement’ and ensure self-efficacy. the nervous laughter of the participants when it was explained why men and women would be placed in separate groups appeared to confirm that this insecurity is a genuine issue affecting oral reading performance. the gendered groups also enabled the selection of texts that targeted the interests of men or women which also served to enhance engagement with the texts and hopefully lead to the residual effect of inculcating a reading culture. two female and two male facilitators were selected to direct the weekly 1 h reading sessions. these facilitators were selected not just based on their academic ability, although most of them were securing postgraduate qualifications, but their skill at facilitation, enthusiasm for literature and approachability with the students. the students were asked to select the reading group time suitable to their academic and work schedule, but once in a group, they were required to remain in that group as there were different books assigned to the facilitators and each group would be reading at their own pace. thus, for textual continuity and comprehension, it was advisable that members remain in their selected groups throughout the course of the semester-long reading programme. in the initial inception of the project in 2010/2011, the book selected for men was the purpose driven life by rick warren. this text was selected not only for its usefulness in helping the students increase their literacy skills of vocabulary, comprehension and analysis, but also to assist them in building their personal life with purpose and confidence. the texts selected for the women’s reading group was a series of three texts by american author marylu tyndall. her texts contained strong, independent female characters, adventurous plots and positive, uplifting outcomes. the department was fortunate to have these texts donated by the author and benefactors interested in investing in a reading programme for the university’s english department. in response to the research by villegas and lucas (2002) on culturally responsive literacy and smith and sobel’s (2010) research on place-based learning, the texts for the 2014 and 2015 reading groups were altered to focus on the south african sociocultural environment. the men read peter abraham’s mine boy and the women read either sindiwe magona’s collection of short stories living, loving and lying awake at night or her novel beauty’s gift. both men and women seemed to find a greater connection to these texts, commenting that they had affinity to the characters and their geopolitical environment. generally, though it appeared that the women responded more valuably to magona’s texts, perhaps because her texts are more contemporary and relate to issues closer to their current gendered experiences. each student was given a text to read, during the reading session, affording them the opportunity to physically take ownership of the material and engage personally with the text by reading along with their peers. in order to assist in evaluating the effectiveness of the reading programme, all participants were given a pre-programme benchmark test in the form of the matric english home language paper of 2013, a paper which assessed grammar, vocabulary and analytical skills. there were two reasons this form of assessment was chosen. firstly, it allowed the project leaders to utilise a standard national test rubric to equalise marking and secondly, the students had, for the most part, just exited matric and the test afforded the most up-to-date view of their current level of reading and comprehension. additionally, the home language version was selected as opposed to the first additional language because students enrolled at the university of fort hare are required to read, study and write all of their course work in the english language and are therefore required to function at the capacity of first language speakers regardless of their language background. the correlation of the two results was tabulated in order to evaluate the level of improvement in the students’ comprehension abilities and grammar skills. additionally, the students’ english course marks between preand post-programme were tabulated to discover if there was any indication of improvement in their academic skills and classroom performance. at the beginning of each session, facilitators reviewed the events of the text to ensure all the students understood who the characters were and what was happening to them. participants were also invited to project what they thought might happen in the future, given what they had read and deduced from events up to that point. in every reading session, each student would read at least one full page of text and then the group was asked to orally reflect on the passage. this format was intended to create an environment enabling open discussion, self-confidence and respect for variable interpretative perceptions. facilitators also created a glossary which they distributed to each student at the beginning of the session. these weekly glossaries provided the definitions of difficult words found in each chapter, but students were encouraged to request the meaning of any additional terms they did not understand and invited to offer their definitions of these words according to the literary context in which they were found. facilitators then clarified the meaning of these new words, and advised students to add these terms to their glossary and practice them in conversation throughout the week. the inclusion of a glossary in the programme was designed to assist students in broadening their vocabulary as well as instilling the importance of seeking understanding of unknown words to enable textual comprehension. results analysis of the preand post-test results indicate that there was some improvement in students’ comprehension, vocabulary and grammar skills pertaining to their performance in the 2013 matric home language paper. see appendix 1 for pre-programme benchmark matric test and the post-programme test. where there was substantial improvement is in their actual results in their english for career purposes course between preand post-programme attendance or between their first and second semester results. the informal table below indicates the comparison between preand post-matric paper results and the preand post-english course results: 23 students showed improvement in their pre and post-matric paper results 2 students remained the same 19 students showed no improvement. however, the differences in the students’ preand post-english scores are significant: 31 students improved their english scores between the first and second semester 1 student improved by 35% (37% – 72%) 1 improved by 29% (42% – 71%) 1 improved by 24% (48% – 72%) 6 improved by over 10% only 13 students decreased their english scores with only 2 by 15% (75% – 60%; 72% – 57%) and the remaining by under 10%. the students were also surveyed for their response to the programme. see appendix 2 for a copy of the student survey. ethical considerations because this project was implemented by the english department to assist students in their literacy skills, it was viewed as similar to a course, workshop or tutorial that the department would provide for students. as such there were no inherent risks to the physical or psychological health of the students who were voluntarily asked to participate in the reading programme. at the outset, students were advised that evidence has illustrated the improvement of previous participants’ literacy skills, but no students were coerced to take part. just as our department does not arrange for informed consent for students to register for english courses, we did not require informed consent to participate in the reading groups. reading programme 2015 survey results were as follows: 86% of students enjoyed the characters 88% found the story interesting 84% thought the glossary was helpful 93% said the group leader helped them understand and guided them through the story 81% feel that being part of the reading group helped increase their vocabulary and reading comprehension 91% said that the reading group increased their interest in reading fiction 84% feel that it has made a difference in their ability to read academic texts 93% believe that the reading group is an important programme and should be continued 58% agreed that 1 hour per week was an adequate amount of time. several students commented that because they came from rural areas, and english was not their first language, they had limited vocabulary of english words and did not read well aloud. however, after the completion of the programme they felt that their english language comprehension had improved immensely. some of the specific comments recorded by the students of the programme were: ‘at first i did not have confidence in reading in front of a group, but this reading class helped me a lot’ ‘reading really helped me, and i have learnt a lot, now i am no longer shy to read at all’ ‘the reading group motivated and encouraged me to read more’ ‘my vocabulary has increased and i am able to speak in front of people’ ‘it was a very good experience as i learnt new words’ ‘it helped me to read and understand what i am reading. if i did not understand a word, there was a glossary available with the meaning of the words and that helped a lot’ ‘it helped me to read and gave me more appetite for reading. the reading session also made me to improve in spelling words’ ‘there were some words that i couldn’t pronounce but this book helped me to improve my reading skills’ ‘i am a very shy person and it helped me to talk and participate in the classroom. now i am not shy to ask a question of my lecturer when i don’t understand something’ ‘reading was fun because we had some small debates. it has made me to be able to work with other people and to boost my self-esteem’ ‘the reading group really assisted me in speaking because i am very shy in front of people, more especially when speaking english as i am not sure of the vocabulary’ ‘i am no longer scared of reading out loud because i noticed that i am good at it’ ‘when i read for myself i just read and did not understand what i was reading or even remember what i was reading. the reading class helped me to read with understanding’ ‘it allowed me to concentrate when reading as i usually don’t focus on what is being read, just on saying the words correctly’ most students found that at the beginning of the reading programme the words were difficult and they could not understand what was going on in the story because of this. this participant response was noteworthy to the project leaders as the selected texts were written for a general south african reading audience and did not contain complex academic discourse. eighty-four percent of the participants responded that the glossaries were highly beneficial, especially with the available opportunity to question other unknown words and add them to their glossary. this process, they believed, helped their english vocabulary to improve and enabled them to more easily comprehend what they were reading. by offering students the opportunity to ask about unfamiliar words, facilitators learnt the limitations in the participants’ vocabulary as well as the serious derailment to vocabulary that a limited reading background had cost these students. as a result, this experience assisted the facilitators and project leaders to adapt their tutoring and teaching in other classes, as they recognised the limited english literacy of many of their students. at the beginning of the programme, students were reluctant to read a whole page aloud and when the group was asked who would like to go first, eyes were downcast and no one wanted to volunteer. however, a few weeks into the programme few students had any hesitation in reading aloud and all were eager to participate. facilitators noted a marked improvement in the confidence and reading ability of all students who participated in the reading programme. as a facilitator attests, one student enthusiastically if not unwittingly reported that this was the first time he had ever finished reading a book. eighty-four percent of the participants felt that their involvement in the reading programme benefited them academically and applied the skills they had acquired through the reading programme to other areas of study. this response can be evidenced in the improvement to their english course marks. additionally, 85% of the participants requested assistance in their essay writing skills through the implementation of department workshops and were willing to invest their time and energy in attending these voluntary classes, which further illustrates their interest in improving their academic skills. a further 91% felt it increased their interest in reading fiction, which as research suggests will strengthen literacy. it is also noteworthy that over half the students improved in their comprehension and grammar matric scores as a result of their participation in the programme. what is the most significant results is the improvement in their scores in their english for career purposes academic subject with 70% of the students (31 out of 44 participants) showing an increase in their course marks, one improving by over 35% and two by over 24%. conclusion given the participants’ improved academic results, illustrated significantly in the fact that 70% of the students’ increased english course scores, the researchers conclude that the design of the programme accomplished the intended objectives. by engaging in a reading programme, students’ reading confidence increases, their english vocabulary expands and their analytical skills improve. providing a glossary allows students to learn the meaning of unfamiliar words, which they can then incorporate into their vocabulary, enabling them to understand an ever-expanding range of terms. by finding enjoyment in reading for leisure, students can discover the value of reading beyond the academic environment, thus magnifying the benefits designed within a literacy programme. the design of this reading programme can be transferred into community-based projects, as the project leaders ascertained when they implemented it at a local centre for impoverished women and their children. therefore, this reading initiative, with the necessary adjustments to texts, facilitators and times, also has the potential to be an effectual tool in enhancing reading comprehension for participants involved in other non-governmental, non-academic programmes in the community. acknowledgement additional information regarding this project is available from the university’s teaching and learning centre and/or the registrar who gave their endorsement of this project. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. references aitchison, j. & harley, a., 2006, ‘south african illiteracy statistics and the case of the magically growing number of literacy and abet learners’, journal of education 39, 89–112. aymer, a., 2005, analytical thinking, capscu, cairo. bharuthram, s., 2012, ‘making a case for the teaching of reading across the curriculum in higher education’, south african journal of education 32, 205–214. http://dx.doi.org/10.15700/saje.v32n2a557 boakye, n., 2015, ‘the relationship between self-efficacy and reading proficiency of first-year students: an exploratory study’, reading and writing journal 6(1), 52–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rwv6i1.52 caskey, m.m., 2008, ‘comprehension strategies that make a difference for struggling readers’, in s. lenski & j. lewis (eds.), reading success for struggling adolescent learners, the guilford press, new york, 170–188. erasmus, j., 2012, ‘why we need a literature nation’, mediaclubsouth africa, viewed 22 august 2015, from http://www.mediaclubsouthafrica.com/youth-and-education/3067-literacy-130912 falk-ross, f., 2002, ‘toward the new literacy: changes in college students’ reading comprehension strategies following reading/writing projects’, journal of adolescent and adult literacy 45(4), 278–288. gurian, m. & ballew, a., 2003, the boys and girls learn differently action guide for teachers, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. herr, k. & arms, e., 2004, ‘accountability and single-sex schooling: a collision of reform agendas’, american educational research journal 41(3), 527–555. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/00028312041003527 hughes, t., 2007, ‘the advantages of single sex education’, national forum of educational administration and supervision journal 23(2), 2006–2007. iol news, 2015, 2014 matric pass rate 75.8%, viewed 22 august 2015, from http://www.iol.co.za/news kalua, f., 2012, ‘reading for empowerment: intertextuality offers creative possibilities for enlightened citizenry’, reading and writing journal 3(1), 21–25. http://dx.doi.4102/rwv3i1.21 lindfors, b., 1996, ‘african literature teaching in south african university english departments’, alternation 3(1), 5–14. ‘literacy rate – youth total (% of people ages 15–24) in south africa’, 2015, trading economics, viewed 25 august 2015, from http://www.tradingeconomics.com/south-africa/literacy-rate-youth-total-percent-of-people-ages-15-24-wb-data.html livingston, c., klopper, b., cox, s. & uys, c., 2015, ‘the impact of an academic reading program in the bachelor of education (intermediate and senior phase) degree’, reading & writing 6(1), 66–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v6i1.66 loveless, t., 2015, ‘the gender gap in reading’, brookings viewed 22 august 2015, from http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/03/26-chalkboard-gender-gap-loveless mbulungeni, m., 2010, ‘fast-tracking concept learning to english as an additional language (eal) students through corpus-based multilingual glossaries’, alternation 17(1), 225–248. nel, c., dreyer, c. & kopper, m., 2004, ‘an analysis of the reading profiles of first year students at potchefstroom university: a cross-sectional study and a case study’, south african journal of education 24(1), 95–103. pretorius, e.j., 2000, ‘reading and the unisa student: is academic performance related to reading ability?’, progressio 22(2), viewed 12 august 2015, from http://www.unisa.ac.za/dept/buo/progressio pretorius, e.j., 2002, ‘reading ability and academic performance in south africa: are we fiddling while rome is burning?’, language matters: studies in the languages of africa 33, 169–196. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10228190208566183 pretorius, e.j., 2013, ‘sa’s real level of literacy’, the citizen, viewed 22 august 2015, from http://citizen.co.za/31407/literatez/ saba, a., 2015, ‘matric pass rate set to drop’, city press viewed 22 august 2015, from http://www.news24.com/southafrica/news/matric-pass-rate-set-to-drop-20150104 shober, d., 2008, communicating with a vision, van schaik, pretoria. smith, g.a. & sobel, d., 2010, place-and community-based education in schools, routledge, new york. south africa literacy rate, 2015. indexmundi, viewed 15 august 2015, from http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/south-africa/literacy-rate swain, s.l. & harvey, d.m., 2002, ‘single-sex computer classes: an effective alternative’, technology trends 46(6), 17–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf02824155 vail, k., 2002, ‘same-sex schools may still get a chance’, education digest 68(4), 32–38. villegas, a.m. & lucas, t., 2002, ‘preparing the culturally responsive teachers: rethinking the curriculum’, journal of teacher education 53(1), 20–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022487102053001003 appendix 1 table 1-a1: reading programme preand post-test results for benchmark and class marks 2015: preversus post-test and english course marks. appendix 2 reading programme survey 2015 please answer the questions below by circling your selected number in which the number 1 indicates least liked or least agree and 5 being most liked or most agree. the name of my book was: _______________________________________________________________________________________________ i enjoyed the characters in the book i read and understood the challenges they were facing. 1 2 3 4 5 i found the story itself and the setting interesting and learnt about south african’s struggles. 1 2 3 4 5 the words were difficult and because i didn’t understand them, i didn’t know what was going on in the story. 1 2 3 4 5 the glossary was helpful and i used it to learn new words and understand the story better. 1 2 3 4 5 the reading group leader helped me understand the story and guided my reading. 1 2 3 4 5 an hour once a week was an adequate amount of time for the reading programme. 1 2 3 4 5 being part of the reading group has definitely helped me increase my vocabulary and reading comprehension. 1 2 3 4 5 being part of the reading group has increased my interest in reading fiction for enjoyment. 1 2 3 4 5 being part of the reading group has made a difference in my ability to read other academic texts. 1 2 3 4 5 i believe the reading group is an important programme and should be continued to help other students. 1 2 3 4 5 in addition to the reading programme i would also like to have a workshop on: essay writing critical reading and listening skills research and referencing reading2.pdf � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � article making sense of the pirls 2006 results for south africa1 hilary janks university of the witwatersrand abstract: results on the pirls test in 2006 make it clear that south african educators need to examine the way in which they teach literacy in the foundation phase. while the test gives a fair indication of what our children cannot do, it is less clear about what they can do. mastery of decoding, for example, is assumed and children are tested on their ability to read lengthy texts and answer cognitively demanding questions. !e test is therefore not a good indicator of whether learners can decode or not. by setting the kinds of skills demanded by pirls, against freebody and luke’s roles of the reader, this article suggests that the problem with literacy learning in our schools is that too o"en students do not get much beyond decoding and basic comprehension. !ey are not taught to be text ‘participants’, text ‘users’ or text ‘analysts’. literacy interventions in schools need to prepare students to ask and answer middle and higher order questions on texts written in their home language if they are to move from learning to read to reading to learn. introduction !e progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) is an international systemic evaluation of literacy in home language. in 2006, 45 education systems in 40 countries participated. most countries tested children in grade four. south african children were tested on two grades, grade four and grade five; at both levels south africa’s score was the lowest. it is not my intention in this paper, to repeat the details of the pirls report (howie, venter, van staden, zimmerman, long, du toit, scherman and archer, 2006) but to add a socio-cultural perspective on reading that might help us to make sense of the south africa’s dismal performance on pirls in 2006. it is important to stress at the outset that i believe that there is merit in systemic evaluations as they help to draw attention to strengths and weaknesses in education which governments then have to address. it is not the fault of the 1 !is discussion is based on the pirls 2006 summary report (howie, venter, van staden, zimmerman, long, du toit, scherman and archer, 2006). rw& � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # # � $ � $ % � & % � � � � � ' ( � ) * 28 reading and writing researchers that their #ndings are rarely reported with a nuanced understanding of what the #ndings mean or that policy interventions do not address the root causes. one of the dangers, however, is that if repeated evaluations show little improvement, despite government interventions this is extremely demoralising for people working in the system, particularly teachers. as steinbach suggested in her keynote address at the 2010 reading association of south africa (rasa) conference: “to do the same thing over and over again and [to] expect a di$erent result is the de#nition of insanity.” reading as a set of cognitive skills versus reading as a social practice one of the central debates in the literature on reading is whether reading is a skill or a social practice. !is is a false dichotomy, an unhelpful form of binary thinking, as i will hope to show. if by skill, we mean cognition, then there can be little doubt that reading requires cognitive skills, such as recognition, (of letters and whole words), association (of letters and sounds), blending (combining sounds together to form words) and understanding (making sense of the marks on the page and how they make meaning). !ese are cognitive processes that take place in di$erent parts of the brain as shown by new brain imaging technologies. put simply, visual information is processed at the back of the brain, converted to sound in the head by the auditory centre of the brain (further forward and to the side of the brain) and conveyed to the front of the brain where meaning is processed. to do this the brain needs to create a new pathway which is developed by extensive practice. moreover, for the brain to process information at the speed necessary for comprehension, the deciphering process needs to achieve automaticity. !e miracle that happens when this is achieved is that %uent readers are able to read so e$ortlessly, that they have time to think their own thoughts in relation to those of the writers they are reading. !e more one is able to predict what a text is going to say, the less visual information (e.g., letters, words) one needs from the page (smith, 1978). for example, if the last line on the page reads ‘when he went to sleep his mother would sing him a lul-’, it is possible to guess that the letters on the next page will complete the word ‘lullaby’, provided that you know the word. !is is the principle on which the game ‘hangman’ is based. similarly, if you are travelling on the road and you know where you are going, you can ‘read’ the name of your destination on a road sign from far away just from the shape of the word. !is helps us to understand why goodman (1967) de#ned reading as a ‘psycholinguistic guessing game’. his research on miscue analysis shows us that when children replace a word on the page with a di$erent word, in most instances the word substituted has an equivalent meaning. !e less visual � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # # � + � $ % � & % � � � � � ' ( � ) * 29hilary janks information readers need, either because of their knowledge of the word or their knowledge of the context, the faster they can process meaning. !is explains why it is so hard to understand texts in an unfamiliar discipline or unfamiliar language. !e reader is so caught up in understanding the meaning of each new word, that he or she loses the thread of the sentence as a whole. if you do not have the vocabulary and don’t understand the meaning of the words you are reading, reading is much harder and much slower. in the south african pirls study, children were tested in the language that children had been taught to read in and had been reading in for a minimum of four years. in south africa, this manifested as the language of learning and teaching used by the school from grade one (howie, venter, van staden, zimmerman, long, du toit, scherman and archer, 2006, 12). many south african children attend schools where the language of learning and teaching (lolt) is di$erent from their home language. sometimes lolt is a cognate language and sometimes lolt and the child’s home language are non-cognate languages. for example, for isizulu children, isixhosa is a cognate language but english and afrikaans are not. children may end up learning to read in a language they do not know and that is very di$erent from learning in their own languages. current research (wolf, 2007; snow, 2002) shows that children’s knowledge of words and their meanings, developed through talking to them in the early years, is the best preparation for literacy. many children in south africa come to school without any knowledge of the words in the language they have to learn to read in. pirls is a home language test, taken by many children in an additional language. !is does not exonerate south african education providers, as other children in other parts of the world are in similar situations, but it does suggest that we cannot expect our children to do as well as children writing in their home languages. and for african-language children in south africa who are writing the test in their home languages, the test takes place in grade four or grade five, a"er they have switched from reading in their mother tongue to reading in english or afrikaans. children in the throes of a language/literacy switch cannot be expected to perform as well as children who are reading in their home language exclusively. pirls is not designed for children who have not been taught consistently to read in their home language. a home language literacy test such as pirls may be setting our children up for failure in the south african context. what the results do show with screaming clarity is that children in grade four are not ready for english as lolt. !ey simply do not have the vocabulary, language and literacy skills for learning in english across the curriculum. !is is not news: � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # # � , � $ % � & % � � � � � ' ( � ) * 30 reading and writing it was shown conclusively by macdonald’s (1991) !reshold project research, nearly twenty years ago. i chose to begin with reading as a cognitive process because pirls is a test of reading skills and comprehension (cognition). but it is possible to read these results in relation to the di$erent roles of the reader outlined in freebody and luke’s (1990) work on the four roles of the reader, which include both the skills and the practices of readers. freebody and luke identify four roles for the reader: text decoder, text participant, text user and text analyst. before using these roles to understand the pirls results it is important to explain them. 1. text decoder text decoders can ‘crack the code’ (freebody and luke, 1990) of the texts they read: they can decipher the marks on the page. decoding is the ability to know and recognise letters, to know the letter sound relationships and to understand how letters and their sounds combine to form words. text decoding includes phonic, phonemic, sight word and reading aloud pedagogies. !ese work with lower order cognitive skills. readers who can decode, without understanding, are able to read aloud; this is what wardaugh (in smith, 1978) refers to as ‘barking at print’. languages that have a one-to-one correspondence between letter and sound are easier to learn to decode (for example, hebrew, arabic and african languages) and are known as phonetic languages. languages that have more than one symbolic representation (letter combination) for the same sound (as in fun, flu!y and photo) or one symbolic representation for di$erent sounds (for example, the letter a which makes the sound æ for sat; ei for late; a: for far; for swan and in zebra) are known as phonemic languages. african languages and afrikaans are phonetic; english is phonemic. moving from literacy in a phonetic language to literacy in a phonemic language, like english, is di&cult and confusing. !is is further complicated by english’s many vowel distinctions which are di&cult to pronounce and hear in the early stages of learning english as an additional language, if your home language does not have these distinctions. phonemic approaches, such as thrass, rely on teachers being able to produce these distinctions and learners being able to hear them. !is makes it a more suitable approach for enliteration in english home language than in english additional language. !e following story illustrates how di&cult it is to hear and produce unfamiliar sound distinctions in a language. when south africa introduced the national credit act (2005) the government also introduced debt counselling. fairly quickly the rumour spread that the government had agreed to debt cancelling. highly articulate radio presenters when trying to make the distinction . / . 0 1 2 1 3 4 5 2 6 4 0 7 8 9 : ; < = = 9 1 1 > ? 1 @ ? 0 1 2 2 2 a b 0 c d 31hilary janks could be heard to say ‘cunselling’ / / for both ‘counselling’ /a /and ‘cancelling’ /æ/, using a vowel sound midway between /a / and /æ/. !is increased the confusion. similarly, english speakers learning to speak an african language o"en experience great di&culty hearing and producing unfamiliar consonant sounds and tonal variations. many south african children can decode both words and pictures, but this is not all that is tested by pirls. pirls assumes that children have learnt these lower order reading skills and the questions asked require higher order skills than decoding. if decoding is all that children can do, they will not manage the pirls test. conversely, if children do badly on the pirls test it does not mean that they cannot decode, the skill that many people equate with ‘reading’. but reading is much more than the ability to turn the squiggles on the page into sound – aloud or silently in one’s head. until such time as automaticity in decoding is achieved, readers are still learning to read. 2. text participant text participants make meaning from texts. while this includes comprehension, it is much more than simply understanding the meaning of the words and images on the page. !is role requires readers to understand what the text is both saying and inferring. however, in addition to taking meaning from texts, readers also have to bring meaning to texts, that is, they have to be active not passive readers. making sense of a text, requires learners to relate the meanings of texts to what they already know. only in this way can the meanings of texts be assimilated. !is ability is essential for reading to learn. learners need practise interacting with texts and discussing them in relation to their own experiences. !e need to talk about texts: they need to talk about what they agree with and disagree with; they need to talk about what the text reminds them of, they need to imagine how the text could have been written di$erently, perhaps with a di$erent ending; they need to act out the stories and draw images that show how they understand the text; they need to spend time with a text. too o"en in classrooms, students read the story and that is it. children’s stories need to be revisited, explored from the point of view of the di$erent characters, examined for details in the images, or simply read again and again for enjoyment. factual texts, such as books on transport or the weather, enable text participants to work with what is new and old information. !ey also create possibilities for children to imagine: imagine what kind of transport there will be when the world runs out of oil; what life will be like when the weather is much hotter. . / . 0 1 2 1 3 4 5 2 6 4 0 7 8 9 : ; < = = 9 2 1 > ? 1 @ ? 0 1 2 2 2 a b 0 c d 32 reading and writing 3. text user text users read a wide range of texts for a variety of purposes, o"en. it is important that young readers and writers have a very good understanding of what literacy is for, if they see little evidence of it in the neighbourhood where they live. in local communities where there are few books, or newspapers, or magazines, or billboards or food packaging in their languages, (apart from the bible) literacy tends not to be an everyday practice. !is is compounded by limited library services and inadequate access to books of all kinds in schools. in some communities, people who can read, including teachers, o"en prefer not to, because reading in an additional language is just too hard. reading and writing become tied in people’s minds to the worlds of work and school and are rarely associated with pleasure. as a result many students, particularly in rural areas, are exposed to a limited range of text types and they do not always have access to literacy role-models. without a visible need for literacy, it is hard to make it desirable. teachers have to #nd the literacy practices that are embedded in local communities and build on these. a love for tv can be turned into writing mini-episodes; love for cartoons can lead to the reading of comics; love for cars can be turned into working with catalogues and comparing brands; enjoyment of football can lead to reading the sports pages of newspapers and sport magazines. dyson (1992, 2003) shows convincingly how children’s engagement with popular culture acts as a spur for reading, writing and drawing. !e one literacy practice that is widespread in south africa where there is 95% (brown and czerniewicz, 2010) cell phone penetration is text messaging. schools need to think carefully how to harness widespread desire for new technologies as a means of turning children into text users. consuming and producing texts are two sides of the same coin. for example, anyone who has taken a photograph has a better understanding of concepts such as framing, focus, shots and angles than someone who has never looked through a view #nder. reading and writing similarly inform one another. without a nuanced understanding of what it is possible to infer from the pirls report, we might choose the wrong literacy intervention. if, as i will argue, the pirls test items require high level meaning making skills, it will not help to provide schools with materials that improve the teaching of phonics and deciphering but do not invite students to make inferences from what they are reading, to analyse and synthesise meanings and to evaluate texts. 4. text analyst analysts are able to evaluate texts in relation to their social e$ects. !ey understand that texts are positioned and positioning as well as how they work to . / . 0 1 2 1 3 4 5 2 6 4 0 7 8 9 : ; < = = 9 0 1 > ? 1 @ ? 0 1 2 2 2 a b 0 c d 33hilary janks persuade readers. !ey recognise that texts are not neutral but are constructed by their writers to inform and in%uence and readers. analysts pay attention to the ways in which texts shape our identities – what we think and believe as well as what we value and do. analysts examine the writer’s choices to see whose side he or she is on and to work out who bene#ts as a result. who is included? who is excluded? who is favoured and who is not? what is shown as natural and inevitable or, on the other hand, as the result of human action? what is portrayed as normal and deviant behaviour? who decides? who speaks? analysts read critically to understand the power relations that are evident in everyday texts. !ey want to know whose interests are served by the text in order to evaluate its social e$ects. most teachers and curriculum writers in south africa think that this is too hard for general education. some even think that this should be le" to higher education. however, research has shown that very young children can do this kind of analysis. in australia, jennifer o’brien (2001) used everyday texts in her classroom of 5 to 8 year olds. her work with mothers’ day cards is emblematic. !e following brief summary gives the %avour of her project. she began by asking the children to discuss in groups what they thought their mothers would like for mothers’ day and in a group report-back gathered all their ideas. !en she sent the children home to do some research: they had to #nd out what their mothers wanted for mothers’ day. !e two sets of answered were compared and the di$erence and similarities were discussed. !en she handed out mothers’ day catalogues and invited children to tackle the following kinds of questions simply by reading the images. what do catalogues show that mothers want? are these the same or di$erent from what mothers say they want? why do you think mothers say they want cards, %owers picked from the garden and hugs, while catalogues say they want jewellery, perfume and washing machines? do the mothers in the catalogue look like your (vietnamese) mothers? how are the mothers in the catalogue di$erent from your mothers? !e children said that the catalogue mothers were young, thin, pretty, made-up, anglo and so on. can you explain why this is? how would you like to change this catalogue? why? and then, when fathers’ day followed, the children were asked to compare what catalogues said that mothers want with what they said fathers want, leading to a discussion of the social construction of gender. e f g f h i j i k l m j n l h o p q r s t u u q q i v w i x w h i j j j y z h [ \ 34 reading and writing children do not have to be able to read to analyse the catalogues. if we teach them how to ask critical questions about the representations of mothers in pictures, we provide them with an orientation to text that can be transferred to their reading of print. vasquez’ (2004) award-winning book negotiating critical literacy with young children demonstrates convincingly the possibility of doing this kind of work with even younger children, aged 3 to 5 years old. using the four roles of the reader to make sense of the pirls results in chapter 8 of the pirls 2006 summary report (howie et al, 2006: 39), long and zimmerman examine ‘the school curriculum and the organisation for teaching reading’. !eir #ndings are based on interviews with principals, who were asked, “at which grade do the following reading strategies #rst receive a major emphasis in instruction in your school?” twelve reading strategies based on current reading theories were listed for consideration (p. 41). !ey identi#ed twelve strategies for reading: 1. knowing letters; 2. knowing letter-sound relationships; 3. reading words; 4. reading isolated sentences; 5. reading connected text; 6. identifying the main idea of the text; 7. explaining or supporting understanding of the text; 8. comparing text with personal experience; 9. comparing di$erent texts; 10. making predictions about what will happen next; 11. making generalisations and inferences; 12. describing the style and structure of the text. i have assigned these strategies to the di$erent roles of the reader in table 1 below. table 1: text strategies aligned with the roles of the reader roles of the reader (freebody and luke 1990) strategies for reading (long and zimmerman, 2006) text decoder cracks the code of the text with knowledge of phonics, phonemics and sight words. knowing letters (1) knowing letter-sound relationships (2) reading words (3) reading isolated sentences (4) reading connected text (5) e f g f h i j i k l m j n l h o p q r s t u u q z i v w i x w h i j j j y z h [ \ 35hilary janks roles of the reader (freebody and luke 1990) strategies for reading (long and zimmerman, 2006) text participant makes meaning by taking meaning from and bringing meaning to texts. relates meanings in the text own ideas, values and experiences. identifying main idea (6) explaining or supporting understanding (7) comparing with personal experience (8) making predictions (9) making generalisations and inferences (11) text user range of texts used for di$erent purposes comparing di$erent texts (for di$erent purposes: literary and information texts) (9) describing style and structure (12) text analyst !e social e$ects of text – who bene#ts? not included in the 12 strategies evaluation questions are not included in the 12 strategies: explaining the possible social e$ects of texts. explaining who is included and excluded. explaining who bene#ts and who is disadvantaged. evaluating whether the text is fair or not. explaining the e$ects of word, image and style choices in creating these social e$ects. (12) explaining what the text wants the reader to believe and why. what if questions that invite students to consider alternative possibilities. e f g f h i j i k l m j n l h o p q r s t u u q ] i v w i x w h i j j j y z h [ \ 36 reading and writing figure 8.1: in howie et al’s (2006) summary report shows the grade at which these strategies are #rst introduced in schools. what this #gure makes clear is that the focus in the early years is on children as text decoders who can move from letter recognition to the reading of connected text (strategies 1-5). !e strategies that are more cognitively demanding tend to be introduced, if at all, in grades !ree or four. !ere is some evidence of readers as meaning takers but not meaning makers; as readers they are expected to comprehend the text. most schools at some stage during the foundation years ask readers to identify the main idea of the text (6). however 20% of schools do not invite students to relate what they are reading to their personal experience (8); 30% of schools do not require children to compare texts or to predict what will happen (9 -10); 40% do not require students to make generalisations and inferences (11) and a massive 60% of schools pay no attention to describing the structure and style of texts (12). !e more demanding cognitive strategies, if they are taught at all occur towards the end of the foundation phase. !ere is very little evidence of children as text users or as text analysts. !ere are only two strategies that require students to be text users and there is little evidence of these strategies being introduced to students before grade 4. children as text analysts are not even on the map. !is goes a long way to explaining why south africa’s pirls scores are so low. moreover, long and zimmerman (2006) show a correlation between higher scores and the introduction of the more cognitively demanding strategies from grade one. what we do not need in grades one and two is more focus on phonics, phonemics and word recognition but rather an emphasis on active engagement with how di$erent kinds of texts make meaning, what they mean, e f g f h i j i k l m j n l h o p q r s t u u q x i v w i x w h i j j j y z h [ \ 37hilary janks and how readers relate the meanings in texts to their own life worlds. learners need to be invited to imagine, and predict, and infer consequences. we should not underestimate what young children are capable of doing. vasquez’ (2003) getting beyond “i like the book”, written with teachers, provides practical ways of extending students’ engagement with books. what is important is that teachers provide ‘sustained time to linger with a book’. lee he$erman provides a model for developing children’s ability to talk about books and to become text participants. lee’s six sessions for working with a picture book session 1: read aloud read the book out loud and give students ample time to make connections, comment and ask questions. session 2: picture walk !e book is revisted for a second time with a picture walk through the text. during this walk students talk about what they remember about the book from the pictures. session 3: small groups conversations why do you think people should or should not read the book? what surprised you about this book? what questions do you have about the book? what topics from your own life connect to the book? write one or two statements from someone whose perspective is represented in the book. write one or two statements from someone whose perspective is not represented in the book. each group marks the statements and questions that generated a lot of discussion with a star. session 4: whole group meeting !e class meets as a whole to discuss the starred questions. e f g f h i j i k l m j n l h o p q r s t u u q v i v w i x w h i j j j y z h [ \ 38 reading and writing lee’s six sessions for working with a picture book session 5: choose an illustration !e group discusses the illustration from the book that best represents the conversations about it. session 6: notebook writing each student writes a couple of pages in his or her notebook about the writing topics noted on the response sheet during session 2. (vasquez, 2003, 37, adapted). vasquez (2003) also shows how teachers can teach children to become text analysts by focussing on social issues (chapter 3) and using children’s literature to unpack social issues in the school community (chapter 4). !e book concludes with annotated bibiliographies of books for children that explore social issues (appendix b), that depict social action (appendix c) and that create space for children to talk about issues of racism, power and control (appendix d). !e cognitive demand of this kind of approach to reading is far removed from the hunt-through-the-text-to-#nd-information approach typical of many south african classrooms. but cognitive strategies are not enough, if literacy practices are not embedded in children’s lives. if children are not helped to become text users then they will not be exposed to the full range of text types and the di$erent ways in which they are shaped for di$erent social purposes. invitations are di$erent from catalogues and they are both di$erent from stories and songs. children need to be given opportunities to explore these and other texts, to discuss their di$erences, and to produce a range of texts themselves. given the freedom to become text participants, text users and text analysts, in relation to reading and writing, children are more likely to discover the pleasures of literacy and the desire needed to overcome the challenge of cracking the code. references brown, c. and czerniewicz. l. 2010. debunking the “digital native”: beyond apartheid, towards digital democracy. in journal of computer assisted learning. 26(5): 357-369. freebody, p. and luke, a. 1990. literacies programmes: debates and demands in cultural contexts. prospect: a journal of australian tesol, 11: 7 – 16. dyson, a. 1997. writing superheroes, contemporary childhood, popular culture and classroom literacy. new york: teachers college press. e f g f h i j i k l m j n l h o p q r s t u u q ^ i v w i x w h i j j j y z h [ \ 39hilary janks dyson, a. and geneshi, c. 2003. !e brothers and sisters learn to write, popular literacies in childhood and school cultures. new york: teachers college press. goodman, k. 1967. reading, a psycholinguistic guessing game. journal of the reading specialist, may: 126-135. howie, s., venter e., van staden, s., zimmerman, l., long, c., du toit, c., scherman, v. and archer, e. 2006. pirls 2006 summary report. pretoria: university of pretoria. o’brien, j. 2001. children reading critically. in negotiating critical literacies in classrooms, b. comber, and a. simpson. mahwah: lawrence erlbaum. macdonald, c. with burroughs, e. 1997. eager to talk and learn and !ink. cape town: maskew miller longman. smith, f. 2004. understanding reading. london: routledge. snow, c. 2002. reading for understanding. science and technology institute (rand corporation, united states). vasquez, v. 2004. negotiating critical literacies with young children. mahwah: lawrence erlbaum. vasquez, v. with muise, m., adamson s., he$erman, l., chiola-nakai, d. and shear, j. 2003. getting beyond “i like the book”. newark: international reading association. wolf, m. 2007. proust and the squid: !e science of the reading brain. new york: harper. _ ` a ` b c d c e f g d h f b i j k l m n o o k p c q r c s r b c d d d t u b v w _ ` a ` b c d c e f g d h f b i j k l m n o o u c c q r c s r b c d d d t u b v w abstract introduction research method schools of thought on copyright protection in the digital sphere the usa the legislative response in south africa possible implications for developing countries conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) tana pistorius south african research chair in law, society and technology, college of law, university of south africa, pretoria, south africa odirachukwu s. mwim high court of south africa, pretoria, south africa citation pistorius, t., & mwim, o.s., 2019, ‘the impact of digital copyright law and policy on access to knowledge and learning’, reading & writing 10(1), a196. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.196 note: this article is partially based on o.s. mwim and t. pistorius, ‘review of legal philosophical approach to digital copyright management and its implications for knowledge degeneration in africa’, 2017 computing conference, london, united kingdom, july 18–20, 2017, pp. 1029–1034. https://doi.org/10.1109/sai.2017.8252218 original research the impact of digital copyright law and policy on access to knowledge and learning tana pistorius, odirachukwu s. mwim received: 25 jan. 2018; accepted: 07 dec. 2018; published: 26 june 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the evolution in digital technologies has had an enormous impact on traditional copyright notions. works in digital form have uniform characteristics and these works can be copied, distributed and stored with ease. objectives: the focus of this article was how to attain a balance between the need to promote access to works and therefore knowledge and learning, on the one hand, and the protection of the interests of copyright holders, on the other. method: technological protection measures (tpms) are applied to copyright works in digital form to curb infringement. the authors explore the extent to which tpms impact on access the knowledge and learning. results: the findings of this article suggest a need for possible countermeasures in promoting knowledge and literacy through legislative reform that address the needs of creators and users in developing communities. conclusion: the authors conclude that tpms may hinder data literacy, access to works, teaching and learning, particularly in developing communities. for example, recent attempts to revise south african copyright law have not attained a balanced approach. keywords: digital; copyright; knowledge; development; legislation; technological protection measures; tpms; copyright law; information; communication technologies; icts. introduction copyright law has always evolved in response to technological change. the need for copyright law arose with the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. according to ploman and hamilton (1980), printing privileges were granted in an attempt to regulate the printing of works. the first printing privilege was granted to antonio sabellico in 1486, followed by the privilege granted to the publisher aldus manutius in venice in 1495 (ploman & hamilton 1980). the revision of copyright law always follows the development of new technologies. a case in point is the legislative developments in response to the development of photography and computer technology (lim 2007). digital technology is no exception. digitisation challenges traditional concepts of copyright law such as the categorisation of works into different classes. multimedia works defy classification. the seamless transmission of digital works and the ease with which works in digital form can be reproduced pose unheralded challenges to copyright law. concerns regarding the impact of digitisation on copyright law led to the adoption by the world intellectual property organisation (wipo) of the wipo copyright treaty (wct) and the wipo performances and phonograms treaty (wppt) in 1996. these treaties are commonly referred to as the ‘internet treaties’. key traits of these treaties are the right of communication to the public, the making available right, the management of rights information and anti-circumvention provisions. technological protection measures (tpms) are applied to copyright works in digital form to curb infringement. the circumvention of these tpms is illegal. books and other resources and learning go hand in hand. there is therefore an intimate relationship between copyright law and education. it therefore follows that any copyright provision that impedes access to copyright works will impede access to knowledge. this in turn will affect the knowledge divide. research method this article examines the impact of copyright law and policy on access to digital content and therefore also access to knowledge and learning. it is assumed that the law should respond to technological change in a meaningful manner. it follows that, where copyright law evolves to address digital piracy, it is also assumed that the law should evolve in a manner that facilitates lawful uses. copyright law serves both private and public interests. the private interest in copyright law is the author’s exclusive rights to reap the fruits of their creative endeavours. the public interest in copyright law is the dissemination and use of works by the public. this article reviews the extent to which private rights in the digital sphere are balanced with public interests, in this case the right to have access to knowledge and learning materials. in this article, an empirical-analytical approach was adopted through the review of the evolvement of copyright law to address the impact of digitisation. the analytical approach adopted in this article juxtaposes the traditional notions of copyright law and the management of the copyright protection of digital works. the interpretive approach was useful to illustrate the impact of information communication technologies (icts) on copyright regulation. through the interpretative approach, the implications of court decisions and laws are also traced to access to knowledge. the approaches adopted in this article highlight the precarious line between the regulation of copyright and access to copyright works and therefore learning. this article adopted an overall qualitative research approach in investigating the research problem. the research methodology involved a literature study of primary and secondary sources. this article traces the perspectives in two jurisdictions, namely the usa and south africa, although other developments are also highlighted. the two jurisdictions were chosen because of the relevance of their copyright regimes to the research problem. the usa was included in this study as it is a developed country that has an advanced copyright regime. the usa follows a protectionist approach through which it protects its robust creative industries. south africa is included in this study as it is a developing country. although south africa has well-established creative industries, it is a net importer of the usa’s creative outputs. south africa has several important national policy objectives, but relevant to this study is the recent emphasis on access to education. south africa has also recently embarked on the revision of its copyright law. the proposed revision aims to address the impact of icts on south african copyright law as well as access to works. schools of thought on copyright protection in the digital sphere various schools of thought have addressed the challenges facing the copyright protection of works in digital form (mwim & pistorius 2017:1029–1030). legal scholars’ philosophical approaches highlight the essential characteristics of the digital copyright paradigm. these schools of thought range from the complete abolishment of copyright protection of works to a moderate approach that embraces the public–private balance of rights. extreme minimalists argue that copyright law is dead (lange 1992:139–151). this school of thought proposes the abolishment of copyright law for digital works as it is out of step with the current realities (halstead 2002:195; meeker 1993:195). the neo-classicists argue that the power currently in the hands of copyright owners should be tempered by public interests (appel 1998:149, 1999:205–238). the post-modernists adopt a subjective view of digital copyright based on the collaborative notion of engaging with text (appel 1999:205–238). post-modernists were the trailblazers of the notion of user-generated works. proponents of the moderate approach emphasise the importance of applying exceptions and limitations to copyright works in digital form (netanel 1996:283–387). we support a moderate approach, as it advocates a balanced approach. we think that a balanced and technologically neutral approach to copyright law is necessary. on the one hand, copyright law could become irrelevant and unworkable if inapposite copyright principles are applied to digital works. the converse is also true – copyright principles that have been developed to address digital issues are not applicable in the analogue world. a case in point is the temporary reproduction exception. without this exception we would not be able to surf the internet as a (temporary) copy is made when a person views a web page on a web browser. the temporary copy exception is vital to the digital world but completely inapplicable to traditional works. the usa introduction to the digital millennium copyright act the usa signed the wct in 1996. in 1998, the usa adopted the digital millennium copyright act (wipo copyright and performances and phonograms treaties implementation act of 1998 (17 usc § 101) (dmca) to curb digital piracy (loren 1999:835, 2002:133–148; lunney 2001:813–920). the dmca is consistent with the obligations created for member countries of the wct. the dmca provides that copyright owners may apply tpms to protect their copyright works from unauthorised copying and unauthorised access to the works. copyright owners may also embed rights management information in their works to aid the management of their rights in the digital sphere. the ‘anti-circumvention’ provisions prohibit third parties from circumventing the tpms and rights management information through the application of circumvention techniques and devices (17 usc § 1201 of the dmca). some authors (appel 1999:155; cho, kim & shin 2015:9; hettinger 1989:31) note that the dmca prohibits both the use of decryption technologies (the act of circumvention) and access to decryption technologies (the trade in circumvention tools and technologies) (17 usc § 1201 of the dmca). the trade in circumvention tools and technologies is not objectionable if such tools or technologies have a commercial significance other than to circumvent (iwahashi 2011:491). review of court decisions in a previous article, we traced the important cases that dealt with the copyright infringement under the dmca (mwim & pistorius 2017:1030–1035). those cases are briefly referred to herein. two important and more recent cases that deal with fair use and access to works are also discussed. in the sony corp case (sony computer entertainment america inc v divineo inc 457 f supp 2d 957 [2006] 968), the court rejected a claim that the manufacturers of sony video cassette recorders (vcrs) that could record television programmes should be liable for contributing to copyright infringement as the devices were incapable of non-infringing uses. this case established an important principle, namely that manufacturers of devices, such as vcrs, would not be liable for contributory infringement of copyright if the device in question was capable of substantial non-infringing uses. lunney (2001:813–920) notes that the sony corp standard was applied in the vault corp v quaid software case (847 f 2d 255 [5th circuit 1988]), where the court held that the decryption program developed by the defendant was capable of non-infringing uses because the program created proper archival copies. the making of archival copies was held to be substantially non-infringing. the liability for trade in circumvention tools and technologies was addressed in the universal city studios v reimerdes case (111 f supp 2d 294 [sdny 2000]). in this case, a group of young hackers based in norway developed a program to circumvent the tpms applied to films distributed on dvds. (for a detailed discussion, see beets 2001:793–834; ku 2002:263–324; yee et al. 2012:358–375). the circumvention program was made available for download, and it was posted on several sites dedicated to similar decryption activities. the court held that trafficking in a decryption program that enables unauthorised access to copyright works infringed the rights of the copyright owner (111 f supp 2d 294 [sdny 2000]). in the chamberlain case (chamberlain group inc v skylink tech inc 292 f supp 44), the circumvention of a garage door opener was at issue. the defendant created a competing device that was programmed to function as a substitute garage door opener. the court rejected this action and held that the dmca was only applicable to copyright works – the software embedded in the garage door opener was not copyrightable. secondly, the court held that consumers had a basic right to use the embedded software they bought (chamberlain group inc v skylink tech, inc 292 f supp 44). it should be noted that copyright infringement cannot be justified by consumer demands. this sentiment was echoed in the umg recordings case (umg recordings inc v mp3.com inc [2000] 92 f supp 2d 349). in this case, the court noted that the purpose of copyright protection was to protect the proprietary interests of copyright owners. consumer demands or convenience fall outside the rationale for copyright and are not a justification for copyright infringement. the chamberlain ruling may seem to be at odds with previous decisions that held that circumvention infringes the dmca. however, these cases dealt with the circumvention of copyright works, such as a computer program (video game player in the sony computer case) and an audiovisual work (the decryption of dvds in the universal city studios v reimerdes case and in 321 studios v metro goldwyn mayer studios inc 307 f supp 2d 1085 [2004] 1103–05). iwahashi (2011:491) has noted that the chamberlain court applied the ‘nexus test’ to determine if a tpm is applied to a copyright work. the same test was applied in the mge i case, where the court emphasised that tpms must protect a copyright right, not some other right (mge 1 no 08-10521 [2010] wl 2820006 at 3). in short, the dmca is only applicable where the tpms protect copyright works. garage door openers and cartridges for printers (lexmark int’l inc v static control components inc 387 f.3d 522 [2004] 546) fall outside this sphere. the usa copyright act lists non-exhaustive factors that courts should consider in analysing claims of fair use, namely the purpose of the use; the nature of the work; the size and significance of the copied portion; and the effect of the use on the value or potential market for that work (17 u.s.c. § 107[1]-[4]). two court cases that dealt with fair use of copyright works in the digital realm both touched on access to works, knowledge and learning. the one case dealt with the massive library of scanned books that google created and the second case related to fair use in relation to electronic course packs. in the google books case (authors guild v google inc no 13-4829 [2d cir. 2015]), google scanned millions of books into databases as part of its library project and its google books project. authors of published books sued google for copyright infringement. the district court held that the google projects constituted fair use. the plaintiffs appealed to the court of appeals for the second circuit. they argued, amongst others, that google’s digital copying of full books created replacements of their books and that google’s repository of digital copies created a risk that these books would be downloaded by hackers and made freely available to users. the plaintiffs also argued that the fact that google distributed the works to libraries would result in the eradication of their licensing income from libraries (authors guild v google inc no 13-4829 [2d cir. 2015] at pp. 4–5). the court of appeals rejected these arguments and concluded that the district court correctly sustained google’s fair use defence. the court held: in sum, we conclude that: (1) google’s unauthorized digitizing of copyright-protected works, creation of a search functionality, and display of snippets from those works are non-infringing fair uses. the purpose of the copying is highly transformative, the public display of text is limited, and the revelations do not provide a significant market substitute for the protected aspects of the originals. google’s commercial nature and profit motivation do not justify denial of fair use. (2) google’s provision of digitized copies to the libraries that supplied the books, on the understanding that the libraries will use the copies in a manner consistent with the copyright law, also does not constitute infringement. nor, on this record, is google a contributory infringer. in cambridge university press v patton (docket number: 12-14676), three publishing houses sued georgia state university (gsu) for copyright infringement. the case centred around gsu’s electronic reserve system. georgia state university professors routinely uploaded scans of chapters of books they wished to prescribe to students onto the gsu’s electronic reserve system. the court referred to other ‘coursepack cases’ (such as princeton university press, 99 f.3d at 1389, and basic books, 758 f. supp. at 1531–32) and noted that where the educational use in question was performed by a for-profit copy shop, it would be deemed to be commercial. the supreme court cautioned (p. 68) that although the teaching of university courses was clearly for educational purposes, the court held: [t]he crux of the profit/nonprofit distinction is not whether the sole motive of the use is monetary gain but whether the user stands to profit from exploitation of the copyrighted material without paying the customary price. the court noted that the digital ‘use’ of a copyright work does not become ‘fair use’ just ‘because the work is distributed via a hyperlink instead of a printing press’ (at 120). the court held (at 115–116): checking the four statutory factors to ensure that they have been considered merely affirms the conclusion that what gsu is doing is not fair use. this case does not involve an individual using a single copyrighted work, nor does it involve a single course, a single professor, or even a one-time use of ‘multiple copies for classroom distribution’. see campbell, supra, 510 u.s. at 579 n.11. nor, in my opinion, should it be confined to the seventy-four specific instances of infringement that were the focus during trial. rather, this case arises out of a university-wide practice to substitute ‘paper coursepacks’ (the functional equivalent of textbooks) that contained licensed copyrighted works with ‘digital coursepacks’ that contained unlicensed copyrighted works. this was done for the vast majority of courses offered at gsu and, as will be seen, it was done primarily to save money. although the court declined to expand the concept of ‘transformativeness’ to cover gsu’s allegedly infringing use of portions of the plaintiffs’ works, it held that gsu’s failure to transform the underlying work was not critical if the use was for education. however, the supreme court held that the district court did err by giving each of the four fair-use factors equal weight and by treating the four factors mechanistically; the district court should have undertaken an all-inclusive review that cautiously weighted the four factors. importantly, the court also rejected the district court’s reliance on the ‘classroom guidelines’ (‘which dictate a ceiling of a 10 percent or one-chapter safe harbour’) in its analysis of the individual instances of alleged infringement. the court said that each instance of alleged copying had to be considered individually, considering the quantity and the quality of the material (at page 91). the court noted that non-profit educational uses are more likely to be fair because they promote the ultimate aims of copyright – the creation and dissemination of knowledge. both of these aims must be kept in mind when evaluating a claim of fair use (at page 108). it is clear that the courts in the usa carefully balance the relevant factors in deciding fair-use cases. furthermore, the copyrightability of the work protected by a tpm is paramount in cases dealing with the circumvention of tpms. one should keep in mind that copyright law and policy of the usa have been carefully calibrated to enhance the growth of the usa’s copyright industry. we next examine south africa’s attempts at law reform, amongst others, to address the digital dilemma and also to introduce fair use. the legislative response in south africa in 2013, the south african government embarked upon a revision of south africa’s copyright law, the copyright act 98 of 1978. the copyright amendment bill, 2015, was published for public comment in july 2015 (government notices 646 in government gazette no. 39028 [27 july 2015]). subsequently the copyright amendment bill, 2017, was published. the copyright amendment bill of 2015 introduced the long-awaited implementation of the wct and the wppt. the 2017 amendment bill builds on this first attempt to implement the internet treaties in south african copyright law. it also deals with wide-sweeping amendments to south african copyright law by the proposed adoption of fair use as well as fair-dealing provisions for educational activities. the latest version of the copyright amendment bill (b 13b 2017) was published on 16 november 2018. some of the more controversial proposals that may lead to abuses include the provision that the reproduction of whole textbooks is permissible where the textbook is not for sale in south africa or cannot be obtained at a price reasonably related to that normally charged in south africa for comparable works. it is uncertain how the price for comparable works should be determined. furthermore, educational institutions may incorporate copies of copyright works in: printed and electronic course packs, study packs, resource lists and in any other material to be used in a course of instruction or in virtual learning environments, managed learning environments, virtual research environments or library environments hosted on a secure network and accessible only by the persons giving and receiving instruction at or from the educational establishment making such copies. (clause 12d[2]) as noted infra, the last-mentioned were emphatically held to infringe copyright in the usa. provision is also made for placing works in open access repositories. the inspiration for the clause is article 38(4) of the german copyright act (federal law gazette part i, p. 3714, available at http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_urhg/). clause 12d(7) provides that: (a) the author of a scientific or other contribution which is the result of a research activity that received at least 50 per cent of its funding from the state and which has appeared in a collection, has the right, despite granting the publisher or editor an exclusive right of use, to make the final manuscript version available to the public under an open licence or by means of an open access institutional repository. (b) in the case of a contribution published in a collection that is issued periodically at least once per year, an agreement may provide for a delay in the exercise of this author’s right referred to in paragraph (a) for up to 12 months from the date of first publication in that periodical. when the work is made available, the place of the first publication shall be properly acknowledged. third parties, such as librarians, may carry out these activities on behalf of the author. (e) any agreement that denies the author any of the rights contemplated in this subsection shall be unenforceable. clause 28p(1) provides that notwithstanding the anti-circumvention provisions in the bill and in section 86 of the electronic communications and transactions act 25 of 2002 (ect act), a person may use: a technological protection measure circumvention device to perform: an act permitted in terms of any exception provided for in this act. the sale, offer to sell, procurement for use, design, adaptation for use, distribution or possession of any device or data, including a computer program or a component, which is designed primarily to overcome security measures for the protection of data, in order to enable the performance of any act permitted in terms of paragraph (a). section 28p(1)(a) provides that any person may use a tpm circumvention device to perform an act permitted in terms of any exception provided for in the copyright act; or in terms of section 28p(1)(b), the trade in circumvention devices in order to enable the performance of any permitted act. it is submitted that the proposed permissible use of a tpm circumvention device is very wide. it is too wide. in this regard one may refer to the new zealand copyright act, which provides in section 226b that the rights that the issuer of a tpm work has under section 226b do not prevent or restrict the making, importation, sale or letting for hire of a tpm circumvention device to enable a qualified person to exercise a permitted act using a circumvention device on behalf of the user of a tpm work. it is important to note that the permitted circumvention is limited to certain works by librarians or similar professionals. a similar approach is followed in hong kong (see section 273(a)(8) of chapter: 528 copyright ordinance). clause 28o(5) provides that a tpm shall be deemed to be effective where the use of the work is controlled by the exclusive licensee or copyright owner through the application of an access control or protection process, such as encryption, scrambling or other transformation of the work or a copy control mechanism that achieves the protection objective. clause 28(o)(6) provides that the provisions must be read together with the provisions of sections 86, 87 and 88 of the ect act. these provisions form part of the cybercrime provisions. section 86 of the ect act relates to the unauthorised access to, interception of or interference with data and is in essence an anti-circumvention prohibition (pistorius 2006:6–7). the ect act prohibits the production, distribution and use of devices and applications designed primarily for the purpose of overcoming data-protection security measures. the criminalisation of the circumvention of tpms may soon become a moot point as the cybercrimes bill, 2017 (b6b-2017), provides for the deletion of sections 86, 87 and 88 of the ect act (clause 58 and the schedule to the cybercrimes bill). possible implications for developing countries several african countries have deposited their instruments of ratification or accession to the wct. these include algeria, botswana, burkina faso, burundi, ghana, gabon, guinea, madagascar, mali, moroko, nigeria, senegal and togo (see http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/showresults.jsp?lang=en&treaty_id=16). a developmental approach to copyright protection is necessary in developing countries in order to address several important policy objectives. in this regard, nwauche (2005a:377) has noted: the appropriate response of developing countries, including african countries to the wipo digital treaties has attracted the attention of individuals and groups alike. the fact that there is no agreed consensus on the expression of exceptions and limitations at the international level under the berne framework and under the wipo digital treaties underscores the point that they ought to be created in response to the circumstances of each nation. a national response expresses the needs and aspirations of each country. an analysis of the human rights obligations of african countries must have a significant impact on these exceptions and limitations. the african countries listed above have not attained a balance in their laws on the ‘legal protection of technological protection measures and effective legal remedies against the circumvention’ of such measures as opposed to the right of users to access the works protected by the tpms (nwauche 2005b). in this regard, the provisions in the south african copyright amendment bill, 2017, overreaches to address user rights. south africa has adopted an ill-advised and radical approach to address this conundrum in its recent proposals to amend the copyright act. the approach adopted in south africa is in stark contrast to the position held in the usa. as noted previously, in the umg recordings inc case (umg recordings inc v mp3.com inc [2000] 92 f supp 2d 349), the court noted that copyright is not designed to afford consumer protection or convenience but rather to protect the copyright holder’s property interests. the proposed amendments through which south africa has attempted to address tpms and the right to access works are radical and in some instances unworkable. expansive rights that go beyond the right to deal fairly with a work are proposed for users. one might argue that this approach is justified in light of the educational needs of south africa. however, it is submitted that it is also as important to protect south africa’s vulnerable cultural industries. conclusion copyright protection is not absolute, and copyright law makes provision for exceptions and limitations. it is generally recognised that users have a legitimate interest in being able to use a copyright work without the permission of its copyright owner. fair dealing in general allows a copyright user to reproduce a work for the purposes of private study. as noted above, the use of tpms can completely negate the fair dealing provisions. if a tpm prevents a user from accessing a work, it then also overrides any fair dealing right the user has. the net effect of technological locks on education and learning is immense. as noted above by nwauche (2005a:377), exceptions and limitations ought to be created by developing countries to address the circumstances of each nation. as noted infra, the recent emphasis on access to affordable education in south africa has come to the fore. we question to what extent the approaches adopted by the south african legislature is geared towards free access to copyright works to the demise of the fundamental objective of copyright protection: to balance public and private rights. it is suggested that developing countries’ rationale for copyright protection should be adapted in accordance with their economic and social realities. the south african legislature should adopt tempered exception and limitations to the use of tpms, based on sound policy objectives. the approach adopted in the copyright amendment bill favours a radical approach. a tempered approach that provides for regulated access to circumvention for fair use or fair dealing purposes, as is provided for in new zealand, is preferable. the current wording of the copyright amendment bill is out of step with south africa’s international obligations in terms of the wct and the wppt. secondly, it could lead to abuses. for example, a user may download or copy an electronic textbook published in europe where the textbook is not available for sale in south africa through the application of a tpm circumvention device. this could lead to the geoblocking of electronic resources. geoblocking will adversely impact on access to knowledge and learning. thirdly, the proposed copyright reform will deter knowledge generation. south african academics will publish less as the market that currently exists for academic works will no longer exist if the copyright bill is enacted. academic authors will also increasingly publish in overseas journals. this will lead to knowledge degeneration and will have a direct and negative impact on access to knowledge and learning. possible future research in the area of digital copyright and access to knowledge would be to measure in quantifiable terms, the impact of copyright law and policy on the generation of knowledge. secondly, examining the individual communities in africa and proposing frameworks that could be adopted in such communities to address their challenges will be valuable. acknowledgements this work is based on the research supported by the south african research chairs initiative of the department of science and technology and national research foundation of south africa (grant no 98405). competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contribution t.p. is o.s.m.’s supervisor. the first part of the article is 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policy 41, 358–375. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2011.09.003 abstract introduction literature review research in the literacy field justification purpose and objective the context of the study methodology results and discussion reading writing speaking listening conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) liezel cilliers department of information systems, university of fort hare, south africa carole bloch project for the study of alternative education in south africa, university of cape town, south africa citation cilliers, l. & bloch, c., 2018, ‘a reading project to improve literacy in the foundation phase: a case study in the eastern cape’, reading & writing 9(1), a167. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v9i1.167 original research a reading project to improve literacy in the foundation phase: a case study in the eastern cape liezel cilliers, carole bloch received: 20 july 2017; accepted: 28 june 2018; published: 06 nov. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract early literacy teaching and learning in the foundation phase of rural schools in south africa experience persistent challenges. in order to address some of these challenges, a national reading programme to improve literacy among rural learners was initiated by a non-governmental organisation. the article provides an overview of how teachers in selected eastern cape foundation classrooms use the reading programme to enhance literacy of the learners. the objectives of the article are to investigate how the reading project has been incorporated into the teachers’ teaching pedagogy and their perceptions as to how the reading programme has contributed to the school and community. four purposively selected rural schools, each being part of the reading programme, served as research sites. participants included eight teachers who used the reading supplement in their classroom. qualitative data were gathered using semi-structured interviews with the teachers in each school. through a process of thematic content analysis, the following themes emerged: (1) pedagogical challenges, (2) infrastructure and provisioning for literacy and (3) community engagement. the considerations for future reading programmes in rural areas include cost, availability of resources, training of teachers and practical aspects of the supplement, for example, font size and length of stories. these findings illustrate how the foundation teachers use the reading programme to enhance the literacy curriculum in schools situated in rural settings. the recommendation of the article is that the reading programme is useful and teachers should be encouraged to use the supplement reading activities in the foundation phase. introduction a recent study conducted in the eastern cape among grade 4 learners found that 32% of the learners were considered illiterate, while 60% could not read for meaning at the end of this grade. one of the reasons attributed to these poor results is that the learners were tested in english, which becomes the language of learning and teaching in grade 4, rather than their mother tongue. however, the study found that this could not be the sole reason for these poor results as the literacy results remained similar whether they were tested in their home language (hl) or english. a second reason often blamed for poor literacy is the overcrowding of rural classrooms with 27% of grades 1–3 in the eastern cape province having more than 55 pupils per class (charter 2016). in this situation, teachers are not able to observe and facilitate the learning of literacy skills of diverse groups of children. the study further found that many foundation phase teachers in south africa do not have the content-knowledge base and pedagogical skills to teach children to read (charter 2016). in south africa the basic learning needs of citizens are protected as a human right. literacy is considered important as it has the potential to reduce poverty, promote productivity and sustain development (zhang 2006). these advantages are particularly important in the rural areas where literacy and development still lag behind (mohangi et al. 2016). the south african government has made progress towards recognising the need for literacy development through the improved access to early childhood development programmes in rural areas (department of basic education, department of social development & unicef 2010). the department of education has also established the directorate for rural education to support this process as outlined in the national framework for quality education in rural areas (department of education 2006). despite these efforts, not much has changed in the rural education environment as research suggests that the rate of educational progress in these areas is limited (nkambule et al. 2011). in 2008, 62% of schools in south africa were situated in rural areas (surty 2011). schools in rural areas are remote and underdeveloped while the community often display poor socio-economic circumstances and lack basic infrastructure such as roads, electricity and information and communication technologies (mohangi et al. 2016). the poverty in rural areas will directly affect educational resources, experiences and opportunity, as it is difficult to attract experienced staff to these schools (lester 2012). typical challenges of a rural school include a high number of multigrade classrooms, lack of public transport because of the isolated setting of the school, attendance problems of learners and diverse learner backgrounds (mohangi et al. 2016). literacy in rural schools is further impeded by the lack of reading material. only 7% of schools in south africa have a functional library while most classrooms do not have books available that learners can read. more than half of learners do not have access to books at home. there is also an acute shortage of relevant content and appropriate level of books in the african languages (department of basic education 2008; nel et al. 2016). klynveld peat marwick goerdeler (kpmg 2008) reported that there are 30 libraries per million people in south africa with only 46% of the population able to borrow books from the library. literature review according to de vos, van der merwe and van der mescht (2014:147), ‘literacy is one of the most important academic skills’. literacy can be used as a measure to predict success in both life after school and the educational environment (pretorius & mokhwesana 2009). snow, burns and griffin (1998) found that grade 3 literacy results are a good predictor of high school graduation. the annual results from the annual national assessments (anas) illustrate the poor state of literacy in the schooling system that decreases steadily from grade 1 (table 1). the language achievement of learners in the eastern cape starts off at the lowest percentage (54.8%) in the country in grade 1 and decreases to 43% at the end of grade 4. these scores then are an accurate predictor of the grade 12 results, with the eastern cape being the province with the lowest pass rate in south africa for the past few years. table 1: language achievement. these dismal results also extend to the international arena where south african learners in grade 5 were found to be almost three years behind international norms. learners in the eastern cape were an average of four years behind the international benchmark (howie et al. 2012). the pirls report in 2011 also placed south africa near the bottom of the list for performance in literacy which necessitated a thorough investigation into the subject of literacy. research in the literacy field primary school curricula state that learners should be able to read and write fluently at a complex level of cognitive skill at the end of grade 3. from grade 4, learners then use these literacy skills to investigate a range of disciplinary fields. the results in the previous section show that this is not the current situation in the south african schooling system (taylor 2016). the results of the anas seem to indicate that the development of basic literacy skills, such as reading, writing, numeracy and life skills, has not received enough attention in the foundation phase (grade r – grade 3) (nel et al. 2016). schools in south africa must offer two languages, one that is used as a hl and a second called first additional language. the hl is not always the mother tongue of all the learners, but rather a language that they are proficient in (department of basic education 2011). this means that many learners do not use their strongest language during the initial few years of schooling but rather an additional first language, for example, english (department of basic education 2011). kerfoot and van heerden (2014) found that the policy of teaching in the mother tongue does not ensure proficiency in either the home or additional first language. instead, reading for pleasure and meaning should be the main goal during the foundation phase (van der berg et al. 2016). justification to assist with these problems, the curriculum assessment policy statements (caps) document for foundation phase (hls) was formulated by the department of education. the caps document emphasises the knowledge, skills and values that teachers in the foundation phase should possess and use to teach literacy. however, the policy has not translated into classroom practice because of insufficient funding and number of teachers, lack of training for teachers and a general indifference where literacy teaching in the foundation phase is concerned (janks 2014; nel et al. 2016). taylor (2016) also reported that pedagogical practice is not appropriate for learners in rural schools. most rural primary schools make use of chanting in a chorus with very little independent reading by learners. this is similar to the report from gains and graham (2011) who found that most early literacy teachers still make use of oral drill sequences to teach reading. this means that learners often do not progress further than technical decoding skills and cannot explain the meaning of words, phrases and sentences. an analysis of an assessment undertaken by national education evaluation and development unit (needu) found that a large majority of african grade 5 children located in rural schools decode simple words at such a slow rate that they cannot understand what it is that they are reading (draper & spaull 2015). a further problem is that teachers do not have expressive writing experience themselves and thus do not teach writing during early literacy classes in rural schools. writing during the year does not reach more than 25% of the caps curriculum specifications (needu 2012). the result is that learners have limited understanding of the texts that they read (hoadly 2012). purpose and objective to date, little research has been conducted into the methodologies that are most efficient to become literature in an african language, specifically in the foundation phase in rural schools (guthrie, wigfield & perencevich 2004). the purpose of this article is to provide an overview of how teachers in selected eastern cape foundation classrooms use a reading programme to enhance the literacy curriculum. the reading programme was established in 2009 to support literacy in rural schools. the project has been ongoing for the past five years in these four schools. the objectives of the article are to investigate how the reading project has been incorporated into the teaching pedagogy and the teacher’s perceptions, as to the contribution that the reading project has made in the school and community. lastly, the teachers provide suggestions for the improvement of a reading programme in rural schools. the context of the study the project for the research of alternative education in south africa (praesa) was the cofounder, together with the dg murray trust, of the nal’ibali campaign in 2012 in south africa. the project was recognised internationally when it received the astrid lindgren memorial award in 2014 and 2015 (bloch 2015). the nal’ibali campaign publishes a bilingual newspaper supplement bimonthly that is distributed to reading clubs and media publications such as newspapers across the country. since the inception of the project, 21.1 million supplements have been distribution to 45 021 children across the country and 1120 reading clubs were started in seven provinces (bloch 2015). ‘the purpose of nal’ibali aims to re-ignite a passion for storytelling and reading among adults and children as an urgent strategic intervention to transform children’s opportunities for becoming readers and writers’ (bloch 2015:1). the supplement makes use of stories, literacy activities, reading and reading club tips and support to promote literacy and make reading and storytelling meaningful, enjoyable and accessible. praesa also maintains a website where teachers can access additional learning material for each story and hosts a radio show on several radio stations where the story featured in the supplement is enacted. methodology this research study employed an interpretivist philosophy where meaning is interpreted from the individual’s lens and reality can be socially constructed. this paradigm can be used to provide holistic, rich and in-depth understanding of complex phenomena (creswell 2016). the objective of the study is exploratory in nature and seeks to understand the behaviour (i.e. the experiences of teachers with regards to the use of nal’ibali to improve reading literacy in rural primary schools in the eastern cape) and not to predict behaviour of the teachers, which is characteristic of the positivist stance. in line with the interpretivist philosophy, the qualitative approach was also adopted and motivated by the need to study, ‘real people, real problems and real organisations’ (edmondson & mcmanus 2007, p. 1155). such efforts are applauded as they can be forerunners in theory development. data collection instrument and procedure the data collection method for this study made use of semi-structured interviews in order to achieve an understanding around the depth and complexity of the teachers’ experiences with regards to the nal’ibali campaign (creswell 2016). semi-structured interviews allow for some flexibility when qualitative data are collected as the interviewee has more ‘freedom’ to express and ascribe meaning to their experiences (noaks & wincup 2004). in order to prompt the interviewee, a trigger question was used, for example, ‘please provide a brief description of your experience and understanding of the goal of the nal’ibali initiatives’. ethical clearance was obtained for the project from the university ethical clearance committee. four rural schools were included in the study and eight teachers were interviewed, two from each school. a purposive, convenience sampling method was used as the sample needed to be ‘available and accessible’ to the study (cohen, manion & morrison 2007). the schools were selected for the study as they have participated in the nal’ibali programme for the past five years. the supplements are distributed to the schools bimonthly by a non-profit organisation. the schools were approached by the researcher and asked to identify the foundation teachers that make use of the nal’ibali supplements in their classroom. interview dates and times were set up at the school when the teachers were not in class. the duration of each interview on average was 45 min. data analysis procedure the interviews were transcribed and prepared for analyses. thematic analysis was used to identify appropriate themes from the interviews. thematic analysis is defined by crowe, inder and porter (2015) as, ‘a process of interpretation of qualitative data in order to find patterns of meanings across the data’ (p. 617). this process allows the researcher to organise and manage data and further facilitate the identification of themes, analysis of data, gathering insight and developing conclusions. results and discussion all four schools included in the study were government schools that were classified by the department of basic education as non-fee schools and placed in the first or second quintile. table 2 provides the demographic information of the schools. all the schools offered classes for learners from grade r to grade 7. table 2: demographics of schools. school 3 had no computer or internet access, while the other schools had one computer and a printer that the principal and staff could use for administrative tasks and/or to access email. schools 1 and 4 had access to the internet via wifi, but both complained that the access was irregular and costly. school 1 had also started a programme where international volunteers would visit the schools once a week and provide computer literacy programmes in a small computer laboratory. because of the geographical location of the school, the laboratory had no internet access as a satellite dish would be needed to relay the signal. schools 1 and 3 made use of the nal’ibali throughout all the grades (r–7). the supplements was typically used first with the younger children and then passed on per grade until it reached the grade 7 class. school 2 used the nal’ibali supplement in their grade 1 class where the teacher would initially read the story to the learners and show them the pictures that accompany the story. as the learners progressed throughout the year, they started to read the story themselves. school 4 used the nal’ibali in the grade 3 class to supplement the prescribed curriculum. two of the schools allowed the pupils to take their nal’ibali home and reported that the supplement is read by the entire family. themes the research makes use of a constructivist lens to analyse the themes of the interviews. vygotsky (1962) developed the ‘zone of proximal development’ that suggests that all learning builds on existing foundations (skills and knowledge). new knowledge is built on this foundation, meaning that advanced skills or different learning areas cannot be learned if the links to existing skills have not been established. a learner cannot learn new information if a certain level of language proficiency and understanding of literacy has not been reached (taylor 2016). in the next section, the various themes that were identified from the interviews are presented. pedagogical issues all the teachers interviewed agreed that the nal’ibali initiative is beneficial to the learners. the nal’ibalies were seen as incremental in the learning process as younger learners can be taught reading and writing skills while learners in higher grades are asked to use more advanced skills, such as reasoning and thinking, to reflect on the stories. the suggested benefits from nal’ibali ranged from general outcomes such as developing language skills to specific skills such as reading, listening, comprehension, storytelling and writing skills. one teacher shared: ‘i use the nal’ibali to encourage writing among the learners. they like the stories and use their imagination for creative writing as they can relate to the characters. even sentence construction is more fun as they interact with the activities.’ (a female, grade 1, teacher) nal’ibali was used by the foundation phase teachers to teach a variety of skills. these include reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. all the schools used the nal’ibali to improve reading, speaking and listening skills, with only two schools incorporating it to improve the learners’ writing skills. the class sizes, except for school 3, are above the recommended 35 students per classroom. the classrooms were observed to be small without enough desks for all the students. in many instances, three or four learners would share a desk designed for two learners. in two of the schools, multiclasses were also present in one classroom. these arrangements make it difficult for the teacher to manage the classroom and design and implement proper classroom activities. reading three of the schools used the supplements, or ‘nal’ibalis’, as they are known, to improve the learners’ reading skills regardless of their grade. the supplements were seen as beneficial, as they provided the story in isixhosa and english as illustrated by the following quote: ‘the nal’ibalis is useful as the learners can use the small book that is easy to transport. the small book provides the story in english and isixhosa which allows the learners to improve the reading fluency in both languages. they can also switch stories if they do not understand the english version. this helps them to understand the “gist” of the storyline.’ (a, female, grade 1, teacher) school 2 used the story to discuss phonics with the learners. the teacher made use of nal’ibali to revise the phonics that was taught during the past week as a re-enforcement to these lessons. writing school 1 incorporated writing skills into the curriculum as they asked the older learners (grades 4–7) to write an essay about how they related to the story or about a specific character in the story. the younger learners (grades 1–3) used the story to improve their vocabulary and spelling skills. the school encouraged all the learners to become involved in the activities by holding a spelling bee competition on fridays with a small prize for the winner. school 4 used word puzzles and sentence construction to improve the learners’ writing skills. pictures were also used as starting points for creative work essays. speaking the grade r teacher at school 2 made use of the supplement to improve the students’ speaking skills. the teacher showed the class the pictures during the reading of the story and asked them to discuss what they thought would happen next. this was similar to school 1 that would ask the older learners specific questions about the story or to discuss the moral principle of the story. school 1 asked the grade 7 learners to dramatise the story in groups. once a month these learners then perform the story in front of the other grades. this is similar to school 4, where pictures in the supplement were used to discuss the story line or act out the story. specific questions were asked to make sure the learners understood and relate to the story. activities such as group guided reading were used in school 4 to improve the english fluency of the grade 3 learners. listening all the teachers started by reading the story in both languages to the learners. this provided an opportunity for the learners to ask questions, such as if they do not understand a specific word, and become familiar with the story. a teacher from school 2 said: ‘i initially read the nal’ibali story to the class and ask them questions about the story. recall of the story is done by asking the learners about the specific sequence of events or characteristics of key characters in the story.’ (b, female, grade 1, teacher) infrastructure and provisioning for literacy reading promotion projects follow a two-step approach: firstly, the reading material must be available, while the second step entails the teacher helping the learners to find the joy of reading (snyman 2016). only 7% of schools in south africa have a functional library, which results in the lack of a reading culture in a community as they do not have the adequate resource material (nel et al. 2016). none of the schools in this case study had a functional library. this meant that the nal’ibalies often substitute for the shortage of reading material. the teachers suggested that nal’ibali should be used in schools where there is no library or a small library as the supplements can be recycled for reading purposes. one of the teachers commented proudly that she now had her own library in the classroom and that the learners read the booklets when they are finished with their school work. she has a valuable resource that she can transfer to the learners in the following year. the nal’ibali programme provides a newspaper supplement bimonthly, as well as electronic resources via a website and radio programme. three of the schools were not aware that nal’ibali provides additional electronic resources such as social media, the website or radio programme. only school 4 made use of the radio programme during class time and has become a member of the facebook page. they said: ‘we know about nal’ibali because john brings us the newspapers every two weeks. we do not have computers or the internet to look at these things. it is expensive and the department of education do[es] not provide us with the resources.’ (c, female, grade 2, teacher) ‘it is good that the learners make their own booklets as it gives them a proud feeling when they have prepared their own learning material. the learners in the other grades are envious of them as they now have a book to take home to read.’ (a, female, grade 1, teacher) during step 2, the teacher is responsible for the reader development of learners to improve their reading fluency and comprehension (snyman 2016). learners must experience the joy of reading before they will develop a reading culture. in order to accomplish this, the teachers felt that awareness about the programme was needed in order to get buy-in from the principal and other teachers at the school. once a year, two of the schools put on a small concert for the foundation classes when they act out one of the nal’ibali stories for world read aloud day. this seemed to be the initiative of the individual teachers responsible for these classes. at the third school, the school principal has supported the reading programme, and here the entire school participates in a spelling bee competition or the older learners dramatise the stories for the younger grades. these activities provide younger learners with the opportunities to really engage with the reading material and develop a lasting joy for reading. community engagement literacy skills are crucial to parenting, employment seeking, consuming and so on. reading not only impacts everyday life but is also at the heart of self-education and lifelong learning (cox & guthrie 2001). it is also needed to take advantage of digital developments. a literate individual can ‘develop capacities of reflection, critique and empathy’ (eu high level group of experts on literacy 2012) that consequently lead to a sense of self-efficacy and identity. one of the school teachers had started a reading group at her church for adults with the books. there is no library in the community and she felt this was a way for the adults to improve their reading skills as well. this teacher was heavily involved in her community and church and served on many committees to improve the quality of her village. similarly, preasa has recognised that many of the reading club volunteers and staff of nal’ibali who live in the black communities become role models and are called on to lead discussion on community issues as they are perceived to be more educated and knowledgeable. in this way, they become the critical voices of the community and reassert the value of community and indigenous knowledge. newman’s (2005) ideas about informal learning are useful here: information and knowledge are used as resources in the fight for better education; interpretive skills are deployed to understand what people are like and to make sense of their actions and behaviour; and critical skills are developed to challenge power relationships. implications for reading project in rural school the availability of the supplement and cost associated with buying the newspaper were seen as prohibitive factors to the sustainability of the project. all the schools are located in rural areas where newspapers are only accessible at the local shop, which is often located far away from the schools. teachers also felt that parents would not be able to afford the newspaper. all the schools in this study were provided with the supplement free of charge by a non-profit organisation and were delivered to the school. teacher training on how to incorporate nal’ibali was another important point that was raised with some suggesting that a separate teacher guide should be produced that can help teachers to use the supplement effectively in the classroom. schools 1 and 3 also wanted more activities for teachers to make use of in the booklet, or that additional material could be emailed to the teachers on a database to include in their lesson plans. school 4 suggested that a training guide or workshop would be useful for teachers to learn how to incorporate the nal’ibali into the curriculum. the teachers also warned that the amount of time needed to cut and prepare the nal’ibalies for the classroom was a burden. some of the teachers overcame this problem by using the older learners to help them prepare the booklets in class. school 1 suggested that the stories should include other languages as well. in the eastern cape, the stories are available in english and/or xhosa, but school 1 felt that the learners would benefit from afrikaans as well. school 2 also echoed this sentiment as they felt that the stories should be used to improve the second language of the older learners. stories should be grade appropriate and not longer than 15 min, while schools 2, 3 and 4 complained that the font size was too small for younger learners to follow. one of the schools also suggested that the size of the book must be bigger in order to allow groups to read together. the story content must also relate with the learners that are from rural backgrounds. conclusion this article provided an overview of how teachers in selected eastern cape foundation phase classrooms use a reading programme to enhance literacy among their learners. the literacy rate among foundation learners in rural schools is dismal, and while the department of basic education has prioritised literacy, there has been very little improvement. the use of a reading programme supplement was found to be beneficial in the four schools that were included in the study. the teachers could use the supplement to enhance the literacy curriculum (reading, writing, speaking and listening) in a variety of ways. none of the teachers were trained to use the supplement or could access the online resources, and the amount of creativity and effort was deemed to be of an individual nature. where the principal or other teachers became involved in the project, the use of the supplements was expanded to all the grades in the school. the reading programme also provided some reading material in the absence of a functional library for the school and the community in one instance. the considerations that were identified that will impact on a foundation phase reading programme in rural areas are cost, availability of resources, training of teachers and practical aspects of the supplement, for example, font size and length of stories. these considerations provide valuable insight into how to improve the sustainability of these projects for the future. the limitations of this study include the small sample size, which could be improved in future research to all the schools that use nal’ibali to enhance their literacy programmes. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions l.c. conceptualised the study, collected the data and performed the literature review. she was also responsible for the analysis of the data and writing the article. c.b. was part of the conceptualising of the study references bloch, c., 2015, 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https://doi.org/10.4135/9781849208789 pretorius, e. & mokhwesana, m., 2009, ‘putting reading in northern sotho on track in the early years: changing resources, expectations and practices in a high poverty school’, south african journal of african languages 1, 54–73. snow, c., burns, m. & griffin, p., 1998, preventing reading difficulties in young children, national academy press, washington, dc. snyman, m.e., 2016, ‘a longitudinal study of a reading project in the northern cape, south africa’, reading & writing 7(1), a85. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i1.85 surty, e., 2011, ‘quality education for rural schools in south africa – challenges and solutions’, south african rural educator 1, 8–15. taylor, n., 2016, ‘thinking, language and learning in initial teacher education’, perspectives in education 34(1), 10–26. https://doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.2 van der berg, s., spaull, n., wills, g., gustasfson, m. & kotze, j., 2016, identifying binding constraints in education. synthesis report for the programme to support poor policy development, department of economics, stellenbosch. vygotsky, l., 1962, thought and language, the mit press, cambridge, ma. zhang, y., 2006, ‘urban-rural literacy gaps in sub-saharan africa: the roles of socioeconomic status and school quality’, comparative education review 50(4), 581–602. abstract introduction literature review method results discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) annelize clark training department, bellavista share, johannesburg, south africa kalavani naidoo training department, bellavista share, johannesburg, south africa adaiah lilenstein department of economics, university of cape town, cape town, south africa citation clark, a., naidoo, k. & lilenstein, a., 2019, ‘adapting a screening tool for dyslexia in isixhosa’, reading & writing 10(1), a235. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.235 original research adapting a screening tool for dyslexia in isixhosa annelize clark, kalavani naidoo, adaiah lilenstein received: 25 mar. 2019; accepted: 25 sept. 2019; published: 27 nov. 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: while much research is dedicated to the understanding of dyslexia in the english-speaking population, there is limited knowledge about how this condition presents in african languages. the need for a literacy screening tool in a learner’s home language to aid in early identification, and therefore early intervention, is crucial for reading success in south africa. objectives: the aim of this study was to adapt and develop a screening tool for dyslexia for home language isixhosa learners. method: the three-part tool consisting of a learner screening tool, a teacher checklist and a parent questionnaire to target the identification of the majority of the indicators for dyslexia. the tool was piloted on a small group of 15 learners across grades 1–4, identified by their teachers as having literacy difficulties. in addition, seven learners were identified by their teachers as average performers and were used as a control group. a team of three professional field workers analysed the data collected and identified five learners as clearly at risk and five learners as possibly at risk. ten indicators for dyslexia were considered. of these, there were high correlations between phonological awareness and spelling, decoding and alphabetic principle, as well as spelling and oral/written discrepancy. after piloting the screening tool, the researchers made further revisions to the content and length of all three parts of the tool, with the aim to simplify the tool for both the assessor and the teachers or parents completing the checklists. results: findings indicate that the adapted screening tool, together with the adapted teacher checklist and parent interview, give professionals an indication of whether an isixhosa-speaking child is at risk for dyslexia. conclusion: a larger study using the same tool with the aim of refining the tool further would be beneficial. the study also opens doors for the adaptation of the tool into other african languages. keywords: dyslexia; isixhosa; indicators; phonology; reading; writing; learning difficulties; literacy difficulties; teacher identification. introduction dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty characterised by effortful reading and spelling. this can be as a result of various combinations of difficulties in phonological awareness, rapid naming and orthographic mapping (sound-symbol relationships) that present differently at different stages of development (hulme & snowling 2015; lyon 1995; rose 2009). it is estimated that dyslexia affects between 5% and 15% of schoolgoing learners (rose 2009). a range of prevalence is presented, as it is widely accepted that dyslexia exists on a continuum from mild to severe. it compromises a learner’s whole learning experience: the ability to read for meaning, as well as the ability to put knowledge into a written format. this learning difference manifests across languages and is not more prevalent in a particular culture, language or race (american psychiatric association 2013; siegel 2006). languages with an alphabetic writing system occur on a continuum of transparent-opaque orthography. opaque orthographies, such as english, are more difficult for learners with dyslexia. african languages have transparent orthographies, where the grapheme-phoneme correspondence is simple. languages are also classified according to typographies. english is analytic and stress-timed, whereas african languages are more agglutinating and syllabic. although isixhosa is a transparent language, it has a conjunctive orthography. a conjunctive orthography refers to the convention of writing different elements of the same words as one word, which results in large, multi-syllabic words, but with a comprehensive meaning (van der merwe & roux 2014). a dyslexic isixhosa learner may therefore find dense text difficult to read. learners at risk of dyslexia in a transparent language are likely to have considerable difficulty acquiring the complex orthography of english (mortimore et al. 2012). sixteen per cent (16%) of the south african population speak isixhosa as their home language, making it the second most widely spoken language in south africa after isizulu at 22.7% (statistics south africa 2012, cited in rossouw & pascoe 2018). in south africa, children often have to master oral and written literacy at school in a language that is different from their home language, particularly after the foundation phase (usually english). a second language learner will not easily self-correct reading errors in english as the second language (referred to as first additional language, fal) if the level of mastery of the home language (in this case isixhosa) is affected (lundberg 2002). the need for a screening tool in a learner’s home language is therefore optimal. the current literacy situation in south africa remains a problem. more than 50% of grade 4 learners in south africa are not yet reading for meaning (spaull 2016, cited in spaull, pretorius & mohohlwane 2018). dyslexia screeners in south africa are available in english, but not in other recognised african languages, and therefore also not in isixhosa. south africa has 11 official languages and, although about 70% of learners have access to instruction in their home language (lolt) in the first 3 years of schooling, there is a lack of assessment or screening materials that can be used to identify literacy difficulties within these languages. it is therefore safe to conclude that we have a substantial number of south african learners who are dyslexic, and the majority of these learners remain unidentified due to a lack of resources and screening tools. the aim of this study was to adapt and develop a comprehensive screening tool for dyslexia for home language isixhosa learners. it was piloted on a small sample of learners and the results are reported in this article. developing a reliable and valid screening tool in an african language will facilitate the development of assessment procedures and resources so that more young children who struggle with literacy difficulties or dyslexia in the south african classroom can be identified in the early grades. a dyslexia screening tool will particularly benefit early identification and intervention, as the brain is more malleable and adaptable during earlier years. early intervention also reduces associated intractable vulnerabilities such as poor self-esteem, lack of confidence, school failure and long-term lowered income (gaab 2017; lyytinen et al. 2015; ring & black 2018). our research question was therefore formulated as: are we able to adapt and develop a comprehensive screening tool with enough evidence to determine risk for dyslexia for the home language isixhosa-speaking foundation phase learner? with the help of an isixhosa-speaking speech and language therapist (splt), the bellavista dyslexia screening tool was adapted for isixhosa-speaking learners who might face difficulty with the acquisition of literacy skills. after the pilot, further adaptations were made to the tool and the modified version is attached. literature review reading and dyslexia the simple view of reading (rose 2009, after gough & tunmer 1986) model is a primary guide for assessing and teaching reading. the model describes reading comprehension as the product of two areas of expertise: word recognition (decoding) and oral language proficiency. it explains how learners may make progress in one area of reading, but not another, and that, if a learner makes adequate progress in both word recognition and language comprehension, reading will develop adequately. the child who develops good oral language comprehension skills but does not make gains in the word recognition process is at risk for dyslexia. researchers hulme and snowling (2015) agree that there are three main predictors for decoding (reading) skills: phonemic awareness – the awareness of the smallest units of sounds and the ability to identify and manipulate these individual sounds within words. letter-sound knowledge – knowledge of the group of letters (graphemes) that represent the letter sounds (phonemes). rapid automised naming (ran) – the ability to name familiar visual stimuli rapidly. naming speed difficulties suggest access to one’s language lexicon is slow, which impacts on reading speed (hulme & snowling 2015). early isixhosa reading instruction exposes learners to a syllabic approach early on in order to combine syllables into common words of two and three syllables (pascoe & smouse 2013). african languages, such as isixhosa, are strongly syllabic, and these learners tend to do better on syllable awareness than phonemic awareness items (diemer, van der merwe & de vos 2015). however, phonemic awareness still seems to be a stronger predictor of decoding than syllable awareness (wilsenach 2016). multilingualism and dyslexia irrespective of whether they are monolingual, bilingual or multilingual, learners with dyslexia present with a similar profile despite differences in alphabetic orthography (chung, ho & chan 2011). joshi, prakash and surendranath (2010) reviewed literature on reading and literacy difficulties in bilingual learners and found that almost all participants had difficulty in both languages they were tested in and there would be phonological processing difficulties in both languages if they were dyslexic (chung et al. 2011; klein & doctor 2003). it must be noted, however, that although dyslexia might manifest differently across different writing systems, phonological processing will remain a difficulty (kovelman, bisconti & hoeft 2016). one can therefore make the assumption that a learner who presents with dyslexia traits in isixhosa as a first language will present with similar difficulties when learning reading and writing in english, especially with phonological processing, in the classroom in later grades. similarly, reading speed and fluency difficulties might go unnoticed in isixhosa learners early on, but might emerge in later years. this may be attributed to the fact that dyslexic isixhosa readers may read accurately but slowly in isixhosa due to the more transparent orthography of isixhosa. however, when they read in english (which has an opaque orthography) in later years, they will have both fluency and accuracy difficulties. since the majority of english reading is only done from grade 4, it makes it more difficult for teachers to identify reading difficulties early on. features of a dyslexia screening test while much research is dedicated to understanding dyslexia in the english-speaking population, there is limited knowledge of the effects of the condition in african languages. teachers and professionals in south africa have a difficult time identifying learners at risk for dyslexia and other literacy difficulties reliably, due to insufficient screening tools and a limited knowledge around the development of african languages. a survey with splts in the western cape confirmed this, and suggested that assessment materials in dominant local languages will improve confidence in developing intervention strategies (maphalala, pascoe & smouse 2010). given that learners in south africa usually learn in their mother tongue until grade 4 (with english as an additional language from grade 1), access to a screening tool for dyslexia in the home language would allow for earlier detection. schools generally wait for a learner to ‘fail’ at literacy before the child is identified for assessment (gaab 2017). gaab (2017) justifies that intensive interventions are most effective in the reception year and first grade. when early learners who are at risk for dyslexia receive explicit, structured and intensive instruction, they have the potential to perform at average reading levels (torgesen 2004). gaab recommends several key characteristics to be included in screening batteries: they should be short, quick and easy to administer, be comprehensive (including all the key indicators of dyslexia), be done during or before the reception year, and include a short family history, and be developmentally appropriate (gaab 2017). in summary, a dyslexia screener will therefore focus on the main indicators presented by a learner who is at risk for dyslexia. these include phonological awareness, decoding, knowledge of the alphabetic principle (that sound can be represented by a letter or string of letters and letter-sound knowledge), spelling and written output (sentence and paragraph structure). auditory discrimination and oral fluency (the ability to speak fluently and with ease) are generally intact, but will vary from child to child. some learners might present with visual or auditory difficulties, or have a double deficit – both fluency and phoneme awareness difficulties, and others only a single deficit (bowers & wolf 1993). listening comprehension should present as adequate, because a child at risk for dyslexia usually presents with a stronger oral language and comprehension, and there will be a clear discrepancy between oral and written language (kelly & phillips 2016). the indicators of dyslexia are not normative, but highly individual because of the compensatory skills employed. method participants and research setting as isixhosa is not widely spoken in the gauteng area in south africa, choices for schools were limited. the research team consisted of an educational psychologist, a splt proficient in isixhosa, and an occupational therapist who is also a foundation phase remedial teacher. the university of stellenbosch identified seven schools in gauteng, two independent schools and five government schools, where the lolt is isixhosa. these schools were identified as functional schools with records of good annual national assessment (ana) scores. the schools also had a quintile 4 ranking. a quintile ranking is an indication of the socio-economic status of the school, where a ranking of 1 is a no-fee school that serves a poor school community and quintile 5 schools are fee-paying and represent the least poor school communities (van wyk 2015). the researchers then identified the seven schools using the gauteng basic education department’s education management information system (emis) and contact was made telephonically with the schools. the two independent schools confirmed that their lolt is english so they were excluded from the selection. the three top ana performing schools were chosen in an attempt to reduce environmental factors such as poverty as far as possible. the schools were all located in urban informal settlements and had electricity and running water. classroom sizes varied from 30 to 60 learners per classroom; however, for the larger groups basic resources such as pencils were limited. poverty is a reality for most of the learners. the schools provide all learners with a meal. most of the learners live with a single parent or grandparent in informal settlements or hostels, and ‘home’ remains the eastern cape as parents had to move or split up for job opportunities. the social, psychological and emotional stability of these learners may therefore be compromised, which in turn compromises the learners’ true academic potential. one cannot view a child in isolation of the family or their environment (kelly & phillips 2016; mowder 2005; shonkoff & meisels 2010). from the parent interviews, it also emerged that two learners experienced trauma after the loss of one or both parents. in the latter case, the interviewee was the learner’s grandmother. upon the first visit to the schools, researchers met with the principal, briefed teachers individually on the focus of the research and discussed learner profiles of learners who struggle in literacy. teachers discussed learners they thought might meet this profile, and thereafter completed the teacher checklist, which took roughly 15 min to complete. learners with known significant trauma and head injuries were excluded in the selection process. the researchers reviewed the selected learners’ isixhosa, english and mathematics books and finalised a shortlist of learners that they deemed may be at risk for dyslexia. based on their clinical experience, researchers identified 13 learners as potentially at risk for dyslexia across the three schools within the foundation phase and grade 4. the final group of learners was discussed with the principal, who sent out consent letters to the parents. a control group of seven learners across the three schools were also selected by the teachers, who were asked to identify average performers. a total of 20 learners whose parents consented to the screening was enrolled for the study. from the 20 learners, 3 learners were in grade 1, 6 learners were in grade 2, 6 learners were in grade 3 and 4 learners were in grade 4. one learner was absent. of the 19 participants, 13 male and 6 female, 5 were repeating their grade. during the second visit to the schools, 19 parent interviews were conducted by the clinical psychologist. running parallel was the learner screening which was done by the isixhosa-speaking splt. a translator was used for three of the interviews. one identified child was absent. teacher checklists were not administered for the control group. one parent did not arrive for the parent interview. the development of the dyslexia screening tool the bellavista dyslexia screening tool (bvdst) for english home language learners was adapted and reworked according to the structure of the language, for the young isixhosa learner in grades 1–3. the english tool is used for screening learners’ literacy skills and makes use of the administrator’s skills to analyse, find patterns in literacy difficulties and interpret findings. it is not normed. after adapting the tool into isixhosa, the screening tool was reviewed by a biliteracy specialist working on bilingual and multilingual children’s literacy development. it is not a diagnostic tool, but a screener to guide early identification and intervention for learners at risk of literacy difficulties. it allows for the administrator to make use of examples in order to determine whether the learners understand what is required of them for each item of the tool. the tool includes screening of the following components: auditory discrimination task (also called a same/different task) – the ability to tell whether two words are the same or different. for example, ‘imali’ – ‘ibali’, or ‘lala – lala’. in each instance the learner will say whether the word is the same or different. phonological awareness (all phonological awareness tasks are done orally): phoneme blending – the ability to listen to sounds, hold them in memory and blend them together to make a word. phonological segmentation – the ability to listen to a word and segment it into its constituent phonemes. phoneme deletion – require multi-syllable, syllable and phoneme deletion, for example: ‘say tatamisa, now say it without tata’ = misa. phonological substitution – the ability to substitute sound or syllable for another. knowledge of common sequences, which includes the ability to recite days of the week or months of the year. knowledge of grammar and punctuation by pointing out related elements in a short passage and explaining why these are found in a sentence – grade 2 onwards, administrator will include questions according to concepts covered in the curriculum. sound-symbol correspondence – the ability to recognise consonant clusters as taught in the appropriate age group. oral semantic fluency task – naming as many animals as one can in a minute. listening comprehension – listening to and understanding a short story. auditory or passage recall task – answering questions about a short story. single word recognition – reading simple, decodable words that are taught frequently in the classroom, as well as simple, high frequency words. spelling tasks – writing simple, dictated words with the correct spelling. free writing task – a qualitative analysis of vocabulary use, writing formation spelling, sequencing, expression of ideas, structure, grammar and so on. administrator will take into consideration grade level of the learner and simplify or leave out entirely depending on the learner’s age, grade and school term. it is important to note that the tool is designed for an educated or trained assessor who understands the developmental progression of learning and who can make judgements around which items to administer and which items to leave out. rapid automised naming was left out of the assessment, as it forms part of a standardised assessment. the development of parent interview and teacher checklist a background history of learning difficulties in the family, as well as a developmental history may contribute to holistic understanding of the learner and the level of risk for dyslexia. a teacher checklist was adapted from kelly and phillips (2016), specialists in the assessment and intervention of dyslexic-type difficulties. a parent interview was also developed. the aim of the interview and checklist was to identify difficulties in the area of literacy that consistently presented in the home and classroom, and to triangulate the information with the learners’ performance on the screening tool. the parent interview included questions related to family and medical history, as well as identifying difficulties with reading and spelling. the teacher checklist refers to questions related to reading and spelling, but also to mathematics, as a discrepancy in skills may strengthen the possibility of risk for dyslexia. scoring procedures data were captured across the three screening sources (teacher checklist, parent interview and learner screener) and compiled into 10 variables as per table 1. capturing across three different sources ensured triangulation of results and therefore increased the reliability of the study. phoneme awareness and auditory discrimination were excluded from the teacher checklist and these concepts together with sequencing, alphabetic principle and written output were excluded from the parent interview due to complexity of the indicators. the other variables are tracked across the three screening methods. table 1: subcomponents for data analysis. each component of the assessment administered was scored. the raw score was then converted into assessment scores: a child who scored in the lower third on the raw scores (33.3%) was ranked as 0 (problem); scores in the second third were ranked as 1 (some difficulty/risk) and scores in the higher third were ranked as 2 (intact). statistics were run on both the assessment and the raw scores; due to the lower variability of the assessment scores, most statistics were run on the raw scores. after analysing the results, it was found that some of the learners selected as controls (the average performers selected by the teachers) presented with results consistent with a dyslexic or learning difficulty profile. the control learners who presented with dyslexic-type profiles were analysed as part of the risk group. of the seven control learners, there were only two learners that represented true controls; the other four learners were identified as false negatives. for this reason (such a small control sample), we present all the data grouped together from this point on and have categorised the learners into clearly at risk, at risk, other disorder, and not at risk groups. ethical consideration ethical clearance was obtained from the department of basic education. each parent or guardian of the selected learners, as well as the teachers and their school principal signed and gave informed consent. results categorisation of learners table 2 represents the number of learners for each indicator within these categories. table 2: identifying learners’ risk for dyslexia from the screening tool. how useful was the screening test for identifying isixhosa learners at risk for dyslexia? based on the triangulation of screening data from the sample of 19 learners (one was absent on the day of assessment), 5 learners were identified as being clearly at risk for dyslexia. eight learners were identified as being possibly at risk for dyslexia. there were also 5 learners who were identified as being at risk, but their difficulties are better explained by a different condition or learning difficulty, for example when the child’s difficulties were global. two learners from the control group presented with literacy skills that were intact. the adapted isixhosa screener identified learners at risk for dyslexia and was measured against the researchers’ clinical experience. the findings for each child were captured in a personalised report and feedback was given to the parents and head of foundation phase. after completion of the fieldwork and feedback with stakeholders, a 2-h workshop on reading and spelling intervention strategies for at-risk learners was facilitated for all the foundation phase teachers and the parents of the selected learners at the three schools. overview: scores for ‘at risk’ and ‘not at risk’ children what did the screening tool show about the not at risk (indicated as control for the purpose of this study) and the at risk learners’ profile, based on the teachers’ categorisation of their learners? this section looks at average scores for the different domains of functioning across at risk and not at risk children. figure 1 presents average raw scores for control and at risk children. given that phonological awareness is the largest category (with a maximum score of 59 on the original tool), it is not surprising that the greatest differential can be seen on this domain. not at risk children scored 19 on average while at risk children scored 15. not at risk children also scored more highly on the two domains that should not be affected by dyslexia: oral/semantic fluency and listening comprehension. figure 1: raw scores – at risk and not at risk children. figure 2 displays the same information, but using assessment scores (i.e. the three rankings of 0, 1 and 2) rather than raw scores. additional derived domains now included are oral/written discrepancy (i.e. the discrepancy between oral and written language scores), sequencing, and written output. at risk children display lower average scores on most, but not all domains. at risk children have the same average score as not at risk children on oral/written discrepancy and alphabetic principle (although the latter was lower when using the more varied raw scores). the greatest discrepancies between the two groups of children are in phonological awareness (0.58 lower), written output (0.4 lower), auditory discrimination (0.3 lower) and spelling (0.29 lower). figure 2: average assessment scores of at risk and not at risk children. figure 3 contrasts at risk children with clearly at risk children. those identified as clearly at risk have similar oral/semantic fluency and higher listening comprehension, the two domains unlikely to be affected by dyslexia, and score lower on the other items. on average, then, those identified as clearly at risk are well defined according to the profile of impairment that is known to be associated with dyslexia. figure 3: assessment scores for at risk and clearly at risk children. figure 4 contrasts at risk children (including clearly at risk children) and those identified as not at risk. those identified as at risk have higher oral/semantic fluency and listening comprehension.they also have higher auditory discrimination, sequencing, and phonological awareness. as may be expected, when including those who are at risk and not just clearly at risk for dyslexia, the average profile of impairment is not as clearly delineated according to the typical dyslexia presentation. figure 4: average assessment scores of clearly at risk and not at risk children. impaired domains: is the profile of impairment consistent? this section explores how well related the different ‘risk factors’ (phonological awareness, auditory discrimination, sequencing, decoding, alphabetic principle, spelling, written output, and oral/written discrepancy) are for children identified as at risk. table 3 displays correlations (spearman’s rho) between the different domains of functioning which should be impaired in dyslexia for children identified as at risk after testing took place. this includes both clearly at risk and at risk children. unfortunately, due to the very small number of children identified as clearly at risk, the same table cannot be replicated for this group alone. additionally, since there was no variation in the scores for auditory discrimination, these correlations cannot be ascertained. if these children really were all at risk for dyslexia, we should see high correlations between the different domains since they should present with a similar, and typical, profile of impairment. high correlations are defined here as between 1.0 and 0.7, moderate correlations are between 0.4 and 0.6, and low correlations are 0.1 to 0.3. table 3: correlations between risk factors for at risk children. in table 3, we see that most correlations are again in the low range. however, we do see very high and statistically significant correlations for phonological awareness with spelling, and decoding with knowledge of the alphabetic principle, spelling, and oral/written discrepancy. sequencing displays low correlations with all domains except spelling. it appears that decoding and alphabetic principle are the most consistent indicators of being at risk of dyslexia in this sample. discussion the results in this study suggest that learners who were identified as clearly at risk displayed dyslexia-type difficulties, resulting in reading and spelling difficulties. there were high correlations between phonological awareness with spelling, as well as decoding with alphabetic principles, spelling, and oral/written discrepancy. the greatest differences between the at risk group and the not at risk group were in phonological awareness, written output, auditory discrimination and spelling. those identified as clearly at risk had higher oral/semantic fluency and listening comprehension, the two domains unlikely to be affected by dyslexia, and scored far lower on most other items. a lower score in oral/semantic fluency may be due to the teaching environment and level of poverty, as per frith’s environmental component of the causation model of dyslexia (kelly & phillips 2016). on average, those identified as clearly at risk are well defined according to the profile of impairment that is known to be associated with dyslexia. for teachers, the main indicators are difficulties with decoding and knowledge of the alphabetic principle. throughout the statistics, there seem to be low correlations with auditory discrimination, which correlates with a study done by paul et al. (2006), who found that dyslexic children and control children did not differ statistically in mismatch field amplitude or latency when tested for auditory discrimination, but only differed in phonological skills. further research is required in this area. oral semantic fluency did not show a discrepancy between the at risk group and the not at risk group. changes to screeners and forms after piloting the screening tool, the researchers made further revisions to the content and length of some of the components. it was reviewed by an educational psychologist whose home language is isixhosa, after which a final version was produced. similarly, the teacher checklist was simplified from two pages to one page. many teachers had difficulty completing the questionnaire accurately. statements were adapted into simpler questions, and a yes/no option was provided for the teacher to circle, rather than to write a response. the parent interview was shortened. the order of questions was changed in such a way that the conversation starts with the child’s current functioning and moves back towards birth history, which enabled the parents to report on pressing issues first and therefore build rapport with the interviewer. limitations there were several limitations to the study. first language isixhosa speakers in gauteng are limited in number, and schools with a lolt in isixhosa are therefore similarly limited. the schools were not as functional as we had hoped, which made it difficult to rule out environmental factors like poverty and lack of quality instruction. often, adequate quality instruction in early reading is compromised. the quintile ranking of the schools was not an accurate representation of the school community, thus low socio-economic factors may have had an impact on the results. classroom sizes ranged from 50 to 60 learners per class. unfortunately, with such large group sizes it is unlikely that a teacher will have an in-depth knowledge of a child’s learning profile. this was evident in the selection of average performers for the research control group, as many of these learners also presented with literacy difficulties. in retrospect, it may have been more beneficial for the research team to have requested top performers to use as a control group instead of average performers. there were only two learners of the seven control learners that represented true controls. the selected sample was small, compromising the outcomes. a larger sample within a larger selection of schools would have been beneficial. the tool may benefit from another cycle of piloting, ideally in areas where isixhosa is the predominant language. the screening tool requires further refinements in terms of presenting phonological awareness skills more accurately. it is also important to take into consideration that african language readers in general perform lower on phonological awareness tasks (wilsenach 2019). the screening tool can only be used by teachers who have a sound understanding of literacy development and literacy difficulties or learning support educators and splts. critical analysis and age-grade comparison is necessary to make an informed conclusion based on the learner’s performance. conclusion the study provides a first step into designing a valid isixhosa dyslexia screening tool. the screening tool was able to identify specific breakdowns in the various areas of performance, specifically phonological awareness, auditory discrimination (less so), sequencing (less so), decoding/reading, knowledge of the alphabetic principle, spelling, listening comprehension, written output, and discrepancy between oral and written language in another language, supporting current research (chung & ho 2010; klein & doctor 2003). furthermore, the validity of the screener was supported by the parent and teacher questionnaires through triangulation, where the teacher checklist, parent questionnaire and screener could be used to substantiate indicators showing risk for dyslexia. in addition to triangulation, the researchers’ clinical judgement and experience in the field of dyslexia and literacy difficulties supported the results. the adapted isixhosa screening tool, together with the adapted teacher checklist and parent interview, will therefore give a professional an indication of whether a child is at risk for dyslexia in isixhosa. the isixhosa screening tool can be further refined by additional studies using larger sample populations. adaptation of the tool into other african languages is to be encouraged, as it would enable the identification, and therefore the early intervention, of learners at risk for dyslexia regardless of their home language. the screener can be obtained through request via email: share@bellavistaschool.co.za. acknowledgements we would like to acknowledge nonyameko njongwe, speech and language therapist with a master’s degree in early childhood intervention, who is proficient in isixhosa. she was responsible for the development, implementation and revision of the screening tool. we also acknowledge dr nicholas spaull, senior researcher in the economics department at stellenbosch university and director of funda wande, for his guidance, support and input. thank you to the funda wande project and bellavista school for funding the project. special thanks to elizabeth (lilli) pretorius, professor of linguistics at university of south africa (unisa), who reviewed the article. competing interests we declare that we have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced us in writing this article. author’s contributions a.c. coordinated the project and writing of the report and was one of the field workers and trainers of parents and teachers. k.n. helped with coordination and review of the report and was one of the field workers and trainers of parents and teachers. a.l. was the statistician and provided the explanation of the graphs in the report. funding information funda wande project under nic spaull for partial funding of the project. bellavista school for funding the remainder of the project. bellavista school for funding of resources – photocopies, stationery and concrete objects for use during screening.. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views expressed in this article are of the researchers and not an official position of the institution or funders. references american psychiatric association, 2013, diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 5th edn., cbs publishers, arlington, tx. bowers, p.g. & wolf, m., 1993, ‘theoretical links among naming speed, precise timing mechanisms and orthographic skill in dyslexia’, reading and writing: an interdisciplinary journal 5, 69–85. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01026919 chung, k., ho, c. & chan, d., 2011, ‘cognitive skills and literacy performance of chinese 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m., 2014, ‘idiosyncratic sound systems of the south african bantu languages: research and clinical implications for speech-language pathologists and audiologists’, south african journal of communication disorders 61(1), e1–e8. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajcd.v61i1.86 van wyk, c., 2005, an overview of education data in south africa: an inventory approach. a working paper of the department of economics and the bureau for economic research at the university of stellenbosch, viewed 17 may 2018, from https://www.ekon.sun.ac.za/wpapers/2015/wp192015/wp-19-2015.pdf. wilsenach, c., 2016, ‘identifying phonological processing deficits in northern sotho-speaking children: the use of non-word repetition as a language assessment tool in the south african context’, south african journal of communication disorders 63(2), e1–e11. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajcd.v63i2.145 wilsenach, c., 2019, ‘phonological awareness and reading in northern sotho – understanding the contribution of phonemes and syllables in grade 3 reading attainment’, south african journal of childhood education 9(1), a647. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v9i1.647 reading2.pdf � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �� � textbook readability and esl learners daniel kasule university of botswana abstract: !is paper reports activities (as part of a university course in language teacher education on teaching reading) in which primary school student teachers (all esl in-service teacher trainees) explored their own skills of determining textbook readability using an online so"ware tool and a cloze test completed by two hundred and seventy-eight grade seven primary school pupils.5 findings from the online tool were that the text was di#cult. !e cloze test con$rmed this when it showed that only eighteen pupils could read the text unassisted while the rest were frustrated by it. !e paper uses these $ndings to describe the challenges pupils face and how readability research is bene$cial to the reading development of esl learners if reading of academic texts is approached from the principles of the interactive view of reading; of cognitive learning theory; and of second language acquisition theory. it is concluded that teachers’ awareness of readability issues is helpful for e%ective reading instruction during the critical formative years of school. introduction an early de$nition of readability by dale and chall (1949) included the concept of interest, but since textbooks are not read because they are interesting, readability will be understood simply as the ease or di#culty with which the textbook may be understood. very appropriate for this paper is the view of reading as an interactive process between the reader, the text, and the writer, captured by prins and ulijn (1998:141) where they de$ne readability as the ability of the text to communicate the intention of the writer to the intended reader. an important observation is that each chapter in a textbook o%ers particular challenges. for purposes of classroom teaching therefore, textbook readability implies assessing readability chapter by chapter. as a language teacher educator i am concerned about my student teachers’ awareness of the readability of the textbooks which they $nd recommended for use in the classes they teach. i therefore set out to bring this awareness to them, recognising that in many under-resourced classrooms, the textbook 5 in the context of primary schools in swaziland, the term grade refers to primary school levels for children, whose ages range from seven to fourteen years. rw& article � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # $ $ % � & ' � % ' � � � � � ( ) � * + 64 reading and writing commands an elevated role in teaching and learning because it may be the only teaching resource on which the teachers’ explanation is based. besides the disadvantage of implanting an unquestioning view of the printed word in children, the situation places a heavy responsibility on the quality of the textbook itself in meeting appropriate criteria regarding the learner’s age, educational and cultural background, and linguistic pro$ciency. textbook writers need to be guided by such requirements. !erefore, the teachers’ ability to determine readability levels of the textbook is crucial for e%ective teaching and learning. measuring readability measuring readability is a complex a%air due to the many factors involved. gray and leary, cited in dubay (2004:18) identify four factors a%ecting readability, namely: content (including propositions, organisation, coherence), style (including semantic and syntactic elements), design (including typography, format, and illustrations), and structure (including chapters, headings and navigation). other research reported by dubay (2004) showed that the best predictors of textual di#culty were two aspects of style, namely: semantic content (e.g. of vocabulary) and syntactic structure (e.g. sentence length). syntactic structure can be determined using readability formulas which are strictly text-based. !e view of reading as an interactive process implies the existence of text-based, reader-based, and author-based factors regarding readability. not all these factors are quanti$able; for example factors related to communicating meaning such as legibility of print, clarity and relevance of illustrations, and conceptual di#culty are non-quanti$able. as well as these, there are factors related strictly to the reader, seven of which bensoussan (1991: 216) identi$ed, namely: faulty top-down processing; faulty bottom-up processing; linguistic pro$ciency; lack of motivation; over-motivation; familiarity with the topic; and misleading or unfocused questions. !ese cannot be measured by readability formulas. instead, more time-consuming tests such as cloze tests and comprehension tests are used. !erefore, a combination of formulas (to measure text-based and author-based factors) and tests (to measure reader-based factors) provides a more reliable assessment of the readability of a given textual item. teachers who are familiar with a topic can determine the suitability of written material for their pupils. however, johnson (2000:2) claims that teachers usually under-estimate the di#culty of the text by up to 8 years and adds that the more familiar the subject teacher is with the topic, the less likely s/he probably is to see the problem from the pupils’ point of view. !erefore, it is recommended that readability be objectively determined using formula and cloze tests (agnihotri and khanna 1992, johnson 2000). it is estimated that there � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # $ $ % ) � & ' � % ' � � � � � ( ) � * + 65daniel kasule are over two hundred formulas (dubay 2004). !ese are free, online computer so"ware tools, activated by simply cut-and-paste techniques and they calculate various readability measurements, using formulas which go by di%erent names such as coleman liau index, flesh kincaid grade level, automated readability index (ari), and smog (anonymous 2007, a). !e calculations indicate the number of years of education that a person needs to have completed to be able to understand the text easily on the $rst reading. !ey also indicate sentences considered complicated due to the number of words and the syllables in them. !e estimated readability by age, called ‘reading age’, means a reader of that age could just cope with the text (johnson 2000). cloze tests, on the other hand, are based on the theory that readers are able to $ll in the missing words as their reading skills improve. cloze tests are becoming the object of intensive research with over a thousand studies reported (dubay, 2004:22). !e word cloze is derived from the word ‘closure’, a term associated with gestalt psychologists, who maintain that human behaviour is motivated by the need for wholeness or completeness. teachers do better to regard reading as a meaning-making activity, a principle on which cloze tests are grounded. unfortunately, when meaning fails, reading becomes frustrating. from the theory of second language acquisition (sla) we learn that individuals bene$t from input and interaction. during reading, individual readers interact with input in the form of print. research on l2 oral skill development (ellis 1984:86) shows that in classroom settings, sla bene$ts both from input and teacher interaction. ellis adds that it is the interaction itself that aids acquisition. classroom reading that merely stops at recognising the printed words (input) leaves many classroom readers frustrated. !is teacher-student interaction provides what krashen (1985: 2004) refers to as acquisition-rich, comprehensible input, which is slightly above the child’s present level of competence; is interesting; is received in su#cient quantity from the text and the teacher; and is produced in a low anxiety environment. krashen’s (1985) a%ective $lter hypothesis informs us that language learners block o% input if the atmosphere is $lled with anxiety, uncertainty, threats, and is not motivating. so krashen’s a%ective $lter hypothesis cautions that it is not just the quantity of reading alone, but also how much of it is comprehensible (krashen, 1985); or, according to ellis (1986), how much of it is convertible into intake. additionally, how o"en pupils are assigned texts to read may indicate very little in terms of their reading-skill development. for instance, are pupils interacting with new ideas and formulating questions (interactive processing), or are they merely responding automatically to what the text is throwing at them (bottom-up processing)? a balance of these two processes bene$ts their reading-skill development. � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # $ $ % , � & ' � % ' � � � � � ( ) � * + 66 reading and writing additionally, teachers are the most knowledgeable people about the norms of linguistic competences of the children they teach. !ese norms assist in assessing the di#culties children would meet based on sentence analyses. because the norms are known to them they form a psycholinguistic theory that informs the teacher about what the individual readers in the class can be expected to understand in a text. with this knowledge, planning to minimise the textual di#culties is possible. !e study context one contextual problem is that many developing countries are facing an everincreasing school population. in swaziland, where this study was conducted, there is a noble goal to “increase access to the lower levels of the education system by making basic education free and compulsory” (undp and swaziland human development forum, 2001:108). according to the central statistics o#ce (2005), there are 555 primary schools with an enrolment of 22,1956 pupils (up from 21,8352 in 2004). !e same source also puts the teacher-pupil ratio at 1:33 at primary school. it is however common to $nd classes with ratios much higher than this $gure. working in crowded classrooms casts doubt on the e%ectiveness of reading instruction. in an environment where textbooks are centrally chosen on a one-suits-all basis, the textbook becomes a potential source of reading problems for particular children. needless to say, the textbook may not be available in su#cient numbers for every child to have a copy and/or may be too old and overused between several generations of users, rendering its physical state uninspiring. !ere is therefore a need to explore ways of developing e%ective reader-authortext interaction in the classroom. however, working with academic texts that are written in a language in which one is not competent, as is the case in esl classrooms, is not easy. nor can young readers readily make easy use of their home languages as resources for understanding and arguing, because these languages are not used in school, and are thus not developed for use in academic discourse. so students cannot turn to these languages as support for their processing of concepts conveyed in the unfamiliar language of the text book. and the teachers’ explanation, which is based on information derived from the textbook, is conveyed in the same unfamiliar language that they are struggling with. under these circumstances, disentangling the nature of reading problems for the purposes of reading instruction can be a complex task. studies that are grounded in the interactive view of reading (greene 2001, prins and ulijn 1998, dean et. al 2006, cutting and scarborough 2006, bensoussan 1998, singhal 1998) indicate that in addition to learner-based factors (such as the learners’ linguistic pro$ciency), problems also arise from the text . / . 0 1 2 1 3 4 5 2 6 4 0 7 8 9 : ; < = = > > 1 ? @ 1 > @ 0 1 2 2 2 a b 0 c d 67daniel kasule itself. for example, deane et al (2006) reviewed several studies that showed that across school levels, texts shi" from being primarily narrative to being expository in nature and use increasingly sophisticated vocabulary, and more complex syntactic patterns. !erefore, in addition to learner-based factors, understanding text-level di#culties can help predict the chances of successful interaction between reader, writer and text. with regard to textbooks, children’s linguistic pro$ciency may either refer to the ordinary language contained in the text which the children have not yet fully mastered; or to the technical language used across the entire textbook which changes from one topic to another; or to both of these. all the above insights were helpful in combining the use of online so"ware tools and the cloze test so as to allow a cognitive assessment of the readers, their application of interactive text processing, and their knowledge of english sentence structure for purposes of reading a text that they were encountering for the $rst time. it was hoped that in this way the studen teachers would see the problem from the learners’ point of view. !e study design seven student teachers undertook the study in two steps: step one involved the use of online so"ware computer tools to assess the readability of a retyped version of a text extracted from the chapter ‘weather and climate’ in science grade seven pupils’ book, primary course for swaziland. step two involved the student teachers using the same text as in step one to conduct a cloze test on pupils at a school of their choice during the university’s mid-term break. for step one, the retyped version of the selected passage of 246 words was cutand-pasted on-line as instructed on the website http://www.online-utility.org/ english/readability, and processed by the so"ware to give readability scores in terms of di#cult level; the number of years of education needed for one to understand it easily on the $rst reading; and the sentences judged to be complicated and requiring improvement. for step two, to test whether the pupils had the ability to make sense of the text without resorting to recall, the student teachers developed a cloze test following ideas from burns et al (1988) and taylor cited in dubay (2004: 27). !e test was prepared as follows: the $rst sentence was le" intact but therea"er, every $"h word was deleted. !e study was conducted during february. at this time of the year, grade seven classes would not yet have covered the selected chapter the test would have been invalid if they had as their answers might be based on recall rather than on a $rst reading. pre-testing at nearby schools . / . 0 1 2 1 3 4 5 2 6 4 0 7 8 9 : ; < = = > ? 1 ? @ 1 > @ 0 1 2 2 2 a b 0 c d 68 reading and writing indicated that pupils would need more than an hour to complete the test. !e pre-test also gave an idea of the kinds of answers to expect. during pre-testing, one problem reported by the student teachers was that pupils felt very threatened, $rst by the test itself, and secondly by the presence of the stranger in their classroom. to minimise this e%ect (a) the regular teacher administered the test in the absence of the student teachers, and (b) the pupils were told that any answer was right as long as it made sense. each of the seven student teachers administered the test at one grade seven class at a school of their choice. !e result of this random choice was one urban, and six rural schools were used. altogether, 278 pupils wrote the cloze test. pupils were directed to $ll in the missing word. pupils were not told the source of the text nor were they told that only the same word that the author had used would be marked as correct. individual pupil performance was then graded as a percentage. !e lower the score, the more di#cult the text was for that individual. based on performance in the test, readability of the text for each pupil was then given as being at one of three levels (dubay 2004:27): 50-60% = independent (unassisted reading) level 35-50% = instructional (assisted reading) level, and below 35% = frustration level expectations our initial expectation was that the cloze test would get the children to engage individually and directly with the author’s language, without any interaction with anyone else, such as with each other or with their teacher. because textbooks may not suit all readers alike, we expected that di%erences in performance on the cloze test would result from this factor. our other expectation was that the reading of textbooks was a problematic activity for many children (burns et al 1988, johnson 2000). grade seven is a particularly signi$cant period in the life of school-going children in swaziland: it is preparation for entry to secondary school where harder texts await. it is also at these higher grade levels that teachers more o"en assign students to read texts on their own. texts at these levels more frequently use technical and specialised vocabulary and concepts. another expectation was that readability di#culties would . / . 0 1 2 1 3 4 5 2 6 4 0 7 8 9 : ; < = = > e 1 ? @ 1 > @ 0 1 2 2 2 a b 0 c d 69daniel kasule be more pronounced in non-urban primary schools since performance in national examinations o"en portrays urban schools as being advantaged. findings and discussion !e flesch reading ease (flesch re) online so"ware tool uses an index of zero to a hundred. !e closer the score is to a hundred, the easier the content; the closer the score to zero, the more di#cult. !e report for the text gave a flesch re index of 65.76. according to the flesch reading ease table, at 65.76 the text is standard, has an average sentence length of seventeen words and contains 147 syllables per 100 words, and is suited to readers who have completed the seventh or eighth grade, based on us standards (anonymous 2007, b). !is $nding shows that the text is slightly above the level it is intended for use in swaziland. we thought that this might not necessarily be a bad thing as it o%ered a slight challenge to the targeted readers. !e number of years of formal education that were required so as to understand the text on $rst reading varied according to the formula: 9.89 on the gunning fog index; 9.35 on coleman liau index; 7.30 on the flesh kincaid grade level; 7.00 on the ari; and 10.11 on the smog index. again, whichever index was used, the text was predicted to be challenging at the grade seven level in swaziland schools, for which it was intended. both $ndings can serve to challenge common assumptions among teachers that a textbook recommended for use by the ministry of education automatically matches the abilities of the children in the classroom and therefore requires no guided instruction. at grade seven pupils should begin to appreciate that muddle is more likely in a long sentence than in a short one no matter whether one is reading or writing it. most writing instructors recommend $"een to twenty (15 – 20) words per sentence for this level of readers. !e so"ware tool reported an average of seventeen (17) words per sentence according to the flesch reading ease table (anonymous 2007, b). !is text is therefore within the recommended sentence length. our subjecting this text to analysis by the online tool might appear ill-conceived as the tool was intended for use in a completely di%erent context. however, since the analysis involved purely mathematical calculations of sentence length, syllables per sentence and number of sentences in the text, it is justi$ed. !e tool analysed syntactical features that have been con$rmed in several studies (dubay 2004, deane et al. 2006, bensoussan 1998, prins and ulijn 1998, greene 2001) as factors in readability. f g h g i j k j l m n k o m i p q r s t u v v w x j y z j w z i j k k k [ \ i ] ^ 70 reading and writing !e tool also listed the following $ve sentences which it suggested needed rewriting in order to improve readability of the text: coastal regions near oceans and large lakes may have di%erent climates than other regions at the same latitude and altitude. latitude: regions at low latitudes near the equator have hot climates because the sun’s rays shine more directly there. it can be freezing, with snow at the top of a high mountain, even on a mountain located in a hot part of the earth. however, the average weather over a large region is usually quite similar from year to year. swaziland residents are familiar with weather and climate di%erences at di%erent altitudes. !ese $ve were among the longest sentences in the text. !ey also contain several words with more than two syllables. !e $ve were therefore assumed to cause di#culty. for purposes of classroom teaching, this $nding implies that teachers would do better to regard sentence length and word length in a text as potential causes of di#culty. (harrison cited in agnihotri and khanna (1992:284) informs us that the longer a word is, the more likely it is to be rare.) table one, below, reports, class by class, on the performance of the 278 grade seven pupils on the cloze test. it is notable that class sizes were above the norm of 1:33 given by swaziland’s central statistics o#ce (2005). as o’sullivan (2006) observed, overall teacher-pupil ratios are not an accurate re*ection of actual class-size as they are obtained by dividing the number of teachers in a school by the number of pupils, without considering the common practice of subject teaching, for example. unlike class teaching, subject teaching, which is common in upper primary and secondary school, increases the number of teachers in a school thereby making the teacher-pupil ratio appear lower than it actually is in certain subject speci$c classes. as noted earlier, a large class impacts negatively on the e%ective teaching of reading. f g h g i j k j l m n k o m i p q r s t u v v y j j y z j w z i j k k k [ \ i ] ^ 71daniel kasule table 1: number of children by category of readability level class a n = 47 class b n = 52 class c n = 20 class d n = 31 class e n = 46 class f n = 47 class g n= 35 independent (unassisted reading) 18 0 1 0 0 0 0 instructional (assisted reading) 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 frustration 26 50 19 31 46 47 35 in class a, the only urban sample, eighteen children in this class could read the text unassisted, three could use it when assisted, and twenty-six would be frustrated by it. although this does not give a normal curve, it ful$lled our expectation that a recommended textbook suits individual children in a class di%erently. results for the other six samples from far-*ung places (classes b, c, d, e, f, and g) consistently show the entire class reading the text at frustration level. !is $nding underscores the need for classroom teachers to accept that readability is an issue. !e right response is not to reject the particular textbook but, rather, to approach the teaching of reading more systematically, as we shall show later, a"er identifying the challenges the children faced in the cloze test. answers supplied by the children to the forty-seven gaps in the cloze test were analysed for patterns emerging. !e patterns found to be prevalent are summed up and discussed below. disregard for text structure, semantic and syntactic clues, and misuse of collocation !e text comprised $ve short paragraphs under the heading ‘weather and climate’. !e two opening paragraphs introduced the topic. !e last three paragraphs followed the sub-headings ‘altitude’, ‘latitude’, and ‘bodies of water’, respectively. !e authors had intended, no doubt, that the subtitles should serve as lead-ins to paragraph topics and hence to serve as an aid to readers’ comprehension. for purposes of our study, we therefore expected the subheadings to provide clear clues to the missing word. however, as the results show, this did not prove to be the case. f g h g i j k j l m n k o m i p q r s t u v v y k j y z j w z i j k k k [ \ i ] ^ 72 reading and writing we also expected that semantic and syntactic clues implied by the context would enable gap-$lling. however, our analysis of the quality of answers provided by children in the cloze test indicated a complete disregard for syntactic and semantic clues. !e randomly selected sample answer below is representative of this kind of problem: regions at low (33) is near the equator have (34) di"erent climates because the sun’s (35) became shine more directly there. (36) big bend polar regions the sun (37) and low in the sky, (38) 12.00 at noon in the (39) evening time. such regions have (40) hot temperatures most of the (41) highveld. !is child refers to ‘big bend’ which is a name of a town in swaziland, and to ‘highveld’ which is a geographical region in swaziland. !e child (and there were many others) is using the geographical context of swaziland alone and is refusing to abandon it, even when the paragraph, in its reference to ‘the equator’ and the ‘polar regions’, clearly demands a global context. ignoring those semantic clues creates the problems. !e child is not guided by signposts of sentence structure, such as when one has the ‘the sun’s (something)’, the child supplies a verb. readability issues at the semantic and syntactic levels relate to a reader’s ability/inability to use the signposts e%ectively to negotiate possibilities and thus aid comprehension. when this fails, the text is read at frustration level as the results of this study show. pointing out these features of the text could reduce the frustration arising from miscomprehension. deane et al (2006:260) rightly observed that the reading process involves combining “information from successive sentences to understand the global communication of the text”. di#culties arising from text miscomprehension may also be attributed to vocabulary in the text. !e following technical vocabulary contributed to the di#culty: altitude, latitude, weather, climate, bodies of water, and polar regions. because children would be required to master and recall these words as part of the content of the chapter, classroom activities would undoubtedly be more rigorous with more time on the task for this to happen than by glancing over them in their textbook. we also expected certain ordinary words in the text to have contributed to the di#culty for a grade seven pupil such as: factors, determines, residents, and continually. as con$rmed earlier by the online tool, sentence length increased progressively to give readers greatly expanded syntactic structures. with regard to the cloze test, such sentence expansion sometimes resulted in more blank spaces to $ll within a single sentence and so, collocation and awareness of sentence structure would be important clues in this regard. for esl children, reading a text becomes di#cult because their familiarity with collocations in english _ ` a ` b c d c e f g d h f b i j k l m n o o p b c p q c r q b c d d d s t b u v 73daniel kasule and the many variations in the structure of the english sentence is limited. in this study the answers provided by the children tended to indicate a formulaic, rather than an analytical, approach to english syntax; for example, when the subjects saw ‘latitude and _?? presence of ’ 33.5% (93 out of the total 278) of children immediately $lled the gap with ‘longitude’. yet the correct answer was the simple word ‘the’. equally confounding, ‘the sun’s rays shine’ arguably a familiar collocation, proved di#cult for the children to predict. out of the total two hundred and seventy eight (278) answers, only twenty one (21) were correct (7.6 per cent of the total) largely from class a, the one urban school in the study. !e frequent answer of choice was ‘the sun’s is shine’; and in one class, all forty-seven (47) children settled for this answer. rather a very odd choice of answer! although possible alternative collocations (such as ‘the sun’s light’, ‘the sun’s position’, ‘the sun’s energy’ and ‘the sun’s heat’) were wrong in the context of this study, they were given by only twenty three (23) children out of a total two hundred and seventy eight (278). !is number is too small for us not to make the claim that children’s approach to english syntax is formulaic at times, and at other times unpredictable, but certainly not analytical. it appears the subjects were easily misled when they relied on a more familiar formulaic utterance, namely: ‘the sun is shining’ frequently used to describe the day’s weather and ignored the main clue in the text which is the apostrophe a"er the word ‘sun’. !e nature of the challenges !e challenges of the cloze test on the children were enormous, recalling that the cloze test was an unexpected one and on a topic that the children had not yet covered. as the results show, a large majority were not pro$cient readers. and because pro$cient reading is not an event but a process, classroom instruction needs to plan it as a series of events that reinforce each other. grabe (1992:50-3) o%ers the view that successful reading is composed of sub-skills. in our e%ort to understand reading-skill development we shall use grabe’s six component sub-skills of reading as a framework to analyse and tabulate the demands. on the basis of these sub-skills, classroom instruction can be planned for reading many other academic texts. _ ` a ` b c d c e f g d h f b i j k l m n o o p k c p q c r q b c d d d s t b u v 74 reading and writing table 2: !e demands on the children’s reading skills grabe’s reading sub-skill demand from the cloze test !e perceptual automatic recognition skill pro$ciency in bottom-up processing of printed words (cutting and scarborough 2006:278) relating to a topic which was new to the children. linguistic skills pro$ciency in analysing the semantic and syntactic relationship between the words (cutting and scarborough 2006:278) including the missing one. knowledge and skills of discourse structure and organization pro$ciency in recognising the use of titles, subtitles, cohesive devices, linking isolated bits of information (greene 2001:83) on local weather so as to understand the global concept ‘climate’ knowledge of the world pro$ciency in top-down processing (cutting and scarborough 2006:278), without the teacher’s help, to bring meaning to the decoded words synthetic and critical evaluation skills pro$ciency in linking the content of the text to ‘science’ as shown in the primary school curriculum metalinguistic knowledge and skills pro$ciency in making inferences using contextual clues !e children in this study who were frustrated by the cloze test would have performed better had they developed pro$ciency in bottom-up and top-down processing (sub-skills 1 and 4). !is is possible if they develop linguistic analytical skills (sub-skill 2) so they can e%ectively use the semantic and syntactic clues available in order to understand local weather before they understand global climate (sub-skill 4). finally, they need to be able to infer that places where the sun’s rays shine obliquely are cold (sub-skill 6) and so on. !is did not happen because the children had not had a pre-reading activity that stimulated using these sub-skills. we can conclude that textbook reading demands active involvement of readers for it to be successful. !e demands listed in table 2 above can form the objective of a classroom reading lesson of this text. for example, the teacher and the class identifying the function of the words in a long sentence taken from the text can respond to demands of _ ` a ` b c d c e f g d h f b i j k l m n o o p t c p q c r q b c d d d s t b u v 75daniel kasule skill 2, 3, 4, and 6. !is makes teaching reading a skills-building activity that can be applied on a variety of texts they read in class. recommendations it is not practically possible to conduct readability assessments for each chapter in a textbook before teaching it. even the online so"ware tools require retyping or scanning the text before it can be cut-and-pasted on the webpage. however, the $ndings of this study imply that determining readability is bene$cial to teaching and learning, as the teacher gets a clearer view of learners’ di#culties with the text. our recommendation therefore is that since classroom teachers are the best available assessors of any mismatch between the linguistic competencies demanded by the text and the resources available to their learners, action research into the readability of school textbooks, particularly in science, would inform their decisions regarding the appropriateness and sequencing of textual content. recognising this need means providing these teachers with skills with which to e#ciently determine textbook readability. conclusion one of the limitations of this study was that it was too narrow in scope and focus, since the readability of a given textbook varies from one chapter to the next. we can therefore not generalise the $ndings. secondly, tools are yet to be developed that speci$cally assess readability of texts intended for use in english as a second language (esl) classrooms where learners’ linguistic norms are diverse. such assessment would not merely be desirable for purposes of rejecting and accepting certain textbooks, but for sensitising teachers to the di#culties embedded in the text in use. it is hoped that the seven participant teachers in this study have been sensitized to the need to assess the readability of the textbook they are currently using and to view textbooks as sources of potential reading di#culties. references agnihotri, r.k and a.l. khanna, a.l. 1992. evaluating the readability of textbooks: an indian study. journal of reading 35(4): 282-288. anonymous 2007 (a). test document readability and improve it. downloaded january 2007from http://www.online-utility.org/english/readability_test_and_improve.jsp anonymous 2007 (b). di%erences among the forecast, flesch-kincaid, and flesch reading ease formulas. downloaded january 2007 from http://www.utexas.edu/disability/ai/resource/readability/manual/*esch-calculate-english.html _ ` a ` b c d c e f g d h f b i j k l m n o o p w c p q c r q b c d d d s t b u v 76 reading and writing bensoussan, m. 1998. schema e%ects in efl reading comprehension. journal of research in reading, 21(3) 1998: 213-227. burns, p. c., roe, b. d. and ross, e. p. 1988. teaching reading in today’s elementary schools (4th ed). boston: houghton mi<in. central statistics o#ce. 2005. education statistics 2005. mbabane: swaziland. cutting, l.e. and scarborough, h.s. 2006. prediction of reading comprehension: relative contributions of word recognition, language pro$ciency, and other cognitive skills can depend on how comprehension is measured. scienti!c studies of reading, 10(3): 277-299. dubay, w. h. 2004. "e principles of readability. costa mesa, ca: impact information. downloaded november 2007 from http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/readab/readab.pdf dale, e. and chall, j.s. 1949. !e concept of readability. elementary english, 26: 23 dean, p., sheehan, k.m., sabatini, j. futagi, y. and kostin, i. 2006. di%erences in text structure and its implications for assessment of struggling readers. scienti!c studies of reading, 10(3): 257-275. ellis, r. 1986. understanding second language acquisition. oxford: oup. fry, e. 1990. a readability formula for short passages. journal of reading, 33/80: 594-597. grabe, w. 1992. what every esl teacher should know about reading in english. in new directions in foreign language teaching theory and practice, r. a. rodriguez, r.l. ortega and f. macarthur (eds). salamanca: universidad. greene, b.b. 2001. testing reading comprehension of theoretical discourse with cloze. journal of research in reading. 24(1): 82-98. johnson, k. 2000. readability and reading ages of school science textbooks. downloaded july 2009 from http://www.timetabler.com/reading.html krashen, s. d. 1985. "e input hypothesis: issues and implications. london: longman krashen, s. 2004. applying the comprehension hypothesis: some suggestions. downloaded december 2004 from http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/eta_paper/index.html ministry of education.1997. science grade 7 pupils’ book, primary course for swaziland. mbabane: swaziland. o’sullivan, m.c. 2006. teaching large classes: !e international evidence and a discussion of some good practice in ugandan primary schools. international journal of educational development, 2 (16: 24-36. prins, d.e. and ulijn, j.m. 1998. linguistic and cultural factors in the readability of mathematics texts: the whor$an hypothesis revisited with evidence from the south african context. journal of research in reading 21(28:139-159 singhal, m. 1998. a comparison of l1 and l2 reading: cultural di%erences and schema. "e internet tesl journal, (108. downloaded july 2008 http://iteslj.org/articles/singhalreadingl1l2.html united nations development programme and swaziland human development forum. 2001. swaziland human development report, 2000: economic growth with equity. mbabane: undp x y z y { | } | ~ � � } � � { � � � � � � � � � � | � � | � � { | } } } � � { � � abstract introduction purpose of the study definition of reading reading instruction methodology findings ethical consideration discussion of findings conclusion recommendations acknowledgements references about the author(s) madoda cekiso department of applied languages, tshwane university of technology, south africa citation cekiso, m., 2017, ‘teachers’ perceptions of reading instruction in selected primary schools in the eastern cape’, reading & writing 8(1), a158. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v8i1.158 original research teachers’ perceptions of reading instruction in selected primary schools in the eastern cape madoda cekiso received: 20 feb. 2017; accepted: 29 aug. 2017; published: 17 nov. 2017 copyright: © 2017. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: there is a general outcry that too many south african foundation phase (grades 1–3) teachers do not know how to teach reading and are currently teaching reading in an ad hoc, unsystematic way. objectives: in response to this, this study explored the foundation phase teachers’ perceptions of their role in teaching reading. the focus was on the relevance of the initial training, awareness of reading strategies and how these strategies were reflected in their classroom practice. method: the study was qualitative in nature and a case study design was followed. semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine teachers who were purposively selected from three public schools. content analysis was used to analyse the data. results: regarding the initial training programme, teachers received at tertiary institutions, the findings of the study showed that the majority of teachers were not adequately prepared to teach reading and to deal with learners who experience problems in reading. some teachers indicated that they were not even trained to teach in the foundation phase. the findings also showed that the majority of respondents doubted if their classroom practice would yield positive results as far as reading instruction is concerned. the findings further indicated that the majority of respondents only paid attention to oral reading (observing punctuation marks and pronunciation), without attending to reading comprehension. there was a general consensus that the new ways of teaching reading were necessary in order to improve the reading ability of learners. conclusion: recommendations based on the findings are that institutions of higher learning that train foundation phase teachers should do so in ways that adequately equip them to produce student teachers who are knowledgeable about research and theory regarding how individuals learn to read. workshops on appropriate instruction of reading strategies are recommended for in-service teachers. introduction reading is a core competency at school, and all academic achievement depends to a lesser or greater extent on reading literacy. the ability to read refers to more than just being able to recognise letters and decode words; it includes the ability to construct meaning from the written word and familiarity with the various forms and functions of written texts (pretorius & machet 2004:45). the importance of reading literacy in the learning process is further acknowledged by the university of california report that states that the ability to read is highly valued and it is important for personal, social and economic well-being. regrettably, there is a general outcry not only in south africa, but worldwide about teachers’ inability to teach reading to learners whose mother tongue is not english. for example, the literature on reading literacy has shown that teachers are not receiving adequate professional development in effective strategies to address english learners’ literacy development (darling-hammond 2000; klapwijk 2012; moats et al. 2010; national reading panel 2000; pretorius & machet 2004; van staden 2011; zimmerman et al. 2007). subsequently, howie (2006) reports that inadequate subject knowledge of teachers is among the factors that contribute to learners’ inability to read. thus, teachers’ classroom practices have a significant impact on student outcomes. this is a cause for concern as teachers play an important role as mediators, facilitators and monitors of the reading process (richards in rido, ibrahim & nambiar 2014). in order to address the learners’ reading challenges, moats et al. (2010) are of the view that knowledgeable teachers who provide quality instruction are crucial in helping children become successful readers. in addition, richards et al. (2014) point out that in order to successfully fulfil their instructional roles, english foreign language (efl) or english second language (esl) teachers are required to possess a number of qualities that include interaction strategies. they further argue that some teachers employ distinctive interactional characteristics, whereas others often disengage with their learners as they fail to maximise their pedagogic potential and promote interaction in the classroom. kuzborska (2011) is of the view that teachers’ understanding and interpretation of reading instruction has a profound influence on their classroom practices. this sentiment is echoed by richards and rodgers (2001) who state that teachers’ perceptions influence their goals, procedures, materials, classroom interaction patterns, their roles, their learners and the schools they work in. richards and rodgers (2001) further point out that teachers’ assumptions about language and language learning provide the basis for a particular approach to reading instruction. therefore, this study examines teachers’ understanding and interpretation of their reading instruction in order to make them aware of the effective strategies of teaching reading so as to increase learner academic achievement. purpose of the study there is a growing body of research that shows correlation between aspects of formal teacher preparation and quality of teaching or student outcomes (klapwijk 2012; sailors 2008; schwab 2011; xie 2011). to this end, van staden (2011) is of the view that putting a quality teacher in every classroom is key to addressing the challenges of reading achievement in schools. this view is echoed by van der merwe and nel (2012) who point out that reading instruction demands knowledgeable, strategic, adaptive and reflective teachers. in addition, the national reading panel (2000) claims that all new ways of looking at reading would require some professional development. however, the reading horizons (n.d.) discovered that when teachers are initially trained prior to their professional career, they are given little instruction on how to teach basic literacy to beginning and struggling readers and this leaves a lot of learners without the basic literacy they need to succeed in education. therefore, this study seeks to explore teachers’ perceptions of reading instruction in selected primary schools in the eastern cape in order to make recommendations on how reading teachers in the foundation phase should be supported. in order to achieve this goal, the following questions guided the study: how does the initial training programme of teachers equip them to address learners’ reading problems? what impact does teachers’ classroom practice have on learners becoming successful readers? what reading strategies do teachers emphasise in their classrooms? do teachers believe that new ways of teaching reading are necessary in order to improve learners’ reading ability? definition of reading several scholars have defined reading in various ways. leipzig (2001) defines reading as a multifaceted process involving word recognition, comprehension, fluency and motivation. based on this definition, leipzig points out that understanding how readers integrate these facets to make meaning from print is important in the reading process. cziko et al. (2000) argue that reading is not a straightforward process of lifting the words off the page. they further argue that reading is a complex process of problem-solving in which the reader works to make sense of a text not just from the words and sentences on the page but also from the ideas, memories and knowledge evoked by those words and sentences. goodman (1988) defines reading as a receptive psycholinguistic process wherein the actor uses strategies to create meaning from text. consequently, pretorius and ribbens (2005) argue that the cognitive-linguistic accomplishment of reading comprises two main components, decoding and comprehension. they state that decoding involves the perception and parsing aspects of reading that ‘translate’ written symbols into language, whereas comprehension refers to the overall understanding process whereby meaning is assigned to the whole text. pretorius and ribbens further state that beginner readers initially learn to master decoding skills, as comprehension cannot effectively occur if decoding has not been mastered. however, oakhill, cain and yuill (1998) argue that skill in decoding does not necessarily imply skill in comprehension. regrettably, the reading literacy literature points to teaching practices in the first 3 years of schooling that focus on decoding skills at the expense of comprehension (pretorius 2002) resulting in reading with accurate pronunciation but with little understanding of what they read. the reading literary literature identifies two reading processes, that is, the bottom-up and top-down processes. the theories that stress bottom-up processing focus on how readers extract information from the printed page, claiming that readers deal with letters and words in a relatively complete and systematic fashion (gough in abraham 2000). in addition, reutzel and cooter (2013) point out that bottom-up theories hypothesise that learning to read progresses from children learning the parts of language (letters) to understanding whole text (meaning). on the contrary, the top-down processes believe that the uptake of information is guided by an individual’s prior knowledge and expectations. in this process, goodman in abraham (2000) states that the readers sample the text for information and contrast it with their world knowledge, helping to make sense of what is written. rumelhart’s (1985) reading model recognises the interaction of bottom-up and top-down processes simultaneously throughout the reading process. rumelhart argues that reading is both a perceptual and a cognitive process. he emphasises that many different sources such as feature extraction, lexical knowledge and semantic knowledge (the study of meaning in language as well as the changes of meaning) have an influence on the readers’ interpretation of the text. similar to the bottom-up and top-down processes, houck and ross (2012) differentiate between reading to learn and learning to read. they define learning to read as an initial stage of the reading process whereby the focus is on the learners’ mastery of skills such as concepts of print, phonemic awareness, phonics and alphabetic code and word analysis strategies. on the contrary, reading to learn develops over a lifetime and includes fluency and automatic word recognition, vocabulary development, comprehension acquisition and strategy development (stahl in houck & ross 2012). therefore, it is the teacher’s responsibility to foster and develop reading, both in learning to read and applying that knowledge in reading to learn. reading instruction reading instruction has been viewed in a variety of different ways for learners who struggle to read, and there were several different techniques and strategies that educators used sporadically over the years to teach reading. as a result of this situation, reading instruction was not considered to be as important as other areas of instruction such as vocational, functional and social skills (browder, wakeman, spooner, ahlgrin-delzell & algozzine in scruggs 2008). similarly, hurst, wallace and nixon (2013) point out that there has been a common perception among teachers that being a skilled reader is a qualification enough to be a skilled teacher of reading. he argues that being a skilled reader does not mean one has an explicit awareness of the structures of written and spoken language that is necessary to effectively teach reading. responding to this problem, the reading literacy literature has revealed that in order to teach the reading components (e.g. phonemic awareness, phonics and alphabetic code, and comprehension), the effective reading strategies can be taught and learners benefit from such instruction (cekiso 2012; lai, tung & luo 2008; scruggs 2008; song 1998). the reading strategies are defined as deliberate, conscious procedures used by readers to enhance text comprehension (sheorey & mokhtari in monos 2004) and their application is believed to contribute to efficient reading (auerbach & paxton in monos 2004). in the reading context, reading strategies indicate how readers perceive a task, what textual cues they attend to, how they make sense of what they read and what they do when they do not understand (block in li 2010). based on the definition of the reading strategies, cekiso and madikiza (2014) are of the view that teachers’ knowledge and application of reading strategies instruction is important to improve learners’ reading proficiency. this view is supported by sheorey and mokhtari (2001) who point out that in order to develop reading skills programmes in an informed manner, teachers’ understanding of their learners’ metacognitive knowledge about reading and reading strategies must be increased. the literature on reading strategies has shown that teaching strategies is one of the most effective means of helping students to overcome their reading problems (mcnamara & magliano 2009:34). mcnamara and magliano further state that strategy instruction across a variety of domains builds on the notion that less skilled learners should learn strategies that mimic those exhibited by skilled learners. in addition, lau and chan (2003) point out that while skilled readers know how to use effective strategies to facilitate the functioning of various cognitive processes and construct meaningful understanding of the text, poor readers simply read the text word by word without any strategies. (p. 177) consequently, a number of studies have been conducted that sought to identify learners’ reading strategies (cekiso & madikiza 2014; lau & chan 2003; li 2010; oranpattanachi 2010) and those that focused on reading instruction strategies (cekiso 2012; lai et al. 2008; song 1998; scruggs et al. 2010). cekiso (2012) conducted a study on the possible effects of reading instruction on grade 11 esl learners’ reading comprehension. the results indicated that learners who received reading strategy instruction improved their reading comprehension and outperformed those who were not exposed to the intervention programme. these results are supported by a number of studies that maintain that comprehension strategy instruction has positive effects on learners’ reading comprehension (caverly, nicholson & radcliffe 2004; lai et al. 2008; mcnamara & magliano 2009; song 1998). thus, training in reading strategies has potential to enhance the reading comprehension of the learners. it is against this background that the current study seeks to investigate teachers’ perceptions of reading instruction so as to improve their classroom practice with regard to teaching reading. professional development for teachers moats et al. (2010) are of the view that the majority of teachers at all levels have not been prepared in sufficient depth to prevent reading problems, to recognise early signs of risk or to teach learners with learning disabilities successfully. according to zimmerman, howie and smit (2011), this evident situation does beg fundamental questions for the development of teacher training curricular in the area of foundational literacy skills and support for learners with literate language development difficulties in south africa. they further argue that, as the initial teacher training programmes which teachers are exposed to in training institutions may largely determine their literacy and reading instruction strategies, it is paramount that an exploration into what are considered as effective literacy teaching strategies for learners from diverse backgrounds is undertaken. according to the california state university (2007), becoming an expert teacher of reading is a career-long endeavour. they further point out that professional reading teachers plan quality reading instruction by drawing on the knowledge base of how children learn to read, grade-level expectations and the fundamentals of effective reading instruction. in addition, they suggest that teachers must be knowledgeable about the reading process in order to make informed decisions that positively affect students’ reading achievement. moats et al. (2010) argue that in order to successfully fulfil their roles, efl or esl teachers are required to possess a number of qualities that include interaction strategies. however, some studies have demonstrated that teachers fail to maximise their pedagogic potential and promote interaction in the classroom (schwab 2011; xie 2011). priestly (2011) and swanepoel (2009) point out that initiatives aimed at the implementation of educational change fail regularly, often because teachers’ roles in the change process are underestimated. in addition, sailors (2008:647) indicates that while ample attention is paid to the professional development of teachers for teaching reading, many studies continue to focus on general reading instruction. specifically, sailors (2008:653) claims that there are no studies about the professional development of teachers and comprehension instruction, and new teachers still enter schools ‘with the understanding of how to teach comprehension based on how they were taught to read’. in addition, klapwijk (2012) is of the view that for teachers to make sustainable changes to their instructional methods, new implementations must adhere to specific principles and, importantly, must provide evidence that they produce results. according to reading horizons (n.d.), when teachers are initially trained prior to their professional career, they are given little instruction on how to teach basic literacy skills to beginning and struggling readers. they further argue that this leaves a lot of students without the basic skills they need to succeed in education, especially students with processing issues, special needs and english language learners. to fill this gap, a study that deals with teacher professionalism, in relation to reading instruction, is necessary in a south african context. the need for teachers’ continued professional development at the foundation phase is highlighted by the national department of education (2008). the national department of education further views teachers as key contributors to transformation in south africa. thus, teacher effectiveness is a critical component of the education system. according to moats (1999), classroom teaching for reading instruction needs to be considered as the critical factor in preventing reading problems and must be the central focus for change. in addition, zimmerman (2007) states that teachers’ acquisition of the teaching skills necessary to bring about the development of literate language competency is critical. van staden (2011) emphasises that putting a quality teacher in every classroom is key to addressing the challenges of reading achievement in schools. he further argues that knowledgeable, strategic, adaptive and reflective teachers make a difference in student learning. methodology design this article presents research conducted in rural public schools in the mbizana district in the eastern cape. a qualitative research approach was chosen for the study. qualitative research is usually concerned with the participants’ perspectives and experiences (best & kahn 2006; slavin 2007). the study also followed a case study design. bromley ([1990] in maree 2007:75) defines a case study as ‘systematic inquiry into an event or a set of related events which aims to describe and explain the phenomenon of interest’. therefore, a case study was deemed relevant as the study sought to explore the teachers’ experiences with reading instruction in three primary schools. participants the sample for the study consisted of nine foundation phase teachers (two males and seven females) who were purposively selected from three public schools. three foundation phase teachers were selected from each school. their age ranged between 27 and 45 years. the participants were chosen on the basis that they were foundation phase teachers and shared a mother tongue (isixhosa) with the learners. data collection method semi-structured interviews were used in order to gain insight into the teachers’ understanding and challenges of teaching reading in the foundation phase. the interview guide solicited information on the relevance of initial teachers’ training in teaching reading in the foundation phase, impact of teachers’ classroom practice on developing learners’ reading ability, teachers’ awareness of reading strategies, how that awareness was reflected in their practice and teacher perceptions of the new ways of teaching reading. data collection procedure the interviews took place during the period of july 2016 to october 2016 and were conducted at the respondents’ schools. permission to conduct the study was granted by the department of basic education in the eastern cape. ethical issues regarding anonymity, confidentiality and access to the data were discussed with the participants who gave informed consent prior to data collection. each interview took about 50 min. a tape recorder was used to record the interviews with the prior permission of the interviewees. after transcribing the data, the researcher provided the participants with feedback on the transcriptions of their individual responses to confirm whether the transcriptions were a true reflection of their views. data analysis content analysis was used in analysing the data. silverman (2004) is of the view that content analysis produces a relatively systematic comprehensive summary of data. in this study, recurrent instances were systematically identified and grouped together. findings research question 1 how does teachers’ initial training programme put them in a position to address learners’ reading problems? regarding the initial training programme teachers received at tertiary institutions, seven out of nine teachers indicated that the training programme they went through did not prepare them well to teach reading and to deal with learners who experience problems in reading. two teachers indicated that they were not even trained to teach the foundation phase learners. although three participants acknowledged the role played by their initial training programme to some extent, they indicated that there is a need for further development in teaching reading. they based their concern on the daily reading problems they experienced with teaching reading in the foundation phase. when asked if they found their initial training programme relevant, the participants expressed the following: not really, i have not been trained in teaching reading and how to deal with problems encountered. no, because i do not have enough time to deal with struggling readers; hence, there are a number of compulsory formal assessment task to administer by end of each year. partially it does, but it needs one to develop himself or herself; hence, we meet daily challenges when teaching reading. no, i was not trained to teach in the foundation phase. i find it relevant to a certain extent but there are problems i face as some learners cannot read with understanding on their own. the focus was only on the traditional methods of teaching in general; there was no special focus on teaching reading. research question 2 what impact does teachers’ classroom practice have on learners becoming successful readers? the second research question was based on the impact of the teachers’ classroom practice on developing successful readers. five out of ten participants doubted if their classroom practice would yield positive results as far as reading is concerned. they put the blame on the overcrowded classrooms and their failure to implement strategies suggested by the department of education (e.g. allowing learners to read for 30 min every day) because of their tight schedule. three participants pointed to their failure to design relevant teaching aids like wall charts that would allow learners to read independently. the following statements support what the teachers said: no, because my classes that i deal with are overcrowded and it is difficult to give individual attention to learners who experience problems in reading. no, it does little because we do not implement suggested strategies by the department of education that require a teacher to let learners read for 30 min every day. also we do not implement dar (drop all and read) per week or per month. not really, it is difficult to design the wall charts and display enough illustrations so that learners get meaning from pictures. however, four participants showed confidence in their classroom practice. they were of the view that the way they teach reading would produce successful readers. they attributed this success to the reading activities they organise in class. one respondent mentioned the fact that she engaged her learners in role playing and group guided reading. the other participant mentioned that she focused on developing spelling, vocabulary, pronunciation and fluency. the participants also mentioned that their aim was to develop lifelong readers and learners who can read for pleasure. the following statements support the participants’ beliefs about their classroom practice: yes, activities like role playing and group guided reading will definitely have a positive impact and make my learners successful readers. yes, i teach them to pronounce words correctly and to become lifelong readers who can also read for pleasure. yes, my classroom practice helps learners improve their spelling, vocabulary, pronunciation and fluency. yes, my classroom practice help learners develop confidence and i also expose them to new words so that they understand their use in everyday language. research question 3 what reading strategies do teachers emphasise in their classrooms? the third research question focused on the reading strategies teachers emphasised in their classrooms. in response to this question, the respondents highlighted that the reading strategies they felt are important in order to develop learners’ reading skills. eight respondents reported that they used pair reading, group reading and whole class reading. their focus was on oral reading. in many situations, reading comprehension was not taken care of. the focus was on observing the punctuation marks and pronunciation. the following statements justify the classroom practice of the teachers: the whole class reads, groups read and, finally, individuals read. i use these strategies so that the fast readers or advanced readers improve the reading pace of the slow readers. in this way, the slow readers become relaxed and gain confidence. the teacher reads, one learner reads and others listen while they are looking at their books. learners write down the difficult words so as to search their meaning in dictionaries. drilling of certain words so as to understand them. i ask questions based on the story after the learners have finished reading. reading audibly, adherence to punctuation and explaining unfamiliar words. failure to adhere to these makes reading incomprehensible. it is for that reason that adherence to punctuation needs to be emphasised. i guide reading because i deal with young people who still need guidance. i also provide independent reading so as to know each learner better so that i provide assistance where necessary. only one respondent out of nine seemed to have a better understanding of the reading process. this respondent mentioned the importance of reading for information or understanding. she mentioned the following: learners should read with understanding. they should obtain information about the story they are reading, not just to read for the sake of punctuation and pronunciation. learners have to figure out the purpose for reading. they should predict the content and identify appropriate reading strategies. teachers should be able to encourage learners to read with understanding and link the lesson with the previous one. research question 4 do teachers believe that new ways of teaching reading are necessary in order to improve learners’ reading ability? the focus of the fourth question was on whether teachers believed that new ways of teaching reading were necessary in order to improve learners’ reading ability. all the respondents agreed that new ways of teaching reading were necessary in order to improve the reading ability of learners. they supported this statement by mentioning that new ways would boost their confidence as reading teachers. the teachers also believed that the new ways of teaching reading would assist them in tackling the reading problems experienced by their learners. one respondent mentioned that as technology has developed, new ways that incorporate technology are necessary. with regard to this question the participants mentioned the following: learning to read requires special techniques, therefore, new ways will play a pivotal role in teaching reading. yes, new ways of teaching reading are necessary because now we live in a global society whereby learners meet a lot of people who speak different languages outside school hence they need an approach which will make them good readers. yes, new ways of teaching reading will come as a way of boosting confidence to both learners and teachers. sometimes the old ways may be dull and not appealing to the type of learners that we have. they also add more information to the existing one i have as a teacher and help me to tackle something (practice) in a different way. yes, we are living in a dynamic world where the technology has taken place. there are devices that could be used that are using voices that could enhance learners’ reading skills. yes, especially the use of electronic media. a dialogue can be taught better if the teacher is showing it on a projector, for example, a visit to the dentist (dialogue between a dentist and a patient). ethical consideration permission to conduct the study was received from the department of basic education (eastern cape). the respondents who were involved in the study gave their informed consent and assent to participation prior to data collection. discussion of findings teachers’ perceptions regarding their initial training programme indicated that they were not prepared enough to teach reading in the foundation phase. the results of this study confirmed the research findings from other scholars. for example, the results of a study conducted by moats et al. (2010) reveal that despite the fact that teaching reading effectively, especially to learners whose mother tongue is not english, requires considerable knowledge and skill; regrettably, the majority of practitioners at all levels have not been prepared in sufficient depth to prevent reading problems, to recognise early signs of risk or to teach learners with learning disabilities successfully. this concern is echoed by zimmerman et al. (2011) who state that this evident situation does beg fundamental questions for the development of teacher training curricular in the area of foundational literacy skills and support for learners with literate language development difficulties in south africa. they further argue that the initial teacher training programmes should expose teachers to effective literacy teaching strategies for learners from diverse backgrounds. in addition, reading horizons (n.d.) is of the view that when teachers are initially trained prior to their professional career, they are given little instruction in how to teach basic literacy skills to beginning and struggling readers. they further argue that this leaves a lot of students without the basic skills they need to succeed in education, especially students with processing issues, special needs and english language learners. the findings from these studies link well with the findings of this study as some teachers indicated that they were not trained to teach reading or deal with reading problems during their initial training. the study also showed that some teachers doubted if their classroom practice would yield positive results as far as reading is concerned. this is supported by the fact that among the teachers, there was no evidence of a firm grasp of teaching strategies relevant to reading instruction except strategies suggested by department of education like allowing learners to read for 30 min every day. unfortunately, this only pertains to time allocated for reading but does not specify how reading should be taught. similar findings were also observed by van der merwe and nel (2012) who conducted a study in identifying which reading literacy components (that are embedded in knowledge of language structure) were included in the programme. the results of their study showed that the reading literacy components were included haphazardly within the teacher preparation programme, and there was no evidence-based research included in the curriculum of the pre-service teachers. the responses also pointed to the teachers’ failure to design relevant teaching aids like wall charts that would allow learners to read independently. the use of teaching aids to facilitate reading is important in the foundation phase. however, eight teachers out of nine indicated that they were unable to design their own teaching aids. only one participant out of nine showed confidence about her classroom practice. the results further revealed that teachers were teaching a limited number of reading strategies in the foundation phase. they only mentioned pair reading, group reading and whole class reading, and in many cases, the focus was only on oral reading. it was clear that reading comprehension was not taken care of. this is a cause for concern as teachers’ awareness and application of a wide range of reading strategies is important. this finding is supported by pressley (2001) in klapwijk (2012) who argues that the case is very strong in showing that teaching students to use a repertoire of reading comprehension strategies increases their comprehension of text. however, klapwijk and van der walt (2011) are of the view that despite evidence of the benefits of reading instruction, it seems that teachers seldom teach reading strategies explicitly in south african schools, thereby depriving learners of the strategies they need. the concern about teachers’ professional development to teach reading is expressed by sailors (2008) in klapwijk (2012) when he points out that teachers continue to focus on general reading instruction. the study also showed that teachers believed that new ways of teaching reading were necessary in order to improve learners’ reading ability. they mentioned that the new ways of teaching reading were necessary in order to improve the reading ability of learners as they believed that new ways would boost their confidence as reading teachers. they also believed that the new ways of teaching reading would assist them tackle the reading problems experienced by their learners and would also introduce them to new technology that would assist them to teach reading effectively. similarly, the national reading panel (2000) recommends that teachers must adopt new ways of teaching, and learners must show appropriate improvement as a result. this finding concurs with sailors (2008) who argued that despite the fact that ample attention is paid to the professional development of teachers for teaching reading, little, if any, attention is paid to the professional development of comprehension instruction. conclusion this study has shown that the initial training programme of the cohort of teachers did not adequately prepare them to teach reading in the foundation phase. surprisingly, some respondents mentioned that they were not even trained to teach in the foundation phase. for those who were trained, the focus was only on general reading instruction. subsequently, many teachers found it difficult to diagnose and offer relevant support to the learners with reading problems. thus, many teachers did not have knowledge and skill to teach reading. the results further revealed that teachers were teaching a limited number of reading strategies and were not confident about their classroom practice as far as reading instruction is concerned. the respondents in the study indicated that they focused on pair reading, group reading and whole class. however, it was not clear how reading was taught within those group activities. recommendations based on the findings of the study, recommendations are made as discussed below. it is unfair for the teachers who were trained to teach other grades to be allowed to teach in the foundation phase. teaching reading, especially in the foundation phase, requires a special skill so as to be able to diagnose and address learners with reading problems. the focus on the general reading instruction does not help learners acquire the reading skill. instead, the focus should be on the reading strategies that help the learner interact with the text. for example, learners could be taught to activate their background knowledge about what they are going to read, and make inferences and predictions about what they are going to read. it is only in the interaction with the text that learners are able to read for comprehension. exposing learners to the reading material alone, as it was the case in this study, is not likely to help the foundation phase learners master the reading skill. the institutions of higher learning should focus on how to teach reading, especially those who offer foundation phase programmes. the student teachers should be aware of explicit and implicit reading strategy instruction. they should know what reading strategies are, why strategic reading is important, and which reading strategies are more effective for the esl learner. moreover, student teachers should be knowledgeable about research and theory 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carien wilsenach catherine kell chaka chaka elizabeth pretorius emmarentia kirchner gavin p. hendricks hilary janks jacqui dornbrack jako olivier janet condy kathleen heugh keoneeng magocha kristin van der merwe lilliebeth hadebe lovie e. seru maria d.c.l. gomes mark de vos peter rule surette van staden uju c. ukwuoma we appreciate the time taken to perform your review successfully. abstract introduction importance of context digital technologies’ interaction with society (and also society’s interaction with digital technologies) the distinction between a tool and its use as a process of empowerment conclusion acknowledgements references footnote about the author(s) james k. njenga department of information systems, university of the western cape, south africa citation njenga, j.k., 2018, ‘digital literacy: the quest of an inclusive definition’, reading & writing 9(1), a183. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v9i1.183 original research digital literacy: the quest of an inclusive definition james k. njenga received: 22 nov. 2017; accepted: 14 june 2018; published: 30 aug. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract forces of globalisation and economic competition enhanced by, among others, the digital technologies, are radically transforming the social context. digital technologies are characterised by a powerful and pervasive internet as well as the related information and communication technologies. globalisation is facilitated by the universally accessible, reliable and inexpensive communication assisted by these digital technologies. however, there is growing and valid scepticism regarding the digitally influenced socio-economic emancipation. this scepticism is mainly driven by a lack of understanding of digital literacy as a holistic process of creating the necessary social, economic and political changes within a given context. the understanding of digital literacy therefore needs to join a number of seemingly divergent views of digital technology when dealing with these technologies’ benefits in socio-economic emancipation. this understanding of digital literacy should therefore be shaped and focused more on understanding how digital literacy impacts the poor and marginalised, especially in looking at the socio-economic welfare of these marginalised sections of the society. this article discusses digital literacy by firstly looking at the shortcomings of the available definitions and approaches and then recommends a socio-economic development-orientated definition. the article brings to the fore the most critical digital literacy issues for socio-economic development. these issues are important; they ensure that digital literacy is not viewed in isolation, but rather in terms of its outcomes and consequences, especially with regard to socio-economic development. introduction digital technologies are major drivers of globalisation and related economic competitiveness, which in turn, have become powerful forces in the social context (avgerou 2010; czerniewicz, ravjee & mlitwa 2006; garrido et al. 2012). this makes digital literacy (dl) essential for progress in the contemporary era (pangrazio 2016). digital technology-based competitiveness has been studied in business for a long time (roztocki & weistroffer 2016). however, little has been done on societal competitiveness. to the general masses, the ubiquity of digital technologies has been credited not only for the accelerated rate of globalisation and economic competition, but also for their social impacts and controversies, at both the individual and societal levels (baase 2012). the digital technologies view of economic competition and competitiveness requires individuals to have dl, which is synonymous with the ability of individuals to participate in the economy through skills and creativity enabled by the digital technologies (klecun 2008). globalisation involves the reorganisation of social and economic relations, interdependences and interconnectedness (avgerou 2010). as a corollary to this, globalisation would need digital technologies that facilitate universally1 accessible, reliable and inexpensive communication. not with standing the potential benefits of globalisation and economic competitiveness, there are concerns on the use of digital technologies related to, among others, ‘antisocial, anticommunity effects’, threats to security and privacy, challenges to intellectual property as well as the exacerbation of the existing inequalities between the haves and have-nots’ (baase 2012:5). furthermore, there is growing and valid scepticism on the digitally influenced socio-economic liberation. three main observations that drive this scepticism are identified from the existing research. firstly, there is a lack of commensurate socio-economic development arising from the use of digital technologies among the poor and marginalised communities (cibangu, hepworth & champion 2017; watkins 2011). socio-economic developments among the poor and the marginalised still remain largely incomparable with the developments among the affluent members of the society, even when the poor are perceived to be using digital technologies (alam & imran 2015; haugh & talwar 2016; klecun 2008). secondly, the macro-level nature of empirical studies on the outcomes of digital technology use is more often than not focused on economic improvements, and not the whole socio-economic development and well-being at the micro-level, with direct impact on the individuals and societies (cibangu et al. 2017; el-darwiche et al. 2012; roztocki & weistroffer 2016). while the macro-level focus (often on gross domestic product [gdp], the labour market and international esteem) is welcomed, it may have the proclivity to leave out the other critical factors that are essential for socio-economic development. such factors include a population’s education, political stability and social liberties, the standard of living and general health (harris 2016; roztocki & weistroffer 2016). harris (2016) attributes this to either a lack of genuine interest on the side of researchers or the possibility that researchers are chasing other interests such as publication and citation counts. thirdly, the narrative of digital technologies and the development they bring about, where the micro-level is concerned, is often based on ‘areas of interventions’ rather than on the ‘approaches or models that cut across different policy areas’ (james 2005:286). this creates a chasm between actual field experiences and the processes which are ‘created and changed over time’ (james 2005:286). while these interventions are valuable in their own rights, the failure to identify multiple possible pathways that emerge as individuals and communities engage with these technologies would fail to capture the parties’ responses to the changes over time (bar, weber & pisani 2016; boeri 2016; sassen 2002). combined, these three views suggest an outcomeand impact-orientated approach to digital technologies, and by extension, dl which include and benefit even the marginalised and impoverished sections of the society. the benefits arise through the fruitful interaction of the communities with the digital technologies, when the outcomes of appropriation (i.e. local improvements, adaptations, experimentation and innovations) are realised by the indigenous population (james 2005). approriation is enhanced through competencies aimed at achieving better and more fulfilling lives (cibangu et al. 2017:41). certainly, the socio-economic pursuits associated with the progress in technology are neither new nor only applicable to digital technologies (balasubramanian & mahajan 2001). for instance, behrents’ (2013) essay on foucault and technology discusses the societal and technological reconfigurations that were happening in france (and in other parts of the world) after the second world war, with specific emphasis on the power dynamics. behrent (2013) notes that foucault’s work, while largely philosophical, was set to conceptualise the complexity of the evolving relationship between ‘objects and machines’ within a system of power. in this conceptualisation, relations ‘refer not to tools, machines, or the application of science to industrial production, but rather to methods and procedures for governing human beings’ (behrent 2013:56). that is, the focus on dl should also be concerned with the processes that create the required change in the relationship between the individuals and society on one side, and the digital technologies on the other side. digital literacy as a concept, has been viewed from a number of dimensions that do not seem to converge (brown, czerniewicz & noakes 2016; buckingham 2016). this ends up with overlapping and competing often divergent definitions (helsper & eynon 2013). the definitions have moved from the classical view of literacy as ‘being able to read and write’, to other forms of literacies which seem to put the prevalent or dominant theme to the digital technology or the use of digital technology as adopted by the researcher. however, there seems to be concurrence: that the original focus of dl should be on the essential competencies of the present-day citizens’ success in today’s highly competitive and globalised market, which often require the performance of basic tasks using technology (buckingham 2016). the competency-based view of literacy, traditionally approached literacy as being able to write, read and deal with information, also includes competencies in using the different digital technologies (burton et al. 2015). consequently, there is an emergent view that what is required is a holistic view of the multiple literacies or transliteracies (burton et al. 2015; stornaiuolo, smith & phillips 2017) which are essential in a world dominated by dynamic perspectives on electronic media and technology (buckingham 2016). these literacies enable individuals to appropriately respond, in socially recognised ways, to even future challenges through sharing and creating knowledge and eventually participating in the society (merchant 2007). according to this emergent view, these multiple literacies cover both the mastery of information and communication technology (ict) skills and generic and critical skills required to engage in social practices across boundaries of culture, institutions, countries and territories (buckingham 2016; burton et al. 2015; lankshear & knobel 2007). the mastery is informed by changes in task requirements, technology and knowledge. this view is in agreement with labbo, reinking and mckenna’s (1998) typification of the dl process as encompassing aspects of lifelong learning, social context, the multiplicity of competencies and ability to assemble and produce knowledge while pursuing other goals. that is, the embeddedness of digital technologies requires a critical view of dl which, among others challenges and addresses the ideological concerns and the social and educational inequalities (pangrazio 2016). the concerns and inequalities inhibit or promote individual practice and at the same time prioritise technical proficiency, thereby forming new norms and living without conscious awareness (pangrazio 2016). however, as much as the promises of digital technologies need to be acknowledged, it is important to note that they cannot completely displace older technologies. rather, the digital technologies need to be appropriated alongside the existing technologies (michailova 2011). if digital technologies do not replace the older technologies, then the intellectual traditions of the other disciplines and their view on literacy will still remain important (goodfellow 2011; hinrichsen & coombs 2013; littlejohn, beetham & mcgill 2012). in addition, the dynamism and inseparability of digital technologies and the society can favour, invite, shape or even constrain their use in society, as well as the conceptualisation of dl. that is, in addition to learning the operational and functional uses of technologies, users and user societies should be able to make informed decisions on the use of these technologies, based on their contexts and needs measured against outcomes and consequences of their use (lankshear & knobel 2007; moje 2009). therefore, there is a need for clear distinctions between the digital technologies and the meaning derived from their uses, as well as the outcomes and consequences of the digital technologies from those of the technologies’ uses (lankshear & knobel 2007; moje 2009). these distinctions require individuals to be empowered to take advantage of the positive outcomes while avoiding or mitigating the negative consequences (amichai-hamburger et al. 2008; maton 2008). importance of context following from the main approach in this article, the context is dynamic and inseparable from the issue of dl (michailova 2011), and at the same time, it provides ‘situational opportunities and constraints’ that change ‘occurrence and meaning’ of behaviour and relationships (johns 2006:386). that is, the dl should not be abstracted or idealised; rather, its meaning should be derived from its contexts. at the core of the contextualised definition is the compelling evidence that digital technologies and globalised networks not only promote and facilitate the movement of and interaction between people, languages and works of art, but that they also do so on a very large and fast scale. this is to the extent that people’s daily lives and routines have become characterised by these movements and interactions (stornaiuolo et al. 2017). however, the above context does not speak to all parts of the world or society. for instance, the majority of people in africa are poor (pangrazio 2016). their context should be understood from their history, culture and power (garrido et al. 2012). they have very limited control over changes in their lives (garrido et al. 2012). without contextualised definition, dl is seen as another way of propagating the already existing digital divide, where skills create new inequalities (alam & imran 2015) arising from the ‘variation in sophistication of use and user expertise’ (reynolds 2016:737). indeed, the focus of the digital divide has shifted from access to digital technologies to the skills and capabilities required in appropriating these technologies (alam & imran 2015; baase 2012; buckingham 2007). consequently, concerns have been raised about the broad definition and understanding of dl in relation to the context of use of these technologies. for instance, pangrazio (2016) laments about a narrow focus on the ‘digital’, which lacks an understanding of what would make dl applicable in other contexts and media. contextualisation is placing the dl within the cultural, historical, geographical, social and political realms of the individuals’ concerns, and with the aim of achieving outcomes that may include life fulfilment or material satisfaction (long et al. 2014). this process also involves bridging the gap between the providers and recipients of dl (long et al. 2014), and addressing issues of redresses and resource redistribution to deal with historical inequities (czerniewicz et al. 2006). regrettably, the available definitions seem to fall into two, almost mutually exclusive, positions. one focuses on the production of digital materials and the other on the consumption aspects. this subsequently limits the development of an inclusive framework that would meet the needs of the intended audience. using the production–consumption continuum, dl is then characterised on progressive levels of competence: with production being the topmost. according to this view, the rural and the marginalised are depicted as mere consumers, whose only role is limited to the use of both the technologies and their products. the challenge with this view is that while consumption is not bad, socio-economic development is dependent on how the use of these technologies and their products is beneficial to this group of people, as they move from simple consumption to actual production. still, these views of dl seem to have reduced dl to a competence or a skill of using a digital technology, discarding the original meaning of literacy, the ability to read and write (buckingham 2007). this reduction in meaning is problematic. defining dl without the context of use, reduces it to just mere competences, skills or abilities to use a digital technology whether for production of consumption. this reduction conceives of dl as possessing the basic skills required to perform given operations using digital technologies, while ignoring aspects of learning, ‘problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, self-regulation’ as well as the understanding of culture, a context of use of the digital technologies (burton et al. 2015:152). by extension, a complete definition of dl should include the understanding of the contextual aspects – social, economic and cultural – of use of the digital technologies, as well as the critical aspects of learning – problem solving, critical thinking, creativity and self-regulation. these contextual aspects are important as engagements in and with the digital technology simultaneously traverse space and time – whose understanding also requires reconfiguration. that is, the context-informed definition of dl is aware of the fact that the context of use of the digital technology requires mutually constitutive actions, social interactions, cultural and economic exchanges which interactively and dynamically shape, and are shaped by the digital technologies (casey & bruce 2011). therefore, ‘digital literacy encompasses the purpose, setting and practices in which technology is used’ (casey & bruce 2011:77). that is, a variety of context of use should be considered when defining dl (martin 2008). digital technologies’ interaction with society (and also society’s interaction with digital technologies) technologies and their use traverse both space and time; this brings along affordances that increase the dynamism in both the society and the digital technologies. as much as we appreciate these affordances, we also ought to recognise the constraints which these digital technologies put on the society (zammuto et al. 2007). any explanation of one will invariably involve the enactment of their entwined forms and functions in a cyclical relationship, that also involves their contexts of use – as they both dynamically inform each other. the time, space or context disparity means that despite the perceived pervasiveness of the digital technologies, their use may vary depending on, among others, the technologies’ purposes and their interactions with society. the difference between the social model of dl and the competency-based model of literacy has been documented in the literature (buckingham 2007; lankshear & knobel 2008). buckingham (2007:48) notes that this issue is complex and needs to be fully addressed in terms of its aims as well as what dl actually entails, including ‘systematic awareness of how digital media are constructed, and of the unique ‘’rhetorics’’ of interactive communication’. to address this complex issue, there has been ongoing research and debates on digital technology, society and social change and their relationships, as well as the social change that includes critical theories, view of technology (brey 2003; sassen 2002). brey (2003:54) argues that technology and society are co-constructed or ‘deeply interwoven’ and ‘their meanings and functions and even (according to social constructivists) their contents are continually open to renegotiation by users and others’. there is therefore a need to reframe the digital technologies, to understand their impact on social development (boeri 2016) while recognising the ‘embeddedness and the variable outcomes of these technologies for different social orders’ (sassen 2002:365). the reframing should allow participants to ‘recognize, interpret, and evaluate underlying ideologies’ of linked information (labbo et al. 1998:282) and could change our perception of dl. as part of the reframing, the social constructivist view of dl drives the social determinism agenda, which seeks to place the ‘human as an autonomous agent who holds a productive purpose driving technology use’ (reynolds 2016:737). technology, and by extension dl, is therefore, shaped by individuals’ participation in political, economic and socio-cultural practices (hinrichsen & coombs 2013). that is, technology and dl are never neutral. this is opposed to the technology determinism which views technology as value-neutral, having its own logic of making things happen independent of its ‘sociocultural context’, and that everyone should adopt (or adapt to its consequences) because of its universally positive impacts (hinrichsen & coombs 2013). the technology deterministic view of dl is inadequate in that it would limit it to the skills required to use technology that currently exists, without recognising the ever-changing nature of technology and society, as it uses the technology (reynolds 2016) and the more meaningful outcomes from the use of such technology (watkins 2011). the social constructivist view therefore is seen as a way of having a definition of dl which does not go with the changes in technology, and one that holds that individuals have autonomy and agency (reynolds 2016). however, the social constructivist view is not without limitations. its most conspicuous limitation is its focus on actors ‘directly relating or interacting with the technology-in-use’; this pre-occupation therefore, leaves non-users out of the picture, even if they are affected by this technology (müller & tworek 2016:106). lamentably, these non-users are usually the impoverished and the manigalised who consititute the majority of the population. with this in mind, dl and approaches to dl cannot be placed in universalised contexts. consequently, any definition of literacy that is afforded by the digital technologies should attend to how digital technologies and society interact (leonardi & barley 2010), while at the same time being aware of the fact that the literacies may be used differently in multiple contexts and even in different social structures (tunçalp & tun 2016). therefore, this calls for a definition or an understanding of dl as meaning-making practices that vary, depending on, among others, the settings, communities and identities in the digital environment (chase & laufenberg 2011). to this end, o’brien and scharber (2008:66–67) view dl as ‘socially situated practices supported by skills, strategies, and stances that enable the representation and understanding of ideas using a range of modalities enabled by digital tools’. the distinction between a tool and its use combining context of use and of interaction between technology and society, there is a suggestion that an inclusive definition of dl should entail ‘practices’ which are socially recognised. that is, the technology, knowledge and skills triad, and the continuous changes in them, should be organised for ease of understanding of the people (lankshear & knobel 2007). however, this fails to capture the intended outcomes and the consequences of the practice. therefore, there is a need to distinguish between the tool and the meaning derived from using the tool. there is also a need to distinguish the outcomes and consequences of the tool from those of its use. according to moje (2009), distinctions: …between the tool (the media) and the norms or conventions that shape meaning making of the symbols offered via the tool (literate practices) are not only worth noting but are also worth distinguishing so that we can better understand the relative outcomes or consequences of each. (p. 349) in the classical diffusion of innovation, the innovation-decision process is depicted as a cognitive process that individuals go through, from the time they become aware of an innovation to the time they make a final decision and a commitment to adopt or reject the innovation (rogers 2003). however, in contemporary use of innovation, there is a further step of appropriation: ownership that could spur new uses (different from those originally intended), and especially new innovations that may arise in the course of use (bar et al. 2016). they define appropriation as a: …contest for control over a technological system’s configuration, as users, designers, and manufacturers battle over who can use that technology, at what cost, under what conditions, for what purpose, and with what consequences. (bar et al. 2016:618) the conditions, for dl, include capabilities of the indigenous people to better their lives through the appropriation (cibangu et al. 2017; james 2005). however, appropriation relies heavily on recognising how ideology and power are manifested in the innovation (bhatt & de roock 2013), as well as imagining multiple distinctive future uses or purposes of the innovation that are different from the innovation’s actual or originally intended use (müller & tworek 2016). at the end, the new determined use of the innovation could be different in not only having new tweaks and new service offerings, but also significantly new social, economic and practical opportunities. in extending this view, bar et al. (2016) have argued that the success of the adoption of an innovations lies in understanding four main things (which they call assumptions): 11technology is not neutral and a technology’s architecture forms relationships between stakeholders that have social, economic and political implications; 22adoption of technology is not for adoption sake, but it is aimed at making a difference in the adopter’s life; 33past the adoption, the adaptations to the technology which occur take many forms; and 44cultural adaptations are ‘uniquely creative’ because, among other reasons, they challenge the original power structure that was embedded in the technology. following the appropriation route, then, defining dl should recognise the social, economic and political learning and the dialogues which take place to make meaning of the technology and to repurpose the technology to shape the outcomes and consequences of its use in a uniquely creative way. at the same time, this recognition extends to the outcomes and consequences not initially intended or imagined by the creators of the original technology. as a process of empowerment digital literacy becomes a process of empowerment; it empowers an individual not only to use a tool but also to take advantage of the positive outcomes of the tool (or its use) while at the same time avoiding any negative consequences. empowerment is aimed at linking an individual to the ‘wider social and political environment’ (amichai-hamburger et al. 2008:1776). maton (2008) defines empowerment as: …a group-based, participatory, developmental process through which marginalized or oppressed individuals and groups gain greater control over their lives and environments, acquire valued resources and basic rights, and achieve important life goals and reduced societal marginalization. (p. 5) it is a process of removing unjust inequalities that inhibit the majority or big groups of people from exercising choices, choices that disrupt the status quo at various levels – individual, group, organisational and community (amichai-hamburger et al. 2008; haugh & talwar 2016). in most cases, the unjust inequalities are historical, often arising from either demographic characteristics or their physical or emotional difficulties (riger 1993). thus, a dl view of empowerment could be described as a means through which individuals acquire ‘mastery and control over their lives, and a critical understanding of their environment’ (zimmerman et al. 1992:708). in order to influence their social, economic and political conditions (gomez & baron-porras 2011) by acquiring or strengthening the necessary psychological resources in order to respond appropriately to their environment (amichai-hamburger et al. 2008). thus, the empowerment is meant to capacitate someone to understand both the ideological dimensions and the cultural forms that encompass selective interests, and the relationships between what is happening in and with the individual and what is happening in the world (mayo 1995). the critical aspects of empowerment arising from these definitions can be classified into two broad categories: individual empowerment and community empowerment. individual empowerment is seen as a participatory developmental process that is aimed at achieving goals – often enhancing an individual’s capacities to control and influence, among others, their economic, political, social and psychological capacities in order to increase self-sufficiency and decrease external dependence (christens et al. 2016; gomez & baron-porras 2011; mayo 1995; rappaport et al. 1995). as a parallel, community empowerment is also a participatory developmental process, but its goals differ in that they are about increasing community participation, reinforcing shared identification and increasing collaborative control by delegating or distributing power to the powerless (riger 1993). by implication, even the empowerment process discussed here is dynamic. the activities within the process and indeed the individuals’ goals, expectations and outcomes are in flux. from the individual’s perspective, goals attainment is the drive towards empowerment, and therefore enhancing the strengths and competencies is akin to acquiring the necessary resources towards the goals (amichai-hamburger et al. 2008). the process individuals go through in determining their goals is critical. in this process, individuals have to systematically go through and identify the causes of powerlessness and their interconnection to other individuals, groups and systemic factors that should be collectively addressed to facilitate empowerment (bradbury & reason 2003). zimmerman (1995) proposes a nomological framework of psychological empowerment, consisting of interpersonal, cognitive and behavioural components that could be applicable in this case. the interpersonal component is concerned with an individual’s perceptions of influencing the sociopolitical domain; the cognitive component is concerned with the skills and competencies required to exert this influence; and the behavioural domain is concerned with the actions required to exert this influence. viewed from an empowerment perspective, dl is a process where individual strengths and competencies are enhanced to enable the individual to be proactive to social policy, social changes, economic emancipation and political consciousness (amichai-hamburger et al. 2008; gomez & baron-porras 2011; zimmerman et al. 1992). social policy and social change relate to the individual’s standing in society, while economic emancipation deals with decisions on earning and spending an income (haugh & talwar 2016). political consciousness involves a critical reflection of the information available (parrott & madoc-jones 2008). conclusion in this study, an argument has been presented for an elaborate and inclusive definition of dl. this elaborate and inclusive definition should be contextually placed within the socio-economic context of use of the digital technologies, while weighing on the outcomes and consequences of these technologies and their use. in the argument, the contextual aspects inform the simultaneous engagement of the contexts with the digital technologies across time and space. this engagement continuously requires reconfiguration as new understanding of the interplay between the context, the digital technologies, the individual and the society, through the mutually constitutive actions, social interactions, cultural and economic exchanges (casey & bruce 2011). in so doing, the view of dl captures the purpose of use of the digital technologies, the setting or the contexts as well as the practices that emanate in the use of digital technologies. perhaps, the greatest challenge here would be the variety and uniqueness of context and social structures within these contexts, and the digital technologies as well as their use. to deal with this challenge, o’brien and scharber’s (2008:66–67) view of dl as ‘socially situated practices supported by skills, strategies, and stances that enable the representation and understanding of ideas using a range of modalities enabled by digital tools’, is recommended. the range of modalities being enabled by these technologies, could cover the issues of appropriation of these technologies, as well as the social, economic and political changes on the one hand, and the technologies on the other hand. of course, this view requires us to reframe the understanding of dl based on the impact of the dl and the digital technologies on, among others, the social development, while at the same time recognising the inherent iterative interplay between literacy, technology and society. in focusing on the impacts, we place value on the way society and individuals within the society 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empowerment: issues and illustrations’, american journal of community psychology 23, 581–599. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02506983 zimmerman, m.a., israel, b.a., schulz, a. & checkoway, b., 1992, ‘further explorations in empowerment theory: an empirical analysis of psychological empowerment’, american journal of community psychology 20, 707–727. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00942234 footnote 1. here it means that digital artefacts are designed to meet the needs of most users, while their costs are plummeting, making it possible for many to own or access these devices. of course, in africa this remains to be a challenge and a major point requiring ongoing research. abstract introduction the role of digital literacy in digital citizen engagement research methodology stakeholders of the mobisam project knowledge transfer and digital literacy development in mobisam conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) caroline pade-khene department of information systems, rhodes university, south africa citation pade-khene, c., 2018, ‘embedding knowledge transfer in digital citizen engagement in south africa: developing digital literacy’, reading & writing 9(1), a193. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v9i1.193 original research embedding knowledge transfer in digital citizen engagement in south africa: developing digital literacy caroline pade-khene received: 17 dec. 2017; accepted: 11 may 2018; published: 27 july 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract basic service delivery is a fundamental right for all south africans, especially vulnerable groups. effective and efficient channels of communication between multi-stakeholder groups involved and affected by service delivery are essential. digital citizen engagement has recently emerged as a key approach for supporting two-way communication between citizens and the government. it is essential for building evidence-based data to engage with government and apply social accountability measures to lobby for the provision of basic services. key to building capacities and learning, is developing the abilities of both local government and citizens to become digitally literate (including civic and responsiveness literacy), in order to realise and action the true benefits of digital citizen engagement. this research set out to identify the roles of digital literacy in digital citizen engagement, and how it may be embedded in knowledge transfer processes for implementing digital citizen engagement initiatives. a pragmatist philosophical approach was applied: studying, observing and reflecting on actions in the mobisam case study. using szulanski’s four-stage model of knowledge transfer, key focus areas for developing digital literacy were identified, contributing to a quadruple-e process of: (1) explore, (2) enable, (3) engage and (4) embed. practices identified in the mobisam case study are provided as suggestions for each phase, with an indication of possible constraints that may be experienced in the knowledge transfer and digital literacy development process – a potential guideline for developing digital literacy in digital citizen engagement initiatives. the process for knowledge transfer and developing digital literacy that was identified in this article provides a guideline for future implementation of digital citizen engagement initiatives in resource-constrained contexts. introduction although south africa possesses a progressive legislative framework for service delivery, when it comes to implementation at the local level, the reality is different (tissington et al. 2008). especially disconcerting is the lack of services in predominantly poor communities, rural areas and informal settlements of south africa (algotsson et al. 2009). service distribution inequalities emanated from the past; apartheid legacy have left high levels of imbalance in access to resources, infrastructure and social services (nnadozie 2013; tissington et al. 2008). a lack of service delivery in these areas infringes on the rights of vulnerable citizens to basic services, such as clean water, sanitation, electricity and housing. particularly pertinent to service delivery in south africa is the need to institute effective and efficient channels of communication between multi-stakeholder groups involved and affected by service provision processes. it is essential that local government engages in two-way interaction, giving citizens a stake in decision-making with the objective of improving service delivery outcomes, especially in marginalised contexts. engagement is vital in policy-making as it informs people of public issues, drives citizens towards a common ground that can break legislative deadlocks and increases the accountability of elected officials. citizens in vulnerable contexts are often unaware of their rights, nor do they have the capacity to effectively engage with government. citizen engagement is widely promoted as a ‘game changer’ for development (gaventa & barrett 2012), as the voiceless become empowered to evoke change in society. building citizen engagement should be examined by identifying ways to increase participation, such as showing results from engagement, designing multiple channels of participation, providing multitiered levels of engagement, reinforcing a sense of civic duty and collectiveness and getting precommitment from citizens (spada et al. 2015). the concept of citizen engagement and citizen participation is universal and fundamental to supporting accountability and transparency of government service delivery; however, each global context differs in terms of the effectiveness to deliver and voice the needs of citizens and vulnerable groups. citizen engagement is not a straightforward process, especially in resource-constrained contexts where citizens have not had the capacity and knowledge of their rights to hold government accountable. coupled with this, local government in resource-constrained contexts often do not have the capacity and rightly shaped institutional cultural to engage in such initiatives – resulting in a lack of government responsiveness. digital citizen engagement (dce) has emerged over the recent years as a key tool to enable this much needed two-way communication and engagement between citizens and government (peixoto & fox 2016). digital citizen engagement is defined as (haikin et al. 2016): ‘the use of new media/digital information and communication technologies to create or enhance the communication channels which facilitate the interaction between citizens and governments or the private sector’. information and communication technology (ict) is not necessarily a panacea for many challenges being faced in the service delivery sector in developing countries; however, an ict-enabled environment could be one of many significant means to support service delivery. examples of key initiatives include ushahidi, fixmystreet, maji voice and mobisam. residents use these platforms to report on service delivery issues, and track the progress in getting them addressed. digital citizen engagement initiatives can play the role of bringing together the voices of individual reports, and collective action by activists and civil society organisations (csos) (illustrated in figure 1 by peixoto and fox [2016]). typically, a citizen would report a service issue directly to a municipality that remains as an undisclosed individual report, which the general public is unaware of. on the contrary, civil society attempts to lobby for more collective actions on certain issues reported to collective groups, which can at times be isolated and insufficiently reflect the true nature of the service delivery issue in the population. the role of icts is to bring together individual and collective action with real-time access to mechanisms to report issues to all stakeholders. figure 1: what citizen engagement means in mobisam. despite the opportunities that exist with ict and citizen engagement, the implementation and beneficial realisation of these initiatives by both citizens and government is not easy. digital citizen engagement projects have not yielded the expected benefits to all key stakeholders, resulting in much scepticism around supporting such projects. this is also quite typical of many ict for development (ict4d) projects in developing countries. nevertheless, this does not imply that such projects do not have successful outcomes – these outcomes can only be fully realised when an effort is made to apply endogenous practices to understand institutional forces that support or hinder implementation and sustainability (mansell 2011). the failures and challenges should be seen by researchers and practitioners as opportunities to learn from them, unlearn wrong practices and apply incremental changes or develop possible mechanisms and theories to address these specific failures (dodson, sterling & bennett 2012; pade-khene & lannon 2017). the process of learning from failures, and unlearning existing practices that hinder progress, requires a process of continuous engagement with key stakeholders in a dce initiative, that is, government and citizens. toyama (2011) points out three fundamental institutional forces that influence engagement with icts in different contexts: differential access, differential capacity and differential motivation. these aspects are often embedded in local practice and context (endogenous practice); therefore, practitioners and researchers need to learn in the local context to obtain insight into the factors that influence dce. furthermore, they need to engage in participatory approaches with key beneficiaries, allowing multiple perspectives to emerge in an open dialogue of knowledge transfer and incremental learning through a consultative process of decision-making (ika & hodgson 2014; mansell 2011; toyama 2015). key to building capacities and learning is developing the abilities of both local government and citizens to become digitally literate, in order to realise and action the true benefits of dce. the aim of this article is to present a case for digital literacy development in dce initiatives in south africa. the two research questions addressed in this article include the following: (1) what is the role of digital literacy in dce projects in south africa? (2) how can digital literacy be embedded in knowledge transfer processes for implementing dce initiatives? to set the background for the article, the case for digital literacy and how it is positioned as an outcome of knowledge transfer is discussed in a literature review. subsequently, a case study of a dce project called mobisam is presented as a reflective case, where a pragmatist approach was applied to investigate the development of digital literacy for dce. szulanski’s (1996) four-stage model is applied as a foundation to build an iterative process for developing digital literacy in dce projects at local government level in the south african context. the conclusion summarises the findings and concludes that the process for knowledge transfer and developing digital literacy that is identified in this article can provide a guideline for future implementation of dce in resource-constrained contexts. the role of digital literacy in digital citizen engagement digital literacy emerged from the concept of the digital divide, which has traditionally been used to describe the inequalities that exist between those who can engage in the digital society and those who cannot (evans & gomes 2017). this is quite pertinent in developing countries, where deducing the digital divide was mainly based on aspects of access to technology to participate in society – the first-order effect of the digital divide. toyama (2015) argues against this limited view of unequal access in the information society, as ‘access’ not only goes beyond access to technology or infrastructure, but also considers issues of capacity and motivation to effectively and strategically use technology for its intended purpose – in the case of this article, to use technology to participate in citizen engagement. this resulted in what authors call, the second-order effect of the digital divide – which moves beyond access to also consider social access or the lack of skill to take advantage of icts (evans & gomes 2017; henninger 2017; huerta & sandoval-almazan 2007). the second-order effect relates to digital literacy, which has now become the focus towards addressing inequalities in the information society. the definition of digital literacy seems to vary in the literature, with authors providing general definitions that can apply to different domains of use. this was studied by leahy and dolan (2009), who provide a historical account of the defined meaning of digital literacy, before they settled on the definition provided by the european union: digital literacy involves the confident and critical use of information society technology for work, leisure and communication. it is underpinned by basic skills in ict: the use of computers to retrieve, assess, store, produce, present and exchange information, and to communicate and participate in collaborative networks via the internet. (p. 152) the definition by the european union seems to be more specific towards the technical skill needed to use technology. eshet-alkalai (2004), on the contrary, speaks to more complex skills associated with digital literacy, such as cognitive, motoric, sociological and emotional – all needed to use digital environments effectively. he differentiates between five types of digital literacy, which can gradually develop over time through different exercises or knowledge transfer processes between project implementers, and project beneficiaries (government and citizens) (leahy & dolan 2009). these include photo-visual literacy, reproduction literacy, branching literacy, information literacy and socio-emotional literacy (eshet-alkalai 2004). all these types possibly contribute to developing the digital citizen (coldwell-neilson 2017) – one who is able to purposefully and confidently communicate and find information to engage in processes to address some of their challenges. when we interrogate the meaning of digital literacy in the field of dce, there are key skills and knowledge that both citizens and government need to possess in order to effectively engage in the process. in this case, government and citizens do not only need to be digitally literate but also need to be civically literate (henninger 2017). for digital literacy, what is paramount is that citizens have the capacity to find, retrieve, interpret and critically evaluate information provided on digital platforms. civic literacy supports digital literacy in dce, as citizens also possess the domain knowledge, ability and capacity to make sense of their political world and hence effectively act individually or collectively to hold government accountable and demand key services (henninger 2017). digital literacy applies to both government and citizens; however, civic literacy is more specific to citizens. literature does not clearly articulate the domain literacy that governments should possess to effectively participate in dce. this is quite typical in the field of citizen engagement, as the focus has mainly been on citizens, where initiatives have taken on an adversarial approach to implementation. however, recent literature has motivated for focusing on building the capacity for government responsiveness, to respond to citizen requests and engagement on digital platforms (daskal 2018; gigler & bailur 2014; pade-khene, thinyane & machiri 2017; peixoto & fox 2016). this is not a forthright process, and at times requires process re-engineering and an understanding of the valuable contribution of dce, for government – any citizen engagement initiative is often looked at by government with suspicion to expose their ineffectiveness, rather than support their processes. that said, this research article proposes the consideration of responsiveness literacy specific to government. when we look at digital literacy in dce, it does not exist as a general entity for technology use, but incorporates domain knowledge (baykurt 2011) in relation to civic literacy (citizen) and responsiveness literacy (government) (see figure 2). figure 2: reimagining digital literacy for digital citizen engagement. given the above conceptual framework of digital literacy, some of the challenges and failures of dce projects relate to a lack of appropriate literacy in the above aspects. as a result, how can an individual or group become digitally literate if the means to do so are inaccessible and unusable (leahy & dolan 2009) – is civic literacy and responsiveness literacy effectively embedded in the implementation process? organisations that implement dce initiatives need to embed informed processes of knowledge transfer between implementers and project beneficiaries to build digital literacy. however, each context is different, and hence, project implementers need to ensure that they are open to learning the endogenous practices of the context in order to understand digital literacy deficiencies and opportunities (mansell 2011). these practices need to be applied iteratively and incrementally to address barriers and build digital literacy. the next sections reflect on this process using szulanski’s four-stage model in the mobisam case study. research methodology the philosophical approach adopted for this research is pragmatism. this philosophy assists in disclosing the current practices associated with dce initiatives in a local municipality and how these practices generate observations to understand the phenomenon (creswell 2014). the pragmatist approach allows the researcher to focus their attention on the research problem, using various methods to gather information to address the problem. observations and explanations of the actors in the research problem context allow for the development of knowledge around the aspect of dce in a local municipality of south africa. goldkuhl (2012) discusses three types of pragmatism: referential, functional and methodological. the context of this research study focuses on the methodological pragmatism, where the researcher has actively participated in the context to provide suggestions and implement practices for improvement – in this case, building digital literacy. pragmatism provides researchers with the ability to observe, understand, reflect and provide guidelines to mediate within a social context (goldkuhl 2012; saunders et al. 2009). the pragmatist philosophy has not been used significantly in research; however, it is instrumental in developing change and action, and how knowledge can relate to that action (feilzer 2010; morgan 2014). this is quite fundamental to developing theories within the african context (indigenous theory), as information systems theory is quite dominated by world views developed in different contexts – western and business contexts (mansell 2011). the premise of pragmatism is abductive reasoning, where the researcher engages in a process of developing a logical connection between theory and empirical data in an iterative fashion. morgan (2014:1049) describes this as ‘… an active process of inquiry that creates a continual back-and-forth movement between beliefs and actions’. therefore, the data collection and analysis process in pragmatist research differs from typical positivist or interpretive research approaches. in this case, moving back and forth between induction and deduction, in an enquiry process of problem-solving, does not limit the researcher to a ‘forced choice dichotomy between post positivism and constructivism’ (crewell & plano clark 2007:27 in feilzer 2010:8), restricted to a particular methodology or thought approach. instead, in the context of uncertainty, particularly pertinent in dce in south africa, the knowledge character in pragmatism is constructive in the form of prescriptive knowledge (providing guidelines), normative knowledge (exhibiting values) and prospective knowledge (suggesting possibilities), which are built from descriptions and explanations in the enquiry process (goldkuhl 2012). this is quite an emancipatory process, not only for the researcher but also for the research participants engaged in the process of problem-solving. the research strategy applied is a case study to understand how digital literacy is developed in the knowledge process of a dce initiative and why it was the suited approach (yin 2009). the case study is mobisam, which is an initiative located in the eastern cape province of south africa. mobisam provides a platform for two-way communication between local government and citizens on public service delivery issues. it is built on an operational model of iterative and incremental development, stakeholder engagement, strategy formulation and capacity building, comprehensive evaluation and citizen education (pade-khene et al. 2017). the mobisam technology incorporates both a reporting interface for citizens (via a mobile application [feature phone or smartphone], website and short message service [sms]) and also a ticketing function (mainly used by the municipality to address internal communication challenges). mobisam presents a useful case study to demonstrate how knowledge was transferred between various stakeholders in the project (including the project implementation team), to build digital literacy among key beneficiaries – unit of analysis. this is still an ongoing process, as digital literacy development is gradual and uncertain, considering the factors that hinder dce implementation, such as information poverty, lack of political commitment, digital exclusion, internet access and lack of incentive and motivation (gigler, bailur & anand 2014). data were collected using a qualitative approach with the following tools: interviews: both semi-structured and unstructured interviews were applied, to allow understanding from the uncertain context to unfold, based on the experience of project participants. government officials, citizens and project implementers were interviewed. government officials interviewed included three service department managers, three communication and two customer care staff, three technicians, and two it staff. citizens interviewed included civil society representatives and community activists. participant observation: the researcher participated in workshops and forums organised by the mobisam project, civil society and the local municipality. examples of local government meetings included service management meetings, special council meetings and public forums on service delivery. civil society forums and rights workshops were also organised to bring together various stakeholders in the municipality. lastly, mobisam held public awareness meetings, needs assessment workshop, civil rights workshops, training a workshops and strategy formulation workshops. document analysis: documentation from the mobisam project was also analysed to supplement the field data. a baseline study report was reviewed to identify key communication ecologies and challenges in the municipality. the case study is described in relation to the knowledge transfer process by szulanski (1996), building explanations on the experiences of project stakeholders and the researcher as a key participant in the project. the analysis of data mainly relied on abductive reasoning, using yin’s (2009) analysis approach of explanation building. this approach builds an explanation about the case, developing causal links in an iterative manner. the iterative process was applied as follows: re-examine the components of the knowledge transfer process proposed by szulanski (1996). compare the qualitative findings of the observation of the project implementation processes that incorporate knowledge transfer (consciously and unconsciously – given uncertainty), against szulanski’s knowledge transfer model. contextualise szulanski’s knowledge transfer process in the mobisam case – allowing for the emergence of an organic process of knowledge transfer in digital literacy development. the above process was repeated at different phases of the project from early 2016 to mid-2017. to provide contextual background to the study and to build the analysis, the stakeholders of the project and their contribution to the knowledge transfer process are first identified and discussed in the case study description. stakeholders of the mobisam project stakeholders in the knowledge transfer process mainly consist of the project implementation team and key beneficiaries, that is, local government, citizens and civil society. media also plays a key role in the dce; however, at the current stage of the project, this article will not dwell on this particular stakeholder. all these stakeholders interact in a web of complexity and uncertainty in an environment that is politically influenced, as well as marginalised (pade-khene & lannon 2017). conflicting perspectives exist between stakeholders as well as within stakeholder groups – in this case, each group has a specific objective that they expect to achieve with mobisam. building digital literacy requires that all stakeholders engage in a shared understanding of how a dce can be effectively used and embedded in active citizenship practices and government responsiveness practices. the project manager of a dce initiative needs to devise strategies to engage all key stakeholders (either separately or together), in an effort to learn how best the dce initiative can function within its context. table 1 provides a summary of conflicting aspects that emerge in different stakeholder groups in the mobisam project. it is important to know these to highlight the challenges that need to be overcome within the iterative process of knowledge transfer and digital literacy development. table 1 also shows the literacy focus areas embedded in digital literacy for each group, with the exception of the project team that plays the role of source or facilitator (where knowledge exists within the beneficiary groups) of knowledge transfer. table 1: conflicting aspects of each stakeholder group. knowledge transfer and digital literacy development in mobisam knowledge transfer is a fundamental process for organisational learning in the business context. it emerges from the need to apply knowledge management as a key practice for maintaining and sharing key strategic knowledge on business operations. in the context of dce, this mainly relates to managing knowledge that can be used by the community or key beneficiaries. conger (2015) is known to be one of the few authors who contextualise knowledge management for ict4d. in the context of ict4d, knowledge managed is defined as a ‘systematic process of acquisition, organisation, and communication of organisational member knowledge for reuse by others in the community’ (conger 2015:114). organisational learning is closely linked to the process of developing digital literacy for citizens and government. here, organisational learning refers to ‘internal adaptation processes triggered by some kind of disjunction or unease in the relationship between the organisation and what lies external and challenging to it in its environment’ (spender 2008:160). digital literacy aims to build the capacity of citizens and government to effectively participate in dce – this can be performed through a process of learning, training and engagement. for digital literacy to develop in the mobisam project, it had to undergo a process of learning, unlearning and knowledge transfer. this process is not necessarily linear, but iterative to adapt to changes in the complex and uncertain context. szulanski’s (1996) four-stage model presents a process that is used to describe the process of knowledge transfer in the mobisam case – in describing this process, key features and practices of digital literacy development at each stage are identified. knowledge transfer occurs through the dyadic exchange of knowledge between a source and recipient. for each stakeholder identified in table 1, the role of ‘source’ and ‘recipient’ is interchangeable, depending on the knowledge shared. the four stages include initiation, implementation, ramp-up and integration: initiation – as the first step in the process, this consists of events that lead to a decision to transfer knowledge. in this case, the need for knowledge transfer to support dce is identified, as well as the feasibility of such an initiative. the constraints of the possible implementation of a dce initiative are also explored in the context. in the mobisam case study, the project team needed to explore the status of digital literacy, including civic literacy and responsiveness literacy in the context. this is based on the understanding of the communication ecologies of citizens and government in relation to civic participation and responsiveness to service delivery reporting. a baseline study was conducted, which consisted mainly of two surveys: the first survey was distributed to citizens and the second survey was distributed to local government staff. this survey explored the existing approaches for communication and citizen participation, identifying traditional ways of engagement and the use of technology for engagement between government and citizens. in addition to the survey, the project team engaged in workshops, informal interviews and government public forums to understand the status of digital literacy, civic literacy and responsiveness literacy. after the baseline study, a needs assessment was conducted to explore the key needs related to the use of technology for citizen engagement and possible constraints. this was a more focused exercise, in relation to the purpose of mobisam, to provide a platform for social accountability monitoring. the purpose of this stage was to therefore explore the needs for digital literacy development and the feasibility of building digital literacy in the project implementation process. this stage is not static and once off, as demand-driven needs can emerge as the mobisam project is adopted in the context. in this case, a needs assessment can be reintroduced in project activities to re-evaluate existing digital literacy needs in the project. implementation – this is the stage where the transfer of knowledge begins, and resources flow between the source and recipient. the project team acts as a source of knowledge for developing digital literacy; however, they also become a recipient of new knowledge from citizen and governments that shapes their activities to develop digital literacy for the context. as a recipient of knowledge, they begin to understand protocol, legislation, accountability processes, transparency requirements, local culture and so on that govern the process of local citizen engagement. an understanding of these aspects shapes their programme for guiding the development of digital literacy to effectively use mobisam platforms. in this case, government, citizens and civil society become the source of knowledge transfer, playing an interactive game of learning and informing. the mobisam project team also played the role of facilitator, in enabling an understanding of how to effectively integrate and use the mobisam platform. this was applied through strategy formulation workshops with citizens and government (separately and then jointly to manage conflicting views), meetings with municipal management staff and cso leadership, engaging in the revision of the municipal communication strategy, civic education and adaptive ict training on how to use mobisam platforms. an important aspect is that social ties begin to develop between source and recipient, and stakeholders work towards a mutual understanding of how mobisam can best work in makana municipality. szulanski (1996) articulates this as follows: the transferred practice is often adapted to suit the anticipated needs of the recipient, to pre-empt problems experienced in a previous transfer of the same practice, or to help make the introduction of new knowledge less threatening to the recipient. (p. 29) initial understanding and development of digital literacy is enabled during this stage of knowledge transfer. furthermore, the project team begins to understand contextual dynamics of both government and citizens, hence context literacy (endogenous practice) – the competence or knowledge to interact and engage in these spheres (mansell 2011). the implementation stage stops, when project beneficiaries begin to use the gained knowledge on digital literacy. ramp-up: this is the stage when the recipients of knowledge begin to use the new knowledge in the context. this was the stage that citizens began to see the value of the mobisam platforms and engage via the facebook page, email, sms and the mobisam website. in relation to the citizen, additional civic education workshops had to be held with civil society, media, local schools and development centres in makana municipality. furthermore, the project had hired ward liaisons in the community to impart awareness and knowledge of mobisam, and based on the train-the-trainer model, train local community members in their wards to use the various platforms effectively. the value of a new initiative can sometimes only be seen and understood from the perspective of common members of a networked system, whether it is the youth, woman support networks or schools. therefore, mobisam activities attempt to incorporate key actors involved in these networks in order to maximise on participation. this has been a very challenging process, as the process of building digital literacy for dce is often met with resistance and lack of resources to support development. this is clearly evident from figure 3, which is a map of reported issues – the reported issues are centred on a particular location in makana municipality (more affluent areas), which is closer to the centre of town and the local university. it is important that unexpected problems or barriers are identified that hinder the alignment of transferred knowledge and expected performance of the adapted practices (szulanski 1996). this is no different for local government. local government staff strategised for the integration of mobisam in makana municipality and participated in workshop sessions to re-engineer their existing processes to adapt better communication practice with mobisam. this was successful among some municipal staff, who confessed that they now saw the value of feedback in communicating with citizens, based on the development of their digital literacy around government responsiveness. their original system, identified in the initiation stage, showed how broken their communication ecology was, with a lack of feedback culture and engagement with citizens. nonetheless, mobisam was met with much resistance from some municipal staff – requiring the mobisam project team to rethink their implementation approach to address the existing constraints. some social and organisational culture constraints may be beyond the scope of mobisam practices; nonetheless, formulating key partnerships with other government officials and csos may push for the transformation of current practice in the municipality. in relation to building digital literacy, this stage relates to engaged literacy development. integration: this stage is reached when digital literacy is developed and institutionalised in government and civil society practice, as well as becoming an embedded skill of active citizens. satisfactory results of the existence of digital literacy should begin to emerge. certain practices related to interaction with evidence-based data for citizen engagement and government responsiveness become associated with various actors, departments and individuals. as digital literacy showed initial progress in becoming embedded, mobisam became formerly integrated into the municipality communication strategy. the project team is always invited to participate in key strategic forums of the municipality, as digitally literate government staff engage in discussions and practices around using mobisam, and the data generated from it. citizens have also began to use mobisam as a point of call for reporting issues, perusing the digital platform for similarly reported issues to engage in discussion about them with an understanding of the severity of the issue. civil societies such as the grahamstown residents association (gra), public accountability monitor (psam) and black sash (bs) now invite mobisam as a strategic partner into their civic workshops. the evidence gathered from the technology platforms is often used by the gra to follow up on unaddressed issues or to lobby for key services. despite the many benefits of having reached a level of digital literacy with some stakeholders, there are still issues of ‘stickiness’ that hinder the effectiveness of the process and call for a continuous iterative approach, building on the lessons learned from each of the stages of knowledge transfer. therefore, this process should not be linear, but lessons learned should feed into another staged iteration of initiation to explore emerged aspects of digital literacy and citizen engagement. figure 3: map of reported service delivery issues in makana municipality. table 2 provides a summary of the knowledge transfer process of digital literacy development in the mobisam dce project. various practices emerged that can guide each stage of literacy development – practices indicated in table 2 are suggestions, but not limited to these, as practitioners or researchers may apply different approaches within the constraints of the project and context. nonetheless, this provides a starting point from which to build on. what was also identified in the knowledge transfer process was the digital literacy development focus at each stage of the transfer process. in this case, digital literacy developed through a quadruple-e process of: (1) explore, (2) enable, (3) engage and (4) embed. table 2: a summary of the knowledge transfer process of digital literacy development. the transfer of knowledge is likely to experience what szulanski (1996) refers to as internal ‘stickiness’, which is based on the characteristics of knowledge transferred, the source of the knowledge, recipients of the knowledge (ajmal & koskinen 2008) and the context (ajmal & koskinen 2008; yeh, lai & ho 2006). pade-khene and lannon (2017) relate this to the issue of power and political influence in dce – diverse stakeholder perspectives and conflicting views result in the need for ad hoc solutions as problems emerge in the transfer process. nonetheless, orlikowski (2002:271) argues that it is a gradual process of developing ‘know-how’ in the transfer process, so as to understand the origins of stickiness in order to work around them and maximise on digital literacy development. the issues of stickiness are not foreign to the ict4d field and hence relate a lot to toyama’s three differentials that influence digital implementation in developing countries (see table 3). project stakeholders need to be aware of these and mitigate their influence in the knowledge transfer process. table 3: a comparison of information and communication technology for development differentials and aspects of stickiness. conclusion the research study presents a case for developing digital literacy in dce initiatives. this is pertinent as dce has emerged as a key tool in supporting two-way communication between citizens and government. it also contributes to building evidence-based data that can be used to support social accountability and transparency practices. the article identifies that dce is not a straightforward process, where some factors that hinder progress relate to a lack of effectively building digital literacy among citizens and government as project beneficiaries. in the case of dce, digital literacy does not only relate to the technical ability to use icts but also relate to embedded competence in civic literacy and responsiveness literacy. using szulanski’s (1996) four-stage process of knowledge transfer, the mobisam project is reflected on in terms of the practices applied to transfer knowledge and develop digital literacy of its stakeholders. the process was identified as iterative and incremental in nature, with key focus areas for digital literacy at the different stages, that is, the quadruple-e process of (1) explore, (2) enable, (3) engage and (4) embed. despite the benefits of knowledge transfer, this process is affected by factors that hinder progress, referred to as ‘stickiness’. the aspects identified relate closely to differentials of ict4d proposed by toyama (2011) – this highlights the significance of addressing digital access, motivation and capacity in developing digital literacy; 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original research voice matters: students’ struggle to find voice toni gennrich, laura dison received: 19 aug. 2017; accepted: 27 june 2018; published: 15 nov. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract often, at universities, it is assumed that students will automatically find their ‘voice’ after a period of exposure to the academic field. what is not understood fully are the struggles that students with different levels of preparedness have in finding and asserting their academic voice, particularly in the academic writing genres necessary for success. there is a clear link between students’ ability to exercise voice and their achievement levels. the data focussed on in this article were drawn from a large assessment study that aimed at reaching an in-depth understanding of why first-year bachelor of education (bed) students experience difficulty with their assessment tasks. focus groups were held with 18 first-year volunteer bed students. in particular, we focussed on the unique insights emerging from the data about the challenges students face in finding their voice. we identified how a lack of understanding of the purpose of assessment contributes to these struggles. other factors that contributed to this are difficulties with the genre of academic writing, challenges with vocabulary and positioning oneself in relation to the theory. many students appeared not to feel a sense of agency or confidence in their capabilities and have poor self-efficacy beliefs. these aspects were underpinned by the requirements of assessment and necessitate that lecturers develop pedagogical strategies to make the acquisition of voice more explicit. introduction to write academically, ensuring the clarity of one’s argument and the presence of one’s voice, is more cognitively and linguistically demanding than is often appreciated by those who work with first-year students. students struggle to find the balance between drawing on theory or previous knowledge and taking up their own positions while building on that knowledge, particularly when they are writing in a language that may be a third or fourth language. often, students arrive at university having been poorly prepared (gee 2008) by a school system and assessment practices that do not foreground academic writing. this is because they did not receive adequate exposure to writing academic essays and, as a result, are unaware of the demands of the genre (bangeni & kapp 2017). the view of knowledge that is established in many of the schools our students come from, is that it is fixed and there is a reliance on memorisation and regurgitation. students also struggle to understand the disciplinary norms that govern the language conventions required in their different subjects and this affects their ability to write successfully in different academic domains. although some lecturers communicate to students the importance of voice in academic writing, they generally do not provide opportunities for their students to enact this as a central aspect in their lecture rooms and may assume that students are learning how to find their voice in other academic spaces at the university. given the poor performance of the 2010 cohort of bachelor of education (bed) students at the wits school of education (wsoe), the rationale of this study was to investigate the assessment practices and students’ experiences of academic writing at this particular academic institution, in an attempt to better understand the challenges that tertiary students in south africa face in finding their voice (dixon, reed & reid 2013; shalem et al. 2013a; shalem, dison & reed 2013b; shalem & rusznyak 2013). voice, reading and assessment cliff (2015), in reflecting on the findings of the national benchmark test, contends that many first-year students struggle with reading, comprehending, making inferences and engaging critically with ideas and concepts. we recognise the centrality of reading, as it allows students to envisage the possibilities that exist for developing voice if they are able to make the connection between what they read and their academic writing. using academic texts as a model across disciplines and academic literacy courses enables the acquisition of the vocabulary, genre, style and register necessary to write academically in resourceful ways. furthermore, we recognise the critical role that writing academic essays plays in promoting learning and thinking and argue that it should not only be used as a tool for measuring achievement. this perspective supports carless’ (2015) argument for a ‘learning orientated assessment framework’ in higher education (p. 27), which distinguishes between assessment for learning and assessment of learning. in response to arguments that assessment often overshadows teaching and learning in ‘ways that are not conducive to a good university education’, carless (2015:10) proposes strategies for designing well-formulated assessment tasks and effective feedback practices that stimulate meaningful learning. he suggests that students have the potential to become ‘assessment literate’ as they engage with assessment criteria and feedback as a means of understanding the ‘tacit nature of quality’ (p. 138). voice and academic writing although there is no universal way to define academic writing, it ‘involves forms of reasoning, analysis, modes of investigation and self-reflection which enable the critical examination of established truths, taken-for-granted assumptions and knowledge handed down by tradition’ (slonimsky & shalem 2006:38). as mentioned earlier, negotiating new writing discourses is challenging for students and calls for an in-depth understanding of perspectives on student voice. voice is a contested concept (oostendorp 2016; pearce & wood 2016; sperling et al. 2011) and has been used in a number of ways in various disciplines. the use of the metaphor of ‘voice’ for enabling agency and asserting identity is useful (sperling et al. 2011) and it is this viewpoint that underlies our discussion. bakhtin (1981) distinguishes between the individual voice and the social voice, emphasising that individual voice develops in relation to other voices. as our aim is to discuss how first-year students struggle to find their individual voice within the social demands of the disciplines they are studying, this relationship is important. the challenge students encounter is to position themselves within fields where there are powerful ‘ideological points of view, approaches, directions and values’ (bakhtin 1981:346). the issue of voice in academic institutions needs to be viewed against the fact that there are fields that reproduce hegemonic voices, while there are also those that empower students to assert their ‘linguistic and social resources’ (pearce & wood 2016:4) to contest the field and transform it. this is particularly relevant in our context, an urban university in johannesburg, south africa, where students are calling for the decolonisation of the curricula and transformative pedagogies. blommaert (2008) argues that it is the extent to which one can make oneself understood on one’s own terms that enable voice. often, the resources and capacity one has (especially linguistically and in terms of academic literacy) make it difficult for students to do this successfully. many students arrive at university, not having been exposed sufficiently to the linguistic, stylistic and generic resources (such as the features of an academic essay) which are required in their academic field. blommaert (2008) is critical of institutions which emphasise uniformity and do not take into account divergent ways of being literate or different ‘ways with words’ (heath 1983). despite this, there is a strong emphasis on uniformity in many academic domains, which causes students’ voices to be silenced because their repertoires of literacy practices do not match the normative expectations of the institution (blommaert 2008). this is evident when individuals need to write in a ‘borrowed’ genre (blommaert 2008:50) such as the academic essay, a genre with which they are not comfortable. those who do not have access to a large collection of texts that may serve as models, try to approximate the genre but this is generally not fully realised. in the process of ‘trying on’ and ‘parroting’ academic discourse (angélil-carter 2000; crème & lea 1997), students do not integrate the material they use into their own thinking. they also do not recognise how academic discourse is situated in different academic contexts differently and how it is about more than reading and writing, but includes values, attitudes and social relationships (gee 1990). in unpacking the role of voice in academic writing, it is important to consider the academic reading and writing practices that different disciplines require from their students. boughey and mckenna (2016) challenge educators to reflect critically on what has been considered the ‘common-sense assumptions’ (p. 7) or what cadman (2003:1) calls ‘divine discourse’ that dominate in their disciplines. educators need to recognise that the literacy practices required in their disciplines are not neutral; they are powerful and often silence voices and deny epistemological access. not making these practices clear, denies access to the knowledge systems located in different disciplines within the university. voice and power in helping students to recognise what knowledge is valued in different fields, we are conscious of the issues of power that inhibit students’ voices. students find themselves in various academic fields, where what is valued as capital is often different from what they acquired in other fields (bourdieu 1990, 2004), such as the subjects they studied for grade 12. the academic field recognises forms of cultural capital which are tied up with the knowledge of long-established norms and values. this knowledge is inextricably linked to power, identity and capital (luke 2008). lecturers, tutors and examiners hold the power in academic fields and it is they who decide which voices are acceptable and which are not (pearce & wood 2016). sperling et al. (2011) emphasise that voice should be considered in its ideological sense, recognising that equity and access are not the same for students in the contexts in which they learn to read and write. it is this that leaves first-year students confused and disempowered as they try to understand how to assert themselves in new academic genres that are different from the genres of writing they are more comfortable with. as many students face this struggle, they ‘are alienated from the subject and the process of study itself’ (mann 2001: 7). this is complicated because those who teach in academic disciplines at university level are not always overtly aware of the explicit writing conventions required in their field, and thus find it difficult to explain to students what exactly is required. also, these conventions, though similar across the curriculum, are more likely to be discipline specific. language, voice and power are linked and language is essential in reinforcing and reproducing the norms of different discourses and the associated values in fields which enable voice. symbolic power is given to writers and speakers who are viewed as being ‘legitimate’ or ‘authorised to speak’ in particular fields (bourdieu 1991:41). because many students in the context in which we teach and in which this study was conducted, speak many languages, with english being one of them, it is important to consider how the use of language can limit students’ voices. students are asked to function successfully in environments where they are measured by their achievement in resources that they do or do not have – their embodied capital (bourdieu 1986). many students in the south african context do not have sufficient linguistic resources to express themselves in writing in ways that reflect their unique individuality (johnstone 2000 in sperling et al. 2011). this is often true of their first language, which they would not have used as language of learning and teaching beyond grade 3. it is even more difficult to find the vocabulary, syntax and punctuation to do this successfully in a language that one is not comfortable in. although many of our students speak a number of languages which provide them with cultural capital (bourdieu 1986), these languages are not sufficient to provide the symbolic capital necessary to achieve in an environment where english is the powerful language, that is, the language of learning and teaching and assessment. voice and self-efficacy self-efficacy is defined as ‘students’ beliefs in their abilities to complete their studies’ (ashwin et al. 2015:33). dweck (2016) outlines two broad ways in which students understand their abilities. they either see ability as fixed, which cannot be changed as a result of learning, or they have an incremental view of their abilities that can be changed through learning and teaching. our focus is on how students negotiate the content and processes of their disciplines and develop their voices in response to the challenges they face. their motivation and belief in their ability to succeed is relationally fluid and is produced through social interaction. we support ritchie’s views (2016) that qualities like self-efficacy need to be developed in different learning contexts and require learning and feedback experiences that develop their capacity for self-judgement. although students are motivated to succeed, their voices may not emerge confidently in certain learning contexts. motivation is not a predetermined quality and will not influence learning positively if students are not sufficiently engaged in teaching and learning activities. research methods and data analysis the participants in this study comprised of 18 first-year students, who were divided into three racially and gender-mixed focus groups. the focus group interviews were held in october 2010. no attempt was made to obtain a racially or gendered representative sample and the only criterion for inclusion in the study was the students’ performance on a compulsory first-year course education theory, which forms part of the curriculum at the wsoe. a total of 490 students were registered for this course in 2010. this course was selected as all students have to complete it, regardless of their specialisation. after the ethics approval was granted by the wsoe, all the students were invited to participate; however, only 18 students volunteered to participate in the focus groups. it was explained to them that they could withdraw from the study at any point and confidentiality and anonymity were guaranteed as far as possible. the participants signed informed consent forms, indicating their understanding of the purpose of the study and their right to withdraw from it. after signing their consent forms, the participants were divided into three groups, based on their achievement in the course education theory. group a consisted of low achievers, group b consisted of average achievers and group c consisted of high achievers it. an overview of the participants in the three focus groups is presented in table 1. table 1: overview of focus groups. the focus group interviews, which were recorded and transcribed, consisted of 15 questions covering students’ understanding, experiences and explanations of the following: the aim of assessment in general at first-year level and its relation to learning, the differences between school and university assessment, the importance of assessment criteria, the tasks required across different courses, the perception of fairness in marking, the quality of feedback provided and suggested ways for improving the first-year assessment plan. data analysis included close reading and thematic analysis of the transcriptions, looking particularly for references to voice, the purpose of assessment, language issues, voice and power. as a result of our inductive analysis of the data, three themes emerged: participants’ understanding of the purpose of assessment, their awareness of the limits of their vocabulary and their difficulties with positioning themselves in relation to the theory. in the next section, we focus on these themes and how they pertain to students’ struggles with voice in written assessments. ethical considerations permission to conduct the study was obtained from wits school of education ethics committee (approval no. 2007ece09). y. shalem who was the project leader, played a significant role in directing research on assessment practices at the wsoe. findings and discussion our examination of the data shows that first year students experience a broad range of difficulties in their academic studies, and more particularly, that finding their voice in academic writing is challenging. the purpose of assessment it is difficult for students to find voice in writing their assessment tasks when their view of the purpose of assessment is limited. the low-achieving students in the assessment study (group a) perceive the purpose of assessment to be primarily for marks and as a measure of whether they should pass or fail a particular course: ‘i think for me, it’s like, the purpose is … proceeding to next year. i don’t see a deep purpose’ (group a, s4, male). another student from the same group concurs: ‘yes, just looking for passing …’ (group a, s3, male). another suggests the purpose of their assessment is: ‘… to test our knowledge [and to see] how we cope with that course’ (group a, s1, male). for students preoccupied with assessments that value certification and obtaining high marks rather than engaging in learning processes that stimulate higher order thinking, assessment is experienced as summative rather than formative and the focus shifts from ‘writing to learn’ to ‘writing to achieve’ marks. a student from group b discusses how his perception of assessment is that it is summative: ‘we are focusing more on passing the assignment, not actually why we are passing … because we don’t get even a chance to maybe try and … you need to test our understanding before, before we get an assignment, we’re not doing anything, just go to a lecture, take notes, discuss in tutorials, they won’t give us a chance to maybe see and test if maybe you are understanding, you’re in the right direction, you just get one assignment, and if you fail, you fail.’ (group a, s3, male) the ‘why we are passing’ becomes obscured. this student recognises that assessment should do more than just focus on the marks achieved, that there needs to be a grasp of why he is either understanding or not understanding in order to learn from the task, but because of the timing of some of the assessments (at the end of the teaching block with no formative structure leading towards them), he views assessment as summative. because formative writing is not supported in the curriculum, he suggests that he is more focussed on marks than the learning process involved in completing the assignment. related to this notion of knowledge being fixed, rather than something to be grappled with and built upon, is the students’ frustration in not understanding the reasons they get something wrong, and thus settling for mediocrity: ‘i will give them their 50 because they don’t want to give me more. but i’ll give them 50% … that’s it’ (group a, s3, female). this student displays defiance in the face of not being able to achieve well, no matter how much work she puts in. she claims to be satisfied with 50%. another student also articulates this exasperation: ‘you can try your best and do what they tell you but then still when you come back you see our marks just scraping fail or scraping pass. why don’t you get 90 or something, when you’ve done whatever they said?’ (group b, s2, female) these students’ limited self-efficacy leads to frustration and withdrawal from any attempts to develop. the frustration lies in not having the strategies to achieve well, despite effort on their part. the latter student is exasperated at not understanding what is expected, thinking that she has complied with the demands set by the anonymous, powerful ‘they’ who are arbiters of whether she has achieved well or not and who are seemingly never satisfied. what she expresses here, borders on thinking that academic ability is predetermined and that she has no hope of attaining it. the feedback these students receive often emphasises how far they still have to go, rather than focussing on development and growth, thus reinforcing their low self-efficacy. this contrasts with ritchie’s (2016) depiction of students with high self-efficacy as being able to achieve mastery because: ‘they understand what they have done, the sense of their learning self and of their capabilities which are affirmed and transformed’ (p. 4). academic genre and vocabulary another challenge the students face is working with an unfamiliar genre. they realise that this is something new to them and recognise that the writing required is quite different from what they have written before, but they are unable to recognise how to bridge the gap. again, they focus on an external, fixed genre that should be attainable, not recognising how to use the genre for their purposes and to express themselves within its conventions. as one student suggests the purpose of assessment should be: ‘just to get us used to the type of writing university requires. and compare it to our usual way that we used to write in school which is completely different from university.’ (group b, s1, female) she understands that there is a division between her previous experience of writing and the current demands made on her; however, there is confusion about the specifics of what this entails. another prohibiting factor in finding voice in assessment is not being able to understand the vocabulary used in the assignment questions and/or not understanding the terminology used in the assessment criteria. students also often do not have the vocabulary to express themselves adequately. students struggle with the notion that academic writing requires the use of complicated vocabulary. many do not have the linguistic capital (bourdieu 1991) to cope with both the academic reading and writing expected. in a multilingual environment, such as the one we work in, the first issue students have is that they do not possess the vocabulary required to write in a language that is not their home language. in trying to unpack why he did not do well in a particular assignment on identity, this student remarks: ‘i don’t know how they work, but they want those bigger words that we don’t have.’ (group a, s3, male). his view is that complicated language equates with academic writing and recognises that he does not have the linguistic capital to meet these demands. however, what is evident from the data is that the language struggles that students face are more complicated. this supports cliff’s (2015) argument that the language barrier first-year students struggle with is threefold and comprises vocabulary, academic jargon and finally the genre vocabulary, that is, the vocabulary necessary to write about academic writing. working from a narrow interpretation of what constitutes knowledge, the group a students struggle to succeed in academic writing. tasks that do not require them to engage with difficult terminology are viewed as easier: ‘so it’s much easier for us to just pass other tasks than when you write the essays that you must read [for]. the terminologies of some theorists that have that “constructive” and other big words.’ (group a, s3, male) dealing with academic language is complicated by the fact that some of the words mean different things across different subjects; in other words, there is jargon that is specific to each academic domain: ‘like when we are describing those developmental stages of piaget, and you will have … “equilibrations”… when you compare it to physics or science, “equilibration” means something else’ (group a, s3, male). students who do not achieve well, blame the ‘language barrier’ for their poor achievement and suspect that this is the reason they are being marked down. however, while making this claim, there is a suggestion that they are not entirely sure of this fact. this uncertainty reflects the lack of understanding they have as to what exactly the requirements of the genre are and with this comes exasperation at not getting explicit instructions and feedback: ‘they had to specify at the end if your language is poor. they must say “your language is poor” so that you maybe improve in the future. but they don’t specify. you just get maybe 48% but they don’t tell us.’ (group a, s2, male) students recognise that there is a need to write academically but are unable to articulate exactly what this means: ‘and when you’re expressing your views, you have to express in a very academic way … very, very academically’ (group b, s1, female). this student does not know how to bridge the gap between what she thinks is expected and how to produce it and this is reflected in the lack of meta-discourse to describe what the writing requires. in one of their subjects, students were asked to complete an assignment which required them to relate their personal literacy practices to the notion of identity. in reflecting on their achievement on this assignment, they indicate how perplexing it was to understand the reasons why they did badly. the assignment asked them to write personally and to relate this to the theory on the literacy and they struggled with the balance required. their interpretation of where they went wrong reveals that they have not grasped how to achieve this balance. one student argues: ‘i was saying my views, but they marked it wrong.’ (group a, s2, male) he is convinced he was marked down for his opinions because: ‘i didn’t see any correction in my assignment.’ (group a, s2, male) this student is operating from the assumption that his work would have shown correction of language errors, had faulty language been the reason he had failed. another student suggests that language use is the problem because: ‘i think they want something like those specific words to put how you reflect yourself … words you must come up with that will reflect on how you are.’ (group a, s3, male) there is an attempt to understand what went wrong and a recognition that drawing on the discourse of the field is important but the focus is on vocabulary rather than engagement with the theory. because at some schools, the focus tends to be on form and not substance, first-year students cannot understand that they are assessed on intangible connections in the content and they look for the specific corrections of form. the high achievers recognise the gap between the language used for writing at school and that required by the university. they have the necessary meta-awareness of the vocabulary requirements and this comes as they grapple with the academic readings: ‘and one reading is like … it takes forever to read. because i mean, coming out of matric and then come to university, the language itself is a huge jump’ (group c, s4, female). this group of students is not only able to recognise the discontinuity (shalem et al. 2013) between what assessment entailed at school and what is expected at university, but also has the language to articulate it: ‘at high school it’s more about do you remember the facts …whereas here is so much better … there’s a shift from working out the answer and actually knowing why the answer is that way.’ (group c, s2, female) this student is able to verbalise how the goal of assessment is different at the university and can make a judgement about what is required to meet these goals. the achieving students recognise the difference between deep and surface engagement in their writing. the struggling students, on the other hand, cannot work out for themselves why they are not doing well. academic genre and positioning oneself in relation to theory the third misunderstanding about the genre of academic writing is how to insert one’s voice into writing while drawing on theory: ‘you need a lot more facts; you need a lot more academic readings that you need to do. so, it’s not based on your creativity and your thinking, it’s based on your understanding of a person’s facts and their research and stuff.’ (group b, s1, female) this student recognises that the academic essay requires one to draw on theory but misunderstands the genre, not identifying the importance of her own intellectual engagement, seeing her creativity and thinking as being constrained. she has not grasped how to insert her own thinking into the knowledge she is drawing on and how to express this in creative ways. another student describes how she experiences being constrained by the need to write ‘academically’: ‘you can’t really express yourself … and when you’re expressing your views, you have to express it in a very academic way. it’s not very personal. it’s more academic than creative … because you’ve got to just express what you see, everything, you can’t exactly give in your own words, you’ve got to do it very, very academically.’ (group b, s1, female) the vagueness with which this student expresses the requirements for academic writing indicates the limited understanding she has of what is required. the only characteristics she identifies as being necessary for an academic essay are that the writing is not personal and should not be written in one’s own words. what is meant by ‘academic’ is unclear to her. her focus is on expression rather than conceptual understanding. this contrasts with the recognition by a well-achieving student that one difference between school and university writing lies in the use of theory: ‘i think for school we weren’t taught in theories, here it’s if you understand something.’ (group c, s1, female). this student identifies a specific discontinuity between what was expected at school and what is expected at university, namely, the need to explain why an answer is the way it is; the theoretical underpinnings to the knowledge. it is being able to recognise the differences and having the language to articulate them which helps this student to overcome the challenges of inserting one’s voice into academic writing. part of the difficulty of integrating one’s voice with that of the theorists one draws on in writing is the dilemma of how much detail to include and how much elaboration is required: ‘it’s not like at high school, they might ask you a question: how are tables made? in high school you can just say, wood from trees. but here, you have to elaborate, one question they expect you to write some sort of a small paragraph, it’s elaborate more on what you say. that’s what i’ve seen. that’s why i didn’t perform well in my june exams.’ (group b, s2, female) as discussed, many students come from an environment where the accurate recollection of facts is important, and so the shift to having to analyse, justify and critique is challenging. the requirement to elaborate is not fully understood and is seen as writing quantity – ‘some sort of a small paragraph’ – rather than any understanding of what is required in the elaboration to make it acceptable. it is not only the weaker students who struggle with this. a high achieving student also comments on the challenges faced by having to elaborate: ‘i think to myself, ok, i already had five pages, which was the limit, and so if i did actually elaborate on this, then where was i supposed to fit it in? so sometimes it’s more of what should i mention and what shouldn’t i mention?’ (group c, s3, female) however, this student seems to be more aware of what ‘elaboration’ entails, that it requires choices and selections to be made about what is important or not. as she grapples with the requirements of the discipline and the quantity of content, it is difficult to decide what to include or not. a further difficulty for all of the students in dealing with the requirement of ‘elaboration’ is a lack of understanding of how to insert their voice into their writing or to position themselves in relation to theorists. the accusation of plagiarism hangs over their heads and it appears to be something that they do not understand how to overcome: ‘sometimes you don’t even see that you’re plagiarising. because you don’t know whether … you have to use the theorist’s key words, explain them according to what he said, not forgetting that you have to put your input, so sometimes … i failed the two assignments in first semester because of this, i couldn’t … the first assignment they said you must write in your own words how you understood. i wrote that, i got 40 … they told me that you must write mixing with the books, don’t use your own knowledge, use the books, like the theorists. i wrote about the theorists, i failed, then i got 45. i went there again, they said, don’t talk too much of the theorists, mix with your own … (laughter). i even cried because i wasn’t sure how to balance. because if you try to balance then you plagiarise.’ (group b, s2 female) this student’s exasperation at trying to position herself in relation to theory is clear. she has tried to implement feedback from her lecturer but finds herself in a predicament as using her own words results in an instruction to draw on the theory and in her attempt to implement this, she is asked to insert more of her own opinions. she is mindful of the challenges faced by having to strike a balance between ‘mixing with the books’ and ‘mix with your own’, but has no strategies to overcome these issues. this dilemma is similarly expressed by another student: ‘you can express your views but to a point, and then after that you can’t anymore. so after that it becomes like your own point of view.’ (group a, s2, male) the boundary between his position and building on previous knowledge is unclear to him. a student in group b also tried to articulate the quandary faced: ‘that’s where i find the problem, because in terms of you explaining or describe this thing in your own words, ok, fine, you go and do your readings, then you try to describe those or just to write them in your own words, then they tell you that these are not your ideas, you are taking other famous ideas. so you get confused now. they say write these in your own words and then you take these things that you read… you write them in your own words and you get a 50 … fine, i did the readings, and i put them in my own words, then what else should i be doing?’ (group b, s4, male) the power relations between students and lecturers are emphasised here and this student feels powerless. the tension he experiences is evident in his question ‘what else should i be doing?’ students feel constrained in inserting their voice into their writing about theory: ‘say they tell me vygotsky said this and that, i understand it that way, but i’m not allowed to say it in my own words. i’m supposed to say it in my own words but say the idea came from vygotsky.’ (group c, s3, female) the fact that this student uses words such as ‘not allowed’; ‘i’m supposed to’ indicates that her focus is on the punitive aspect of assessment and on the rules of writing. she sees the conventions of the genre as limiting and confusing. her lack of self-efficacy in the face of restrictions is evident. our findings suggest that, rather paradoxically, the development of a student’s voice is not a natural practice – it needs to be actively developed and explicitly modelled by the lecturers and tutors in each discipline. understanding the purpose of assessment tasks plays an important role in terms of how voice is expressed in each assessment task. how to integrate, engage with or analyse the ideas from published sources into one’s own argument has to be taught overtly. we support thesen and cooper’s (2014:15) contention that through explicit teaching and learning processes, students’ voices will be realised through their writing as they ‘grapple with risky decisions about content and form’ and manage the ‘tilting point between the self and others where the other refers to ideas, beliefs, places, relationships, audiences and forms’. there are many common-sense understandings of what is meant by student voice in assessment. what is needed is a more nuanced engagement with students’ specific challenges and this requires further research into the effects of the explicit teaching and modelling of voice in academic writing. implications of the findings in light of the findings discussed above, we recommend the following: lecturers should take part in professional development programmes, which offer cross-curricula interactions, as well as discipline-based teaching workshops that focus on the instruction of academic writing. lecturers need opportunities to help develop pedagogical strategies to foreground critical thinking and articulation of this in their disciplines. lecturers need to consider how they affirm and transform students’ knowledge and practices in their disciplines. they need to help students to practise and master the discourses necessary to foster self-efficacy and to achieve success in their chosen disciplines in clear ways with the support of the institutions. lecturers need to provide models and help students to practise how to position themselves and their arguments in relation to the theories they are taught in the disciplines. subject specialists should be trained how to do this in collaboration with language specialists. lecturers need to teach and model ‘voice’ in their disciplines overtly in particular how this is achieved in their disciplines and taking into account the demands of each assessment task. lecturers should provide feedback that emphasises students’ possibilities for development rather than focussing on how limited their work is. conclusion because students struggle with writing their assignments in their first year, it is important for lecturers and tutors to be aware of the specifics of what the struggles are and to work with students to overcome these. a key challenge is to enable lecturers to recognise that voice is multi-faceted and that the nature of voice is that it is not generic and manifests itself differently in different contexts. a core finding that emerged from the assessment project is that students’ ability to exercise their voice in their first-year assessment tasks is closely related to their levels of achievement in their courses. flowing from our analysis of the focus group data, three dimensions of voice (genre, vocabulary and argument) have been apparent. creating spaces for lecturers to think, speak, write, reflect and develop the confidence to articulate their understanding in their discipline will help them to recognise the different discourses and genres valued and enable them to create awareness and a meta-discourse for discussion of these with their students. we recognise the challenges presented in the face of dwindling university resources for student support, as well as increasing student numbers and the demands of these on lecturers providing substantive feedback to students when marking assignments. even so, students should be empowered to position themselves in ways that help them to develop a meta-awareness, which will help them to view assessment and academic writing as tools for development. if students can recognise the power they have to use the academic genre of each discipline to serve their purposes and recognise assessment as enabling rather than threatening, they can begin to find their voice. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank prof. yael shalem for her leadership and work on the study which provided the data for this article. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions 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postgraduate students, their teachers and the making of knowledge, multilingual matters, bristol. abstract introduction related literature theoretical framework methodology ethical consideration results paraphrases discussion conclusion acknowledgements references footnote about the author(s) vimbai hungwe department of language proficiency, sefako magatho university, pretoria, south africa citation hungwe, v., 2019, ‘using a translanguaging approach in teaching paraphrasing to enhance reading comprehension in first-year students’, reading & writing 10(1), a216. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.216 original research using a translanguaging approach in teaching paraphrasing to enhance reading comprehension in first-year students vimbai hungwe received: 07 sept. 2018; accepted: 02 apr. 2019; published: 27 june 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the teaching of reading strategies that enhance comprehension is a priority for many practising lecturers involved in academic literacy programmes. however, due to the unprepared nature of a large section of students entering the higher education system, a number of students have been found to lack basic literacy skills such as reading for comprehension. a plethora of studies has been conducted locally and internationally with the aim of finding solutions to help students who struggle with text comprehension, especially at university level. objectives: the purpose of this research is to show how paraphrasing as a strategy can be combined with a translingual approach to instruct students explicitly on how to read and comprehend texts method: using a group of first-year multilingual medical students, this research included translanguaging as an additional component to the use of paraphrasing as a reading comprehension strategy. results: the paper provides insight into how translanguaging can be used to assist multilingual students to understand texts through paraphrasing. drawing empirical data from classroom activities, this paper shows how lecturers can help students to use translanguaging and paraphrasing as metacognitive strategies to help improve their comprehension of texts. conclusion: finally, the importance of allowing students to utilise their multilingual repertoires is emphasised and reiterated, through translanguaging, in order to enhance learning. keywords: paraphrasing; translanguaging; reading comprehension; multilingualism; multilingual education. introduction reading is an important skill required for many academic activities (hagaman, casey & reid 2012), especially at university level. however, recent assessments of reading skills locally and internationally show that reading comprehension among students is still of great concern. in the united states, about a third of grade 4 pupils are able to read and understand texts fully (hagaman et al. 2012). in south africa, too, a variety of factors contribute to poor reading comprehension among students. according to currin and pretorius (2010), poor teaching methods at school level is one of the major factors that hinder reading development in many students. many of the students who struggle to comprehend texts especially at university may have attended schools where very little emphasis was placed on reading and writing in english (probyn 2006; taylor & vinjevold 1999). in addition, many of the students also find reading in english difficult because it is a second (l2) or third language to them (ngcobo 2014). when all explanations for poor reading comprehension in especially university students are considered, there is evidence that reading comprehension is a serious problem among many students (underwood & pearson 2004). these problems stem from inadequate reading instruction at a very basic level of education. the identification of the problem certainly means there is a need for teachers to improve their teaching methods in order to improve students’ reading comprehension skills. several studies (brown & palincsar 1989; graham & bellert 2004; pressley 2000; pressley & mccormick 1995) have shown that, in order for students to understand texts, teachers explicitly need to teach comprehension skills. according to grabe and stoller (2011), it is not necessary for academic literacy courses at university to include extensive grammar review; although grammatical errors should not be ignored as a resource for more advanced comprehension abilities. rather, it is suggested that the main idea of the text should be at the heart of l2 reading instruction. grabe and stoller (2011) suggest that the main idea of a text can be understood through class conversations that encourage identifying and exploring main ideas, as well as building connections between the text and student background knowledge. in the same sense, l2 students can be assisted to build text structure awareness to enhance their reading comprehension. ultimately, students should be encouraged to explain main ideas to each other in group collaboration activities using their own languages. the ability to extrapolate and paraphrase main ideas from the text constitutes the meaning-making process, which is the comprehension process that is required when reading (king 2007). however, there are different levels of comprehension. deep comprehension is achieved when a reader progresses beyond literal comprehension to using the text combined with prior knowledge to construct understanding. unfortunately, according to king (2007), most students rarely gain a deep understanding of the materials they read in their course. instead, they settle for shallow knowledge such as listing facts, definitions and other memorised material. in fact, students need to organise shallow knowledge and go beyond it by pursuing deep explanations, causes and implications. king (2007) emphasises the importance of inference during and after reading in order to enhance understanding. king’s argument comes from the fact that in most cases writers leave some information implicit in their text, with the assumption that the reader will infer from the text. unfortunately, many readers are not able to infer meaning from texts. this is one reason why most readers cannot move from a shallow understanding of texts to a deeper understanding. it is important to note, however, that there is a gap between what research has found and what is being practised in the classroom. many students gain university entrance without the foundational skills required for them to fully read and comprehend texts. this militates against their success at university. the purpose of this research is to show how paraphrasing as a strategy can be combined with a translingual approach to instruct students explicitly on how to read and comprehend texts. related literature according to fisk and hurst (2003), paraphrasing is an excellent tool for reinforcing reading skills such as identifying main ideas, finding supporting details and identifying the author’s details. hirvela and du (2013) identify paraphrasing as a principal means by which students can demonstrate their understanding of texts by capturing the original ideas of the author using their own words. in as much as paraphrasing has been identified as a barometer to measure students’ reading comprehension skills, it is unfortunate that there is a dearth of both pedagogical and research literature corroborating the importance of using paraphrasing as a tool to enhance reading comprehension. according to hyland (2001), a major reason for this scarcity is that paraphrasing is often subsumed by summary writing. hedgecock and ferries (2009:185) distinguish summarising from paraphrasing by stating that a summary is always shorter than the original material. a paraphrase is also written in the student’s own words, but it is a restatement of the original information and is therefore as long (or longer) than the original material. a summary is based primarily on main ideas, while a paraphrase includes all details from the text using different words. according to yamada (2003), paraphrasing is a process or set of processes in which students are required to engage in acts such as inferential thinking and decision-making as they generate meaningful and accurate reconstructions of what they have read. paraphrasing is an active learning strategy which helps students to place information into long-term memory as they move from an understanding level to an active comprehension level. according to fisk and hurst (2003), paraphrasing works very well as a tool to enhance comprehension because it integrates all modes of communication, i.e. reading, writing, listening and speaking, which leads to a deeper understanding of the text. leamnson (1999) also contends that there is no better way to learn content from a text, lecture or discussion than to paraphrase. thus, paraphrasing is an integral tool that is essential in tackling the reading comprehension challenges faced by students. an important marker of a student’s understanding of a text is the ability to find new ways to capture the meaning of what was stated in the passage (hirvela & du 2013). research has shown that many students, especially l2 students, struggle to paraphrase because they feel that they cannot compete with the experts’ language, therefore they resort to copying word for word from the text without much comprehension (hyland 2001). thus, it is important to mention the practical ways in which paraphrasing can be used to benefit students who struggle to comprehend texts. according to harvey and goudvis (2000), paraphrasing can be used during collaborative activities. in fact, when students are allowed to interact with one another and to challenge each other’s ideas, higher level thinking is the ultimate result. as early as the 1990s, harris and sipay (1990) discovered that when students are allowed to express the author’s ideas in their own languages clearly and unambiguously, it shows that ideas from the texts were understood. thus, paraphrasing can be used in multilingual classrooms by allowing students to write ideas from a text in their first language (l1) as a test for comprehension. although harris and sipay (1990) do not provide a name for the process of expressing the author’s ideas in one’s language for deeper understanding, that process is now referred to as translanguaging. theoretical framework this study is premised on the translanguaging paradigm. williams (1996), who coined the term translanguaging, defines it as a bilingual pedagogy that alternates language modes. the input is in one language while the output is in the other language. translanguaging as pedagogy was initially related to bilingual education and refers to ‘building bilingual students’ language practices flexibly in order to develop new understandings and new language practices’ (garcia, flores & woodley 2012:52). canagarajah (2011) purports that, in multilingual environments, translanguaging takes place when students use their entire linguistic repertoire strategically to learn. baker (2011) refers to translanguaging as the use of two languages to make meaning, gain understanding and gain knowledge. however, according to garcia and wei (2014), translanguaging does not refer to two separate language practices or to a hybrid mixture of languages; instead, it refers to a single linguistic repertoire. garcia and wei (2014) premise translanguaging within the recent critical post-structural paradigm shift in applied linguistics. proponents of this school of thought (garcia & wei 2014; makalela 2016; makoni & pennycook 2007; may 2014; ndlhovu 2017) question the notion of languages being separate and disconnected entities. the paradigm questions the homogeneity, boundedness and stability of languages in favour of mobility, mixing and historical embedding in the study of language (blommaert & rampton 2011). as a result, garcia and wei (2014) view translanguaging as a new language practice which emerges from exchanges among people with different histories that were created by the compartmentalisation of languages due to nation-building. in fact, according to wei (2016), translanguaging is a process that transcends the notion of movement between languages. translanguaging allows bilinguals to deploy their full linguistic repertoire, disregarding adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named languages (otheguy, garcia & reid 2015). that is why garcia and leiva (2014:204) insist that translanguaging resists the historical and cultural ‘positionings’ of monolingualism and advocates for fluid and fuzzy boundaries between languages in order to promote social justice. this research is based on the critical post-structural paradigm in which all languages within multilinguals’ repertoires are allowed to manifest for deeper understanding and for meaning-making processes to take place. instead of treating languages as separate entities in order to understand texts, this paper argues that students should be allowed to use all the languages at their disposal to understand texts. in the case of africa, makalela (2016) asserts that languages were put in ‘boxes’ as a way for political leaders to promote national sovereignty. makalela, therefore, calls for a multilingual return by articulating the interconnectedness of african languages in the mapungubwe settlement of the 10th century. makalela emphasises that what guided these people was a worldview of belonging together (ubuntu) despite differences. thus, in the classroom, makalela advocates for the ubuntu translanguaging pedagogy (utp), where students use their various linguistic resources to understand texts. based on the critical post-structuralist paradigm in which translanguaging is premised, languages have no boundaries and are not compartmentalised. this, therefore, should prompt lecturers to adopt a translanguaging model of teaching reading comprehension by allowing students to utilise all the linguistic resources at their disposal. this paper argues that students enter classrooms with rich linguistic repertoires (carroll & morales 2016) that require recognition and utilisation for meaning-making and understanding of the reading material. the call to recognise, value and utilise students’ linguistic repertoires is emphasised by garcia and kleyn’s (2016) call for educators to start looking at language from the point of view of the multilingual students in their classrooms. in the same vein, mgijima and makalela (2016) argue for a literacy model that integrates learners’ linguistic repertoires in order to enhance reading development at an elementary level. my argument is based on the contention of lewis, jones and baker (2012) that the use of one language through translanguaging helps to develop the other. in addition, the targeted use of students’ l1 helps students to understand the meaning of new and difficult words and explains complex syntactic rules (hussein 2013). storch and wigglesworth (2003) conclude that when l1 is used in an english as a second language (esl) classroom, learners receive additional cognitive support that allows them to work at a higher cognitive level than they would be if they were restricted to the sole use of their l2. in order for students to gain a full understanding of the texts that they read, i argue that translanguaging involves reading the text in a target language (english in this case) while discussing and writing the content in a combination of both target and home languages. this paper intends to show that, in addition to using paraphrasing as a measure for comprehension of texts, translanguaging should be incorporated for pedagogical purposes. this paper presents translanguaging and paraphrasing as pedagogical tools that enhance reading comprehension in students. methodology research context the findings of this article are based on a study conducted to investigate the effectiveness of using translanguaging and paraphrasing as tools to enhance reading comprehension in first-year medical students. the study was conducted at a university in south africa where most of the students are multilingual and english is not yet adequately developed for academic purposes. the languages spoken by the majority of students at this university are sepedi, setswana, afrikaans and tshivenda. many of these students struggle to comprehend academic texts that they are expected to read. this has been a cause for concern at this institution. the department of language proficiency (dlp) was established with the sole responsibility of servicing all health science departments with the required english language proficiency in their fields of study. thus, the dlp services the following departments: pharmacy, medicine, dentistry, physiotherapy, radiography, speech therapy, occupational therapy, and nursing. lecturers from these departments have registered complaints to the dlp about students struggling to comprehend academic texts. as a lecturer in the dlp, i decided to embark on this inquiry using translanguaging as a strategy and teaching resource to help students develop metacognitive skills that will assist them in tackling reading comprehension challenges. ethical clearance was granted by the university’s ethics clearance committee. research design the research design for the study is mainly qualitative, using excerpts from students’ writing as data. participants participants in this research were first-year students studying medicine. a convenience sampling method was used to select the participants. according to saunders, lewis and thornhill (2012), convenience sampling (also known as availability sampling) is a specific method that relies on data collection from population members who are conveniently available to participate in the study. in the case of this research, participants were selected on the basis of them having been allocated to me as their lecturer. the participants were 36 first-year medical students. the mean age of this group was 19 years. of the 36 students, 20 were male and 16 female. as mentioned earlier, these students are not l1 speakers of english. data collection data were collected during lecture time. participants were divided into discussion groups of six and were required to read an academic text entitled ‘in search of the holy grail’1 individually, outside of class. dividing students into discussion groups is a strategy recommended by harvey and goudvis (2000) to help students better understand texts. in order to maintain the fluid nature of languages, participants were allocated to groups where members spoke different languages. the article they read reports on the human genome project in the uk. this scientific project aims to design human genes so that in future humans are born free of certain diseases and ailments caused by genes that they might have inherited from their parents. the project aims to study the human genome, derive mechanisms to alter people’s genetic inheritance and design the ideal genetic makeup – free from genetically inherited diseases such as cancer, cystic fibrosis, heart disease etc. this article was recommended for these students’ main field of study, which is medicine. when participants came to class, they were required to discuss the ideas of the text, using all the languages at their disposal, that is, translanguaging. this included discussing unfamiliar words and using the dictionary to look up meanings in their languages. each group was asked to split into two groups of three students. one group of three was supposed to write a paraphrase of the author’s ideas in english using their own words. the other three had to write the ideas in their home language(s). finally, they had to come together as a group of six and discuss (in any of the languages they felt comfortable with) and finally fuse their paraphrases to present the ideas of the paragraph. the main aim of this research was to avoid forcing the students to think and understand the article in english. rather, the participants were allowed to explore the fluid and fuzzy boundaries of languages (garcia & leiva 2014) by utilising all languages at their disposal as they tried to negotiate and grasp the meaning of the text. in addition, students could measure their understanding of the text as they moved and shuffled between the languages at their disposal (harris & sipay 1990). students were instructed to pick one paragraph of their choice from the text and convey the meaning of the paragraph through paraphrase. data analysis this research employed a language-oriented analysis (tesch 1991:17–25). this analysis is primarily interested in the use of language and the meaning of words. based on this analysis, excerpts of the draft paraphrases were analysed with specific attention to the way participants negotiated their understanding of the text using their linguistic resources until they could put it on paper. the final versions of the paraphrases were analysed to see if participants were able to use their own vocabulary and phrases to present the ideas of the text. particular focus was placed on determining whether students were able to refrain from copying from the original text. according to hirvela and du (2013), when students use their own words to state the main ideas of the text, it shows some understanding of the reading material. another focus was to see if students could use their experiences from their language practices to understand the text. ethical consideration the research went through the required ethics clearance process. results having read the article, students stated that the article was just too difficult for them to understand. they indicated that the title itself (in search of the holy grail) appeared unrelated to the article’s subject matter. when asked to look up ‘holy grail’ in their dictionaries, students indicated that the dictionary defined the holy grail as the cup that jesus drank from during his last supper with his disciples. they could not make the connection between the holy grail (the cup) and the human genome. this is because the meaning was inferential and required students to infer meaning to understand the text (king 2007). through discussion, the meaning was negotiated until students could understand that the expression ‘holy grail’ refers to something that is difficult to obtain. as a lecturer to multilingual students, i cannot speak all their languages. i used simple english terms to explain the title. in order to connect with the text, during the discussion, i paralleled the title ‘searching for the holy grail’ to a familiar saying: ‘looking for a needle in a haystack’. then i asked students to relate the explanation in their own languages so that they could understand it better. establishing this parallel helped students to understand the title of the article because they were able to come up with common sayings in sepedi and setswana which mean the same as ‘in search of the holy grail’: moleta ngwedi ke moleta lefifi in setswana and moleta ngwedi ke moleta leswiswi in sepedi. both sayings, when literally translated, mean that when it is dark you cannot see the moon, no matter how much you look for it. when students applied their cultural and language background, they could understand the title of the article. the use of relevant background to infer meaning is emphasised by mgijima and makalela (2016) as a vehicle for improving reading comprehension. in fact, students need to be taught from an early age to infer meaning from texts using all the accessible linguistic resources at their disposal (mgijima & makalela 2016). in this study too, by allowing students to use their rich linguistic and cultural backgrounds, they were able to understand the title of the article, which in turn helped them to understand the article too. through this process, students were able to understand that the title of the article was a metaphor used to show that the human genome project was attempting a difficult task. the encouragement during class discussion to use their linguistic and cultural background helped the students to grasp the general meaning of the article. the use of a familiar saying (looking for a needle in a haystack) as well as the common sepedi and setswana sayings helped them to break through the barrier that had been created by the phrase ‘in search of the holy grail’ and allowed them to utilise their linguistically and culturally pre-existing knowledge to scaffold their understanding of the text. results from this research show that students indeed face a mammoth task of working out meaning, especially when they are faced with unfamiliar contexts. in fact, participants in this study demonstrated a shallow understanding of the text. the fact that they could not make a connection between the title and the meaning of the text shows what king (2007) refers to as shallow comprehension. however, through collaboration and discussion using students’ language practices (grabe & stoller 2011), students gained a deep understanding of the texts. it is important for lecturers, therefore, to help students gain a deeper understanding of a text by using a translingual approach to collaboration in class discussions. most importantly, allowing students to understand difficult and unfamiliar terms using their linguistic resources enhances their understanding of the target language (hussein 2013). paraphrases students were instructed to choose a paragraph from the article and paraphrase it. each group produced paraphrases that were written in the languages spoken by group members as well as an english version which was a fusion of the ideas in the different languages. the results were as follows: paragraph 3 three groups chose to paraphrase paragraph 3 but for purposes of this paper paraphrases from two groups will be discussed. this paragraph provides an explanation of how a baby inherits certain genes from its parents. it further explains that the human genome is a complex phenomenon which is written in chemical letters amounting to 3 billion and that it takes a decade to track down, analyse and record one genetic letter. in a nutshell, the paragraph shows that human dna is a complex phenomenon which is extremely difficult to understand. generally, students were able to paraphrase the paragraph using their own words without altering its meaning. worth noting is that, as students used their own languages to paraphrase, there was no attempt to translate from english. this suggests the interconnectedness of languages – students did not need to translate from one language to the other; rather, meaning was conveyed without translation. as noticed in the paraphrases, students did not use direct translation of the text that they had read; rather, they used their understanding of the text using their various linguistic resources. for example, one group used tshivenda and english in their discussions (see figure 1). figure 1: excerpt 1. based on the paraphrase written by this group, there is a general understanding of the passage. the word ‘inheritance’ in the original passage, however, was replaced by the word ‘transfer’ in the paraphrase. the ability to replace words with synonyms is a measure of comprehension (fisk & hurst 2003). however, it is important to mention that this group’s tshivenda paraphrase sufficiently conveys the meaning of the original paragraph. although participants could not find the synonym for ‘inheritance’ in their language, they used the phrase ‘dzigini dzine nwana’ to mean the features that a child is born with. this phrase conveys the idea of a baby’s genetic inheritance from its parents. the original passage outlines the fact that tracing the ‘unwanted’ genes inherited from parents is a difficult task, considering the effort and time required to read and flush out a single gene from a huge genetic text of over 3 billion chemical letters. this idea is clearly conveyed in both the english and tshivenda paraphrases. in the english paraphrase, the students capture the complex nature of the human dna by stating: ‘… the human dna contains a lot of detailing, it’s extremely long with lots of chemical lettering’. similarly, the tshivenda version captures the meaning of the text quite remarkably: ‘manwalo [letters] arekha dna ndimanwalo manzhi [many letters]’. the fact that students used their understanding of the text and were able to convey the meaning in their language (tshivenda) and successfully convey the same meaning in english proves the fluidity and interconnectedness of languages. the problem is that the education system thrives on putting languages into compartments to avoid mental confusion (makalela 2015, 2016) and emphasises the monolingual use of english for pedagogical purposes. from a translanguaging point of view that is propelled in the critical post-structural shift paradigm, however, languages were created for demarcation and sovereign purposes (makalela 2015). that is to say, languages were separated in order to separate people from each other for political reasons. in fact, languages are fluid and have no boundaries. thus, there is no reason to insist on using one language for pedagogical purposes when meaning-making and understanding of texts can be achieved in any language at the student’s disposal. the results presented in this paper suggest a rich and deep understanding of text when input (baker 2011) is in english, successful meaning can be made using the home language and output (baker 2011) is in english. also, when students are allowed to utilise accessible linguistic repertoires, their reading comprehension will be enhanced (mgijima & makalela 2016). there is a need for teachers to create translanguaging classrooms (garcia, johnson & seltzer 2016) in order to help students to understand and grasp the deeper meaning of the texts they encounter in their academic endeavours. another group also chose to paraphrase paragraph 3. this group, however, indicated that they could only use english to discuss and write their paraphrase. the students maintained that they had attended schools where english was the only medium of instruction. these students also indicated that it was impossible to use any other language for learning besides english. they argued that the text they had read was in english, therefore, they felt comfortable discussing and writing in english. in order to establish how well the students would perform in their paraphrase, i allowed them to use english only (see figure 2). figure 2: excerpt 2. this group failed to show that they had understood the meaning of the text. as mentioned earlier, the paragraph intended to prove that studying human dna is a complex process because the dna text contains a great number of chemical letters. instead, the group defines the genetic codes and they refer to genetic templates. ultimately, this group failed to interpret the meaning of the paragraph and they introduced new information which is not related to the meaning of the paragraph. the reason for this group’s failure to understand and grasp the meaning of the text cannot be speculated on. however, rivera and mazak (2016) explain that it may be difficult for students who treat languages as unique and separate entities to break free from this ideology. it is important, therefore, to research this issue further and find ways of changing such students’ attitude towards translanguaging. paragraph 7 two groups chose to paraphrase paragraph 7 of the article and both groups used sepedi and english to convey their understanding of this paragraph. one group comprised of two sepedi speakers and one speaker each of tshivenda, setswana, siswati and xitsonga. due to the linguistically heterogeneous nature of the group, they decided to use sepedi for their paraphrase. observation of this group’s discussion showed that participants used all the languages spoken by group members to negotiate meaning. it should be noted that there was a mutual understanding of meaning as all members of the group contributed to the discussion. in addition, some participants also used english to explain some concepts among them as they negotiated meaning. i emphasise that a translanguaging approach does not eliminate english from being utilised for meaning-making. english contributes to the students’ linguistic repertoires and can be used as needed for meaning-making and a deeper understanding of concepts. paragraph 7 presents arguments against the human genome project. the paragraph argues that, although the project might bring people to understand more about what it is to be human, too much focus on humans’ genetic constitution may result in people forgetting that there is more to human life than the expression of the chemistry of dna. using sepedi and english, this group was able to negotiate the meaning of the paragraph and convey it in the paraphrase (see figure 3). figure 3: excerpt 3. the sepedi version highlights the fact the human genome project is important because it will help people to understand human genetic makeup. this is captured in the phrase: ‘… project ye e kadira gore bathobakwesise gore gobamothokeeng’. this is also highlighted in the english version, which mentions that the project does not only focus on avoiding genetically inherited disease but also helps people to understand the importance of being human. the paraphrase also refers to the fact that critics of the human genome project warn that too much emphasis on human dna might lead people to forget the importance of valuing human life. in sepedi, they wrote: ‘… batho ba nagana gore project ye e tlo dira gore re lebale gore re bo mang ebile …’. in general, both the sepedi and english paraphrases capture the intended meaning of the paragraph. discussion the purpose of this paper is to affirm that translanguaging can be used as a pedagogic strategy to enhance comprehension of academic texts. the research uses paraphrasing and translanguaging as useful tools to gauge comprehension of reading material. the results have shown the importance of adopting a multilingual approach to language teaching. the fact that participants in this research were able to produce paraphrases in two languages and retain meaning in both languages proves that languages can be used interchangeably and fluidly by students for meaning-making and a deep understanding of texts. it is important to note that both the sepedi and tshivenda paraphrases did not in any way attempt to translate english to sepedi or tshivenda and back to english in order to convey the same meaning. students were able to draw their meaning from different languages at their disposal. this proves the fluidity and interconnectedness of languages, thus affirming the need to transcend language boundaries (garcia & wei 2014; wei 2016; makalela 2016) and allow students to utilise all languages for meaning-making. lecturers should consider seriously makalela’s (2016) call for a multilingual return. as mentioned before, one of the groups decided to write their paraphrases in sepedi and english although the group comprised of members who speak other languages too. hence, they were able to coordinate and collaborate harmoniously using all the languages at their disposal. this proves the need to incorporate the utp, where multilingual classrooms become havens of fluid, unbounded and interdependent repertoires through which students make meaning of the academic material through collaboration (makalela 2016). the utp proves the possibility of a multilingual return where students can be allowed to utilise their entire linguistic repertoire during collaboration in order to achieve a common goal. it is important to note that the use of translanguaging provides a ‘haven’ for multilingual students to negotiate the meaning of english texts. the level of comprehension displayed by these students confirms harris and sipay’s (1990) assertion that when students are allowed to express what they have read in their own languages (translanguaging) it suggests that they have understood the text. thus, i urge all teachers and lecturers to transcend linguistic boundaries (wei 2016) and allow the fluidity of languages in their classrooms to enable meaning-making and deeper understanding of texts. lecturers must create an instructional space where translanguaging is nurtured without students having to suppress their linguistic repertoire (garcia & lin 2017). thus, a classroom where students manifest and utilise their linguistic repertoires constitutes a ‘haven’ for students to attain a deeper understanding of the learned material. the fact that i, as the lecturer, do not speak all the languages spoken by my students did not dissuade me from allowing and encouraging students to utilise their linguistic resources in order to gain a deeper understanding of the text. in order to assist students in understanding the text, i allowed them to explore their ideas through the linguistic resources they possess. during class discussion, i relied mostly on students’ interpretation of the title ‘in search of the holy grail’ in their languages. this is in line with garcia and lin’s (2017) call for teachers to create space in the classroom for students to utilise features of their linguistic repertoires as they negotiate meaning. it also concurs with makalela’s (2016) research during which he created space for understanding among his multilingual students by allowing them to use their different language repertoires. in addition, essien (2010) refers to the acknowledgement, recognition and utilisation of linguistic metaphors prevalent among multilingual students as one of the best practices that teachers need to inculcate in their students. it can be suggested that students need to be taught the need to infer the meaning of texts using their relevant linguistic repertoires from an elementary level (mgijima & makalela 2016). if students learn to utilise their full linguistic repertoires to grasp the meaning of texts, they will not struggle when they reach university, because the skill would have been learned at an early stage of their academic career. conclusion grounded in the critical post-structural shift paradigm which translanguaging emanates from, this paper has provided evidence to show the importance of cultivating and encouraging students to use all the languages at their disposal for meaning-making and a deeper understanding of texts. paraphrasing is a tool that can be used together with a translingual approach to help students grasp the meaning of texts. the results show that when students are accorded the opportunity to freely utilise the linguistic resources at their disposal, they are able to comprehend texts. it is also important to mention that although participants in this research used a translingual approach to help them understand the article, they eventually were able to produce paraphrases in english that showed that they had understood the paragraphs that they paraphrased. this confirms that the use of more than one language enhances understanding as opposed to causing confusion in students’ minds. i, therefore, recommend that lecturers employ a translanguaging strategy in their classrooms to help students understand texts. i further recommend that lecturers create a ‘haven’ in classrooms by employing translanguaging pedagogy. it is also important for lecturers to introduce different learning strategies that will help students to understand texts; this includes the use of 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college websites’, system 31(2), 247–258. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0346-251x(03)00023-x footnote 1. available from http://mini-ielts.com/139/reading/in-search-of-the-holy-grail abstract introduction methodology findings and discussion discussion conclusion and recommendations acknowledgements references about the author(s) tesfaye a. gidalew institute of education and behavioural science, debre markos university, ethiopia geesje van den berg department of curriculum and instructional studies, college of education, university of south africa, south africa citation gidalew, t.a. & van den berg, g., 2018, ‘the relationship between lecturers’ beliefs and their actual methods of reading instruction: an ethiopian case study’, reading & writing 9(1), a162. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v9i1.162 original research the relationship between lecturers’ beliefs and their actual methods of reading instruction: an ethiopian case study tesfaye a. gidalew, geesje van den berg received: 25 mar. 2017; accepted: 20 mar. 2018; published: 24 may 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract the purpose of the study was to determine the relationship between lecturers’ beliefs and the actual methods they use in teaching reading. the study, which was conducted in teacher training colleges in the amhara region in ethiopia, showed quite a number of discrepancies. the findings revealed that although in many cases lecturers were aware of the required methods to teach reading in the classroom, they did not use them. if students are not taught the necessary skills to enable them to read fluently and with comprehension in english as their second language, the implications might be far-reaching. possible consequences will be lack of confidence and motivation to read and study in english. furthermore, as teaching of english second language reading is not only of utmost importance as a foundation for learning in higher education, but also the language of teaching and learning in ethiopia, the most important implication is that it might deprive students from being successful in their studies. the findings of this study will benefit lecturers and higher education institutions. the study not only creates awareness of possible discrepancies that might exist between lecturers’ beliefs and their actual practices but also recommends lecturers to be involved in continuous training on how to confidently use the best reading methods to assist students to be fluent readers and literate students, and be able to study in the language of teaching and learning. introduction reading skills may be regarded as the most important of the four skills in language teaching and learning and much has been written in this regard (alvermann, phelps & gillis 2010; bharuthram 2012; salinger 2003). rajabi (2009) argues that the ability to read with comprehension not only serves as a means of information and pleasure but also provides students with a rich experience of the language and presents a gateway to continuing education. through reading, students are able to develop a sufficient language base that enables them to produce spoken and written messages, resulting in efficient communication. in fact, reading is at the heart of most academic tasks that students have to perform. shen (2005) makes the point that for english second language (esl) students, reading may be the most important of the four skills in language arts because it is the foundation of learning. this is even more applicable in an english-as-a-foreign-language (efl) situation. the ability to read may be the main motivation behind why millions of students around the world study english. however, no empirical study on teaching efl reading in teacher training colleges in the amhara region of ethiopia could be found, and this study intends to make a contribution in this regard. considering how crucial reading is for college students, the importance of developing their reading ability cannot be overemphasised. lecturers of reading should therefore implement the best instructional practices and techniques supported by theories to develop students’ reading ability. reading strategies and teaching methods phan (2006) mentions that reading strategies are operationalised into methods, techniques and behaviours, enabling readers to effectively construct meaning. lehr and osborn (2005) describe reading strategies as specific cognitive procedures which guide readers to become aware of how well they comprehend as they read. from these definitions, it becomes clear that reading strategies refer to conscious reading behaviour, while methods are used by a lecturer or teacher to teach reading. oxford (1990), who has conducted extensive research on language, and specifically reading and teaching strategies, suggests some methods which have shown a positive relationship with good reading, such as reading aloud, question-and-answer and peer tutoring. taberski (2009) adds that reading strategies could be referred to as a set of particular moves that proficient readers use over and over again, sometimes deliberately and sometimes not. reading strategies, although defined differently by different researchers, refer to a repetition of certain conscious cognitive actions to improve reading. cekiso and madikiza (2014) emphasise the importance of classifying reading strategies into three categories: pre-reading strategies, during-reading strategies and post-reading strategies. these strategies have been documented by various authors such as christen and murphy (1991), tierney and pearson (1994) and ad-heisat (2009), and they will be summarised next. pre-reading strategies assist in linking the readers’ schema with the new knowledge by predicting, improving interest and anticipating what will be read. strategies used during reading, help readers cope with new vocabulary and contexts, as well as build bridges between existing knowledge and the new text. post-reading strategies help readers to interpret, confirm predictions and evaluate their understanding of the text while making generalisations and connections to their own lives. research in esl and efl reading has mainly focused on reading strategies. both singhal (2001) and wessels (2007) confirm that in most cases such studies have found that strategy training leads to improved reading performance and comprehension. to help students become efficient readers, it is necessary for lecturers to cultivate the awareness of the use of reading strategies. moreover, students should use a variety of strategies to assist them with the acquisition, storage and retrieval of information (singhal 2001). good readers, on the one hand, deliberately and, sometimes, coincidentally use a range of reading strategies for understanding a text, and lecturers should be able to guide students in this regard. lehr and osborn (2005) also agree that weak readers, on the other hand, have a very small repertoire of reading strategies and may often choose to continue reading, even if they do not understand. although many methods or approaches exist to teach reading, researchers such as oxford (1990), brantmeier (2002), lehr and osborn (2005), raphael (1986) and laduke-pelster (2011) agree that significant methods include reading aloud, questions and answer relationships (qar) and peer tutoring. because of their relevance to the current study, they will be discussed next. reading aloud may be regarded as an important method to teach reading as it helps motivate students to learn to read, extends their oral language and gives them opportunities to connect new information to what they already know. little and hines (2006) argue that readers must be exposed to reading aloud, and lecturers should read aloud to students to model fluent reading and for students to experience and hear how new words are pronounced, to learn more about the world and, finally, to develop a love for reading. harvey and goudvis (2007) further argue that lecturers should not read aloud for the purpose of instruction alone, but that they should also do so for enjoyment. scanlon, anderson and sweeney (2010) state that reading aloud builds vocabulary and background knowledge and expands comprehension. although reading aloud is a method generally used by teachers in a school context, lecturers at college level may also successfully use it to model fluency and teach aspects such as pronunciation, as was the case in the current study. questions and answer relationships is a method that has the potential to build reading comprehension in class. lecturers could systematically teach their students to find the answers to complex comprehension questions (lawrence 2015). it further helps students to understand the texts they read. lawrence (2015) indicates that the most important aspect of this method is that it gives students and lecturers a language for talking about questions and their answers – which is of particular importance in a second or foreign language class. according to raphael (1986), this question-and-answer method helps students realise the need to consider the information in the text, as well as the information from their own background knowledge. without having had qar instruction, students tend to rely either on the text only or on their own background knowledge. peer tutoring seems to be a commonly practised method of teaching reading on almost all levels (veerkamp & kamps 2007). during collaborative learning, students form groups. depending on the purpose of reading, reading in small groups enables everyone to have access to the information. furthermore, it teaches students that listening has important functions: paying attention, thinking about and responding to what is read. peer tutoring may help students share their overall experiences regarding learning the language in general and reading in particular. it also enhances the culture of self-learning among students. fields, lois and spangler (2008) assert that the main focus of peer tutoring should be on the interconnection between listening, speaking, reading and writing, although most language educators tend to teach the skills separately. theoretical framework this study is framed within the constructs of bandura’s sociocultural theory. this theory focuses on a person’s self-perceptions, beliefs and expectations (bandura 1986). within the context of this study, a lecturer’s self-efficacy refers to the extent to which he or she believes that he or she is able to influence a student’s performance (chiampa & gallaghar 2017). bandura (1994) believes that mastery experiences create a greater chance of self-efficacy: this means that the better a lecturer masters a task, the more self-efficacy improves. similarly, when lecturers do not believe that a task can be successfully completed, self-efficacy decreases (rogers-haverback & mee 2015). for the purpose of this study, it may be assumed that if lecturers believe that they are successful in their teaching of reading skills, they will have a high level of self-efficacy for teaching reading. a high level of self-efficacy is important, as it influences lecturers’ actions, thoughts, beliefs and feelings about their work. these feelings, in turn, may influence lecturers’ accomplishments. plourde (2002) defines a lecturer’s self-efficacy as a belief in one’s capability to teach effectively. the aim of this study was to find out how lecturers perceive their role in teaching reading skills to their students. purpose of the research researchers such as chou (2008) and farrell and ives (2015) confirm that not much research has been conducted on the interplay between lecturers’ beliefs and their practices of teaching second language reading. farrell and ives (2015) refer to the works of johnson (1992) and kuzborska (2011), which showed strong relationships between lecturers’ beliefs and their practices. in the current study, we were interested in how lecturers’ beliefs at teacher training colleges in the amhara region, ethiopia, correspond with their instructional practices. this curiosity flowed from the preliminary observation which showed that in many instances students experience serious challenges in reading english texts. these challenges, in turn, affected their ability to communicate and their general academic progress as english reading proficiency is a prerequisite for academic success. although english is not an official language in ethiopia, it is the medium of instruction from secondary school onwards. as a result of the fact that students are taught in english, a language that they sometimes speak and read with difficulty, many lose interest in learning and merely attend classes for the sake of attending. they also become demoralised and may fail the course, which, in turn, leads to low self-esteem. for this reason, we found it necessary to determine what lecturers’ classroom practices were and how these might affect their students’ reading ability. methodology the purpose of the current research was to investigate lecturers’ beliefs about teaching reading and how these correspond with their actual reading strategies. to achieve this purpose, the following research questions were formulated: how important is teaching english reading at teacher training colleges in the amhara region, ethiopia? which methods are used to teach reading in english as a second language? which reading materials are used in teaching english reading strategies? how can reading strategies be improved in the esl classroom? research design this research followed a qualitative approach, and a case study was used. ritchie and lewis (2003) argue that qualitative research has a distinctive character aiming to provide an in-depth and interpreted understanding of the social world of the participants by learning about their experiences and perspectives. because we were interested in the ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions about a contemporary set of events (yin 2003), we regarded a case study appropriate for this research. stake (1995) argues that case study research examines the particularity and complexity of a single case, trying to understand its activity within specific circumstances. the particularity of this case study is that it is an in-depth study of the beliefs and the practices of english language lecturers who are teaching reading at teacher training colleges in the amhara region. according to bloor and wood (2006), piloting involves field testing and refers to preliminary research to provide a structured opportunity to reflect on matters such as the research design, the instrument and timing. in this study, piloting was done by conducting an interview with an english lecturer at one of the colleges. the testing involved word and terminology appropriateness to the target participants, identification of vague and irrelevant questions, determining the approximate time it would take the participants to tell experiences of teaching reading and testing the effectiveness of the audio tape recorder in recording and playing back the stories when transcribing. when the pilot study was conducted, no terminology or wording discrepancies were identified, but the value of printing out the interview guide to enable participants to read the questions on their own and narrate accordingly, was determined. moreover, more time than initially anticipated was necessary to accommodate the participants’ pace and to allow for more probing. all the necessary changes were made after the pilot study. to ensure that the research was conducted in an ethical manner, we obtained ethical clearance for this study. permission to conduct the research was granted by the authorities at the three teacher training colleges. during the interviews, participants were treated in an ethical manner and were assured of their anonymity at all times. to confirm that we adhered to the notion of trustworthiness, the key aspects of credibility, confirmability, dependability and transferability, according to shenton (2004), were addressed. in addressing the issue of credibility, we did member checking, which allowed us to share the data, interpretations and conclusions with the participants and make adjustments where necessary. confirmability verifies if the findings are shaped by the participants and not the researcher, and in this regard we checked, rechecked and corroborated the data. dependability was addressed by carefully documenting the research process. this process includes research design, data collection method and data analyses. lastly, shenton (2004) states that to achieve transferability in a study, the researchers should provide as much as possible contextual information to enable the reader to decide how far the findings could be generalised and transferred to similar studies. in this research, measures have been taken to address this aspect, such as describing the context, the research process and the participants; however, because of a relatively small sample size, the specific context and the nature of qualitative research, it cannot be said that the results of the current study are transferable to similar studies. however, the purpose of the study was not to generalise the results but rather to do an in-depth study of a specific case. participants by using purposive sampling, six lecturers and nine students from three teacher training colleges in the amhara region of ethiopia were regarded as a representative sample. two lecturers in the three respective colleges who had at least completed a reading course in their undergraduate programme, had a master’s degree in education and had done some action research on english reading instruction, were selected. the six lecturers had between 2 and 35 years of experience in english reading instruction. all the lecturers were male because there were no female lecturers teaching english (reading) at the time of the research. the management of the departments of english at the colleges assisted us in the selection of both the lecturers and the students. rubin and babbie (2001) argue that in purposive sampling, a sample of observation that researchers believe will yield the most comprehensive understanding of the subject of study needs to be selected. for this reason, we selected students either in their second or third year of study who performed well in the english teaching classroom. in total, four students were in their second year and five in their third year of study. three students from each of the three colleges were selected to take part in the study. five students were males, while four were females. we believe that the selected sample was able to provide us with comprehensive, in-depth data. data collection interviews and observation were used to collect data, offering the opportunity to explore how everyday life is experienced and how meaning is understood. we were looking for a unique opportunity to probe, explore and negotiate the participants’ experiences regarding lecturers’ teaching of reading practices. semi-structured, one-on-one interview, which, according to mcmillan and schumacher (2006), could provide us with first-hand experiences, opinions and knowledge, were chosen for both the lecturer and the student participants. interviews lasted between 45 min and 60 min. in the opinion of corbetta (2003), this kind of interviews embraces individual differences and is sensitive to diverse forms of expression. while the one-on-one interviews with lecturers focused on their beliefs and perceptions regarding their teaching and the methods they used when teaching reading, the focus of the interviews with the students was on the methods of reading instruction, and lecturers’ activities and practise in the classroom. non-participant observation was also used to collect data. according to mcmillan and schumacher (2006), the observational method relies on a researcher seeing and hearing things and recording these observations rather than relying on the participants’ responses to questions or statements. kuzborska (2011) confirms that very few studies have been conducted where interviews have been combined with classroom observation to determine actual classroom practices. furthermore, kumar (2005) contends that observations are the most appropriate way of collecting data, when, for instance, more information is needed to get accurate information. an observation sheet was used to guide the observation in the classrooms with a focus on instructional techniques during reading lessons. three classes (teaching second and third year english reading) were observed in each of the three colleges, and the classes were visited during reading lessons, or until data saturation was reached. data analysis to analyse the data collected, thematic analysis was used (braun & clarke 2006). initially, data from the interviews were transcribed and read together with the data from the observations. looking for patterns, the data were systematically coded across the entire data set. the next step was to collate the codes into potential themes and to put all coded data with these themes. the final step in the process was to refine and name the identified themes. the data analysis was guided by the research questions. findings and discussion the purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between lecturers’ beliefs and their actual strategies in teaching reading skills to esl students in higher education. to address the research questions, we will discuss the following four themes that emerged from the empirical study: the importance of teaching english reading at teacher training colleges in the amhara region, ethiopia methods used in teaching reading in english as a second language reading materials used in teaching english reading skills the need for continuous professional development. the importance of teaching reading in response to a question about the importance of teaching reading, all the lecturer participants agreed that it was important. one lecturer stated, ‘we as lecturers are responsible for teaching our students to be able to read and understand different english texts. all students need this skill’, while another said that ‘our students must be able to read english texts’. as english is the medium of instruction in ethiopia from secondary school, one can understand why lecturers in this study found the development of english reading skills of utmost importance. lecturer participants also believed that regular practice and frequent opportunities to read a wide range of materials were necessary for the development of both fluency and enjoyment in reading. one lecturer indicated that ‘teachers need to emphasise the importance of this skill from the elementary level’, while another lecturer was of the opinion that english language lecturers who are teaching reading should be given workshops, seminars and training on reading continuously for them to focus more on reading. from the interviews with the students, it emerged that students did not agree that lecturers regard the teaching of reading as important. according to them, lecturers did not regard the teaching of reading as important and this consequently led to a lack of motivation and interest in reading on their side. one student stated that ‘most of the time lecturers do not give attention to the reading part of the lesson. and i also do not give attention to reading’. another student said that ‘lecturers do not put in any effort to motivate students to read texts that are written in english’. in this regard, a lecturer, although agreeing on the importance of the reading skill, confirmed what was said by the student by stating, ‘students do not get enough good opportunities to practise reading in the classroom. even we, instructors, do not give much attention to the reading part of the lesson. rather we focus on the grammar aspects of the lesson.’ [lecturer, male, 52 years old] our class observation confirmed this statement by the student, as classes had more emphasis on grammar than on reading. rajabi (2009) emphasises the importance of reading to students for two reasons: firstly, this skill provides students with access to a wealth of experience of the language and, secondly, reading presents a gateway to continuing education via students’ reading skills. through reading, learners are able to develop a sufficient language base that enables them to produce the spoken or written messages, making it possible to communicate to others. it seems as if students in this study were not able to experience the richness of the language, which might hinder their opportunities for, and success in, further education. if students are not motivated and do not see the importance of obtaining english reading skills, it is unlikely that they will read. methods used in teaching reading in english as a second language we were interested in the different instructional techniques or methods lecturers were using to teach reading in the classroom. when asked how reading was taught, the participants indicated that they were aware of and were using pre-reading, during-reading and post-reading activities. when referring to pre-reading activities, one of the lecturer participants stated: ‘i usually start by asking questions about the topic to arouse the students’ interest and get their attention. then, i ask a few pre-reading questions related to the new topic to help the students know that reading is a purposeful activity and to predict certain pieces of information that are found in the texts. this helps me decide on the amount of input i have to provide for students to have a better understanding when they engage in the reading tasks. then i teach a few new words from the text before students read the text.’ [lecturer, male, 58 years old] effective reading instruction requires teaching methods that give due attention to what the reader brings to the text. the beliefs of lecturers confirm that they understood the importance of combining students’ prior knowledge and experiences with the texts they are reading. one of the lecturer participants mentioned that: ‘i start my reading lesson with pre-reading activities to arouse the students’ interest; thereafter i provide questions for students to answer while reading and finally i give students post-reading activities to check their overall understanding of the text.’ [lecturer, male, 44 years old] during the observation, only one lecturer was using these instructional techniques to teach reading, which means that they were aware of this theory from their own studies or research, but that they did not always use it in practice. during the interviews, lecturers did not mention question-and-answer methods (qar) or translating for students to understand texts, but we found that these were the two most common instructional techniques used by the lecturers in the reading classrooms. one possible reason for not mentioning these methods is that they thought that these might not be the best or appropriate methods to use. lecturers depended on either reading the texts aloud or asking volunteer students to read the texts. it was also observed that they were mainly using the question-and-answer method to assess students’ understanding of texts. in a few cases, questions were asked about the topic of the text in an attempt to link students’ prior knowledge with the content of the text or to arouse students’ interest and capture their attention. lecturers, in general, seemed to be more comfortable with text-driven processing methods of teaching reading, especially when they considered a certain part of the passage as important to be understood by students. in three cases, the observation showed that lecturers would translate texts phrase-by-phrase to help students understand them fully. during the interviews, most lecturers were not convinced that their instructional techniques were successful. one of the lecturers admitted: ‘i do not think the method i apply when i teach reading is very successful because when i assess students they do not perform well’ (he was referring to the question-and-answer method that he uses to assist students in reading comprehension). this shows a low level of self-efficacy because the lecturer doubted his capabilities, which has the potential of discouraging him from persevering until he is successful (bandura 1994). it was further evident that students were not involved in group work during reading classes. during the interviews, lecturers indicated that in most cases they preferred to use individual rather than group work in the class when they were teaching reading. in this regard, a lecturer indicated that ‘i prefer to teach the whole class and ask questions to students. then the whole class benefits. i do not prefer group work. it is time consuming’. another lecturer had a different reason by indicating that ‘my classroom is not conducive for group work. if i have to move students to go into groups, it disturbs everybody’. students confirmed this, and one student said ‘there is no interaction among students during reading classes. the lecturer dominates the class’. this was confirmed during observation as none of the lecturers made the students work in groups while they were teaching reading. in this regard, sidek (2010) makes the point that for students to play an active role by contributing ideas and responding to the input from other students, they need group work and peer tutoring. the data collected from both the interviews and observations further indicate that lecturers saw the reading lesson in a limited way. typically, the lecturers started a reading lesson by explaining to the students that they were going to first read the story of the text and expected the students to listen and follow what they were reading carefully. the lecturers demonstrated the correct pronunciation of words while reading. little variation of this instructional technique was observed. for instance, as part of the introduction of a reading lesson, a lecturer said: ‘i will start by reading the paragraph and i want you to look carefully where i am reading’. he explained that this would help them to listen to the correct pronunciation of words. this is in line with the sentiments of miller (2006) and little and hines (2006), who argue that reading aloud offers lecturers the opportunities to share a variety of genres, model fluency, reading behaviours and correct pronunciation and that readers must be exposed to reading aloud for them to benefit from reading. in all the three colleges, lecturers preferred reading aloud, either by themselves or by their students. for example, one lecturer stated that he orders the students to read the text individually, and he then gives a few students the opportunity to read aloud in the class. thereafter, he explains the text paragraph by paragraph. finally, he asks the students to answer the comprehension questions extracted from the text in writing. reading materials used in teaching english reading skills it is important for efl and/or esl lecturers at a college level to select appropriate reading materials, considering students’ needs, interests and abilities. based on a question to lecturers and students on whether they used any additional materials other than the prescribed textbook or material, the participants admitted that they believed that a variety of reading materials was necessary to improve students’ reading skills, but that the reality in the classroom did not allow them to do so. one lecturer stated that ‘the students’ personal efforts are very low. ‘students are not interested to practise their reading’, while another lecturer admitted that ‘i just do not have enough time to use materials other than the prescribed textbook. i even struggle to cover the content in the textbook’. two lecturers admitted that they never gave students extra reading materials or activities for the english reading class, while four lecturers stated that they usually advised their students to read english texts such as newspapers, magazines, fiction and other books. however, they did not make a follow up and were not sure if students were actually doing this. a few of the participants stated that they used other materials such as newspapers and magazines in the classroom. a variety of reading materials is important for the students to improve their reading skills (ballou 2012). however, from the students’ interviews it became clear that most students hardly ever read. those students who admitted that they read additional materials in their free time, mentioned that they did so in their mother tongue and not in english. in this regard, a student admitted that ‘i read books in my mother tongue, not in english’. it seems as if one of the biggest inhibitors of allowing students to get exposure to different reading materials was the compulsory use of the training module. according to the lecturer participants, the colleges received the training module from the department of education, and they had to use the texts in the training module. for instance, a lecturer explained that he focused on the training module which was designed for the reading course and that he had to stick to the already prepared training module to prepare the students for the final examination, which was based on the module. he also explained that the training module contained a substantial amount of theoretical rhetoric which he also had to cover in the reading class. another participant confirmed the previous statement by saying that ‘due to the training material we have to cover, we do not have enough time and students and lecturers cannot use all the strategies in the classroom, although they know it theoretically’. observations confirmed the findings of the interviews and showed that most of the lecturers used only texts from the training module to teach reading. when observing the texts of the module, we found that they included less common vocabulary which students in many instances struggled to understand. for this reason, lecturers had to do extra explanations for students to understand the texts. besides, the texts were more theoretical in nature and beyond the background knowledge and comprehension level of the students, resulting in a loss of interest in reading and students failing to develop positive reading habits. in this regard, one lecturer mentioned that ‘students are not interested in practising reading’. ultimately with less reading opportunities, not much learning takes place. the need for continuous professional development regarding the question on lecturers’ opinions on how teaching strategies could be improved in the esl classroom, most of the lecturers indicated that they needed training. one lecturer stated that ‘english language lecturers who are teaching reading should be given workshops, seminars and training on reading continuously’. another participant argued, ‘the difficulties go both to students and lecturers in the sense that lecturers did not have sufficient training particularly to teach english reading; sufficient support was not given to the lecturers by those in authority.’ [lecturer, male 59 years old] it was observed that there was a lack of experience among teachers in developing modules, in general, and in selecting interesting texts for reading, in particular. on the side of the students, there was no reading of supplementary materials to develop their reading proficiency. it seems the students did not have a good foundation in their early grade levels because of lecturers not being adequately trained. as one participant stated, ‘training is needed for all of us to teach english reading’. only two of the lecturers reported that they have attended workshops on the teaching of english reading in the esl classroom, while the rest said that besides their undergraduate courses, they have never attended training in this regard. the lecturers further mentioned that they were not always sure if they were using the right methods as it sometimes appeared as if students’ reading skills did not improve, and they were not motivated to read english texts. discussion based on the interviews with the lecturers, it was clear that they agreed that it is important to teach english reading to their students. during the interviews, all the lecturers reported that teaching of reading strategies was extremely important. in addition, they suggested that students should regularly practise and read a wide range of different texts, not only for fluency but also for enjoyment. these ideas confirm linnakyla, malin and taube’s (2004) stance that english reading skills are an important means of functioning effectively in education and of developing as an individual, within and outside school, in the present and in later life, in further education, at work, and in leisure. furthermore, as english is the medium of instruction in ethiopia from secondary school, one can understand why lecturers in this study found the development of english reading skills of the utmost importance. however, this belief was contradicted in practice, as interviews with students confirmed that lecturers did not prioritise reading in the classroom. as a result, students were left with very little interest and motivation. the lecturers themselves agreed that they did not give students enough opportunities to read and that they, in general, focused on grammar. with regard to reading strategies used in the english reading classroom, the lecturers focused on the importance of pre-reading, during-reading and post-reading activities. some of them even explained these strategies by providing examples of how this could be done. they found it important to link students’ existing knowledge with the new knowledge in the texts. it was interesting that lecturers focused on these strategies, and yet none of them mentioned teaching methods, such as reading aloud, questions and answer relationships and peer tutoring. during the observation, we found that only one lecturer was using pre-reading, during-reading and post-reading strategies. the lecturers did not mention question-and-answer method or translation, but we found that these were the two most common strategies used by the lecturers in the reading classrooms. these findings are consistent with the findings of khonamri and salimi (2010), who found no significant correlation between high school teachers’ beliefs about methods of reading instruction and their classroom practices. although the lecturers did not mention reading aloud, all of them were using this strategy by either reading aloud themselves or allowing a few strong readers to read to the class. the lecturers confirmed that they did not give students enough opportunities to read; therefore, students did not get much practice in the class. extensive reading was also not thoroughly undertaken and encouraged as a resource to improve reading efficiency. furthermore, peer tutoring was also not used, as the lecturers confirmed that they were not using any group work in their classes. the latter was a matter that was confirmed by students, as they said that there was not much interaction, and that lecturers dominated the reading classes. when asked about the importance of teaching reading in the classroom, lecturers mentioned the importance of using a variety of reading materials. however, in practice, this belief was contradicted as lecturers felt obliged to use the training module because of the centralised examination that focused on this resource. although some lecturers indicated that they were encouraging students to read different texts, this was not compulsory and was not part of the formal reading lesson. the lecturers also did not follow up to check if this was done. during the interviews, most of the lecturers mentioned that they needed training and were not always sure if the methods they were using in the classroom were effective. in this regard, bandura (1994) states that the more lecturers manage to master tasks, the more their self-efficacy will improve, which, in turn, will positively influence their students’ accomplishments. on the other hand, the less lecturers believe that they are able to master tasks, the lower their self-efficacy will be. conclusion and recommendations this study shows a significant amount of contradiction between lecturers’ beliefs and their actual practices when teaching english reading. however, the relationship between lecturers’ beliefs and their practices is multifaceted, and there are a number of possible reasons why inconsistencies between the two occurred. in this regard, khonamri and salimi (2010) agree that contextual factors could have powerful influences on teachers’ beliefs and their actual classroom practices. in the current study, the lecturers in most cases were aware of pre-reading, reading and post-reading strategies, and although they were able to explain how to use them, they seemed not to have had enough confidence to use them in the class. furthermore, it appears that they were possibly not familiar with the different methods that might work well in the reading classroom. this situation calls for workshops and relevant training support for the lecturers in the colleges. perhaps the lecturers themselves have not been trained in using a variety of reading methods. another reason contributing to the inconsistencies between lecturers’ beliefs and their practices is the fact that lecturers had to teach reading from the training module and that centralised examinations test students on the content. the use of the training modules seems to limit lecturers’ use of different teaching methods and their choices regarding the texts they use for reading. this study therefore recommends closer liaison between the department of education and higher education institutions on preparing and prescribing study materials for students. the purpose of the study was to determine the relationship between lecturers’ beliefs and their actual practices in teaching reading skills to students. the study revealed quite a number of discrepancies between the two. in light of the complexities that go with the relationship between beliefs and actual practices, they were not unexpected and lend themselves as topics for further research. however, if students are not taught to read with comprehension in english as their second language, the implications might be far-reaching. possible implications include a lack of confidence and motivation to read and study in english. furthermore, it might deprive students of successful academic performance in higher education. this study recommends that lecturers should not only be made aware of discrepancies between their beliefs and the actual teaching techniques they are using in the classroom, but that they should also be equipped to become effective in their teaching of reading. this will assist them in closing the gap between what they ideally want to do and what they truly do in the reading classroom. furthermore, it will build a strong sense of self-efficacy, helping them to be successful in teaching esl and efl reading with confidence to students who desperately need it to be successful in life. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions this article is based on the completed ded thesis of t.a.g., supervised by g.v.d.b. g.v.d.b. has done 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enculturation language and the law research methods and design results discussion and conclusion acknowledgements references appendix 1 footnote about the author(s) bongi bangeni academic development programme, centre for higher education development, university of cape town, cape town, south africa lesley greenbaum department of private law, university of cape town, cape town, south africa citation bangeni, b. & greenbaum, l., 2019, ‘bachelor of laws (llb) students’ views of their literacy practices: implications for support in a time of change’, reading & writing 10(1), a248. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.248 original research bachelor of laws (llb) students’ views of their literacy practices: implications for support in a time of change bongi bangeni, lesley greenbaum received: 24 may 2019; accepted: 24 july 2019; published: 26 sept. 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: from 2020, the law faculty has decided to discontinue the five-year extended curriculum programme (ecp) stream within the bachelor of laws (llb) degree for a variety of reasons, including students’ perceptions of stigma, the poor throughput rate of this stream and the identified need to extend academic support to more students in the mainstream class. objectives: this article argues that we need to gain insight into the struggles experienced by novice writers on the ecp to inform the nature of support that will need to be provided to llb students going forward. we thus sought to explore the nature of the challenges experienced by two sets of first-year llb ecp students with acquiring legal writing practices, namely students from high school and postgraduate students with degrees from other faculties. method: two semi-structured interviews on students’ perceptions of their challenges experienced with legal writing were conducted with 12 participants. results: students’ struggles with legal writing could be traced to difficulties with engaging appropriately with legal concepts and sources, reading effectively and accommodating the discipline’s valuing of conciseness in presenting arguments. we also show how students’ english additional language status and prior degrees inform these struggles. conclusion: the article shows the value of looking to ecp students’ challenges with literacy practices (legal writing) in their first year to inform support for all first-year llb students. keywords: extended curriculum programme; student perceptions; reading and writing; access; academic support. introduction first-year university students’ challenges regarding academic literacies, specifically writing and reading, can be exacerbated by the quality of teaching and learning in schools classified as ex-det (former department of education and training). these schools are characterised by a lack of resources in the form of qualified teachers and teaching materials and are mainly attended by students who fall into the ‘redress’ categories (classified officially as african, coloured and indian). students with academic literacies challenges, the majority of whom are from ex-det schools, are placed in extended curriculum programmes (ecps) due to not meeting faculty criteria for admission into mainstream programmes. within the university of cape town’s law faculty, students who do not make it into the ‘mainstream’ bachelor of laws (llb) degree are placed on the ecp based on their results in the national senior certificate (nsc), combined with the mark achieved in the academic literacy and quantitative literacy components of the national benchmarking tests (nbts), while for graduate students wanting to register for the graduate llb, their grade point average in their primary degree is a determinant factor. in both cases, thus, the ecp students fall into a band of points below the minimum admission criteria for students admitted to the ‘mainstream’ class. these students receive extensive support in the development of legal writing skills, by means of explicit teaching regarding the conventions of writing within the discipline of law, as well as submitting weekly written assignments on which detailed written and oral feedback is provided, throughout their first year. however, there has been controversy among students on such programmes, as to whether being separated from ‘mainstream’ classes, which may induce perceptions of stigma and ‘being in need of’ academic development, is the most effective way of implementing redress interventions at university. during the nationwide student protests of 2015 and 2016, the ecps came under the spotlight, raising issues of placement and of permeable boundaries1 for students to move between the extended pathway and the mainstream programmes, which would serve to remove the stigma attached to separate curricula. while ecp students have typically matriculated from disadvantaged schools, this is increasingly not the case in the faculty. many ecp students have attended former ‘model c’ schools, typically located in suburban middle-class areas. bangeni and kapp’s (2017) research on students’ negotiations of multiple transitions to and through the university show how this is the case across the university’s faculties. this factor begs the question as to whether students from secondary schools across the spectrum are coming into university unprepared for the demands of tertiary study. from 2020, the law faculty has decided to discontinue the ecp for a variety of reasons including students’ perceptions of stigma, the poor throughput rate of this stream and the identified need to extend academic support to more students in the mainstream class. this move supports a global emerging view of the need to extend support to all students rather than just those from non-mainstream backgrounds (see tinto 2004 and, more recently, turner et al. 2017). sufficient student applicants from the redress categories qualify for entry to the mainstream through achieving the advertised admission criteria, thus ensuring that access to the degree and demographic targets within the first-year class are attained. the discontinuation of the ecp will have implications for the nature of the support that will need to be provided to incoming students going forward. it is envisaged that the support of students’ academic literacies will take different forms from 2020 onwards. since 2014, a legal writing project, funded by a teaching development grant and then by a university capacity development grant from the department of higher education and training, has been implemented in the first-year llb class for all incoming law students. explicit teaching of legal writing conventions, integrated within the substantive materials, and the submission of four writing tasks, upon which detailed feedback is given by senior writing tutors, were introduced. while the project is now embedded within the first-year law curriculum, discussions around conscientising teaching staff in mainstream programmes to the typical challenges experienced by incoming students and ways of responding to these in their teaching approaches have become especially important for facilitating access to the discipline. we argue that the challenges experienced by ecp students with disciplinary practices related to legal writing over the years should inform discussions around approaches to teaching in all teaching contexts. we therefore sought to investigate the experiences of this group of students in engaging with the literacy practices that shape legal education as a means of taking these discussions forward. the research project on which we draw was conceptualised in 2013 in response to ongoing concerns around llb students’ access and participation within law faculties. the objectives of this study were to ascertain first-year ecp law students’ perceptions of their challenges regarding legal writing upon entering a law faculty, and to interrogate their perceptions of what constitutes good legal writing at this stage of their studies. we then aimed to trace the shifts and developments in these perceptions by reviewing them at the end of their first year of study. we also aimed to conduct a comparative analysis of the perceptions of undergraduate students moving directly from high school into a university law faculty alongside those of the postgraduate cohort. this was done to gauge the extent to which exposure to three years of university study impacted their ability to effectively engage with the literacy practices of law. it also allowed for a comparison of the nature of challenges experienced by the postgraduate students in relation to those experienced by the school-leavers. while first year law students’ challenges regarding legal reading and writing have been well documented within a south african context (bangeni & greenbaum 2013; snyman-van deventer & swanepoel 2013; van der walt & nienaber 1996), these have not been considered alongside those of postgraduate llb students who have obtained an undergraduate degree in disciplines outside of law. this becomes especially important when considered alongside studies such as that of maurer and mischler (1994) who maintain that novices in most law schools in the united states experience significant challenges with literacy practices in their first years despite having obtained the mandatory undergraduate degree which is a prerequisite for legal studies. these authors assert that the quality of graduate students produced by a law school is invariably tied to a good foundation in their first year. while we look to the first year to understand student’s access to the disciplinary literacy practices, we do so with the full understanding that novice writers typically struggle when entering a new discipline (newell 1992). however, of concern to us is the observation made as early as 1974 by achtenberg that even though novice students come to quickly realise the difference between legal writing and writing produced in other contexts, this insight is not necessarily transferred to their writing. the role of discourse in disciplinary enculturation a combination of english for specific purposes (esp) and academic literacies theories is used to describe our research participants’ negotiation of the requisite language and literacy practices of their disciplines. while we aim to understand students’ challenges in respect to engaging in the structural and linguistic aspects of legal discourse and its genres, this is considered within a social justice frame which highlights the impact of these challenges on participation and access to legal discourse (see mcgrath & kaufhold 2016, who highlight the importance of drawing on both approaches when exploring the development of the novice writer’s literacy practices). the recent work of lillis et al. (2015) and gee (2010) assists us in describing our research participants’ attempts to become accepted members within law. these scholars foreground the contested nature of writing and inherent issues around power, with gee describing what the transition process entails for english as an additional language (eal) students within law. like williams (1991), he views it as one that entails socialisation into a distinct community with its set of discourse practices (see also swales 1990:24–27). while swales’s (1990) definition of a discourse community emphasises the mechanisms to participation from an esp perspective that foregrounds form and function, it does not address issues around power and access which gee (1996) considers in his assertion that discourses are ‘inherently ideological’ (p. 132). according to him, these serve to position individuals as being insiders or outsiders depending on the extent to which aspiring members successfully engage engage in the discourse on the community’s values, as well as its central concepts: people do not just read and write in general, they read and write specific sorts of ‘texts’ in specific ways … determined by the values and practices of different social and cultural groups. (gee 2010:20) however, gee (1996) cautions that these values can come into conflict with already established ways that are acquired in other discourse communities. bangeni’s (2009) phd research on social science graduate students’ transition into law outlines this phenomenon of feeling torn between past and present ways of being and the implications of this for students’ writing (see also mertz 2007). furthermore, dejarnatt (2002) argues that the teaching of traditional legal pedagogy is mainly through oral communication in the form of lectures and through disciplinary practices such as mooting. however, students are evaluated through written tasks. this can be problematic in that they have to make the leap from classroom discussions on content to negotiating the discourses of the discipline in written form. language and the law while six of our participants spoke english as a first language, six engaged with eal. within the south african context, several studies have hinted at the gate-keeping effects of english for eal student writers within the field of law (greenbaum 2004; ngwenya 2006). greenbaum (2004:8) references a survey that sought to access the views of legal educators in south african universities on the language skills of their llb degree students. the author notes that the areas in which students struggled were mainly centred on language usage, expressed by the educators as ‘the inability of students to express themselves’ (2004:8). while her study offers useful insights into the struggles experienced by eal students, it does not consider students’ views about their struggles with writing within this context and the extent to which their eal status contributes to these struggles. this study thus hopes that through its sourcing of students’ understandings of their meaning-making practices within law, statements such as those of the educators in greenbaum’s study can be contextualised. hartig’s (2017) study explores the factors that promote and impede the development of eal students’ legal literacy. writing from an esp perspective in the us context, her research underscores the connectedness of language and disciplinary knowledge. she makes the point that an exploration of the development of l2 legal literacy cannot afford to overlook this link and its implications for how students engage with the discipline’s concepts and genres. other theoretical perspectives on the teaching of legal writing in south africa reviewed by greenbaum (2009:89) include those of bronstein and hersch (1991) who recommend a multifaceted and integrated approach to teaching law to eal students, one that would involve changes to pedagogical strategies for law educators (see also clarence, albertus & mwambene 2014 who write about the value of this approach in the context of providing support to large classes within the llb). research methods and design twelve law ecp students in a south african law faculty volunteered to participate in the study. of the 12, six were undergraduate students, while the other six were graduates who had already obtained a degree in a faculty other than law. table 1 provides an overview of the participants’ educational and language backgrounds. table 1: overview of participants’ educational and language backgrounds. our methodology aims to extend our understanding of students’ challenges experienced with writing as reflected in the findings of a textual analysis of their writing (as suggested by bangeni & greenbaum 2013) by soliciting students’ perceptions of their challenges. we utilise lillis’s (2008:359) ‘talk around texts’ methodology which prioritises students’ understandings of their writing processes via semi-structured interviews. foregrounding the student voice reflects the academic literacies approach’s insistence on moving away from a sole focus on text as product and instead directing empirical attention to students’ views of their processes of text production (see lillis 2008). drawing on canning’s (2017:520) notion of voice, this methodology also acknowledges that ‘certain student voices are not always heard or articulated’ (see also gennrich & dison 2018). semi-structured interviews were conducted with each of the students at the beginning of the year and follow-up interviews at the end of their first year. in both these interviews we asked students to describe their understanding of what constitutes legal writing, as well as their experiences of legal writing. in the first interview, students addressed these questions in relation to a marked essay from one of their courses. in the second interview, the question regarding students’ perceptions of their writing in the faculty was revisited with the aim of assessing the nature and extent of their development in engaging with the literacy practices of law (see kapp & bangeni 2009, for a similar methodology in the humanities). themes were identified using content analysis (krippendorf 1980) with each author conducting a separate analysis where keywords and concepts that appeared frequently in the interview transcriptions were identified. the themes were then interpreted in the light of the study’s research questions, and developments from the first to the second interview were identified. our analysis draws on joseph williams’s (1991) model which outlines the various stages in the growth and development of novice legal writers. williams proposes three stages which he sees as constituting the process of acquiring the critical and problem-solving abilities needed for legal reasoning. these are the pre-socialised, socialised and the post-socialised stages. the pre-socialised stage is characterised by a lack of awareness of the values of the discipline which is then reflected in the novice’s reasoning, as evident when the law student makes the transition from contexts outside of the university into the law discipline. the socialised stage is characterised by an awareness of the expected conventions and values of the discipline. the post-socialised stage represents another transition, from law school to the workplace (or other learning contexts). this framework assists us in describing what the first two stages look like for our research participants as they engage with legal writing in their first year. results this section presents the themes yielded by the content analysis of the interview data, namely difficulties with legal discourse and english, concision in integrating cases and sources in writing, and engagement with legal concepts. difficulties with legal discourse and english when first interviewed, the participants were asked to describe what they considered to be the characteristics of good legal writing. in this section, we present their responses to this question alongside their perceptions of the challenges they encountered in their writing. expert views on legal writing characterise it as writing that includes some of the following features: extreme conciseness, which often results in confusion and intimidation on the part of the novice writer, impersonality such as the use of the third person, conditional sentences, pompous tone, dull tone, poetic devices and precise terminology, as well as a defined rhetorical structure and certain stylistic conventions (see benson 1985:518; mitchell 1989:277). students used a range of phrases to convey the idea that legal writing must be clear, concise and ‘understandable’ for the reader. these descriptions resonate with greenbaum and mbali’s (2002:2) identification of some of the conventions of legal discourse, such as the accurate use of certain ‘terms of art’, as well as an understanding of ‘what counts as knowledge in the field’ (williams 1991:10). de klerk (2003) notes that the peculiarity of legal discourse, including the power relations implicit in its formality and adversarial politeness, serve to exclude those not adept at its practice. students’ views of their struggles with legal writing were largely based on the prescribed readings with which they engaged in their first-year courses. responses ranged from the ‘difficulty of legal language’ to struggles with the various aspects of constructing and structuring legal arguments within genres such as the legal case and the problem question answer (pqa). in the first interview, the undergraduate students communicated that their schooling had not prepared them for the demands of academic writing, much less the demands of legal writing: ‘i have to forget what i have learnt at school.’ (imraan, undergraduate, l1 speaker) ‘in school we never did such writing, the actual application of the knowledge wasn’t taught in school.’ (sam, undergraduate, eal speaker) langa expressed experiencing the same challenges: ‘having to write in a way that was the direct opposite of what i had learnt at school and learning how to apply the legal rules to given factual scenarios in working with the pqa.’ (langa, undergraduate, eal speaker) students who had studied drama at school spoke of experiencing a loss of personal voice and struggling to avoid producing writing that was colloquial, as conveyed in the comment: ‘i write like i talk.’ (sam, undergraduate, eal speaker) gugu, an eal postgraduate student, articulated this struggle: ‘my writing is very poetic, hard to conceptualise, tends to lose people a lot. i worry that it doesn’t get the facts across because law, i discovered, is very facts based. they want you to tell them a certain thing and they want you to tell it to them in a certain way. i don’t think lawyers are up for interpreting, they want the facts up straight.’ (gugu, postgraduate, eal speaker) here, gugu is aware of how legal discourse ‘summons’ (gee 1996:135) one to be a certain kind of person through their engagement with it. her comment on her poetic writing is interesting when considered alongside the use of poetic devices in legal writing. the interview statements also pointed to struggles not only with legal academic discourse but with using english as a medium of learning. the students who had english as an additional language (eal) described their writing skills upon entering the law faculty as ‘horrible’, ‘very poor’, and ‘bad’. frank, a second language speaker, expressed the view twice that his writing had deteriorated since starting law: ‘my english was good, even talking, but now i don’t know what is going on with it, i have lost all my grammar, the thing that i was marked down on most was grammar and sentence construction and my written work is poor because i think much faster than i write.’ (frank, undergraduate, eal speaker) this struggle is evident in the statements of williams (1991:13) who describes how students at times of transition, when absorbing new concepts, often experience a cognitive overload, resulting in a regression in their writing and a temporary loss of skills they had once mastered. a notable difference between the responses of the first language speakers of english (l1) and eal speakers appeared to be that l1 speakers were more familiar with the structural features of formal writing from their school backgrounds. integrating cases and sources in a precise and succinct way our data also reflect how students struggled significantly with effectively interpreting sources in light of a given task, which pointed to a broader struggle with integrating prescribed cases and sources in their writing in a precise and succinct way. the challenge of selectively reducing a reading to a summary and explaining complex ideas in one’s own words was mentioned by several students and proved to be a particularly difficult task in english. sam notes: ‘i will write something down but sometimes it is like i am rewriting a textbook because everything is important, so i just write it as it is.’ (sam, undergraduate, eal speaker) ‘my problem is more than reading. i feel like if i write exactly what a source is saying, i will be copying what it says, and sometimes i lose track of the meaning when i try to actually rewrite it in a different way.’ (frank, undergraduate, eal speaker) frank was found to have plagiarised a substantial portion of a second semester essay. he was penalised by receiving a zero for this assignment. when discussing his actions, he explained how he had struggled to complete the essay and had followed the expeditious route of copying and pasting a significant amount of text from an internet site. fernsten and reda (2011:171) suggest that the fear of failure that struggling students experience when writing academic tasks may result in them ‘subtly or overtly resist[ing] writing assignments by turning them in late, leaving them undone or incomplete, or even plagiarising to approximate school’s required discourses’. for some students, using sources effectively was directly linked to how well they understood a source: ‘if i have a good understanding, then i can bring the sources in and have my own voice, but if i am not too sure, then it becomes a lot harder to do it in a straight to the point way.’ (inbal, postgraduate, l1 speaker) inbal mentioned how she had learnt the skills of ‘summarising, in a structured way at school’. this suggests that, while all students struggled with legal discourse, summarising was, to a certain extent, linked to students’ eal status and educational background. the undergraduate students stated that they had found it very helpful to see a sample answer written by another student in the ecp class, which was ‘to the point’. students’ statements also illustrated how their struggles with integrating sources in a concise manner were intimately tied to their struggles with reading effectively and their inability to discern relevant information for a writing task, as is evident from frank’s description of his challenges regarding writing: ‘my low marks are mainly due to not reading effectively which then affects how i summarise the necessary information from a long text.’ (frank, undergraduate, eal speaker) even though the postgraduate participants acknowledged the value of conciseness in integrating sources, it was one of the aspects of writing that presented a significant struggle in their initial months in the faculty. abdul, a first language (l1) speaker of english, felt that studying in the humanities placed him at a distinct advantage in terms of setting a strong foundation for the legal arguments he would need to construct. in contrast, students like nathi, an eal student, and gugu stated that they needed to ‘unlearn’ and ‘destroy’ the ways of thinking that were fostered by their undergraduate disciplines as these tended to get in the way of their attempts to produce concise arguments: ‘i struggle to present concise arguments after my humanities essays which allowed elaboration.’ (gugu, postgraduate, eal speaker) nathi’s statement on his problems with precision is illuminating: ‘the law faculty likes detail but it’s a contradiction because they like detail but not too much and they like you to get straight to the point but not using detail.’ (nathi, postgraduate, eal speaker) this statement captures mellinkoff’s (1982) description of legal writing where he notes its verbosity, which directly contradicts its attempts at concision. williams’s (1991:12) description of the pre-socialised stage illustrates how first-year students typically exhibit deference to authority, focus on concrete rather than abstract thinking, and are unable to manipulate abstract legal principles for application in a different context. they feel slavishly bound to emulate models of case summaries and formulaic approaches to answering problem questions, because they have not yet found the confidence to use their own voices. this was evident in our research participants’ use of copious quotes, stating what is self-evident as well as ‘an inability to use the language of law with dexterity’. it is worth noting that the postgraduate students’ struggles with drawing on cases and sources had less to do with deferring to authority as was the case with the undergraduate students. their struggles mostly concerned selecting key information from cases as well as engaging with the terminology used in older cases: ‘there has been a shift in the use of language, the old cases tend to focus more on latin than the recent ones do.’ (olwami, postgraduate, eal speaker) ‘i struggle to understand the judge’s terminology and how it leads to the final decision.’ (yusuf, postgraduate, first language speaker). it would seem that their undergraduate studies had in some ways managed to move them from deferring to authority, a process which would have occurred in their initial years. students’ engagement with legal concepts bizzell (1992:145) maintains that the ability to use disciplinary vocabulary is often the first test of initiation into a discourse community. likewise, hartig (2017:21) writes about ‘the close connections between disciplinary concepts and the language used to express them’. one of the interview questions sought to access students’ perceptions of their engagement with legal concepts. we revisited this question again in the second interview at the end of the year. most of the participants described a process of reading complex texts ‘over and over’, reading different sources ‘around’ new ideas, and comparing the material in their lecture notes, summaries and primary texts, to enable them to acquire an understanding of new and unfamiliar legal concepts. some of the eal participants described how they used dictionaries or internet search engines such as google and electronic resources such as wikipedia to assist them in appreciating the meaning of many of the new legal concepts. there was a language-induced sense of anxiety and fear (‘a rollercoaster’) expressed in relation to the difficulty they experienced in grasping meanings from difficult legal texts: ‘i feel bound to use the words from texts, because i am afraid to step out and use my own words, as i might misrepresent the ideas i am writing about. i do not have difficulty with the acquisition of most legal concepts because i can brainstorm them but then at times the english cripples me.’ (sam, undergraduate, eal speaker) students also mentioned the value of discussion as a means of learning new concepts: ‘talking to friends and other students.’ (sam, undergraduate, eal speaker) ‘asking a teacher or another student.’ (imraan, undergraduate, l1 speaker) langa described how he approached new concepts in law: ‘if i don’t get it the first time i hear it, or the first time i read it, i need to talk about it [a new concept]. so then i hear how my friends interpret things.’ (langa, undergraduate, eal speaker) the value of the study groups set up by students was also evident in the responses from the postgraduate students. there was also a notion of students ‘re-teaching’ themselves legal concepts through group discussions as they started to understand how academic legal discourse worked. frank and langa described how they did not learn new concepts at first in lectures, but that they had to ‘re-teach’ themselves by repeatedly reading the texts in which these concepts appeared, a process that also entailed attempts to match the definitions of these concepts to their own understanding derived from other contexts outside of law. even though both students perceived this as a positive feature in their learning, gee (1996) coincidentally attempts to debunk the taken-for-granted assumption that students will successfully teach themselves the literacy practices and key concepts of law if these are not taught explicitly to them. he draws on the findings of minnis (1994) to argue that this process of students teaching themselves does not necessarily work for students from non-mainstream schooling backgrounds. this is evident in how both frank and langa, who matriculated from disadvantaged schooling backgrounds, struggled with this process. students’ initial encounters with the concepts in their lectures further serve to compound the problem. our data, as well as statements from senior students in the faculty, show that in some law modules, there is an assumption by the lecturer that students enter the lecture room with a familiarity with the course’s key concepts, which then impacts on how these are mediated to the student. the postgraduate students expressed confidence in their engagement with legal concepts in the second semester of their studies. some of the explanations they gave as to how they had arrived at this stage are noteworthy such as the following statement from gugu: ‘i think my stance on legal concepts has changed, especially after we had gotten into jurisprudence. i recognise now how legal concepts actually inform society. i always thought it was a narrow legal thing, where law is one thing and society is another.’ (gugu, postgraduate, eal speaker) ‘even though the work in constitutional law is very theoretical and loaded with concepts, you can apply these to everyday life, so that helps.’ (abdul, postgraduate, l1 speaker) unlike gugu and abdul, nathi struggled significantly with concepts. he stated that he appreciated courses within law that required him to memorise the rules as he felt that he performed better on those rather than courses which were, according to him: ‘more theoretical and more like real law, i don’t know how to write these essays better.’ (nathi, postgraduate, eal speaker) while their eal status did not seem to impact their writing to the same extent to which it affected the undergraduate students, the responses from the eal postgraduate speakers did, at times, suggest that their inability to express their understanding of key concepts was, similarly to the undergraduate students, language related. the participants were all much more articulate about what constitutes good legal writing after the initial six months. there was clear evidence of a: ‘mindset change.’ (yolanda, undergraduate, eal speaker) they could identify with accuracy that legal writing is concise, formal, focuses on facts and requires backing from authoritative sources. ‘nothing superfluous’, ‘constrained writing’ and ‘complete clarity’ were some of the terms used to identify the type of writing they now aspired to use. while students still struggled with legal writing, they attributed their improvement to having practised during the year and suggested that more written exercises, with extensive feedback on them, would be the best way to support novice law students to improve their writing skills. williams (1991:13) postulates that good thinking and good writing are a set of skills that can be deliberately taught and learnt from experts in the discourse community; they are not skills that develop naturally as a result of a student’s mind maturing. this view contrasts with dominant modes of thinking within some law faculties in south africa and abroad which suggest that students come to acquire the literacy practices of the law discipline by simply being present. ethical consideration ethical clearance was granted by the law research in ethics committee for a one-year period (june 2013 – june 2014) with the option of a renewal (2 months before the expiration date) via the faculty’s research office directorate. discussion and conclusion attaining an understanding of novice law students’ challenges regard to disciplinary literacy practices assists in addressing teaching and learning issues within the faculty. students identified problems not only within the writing process in their struggles with the various aspects of legal writing, but within the reading stage as well. it seems that both groups of students understood the importance of reading effectively in facilitating an understanding of legal concepts and in integrating sources and cases effectively in their writing. while some of the postgraduate students could utilise the reading strategies they came with from their undergraduate degrees, the structure and dense nature of genres such as the legal case resulted in most of them not reading effectively. the interview data suggest that most of the students believed that repeatedly reading the course material would facilitate an understanding of the concepts therein. this lack of awareness of the need to read differently in their discipline dilutes the effectiveness of the arduous reading strategies that our research participants invented for themselves. this then points to the importance of teaching critical reading strategies for law, as well as the modelling of expert reading and writing techniques which would need to be introduced in the initial stages of entry into the faculty. while we are aware of gee’s (1996) cautioning statements regarding some of the impracticalities involved in making legal discourse explicit to novice writers, the act of modelling is one that is beneficial but which is typically overlooked in the process of disciplinary enculturation. it is also important to note that gee does concede that in the case of non-mainstream students, explicit teaching is necessary as their struggles with writing for a new environment are more compounded than those of mainstream students. however, all students would benefit from an approach that directs emphasis from what genres look like to what genres do within the discipline (english 2015:245). this author maintains that this approach raises not only the students’ genre awareness but their disciplinary knowledge as well. students entering the law discipline need to engage in meaningful discussions about how key genres such as the legal case function to create knowledge and how this function is realised in their structure and language use. the process of learning and engaging with new disciplinary concepts should therefore be an area of focus in mainstream classes, as well as in tutorials. in terms of addressing students’ problems with attaining conciseness in legal writing, the provision of samples of good written pieces such as case summaries and problem-solving answers for students would assist in exposing them to the conventions of legal writing. it is, however, also important how the faculty’s expectations of students’ use of these conventions are conveyed to students. it is envisaged that providing effective feedback should not only be a concern of the legal writing programme but should form part of mainstream lecturers’ teaching practice. while the law writing centre, the ecp classes, and the faculty’s mentoring system were identified as important resources in students’ transition into legal writing, students still struggled to adjust to its concise nature. in some cases, this challenge was exacerbated by their eal status. in keeping with our dual focus on academic literacies and esp approaches, the work of lazar and barnaby (2015:296), who write positively about the value of linking discussions about sentence-level grammar to ones about identity and access, is important. this entails not only alerting students to the form and function of the discipline’s genres but to how grammar functions as a meaning-making tool which takes into account one’s situatedness and audience. the roles of both students and lecturers in this process are significant. the size of the ecp class facilitates interactive teaching, collaborative learning and extended debate, as well as making possible the provision of detailed and regular feedback on students’ writing. the use of collaborative learning strategies in the small ecp class (averaging 20 students) has proved to be an important learning approach, which could be creatively adapted for use in tutorials and even lectures. peer support groups or the formal encouraging of study groups might also be helpful to novice students in mainstream classes. an important contribution of this study is that it highlights the nature of eal students’ struggles with legal discourse in the first year to show how these are inextricably tied to their struggles with english and educational background and, in the case of postgraduate llb students, to the ways of doing within their undergraduate disciplines. williams’s (1991) description of the stages of progression of novice legal writers is located within a context that is significantly different to our context, both in terms of the students’ levels of fluency in the english language, as well as the schooling systems from which some of our research participants matriculated. our research, therefore, contributes to an understanding of the ways in which the stages he describes manifest within legal novice writers in a south african context. an important finding from the interviews highlighted how mainstream students draw on ecp students’ learning strategies by seeking assistance from them. this supports the notion that the mainstream has, over the years, come to be vulnerable and equally in need of interventions for the facilitation of effective teaching and learning which move students from concrete to more abstract ways of thinking. our data suggest how students’ challenges regarding legal literacy can inform teaching strategies, without excessive resource implications, at a time when south african higher education is focused on a transformative agenda through facilitating access to disciplinary practices for all students. acknowledgements we are grateful to professor robert morrell for his insightful feedback on an earlier draft of this article. competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interests exist. authors’ contributions both authors, b.b. and l.g., collected and analysed the data and wrote the article collaboratively. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement the interview data used to support the findings of this study are included within the article. the authors fully support open access to their article. disclaimer the views expressed in the article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references achtenberg, j., 1974, ‘legal writing and research: the neglected orphan of the first year’, university of miami law review 29, 218–259. bangeni, b., 2009, ‘negotiating between past and present discourse values in a postgraduate law course: implications for writing’, southern african linguistics and applied language studies 27, 81–92. https://doi.org/10.2989/salals.2009.27.1.6.754 bangeni, b. & greenbaum, l., 2013, ‘an analysis of the textual practices of undergraduate and postgraduate novice writers in law’, per linguam 29(2), 72–84. https://doi.org/10.5785/29-2-147 bangeni, b. & kapp, r. 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(eds.), 2015, working with academic literacies: case studies towards transformative practice, parlor press, anderson, sc. maurer, n.m. & mischler, l.f., 1994, ‘introduction to lawyering: teaching first-year students to think like professionals’, journal of legal education 44, 96–115. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1726598 mcgrath, l. & kaufhold, k., 2016, ‘english for specific purposes and academic literacies: eclecticism in academic writing pedagogy’, teaching in higher education 21(8), 933–947. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2016.1198762 mellinkoff, d., 1982, legal writing: sense and nonsense, charles scribner, new york. mertz, e., 2007, the language of the law school: learning to ‘think like a lawyer’, oxford university press, new york. minnis, m., 1994, ‘toward a definition of law school readiness’, in v. john-steiner, c.p. panofsky, l.w. smith (eds.), sociocultural approaches to language and literacy: an interactionist perspective, pp. 347–390, cambridge university press, cambridge. mitchell, j.b., 1989, ‘current theories on expert and novice thinking: a full faculty considers the implications for legal education’, journal of legal education 39, 275–284. newell, w.h., 1992, ‘academic disciplines and undergraduate interdisciplinary education: lessons from the school of interdisciplinary studies at miami university, ohio’, european journal of education 25, 211–221. https://doi.org/10.2307/1503450 ngwenya, t., 2006, ‘integrating language awareness with critical language skills: a legal english experience’, southern african linguistics and applied language studies 24, 23–33. https://doi.org/10.2989/16073610609486404 snyman-van deventer, e. & swanepoel, l.n., 2013, ‘teaching south african law students (legal) writing skills’, stellenbosch law review 24 (3), 511–527. swales, j.m., 1990, genre analysis: english in academic and research settings, cambridge university press, cambridge. tinto, v., 2004, student retention and graduation: facing the truth, living with the consequences. occasional paper 1, pell institute for the study of opportunity in higher education, washington, dc. turner, r., morrison, d., cotton, d., child, s., stevens, s., nash, p. & kneale, p., 2017, ‘easing the transition of first year undergraduates through an immersive induction module’, teaching in higher education 22(7), 805–821. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2017.1301906 van der walt, c. & nienaber a.g., 1996, ‘the language needs of undergraduate law students: a report on an empirical investigation’, de jure 29, 71–88. williams, j.m., 1991, ‘on the maturing of legal writers: two models of growth and development’, journal of the legal writing institute 3, 1–33. appendix 1 semi-structured interview schedule interview 1: tell me about your educational history so far in your questionnaire, you wrote that your reasons for studying law were….could you please elaborate on this / explain this in more detail? how would you describe your legal writing skills at present? how do you approach writing within your law courses? how do you go about the process of writing an assignment, such as the marked assignment which you have here now? can you tell me about your experiences with acquiring legal writing skills? what challenges, if any, are you experiencing in engaging with key legal concepts in your law courses? do you think that the knowledge you bring with you from your undergraduate degree / working context hinders or facilitates writing / learning within the law context? please elaborate on your answer or explain in what ways, if at all, do you think your previous learning context prepared you for studying in the law faculty? having been in the faculty for four months, what do you think constitutes good writing within the law discipline? interview 2: tell me about your legal writing skills at present how did you acquire legal writing skills this year? can you share your experience of this process? can you comment specifically on legal concepts? what has been helpful to you in improving your legal writing skills? could you comment on the use of sources in your writing? were there any challenges you encountered there? to what extent has your undergraduate degree facilitated or hindered your ability to work with sources within legal discourse? (for the postgrad students) are there any specific things that would have supported the development of your legal writing skills more effectively than the support that was provided to you? following on from the previous question: what support do you think needs to be provided for students from non-law backgrounds? footnote 1. from 2016 to 2018, it was possible in the law faculty to transfer in and out of the first-year extended programme. rw 9-1_2018_contents.indd http://www.rw.org.za open access table of contents i original research enhancing learners’ reading habits through reading bags at secondary schools tsebe wilfred molotja, mahlapahlapana themane reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a185 | 30 august 2018 original research a reading project to improve literacy in the foundation phase: a case study in the eastern cape liezel cilliers, carole bloch reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a167 | 06 november 2018 original research voice matters: students’ struggle to find voice toni gennrich, laura dison reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a173 | 15 november 2018 original research extended strategy-use instruction to improve students’ reading proficiency in a content subject naomi a.y. boakye, michal-mare linden reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a212 | 03 december 2018 44 51 59 page i of i table of contents i original research genre analysis of essays in the social sciences: the case of botswana students joel m. magogwe, unity m. nkateng reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a137 | 22 january 2018 original research grade 3 learners’ imagined identities as readers revealed through their drawings sibhekinkosi anna nkomo reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a163 | 26 february 2018 original research the relationship between lecturers’ beliefs and their actual methods of reading instruction: an ethiopian case study tesfaye a. gidalew, geesje van den berg reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a162 | 24 may 2018 original research analysing english first additional language teachers’ understanding and implementation of reading strategies nophawu madikiza, madoda p. cekiso, baba p. tshotsho, nhlanhla landa reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a170 | 22 august 2018 7 16 25 vol 9, no 1 (2018) issn: 2079-8245 (print) | issn: 2308-1422 (online)reading & writing 1 35 vol 9, no 1 (2018) special collection: digital literacy, sub-edited by prof. hossana twinomurinzi, university of pretoria, south africa original research implementing tablets to teach reading in grade 5 ethel maboe, cornelia g.a. smith, mumthaz banoobhai, moses makgato reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a197 | 27 july 2018 original research embedding knowledge transfer in digital citizen engagement in south africa: developing digital literacy caroline pade-khene reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a193 | 27 july 2018 original research digital literacy: the quest of an inclusive definition james k. njenga reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a183 | 30 august 2018 original research changing thoughts towards digital literacy interventions for south african entrepreneurs riana a. steyn reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a172 | 30 august 2018 original research are we teaching critical digital literacy? grade 9 learners’ practices of digital communication lutho mnyanda, madeyandile mbelani reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a188 | 13 september 2018 68 78 87 94 103 original research use of mobile phones as supplementary teaching and learning tools to learners in south africa nandipha ngesi, nhlanhla landa, nophawu madikiza, madoda p. cekiso, baba tshotsho, lynne m. walters reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a190 | 25 september 2018 original research navigating the unbeaten track from digital literacy to digital citizenship: a case of university students in south africa’s eastern cape province sam takavarasha, liezel cilliers, willie chinyamurindi reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a187 | 06 november 2018 original research can you teach an old dog new tricks? an exploratory study into how a sample of lecturers develop digital literacies as part of their career development willie t. chinyamurindi, zikhona dlaza reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a191 | 21 november 2018 reviewer acknowledgement reading & writing | vol 9, no 1 | a219 | 05 december 2018 112 124 139 147 abstract introduction research relating to reading support theoretical framework of reading methodology results and discussion conclusion acknowledgements references footnote about the author(s) kristien andrianatos centre for academic and professional language practice, school of languages, faculty of humanities, north-west university, potchefstroom, south africa citation andrianatos, k., 2019, ‘barriers to reading in higher education: rethinking reading support’, reading & writing 10(1), a241. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.241 original research barriers to reading in higher education: rethinking reading support kristien andrianatos received: 15 apr. 2019; accepted: 07 aug. 2019; published: 30 sept. 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: reading is a functional academic literacy ability needed by students in higher education. in the south african context, inadequate reading ability is one of the reasons for high undergraduate attrition rates. it seems that role players within this sector are of the opinion that students have reading ‘problems’ that need to be ‘fixed’, often by generic reading courses. this article differs from the perception of reading ‘problems’, as reading is viewed from a lifespan developmental perspective. according to this perspective undergraduate students do not have reading ‘problems’ but experience reading barriers hindering their reading development and in effect their academic literacy. objectives: this study aimed to uncover some of these barriers by means of an empirical study conducted at the north-west university (nwu). method: the setting of this study was the potchefstroom campus of the nwu. a qualitative methodology was chosen whereby 14 individual interviews and 7 focus group interviews were used. the purpose of these interviews was to better understand lecturers’ and students’ perceptions about the variables of the reading process, namely the reading ability of the reader, the text to be read, the task, and the socio-cultural context. results: lecturers and students perceived a number of reading barriers within each variable, namely students’ non-compliance and lack of abilities, elements of the textbook and availability of lecturer notes, the format of the task, throughput pressures, and lecturers’ assumptions. conclusion: knowledge of these barriers and knowledge of the interconnectedness of the reading process could enable role players to collaboratively rethink undergraduate reading support, in which the lecturer has a crucial role to play. keywords: academic literacy; higher education; undergraduate students; reading; reading comprehension; reading development; reading barriers; tasks; textbooks; socio-cultural context; lecturers. introduction it has been known for a number of years that many learners who pass through the education system exit without being able to comprehend what they read (berndt, petzer & wayland 2014; pretorius 2002; van dyk, van der poel & van der slik 2013). for the fortunate who enter higher education, understanding an academic text seems to be a challenging task (bharuthram 2012; boakye, sommerville & debusho 2014; macmillan 2014; pretorius 2005; schoenbach, greenleaf & murphy 2012; taraban, rynearson & kerr 2000). as more and more students are gaining access to higher education (wingate 2007:392), higher education institutions experience pressure to help an increasing number of underprepared students to succeed. understanding what you read is integral in this success. indeed, reading is one of the functional academic literacy abilities (butler 2013; pretorius 2005) and research indicates that inadequate reading ability is partly to blame for students’ academic failure and the high attrition rates of undergraduate students in south africa (mcloughlin & dwolatzky 2014; scott, yeld & hendry 2007; styan 2014). as a result, many institutions in south africa offer academic support to their students, which usually includes a reading component of some sort. there is limited research available on reading support provided to undergraduate students. notably, research on undergraduate reading is not at all prevalent (alexander 2005:415). a possible reason for this is that at university reading per se is not assessed, only the outputs of reading in the form of assessments (bharuthram 2012; nel, dreyer & klopper 2004; pretorius 2002:170, 2005:812). if one takes into account that in higher education, reading is learning (taraban et al. 2000:284), i am of the opinion that role players need to know more about undergraduate reading and specifically the reasons why students struggle to understand what they read. in an attempt to address this lacuna, the aim of this article is to report on an empirical study conducted at the potchefstroom campus of the north-west university (nwu) that investigated reading barriers1 that first-year students and their lecturers perceive. i am of the opinion that knowledge of these barriers could prove insightful to role players with regard to undergraduate reading support. research relating to reading support hallet (2013:519) states that literature related to learner-focused support views academic literacy as the mastery of a set of skills, namely reading, writing, speaking, listening and thinking or reasoning. along similar lines butler (2013:75) finds that conversations about reading at university are often based on an approach that advocates for the acquisition of these skills. i would also argue that the reading support currently provided at the nwu, where the study took place, falls within this approach. students are offered a generic reading course aimed at improving their reading skills as part of achieving academic literacy. research shows that institutions choose this approach for a number of reasons. firstly, it means that the lecturer teaching disciplinary content is exonerated. this approach suits lecturers, as they do not regard themselves to be responsible for ‘teaching reading’ (howard et al. 2018:193; niven 2005:786; wingate 2007:396). jacobs (2007:60) adds that this responsibility is thus shifted to the shoulders of academic literacy practitioners. secondly, generic reading support courses are convenient in terms of ‘cost-effectiveness and administrative effort’ (wingate 2007:393). such courses only require a certain number of practitioners to cater for students of all disciplines. thirdly, it seems that universities offer such generic support ‘both as a politically astute form of marketing and as an attempt to combat undergraduate attrition rates’ (hallet 2013:519). according to archer (2006:450), defining academic literacy as a neutral set of skills that can be taught and acquired has increasingly become contested in this research field. research has therefore started to note the ineffectiveness of the type of generic academic literacy skills courses of which reading courses typically form a part. this generic approach suggests that the ‘problems’ are situated within the students themselves and they are held responsible for their ‘shortcomings’ (hallet 2013; wingate 2007). wingate (2007) and hallet (2013) both further explain that generic skills courses are divided into reading and discipline-specific academic literacy. butler (2013:78) confirms this division, adding that a limitation of generic support is that ‘irrelevant content not grounded in the discipline is demotivating to students and the generic skills are not transferred to the disciplines’. a fellow literacy lecturer, frustrated with some academics’ short-sighted view on reading issues at the university, conjured a metaphor to explain this dilemma. my colleague believes that the perception among lecturers is that students who struggle to understand what they read have a so-called ‘reading illness’. these academics do not consider themselves qualified to make the right diagnosis and they think that they do not have the right cure. therefore, they hope that struggling students will find their way to the academic literacy department or the student or reading support office. academic literacy practitioners or the support office are viewed as the doctors who have to figure out what is wrong with the students’ reading so that they can give them the right cure. i would argue, along with alexander (2005), that reading needs to be viewed from another perspective in order to open up alternative approaches to reading support. alexander proposes a lifespan developmental perspective on reading. according to this perspective, ‘reading development is a lifelong journey that unfolds in multiple stages’ (alexander 2005:413). she states that readers never come to the point where their reading is perfect. all readers continue to encounter problems with written language in every stage of their development. even seasoned researchers continuously grapple with texts that require them to, for example, adapt a different reading strategy or make use of reference materials. similarly, all students are on a reading development continuum as they commence and continue their journey through their undergraduate course. according to alexander (2005:426), the use of oppositional terms such as ‘struggling’ versus ‘successful’ do not fit into the complexity of lifespan reading development. she suggests a range of profiles of more and less successful readers. from this perspective, all students have the ability to develop into readers who can cope with undergraduate reading demands; they just need to be provided for. alexander (2005:430) then defines reading as a complex process of growth and development within a certain domain. her perspective is situated within new literacy studies (gee 1990, 2003) that views literacy practices as socially constructed and embedded within a context. alexander (2005) and gee (1990, 2003) share similar views. according to alexander, students need guidance from more knowledgeable people within a specific domain, while gee notes that guidance should come from ‘insiders’ of a discourse community. from these findings, it can be deduced that reading development should be contextualised within specific disciplines. as such, reading should be developed under the thoughtful guidance of lecturers teaching disciplinary content as they are more knowledgeable about what exactly the students have to master. it seems that embedding academic literacy development, of which reading development forms part, within a discipline is an approach favoured by a number of researchers (butler 2013; hallett 2013; jacobs 2007; wingate 2007). in order to juxtapose the reading skills approach against reading support and reading development within disciplinary contexts, another metaphor is useful. this metaphor is informed by butler’s (2013:76) reference to students as ‘apprentices’. students entering higher education want to learn a trade. reading is a key they need to unlock the knowledge of the trade. students are in different stages of their reading development. some need little guidance and others need more. it is the responsibility of the trade masters, or the more knowledgeable others, to cultivate the right set of conditions to guide their apprentices as they develop their reading abilities. with expert guidance, students can become more knowledgeable to the extent that, like the trade masters, they have enough experience to further their own reading development. in the next section i present the theoretical framework of reading that i used as a point of departure for this empirical study. theoretical framework of reading the applicable theoretical framework of reading was developed by the rand reading study group (2002). the purpose of this american study group, chaired by catherine snow, was to propose strategic guidelines to support the improvement of reading comprehension. this group define reading ‘as the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language’ (rand reading study group 2002:11). the study group came to the conclusion that reading can be conceptualised as a combination of variables, namely ‘the reader who is doing the comprehending, the text that is to be comprehended and the activity in which comprehension is a part’. these three variables occur within a fourth variable, namely the socio-cultural context that influences and is influenced by the reader, the text and the activity (rand reading study group 2002:11). this framework clearly indicates that reading is the product of the interaction of variables and that each of these variables, both individually and in combination with each other, has implications for reading development (woolley 2011:21). each of the variables is briefly defined below, as these descriptions informed the planning of the data collection as well as the data analyses of this study. the reader (rand reading study group 2002): the reader brings to the act of reading his or her cognitive capabilities (attention, memory, critical analytic ability, inferencing, visualization); motivation (a purpose for reading, interest in the content, self-efficacy as a reader); knowledge (vocabulary and topic knowledge, linguistic and discourse knowledge, knowledge of comprehension strategies); and experiences. (p. xiii) in this study, the reader is a first-year university student. the text (rand reading study group 2002): texts can be difficult or easy, depending on factors inherent in the text (such as the text features), on the relationship between the text and the knowledge and abilities of the reader, and on the activities in which the reader is engaged. (p. 14) in the context of this study, the texts were the prescribed academic textbooks students were expected to read. the activity (rand reading study group 2002): reading does not occur in a vacuum. it is done for a purpose, to achieve some end. activity refers to this dimension of reading. a reading activity involves one or more purposes, some operations to process the text at hand, and the consequences of performing the activity. (p. 15) in an undergraduate higher education setting, reading activities take a variety of forms. these activities are always part of an assessment where, for example, the students write a class test on a chapter of their textbook that they had to read. in this study the term ‘task’ will be used as a collective term for all the different activities that students complete as part of assessment within the context of the different modules. the socio-cultural context: the socio-cultural context refers to ‘everything going on outside the classroom which might impact upon learning outcomes’ (haggis 2009:380). as the focus of this study is reading in a tertiary context, this statement can be rephrased as everything going on outside the lecture hall, which impacts on reading. the rand reading study group (2002:16) identified two main aspects: the environments in which individuals live and function, as well as the context of instruction. in the socio-cultural context of the first-year participants of this study, the transition from the school environment in which they functioned for 12 years to the new university environment in which they need to function is an important aspect of the environment within the socio-cultural context. lecturers are central to the context of instruction by orchestrating the teaching and learning activities of their modules. furthermore, according to bernstein (1999), each discipline has a certain ‘gaze’, that is, a certain way of viewing knowledge with a particular focus. schoenbach et al. (2012:40) refer to the ‘habits of mind’ characteristic of a particular discipline. lecturers themselves have these habits of mind with which they engage in their discipline. lecturers also need to impart this ‘gaze’ to their students by making certain choices in the disciplinary instructional context (bharuthram & clarence 2015:51). lecturers usually have the freedom to choose the prescribed texts for their module and they also design the assessment tasks. as is clear from the theoretical framework, the text and the task influence the reading process and the lecturer can, to a large extent, choose and design these two variables. thus, the lecturer plays an important role in reading development in the higher education context. in the next section i discuss the method and findings of this study. methodology design at university the outcomes of reading are assessed in the form of tasks, but not reading itself (bharuthram 2012:205; pretorius 2002:170). therefore, a qualitative method was used to uncover some of the problems lecturers and students were experiencing in terms of reading in the first year of study. the perceptions of students and lecturers on students’ reading barriers were collected in semi-structured interviews held with lecturers and focus group interviews held with students. this qualitative study was part of my larger investigation of first-year students’ reading comprehension and reading strategy use (andrianatos 2018). the interview schedules of both the interviews and the focus group interviews were informed by the theoretical framework. as part of the larger study, the interviews and focus group interviews enabled me to compare students’ and lecturers’ perceptions about the students’ reading abilities, the texts to be read and the tasks to be completed within a disciplinary context. setting, population and participants a programme of study was randomly selected within the faculties of humanities, education, natural sciences, health sciences, economic and management sciences, law and engineering. thereafter lecturers responsible for the first-year modules within the programme were invited to take part in the study. the first two lecturers who responded per faculty were selected (n = 14), and i refer to the two lecturers within a faculty as lecturer a (la) and lecturer b (lb). i then visited a class of each of the lecturers and invited students to take part in a focus group interview at a specific time and place. the students who volunteered were chosen as participants (n = 56). participants from seven faculties took part, namely humanities (n = 8), economic and management sciences (n = 12), education sciences (n = 7), health sciences (n = 10), natural sciences (n = 5), law (n = 6) and engineering (n = 8). the focus groups were held per faculty. i included participants from different faculties on the campus to get a more holistic picture of reading challenges as opposed to reading challenges experienced within one faculty. measures, procedures and analyses the qualitative data collection methods were individual semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews. the interviews were conducted according to a semi-structured interview schedule based on the variables of the reading process according to the theoretical framework (rand reading study group 2002). this schedule consisted of four main discussion points, namely the perceived reading abilities of the students (reader), the influence of the prescribed academic texts of the module on reading (text), the influence of the tasks on reading (activities) as well as the influence of the lecturer and the specific requirements of the discipline with regard to reading (socio-cultural context). a semi-structured interview worked best in this study as it allowed me to clarify, probe and crosscheck responses. i also altered and rephrased questions according to the responses of the lecturer (joubert, hartell & lombard 2016:113). a focus group interview was held with a group of students from each of the seven faculties who were enrolled in the modules taught by the lecturers who were interviewed. the same interview schedule was used during the focus groups in order to gather data from the students’ perspectives. the data were analysed through the coding process of content analysis (maree 2007:101). first, i read all the transcribed interviews and focus group interviews to gain a holistic view of the data. stemming from the variables of the reading process as set out by the rand reading study group’s theoretical framework (2002), the transcribed data were divided into sections: the reading abilities of students, the prescribed texts of the modules, the tasks, and comments relating to the socio-cultural contexts. these were the a priori codes. according to maree (2007:107), this term refers to codes existing before data are analysed. after the data segments were divided, i made use of axial coding to uncover the barriers to reading within each of the codes. results and discussion there are undoubtedly many barriers within the reading process. the results and discussion of the interviews and focus group interviews are presented per variable. although these variables cannot be viewed in isolation from each other, their separation enabled me to analyse the different perspectives to be able to identify the perceived reading barriers. barriers within the reader from the qualitative data analyses, i uncovered two barriers that can be situated within the reader, namely students’ lacking reading abilities and their non-compliance with prescribed academic reading. in general, the lecturers were of the opinion that students’ reading abilities were lacking in terms of the reading demands of their modules. some of their comments include: ‘there are definitely many problems with reading, (and) understanding.’ (lb, education, female) ‘i think less than 3% of my students truly engage with the prescribed reading material and can read with the needed insight.’ (lb, humanities, female) some of the students were also aware that they were struggling with reading: ‘because like, with the chapter … when i read it, i get confused, so i just skim and scan, and when we do the actual chapter in class, that’s when i literally understand.’ (s4, humanities, female) students experienced problems with understanding what they read, they are not complying with their prescribed reading, they ‘take long’ to read, and they struggle to understand ‘difficult’ words. their low reading abilities seemed to be one of the reasons why they did not read their prescribed textbooks. a cycle of non-compliance with prescribed academic reading emanated from the interviews. firstly, students realise that their reading abilities are inadequate as they experience problems of comprehension as the following student comment indicates: ‘the authors want to look smart. they wrote with their level, not our level.’ (s7, humanities, male) then, they do not allot the needed time to read the text with comprehension. it seemed that students could not sustain reading for longer periods and they might also have lacked the vocabulary needed to understand the textbook. this seemed to frustrate students: ‘the textbook is so formal, so i do not have time to figure out what is going on. i rather study other modules where i understand everything.’ (s3, education, female) as a result, students became dependent on the lecturer to explain what they were supposed to read: ‘if it’s important, the lecturer will explain it in class’. (s5, engineering, male) from the lecturer’s viewpoint, it is evident that students are non-compliant with the readings and therefore, because of the pressure to help students pass the module, the lecturer devoted class time to teach to the text: ‘students will be able to pass this module without using the textbook.’ (lb, engineering, female) the students realise that the lecturer will review the needed sections of the textbook and so they are not forced to develop their reading in order to become better readers: ‘we start with the lecturer’s slides so we know what is going on. that way we won’t look at unnecessary information in the textbook.’ (s11, economic and management sciences, male) this cycle indicates that students themselves realise that they need to develop their reading abilities, but they would rather be non-compliant readers than take active steps to improve their reading abilities. the fact that lecturers take responsibility to ‘teach’ textbook content to students (e.g. identifying core aspects that could also be asked in tests etc.) reinforces students’ non-compliance and their reading abilities are not improved. these findings on the negative cycle of non-compliance are supported by ryan (cited in hoeft 2012:2) and bean (2001:134). non-compliance and low reading ability definitely hinder students’ reading development. barriers within the text according to all 14 lecturers, the textbook they prescribed for their module was suitable for first-year students. it seemed as though the lecturers matched the outcomes of the module to the content of a textbook. as one lecturer justified: ‘it is the only textbook available about the subject which is specifically suited for first-year students.’ (la, natural sciences, male) the majority of students held a different opinion on their textbooks. they thought many of their textbooks were too ‘difficult’ and ‘unnecessary’. this difference in opinion can be due to a ‘mismatch’ of students’ reading abilities and the difficulty levels of the textbooks. the opinion of students that the textbooks were not suitable can also be traced back to the fact that reading was not essential in many of their modules. a student’s frustration with realising that reading a textbook was, in fact, not necessary is evident from the following comment: ‘the lecturer would say “prepare chapter 7 of the textbook” and he literally only uses a few points, and there i go and study the whole chapter, where i could have just like done something else.’ (s2, humanities, female) the opinion of students that the textbooks were unsuitable can additionally be ascribed to the availability of other texts in the module. students in different focus groups and two lecturers stated that it was not necessary for students to read the textbook with reference to certain modules. one lecturer said that she ‘helped’ the students by preparing notes which the students could photocopy. as a result, students had little or no use for the textbook. students depended on the lecturer to give the gist of the content and expected to be ‘trained’ for assessment and, in many cases, the lecturers met their expectations. this seems to nurture a non-reading culture where students can pass the module by only attending class and studying notes. in fact, from the analyses of all seven focus group interviews, it was clear that most students made use of notes as a primary text. these notes either took the form of ‘handouts’ from the lecturers’ powerpoint presentations, or were notes compiled by a peer. furthermore, it became clear that selling and buying module notes was a practice among students. students preferred these notes because information was summarised, to the point, and the key concepts were identified. these notes were, in many cases, the only text necessary to ‘read’ to complete tasks. the following comment made by a student indicates how the availability of notes influenced his perception of the necessity of reading: ‘in the beginning of the year, i really studied from that textbook. then when the test came, i did poorly. the next time i did not open the textbook, i just studied the notes. now i’ve learnt my lesson.’ (s1, engineering, male) the availability of notes partly influences students to adapt such a pragmatic approach to reading. students run a ‘cost-benefit analysis’ when it comes to prescribed academic reading as they determine the minimum reading investment that will help them reach at least the minimum task requirements (schwartz n.d:1; del principe & ihara 2016:203). it seems that using information for different purposes is a characteristic of the current generation of students generally referred to as millennials. morreale and staley (2016:357) note that this generation of students ‘are more likely to repurpose, recycle, and reuse information from others for their own creative purposes’ than read seminal works and build their own knowledge. when other texts are available such as notes, and students can use the notes to complete the task, students see no reason to ‘go to all the trouble’ to read the textbook. it seemed as though students stopped looking for information when they found it in the slides. they generally do not read the textbook after they have studied the slides. this is definitely a barrier to their reading development. barriers within the task from the data analysed it is clear that students and lecturers had different perceptions about reading as a requirement for task completion. all the lecturers remarked that students needed to read the prescribed texts to be able to complete the task. different lecturers used the word ‘force’ as the following comments indicate: ‘the purpose of the tests is to force students to work through the content.’ (lb, natural sciences, male) ‘the individual tests definitely force students to read the textbook.’ (la, economic and management sciences, female) the lecturers generally communicated the requirement of reading before starting the task, by providing students with relevant page numbers and informing them that reading is important. the link between the text and the task was clear to the lecturers, as they designed the tasks. for the students, however, the link between the text and the task was generally vague and in some cases absent. the barrier related to the task as variable seemed to be the format of the task. to illustrate this barrier, i will discuss two examples. in one specific module, students had to give a presentation on a chapter in the textbook. the students worked together in groups of 10. according to the students, not all members took responsibility to read the chapter: ‘i do not like the group work. not everyone read the book. just those who had to talk made sure they read the chapter.’ (s2, economic and management sciences, male) in the second example, the students in one of the focus groups explained that one of their tasks was a tutorial class test. this test took place during a set time, where the students had to answer a set of questions using their textbook. discussions among students were allowed and a lecturer was present. according to the students, the format of this tutorial test led to very little reading, but a lot of discussion, which they clearly preferred: ‘i think it is much quicker when someone tells you something, than when you have to read a whole paragraph in detail. it takes long to read, reread and try to make sense of everything.’ (s1, natural sciences, male) during the focus group interviews students mentioned that they were content with ‘getting by’ (i.e. achieving a pass mark of 50% for a task). students remarked that they would always try to find ‘the easy way out’ in terms of task completion, which would lead to at least 50%. in other words, if the format of the task is group work where one can depend on another student to read the chapter, or a tutorial where peers and the lecturer are present to discuss difficulties, it is conceivable that for a goal of 50% task achievement, such tasks will lead to little or no reading development. barriers within the socio-cultural context within the socio-cultural context, the barriers of throughput pressure and lecturers’ assumptions were uncovered. in the higher education environment, there is pressure to grant students access to university and make sure that they succeed. it seems as though lecturers experience pressure from institutional managers who are running a university like a business. more students equal more government subsidy and so throughput must be ensured. the following comments of two lecturers support this statement: ‘i am of the opinion that lecturers do not pressure students to struggle with the textbook on their own, because all lecturers are under pressure to have a good throughput rate of students in their modules. as a result, the lecturers take on more and more responsibility and the students take on less and less. that negatively impacts the way students engage with their textbooks.’ (lb, natural sciences, male) ‘i also think that you have to find a balance between throughput figures in your module and knowledge that the students need to obtain. there is a lot of pressure not to have students fail your module, so it is not going to work if the material is too difficult. i try to achieve this balance with tutor classes and having the technical aspects of the essay count as much as the content of the essay. however a student can pass my module without doing a lot of reading, as long as they attend classes and do the needed assignments.’ (lb, humanities, female) throughput pressure is one of the barriers to reading as it seemed to increase lecturers’ willingness to make their slides and notes available to their students. it also influenced the tasks they designed (including the format), as is clear from the comment that the technical elements of an essay count as much as the content, for example. when lecturers, as important role players within the socio-cultural context, make choices based on the pressure to help as many students as possible to pass their module, reading development can be hampered. from the students’ perspective it is understandable that they would not deem reading the textbook as an essential activity, as the lecturers provide summarised texts. it seemed as though this help is superficial. when lecturers make notes available that summarise a section of content, the students are deprived of a reading development opportunity to learn how one goes about making summaries from a section of a textbook. when students can attain 50% for a task by making sure the technical aspects are in place, for example, they are also in a way deprived of the responsibility to produce well-written content, like a well-structured argument, for example. this assumption also leads to a dependency on the lecturer as students do not learn how to be independent scholars – something they will need increasingly as they continue with further studies. lecturer’s assumptions were another barrier that i uncovered within the socio-cultural context. lecturers seemed to assume that their students can read independently and that students intuitively know how to ‘use’ scholarly discourse, in other words, what is expected in the discipline in terms of scholarly engagement. the following comments of different lecturers illustrate these assumptions: ‘i cannot understand why students do not do well in this module. it is very straightforward. the students have to read, remember and give the information in a test.’ (la, economic and management sciences, female) ‘they should have read something before they enter my class.’ (la, law, female) ‘i think the vocabulary and language (of the textbook) are suitable for first-year students. i do not think it is difficult.’ (la, natural sciences, female) from the data analyses of the focus groups, it seemed that many of the students are not independent readers and struggle with scholarly engagement: ‘i just look at the [text]book and i get drained.’ (s8, humanities, female) ‘with one of my modules i read and read, and i still don’t understand.’ (s1, education, female) i think the textbook of this one module is way too complicated.’ (s5, education, female) ‘the textbook compresses the information in such a way that it is there, but it is not there.’ (s3, economic and management sciences, male) ‘it [reading the textbook and completing a certain task] is nothing like that which we did at school. we do not understand it well.’ (s4, natural sciences, male) because of the assumption that students should be prepared for scholarly engagement and reading, the interviewed lecturers did not seem to make any provision for students’ reading development. students seemed discouraged about their own reading practices within the context of their modules. they seem to realise that their reading abilities are not meeting the lecturers’ expectations, but they are unsure how this can be remedied. one student remarked that he did not fare well in a task and that in future he is going to read the notes ‘better’. this is ironic because the student failed to realise the core issue: he was not reading the textbook, but rather someone else’s summarised version of it. i am of the opinion that lecturers’ assumptions create a distance between the lecturers and the reading development needs of the students. the reading mechanism as the final part of the results, i present a visual representation as a summary of the discussed reading barriers (see figure 1). this representation was developed through a combination of theory and the findings of this qualitative study. as stated, reading is the product of the interaction of variables (rand reading study group 2012). based on this view of the reading process, i present the interrelated variables as cogs in a mechanism. in this visual representation, the barriers are presented as smaller ‘broken’ cogs that obstruct the functioning of the bigger cogs and thus also the functioning of the reading mechanism. this metaphor indicates that the uncovered barriers hamper students’ reading development. figure 1: the reading mechanism: barriers to reading within the reader, the text, the task and the socio-cultural context. ethical consideration the setting of the study was the potchefstroom campus of the nwu. the study population was first-year students and lecturers responsible for first-year modules. as the highest attrition occurs in the first year of study (scott et al. 2007), first-year students and their lecturers were chosen as participants. all participants volunteered to take part in this study and approval was obtained from the university’s ethics committee. conclusion higher education institutions in south africa have a responsibility to help the students who gain access to a tertiary education to succeed. from a lifespan developmental perspective on reading, all students can develop into competent readers; they just need to be provided for (alexander 2005). if reading is understood as the interaction between the variables of the reader, text and task within a socio-cultural context (rand reading study group 2002:11), generic reading support cannot be the answer to our students’ reading challenges. a handful of academic literacy practitioners or support staff cannot effectively help undergraduates from different faculties to, for example, read their chemistry textbooks or court cases. the lecturer teaching academic content is a critical role player in students’ reading development. as is clear from the visual representation in figure 1, the lecturer usually decides on the task (design and format) and the text (including whether or not to make notes available). these choices influence the reading process. although reading abilities and non-compliance are barriers within the reader, we cannot place the responsibility for reading development squarely on the shoulders of our students. they do not have a reading ‘illness’ that can be ‘cured’. in my opinion they are new apprentices in need of guidance from an insider within a discourse community (gee 2003). in my mind, there is no better insider than the lecturer. it is a fact that the south african school system is not preparing our students optimally for university. the academic literacy and support departments can definitely contribute to improve students’ academic literacy, of which reading is an integral part. however, other role players like lecturers, faculty boards and institutional management should move beyond blame shifting to accountability in terms of students’ reading development. van de poel and van dyk (2014:172) refer to a collaborative approach. lecturers are appointed at universities because of their expertise in a certain discipline. as lecturers, the teaching and learning policy of the university states that they should guide students to reach module outcomes ‘through active learning activities suitable to the level of autonomy expected at a certain level’ (north-west university 2011:1). disciplinary experts do not necessarily have knowledge of what constitutes such a suitable activity and might therefore be unable to design activities that closely link the text and the task so as to aid students’ reading development. the teaching and learning support structure of a university includes individuals who are skilled in developing active learning activities and have knowledge of the reading process, but they lack disciplinary knowledge. the education sciences faculty can also contribute in terms of how reading support should feature within curriculum design. such a team effort can possibly result in synergy between disciplines, the fostering of a relationship between role players who take responsibility and students who have the needed opportunity to develop their reading abilities. the aim of this article was to uncover reading barriers that students and lecturers perceive so that role players can gain insight into the reading support needed at higher education institutions. one limitation of the study is that the uncovered barriers might only exist for the specific context in which the study took place. it will be naive to think that addressing each separate barrier will help students to read better. it would not be theoretically sound to take the reading ‘mechanism’ apart and attempt to ‘fix’ the separate cogs. all role players have to understand that reading is an interconnected and complex process. role players, especially lecturers, should take cognisance of some of the reading barriers that lecturers unintentionally cause and students unknowingly experience, and how the variables of the reader, the text and the task influence each other within the context of a discipline. in this way, we can move a step closer towards collaboratively planning the developmental reading opportunities our students need as opposed to the limited generic reading support that is presently offered. acknowledgements the author would like to express her gratitude to prof. carisma nel for her expert guidance in this research project. also thank you to all the lecturers and students who participated and were willing to share their experiences. competing interests i declare that i have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced me in writing this article. author’s contributions i declare that i am the sole author of this research article. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references 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accepted: 06 apr. 2018; published: 22 aug. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract despite the fact that comprehension plays an important role in the reading process, the literature in a south african context reveals that learners continue to struggle with it and teachers continue to neglect it in their teaching. the literature has further shown that teachers’ neglect of comprehension in their reading lessons could be attributed to various reasons, including the fact that teachers seemingly are not taught how to teach reading during their teaching training years. this paper analyses the english first additional language teachers’ understanding and their implementation of reading strategies in their classrooms to develop teachers’ understanding and awareness of the important role played by reading strategies in the reading process. both quantitative and qualitative approaches were followed and a survey design was used. purposive sampling was used to select 126 teachers, to whom questionnaires were administered. statistical package for social sciences software was used to analyse the quantitative data and the qualitative data were analysed thematically. the results indicated that the majority of teachers seemed not to understand certain reading strategies and, therefore, implemented only a few that they understood, greatly limiting learners’ potential to explore other reading strategies. the study also established that some teachers only paid attention to traditional reading strategies that did not facilitate comprehension. the study recommended that teachers should be trained on how to teach reading strategies so that they are exposed to a wide range of reading strategies in order to assist learners improve their literacy. introduction reading, which is developed through teaching and learning, is an essential skill in modern societies and is crucial for learning in school and beyond (noor 2016). within the reading process, comprehension is singled out as a variable that plays a critical role in the reading process. paris and hamilton (2009:49) define comprehension as a strategic process in which readers use cues from the text in conjunction with their existing knowledge to make predictions, monitor the predictions and construct meaning from the text. in addition, pressley (2002) argues that good text comprehension emerges if a reader is able to predict what the text may be about, relates information in the text-to-background knowledge, asks questions while reading, monitors the understanding of the text and summarises what is being read. the relationship between reading comprehension and strategies of readers has long been investigated by various researchers (gonen 2015; iwai 2016; korthof & guda 2016; muijselaar et al. 2017; yang 2016; zainal 2008). cubukru (2007) defines a strategy as an individual’s comprehensive approach to a task, including how a person thinks and acts when planning and evaluating his or her study behaviour. cubukru (2007) further states that a strategy consists of guidelines and rules related to selecting the best tactics and making decisions about their use. because of the developing interest in the relationship between comprehension and reading strategies, research into the use of reading strategies for improving comprehension has increased over the past decades (cekiso 2012; klapwijk 2015; korthof & guda 2016). muijselaar et al. (2017) are of the view that for reading strategies to be used during text comprehension, metacognitive knowledge of reading is an important prerequisite. however, despite the fact that comprehension plays an important role in the reading process, klapwijk (2015) is of the view that learners continue to struggle with it and teachers continue to neglect it in their teaching. the teachers’ neglect of this important element of the reading process (comprehension) could be attributed to various factors. for example, klapwijk (2015) argues that teachers simply do not seem to view comprehension as part of the reading process, are not able to teach the concept and are seemingly not taught to do so during their teaching training years. teachers’ inability to teach reading has also been observed by botha et al. (2008), who stated that many teachers in south africa have underdeveloped understanding of teaching literacy, reading and writing. they further pointed out that many teachers do not know how to teach reading and stimulate reading inside and outside the classroom. this situation is a cause for concern and, therefore, has inspired the researchers to embark on the current study in the context of the eastern cape. specifically, this paper seeks to analyse the english first additional language (efal) teachers’ interpretation or perception of reading strategies and how they teach them in their classrooms. this paper is unique because the literature indicates that many studies have focussed on learners’ understanding and their choice of reading strategies (cekiso & madikiza 2014; li 2010; sheorey & mokhtari 2001). in addition, waddington (2017) argues that despite the growing body of literature in the field of reading strategies, little work has been done to show how teachers understand reading strategies and how they implement them within their practice. to the best knowledge of the researchers, no study has been conducted on teachers’ understanding and implementation of reading strategies, especially in the context of the eastern cape. therefore, little is known about teachers’ perception of reading strategies and how they teach them in the context of the efal in the eastern cape. problem statement reading is practical learning and has been seen by zhou and zhao (2014) as a hard nut to crack. their study on reading strategies used by chinese english majors revealed that english as a foreign language (efl) learners were unable to read effectively and frequently failed to comprehend the text. in the context of south africa, especially in the eastern cape, a similar study was conducted by cekiso and madikiza (2014). specifically, their study was conducted in one of the schools in mthatha district on reading strategies employed by grade 9 learners, which revealed that the learners from the selected school were not using a wide range of reading strategies and as such found it difficult to understand the printed text. their study was prompted by the reading challenge that was observed by the teachers from the school who reported that learners were learning without comprehending. the learners’ poor performance in comprehending texts has been revealed by the annual national assessment (ana). for example, the 2011 grades 2–7 ana results, as reported by the department of basic education (2011), revealed that learners who obtained ‘partially achieved’ level varied from 30% to 47%, and those who obtained ‘achieved’ as a level of performance ranged from 12% to 31%. in addition, botha et al. (2008:2) state that the problem of poor reading competency amongst south african learners is that most teachers who are teaching beyond the foundation phase are not trained to teach basic reading. mthatha district has not been immune to the reading crisis that is faced by south africa. learners in this district have consistently shown poor performance in literacy assessments conducted since 2011. this has over the years led to interventions by the eastern cape provincial department of teachers’ education in districts to host reading awareness weeks. this points to a high possibility that the reading challenges learners face might be linked to challenges teachers have in understanding and implementing reading strategy instruction. therefore, this paper seeks to answer the following questions: what are efal teachers’ perceptions of reading strategies? what are their reading instruction practices? purpose of the study reading has generally held an important place in foreign and second language learning and teaching (zhou & zhao 2014). the assumption is that if teachers understand reading strategies, their learners are likely to understand them too. it is vital for teachers to not only understand reading strategies but also implement them in their classrooms. in this way, teachers would be helping their learners to become independent and confident readers. this study sought to explore teachers’ conception of reading strategies and how they teach them so as to provide teachers with information they can use to learn more about reading strategies and improve their classroom practice with regard to reading strategy instruction. also, the study aimed to describe and analyse the teachers’ perceptions of reading strategies. reading strategy instruction oxford (2013) points out that efl and/or esl educators have long been in search of answers to account for the fact that some students have great difficulty in esl and/or efl reading comprehension. as a result, many studies have been conducted to determine what influences the reading comprehension process. while some studies explored the role played by grammar and vocabulary in the reading comprehension process (akbari 2014; ma & lin 2015; sidek & rahim 2015), other empirical studies focussed on the role played by reading strategies (sheorey & baboaczky 2008; zhang 2008). the results of such studies have revealed that there is an extensive body of knowledge indicating that teaching students how to use reading strategies can enhance their reading comprehension (pressley 2002 in cahoon 2008). beckman (2002:3) believes that strategy instruction involves teaching students about strategies, teaching them how and when to use strategies and encouraging them to make strategic behaviours part of their learning schema. cahoon (2008) views teachers’ use of reading strategies to be an effective way to help students improve their comprehension of content. in addition, laughridge (2011) argues that the ultimate goal of classroom reading instruction is to promote self-regulated readers who possess the skills and strategies to comprehend what they read and to develop metacognition to know when and how to apply the strategies. according to cekiso (2012:1), comprehension strategy instruction, including multiple reading strategies, has been justified for being beneficial in helping learners become strategic readers and improve their reading comprehension. in the south african context, the need for reading strategy instruction should be seen in the poor reading performance of the learners at primary, high school and tertiary levels. thus, it is necessary for teachers to provide learners with reading strategy instruction that focusses on teaching reading strategies that can help them become strategic readers (cekiso 2012). this sentiment is also echoed by william and burden (1997), who point out that english language teachers should go beyond the transmission of knowledge to the empowerment of students by helping them to acquire the knowledge, skills and strategies needed to become autonomous learners who can take responsibility for their own learning. according to cofu (2013), in south africa teachers have significant difficulties in implementing the reading strategies to achieve the levels of competencies as required by curriculum assessment policy statement (caps) strategies to learners. to address this challenge, cofu (2013) is of the view that teachers need extensive knowledge and specialised skills, which were not offered during their initial training. a study conducted by martinez (2011) points out that literature on metacognitive awareness of reading strategies indicates the need to increase understanding of readers’ metacognitive knowledge about reading strategies so that individuals develop into active and constructively responsive readers. according to mokhtari and reichard (2002), unskilled readers lack the metacognitive strategic awareness and monitoring of the comprehension process, and these less successful readers are often unaware of their own cognitive process (garcia 1998; mokhtari & reichard 2002). mokhtari and reichard (2002) also point out that students must be helped to acquire and use the reading strategies that have been identified as successful. considerable research has shown that the use of a reading comprehension strategies in the learning of second language has positive effects on students’ reading comprehension performance (noor 2016). in addition, ness (2011) argues that teachers need to teach a variety of reading strategies to enhance students’ abilities in reading comprehension. therefore, according to ness, it is important to develop teachers’ deeper understanding of their reading instruction. the results of a study conducted by ballou (2012) on explicit strategy instruction revealed that the students’ ability to use a wide variety of strategies increased after receiving explicit strategy instruction. the literature has revealed that more proficient readers employ many different reading strategies such as guessing, identifying main ideas and focussing on text structures, while less proficient readers use fewer reading strategies (klapwijk 2015; westby 2004). therefore, the teacher’s role in the development of the learners’ reading comprehension is important. however, priestley (2011) and swanepoel (2009) in klapwijk (2012) argue that initiatives aimed at the implementation of educational change fail regularly, often because teachers’ role in the change process is underestimated. hence, the focus of the current study has already been mentioned above. research methodology this study used both quantitative and qualitative approaches. the aim of using both approaches was an attempt to produce results that could bring insight and be generalised regarding the perceptions of senior phase efal teachers’ understanding and implementation of reading strategies in the mthatha education district. a survey research design was used in this study. it was chosen so that the information gathered from the 126 efal teachers’ responses could be inferred. the purposive sampling technique was used to select 126 teachers to whom questionnaires were administered during data collection. the teachers were all from the mthatha education district. out of 126 efal teachers, six teachers were selected voluntarily to participate in the interview process. participants in this study, the participants comprised senior phase teachers teaching english as first additional language in the mthatha district in the eastern cape. they were all senior phase teachers. in the context of south africa and by the time this study was conducted, senior phase was from grade 7 to grade 9. all teachers (126) were speaking isixhosa as their mother tongue. the sample consisted of 86 females and 40 males. their qualifications ranged from diploma to junior degree. the researchers looked at the teachers’ understanding and implementation of reading strategies in their classrooms. instrumentation the study used interviews and questionnaires as methods of data collection. to address the first research question, the study employed a qualitative approach. specifically, teachers’ perceptions or understanding of reading strategies was examined through the use of semi-structured interviews. gill et al. (2008) describe a semi-structured interview as consisting of several key questions that not only help define the areas to be explored but also allow the interviewer or interviewee to diverge to pursue an idea or response in more detail. this data collection method was deemed suitable for the first research question as it sought to understand how teachers perceived reading strategies. to address the second research question on teachers’ implementation of reading strategy instruction, questionnaires were distributed to 126 efal teachers from mthatha district. according to godwin and harry (2009:1), a questionnaire is a set of systematically structured questions used by a researcher to get the required information from respondents. a questionnaire is any written document that presents respondents with a series of questions or statements to which they are to react either by writing out their answers or selecting from amongst existing answers. there were 36 reading strategies in the questionnaire that were presented to teachers to evaluate their understanding and implementation of reading strategies. these strategies were divided into three categories as guided by the three stages of reading (pre-reading, during-reading and post-reading), which were compressed into different categories for better understanding. when grouping these strategies, some were overlapping and could fit into both pre-reading and during reading stages and some could fit into during reading and post-reading stages or sometimes to all three stages. these were then put into either fitting category. there were 6 pre-reading and 20 during-reading strategies that were divided into two categories: strategies that analyse the level of understanding and strategies that involve inferences, and the 10 post-reading strategies were also divided into two categories – strategies that analyse the level of understanding and strategies that deal with summarising the text. the teachers had to rate how a reading strategy pertained to themselves on a likert scale of 1 (which meant ‘i never do this’) to 5 (which meant ‘i always do this’). for ease of coding, the above statements were collated into likert scale categories. collated raw responses the 5-point likert scale categories were combined as follows: agree: 4 and 5 = i usually do this and i always do this. sometimes: 3 = from time to time i do this. disagree: 1 and 2 = i never do this and i almost never do this. data analysis according to maree (2008), qualitative data analysis involves working with data, organising them, categorising them into manageable units, synthesising them, searching for patterns, discovering what is important and coming to reliable conclusions about the data. in this study, the researchers used the manual method to analyse the data generated from the six participants through interviews. the researchers read through the data and became familiar with it. the next step was to examine the data in detail and to provide detailed descriptions of what the participants have said; this was followed by coding and categorising the data and grouping them into themes. on the other hand, the quantitative data collected through questionnaires were analysed by using statistical packages for social sciences (spss) version 22 for data capturing, presentation, analysis and interpretation. the data analysis is in line with the instrument that was used (questionnaire) in the collection of data. as already mentioned above, the data were from 126 teachers from mthatha. the sample consisted of 86 females and 40 males. the questionnaire protocols on reading strategies, understanding and use were reduced to meaningful units through the use of spss version 22 to divulge contributions made by teachers. findings qualitative data the focus of the first research question was to establish the efal teachers’ understanding or perceptions of reading strategies. specifically, the researchers were interested in establishing whether teachers from the selected district knew what reading strategies were. these efal teachers were asked to share their own understanding of reading strategies. most teachers seemed to be of the view that reading strategies are ways that can be used by learners to comprehend a text. others stated that reading strategies were techniques that helped in effective reading, and they aided learners to be critical thinkers. based on their responses, it was clear that teachers understood what reading strategies were and when they were used. responding to this question, one teacher explained that: ‘reading strategies involve how one embarks on reading and how teachers go about teaching reading to the learners. these are techniques that both teachers and learners employ in class for meaningful and effective reading. the ideal reason for the use of reading strategies is to understand the text.’ [teacher a, iqhayiya secondary school] to the very same question, another teacher seemed to agree with the above teacher as she explained: ‘reading is a very critical skill that needs both the teacher and the learners to master in order to achieve the desired outcome. therefore, reading strategies are the different ways a teacher employs in her/his class in order that learners are able to read with understanding. this means that learners will be able to comprehend the text.’ [teacher c, shooting star secondary school] as part of teachers’ understanding of the reading strategies, the researchers were also interested in the reading strategies teachers were using in their classrooms. most teachers mentioned individual, shared group reading or even reading aloud for the learners as reading strategies that they used in class. in trying to share reading strategies employed in the class, some teachers went as far as giving the different stages of reading including before the actual reading (pre-reading), while reading (during reading) and after the reading has taken place (after reading) strategies, but it was quite evident that they knew reading strategies as they mentioned them in their explanation. each stage was provided with reading strategies that went with it. amongst reading strategies mentioned were skimming, scanning, predicting or guessing what will happen, visualising or forming mental pictures, summarising, identifying the most important ideas and restating them on their own. responding to this question, teacher a from iqhayiya secondary school said: pre-reading: it includes activating background knowledge, predicting or guessing, skimming and scanning of the text. during reading: it refers to close reading of the text supported by the teacher, inference, language use, imagery or formulating mental pictures, focus on word choice, identifying the most important ideas and restating them on their own. post-reading: this refers to interpreting the text as a whole using strategies like summarising, comparing and contrasting, inference, drawing conclusions and expressing opinions. responding to the question on reading strategies that teachers adopted in their classes, one teacher commented: ‘my strategy is to give my learners a text and then read for them to model what i am doing; they will read individually to check if they were listening to me. i also train the learners to work as partners or groups as this helps them to learn freely without feeling the pressure from the teacher.’ [teacher b, ilithalethu secondary school] when the learners finally meet with the teacher for reading and answering questions on the text they have read, they display more confidence. teachers were asked to give reasons why they thought the reading strategies they adopted in their classes were important. many teachers claimed that the strategies they adopted in class were important because they helped them improve reading in learners. reading strategies were also said to be important because they brought greater meaning and understanding to what learners had read. they also claimed that reading strategies encouraged the learners to talk about the text and use the text’s vocabulary fruitfully and at the end involve them in trying to reproduce the genre in a written text on their own. the teachers said frequent talking about what the learners read helps them understand the text better. keeping on asking the learners’ questions to check their level of understanding about what they have read improves their level of english proficiency, which was another common thread amongst the 10 teachers. some teachers also mentioned that there were those strategies that they were still struggling with like tonal variation and were still working on them. the following extracts support the explanation above: ‘reading strategies help learners to demonstrate different purposes for reading for an example reading for understanding or when they are reading for test purposes. as much as reading for fun is important learners must be able to pinpoint important aspects of the text. vocabulary increases with reading, language structures are also identified in the text i.e. parts of speech. these reading strategies make learners understand relevance of the previous reading to the one that they are reading. learners make sense of what they are reading through reading strategies that they employ in class.’ [teacher d, excel secondary school] a response to the question on why teachers thought the reading strategies they adopted in their classes were important was the following: ‘these reading strategies encourage learners to engage with the text and the vocabulary in the text is used correctly which indirectly improves their level of english proficiency. as much as i am still struggling with some reading strategies like tonal variation, the few that i am adopting seem to be working for my learners. my learners are now able to comprehend the text given to them and show interest in reading.’ [teacher e, thembelihle secondary school] the six teachers were asked to list and describe any five reading strategies that they felt were important and also to provide any reading activities that addressed each of the five reading strategies they would have mentioned. it was evident that some teachers amongst this group were aware of only a few strategies. teachers concurred with each other as they believed the important reading strategies to be employed in class were to read aloud, share the reading, group reading or simultaneous reading as one teacher has put it, individual reading, reading intensively which promotes a lot of practice for learners. two teachers differed from other teachers as they gave a number of different strategies from the group. these reading strategies ranged from skimming the text, making inferences and visualising to summarising the text. the following are marked deliberations by teacher c, thembelihle secondary school: shared reading: the teacher divides the class into smaller groups. reading aloud: the teacher first reads aloud to the class while learners are listening. group reading: the learners read aloud in groups. individual reading: the teacher asks learners to read aloud individually. a short story is a good example of an activity that can go with my reading strategies as it captures learners’ interest and provides tone variations. reading intensively: too much reading that makes a learner to practise more. reading strategies shared by teacher e from the shooting star secondary school were: skimming: a reading technique used to gather information. one runs through the text, picks up the ideas that draw the attention. scanning: this is used to find specific information, read the passage to find the answer, ignore unrelated information. activities like word puzzles for skimming and scrabble for scanning were mentioned. predicting reading: guessing on what the text is all about, some of the predictions may be true. reading without dictionaries: use of clues to predict the meaning of words. teacher f from the iqhayiya school stated: ‘i think for me reading for competition – where learners have to compete at a higher level like readathon (pronunciation of words, tonal variations and dictionary work are activities associated with this reading strategy).’ ‘reading with comprehension – learners answer contextual questions (picture analysis can be one of the activities to be used with this strategy).’ ‘reading for enjoyment – learners read for leisure but fluency and vocabulary are being developed. interesting books like magazines with celebrities, newspapers and folklores as activities that goes with this reading strategy).’ ‘reading with understanding – being able to answer questions.’ ‘observing punctuation marks – to make sense of what the learner reads.’ ‘summarising the text – it is when a reader uses his or her own words to retell the story.’ ‘underlining difficult words – marking important words.’ ‘meaning of difficult words – using dictionary or guessing the meaning.’ the last deliberation on important reading strategies is from teacher a of imfundo school, who mentioned the following strategies: ‘making inferences: learners take what they know using clues from the text and think ahead to make judgments. it is simple the speculation of what is to come or said. guess work will be an activity i can use and underlining difficult words and creation of own dictionary for all inferred words in class.’ ‘visualising and/or forming mental pictures: it brings a text to life, engages the imagination and use of all senses, learners create a mental image from the text that is read. the activity i can use is to tell the learners to close their eyes and think of a situation or maybe describe a character using their own imagination.’ ‘summarising: learners are taught how to identify the most important ideas and restate them in their own words. there is also retelling of a story that learners have heard before teaching them how to summarise. i can also tell them to look at a story’s features like the title, character, place and time and briefly tell me what they think happened there before we even actually read the story.’ from the above responses, it was clear that teachers understood what reading strategies were. however, it was also clear that their understanding was only limited to the traditional way of teaching reading. for example, their focus was on teaching oral reading. the literature has revealed that focussing only on oral reading does not address the problem of reading comprehension but only assists with elements like observing punctuation marks, pronunciation and determining reading speed. such elements of the reading process play a limited role as the major aim of reading is comprehension. few teachers mentioned reading strategies such as making inferences, summarising and visualising. only one teacher out of six mentioned important reading strategies like guessing at the meaning of unfamiliar words. instead they only mentioned the use of dictionaries which might force the learners to read at a word level and disregard context. quantitative data the second research question focussed on establishing the reading instruction practices of the efal teachers. specifically, the focus was on how efal teachers implemented or adopted reading strategies in their classrooms. teachers completed a questionnaire, which served as a snapshot of their practices. the tables below show reading strategies from three different categories that were said to be both preferred and not preferred by efal teachers. the reading strategies were divided into pre-reading, during-reading and post-reading categories. pre-reading strategies table 1 below focusses on the reading strategies that teachers encourage their learners to use before the reading process. such reading strategies are important as they seek to sensitise learners to the text. table 1: pre-reading or before-reading strategies. in table 1, 6 out of 36 items are pre-reading strategies. the pre-reading strategies comprised skimming the text by first noting characteristics such as length and organisation, to always read the title, subheadings, references and so on, using one’s previous knowledge to guess what is not explicitly stated in the text, decide what to read closely and what to ignore, thinking about what one knows to help one understand what one is reading and bringing what you know into what you are reading. four of these strategies seemed to be most preferred, one unconvincingly preferred and the other being least preferred by the teachers. a total of 69.6% of the respondents agreed that the most important reading strategy out of all six pre-reading strategies was to always read the title, subheadings and references. the reason for this response could be that the teachers knew that a title gives direction as well as understanding to what is written or going to be read. it also creates eagerness or lack of interest to read a text. the next two reading strategies that were equally important with 59.2% respondents focussed on how learners manipulate their background to understand what they read. the above strategies mention almost the same thing, for example, taking acquired knowledge and using it to relate to what one is reading. the teachers’ agreement to the use of these strategies could be because they understand that their learners bring to class knowledge acquired before they even started to attend school and they are motivated to apply it during reading (fillmore & snow 2000:8). the respondents felt that skimming the text was least important to their classes; hence, 57.6% did not agree with this strategy; only 27.2% agreed to encourage their learners to skim the text before reading. it raises the concern of the researcher that there was such a low percentage of teachers who encouraged their learners to skim the text seeing that skimming is one of the most important techniques to read the text faster and helps one to focus on understanding the main idea and concept of the text, ‘structure, organisation and gist’ (spafford & grosser 2005:14). one of the reasons for this could be that teachers are not aware that skimming is one of the reading strategies or they know but are not even able to implement it. during-reading strategies table 2 below focusses on the reading strategies that teachers claim to teach their learners during the reading process. specifically, the focus is on the activities in which teachers engage their learners during reading. table 2: during-reading strategies. table 2 indicates that 20 out of 36 items are during-reading strategies. what this means is that the reading strategies that made up 55.5% of the questionnaire items were during-reading strategies. in the during-reading strategy, respondents were supposed to respond to 20 questions. the questions focussed on what teachers did during the reading lessons. a total of 74.4% of the respondents felt that the part that the learners did not understand when they read should not be skipped. the teachers seemed to accentuate to their learners not to leave out parts of the text that they did not know. this could be because learners would miss relevant parts of the text. the second highest with 68.8% was the use of clues to help learners better understand what they were reading. the emphasis by the teachers on the use of clues when reading could mean that they were aware that clues could serve as guidelines to what learners were reading. the third strategy, with 64.8%, was that when parts of the text become difficult they re-read the difficult parts to increase their understanding. re-reading of the text may be beneficial to the learners as they may appreciate the language used in the text. all three of the reading strategies above focus on understanding of the text read. this could mean that the teachers’ concern during reading was to influence their learners into comprehending the text more than the other strategies. regarding the reading strategy of whether teachers encourage their learners to use dictionaries to look up for words they did not know, 44% of the respondents agreed to be implementing it and 16.8% sometimes allowed the use of dictionaries, while 39.2% of the respondents disagreed with the use of dictionaries to look up for words learners did not know. the assumption to this response could be that learners from these schools did not have dictionaries, and the majority of these schools are in rural areas where even parents do not understand the necessity of buying dictionaries for their children. the least strategy, with 36.8% respondents, is ‘utilised information in the text to understand what is not directly stated’. this statement is supported by 40.8% who felt it was not important and, therefore, disagreed that it was important. furthermore, 48% of the respondents disagreed with using facts in the text and their previous knowledge to help learners understand the text. post-reading strategies table 3 below focusses on the reading strategies that teachers encourage their learners to use after the reading process. table 3: post-reading strategies. table 3 revealed that 10 out of 36 items are post-reading strategies. what this means is that the post-reading strategies made up 27.7% of the questionnaire items. in the analysis of post-reading strategies, the strategy ‘to go back and read things over when learners do not understand what they are reading’, 72% respondents indicated they implemented it, while 4.8% indicated that they sometimes implemented it. this could mean that the learners in this district were encouraged to read for understanding by their teachers. ‘to summarise the main concept of what one reads’ was another strategy that seemed to be preferred by the teachers, with 69.6% respondents indicating that they have been implementing the strategy while 8.8% of teachers confirming that they sometimes implemented the strategy and 21.6% confirming that they never encouraged their learners to use the strategy. it is assumed that the majority of learners in this district should be able to read for understanding if the teachers’ assertion is anything to go by. the next strategy, which was equally preferred by the teachers, was ‘to think up of questions to test how well learners understand what they are reading’. a total of 66.4% respondents agreed to having been encouraging their learners to use the strategy, while 15.2% sometimes and 18.4% of the teachers could not have been implementing this strategy. the implementation of the above strategy by the teachers could mean that the learners were encouraged to critically engage with what they were reading as well as discovering how much they comprehended. the other reason for encouraging learners to think of questions to test how well they understood what they were reading could mean that the teachers wanted self-sufficient learners who appreciated the importance of analysing and describing the text. discussion of findings this study sought to establish teachers’ understanding and implementation of reading strategies in their classes. the objective was to establish teachers’ understanding of reading strategies. the results indicated that teachers understood what reading strategies were. however, they were using quite a small number of reading strategies and also focussed on the traditional reading strategies that did not facilitate reading. similar findings were obtained by cekiso (2017) in a study that was conducted on teachers’ perceptions of their reading strategies instruction in a similar context to the current study. cekiso’s study revealed that the majority of teachers were not adequately prepared to teach reading, and they only paid attention to oral reading without paying attention to reading comprehension. a teachers’ knowledge of a limited number of reading strategies has been revealed by a study conducted by cahoon (2008) who observed that reading strategies were not necessarily being implemented by teachers on a consistent basis. the study further established that teachers claimed to implement pre-reading strategies more than during-reading and post-reading strategies. this could be because teachers understood that the title, subheadings and references helped learners get a sense of direction on what was going to be read, and learners became eager to read thereafter. these findings are supported by beers (2003) who concluded that pre-reading strategies help learners think actively throughout the reading process instead of trying to make sense of the text at the conclusion. teachers from the selected district seemed to acknowledge the importance of prior knowledge when one comprehends a text. this knowledge, as indicated by cromley and azevedo (2007), assists the student when meaning breaks down during the reading process. the findings of the study also sit well with the argument by fisher and frey (2009) that prior and background knowledge constituted the missing link in effective comprehension. the skimming of the text proved to be less employed by the teachers. this could be related to the belief that skimming reduces overall comprehension of the read passage as the reader reads only a part of the text (beale 2013). however, this seems to ignore the benefits associated with skimming, such as that with skimming there is potential to read more in less time (beale 2013). findings on the during-reading stage show that the three most important strategies employed by the teachers have everything to do with metacognition (awareness and understanding of one’s thought processes). the key issues were that teachers discouraged learners from skipping the parts that they did not understand when read. furthermore, teachers encouraged learners to use clues to help learners better understand what they were reading. teachers could be encouraging their learners to employ this strategy because they understand that clues give guidance and shed light on what one is reading. in support of these findings, benchmark education (2015:3) highlights that other ways to improve comprehension during reading are to make connections, make predictions, make inferences, use context clues, use text features, identify text structures, use graphic organisers to pinpoint particular types of text information and write comments or questions on self-stick notes or in the margins. furthermore, to increase learners’ understanding regarding the re-reading of difficult parts of the text that was another strategy that learners were encouraged to use, a strategy that karpicke, butler and roediger (2009) found to be both effective and popular with learners. conclusions and recommendations we conclude, on the basis of findings discussed above, that teachers seemed to encourage their learners to employ certain reading strategies. however, very few reading strategies are understood and implemented before, during and after reading. as the majority of teachers were not competent in teaching reading strategies, it is important that teachers undergo a training session on how to teach reading strategies for the purpose of facilitating learners’ understanding of text. teachers’ understanding of and ability to implement strategies in the reading process are important skills for them to master as they are the medium to transfer this knowledge to the learners; they can do this only if they themselves are empowered with reading strategies. most of the strategies were not understood by teachers and, therefore, their implementation was compromised. we, therefore, recommend that teachers from this district employ and expose their learners to a variety of reading strategies to be able to prepare readers for efficient reading. overall, for teachers to help their learners develop strong reading skills and habits, they themselves need to improve their own reading skills, and hence the need for teacher training and retraining on reading strategies. acknowledgements the authors thank the teachers who participated in the study. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions n.m. was responsible for conceptualising the title of the manuscript and collected and analysed the data. m.p.c. was responsible for the introduction, presentation and discussion of findings and collated the manuscript. b.p.t. was responsible for the literature review. n.n. was responsible for the methodology section. references akbari, z., 2014. ‘the role of grammar in second language reading comprehension: iranian esp context’, procedia-social and behavioural sciences 98, 122–126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.397 ballou, a.k., 2012. ‘using explicit strategy instruction to improve reading comprehension’, unpublished master’s dissertation, st. john fisher college, pittsford, 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https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-007-9025-6 zhou, x. & zhao, y., 2014. ‘a comparative study of reading strategies used by chinese english majors’, english language teaching 7(3), 13–18. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v7n3p13 abstract introduction the databases the evaluative framework flawed research design: flawed writing about the research design inadequate or inappropriate selection and use of literature lack of research rigour from the genre of the dissertation or thesis to the genre of the research article conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) claire biesman-simons foundation studies wits school of education, faculty of humanities, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa kerryn dixon foundation studies wits school of education, faculty of humanities, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa elizabeth pretorius college of human sciences, school of arts, department of linguistics and modern education, university of south africa, pretoria, south africa yvonne reed wits school of education, faculty of humanities, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa citation biesman-simons, c., dixon, k., pretorius, b. & reed, y., 2020, ‘pitfalls and possibilities in literacy research: a review of south african literacy studies, 2004–2018’, reading & writing 11(1), a238. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v11i1.238 report pitfalls and possibilities in literacy research: a review of south african literacy studies, 2004–2018 claire biesman-simons, kerryn dixon, elizabeth pretorius, yvonne reed received: 28 mar. 2019; accepted: 28 oct. 2019; published: 12 mar. 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: given the comprehensively documented literacy crisis in south africa and the gaps in what is known about the effective teaching of reading and writing in schools, high-quality literacy research is a priority. objectives: this article evaluates south african research from two annotated bibliographies on reading in african languages at home language level (2004–2017) and south african research on teaching reading in english as a first additional language (2007–2018). it also aims to provide guidelines for addressing these weaknesses. methods: examples of 70 quantitative and qualitative research studies from the annotated bibliographies were critically analysed, identifying key weaknesses in the research as a whole and examples of excellent quality. results: weaknesses evident in the research reviewed, suggested greater consideration is needed to lay sound methodological foundations for quality literacy research. three methodological issues underlying local literacy research that require greater attention are research design, selection and use of literature and research rigour. high-quality research examples are referenced but, for ethical reasons, examples of what we consider to be flawed research are described generally. guidelines are offered for addressing these pitfalls that, in our view, contribute to research of limited quality. since many universities require submission of a journal article as a requirement for postgraduate students, preparation for such an article is considered. conclusion: while this article is not intended to be a comprehensive guide, we hope it is useful to supervisors, postgraduate students and early career researchers currently undertaking, or planning to undertake, literacy research and to writing for publication. keywords: literacy research; annotated bibliographies; review of research; guidelines for research; research rigour. introduction as widely reported in both the popular media and in research reports (e.g. howie et al. 2017; isdale et al. 2017), south african primary school learners have performed poorly in international, regional and local literacy and mathematics assessments. while there have been numerous small-scale and large-scale research and development interventions at school level to address the problem and improve learner performance, less attention has been paid to initial teacher education at universities. a key finding from research conducted by the council of higher education (2010) and the initial teacher education research project (deacon 2016) is that universities need to improve the quality and the curriculum focus of aspects of their initial teacher education programmes. as a response, in 2016 the department of higher education and training (dhet), with funding from the european union, launched a 5-year teaching and learning development capacity improvement programme. one of its five projects is the primary teacher education (primted) project which aims to strengthen foundation and intermediate phase mathematics and literacy courses in initial teacher education programmes. this article arises from the work of the primted literacy group, of which the authors are members, which is tasked with strengthening the teaching of african languages as home languages and of english as a first additional language (efal) in teacher education programmes throughout the country. as part of its work, the authors reviewed south african research into reading in african languages at home-language level and in reading and writing in efal. the reviews have resulted in the compilation of two annotated bibliographies which are available on the open access primted website (https://www.jet.org.za/clearinghouse/primted/resources/language-and-literacy-resources). in reviewing the literature in the field, biesman-simons and dixon (the efal bibliography) and pretorius (the african languages bibliography) identified several patterns that occurred across the reviews. while there were valuable sections in all of the articles, dissertations and theses reviewed, there was also recurring evidence of an incomplete understanding of what is required to conduct research that is sufficiently rigorous to be considered an addition to knowledge in the field. given the literacy crisis in south africa, the under-researched nature of literacy in the country’s schools, and the gaps in what is known about how to teach reading and writing, particularly in african languages, there is a great need for high-quality research. the value of reviewing the literature that forms the basis of the annotated bibliographies is that there is a corpus of data that provides insights into not only what research is being done but also into evident strengths and limitations within this research. rather than write a literature review identifying trends in local research regarding direction, focus and current findings, this article responds to one of the primted project’s aims of providing resources and support for those in higher education institutes involved in various aspects of literacy education and research, namely lecturers, postgraduate students, early career researchers and supervisors, to produce high-quality literacy research. our aims in this article are twofold. firstly, we aim to describe key weaknesses in research design and the selection and use of literature and to unpack the concept of research rigour that we identified in the studies we reviewed for the annotated bibliographies. secondly, we aim to provide suggested guidelines and actions for addressing these. by doing so, we hope this article will stimulate discussion and debate that will invigorate literacy research in south africa. we acknowledge that all research is challenging and potentially messy and also that at universities, mentorship of novice research supervisors, novice researchers and early career scholars may be limited or non-existent, as a result of resource constraints. the next section describes briefly how each annotated bibliography was compiled and then drawn on for this article. the databases as stated above, two annotated bibliography databases inform this article. the annotated bibliography on reading research in african languages comprises studies from 2004 to 2017. all relevant articles from local and international academic journals on the dhet’s list of accredited local and international academic journals were reviewed. master’s dissertations and doctoral theses were also included. most of the studies reviewed focus on reading research in any african language belonging to the family of southern bantu languages (to which all nine official african languages in south africa belong), although other african languages belonging to the south-western bantu family (e.g. herero) and eastern bantu family (e.g. swahili) were also included. the efal annotated bibliography comprises research on reading and writing in efal in south africa from 2007 to 2018. articles were drawn from dhet-accredited south african journals. included in the bibliography are citations of south african phd and master’s students’ research but at the time of writing, these had not yet been annotated. while most journal articles relate directly to reading and writing in efal, there are a few examples of annotations and citations that discuss teaching reading and writing in general but are pertinent to efal. table 1 provides a breakdown of the 70 texts that constituted the annotated bibliographies that we drew on for our analysis. table 1: texts in the two annotated bibliographies. the evaluative framework by its very nature, research is intended for public consumption, even if the public is comprised mainly of academics and stakeholders interested in the particular field in which the research is conducted. while research studies are published in academic journals, key findings sometimes appear in the media, and postgraduate dissertations and theses are available online and on library shelves in academic institutions where they can be accessed by other researchers in the field. research should be held up to high standards. poor quality research has a public face, and especially in the digital age, cannot be swept under the academic carpet. during a primted meeting after the annotated bibliographies had been completed, the team members raised concerns about research-related issues that had emerged from a holistic reading of the studies. it appeared that these concerns were similar across both bibliographies and the team decided that a more intensive evaluation was required. during a 2-day workshop the four members of the team worked closely with the bibliographies identifying common pitfalls that emerged from the databases. three of the authors are experienced supervisors, reviewers and researchers with strong publication records, and one of the authors is a novice researcher and doctoral student. one of the authors in the team comes from a linguistics and psycholinguistic background and has experience with quantitative methods, while three of the team members are steeped in critical and sociocultural approaches to language and literacy and have experience with qualitative research. the different disciplines, experiences and areas of expertise of the team members provided an equalising pool of theoretical and methodological perspectives to allow for fair evaluation of the strengths and limitations in the reviewed body of research. three key themes emerged from the review of the studies in the data set characterising methodological weaknesses that impact negatively on the quality of literacy research articles, dissertations or theses, namely: flawed research design, failure to select and use literature appropriately and lack of research rigour in both quantitative and qualitative studies. examples of good quality research which illustrate what is possible for researchers to achieve were also identified. in the following sections we describe and discuss what we have termed pitfalls in research and offer some possibilities for avoiding them. the discussion is not intended to be exhaustive, given that each pitfall and how to avoid it could be the subject of a book chapter. rather, it should be seen as complementary to the existing more detailed texts on research methodologies. flawed research design: flawed writing about the research design having decided to embark on a research project, one of the initial major challenges for a researcher to address is that of research design. this is an important first step in the research process as a well-designed study provides the researcher with a logical and coherent frame within which to work. in the studies reviewed, the purpose of the research and the connections between research purpose and research questions were not always clearly stated. there were also instances in which the methods of data collection and data analysis selected for the study were not well described and occasions where the methods selected were not appropriate, or were inadequate, for addressing the research questions. such weaknesses in either the conceptualisation of a project or in writing about a project (or both) raise concerns about the validity and reliability of the researcher’s findings (cohen, manion & morrison 2011). extensive reading of literature in the researcher’s area of interest, together with literature on research design, is likely to assist with conceptualisation and coherent design of a research project. it may also be helpful to adopt a team approach to the conceptualisation of the research. brainstorming and discussion with peers, colleagues and more experienced researchers or supervisors can help a researcher to develop a solid foundation for a study. inadequate or inappropriate selection and use of literature weaknesses in the selection and use of literature evident in a number of the articles, dissertations and theses reviewed for the annotated bibliographies also emerged as an area of concern. deciding which theories to use to inform one’s research and what literature to include in a literature review is a crucial part of research design and research writing but making these decisions can be quite a daunting task. as an indication of the challenges of working with literature, kamler and thomson (2006) title a chapter on this topic ‘persuading an octopus into a glass’. kamler and thomson (2006) propose that the tasks of ‘literature work’ are to: sketch out the nature of the field or fields relevant to the inquiry, possibly indicating something of their historical development identify major debates and define contentious terms, in order to establish which studies, ideas and/or methods are most pertinent to the study and locate gaps in the field, in order to create the warrant for the study in question identify the contribution the study will make. (p. 28) additional functions of a literature review include providing a framework for relating new findings to previous findings, enhancing and acquiring the subject vocabulary and identifying recommendations for further research (randolph 2009:2). in the articles, dissertations and theses reviewed for the annotated bibliographies, four pitfalls that weakened the quality of research were identified in relation to the literature and theoretical frameworks that researchers selected and used. each of these is described and discussed in this section. not reading enough in the field across both bibliographies there was evidence that researchers had not read enough in the field, resulting in the replication of research that has already been done or the failure to address – or at least show awareness of – key issues in the field. in many ways, the dissemination of research findings is a way to join a conversation in the field and to supplement an understanding of it. not reading and drawing on published research undermines the integrity of the findings, and does not help to build, extend or change a field. readers are referred to botha’s (2018) thesis for an excellent example of an in-depth overview of local and international perspectives on reading and to alcock et al. (2010) for a succinct synopsis, within the narrower constraints of a journal article, of phonological awareness research in general and of how research in an african context might add to and inform larger international debate. while it is not possible to read everything, it is important to spend time searching for what has been published in the field, taking note of who researchers reference and being aware of how researchers align themselves with others in the field. it is also necessary to read original sources and research and to represent these accurately rather than relying only on second-hand sources, especially when critiquing a particular approach or findings. developing a deep understanding of relevant literature is critical for new researchers who may not know the theoretical and ideological positions of many writers. the next pitfall is related to this first one. not reading the most appropriate research this pitfall relates to work that did not sufficiently consult literature related to language and literacy research which may also have resulted in an imbalance between local and international literature. it was often the case that the literature reviews centred more on the work of educational theorists than of literacy researchers. while we are not claiming that the work of scholars such as piaget, vygotsky, bourdieu or bernstein has no value, or that their work does not provide rich frameworks for data analysis, we do contend that there are many other influential international and local language and literacy researchers whose work in disciplines as varied as cognition, neurolinguistics, linguistics, critical literacy, sociology and anthropology should inform literacy research (e.g. freire 1972; heath 1983; janks 2010; mckinney 2017; street 1984. see also compton-lilly, lewis-ellison & rogers’ 2019 review of family literacy research). the problem with privileging educational theory is that it does not provide researchers with the lenses required for focusing on the processes of reading and writing, curriculum and pedagogical possibilities, classroom practices, assessment and testing and the debates in the field of literacy by reading and literacy researchers (e.g. buckingham, wheldall & beaman-wheldall 2013; dehaene 2009; freebody & luke 1990; green 2018; oakhill, cain & elbro 2014; seidenberg 2017; snowling & hulme 2005; wolf 2007). there are also specialised sub-fields within literacy research which are important for literacy researchers to know about. knowledge of literacy research in general, and of specialised sub-fields that relate to specific research projects, enables researchers to minimise the faulty generalisations that are evident in other research reviewed for the annotated bibliographies. in addition to reading specialised literacy research rather than mainly general educational research, researchers need to think carefully about context. although there is a paucity of literacy research in south africa that focuses on primary schools (pretorius & spaull 2016) compared to the large body of international research, it is necessary to engage with quality local research (e.g. makaure 2017; matsatse 2017; wilsenach 2016; zimmerman 2014), noting its strengths and its limitations. such critical engagement adds to the body of knowledge of literacy in this country, and enables researchers to work in particular areas, address specific research gaps systematically and build a more coherent field that feeds into teacher education and literacy research in more structured ways. international research is valuable, but too often literature reviews treat it uncritically. context matters and socio-economic, political, cultural and educational histories impact the kinds of language and literacy practices that are in place. while there are likely to be common findings across countries, it is important to consider how research from the political south speaks back to research from the political north (e.g. makalela 2015; mckinney 2017; pretorius & mampuru 2007). not threading theory and literature through the research text the sections entitled literature review in research articles and literature review chapters in dissertations and theses sometimes showed a lack of connection to other sections of the research. dixon and janks (2010) make the point that as a research project moves through its various phases towards completion, it becomes easier to work out where and how literature should be used: some of it provides secondary evidence for a claim; some of it may clarify an idea or can be referenced in passing; some of it provides direction for further research; some of it fundamentally reorganises one’s interpretation of the data; much of the later reading is confirmatory. it also becomes clearer where to fit it into the thesis. not all of it has to go into the literature review. (p. 62) they argue that researchers need to understand that the literature included in a completed thesis, dissertation or research article is: … an account of the ideas that informed the project and that the project speaks back to … it is an articulation of how the work is positioned in the ongoing development of ideas in the field and how the researcher positions herself in the field. (dixon & janks 2010, p. 64) taking a ‘cookie cutter’ or ‘chunking’ approach to working with literature failure to thread the literature through an article, dissertation or thesis in a coherent way is likely to result in what we term a ‘cookie cutter’ or ‘chunking’ approach in which chunks are taken from a text and inserted in the researcher’s article or thesis as a direct quotation or as a paraphrased summary and then presented to the reader without further explanation or mediation. the researcher does not explain why these chunks are important to his or her analysis of data or developing argument, or how they are connected to each other. while in some of the articles reviewed there was little or no evidence of any relationship among the texts reviewed by the researchers, the research design and the research findings, there were also articles in which pertinent summaries or quotations from literature were threaded through the presentation and analysis of data. see o’carroll (2010) for a study in which the researcher is careful both to state explicitly the limitations of the study and to use literature in the discussion section to support the argument she is building. not threading the literature through the research writing may suggest a lack of understanding of the important role that specialist knowledge plays in research and the way that knowledge and the framing of knowledge contributes to an ongoing professional conversation within a particular domain of literacy and helps to inform prior, current and subsequent research. mentors and supervisors of emerging researchers and reviewers of articles should pay more attention to the quality of literature reviews. there are many ways to write a literature review and to use literature in the various chapters of a thesis or sections of an article. what should be kept in mind are the questions why this literature, why this literature at this point in the text, and how do i want to use it? lack of research rigour when preparing the annotated bibliographies, lack of rigour in much of the research reviewed emerged as a major concern. the longest section of this article thus focuses on the various ways in which this lack of rigour manifests in the data set. rigour in research refers to qualities of thoroughness, precision, accuracy and paying attention to detail. it also refers to adherence to norms and principles that underpin different approaches to research such as quantitative, qualitative or mixed method approaches. achieving rigour is challenging for all researchers, but especially for inexperienced researchers and inexperienced supervisors of master’s and phd studies. failure to provide a detailed audit trail an important aspect of rigour is providing for a detailed and transparent audit trail (bassey 1999) which documents each stage of the research process (gall, gall & borg 2007). an audit trail: … endeavours to give access to others of the evidence which points to the trustworthiness of the study but also enables them to exercise their own creativity in finding alternative interpretations. (bassey 1999, pp. 61–62) an audit trail should include a well-thought-out rationale for the study and for the choices of theoretical framework and literature, explicitly stated details of the research site and participants, explanation of the data collection and analysis methods, clear analysis of the data which is informed by the theoretical framework and the literature reviewed, and clear presentation of conclusions (bassey 1999). in some of the studies reviewed, gaps in the audit trail included the following: the rationale for the selection of specific research instruments was not explicitly stated. in quantitative research, if several reading sub-skills were being assessed in reading tests (e.g. vocabulary, phonological awareness, word recognition, oral reading fluency), scant details about the sub-components were provided. for instance, the number of items included in each sub-component of the test was not indicated, or the text length, the number of words in a text or its grade difficulty level were not specified. when reading comprehension was assessed, there was often limited reporting on the length of the selected passages, the number of questions, the types of questions (e.g. literal, inferential and integrative) and the formats used (e.g. cloze, multiple-choice and full-sentence answers). for an example of detailed reporting, refer to marx (2010) for a study in which reading comprehension tests designed by grade 4 teachers were described in detail and then analysed in terms of appropriacy for learners at this grade level. in quantitative research, information about the reliability index of test instruments was not always reported. in ‘the patterns and prevalence of monosyllabic three-letter-word spelling errors made by south african first additional language learners’, fleisch et al. (2017) provide a level of detail that should be made available to readers of research articles. piloting test instruments before using them in the main study either did not seem to be a requirement or was not always documented in dissertations and theses. piloting instruments (as well as data collection procedures) is part of research rigour. like a dress rehearsal in a theatre production, having a trial run is necessary for picking up items that do not work or for identifying unanticipated problems. if instruments and procedures were piloted, it is particularly important that a section in the research report needs be dedicated to the pilot, and how or why the instruments and procedures worked or did not work and what changes were made. inadequate contextual information was provided. given the complex nature of schooling in south africa, the diverse teacher and learner population and the socio-economic and structural inequalities inherited from apartheid, literacy research in the southern african context requires descriptions that situate the research within a clearly defined context and within which possible limitations as a result of this diversity can be clearly identified. this is particularly important in small-scale studies because of the key role that context plays in adding richness to the data, positioning findings and providing a framework for research that could be replicated in similar contexts. for an example of a richly contextualised study, see prosper and nomlomo (2016). their explanation of the context of the study, the participants’ position within the study and how the context informed the purpose of the research provides a strong foundation for responding to their research questions. insufficient information was provided in regard to procedures used for data collection. in literacy research, reporting when, how and by whom data was collected is important not only in terms of replicability but also in terms of how the outcomes are interpreted. probyn’s (2016) description of the data collection process in her study of language use in grade 8 science classrooms in the eastern cape is an excellent example of detailed, relevant and interesting reporting. two examples illustrate the importance of addressing when, how and by whom data is collected. firstly, learner performance can be affected by when learners are assessed. assessing grade 1 learners’ vocabulary knowledge in term 1 of the academic year ought to yield different results from a vocabulary assessment in term 3. secondly, what teachers do and when they do it is affected by the academic year and the demands of the curriculum. for example, the south african curriculum stipulates that shared reading in foundation phase should be done for 15 minutes, three times a week, with each session centred on a different way of using the story to develop language or literacy skills and knowledge (department of basic education [dbe] 2011). a study that focuses on how teachers use shared reading will thus have to observe the teacher at least three times in a week, otherwise data collection procedures will not do justice to the topic being examined. underestimating the demands of qualitative research an assumption, more frequently visible in the work of inexperienced researchers, is that qualitative research is easier to undertake than quantitative research because data from a qualitative study do not require statistical analysis. this is exacerbated by the case that very few academic departments in the human and social sciences at south african universities teach quantitative research methods at undergraduate (or even postgraduate) level (except perhaps in the fields of economics and psychology), so there is little support for students who opt to undertake quantitative research to develop the requisite statistical and methodological knowledge and skills. however, qualitative research is demanding in several ways. according to cohen et al. (2011), a qualitative researcher needs very good verbal skills, the capacity to describe and interpret data and the ability to read between the lines. the researcher needs to explain why a qualitative approach was appropriate, why particular data collection methods were selected and what informed the approach to data analysis (cohen et al. 2011). any potential limitations and personal involvement must be articulated, as must what was done to address each of these. identifying what constitutes rigorous qualitative research and how best to conduct such research is challenging, even for an experienced researcher. two examples of high-quality qualitative literacy research are van der mescht’s (2013) phd study and mather and land’s (2014) journal article on educators’ understanding of reading skills. across both bibliographies there were large numbers of small-scale studies, many of which were flawed in various ways. for example, in a 5-year period, 15 out of 23 of the entries in one of the bibliographies involved small-scale studies, and, of these, more than half were problematic with regard to one or more aspects of research rigour. many of these small-scale studies took the form of case studies. when well designed and executed, case studies are valuable for the richness of the data they can provide, but many of the studies reviewed were found to be problematic. areas of concern identified by the reviewers include the use of a single research instrument (i.e. absence of triangulation), lack of a rationale for the choice of case study, insufficient explanation of the context within which the research was undertaken and of the reasons for situating the research in such a context, and researchers making large claims and unwarranted generalisations despite the small size of the study. due to the small size of case studies, rigorous research is essential in order to produce valid findings and interpretations that can lead to what bassey (1999) terms ‘fuzzy generalisations’. guzula, mckinney and tyler’s (2016) study is an example of rigorous case study research. limited understanding of ‘size’ and its relationship to rigour the quality of a study is not determined by its size, the number of participants or number of research sites. rather, it depends on how rigorously the research is undertaken within its specified parameters. similarly, the size of the study should be guided by the requirements for how best to respond to the research questions. for instance, if the research question relates to grade 4-literacy practices in south african classrooms, a case study involving a single teacher is unlikely to be able to address such a question fully. we organised the data set into four categories of study size depending on the number of participants involved and the number of schools that served as research sites. participants involved were either learners, teachers or other officials in education, such as principals, district officials or subject advisors. the four categories of study size were: small: research involving 100 or fewer participants or one or two schools. medium: research involving between 100 and 499 participants or 3–10 schools. large: research involving 500–1000 participants or more than 10 schools (these can involve up to 60 schools, with limited numbers of participants from each school). very large: research involving over 1000 participants or more than 20 schools (usually well over 200 schools). size is obviously a relative concept, so these categories serve as rough guides only. the large and very large literacy studies in south africa have typically derived from team-based, well-funded international or national projects where researchers have had access to large data sets and have worked individually or jointly with team peers. the very large studies come from the progress in reading literacy studies (pirls) involving 12 000 and more learners1, while the first large-scale randomised control studies undertaken by the dbe in north west (setswana home language) and in mpumalanga (efal) have both involved the assessment of over 4000 learners in each successive iteration (taylor et al. 2017). generally for master’s and doctoral studies students are expected to produce individual research, and the articles that derive from postgraduate research are written individually or co-authored with a supervisor. because large and very large studies are team-based and funded, there tend to be methodology experts in the project team with expertise in quantitative or qualitative approaches who aim to ensure that the studies are well designed and rigorously conducted. the same checks and balances are not always built into small-scale individual studies. while the importance of small-scale studies must not be underestimated, every effort should be made to ensure that they are carefully designed and meticulously conducted. lack of data triangulation for research to be rigorous, it must be conducted in a manner that produces useful and reliable data. the need for more rigorous triangulation of data was also identified as an area of weakness. lack of triangulation was particularly concerning in qualitative research involving classroom or teacher-based studies, where data were collected from a single source (e.g. teacher interviews) or a single instance (e.g. one lesson observation) and conclusions were then drawn about how literacy was enacted in the classroom, without being corroborated by data from other sources. claims about the efficacy of interventions (e.g. teacher workshops, literacy circles, after-school classes) were often made solely on the basis of self-report questionnaires or interviews without conducting classroom observations or capturing learners’ literacy performance before and after the intervention, to verify that reported changes were occurring as a result of the intervention. lack of data triangulation can lead to opinion-based rather than evidence-based research, or to making claims not substantiated by the reported data. for instance, if teachers are self-reporting on their classroom practices, this information does not necessarily offer a reliable account of their practices as it is opinion-based. for the research to be considered rigorous, teachers’ self-report data would need to be complemented by classroom observations to ascertain whether there was a similarity between teachers’ espoused and enacted practices. kruizinga and nathanson (2010) offer an example of comprehensive triangulation of data. limited analysis and interpretation of data for research to be accepted as rigorous, it is important that data are carefully and appropriately analysed. in some of the quantitative studies reviewed, there was evidence of limited understanding of the requirements of quantitative analysis (e.g. claiming differences when there were no statistically significant differences or claiming relationships and interactions between variables without employing inferential statistics), insufficient background knowledge as to how to approach quantitative analysis and making grand claims from a small data set. consequently, there was a lack of meaningful discussion and analysis in response to the context, research questions or to the literature and theory that framed the research. on the other hand, failure to take into account the researcher’s own position in some of the qualitative studies reviewed limits the rigour of the analysis and interpretation. failure to understand the role of researcher subjectivity all researchers need to consider how the researcher’s subjectivity can influence both the research design and the interpretation of findings. this is particularly the case in qualitative research where a researcher’s interpretations are not guided by predefined rules, as is often the case for quantitative research, and where personal interaction with participants may be required (davies & dodd 2002). lack of rigour may be the result of approaching research with preconceived assumptions and anticipated findings, having a personal relationship with research participants or selecting a specific research design due to personal preferences rather than establishing the most appropriate approach (gioia, corley & hamilton 2012). while subjectivity cannot be avoided, it is key that checks and balances are in place. a critical reading of a first draft of a research proposal, thesis chapters or a journal article by more experienced researchers or supervisors is likely to be helpful. potential limitations of the study design, or of the interpretation of findings arising from the researcher’s subjectivity, should be acknowledged in the final text. from the genre of the dissertation or thesis to the genre of the research article increasingly, submission of a journal article for publication is a graduation requirement at south african universities and, if not mandatory, at least strongly encouraged. thus, regardless of whether postgraduate students will be or would like to be academics for whom publishing is an essential part of working life, most will need to write a journal article informed by their examined research project. while a few of the characteristic features of a thesis and a journal article are similar, for example both focus on the author’s research and aim to add to current research conversations or to start new ones, there are more differences than similarities, beginning with length and anticipated readership. for a dissertation or thesis, the initial readers are the supervisors and examiners, and the text they read will vary in length from approximately 20 000–25 000 words (at master’s research report level) to approximately 80 000–100 000 words (at phd level), with differences in length across faculties within a university and across universities. a journal article is likely to attract a wider informed readership and will be much narrower in focus and more succinctly written than a thesis. the length of articles accepted by journals varies, but for those in which literacy research is likely to be published, a word limit of between 6000 and 8000 is common. readership and length have implications for what a researcher chooses to exclude and include, and to background and foreground in the article. while binaries can oversimplify, table 2 summarises important contrasts between the expectations of thesis examiners and journal article readers. table 2: differing expectations of examiners and readers of journal articles. manuscripts submitted to journals are likely to be rejected if they are too ‘thesis-like’ or if they are not well suited to the conversations that take place in particular journals. an essential question for authors to answer before submitting a manuscript to a journal is: who is the imagined reader? (e.g. a reader interested in translanguaging, a reader interested in critical literacy or a reader interested in the transition from learning to read to reading to learn). a second key question is: what is the contribution i wish to make to the conversation on this topic in this journal? thomson and kamler (2013:164) suggest that a researcher makes a publication plan which responds to questions such as which parts of the research he or she wishes to prepare for a journal article and for which journal he or she is preparing the article. to begin to answer these questions, researchers need to be thoroughly familiar with the content of what has been published in a particular journal in the preceding 3–5 years and with the house style of the journal. as it is not always easy for less experienced researchers to distinguish accredited journals from predatory ones, we suggest that journal choices be discussed with experienced colleagues or the university’s research office, and the list of accredited articles, recognised and regularly updated by the dhet, be consulted. (although published 8 years ago, uysal 2012 also provides a useful summary of international language and literacy journals that is still relevant.) conclusion the two annotated bibliographies that we have drawn on for this article include a number of examples of quality research, in addition to those cited in this article. however, we chose to focus on the limitations in the local research on reading in african languages and efal, and to offer guidance for addressing these, as a contribution to enhancing the quality of research on aspects of teaching and learning literacies. producing quality research enables literacy researchers in south africa to assist in addressing the literacy crisis in education locally, but it also enables researchers to publish in high impact international journals and, in doing so, to contribute to global conversations in which the political south talks back to the political north. it is hoped that the issues raised in this article will promote constructive debate and reflection on ways to advance and improve literacy research on the continent. acknowledgements this publication has been developed through the teaching and learning development capacity improvement programme which is being implemented through a partnership between the department of higher education and training and the european union. the contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the authors and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the european union. competing interests we declare that we have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced us in writing this paper. authors’ contributions this is a jointly conceptualised and written article. k.d. is responsible for the idea and structure of the article and this was then planned collaboratively. y.r. wrote the opening sections, k.d. the section on literature reviews and co-authored the conclusion with y.r., c.b.-s. and e.p. wrote the sections on rigour. all authors gave feedback to each other over drafts, proofreading and edited before submission. ethical consideration this article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this publication has been produced with the assistance of the european union and the department of higher education as part of the primary teacher education project. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references alcock, k.j., ngorosho, d., deus, c. & jukes, m.c.h., 2010, ‘we don’t have language at our house: disentangling the relationship between phonological awareness, schooling and literacy’, british journal of educational psychology 80(1), 55–76. 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accepted: 27 sep. 2017; published: 29 nov. 2017 copyright: © 2017. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract whilst research has been conducted on reading skills at primary school level in south africa, not much research exists on writing, especially boys’ writing. this article focuses on the use of an interactive questionnaire to get grade 6 boys involved in research that is based on a cycle of the writing programme as prescribed by the curriculum and assessment policy statement. underpinned by literature on research with children and on boys’ learning and writing, a questionnaire was developed, piloted and adapted to engage boys actively in the research process and facilitate ease of use. the questionnaire was then administered to 39 grade 6 boys from two schools in kwazulu-natal. an evaluation of the use of the questionnaire found that four key lessons emerged: attention to affective responses, supporting and scaffolding the process, using appropriate multi-modality and using incentives to engage participants. the article argues that careful consideration of the research participants’ interests, age, gender and cultural motivation is an important part of affording them agency in the research process. introduction whilst there is extensive international literature on the teaching of writing at primary school level (graham 2003; tan & zammit 2016; vincent 2006), in south african primary schools, reading rather than writing has been a dominant research focus. for instance, studies conducted in south africa have established that teachers tend to focus on decoding text to speech when developing their learners’ reading skills and pay little attention to the development of comprehension and writing skills (long & zimmerman 2008; mather 2012; pretorius 2002; rule & land 2017). one of the few south african studies on teaching writing at primary school level, conducted by nasvaria, pascoe and kathard (2011) in the western cape, finds that teachers are very concerned about the written language development of their learners. given this, more research regarding what goes on during writing lessons in south africa is needed. writing is integral to all learning; for example, notes and essays have to be written, many formal assessment tasks are written and answers in tests are written, in all learning areas. thus, if a learner is unable to write at the appropriate level, all learning will be affected. the purpose of this article is to evaluate the use of an activity-based questionnaire as a data collection tool to research grade 6 boys’ writing development, as well as boys’ perceptions of writing instruction, in kwazulu-natal (kzn) (one of nine provinces in south africa). the research took place in the context of a cycle of the writing programme (i.e. the process-genre process of writing), as prescribed by the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps). according to the caps [department of basic education (dbe) 2011a], developing learners’ writing skills in the intermediate phase (ip) involves leading them through the following stages of the writing process: planning, drafting, revising, editing and publishing. thus, in grade 6, learners go through a number of cycles of the writing process throughout the year to complete different pieces of writing such as descriptive essays, letters, emails and instructions. the questionnaire described here was used as part of a larger study, in which writing instruction was investigated in two schools. to collect data for the larger study, interviews with the teachers were conducted, writing lessons were observed, the boys’ written efforts and their teachers’ feedback were analysed and the boys were given an activity-based questionnaire to complete. given the purpose of this article, only an analysis of the boys’ written, oral and behavioural responses to the interactive questionnaire will be presented; and this analysis will be used to evaluate the questionnaire. in evaluating the questionnaire, we considered four dimensions: the content: were the learners able to understand and engage with the content of the questionnaire? the process: did the process of administering the questionnaire support learners in responding to it? the design: did the design of the questionnaire facilitate learners’ engagement with it? the findings: did the learners’ responses to the questionnaire yield useful insights into their writing development? this article begins by providing the rationale behind the study and the design of the activity-based questionnaire. it then reviews scholarship surrounding boys’ learning, in particular how their writing skills develop and how research is conducted with pre-pubescent children, especially boys. this forms a backdrop to the main focus of the article, which is an evaluation of the content, process, design and findings of the activity-based questionnaire, and the lessons learnt from its application. rationale for the study boys’ writing was selected as the focus of the study because of the fact that boys’ language performance (including writing) is a cause for concern in south africa. given the centrality of writing in the curriculum, its instruction ought to receive heightened attention. the writing programme prescribed by the caps is made up of a number of writing tasks for different purposes, which must be completed during the course of the year, using the process-genre approach to teaching writing (dbe 2011a). this, as explained above, includes at least five stages: planning, drafting, revising, editing and publishing. very little is known about how south african learners (boys in particular) respond to this instructional approach, and what their perceptions of and attitude to this kind of writing process are. what is known is that south african children have performed poorly in international literacy tests. for example, according to the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls 2006 cited in long & zimmerman 2008), south african grades 4 and 5 learners achieved the lowest mean performance scores in comparison with 39 other participating countries. assessments within south africa suggest that this poor ranking is credible: in the annual national assessment (ana) tests of 2012 in kzn, grade 6 learners achieved an average of 43% in home language (hl) with only 39% of the learners who wrote obtaining above 50% (dbe 2012). in 2013, the department of basic education saw an improved 59% average, and 68% of learners achieved higher than 50% (dbe 2013). however, what remained the same in 2012 and 2013 was that boys achieved poorer results than girls in all provinces, in both language and mathematics. for instance, in 2012 in kzn, grade 6 girls achieved an average of 44.2% in hl whilst the boys achieved 37.6% (dbe 2012), and in 2013, the girls achieved 61.4% whilst the boys obtained 53.3% (dbe 2013). in 2014, this trend continued in the ana, with boys achieving an average of 59.2% and girls achieving an average of 66.4% (dbe 2014). these results resonate with an earlier report by howie et al. (2012) which indicated that girls outperform boys in south africa, in both the prepirls and pirls 2011 studies. studies conducted in australia (pavy 2006), seychelles (geisler & pardiwalla 2009), france (pritchard 1987), germany (maubach & morgan 2001) and south africa (gxilishe 1993) have all concluded that, in general, boys underperform in language learning, and that girls achieve better results in language subjects than boys. if boys are underperforming in language subjects, their performance in other learning areas may also be affected because language is essential for all learning. boys’ learning, and in this case their writing, is thus a key area to research. as daly (2002) argues: boys mostly feature as the objects of research, on whom alternative practices are being trialed, than being measured in terms of their writing behaviour in class, or teachers’ perceptions of their improved disposition towards writing (p. 4) this study attempted to engage boys as subjects and agents of writing through the interactive questionnaire. teaching boys writing the literature indicates differences between boys and girls regarding language learning (gxilishe 1993; pavy 2006; pritchard 1987; van de gaer et al. 2009). carr and pauwels (2005) highlight the socialisation factor in determining boys’ subject choices and, because languages are often considered girl-appropriate subjects, boys’ neglect of languages may be a way for them to affirm their masculinity (scantlebury 2009). smith and wilhelm’s (2002) seminal book on reading and young men in the american context, reading don’t fix no chevys, points to this socialised gender divide. regarding boys’ disregard of languages, carr and pauwels (2005) found that some boys saw language learning as irrelevant for their future. in addition to socialisation factors, the manner in which boys and girls experience and respond to writing activities differs. because of a range of social and developmental differences between boys and girls (king & gurian 2006; sax 2005), weil (2008) motivates for separate classes for boys and girls and sax (2005) argues in favour of separate schools. because of contextual factors such as lack of resources and shortage of space, it may not be possible for public schools to have separate classes or same-sex seating. carr and pauwels (2005) state that teachers need to acknowledge that boys and girls have different learning needs, and change their teaching methodology where necessary. to assist teachers who teach mixed sex classes, king and gurian (2006) draw on research on gender differences in cognition and in classroom interaction. they suggest that teachers use same-sex seating arrangements in the classroom and propose the following instructional features to make the writing classroom more boy-friendly. firstly, experiential and kinaesthetic learning opportunities can be increased by planning activities that keep boys energised, attentive, promote healthy competition and keep boys moving around. secondly, addressing boys’ visual-spatial needs with activities like story boards or drawing pictures will help them to put down on paper what they are thinking. thirdly, because boys and girls have different interests and because boys have a strong desire to choose their own topics (higgins 2002), teachers should provide options that allow for self-direction. moreover, they should make activities purposeful by connecting them to real-life situations. this is supported by smith and wilhelm (2002, 2014) who argue for authentic problem-solving classroom tasks that will engage boys in reading and writing. lastly, teachers should seek out male role models, which may also include older respected male learners, to visit the class and share their learning experiences. whilst the various factors regarding gender and writing mentioned above may not be generalisable to the south african context, the difference between boys’ and girls’ language performance is similar in south africa than in the rest of the world. this indicates a possible problem with engaging boys’ interest in language activities (including writing) and suggests the possibility of developing research strategies that engage boys actively in considering their own writing development. this study thus generated exploratory strategies, suggested by international scholarship but adapted to the local context, in the form of an interactive questionnaire to inquire into boy’s own perceptions of their writing. conducting research with children eliciting children’s perceptions and experiences can be of value to research because children provide original insights into their daily lives that are free from adult interpretations (laws & mann 2004). researchers use a variety of methods when conducting research with children, which should be child-appropriate. for instance, shaw, brady and davy (2011:20) provide the following general ideas to consider when conducting research with children: data collection must be brief and concise because children have a shorter attention span than adults. an informal, open environment must be created. the approach should emphasise that there are no correct or incorrect answers. short questions and simple language should be used whilst abstract concepts ought to be avoided. researchers should be aware that questions may not be interpreted as intended. data collection tools must be accessible (content, length, format and language) based on the age and intellect of the children. piloting of the data collection tools is essential. whilst various methods are advocated for conducting research with children, including focus groups (hennessey & heary 2005), observations (christiansen, bertram & land 2010; mather 2012) and participatory methods (shaw et al. 2011), this study focuses on the use of an interactive questionnaire. the questionnaire a questionnaire is a list of questions, either open-ended or close-ended or both, which the participants answer to elicit attitudes, beliefs or reactions (mcmillan & schumacher 2001). an activity-based questionnaire was created for this study of boys’ writing in view of the following factors. firstly, boys tend to have a shorter attention span (than girls) and need to move around periodically (king & gurian 2006); therefore, the data collection method should allow for variety, choice and movement. secondly, they need to see the purpose of what they are doing and be interested enough in the process to provide meaningful responses. shaw et al. (2011) state that, to maintain interest when collecting data from children, the researcher must be clear at the outset about what is expected from their participation. lastly, shaw et al. (2011) caution against making unreasonable demands on their time. in the case of this study, negotiating time with the boys’ teachers to collect data from them was challenging because there was not much time to spare given the sequence and pace of the caps. contextual factors, pre-pubescent boys’ learning preferences and different data collection methods were considered and evaluated (the discussion of each is provided below) which led to the design of the activity-based questionnaire. methodology participants and research setting the sample for the study consisted of 39 grade 6 boys and two english hl teachers. school a was a formerly indian school which is now racially and linguistically mixed. sixteen indian and five black african boys from this school participated in this study. the 18 boys from school b were all black africans – their mother tongue is isizulu, but they were learning english at hl level. the focus of the study was the boys’ and their teachers’ experiences, with particular emphasis on their perceptions and challenges, of teaching and learning writing using the process-genre approach. procedure: conducting research with boys because of the need for self-reported data pertaining to the participants’ experiences and challenges of the writing programme, in-depth interviews were conducted with the teachers. the initial plan was to interview the boys as well. however, after reviewing the literature related to boys’ learning preferences and what an interview entails, this was reconsidered. eliciting rich, in-depth data would have meant interviewing each boy for not less than 30 min on two occasions. as lobe et al. (2008:33) contend, ‘a standard, lengthy series of questions and answers may not work as well for children as for adults’. they suggest a variety of active strategies to engage children, including drawing pictures, role play and pen-and-paper exercises. supporting this, fargas malet et al. (2010) recommend using a wide range of activities and using a mixture of materials and techniques when conducting research with children. besides retaining the boys’ interest, in this study, there were also logistical challenges that made interviewing problematic. securing time for so many interviews would have disrupted the normal teaching programme. thus, there was a need for an alternative method to elicit the required data from the boys. a second option was to plan focus groups for the boys to share their perspectives on and experiences of the manner in which they learn writing. whilst focus groups can work well with children if they are made enjoyable and interesting, if the children are given breaks (fargas malet et al. 2010) and if they are sensitively and ethically incentivised (gibson 2007), the constraints of the timetable once again mitigated against this. it would have meant allocating four groups of about six boys each at least two 30-min sessions. unfortunately, because of the pace of the caps and mandatory extra-curricular activities, the participating teachers did not have sufficient time to allocate for focus groups and follow-up discussions with the boys. finally, the idea of using questionnaires was considered, which others have found can be effective with children if designed and administered appropriately (bell 2007; de leeuw 2011). it was surmised that this data collection tool would work best as it could be administered to all the boys at the same time with the researcher present to provide clarity if there were any misunderstandings. the use of open-ended questions would certainly have elicited in-depth responses but expecting pre-pubescent boys to sit still and provide responses to a questionnaire may not have elicited trustworthy responses, as they may have rushed to complete the questionnaire without really thinking about their responses. closed-ended questions, on the other hand, that required the boys to simply choose the most appropriate response may not have been stimulating for them. design of the activity-based questionnaire these considerations led to the design of an activity-based questionnaire that would be enjoyable for the boys, allow for movement, cater to the boys’ different learning styles and not be too time-consuming. the specific purpose of the questionnaire as a data collection instrument was to gain insight into how the boys perceived and experienced a cycle of the writing programme and the challenges that they may have encountered when writing. the questionnaire consisted of four sections. the first section was ‘general’, which dealt with biographical information. the second section was ‘school’ where the boys would provide insight into their school experiences such as their best friends, favourite subjects and favourite and least favourite aspects of school. the third section was ‘english’ to determine the boys’ favourite and least favourite aspects of learning english. the last section was ‘writing’. here, boys indicated the genres of writing that they did in class, their favourite and least favourite types of writing, and difficulties that they experienced when completing a piece of writing. they also had to draw a picture of a writing lesson. the purpose of the drawing exercise was to elicit visual representations of how the boys experienced a cycle of the writing process. shaw et al. (2011:23) state that drawings are best used for capturing the participants’ ideas or thoughts to supplement interview or focus group data, and that each drawing must be accompanied by a caption so that the participating children are given the opportunity to explain their drawings. thus, the researchers included a block at the bottom of the page allocated for the drawing, for the boys to write a paragraph to explain the drawing that represented their learning experience in the writing class. the draft questionnaire was three pages long, with a blank fourth page for the boys to draw their pictures and write a paragraph. three workstations and a help desk were created in the classrooms where the questionnaire was administered. at the first workstation, the boys would come to complete parts of the questionnaire that required them to write answers using pens. the second workstation contained crayons and coloured pens for the boys to come to if they needed to colour in or draw. the last workstation was for the boys to come and use stickers for the different parts of the questionnaire. this allowed for movement, which, according to king and gurian (2006), is necessary to cater for boys’ tendency to be restless and fidgety. each workstation had a symbol and these symbols also appeared on the questionnaire. depending on the workstation that the boys had to go to, the relevant symbol appeared. for example, the star image in figure 1 was the symbol for station two. thus on this questionnaire, wherever the boys saw this symbol, they would have to go to station two to use the stickers provided. an example of this taken from the questionnaire is provided in figure 2. figure 1: symbol used for station 2. figure 2: question with subject options. the questionnaire assumed that the boys would be able to read and understand the instructions; thus, it was vital to ensure that the instructions were unambiguous, clear and pitched at the appropriate level. for instance, instead of using the word genre, types of texts was used, and instead of using descriptive, narrative, expository and visual, simpler terms such as stories, descriptions, news reports and adverts were used. the font size was also carefully considered to ensure that the boys would be able to read the instructions with ease and not risk missing any questions. a different font type for each workstation was used so that the stations would be easily identifiable. another consideration taken from king and gurian (2006) was giving the boys the freedom to make their own choices. thus, in the pilot questionnaire, they could choose their favourite stickers and use their favourite colours for certain aspects. in this way, some effects of socialisation on these boys could also be observed because colours like pink are considered to be more female-oriented colours, whilst blue is a favourite for boys. there was also a range of stickers provided; hearts, stars, flowers, cars and other motor vehicles, as well as stickers of handbags, shoes and cosmetics. it was interesting to see which of the stickers and colours the boys chose. piloting and adapting the questionnaire the questionnaire was piloted at a public school with eight grade 6 boys. this was crucial for testing whether the design and content of the questionnaire, including the wording of tasks, questions and instructions (de leeuw 2011), and the process of administering it were appropriate. the researcher was introduced to the boys by their english teacher before she left the classroom. this happened during an english period of 60 min. the researcher proceeded to explain the purpose of the questionnaire, how they would use the workstations to complete it and the general rules to maintain order. the workstations were set up on the far ends of the classroom and the help desk was in the front by the teacher’s table. the boys moved around freely and easily and seemingly had fun with the stickers and colours. they took about 1 h to complete the questionnaire. the piloting phase showed that including incentives in the process and an element of competition engaged the interest of the boys. king and gurian (2006) state that boys enjoy healthy competition. the researcher added instructions that would make the boys look for certain items at the different workstations; whoever found the item was instructed to bring it to the help desk to claim a reward. the reward instructions helped to ensure that the boys were reading all the questions and instructions carefully. this phase also indicated that boys responded well to having choices, confirming king and gurian (2006) insight that boys prefer to make their own decisions. the instruction pertaining to their favourite subjects was changed to allow the boys to choose their favourite stickers to indicate their favourite subjects. at the workstation, a selection of car, motor vehicle, handbag, cosmetic and shoe stickers was included. in addition to allowing for choice, it allowed for the researcher to see which stickers the boys would choose, as with their favourite colours and the colour flower sticker that they chose to stick on their age, as can be seen in figure 3. figure 3: question with subject options. following the pilot, some design modifications were made to the questionnaire. for instance, the question in figure 3 previously read as indicated in figure 4. this change was made to allow for freedom of choice, as explained above. modifications were also made with regards to the formatting and font size this was done to improve readability and ease of use. figure 4: question with subject options. findings participants’ response to the questionnaire the final questionnaire contained four sections. once the excitement over the stations, colours and stickers subsided, the boys in both schools managed most of the first section, ‘general’ with ease. they were unsure of what to do at first, but, after reading and following the instructions, they managed fairly independently. however, all the boys in school b and one isizulu speaking boy in school a came to the help desk as they needed assistance with writing their address (the reason being that in many of the outlying areas where they live, there are no street names or house numbers). these learners were told to write the area where they lived. the reason for asking the boys where they lived was to assist with determining their cultural and socio-economic status. some boys came to the help desk to ask what they should do if no-one helped them at home with their homework, thus ‘no-one’ should have been included as an option for them to colour in. the second section entitled ‘school’ dealt with aspects like the part of school that they enjoyed most and least, their favourite and least favourite subjects and who their best friend was. this section was also accomplished with ease by the boys but, in both schools, when the researcher was walking around, she noticed that many learners had put a sticker by their favourite subject but omitted the green star on their least favourite sticker. a possible reason for this was that the instruction was too long and after engaging with the first part, the boys forgot to go back to complete the second part. perhaps, this question should have been split into two questions as follows (see figures 5 and 6). figure 5: question with subject options. figure 6: question with subject options. the next section dealt with english and asked the learners about their favourite and least favourite aspect of learning english as well as the genre that they most and least enjoyed reading. here, again, the question should have been split as explained in the paragraph above as some boys omitted the second part of the instruction. orals and listening to stories were most boys’ least favourite aspect of english, with only two boys choosing writing. on the other hand, reading was a favourite for most boys, whilst seven boys chose writing as a favourite. in school a, four boys chose all the aspects as their favourite. this could be because they indeed enjoyed all aspects of learning english or that they enjoyed sticking the stickers because in the second section of the questionnaire, these same boys did not select english as their favourite subject. the effects of socialisation and issues of masculinity were evident in the second question of this section because most boys chose action, adventure and comics as their favourites with only two boys from school a and seven boys from school b choosing fairy tales and romance. two boys from school b picked ‘other’ as an option but did not write the genre that they instead enjoyed reading. this was because there was no instruction or space provided on the questionnaire for them to write the other genres. the findings suggest that this part could have been presented as indicated in figure 7 and figure 8. figure 7: question with types of stories. figure 8: question with types of stories. the boys had to provide information about their writing experiences. they were asked about the types of writing that they did in class, their favourite and least favourite types of writing and the part of writing that they found most difficult. further to this, they had to draw a picture reflecting their teacher teaching them writing and write a paragraph to explain what was happening in the picture that they drew. the answers for the types of writing that they did in class were not consistent considering they were all in the same class (in the school that they attended) and taught by the same teacher. for instance, in school a, most boys selected almost all the genres provided but three selected only stories, letters and advert. in school b, all the boys selected stories, plays and poems but each had a different variation of the other genres. a possible reason for this could be that the boys coloured in the ones that stood out in their minds or that they remembered having written, so this is not necessarily an accurate indication of the genres that they learnt how to write in class. in addition, some picked favourite and least favourite types of writing that were not compatible with the list that they provided for the types of writing that they did in class. thus, triangulation was important: teachers were asked about the types of writing that they taught their learners and the learners’ books were analysed to see the writing that they did. nevertheless, the responses that the boys provided for these questions were of value as they indicated the types of writing that the boys were most familiar with. most boys found spelling, punctuation, thinking what to write about and planning most difficult when writing. two boys in school b wrote the following: ‘writing without knowing what to write about’ and ‘writing your own story’. this was interesting because their teacher did not give them a topic to write about. instead, they were told to write a story about anything, in other words, they had to choose their own topic. finally, the boys had to draw pictures of a writing lesson and had to write a paragraph about how they learnt writing. the boys did not put much effort into the completion of this section and many expressed that they did not enjoy drawing, could not draw well or did not know what to draw. the boys had to be reminded to complete this part of the questionnaire. after analysing their completed questionnaires, the drawings did not contribute much to the findings, so this aspect could have been omitted (or needed to be approached differently). most of the drawings depicted learners seated, with a teacher standing in the front of a chalkboard. with regard to the paragraphs, the boys appeared not to know what to write and possibly did not have the vocabulary to complete the paragraph. this is telling, in that the boys should have been familiar with the stages of the writing cycle, as their teachers stated during the interviews that it was how they developed writing since the beginning of the year. additionally, the teachers reported that these learners produced a variety of texts throughout the year, but the boys were unable to write about any of these texts. instead of paragraphs, the boys, who attempted to write something, wrote a few sentences that related to writing but not to how they learnt writing. most of the boys left this section blank. discussion using an interactive questionnaire with boys: lessons learnt this section discusses the insights arising from using an interactive questionnaire with boys in relation to the content, process, design and findings. broadly speaking, six key areas that need to be considered in the use of an interactive questionnaire were identified, namely: the need for clear and simple language, the importance of affect, supporting and scaffolding the process, using incentives, multi-modality and the need for triangulation of findings. each of these areas will be discussed in more detail below. content lesson: simplicity, accessibility and present-focus the content issues arising from using the questionnaire confirmed previous findings that the language level and accessibility of the questionnaire are crucial. for example, formulating the questions simply and with words that learners understand (bell 2007; de leeuw 2011) are paramount. importantly, this study found that questions should not be double-barrelled, as learners consistently neglected to respond to the second part of the question. in addition, questions with a current focus seemed to be answered in more detail and more accurately than those requiring retrospection. this supports bell’s (2007) finding that the ability to reflect is not as well developed in children as it is in adults. process lesson: participants’ affective responses to questionnaire from the research process, it became apparent that how the boys felt about doing the questionnaire was important for its effectiveness as a research instrument. a non-threatening, non-intimidating, enjoyable environment was created to ensure that the boys were comfortable and at ease – the underlying idea being that they would have no reason to invent responses or not to respond. in both schools, the boys’ reactions indicated that they most enjoyed choosing and using the stickers as they spent the most time at this station. it was interesting to note that all the boys picked the car and motorbike stickers as their favourite. in school a, the boys took out their sticker albums to show the researcher their collections and asked if they could share the leftover stickers. illeris (2009) argues that all learning involves not only a ‘content’ dimension but also an ‘incentive’ dimension that is concerned with motivation, emotions and volition. both these dimensions are informed by an ‘interaction’ dimension, which concerns the relations between participants. this theory of learning pointed towards the importance of considering the relation amongst content, incentive and interaction in using the questionnaire. the study found that the conducive environment and supportive interactions contributed to creating positive feelings towards the task. process lesson: supporting and scaffolding the process scaffolding and support are key considerations for effective language teaching (rose 2004) and proved important in administering the questionnaire. in school a, the boys came to the help desk to ask many questions pertaining to the purpose of the questionnaire and to find out more about who the researcher was and what she was doing. thus, when the researcher went to school b, she spent more time on introducing herself, the questionnaire and its purpose. some boys in this school definitely needed more assistance with understanding what to do but, by the end of the first section, most were able to follow the instructions independently. a few boys in this school were unable to read the instructions, so the researcher assisted some with completing the whole questionnaire, whilst others asked their peers for assistance. the presence of their teacher did not hinder the process. instead, she was a great help in terms of maintaining order and seeing to the girls. she also constantly reminded the boys of the importance of being honest and taking their time to think about their responses to provide accurate information. in both schools, the girls were very disappointed that they were not a part of the process but enjoyed colouring-in the mandalas that the researcher provided to keep them occupied. the researcher also found that walking around and providing assistance was helpful as opposed to waiting for the boys to come to her at the help desk. although boys did come to the help desk to ask questions, going to them was beneficial particularly for the boys who were shy or afraid of seeming unintelligent for not knowing what to do. process lesson: using incentives to engage participants promoting healthy competition, as suggested by king and gurian (2006) and drawing on illeris’ (2009) ‘incentive dimension of learning’, by using the unexpected instructions for prizes, was particularly beneficial because it prompted boys to read instructions carefully and broke the ice in getting them to come to the help desk. an important consideration arising from the study is that incentives should stimulate engagement but not become ends-in-themselves that detract from the primary purpose of data collection. design lesson: using appropriate multi-modality multi-modality played an important role in the design and administration of the interactive questionnaire. fleming (1995) elaborates four learning styles: visual, auditory, reading or writing and kinaesthetic (commonly known as vark). the questionnaire used multiple modes of communication and interaction to account for individual learning styles. these included written, visual, kinaesthetic, interpersonal and interactional modes. these varied modes not only accommodated the boys’ different learning styles but also helped to keep the boys engaged so that they completed the questionnaire and produced rich data. symbols and pictures were used and the boys were expected to read and follow the instructions, provide written responses, colour in some responses, draw pictures and stick stickers on others. the questionnaire also allowed for the boys to move around to the different stations, to the help desk and whilst moving around, there was animated interaction amongst the boys about which section they were at, which stickers they chose, which boy picked the best sticker and so on, which again foregrounded the competitive nature of the boys. finally, by including a creative task (in which boys had to depict how they learnt to write via their own artwork, and had to describe their drawings in writing), the researchers hoped to gain a deeper understanding of learners’ experiences of and opinions about the writing cycle (i.e. planning, drafting, revising, editing and publishing) that was used to teach them. it was clear though that the boys were unable to respond to this task; most likely as a result of their general dislike of drawing, and their limited understanding of what the various stages of the writing cycle entail. using a multi-modal approach recognises that children operate in a multi-modal culture in which they are used to interacting with various media, particularly through cell phones, gaming and other audio–visual technologies (tan & guo 2009). as vincent (2006:51) argues, ‘some children need multi-modal scaffolding in order to communicate ideas effectively’. however, in the south african context, access to multi-modal technologies is uneven, especially regarding computer-based technologies. with this in mind, the use of multi-modality has to be contextually appropriate and a text-based but interactive and visually rich format was selected so as not to exclude learners. findings lesson: the need for triangulation the questionnaire provided some insight into boys’ writing preferences, for example, their greater enjoyment of adventure, comics and action genres rather than fairy stories and romance. in addition, the responses to the questionnaire also indicated that learners found ‘spelling’, ‘punctuation’, ‘thinking what to write about’ and ‘planning’ most difficult when writing, which was born out in lesson observations, interviews with teachers and analysis of workbooks. however, an analysis of the findings also revealed that not all their responses were necessarily reliable indicators. for example, the incentive of getting prizes and the process of using stickers might have overshadowed their attention to the actual content. this confirms scott’s (2000) contention that children’s answers may reflect biases such as social desirability, context effects and acquiescence bias. the findings from a questionnaire such as the one described in this article thus have to be carefully triangulated using other methods, including classroom observation, interviewing teachers and analysing learners’ workbooks. limitations and recommendations as we acknowledged above, this particular questionnaire was designed with the target group in mind and it therefore might not be generalisable as a research instrument in different contexts. however, the lessons learnt could have value for teachers and researchers in designing their own instruments to investigate boys’ writing. in addition, we recommend that a questionnaire like this should be used together with other methods to enhance reliability of findings. in south african and african contexts, further research is needed to ascertain boys’ perceptions of and engagement in their own writing, as well as comparative research on boys’ and girls’ writing. in particular, future research should attend to the finding that the boys were unable to describe or reflect on the different stages of the writing process that had been used as an instructional method by their teachers. this is concerning and leads to several questions about how writing instruction unfolds in the average south african classroom, and whether the guidelines for writing instruction in the caps meet the needs of teachers and learners. conclusion this article focused on the use of an interactive questionnaire to explore grade 6 boys’ attitudes towards, and experiences of, writing. the article identified factors related to the content, process, design and findings of the questionnaire. regarding content, it was found that questions and instructions had to be formulated at an appropriate level. the process of administering the questionnaire revealed that the interactive nature of the instrument catered for the boys’ need for movement and activity, and that promoting healthy competition through the use of hidden items helped to motivate and energise them. the multi-modal design of the questionnaire (written, visual, kinaesthetic and interpersonal) accommodated a range of skills and learning styles. the questionnaire generated some useful findings regarding the learners’ perceptions of their writing, but the unevenness of their responses also pointed to the importance of triangulation of sources and methods. the use of this questionnaire also indicated the importance of providing clear explanation and instructions at the beginning of the process, and continuing support and encouragement throughout. creating a conducive, non-threatening environment, enlisting the assistance of the teacher and developing a supportive relationship between researcher and participants also proved important for the boys’ participation and the effectiveness of the data collection process. what the exercise also showed was that careful consideration of the research participants’ interests, age, gender and cultural motivations is an important part of affording them agency in the research process. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare 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(eds.), 2016, teaching writing and representing in the primary school years, pearson, melbourne. van de gaer, e., pustjens, h., van damme, j. & de munter, a., 2009, ‘school engagement and language achievement: a longitudinal study of gender differences across secondary school’, merill-palmer quarterly 55(4), 373–405. https://doi.org/10.1353/mpq.0.0034 vincent, j., 2006, ‘children writing: multimodality and assessment in the writing classroom’, literacy 40(1), 51–57. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9345.2006.00426.x weil, e., 2008, teaching boys and girls separately, viewed 27 december 2013, from http://www.nytimes.com abstract introduction literature review justification purpose and objectives the context of the study methodology results and discussion ethical consideration limitations implications of the study conclusion acknowledgements references appendix 1 about the author(s) beauty b. ntereke communication and academic literacy, university of botswana, botswana boitumelo t. ramoroka department of communication and study skills, university of botswana, botswana citation ntereke, b.b. & ramoroka, b.t., 2017, ‘reading competency of first-year undergraduate students at university of botswana: a case study’, reading & writing 8(1), a123. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v8i1.123 original research reading competency of first-year undergraduate students at university of botswana: a case study beauty b. ntereke, boitumelo t. ramoroka received: 27 oct. 2015; accepted: 11 oct. 2016; published: 26 jan. 2017 copyright: © 2017. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract the ability to read and interpret textbooks and other assigned material is a critical component of success at university level. therefore, the aims of this study are twofold: to evaluate the reading levels of first-year students when they first enter the university to determine how adequately prepared they are for university reading. it is also to find out if there will be any significant improvement after going through the academic literacy course offered to first-year students. the participants were 51 first-year undergraduate humanities students enrolled in the communication and academic literacy course at the university of botswana. the data were collected through a reading test adopted from zulu which was administered at the beginning of the first semester. the same test was administered at the end of the semester after the students had gone through the academic literacy course to see if there was any difference in performance. the findings of this study indicate that there is a mixed and wide variation of students reading competency levels when students first enter the university and that a significant number of first-year entrants are inadequately prepared for university reading. introduction the ability to read and interpret textbooks and other assigned material is a critical component of success at university level. reading skills form the basis for learning and are an important element for obtaining knowledge in academic learning in all subject areas. however, research on both l1 (first language speakers) and l2 (second language speakers) reading indicate that proficient reading is a complicated process that involves a combination of different abilities and strategies at the same time to compensate for each other in processing a text. for example, a reader should have linguistic, cognitive and metacognitive knowledge to be called a proficient reader. the following types of reading comprehension strategies are considered central to helping students read a variety of text across the curriculum; making connections, engaging with the text, active meaning construction, monitoring understanding, analysis and synthesis, and critical reading. research indicates that proficient l2 readers, unlike less-proficient readers, are able to use a wider range and combination of these abilities and strategies to aid them understand and interpret a text (e.g. anderson 1991; carrell 1989; rumelhart 1984; stanovich 1980). this study therefore focuses on the reading proficiency of english l2 first-year students when they first enter university, with particular attention to evaluating their reading proficiency levels. the study also sought to evaluate the impact of an academic reading programme on the students’ reading abilities. the study focused on first-year humanities students at the university of botswana. literature review a number of studies have been conducted on abilities and strategies that proficient readers possess over less-proficient readers. for instance, stanovich’s (1984) interactive-compensatory model recognises that proficient l2 reading is a result of interaction of both bottom-up and top-down processes working together at the same time, flexibly, to compensate each other in comprehension. however, the bottom-up process is thought of as central to creation of meaning in an interactive process between the information in the text, the reader’s knowledge of the language and content, and the processing skills and strategies (hellekjaer 2009). nevertheless, the level of interaction between the processes may differ depending on the purpose of reading, motivation and knowledge of subject. the model shows that both processes are vital for proficient reading because this allows a reader with a weakness in a particular knowledge source (e.g. linguistic knowledge which is bottom-up processing) to depend more on another knowledge source (e.g. background knowledge which is top-down) to facilitate comprehension. they are compensatory because ‘a deficit in any knowledge source results in a heavier reliance on other knowledge sources’ (stanovich 1980:63). clapham (1996) conducted a large-scale study of undergraduate ielts esl/efl test takers investigating their reading performance on subject-specific reading tests. through analysis of the learners’ performance in the reading tests, she found that learners with inadequate language proficiency (bottom-up) failed to fall back on top-down abilities to compensate for their lack of understanding knowledge. for instance, the students could not draw on the subject matter to guess the meaning of unknown words and phrases, or with unfamiliar topics, they failed to build understanding from the text using a bottom-up strategy. on the other hand, the linguistically proficient readers could ‘compensate for a certain lack of background knowledge by making full use of their language resources’ (p. 196). researchers who have studied the cognitive aspect of reading in l2 contexts believe that proficient readers are strategic readers in that they make use of many reading strategies, compared to less-proficient readers (anderson 1991; bernhardt 1991). chimbganda (2006) in a respondents’ self-reporting study of strategies used by science students at the university of botswana concluded that less-proficient readers used more ‘inappropriate’ strategies which were not effective in facilitating understanding of text. hosenfeld (1984) outlines examples of good or appropriate reading as follows: keeping the meaning of the text in mind, reading in broad phrases, skipping inessential words, guessing from context the meaning of unknown words, having a good self-concept as a reader, reading the title and making inferences from it, and continuing if unsuccessful at decoding a word or phrase. (pp. 233–234) a number of studies also highlight the importance of linguistic knowledge and processing ability skills for proficient reading. pang (2008) refers to the linguistic knowledge and processing ability of the readers as appropriate knowledge of vocabulary, language rules and sentence structure, discourse and their competency to use this knowledge in their interaction with texts. alderson (1984) emphasises the importance of linguistic knowledge by arguing that l2 students have to reach a linguistic threshold level (lth) of competence before they become competent readers in a foreign language. according to the linguistic threshold hypothesis, l2 learners must first attain a certain level of linguistic competency in the l2 before they are able to transfer their l1 reading skills to aid comprehension in their l2 reading. various other studies (alderson 1984; cummins 1980; eskey 2005) have indicated that readers whose l2 proficiency falls below the linguistic threshold cannot transfer their l1 reading skills to l2 reading until they cross the threshold. clarke (1979) asserted that readers cannot transfer their l1 reading skills to their l2 if their l2 proficiency is below the threshold, no matter how proficient they are in their l1. alderson (2000) though, points out that linguistic threshold is not absolute but must vary from task to task: the more demanding the task, the higher the linguistic threshold. proficient l2 readers have been seen to have knowledge of the syntactic structure and high levels of vocabulary proficiency which aids them in making inferences (e.g. barnett 1986; hellekjaer 2009; nassaji 2003). furthermore, proficient readers can quickly recognise words and can process complex sentences because of good syntactic knowledge in the target language. carrell (1992) points out that proficient readers are aware of the structural elements of the text and discourse organisation which helps them to remember the main ideas of the text and understand much better. proficient l2 readers have also been found to have wide range vocabulary which allows them to spontaneously and quickly recognise words in a text (e.g. alderson & urquhart 1984; nassaji 2003; pang 2008; perfetti 1985). a droop and verhoeven (2003) study also confirms a strong relationship between vocabulary knowledge and learners reading abilities. furthermore, research on l2 metacognitive competence reports that proficient readers are able to demonstrate a high level of comprehension monitoring ability during the reading process which leads to better reading proficiency and make their comprehension processing effective. alderson (2000) confirms that proficient readers have metacognitive understanding of how and when to use a combination of strategies. they are more aware of purposes for reading and adjust their reading process accordingly, focus attention on major ideas rather than minor details, engage in self-questioning to determine if reading goals are being met, notice comprehension failures, and take action to correct such failures (alessi, anderson & goetz 1979; block 1986). nel, dreyer and kopper (2004) in a cross-sectional study and case study analysis of reading profiles of first-year students at the university of potchefstroom found that less-proficient readers were unable to assess their understanding in order to select and use strategies that could help them adjust their understanding to different texts and purposes. in a more recent study, magogwe’s (2013) study on metacognitive awareness of reading strategies of second language students of different academic reading proficiencies affirms earlier studies that high proficient readers select important and focused strategies that enable them to manage and monitor their comprehension. studies have also been conducted on reading proficiency of students at tertiary institutions and whether there is a relationship between students’ performance and their reading abilities (perkins 1991; pretorius 2000, 2002, 2003; zulu 2005). for instance, pretorius (2002) investigated the relationship between reading skills and academic performance of students at undergraduate level. the findings of this study indicated that underperforming students had serious reading problems. for instance, they had difficulties in linking up information in a text which resulted in difficulty to understand texts they read. zulu (2005) also carried out a study in which she explored the reading abilities of first-year students and the impact of an academic reading course on their reading abilities. the results suggested that students had difficulties with high-level reading skills like critical reading. however, there seems to be paucity of reading research on the reading proficiency of students when they first enter tertiary institutions, particularly in the context of botswana. as indicated above, most studies pertain to the international community. majority of studies on reading research that have been conducted in botswana are limited to primary and secondary levels of education (arua et al. 2005; commeyras & ketsitlile 2013; ketsitlele & commeyras 2014; molosiwa 2007; seeco 2001). arua et al. (2005) conducted a study that sought to look at secondary school literacy practices in botswana. part of their study involved interviewing teachers at secondary schools to find out what sort of literacy instruction was provided at junior secondary level to support learning across content areas in schools and to provide adequate skills for further studies. in the area of independent reading and critical skills, the teachers interviewed felt that these higher level skills were not adequately developed among students. the reasons given for this were that there ‘was rarely a culture of reading in schools, lack of materials and resources, lack of teacher training to support language and literacy across curriculum’. similarly, biakolo (2007) carried out a study to investigate the teaching of reading in botswana government schools. the conclusion she drew from the study indicated that there was minimal instruction of reading strategies in botswana primary schools. the findings indicated that there was lack of reading teachers, inability to model reading strategies by teachers and restrictive nature of reading materials. this meant that students who could not acquire reading, incidentally could not read. justification having looked at some literature on l2 research carried out in sub-saharan africa and internationally it is clear that many students enter university without adequate reading skills and thus struggle with reading requirements at tertiary level (e.g. chimbganda 2006; nel et al. 2004; zulu 2005). bharuthram (2006:268), cited by livingston et al. (2015), also echoes that students ‘enter tertiary institutions with limited reading experiences and strategies’ and therefore struggled to understand texts at this level. however, students at this level are required to be competent in both lowand high-level reading skills such as ability to understand meaning, evaluate, integrate, synthesise information and critical reading. this means the ability to read academic texts is regarded as a critical skill university students need to acquire. as indicated earlier, locally, few studies on students reading abilities at university level have been conducted. however, nel et al. (2004) recommend that ‘lecturers at university and specifically those responsible for teaching courses such as english for academic/professional purposes, need to have knowledge of students’ strengths and needs in reading to ensure the most effective instruction possible’ (p. 100). it is against this backdrop that we decided to engage in this study to evaluate the reading proficiency level of first-year humanities students and the effects of a reading programme on their reading comprehension. purpose and objectives generally, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the reading level of first-year humanities students at the university of botswana (ub). the specific objectives were to: assess the reading levels of first-year humanities students based on data collected in the 2014/2015 academic year in semester 1. find out the reading difficulties experienced by first-year students when they first enter the university. find out whether exposure to the academic literacy reading module made a difference in student’s reading levels. the context of the study recognising the gap between secondary and university level literacy skills and the inadequacy of such skills among first-year students, the ub put in place compulsory academic literacy courses for first-year students meant to help them raise their academic literacy skills so that they could cope with the learning demands at university level. the communication and academic literacy course is tasked with the responsibility to teach mainly academic literacy skills – reading, writing, listening and speaking. students are not required to take any placement tests in any of the academic literacy skills or their english competency level. because reading is a critical component of success at university level, the researchers who are lecturers of academic literacy felt it necessary to evaluate the level of reading skills of incoming students to determine the suitability of the current reading module offered. the results of the reading tests will be evaluated and their implications for teaching and curriculum review discussed. the reading module the focus of this study is on the reading module, which is part of the communication and academic literacy skills 1 (com111) course that is compulsory to all ub undergraduates in the faculty of humanities. the reading module consists of six sessions taught in 2 weeks of 1 hour per session in a 14 week semester. the content is based on the realisation that first-year university students need assistance in developing essential and suitable reading skills that would enable them to independently learn from academic reading. the module focuses on teaching strategies used to facilitate comprehension, help learners to remember and retrieve information. the components taught as outlined on the com 111 course outline are: recognising main ideas and details reading techniques (skimming and scanning) strategies for independent critical and analytical reading review strategies – that is, sq3r system ways of making notes – outline, summarising, mapping etc. instruction on the different reading strategies are given explicitly and students are given both individual and group tasks to practice the targeted strategies. methodology participants convenience sampling was used to select one class taught by one of the researchers of the communication and academic literacy course at the ub. the participants were 51 mixed gender first-year undergraduate students studying in the humanities department. they had been admitted to the university based on their national end of secondary school examination scores which are equivalent to cambridge overseas school certificate examinations. all students were assumed to have a minimum of ‘c’ grade in english language which is the minimum grade for admission to humanities programmes at the ub. the students were informed of the purpose of the reading proficiency test and initially they all volunteered to participate but when the test was repeated at the end of the semester only 30 students participated. data collection instrument and procedure the aim of this case study of humanities students was to measure their reading abilities and the reading difficulties they experience when they enter the university. in order to do that, a reading test adopted and slightly adapted from zulu (2005) to suit the context of the study was administered. the test was selected by the researchers because a number of studies (seliger 1977; rye, 1982; zulu 2005) show that cloze tests are generally considered valid and reliable reading ability gauges. it also had been administered to students whose english second language ability is not distinctly different from the students in this study. this was a general reading test and not necessarily related to students’ content area. we considered that the students were just entering the university and would not have any disicpline-specific knowledge therefore a general reading text would be suitable. usó-juan (2006:211) also argues that ‘the fact that people study in a particular subject area does not mean that they do not have background knowledge of subjects outside their own specialised area’. we therefore assumed that students had some background knowledge of content on electronic mail messages and could relate to content in the passage. the test was a combination of cloze and a reading comprehension in the form of multiple-choice questions which enabled us to obtain a reasonably valid and reliable assessment of students reading comprehension. we assumed that a proficient reader would be able to use the knowledge of reading to perform the various tasks in the test. the test comprised of a 555-word long cloze passage with 20 deletions on a topic on electronic mail messages and a set of 15 multiple-choice questions with four alternatives of varying difficult levels from a comprehension passage 772 words long. the questions required students to fill in the gaps with appropriate or suitable words. both suitable and exact word answers were scored since we were of the view that the readers’ comprehension of the text is more important than the precise words of the text. the reading comprehension passage was on theories of reading and was divided into three sections; section 1 was on the place of meaning in reading, section 2 on the impact of context upon reading and section 3 on the influence of reader purpose. the reading test was administered during the second lesson of the academic literacy course which lasts 1 h, and the same test was administered again at the end of the same semester after the students had been exposed to the reading module. data analysis procedures the data for this study comprised students’ scores in the reading comprehension test that we administered before they began the course and at the end of the course. preand post-entry scores of students in the reading test were used in the analysis. for analysing the scores, spss was used. in order to ascertain whether there was any significant difference between the test scores of the two tests, anova test was used and we worked on the hypothesis that there will be improvement in the scores because of exposure to the course. we also analysed how students performed in each of the questions and which questions posed difficulties to the students. results and discussion as already mentioned, the data for this study comprised two marks students attained on the reading proficiency tests and analysis of each question item. levels of reading the first objective of this study was to assess the reading levels of first-year humanities students when they first entered the ub. the assessment was based on the ub assessment criterion to determine the level of proficiency of the students. the assessment criterion is as follows: marks: 80% – 100% = a (excellent letter grade) 65% – 79.9% = b (good letter grade) 50% – 64.9% = c (satisfactory letter grade) 35% – 49.9% = d (poor letter grade) 0% – 34.9% = e (very poor letter grade) a breakdown of students’ performance in the test is as follows: 14.2% of the students scored a b grade which ranges from 65% – 79.9% 51.5% of the students scored a c grade which ranges from 50% – 64.9% 34.3% of the students scored a d and below. this was a mark of 40% – 49.9% and below. the results of the study seem to indicate mixed levels and a wide range of reading proficiency of students who wrote this test. for instance, the results indicate that 51.5% scored a satisfactory mark and 34.3% were below levels expected at university and only 14.2% of students passed the test fairly well. the results seem to corroborate other studies which seemed to indicate that the majority of students enter the university with poorly developed reading skills and strategies which cause huge reading difficulties for them (nel et al. 2004; pretorius 2000, 2002, 2003; zulu 2005). reading difficulties the second objective of the study was to find out the reading difficulties experienced by first-year students when they first enter the university. in order to do that we did an analysis of each of the questions and isolated items that students seemed to find most difficult. in the reading comprehension section, questions that required higher order reading skills to comprehend, deduce meaning, interpret and make associations of meaning between different parts of a text were a source of difficulty to the students in both the preand post-tests. for instance, in both the pre-test and post-test, 56.7% and 36.7% of the students respectively failed to answer question 3 correctly (see appendix 1). this is a question that required students to make inferences and make connections between different parts of the text, a task that students seemed to find difficult. another example is question 5 which required students to make connections to the preceding paragraph and deduce the point of view of the writer to answer the question correctly. the students seemed to lack understanding of what the gist of the preceding paragraph was. eighty percent of the students failed to answer this question correctly in the pre-test and 70% of the students in the post-test. question 8 was another question that was very problematic for students. altogether 90% of the students failed this question in the pre-test and 80% of the students in the post-test. the question required students to summarise the main points of paragraphs 4–8. the last example is question 12, where 86.7% of the students failed to answer the question correctly in the pre-test and 66.7% of the students in the post-test. the students failed to interpret the meaning of the statement that they were given. we can see that generally the items that proved difficult to students were questions that required high-order thinking and interpretive skills. for instance, as indicated above, students had difficulties to interpret meaning and make associations, make inferences and summarise the main points. these difficulties in high-order questions were also revealed by other researchers such as pretorius (2005) and zulu (2005). the results also confirm what arua et al. (2005) found out that students who leave high school do not possess adequate reading skills for further studies. generally, the students preformed very badly in the cloze passage questions for both preand post-tests. the cloze questions tested students on their general linguistic knowledge and processing ability. this was meant to gauge whether they had proper knowledge of vocabulary, syntax, and discourse and the competence to use this knowledge in their interaction with texts (pang 2008). exposure to academic literacy reading module the third objective of the study was to find out whether exposure to the academic literacy reading module made a difference in students’ reading levels. to do this, the results of the preand post-tests were compared. the results are shown in tables 1 and 2. table 1 gives a summary of the mean scores of the two tests. the table indicates an improvement in the test scores after the second test. table 1: total number of students and the mean scores of the two tests. table 2 shows a comparison of students’ performances in both tests. table 2: comparison of students’ performances in the preand post-entry tests. as indicated by data in table 2, there was a general improvement in the results registered after the post-test. for instance, the table indicates that in the pre-test, 34.3% of students failed the test and 51.5% scored a grade c which is satisfactory and only 14.2% scored a grade b which is good. in the post-entry test, the results indicate an improvement in that 56.6% of students scored grade b which shows a great increase of 42.4%. the results also indicate that 6.7% scored grade a and only a small percentage of students failed the test. in order to ascertain whether there was any significant difference in the results, anova test was conducted. the results of the anova test are presented in table 3. table 3: statistical preand post-test results. as table 3 indicates, there are statistically significant differences between the preand post-entry test results. the results indicate that p-value = 0.000238 < 0.05. therefore, it can be argued that the independent variable, in this case the course, has affected the response variable, which is the performance of the students. the results seem to indicate that the reading module has had an impact on students’ performance besides other elements such as improved reading proficiency because of extensive reading of academic textbooks. ethical consideration the code of research practice as contained in the research ethics policy for the university of botswana was adhered to. the rights of the participants were respected by requesting students to freely volunteer to take part in the research. students were free to opt out at any time. although participants were asked to write their names on their answer sheets, the scores were not revealed to anyone even the participants. the marks attained in both the preand post-tests were not used for continuous assessment. the names were required to help the researchers measure improvement or failure from scores obtained for each individual participant in the preand post-tests. limitations it is important to acknowledge the limitations of this study. first, the study used convenience sampling of a small specific group of students; therefore caution should be used in generalising the results to all students that enter the university in botswana. future research could do a replication of the study that involves all year-one first entrants from all faculties at the university. second, we would like to acknowledge the insufficiency of the assessment instrument because the text that was used was not specific to students’ content areas. we acknowledge that students could have benefited a lot if the reading text was in their content area. third, the focus of the study was mainly on students’ understanding of content and the impact of the reading module and not on the instructional strategies that lecturers used which could also have impacted on students’ reading skills. it is possible that the lecturers’ influence on the students and instructional strategies could have contributed to students’ success. future research investigating students’ reading proficiency levels and the impact of the reading module could also assess the impact of lecturer and instructional strategies. despite these limitations, the study provides a useful starting point to assess the reading proficiency of students when they first enter university to ascertain the extent to which they are prepared for university reading. the study also serves as a useful point to reflect on the impact of the english for academic purposes (eap) reading module. implications of the study the findings of this study have important implications for the teaching of reading skills at the ub. first, given the results of this study, we cannot assume that students that enter the ub are competent and proficient readers. as indicated, the reading module is allocated only six 1-hour sessions which are inadequate. we need to consider increasing the time allocated if students are to benefit more from the reading module. therefore, urgent attention needs to be given to designing a new basic reading course (and not a module) that would enable students to use a combination of reading strategies that would aid them to understand and interpret a text. it is evident that more focus should be placed on developing students’ critical and interpretive skills because these skills are crucial in academic contexts. the focus of this reading course could be on pre-reading strategies (e.g. activating background knowledge, making predictions and questioning), while reading strategies (such as drawing inferences, questioning, connecting, and evaluating and monitoring of comprehension) and after reading strategies such as summarising and synthesising (block & parris 2008; spector-cohen, kirschner & wexler 2001). the course could also focus on improving students’ reading speed so that they would be able to handle the reading load of the university. second, it is also evident from the results that there is a mixed and wide variation in students’ reading competency levels when they first enter the university. lecturers teaching academic literacy need to take cognisance of this diversity for them to be able to effectively cater for different learners. they could initiate a reading competency testing programme, which will determine the reading level of first-year students and inform them of what skills to focus on. this will allow for appropriate intervention. for instance, proficient students could be given an advanced discipline-specific reading course while less-proficient readers begin with a basic reading course suggested above. finally, although exposure to the reading module had an impact on students’ performance, the impact was minimal when we analysed performance for each question. the results indicate that students still struggled with high-level reading skills such as interpreting meaning, making meaning associations, inferences and summarising the main points even after going through the reading module. there is a need for explicit instruction and more practice in these different reading strategies. research indicates that explicit instruction of reading strategies is beneficial to students (johnson 2005; zimmermann & hutchins 2003). conclusion the study provided a picture of the reading competency of first-year students when they first enter a university and the impact of the reading module they did. the findings indicate that students have varied reading levels and difficulty in high-level reading skills. the results suggest the design of a reading course that will address students’ weaknesses in reading. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. author’s contributions b.b.n. is the lead author and b.t.r. is the co-author. b.b.n. prepared the reading competency test answer sheet and administered it. b.b.n. marked the scripts and compiled the scores for anova analysis. b.b.n. and b.t.r. interpreted the results and b.b.n. wrote the initial introduction, justification and methodology sections. b.t.r. wrote the results and discussion section and implication section. editing was done by both authors. references alderson, j.c., 1984, ‘reading in a foreign language: a reading or a language problem?’, in j.c. alderson & a.h. urquhart (eds.), reading in a foreign language, pp. 1–24, longman, london. alderson, j.c., 2000, assessing reading, cambridge university press, cambridge. alderson, j.c. & urquhart, a.h. 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http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/16073610509486377 appendix 1 reading proficiency test the aim of this test is to measure your level of proficiency in reading to determine the degree and amount of intervention necessary to assist you to improve your ability to read and comprehend university texts. answer all questions on the answer sheet provided. section a: reading cloze test instructions read the passage below carefully. there are missing words which you have to supply. on the answer sheet, write the correct answer next to the number. before you write anything, read the whole passage quickly to get a general sense of what it is about. then read it again, more carefully and decide what word is suitable in each blank space. supply only one word per blank space. the first two have been done for you to give you an example of what you should do. do not write them on your answer sheet again. ensure that the word you decide on makes sense when the whole sentence is read. do not write anything in the blank spaces on this question paper. sample answer: 00 – which 000 – of electronic mail messages in the past few years, a new type of communication has become available 00 ……… is known as electronic mail or email – a term that has become generic for a vast array of different commercial enterprises that sell their services in this field. electronic mail is a system whereby your personal computer is connected by means 000 …….. a modem to you telephone. you type in your message and send it off to a specific address by simply striking a specific key. the computer sends the ….1….. to the server (a commercial company that specialises in this type of communication), which then distributes your messages all over the world. most universities and technical colleges in botswana have electronic mail and more and more private individuals are ‘getting connected’, that is by joining servers, who, for a minimal fee, give individuals and companies access to electronic mail services and the internet. just as with ordinary mail, institutions, firms, companies and individuals have ….2…… own addresses and these usually follow a specific pattern: email addresses differ widely but they all have one thing ….3…. common and that is the @ sign, which means at. in the above address, bw is the international sign for botswana and ac is short for academic, which immediately indicates that the addressee is connected with an educational institution. some ….4….. institutions use another ‘path’ like edu (for education) or com (for communication) to deliver their electronic post. it is important for students …..5….. realise that electronic mail can be an invaluable resource when you are studying at a distance education institution. depending on the institution …..6…… you are studying, you can contact your lecturer far more quickly, regularly, cheaply and reliably …..7…… through ordinary post. there is no prescribed format for messages on the electronic mail system. messages are far more informal and it is not necessary to an address or date because ….8….. are usually automatically inserted by a program. many electronic mail ….9…. also give their clients access to the internet. for students,…10….. to the internet through their university can give them valuable information about books, articles, journals and other types of publications in a specific field. for example, at the time when the new 1996 south africa constitution was ……11….. drafted, it was possible to gain access to the latest version of the constitution on the internet, literally as it was being written. the decisions …12…. the constitutional court can also …..13…. downloaded from the internet before they are even reported in the newspapers the next day. in the united states, academics make extensive …..14……. of the internet and some academic journals exist in electronic form only. …..15…… you want to find out more about the internet your library is probably the best place to start. you should also try to find out if the institution where you study has a computer centre, …..16……. the people there usually have the latest information on access to the electronic mail and the internet. a word of warning: the internet can ruin …..17…..life! some people get so engrossed by the seemingly unlimited information that is on offer ……18……. they either run up a huge telephone bill that they are …..19…… to pay or they get addicted and cannot stop ‘surfing’ the internet, that is, clicking from one subject to …..20……. other. [20] section b: reading comprehension instructions: read the following passage carefully and then answer the questions on the answer sheet provided. circle the correct letter of the answer you have chosen next to the given number. where you are required to write your answer in words, use the space provided for that on your answer sheet. do not write anything on the question paper. part one – the place of meaning some theories assume reading begins with a search for meaning, whereas others argue that meaning is not derived until print has been fully decoded. the former also assume that only one meaning is possible, the reader’s role being to extract this specific meaning. however, the second perspective suggests that any text has potential to generate the construction (as opposed to ‘extraction’) of multiple meanings. the understanding is important, because if we accept it, then we must accept that meaning is relative and dependent upon the transactions that take place between readers and texts in a specific context. as a result, readers who share a common culture and read a text in a similar context will create similar texts within their heads. however, the meaning they create will never be exactly the same; in fact, individuals who re-read a known text never comprehend it in exactly the same way. because we change, and the context in which we read changes; the meaning we create also changes. anyone who has read a novel a number of times knows that each time they have read it, they have seen (or understood) new things: how much more then, must meaning vary, for different people who read the same text. these different perspectives lead to quite different instructional outcomes. the first leads to activities designed to give students skills that are assumed to be necessary to extract the ideal meaning. the latter will result in instructional approaches designed to help students construct more elaborate meanings as they read, and will focus on the efficient orchestration of reader, text and contextual factors. it is the second perspective which has influenced this book. part two – the impact of context upon reading 4. there are differing degrees of importance placed upon reading context within alternative theories. one extreme perspective is that context has little influence upon meaning; that is, a good reader should be able to extract the ‘correct’ meaning irrespective of contextual constraints. however, at the other end of the continuum, reading theorists argue that context has a profound impact, shaping the meaning as it is constructed. 5. the viewpoint that has influenced this book is very close to the latter. to ignore context is to overlook a key factor in meaning making. context has influence at a number of levels. first, readers are the type of people they are because of the specific social context within which they have lived. readers who have lived in similar social and cultural contexts will share specific meanings, and one would expect to see this reflected in the texts they construct as they read. 6. second, any text is written in a specific context and is shaped in part by the culture and social fabric within which it is created. recognising this fact alone can have a profound influence upon the meaning the reader will construct as he or she encounters a text. 7. third, readers encounter texts in specific contexts, which can influence meaning at a number of levels. for example, a mother reading a note left by her 5-year old on the refrigerator may need to use contextual factors simply to determine the note’s purpose. at another level, if students are told to read a novel to prepare for a test, they will read it differently than discovering it themselves in the library and read it for pleasure. 8. the perspective adopted in this book is that context is an integral part of any reading event, influencing the meanings readers construct as they attempt to orchestrate all sources of knowledge available to them. part three – the influence of reader purpose 9. the role that reader purpose plays in reading is also an important consideration. most reading theories fail to recognise that reader purpose has a role in comprehension. it is more difficult to determine the range of beliefs in this area in the absence of comment in most theories. one could assume that the most extreme perspective may be that purpose has no influence upon meaning. in other words, a text has a precise meaning which readers need to extract irrespective of whether their purpose is to read for pleasure or to seek information. such a perspective seems difficult to justify or sustain when one considers the range of readings possible for even a single text (e.g. a newspaper article) if the reading purpose is varied. some theorists recognise that purpose has significant impact upon the way a reader approaches a text and the meaning derived. within this book, it is assumed that reader’s purpose places limits upon the potential meanings that readers can construct questions read the headings in bold print and answer this question. in this passage, the writer is talking about: the place of meaning the impact of context upon reading the influence of reader purpose all of the above in paragraph 1, the writer is saying: reading begins with a search for meaning meaning is not derived until print has been fully decoded one point of view is that reading begins with a search for meaning, and another view is that meaning is not derived until print has been fully decoded none of the above in paragraph 1, when the writer says the ‘former also assume that only one meaning is possible’, he is referring to: theories which assume that meaning is only derived after print has been fully decoded theories which assume that reading begins with a search for meaning none of the above in paragraph 2, the writer is saying: readers who share a common culture understand a text in exactly the same way meaning changes according to the interaction between reader and text in a specific context reading a novel many times changes its meaning in paragraph 2, the writer says ‘this understanding is important because if we accept it …’ what do the words in bold letters refer to? in paragraph 4, when the writer says ‘the viewpoint that has influenced this book is very close to the latter’ he is referring to: the viewpoint that context has little influence upon reading the viewpoint that context influences meaning the viewpoint that there is no context in meaning which of the three views in the above question (7) does the writer agree with? a or b or c? re-read paragraphs 4–8 and write down the phrase which supports your answer in paragraphs 5–7, the writer: talks about the importance of culture on reading lists different levels in which context has an influence on reading points out that students will read a novel differently depending on the purpose in part three, the writer is saying that: the purpose for which a reader reads a text influences the meanings that he/she can construct a text has a precise meaning which readers need to extract irrespective of whether their purpose is to read for pleasure or to seek information purpose has an insignificant role to play in reading which statement best summarises parts one, two and three: meaning and context play an important part in reading reader purpose is important in reading when reading, the purpose for which one reads and the context in which one reads influence the meaning which one can construct in paragraph 1, the statement ‘meaning is not derived until print has been fully decoded’ means meaning is not arrived at until reading a text is completed words must be fully understood before their meaning can be made meaning is not formed until words have been completely understood the word extract in paragraph 1 means: guess remove take out derive the word viewpoint in paragraph 5 means the same as another word in paragraph 4. what is the word? the word context in paragraph 4, means: conditions and circumstances surrounding a text which helps shed light on its meanings the book in which a word occurs that which occurs before or after a word connection [15 × 2 = 30] source: adapted from: zulu, c, 2005, ‘academic reading ability of first – year students: what’s high school performance or prior exposure to academic reading got to do with it?’, southern african linguistics and applied language studies, 23:1, 111–123, http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/16073610509486377 reading2.pdf � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �� � report making space for expressive and creative writing in african primary schools: a two-site action research study in kenya and south africa1 paula gains molteno institute for language and literacy (mill, south africa) barbara graham summer institute of linguistics / bible translation and literacy ( kenya)2 abstract: similar concerns about the development of children’s creative writing abilities in kenya and south africa prompted two mother tongue (mt) education practitioners in summer institute of linguistics (sil) and molteno institute for language and literacy of linguistics (mill) to undertake parallel intervention studies to increase teachers’ competence in writing pedagogy and improve the quantity and quality of learners’ writing. most early literacy teachers have had no experience themselves of expressive writing, so it is not surprising that this activity rarely, if ever, features in public school early literacy classrooms. !e hypothesis which formed the basis for this action research study was that educators, exposed to extensive and expressive writing themselves, will be more skilled in the generation of such activities with learners. !is paper reports on the workshop processes in the two sites, identifying similarities and di"erences in the experience. whilst the hypothesis, though tested, remains unproven, this paper presents #ndings that are of relevance to further study in the area of writing pedagogy research and also to teachers and teacher educators involved in writing in the primary school. education action research – a systematic enquiry conducted by practitioners with a vested interest in the teaching and learning process – is most o$en carried out by teachers who want to better understand and improve an aspect of their work. !is paper describes action research which involved teachers, but 1 an earlier version of this article was presented as a conference paper and was submitted for inclusion in the conference proceedings of the multilingualism conference july 2010, to be published by kenyatta university. 2 !e authors acknowledge the valuable input made to this article by mandisa magwaza of the molteno institute for language and literacy (mill, south africa). rw& � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # # $ $ � $ % � & % � � � � � ' ( � ) * 78 reading and writing originated with practitioners working at the level of programme facilitation. however, the paper is as much about exploring the possibility of collaboration and synergy between two similarly focused non-governmental education organisations, as it is about the action research project that jointly ensued. summer institute of linguistics (sil) and molteno institute for languages and literacy (mill) have had %eeting contact over a number of years in relation to projects and potential projects in ghana and sudan; both of these non-pro#t organisations have a central and strong belief in the importance of using mother tongue as the medium for early literacy and of thereby promoting marginalised african languages. whereas the possibility existed for ‘turf wars’ between the two organisations on the promotion of di"erent approaches to mother tongue pedagogy, there was a recognition on the part of both organisations that the issue is bigger than the reach, or potential reach, of any single organisation and must be focused rather on important educational, cultural and, we believe, moral principles. in relation to such important values, both organisations recognise the importance of collaboration rather than competition. !us, the director of academic a"airs for sil africa area proposed that barbara graham, a mother tongue specialist based in kenya, visit south africa in october 2009 to have an exchange of information about the di"erent approaches and explore with mill the possibilities for collaboration. clearly there are di"erences in the approaches of the two organisations. brie%y stated, sil works with local communities, where invited, assisting them to build capacity for language related development projects which include bible translation, adult literacy and children’s education involving mother tongues. sil uses a number of teaching strategies in its literacy and mother tongue education provision. mill has developed an early literacy methodology for grades one, two and !ree called breakthrough to literacy (also referred to below as breakthrough). !is methodology is a version of the approach developed in the united kingdom in the 1960s by the linguist michael halliday. it recognises and builds on learners’ oral and aural competencies in their mother tongue, and is “founded on an understanding and interpretation of what language is and what part it plays in our lives” (halliday, 1978: 205). using learners’ own ideas and utterances as a basis for the production of written texts, breakthrough “starts from what learners know, i.e. their spoken language, and uses this to help them learn something new, i.e. how to read and write” (molteno project, 2004: 1). breakthrough works even more e"ectively in african languages than in english because of the regular phoneme/grapheme relationships in the spelling and pronunciation. mill implements breakthrough in africa by working with teams made up of early grade teachers together with curriculum and language specialists, to develop versions of the course that suit the language and the learners’ context. teachers are then trained in the � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # # $ + � $ % � & % � � � � � ' ( � ) * 79paula gains and barbara graham methodology and receive classroom support for their implementation work. so far, breakthrough has been translated into #$y african languages and is being used in nine sub-saharan countries. one outcome of the meeting between mill and sil was the realisation that in both countries, teachers, in their e"orts to facilitate the development of children’s writing, emphasised the correct representation of text above children’s personal expression of their ideas. in kenya, younger children’s writing consisted largely of copying. in south africa too, it has been noted that despite the success and power of the methodology, and despite ample guidance about expressive and communicative writing in the breakthrough teacher’s manual (molteno project, 2004), teachers’ implementation of writing in breakthrough classrooms is quite limited. for example, #ndings from ethnographic-style research (gains, 2010) in one classroom identi#ed that children did very little writing apart from sentence drills that copy the structure of the key sentence with the substitution of a noun. example: mother is cooking (key sentence) learner’s `original’ sentences: brother is cooking; father is cooking; sister is cooking etc following discussions about the similarities in the kenyan and sa situations an agreement was reached to conduct a parallel research study, focusing together with teachers and teacher trainers on their own practice as writers, and to explore the hypothesis that teachers, and teacher trainers, generally do not encourage expressive and creative writing because they themselves do not routinely engage in, or with, such writing activities. !is perception is supported by calkins (1986) who argued that writing has not been a skill that was taught but rather a task that was assigned and marked by teachers. learners were not assisted to understand the processes involved in developing a written script but emphasis was on the #nal product. “i do not think a single teacher ever watched me as i wrote, heard my ideas about good writing, or spoke with me about my composing strategies” (calkins, 1986: 13). we wanted to give teacher trainers and teachers the opportunity to engage in personal expressive and creative writing and to re%ect upon the process as well as on the resulting texts. !ere was an underlying expectation, and one that we planned to document, that the intervention might result in improved classroom practices with regard to children’s expressive and creative writing. we envisaged that the bene#ts accruing from the implementation of a dual-site collaborative study would include support for each other during the process of carrying out the research and the analysis of the outcomes. !e focus of , . / 0 1 0 2 3 4 1 5 3 / 6 7 8 9 : ; < < = > 0 = ? 0 @ ? / 0 1 1 1 a b / c d 80 reading and writing the two organisations is largely on implementation, rather than research. as a result, the tendency of school-based interventions has been to seek measurable outcomes rather than to learn from observed practice. however, this intervention, with its clear research focus, has highlighted the importance for the organisations of re%ection and learning which will enrich and inform future practice. we describe, below, the development of the research in our respective countries and the results to date, before re%ecting upon what has been learnt in relation to the research hypothesis and underlying expectations. kenya in kenya, #nancial and time constraints were particularly relevant. as a mother tongue education (mte) specialist assigned to the kenyan ngo, bible translation and literacy, i have the role of helping to facilitate the introduction and implementation of mte in particular language communities.3 each mte programme plans its activities one year in advance based on available funding, among other criteria. funding agencies are particularly keen to see that the activities mte programmes engage in are in accordance with those stated in their plans. i hoped to involve persons from the following groups in the research process: local education o*cers, mte teacher trainers, and teachers at schools that programme sta" judged to be supportive of mte. however, since the research study was not within planned programme activities, costs needed to come from personal resources. !e budget and timing therefore needed to be carefully managed. research plans i planned to travel to the research area on three occasions, each time for a period of one week, to conduct the study while also doing other programme related work:e f november 2009 – explain the intervention and seek permission for the research from education o*cials, the language project sta" and the sta" at the school. i requested three sessions during each week lasting about two hours each. i reasoned that three sessions would allow time for participants to write longer pieces and to re%ect on and develop what had been written. i had verbal agreement from all groups, with a proviso by the education o*cers that the timing needed to be %exible. 3 !is paper has been collaboratively written. in the sections about kenya, the author, o$en denoted by `i’ is the sil researcher; in the section on south africa, the author is the mill researcher. , . / 0 1 0 2 3 4 1 5 3 / 6 7 8 9 : ; < < g 0 0 = ? 0 @ ? / 0 1 1 1 a b / c d 81paula gains and barbara grahamh i january 2010 – conduct the intervention with education o*cers and project sta" who are involved in training teachers for the implementation of mother tongue education in lower primary classes. by the time of the second visit the education o*cers and mte sta" were unable to commit to the time and the intervention was reduced to a one-hour session. participants were asked to write brie%y about di"erent topics; to re%ect upon the process of writing, the languages they used, and the place of expressive and creative writing in lower primary classes. !is session became primarily a way of introducing education o*cers and mte sta" to what i hoped to do with the teachers.j k february 2010 – conduct the intervention with teachers. !e intervention with teachers was more successful in that they agreed to meet over three days (monday, tuesday and wednesday) for one and a half hours during their lunch break. !ey requested that lunch be provided so that they would not need to return home for lunch. !e intervention with teachers workshop one all the sta" except for the head teacher took part in the sessions. !e teachers comprised three from pre-school or early childhood development (ecd) classes, two lower primary teachers and four from upper classes. on the #rst day, a$er i explained a little more about the writing project, teachers were given exercise books and pens and asked to write on a particular topic. a$er about two minutes of writing they were asked to stop and to write about a different topic. about #ve to six topics were covered mainly dealing with their personal experiences or opinions, such as “a memorable experience during teenage years”, “ a place i like to be” and “one person i admire”. at various points they were asked to discuss in small groups, or in the larger group, di"erent aspects of their writing, such as their choice of language and their reactions to the process of writing. most wrote in english to begin with, though one ecd teacher who had received mte training which included the orthography of the pokomo language, kipfokomo, wrote in kipfokomo. !e others were not con#dent enough in their knowledge of the orthography of kipfokomo to commit it to paper. as the session went on most were persuaded to try to write in kipfokomo without , . / 0 1 0 2 3 4 1 5 3 / 6 7 8 9 : ; < < g 1 0 = ? 0 @ ? / 0 1 1 1 a b / c d 82 reading and writing worrying too much about correct spelling, since at this time the focus was their ideas rather than the presentation. one teacher, a non-native pokomo speaker, continued to write in english and another wrote in kiswahili. one teacher commented on the short time given initially for writing ideas, suggesting that this enabled her to make good use of the time without thinking too much about what she was going to write. a$er a while teachers were asked to share their writing with each other in small groups, either by reading or by talking about what they had written. !ey were then asked to choose one of their pieces to develop into a longer piece of writing for publication. !e #rst session ended as the teachers began to work on their longer pieces. workshop two i had intended that teachers would use part of the following session to develop their writing but many came to the session having already completed their writing. !ey had found time in their day to continue writing. one explained how he had returned to the workshop venue a$er he had completed the school day to improve on his writing. another had had to visit the doctor but took her book along so that she could continue writing as she waited. most of the session was therefore focused on editing and involving others in the dra$ing and editing process. teachers read each other’s writing, and input on kipfokomo orthography was given by a member of the pokomo mte programme sta". teachers were asked their opinion about how far children could be expected to engage in a similar writing activity. general agreement was expressed that the focused writing activities could also be done with children. however, when asked if they would be prepared to try the activity with their classes and report back to the group the following day, only two teachers from the upper classes volunteered immediately. a$er some persuasion a standard two teacher and an ecd teacher also agreed to try the process with their classes. exercise books had been bought for each child in the school to encourage the exploration of expressive and creative writing. !ese books were to be used by the children and brought back to the group the following day. in the meantime i typed and printed the teachers’ writing for #nal editing the following day. workshop !ree on day three the teachers who had volunteered returned with the children’s books. !ey shared what they had asked the children to do and showed the results. !e ecd children had drawn pictures of their families and labelled each picture. !e teacher said she had spent two hours on the activity and the children had copied the writing from the blackboard. !e standard three l m n m o p q p r s t q u s o v w x y z [ \ \ ] o p ^ _ p ` _ o p q q q a b o c d 83paula gains and barbara graham teacher said she had elicited many ideas verbally from the children before asking them to choose one topic to write about. !e class spent about an hour on the activity and most wrote nearly a page. children from class seven and eight wrote longer pieces, mostly in swahili but a few were written in kipfokomo. when i asked one teacher from the upper school why he had volunteered to do the writing with his class, he said he wanted to learn about any weaknesses in his teaching and to be open with the other teachers. when i asked others why they did not immediately volunteer, the general feeling was that children from the upper primary were already able to form letters and sentences correctly so could concentrate on the creative element. copying was thought to be the best way to get younger children to write. during this session teachers were given time to discuss among themselves if, and how, the strategies they had experienced over the three days could be incorporated in their teaching. i was later told that there was a divide between mainly upper primary teachers, who felt that incorporating the strategies in the school would be possible and bene#cial, and who suggested ways in which this could be done, and teachers of the younger children, who felt that there was no need to include creative writing in normal school practice. !e teachers’ writing from workshop two was further edited by teachers, again drawing on collaboration in the process. !ese versions were later published in book form, a$er being #nally edited by a member of the pokomo mte sta". !ree copies of an eleven page a4 book entitled “hewani teachers write !eir !oughts and stories” were placed in the sta"room the following day. i was interested to observe teachers’ reactions as they saw this simple book – a stapled-together printout of their writing. !e books attracted immediate attention as teachers entered the room, took copies and began reading. !e head teacher was seen later sitting in the playground reading a copy. re"ection !e intervention was very short due to time and funding constraints. perhaps the period was too brief for notable impacts to be expected on teachers’ practice. however over the three days of the intervention and the two days that followed, when i was able to spend two full days in the school, there were some positive indications that the intervention had the potential to positively impact teachers’ practice of developing children’s expressive and creative writing: !e teachers were keen to write. !ey were very willing to write in their mother tongue, kipfokomo. l m n m o p q p r s t q u s o v w x y z [ \ \ ] x p ^ _ p ` _ o p q q q a b o c d 84 reading and writing working with all the teachers in one school facilitated mutual understanding and re%ection which could potentially provide support for teachers wanting to attempt the suggested innovation. discussion revealed teachers’ ideas about what constitutes writing at the early stages and what learners at this stage are capable of and allowed other views to be expressed. !e goal of eventual publication provided a purpose for writing and for illustrating the stages in the process towards the #nal copy such as dra$ing ideas, writing, cra$ing and editing. a few teachers were willing to attempt the new ideas in their classes and share their experience with their colleagues. a further positive outcome was seen in the days following the intervention. i was asked by one of the teachers of the upper class to implement the writing workshop activities with the children. at the end of the period, during which many children wrote in their mother tongue, the teacher announced that every friday he would be doing creative writing with his class, a"ording the opportunity for expression in any language. !e students’ initial reservations about writing in kipfokomo, based on concerns about accuracy in spelling,4 were overcome by persuasion, and one child was observed to write with a great deal more %uency when writing in kipfokomo than in english. another commented that writing in kipfokomo was not as di*cult as she had thought but that she would still like to know how to write the language properly. despite these positive indications, one ecd teacher said she had spent two hours getting children to copy pictures of their family and label the pictures. !is shows that greater understanding is needed of the purpose and value of expressive writing, particularly with early learners. i was not invited to implement writing activities with the lower primary classes, but it is probable that the teachers of these classes will need more exposure to and experience of expressive writing before being persuaded of its value for their classes. it would be useful for them to observe young children writing and reading back their ideas, and to gain an appreciation of what ‘mistakes’ reveal about what and how children are learning. such experiences, gained over time, might encourage them to value children’s re%ective and creative writing, and to add it to copying as part of children’s writing repertoire. 4 !ere are also diacritic marks in written kipfokomo. l m n m o p q p r s t q u s o v w x y z [ \ \ ] b p ^ _ p ` _ o p q q q a b o c d 85paula gains and barbara graham challenges and possibilities one key challenge is located in teachers’ perceptions. most lower primary teachers do not see a role for creative writing with their children. action research where teachers are supported to implement and re%ect on changed writing pedagogy may be the right way to help teachers to engage re%ectively with education innovation and to explore its impact on children’s con#dence and competence as meaning-makers. however, even with a great deal of experience there is never a guarantee that teachers will include innovations in their practice. a number of studies have noted that even a$er extensive interaction involving policy statements, teaching and learning materials and special training, there is o$en little long-term change in teachers’ practice (janks, 2010; williams, 2007). teachers tend to adhere to an interpretation of the curriculum that has characterised their usual practice and that of their colleagues. in this school, teachers of the younger children did not appear to be able to envisage the bene#ts of children writing independently, when it was likely that this would be done less than perfectly. !ey were, therefore, not inclined to #nd ways of incorporating independent writing activities into their practice. instead, copying from the blackboard was thought to be the best way of helping children to develop writing. implicit in this notion is that children are prevented from expressing themselves in the written form until such time as they have mastered the technicalities of letter formation and spelling rules. a process of development which includes making and learning from mistakes, as children became conversant with writing conventions, was not part of their understanding. small incremental changes over time, though not easily achieved, may be all that can reasonably be aimed for. another challenge relates to the acceptability to teachers of the source of suggested educational innovation. in kenya, curriculum is formulated by the kenya institute of education (kie). !e mother tongue section of the primary education syllabus covers standards one to !ree, the levels in which the mother tongue subject is included. !e listed objectives, learning experiences and assessment activities for ‘writing’ in the mother tongue seem to emphasise the correct formation of letters, words and sentences, with indications that this is achieved by copying. however, also included in the objectives are the following statements for standards one and two, “use pictures, symbols, or isolated letters, words and phrases to communicate meaning” and “produce simple guided pieces of writing” and, for standard !ree, “write own stories based on familiar experiences” (kie 2002). !ese latter objectives do relate to expressive writing in the early stages of primary schooling, and yet this type of writing is not routinely seen in classrooms. clari#cation on this disjuncture is o"ered by sociologists who have shown that regular interactions, which e f g f h i j i k l m j n l h o p q r s t u u v w i x y i z y h i j j j { | h } ~ 86 reading and writing include particular ways of doing things, reinforce beliefs about the course of action that is deemed to be correct, and have a greater in%uence than written stipulations (giddens, 1984; wells, 2007). for teachers, what constitutes young children’s writing is therefore likely to be based much more on usual practice than on written objectives or suggestions from one-o" innovations. a series of small whole-school action research projects may provide the opportunity for teachers not only to experience and re%ect on innovative strategies but also provide reinforcement for the new strategies to be viewed as acceptable courses of action – in e"ect, building a community of practice (wright, 2007) around this aspect of literacy. in the long term, a focus on expressive and creative writing might also help to develop competent and con#dent writers in the mother tongue, which are sorely needed if wide availability of mother tongue literature is to become a reality. south africa !e proposed intervention !ere were to be three workshops spaced about two months apart. !e participation of teachers was to be voluntary and the intervention would focus on increasing teachers’ own experience and understanding of creative and expressive writing. as mentioned above, the underlying expectation was that a$er the three workshops it might be possible to record increased teacher con#dence and competence with regard to expressive writing and that this in turn might have an impact on, and improvement of writing pedagogy. !e workshops were scheduled to take place for two hours a$er school. setting up in order to select the participating schools, in november 2009 contact was made with district o*cials of two district o*ces serving urban and periurban schools. a desirable, although not essential criterion for selection was that the schools would be teaching home language using breakthrough to literacy. !is would mean, hopefully, that teachers, having been trained by mill, would have competence in the teaching of mother tongue and it would also mean that any positive impact of the intervention would enhance teachers’ competence as breakthrough teachers, and hence have a positive impact also on their learners. e f g f h i j i k l m j n l h o p q r s t u u v z i x y i z y h i j j j { | h } ~ 87paula gains and barbara graham !e curriculum advisors in both district o*ces were enthusiastic about the idea of the project but protocol required that an intervention of this kind be approved in writing at provincial level. !ere was therefore a necessary delay in which protocol was duly addressed by way of the completion of a research request form. !e application gained provincial approval but it then required that a memorandum of understanding be drawn up and signed between mill, as service provider, and the districts concerned. !e process of ensuring compliance with provincial and district protocol meant that the #rst workshop in the school in district a did not take place until late february, with others planned for may and september. meetings in district b about the intervention were delayed pending the receipt of approval from the relevant district o*cial. !is delay resulted in the meeting taking place in february and workshops commencing from april onwards. what follows is a report on the series of workshops implemented in the same school in district a. !e process workshop one in district a, the #rst workshop took place with twenty-nine teachers. it seemed that they were initially bemused because the approach of this workshop, instead of o"ering training in classroom materials or methodology as usual, focused on them as individuals, requiring them to express themselves through various writing exercises and activities. !e workshop icebreaker involved designing a tee-shirt with logos on it; this a"orded a fun and supposedly non-threatening context for teachers to provide information about themselves, their objectives for the workshop and to re%ect on their current writing and reading practices. it was also an exercise that teachers could use with their own learners, showing that writing takes di"erent forms and need not only be narrative or expository text. we then talked about and generated a list of the writing activities that the teachers engage in, in every-day life. moving into the practice of writing, teachers were given a blank, unlined sheet of paper and asked to write three things that they feel when faced with a blank sheet of paper and being asked to write. in other words, the workshop was recognising and acknowledging the range of emotional responses involved in writing. implicit in this recognition is that the learners likewise may have similar `performance-related’ concerns that need to be acknowledged and addressed. e f g f h i j i k l m j n l h o p q r s t u u v x i x y i z y h i j j j { | h } ~ 88 reading and writing free writing (elbow, 1973), the process by which one simply writes for a given time period without judgement and without editing or correcting oneself, is an excellent strategy for addressing ‘writer’s block’. !us, a$er a brief explanation of the purpose of the process, teachers were asked to free-write about how they feel when faced with a blank page and being asked to write. calkins (1986) provides a re%ection of how he felt as he stared at a piece of paper before writing. he says he felt hollow and anxious, and would procrastinate before actually attempting to write. !ese feelings and behavioural tendencies were a result of feeling incompetent, as there was no clear and productive guide on the processes involved in writing. writing therefore felt more like a chore than an experience that could be enjoyed. such experiences are important to note, as they provide a reference point for the limitations that teachers may have when required to teach writing, as they themselves almost certainly did not have positive experiences of writing pedagogy as learners or as student teachers. it was interesting that whilst about a third of the teachers became readily involved and wrote freely and with enthusiasm, others seemed to continue to be blocked; a few did not even write at all. at the end of the activity, i asked the teachers how they felt about this exercise; whether it had freed them from the usual blockages that most of us feel when we are asked to write. it was interesting to note that none of the teachers responded by re%ecting on how the exercise had made them feel; they responded rather by reading out what they had written. whilst this mismatch may suggest that i had not posed the question clearly enough, it may also indicate that re%ection on own practice may not be easily or readily done. !e closing session aimed to generate re%ection about how the workshop activities could be used with learners, and to seek agreement that at least one activity would be implemented with their learners before the next workshop. workshop 2 it had become clear that the original schedule, with several weeks’ gap between workshops, was problematic because of the need for continuity and sustained momentum. !erefore, the second workshop took place a month earlier than planned, at which nineteen teachers were present. several teachers arrived late, and clearly many of them, a$er a day’s teaching, showed signs of fatigue. even though the workshop was scheduled for 1.30 pm to 3.30 pm, it actually started at 1.35 pm, with teachers arriving at di"erent times. however, those who did arrive on time were asked to read a letter `puzzle’ that involved pictograms � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 89paula gains and barbara graham for words. although this icebreaker activity was enjoyable, it was noted by one teacher that the idea would not translate well into the language that she teaches, isixhosa, because it was based on the concept of homonyms, of which there are very few in most of the african languages of south africa. early in the workshop, during the recap of the previous session, it emerged that none of the teachers had implemented any of the ideas introduced in that session. !is is possibly related to the fact that there had been a two-month gap since the #rst workshop and that the lack of follow-up had resulted in teachers losing motivation or focus. !erefore, the point was strongly reiterated that although these workshops address teachers’ own writing skills, there is an additional objective for them to re%ect on how they could implement the workshop activities with their learners. teachers were asked to free-write about their very earliest experiences and memories of developing an understanding of the concept and practice of writing; in other words, to recall their earliest memories of `doing writing’. as in the previous workshop, during the feedback session, in addition to sharing what had been written, re%ective feedback was sought on the experience of free writing, as to whether it frees up creativity, as it is supposed to, or not. again, teachers were not able to, or did not give this kind of re%ective feedback, focusing rather on retelling what they had written. !e next session focused on deepening teachers’ awareness of style in narrative text. two versions of an introductory chapter of a children’s story were presented for evaluation and comparison. one was a plain précised version of an extract from an expressive text by the south african writer, chris van wyk (2006). !e plain version was shown #rst (although for the purposes of the exercise, they were not told that this was a précis) and discussed. !en the original text was shown for comparison and analysis of the textual strategies used by the writer to communicate more e"ectively and expressively with the reader. drawing on the readings and the discussion, teachers were asked to write about an item that has special meaning for them. !ere was no time le$ for peer review and editing, so the completed texts were taken away and typed up for the next session, at which teachers would learn about and practise process writing – dra$ing, re%ecting, redra$ing, editing and then publishing a #nal version. at the end of the session it was agreed that the workshops needed to occur more frequently to maintain the momentum. !e need was stressed for teachers to do `homework’ before the next workshop. !ey were asked to do one piece of free writing on anything that they wished, and also to use one idea from this workshop with their learners. teachers were also asked to bring � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 90 reading and writing samples of their learners’ writing to the next workshop, so the impact, if any, of the workshop on the learners’ writing could be identi#ed. it is hoped that there will continue to be involvement with these teachers until the end of october of the academic year, thus a"ording a su*cient amount of time over which to observe change and/or improvement. workshop !ree twenty-one teachers attended the workshop and, since it again started late, only one hour was available for the activities. unlike in the kenyan experience, the teachers did not do any writing between the workshops. although their enthusiasm for these workshops seemed to be increasing, at the start of each workshop, inhibitions about writing had to be overcome anew. !e #rst activity in each workshop was therefore an ice-breaker, which on this occasion was a group writing activity. teachers wrote one sentence on a page and passed it to their neighbour for the next sentence to be written. !ey were encouraged to write in any chosen language. some wrote in english, others in isixhosa, isizulu, tshivenda or sepedi (#ve of the eleven o*cial languages of south africa). !is exercise did indeed break the ice, a"ording cognisance of the value of multilingualism and the multi-lingual nature of the school. it also provided an opportunity to enjoy a collaborative and non-threatening experience of expressive writing. !e main activity intended for the third workshop was to peer-edit and redra$ the pieces started in the previous workshop. dra$ing, editing, redra$ing and publishing of written work are requirements of the languages curriculum (doe, 2002); but due to the fact that teachers have not been exposed to this practice, there is very little evidence that it is done with learners. dra$ing, editing, redra$ing and publishing, regarded as features of the writing process (emig, 1971), are based on the assumption that learners need to engage in these processes in order to understand writing as a meaningful generative activity in which ideas can be communicated to di"erent audiences. auerbach (1999) argues that while the process approach focuses on meaning, the formal features of orthography and writing are not ignored. supporters of the process approach argue that increasing accuracy and enhanced expression evolve through dra$ing, revision, and editing. auerbach (1999) further asserts that this approach to writing values learners’ lives and voices, creating a pathway for better language acquisition as well as self-discovery. !e importance of including these activities in this writing workshop series is thus fundamental to this project. � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 91paula gains and barbara graham criteria for feedback and a role–play exercise for giving feedback were provided by the two facilitators. as the teachers engaged in the process, it became clear that more time was required than was available for the activity, because of the teachers’ lack of familiarity with the experience of giving and receiving feedback on their writing. !ere is, thus, a need for more time to be devoted for teachers to gain experience and con#dence in editing and redra$ing. it was also apparent that teachers struggled to distinguish between the developmental stages of the writing process and the more familiar act of marking. re"ections on the south african study although three workshops were planned for this study, it became apparent that the development of primary school teachers’ understanding and practice around expressive writing requires more than three short workshops. it is hoped that further workshops will be possible for and welcomed by these teachers. however, although it will be necessary to implement further workshops to be able to report with regard to changed practice, even at this mid-point in the study, the #rst part of the hypothesis has been corroborated; teachers, in this school at least, have little experience of creative and/or expressive writing, and this does relate to the implementation of a limited writing pedagogy that prioritises form over content. it is heartening that there appears to be a sustained interest in the content and practices of these workshops, despite the somewhat sporadic attendance and late arrival of teachers. !e di*culties with regard to eliciting re%ective feedback from the teachers is of interest, although it would not be fair to draw conclusions about this at so early a stage in the process. it would be worth exploring further whether it relates to lack of con#dence, or cautiousness around a new discourse, or it could reveal that re%ective practice is for these teachers, a challenging cognitive activity. !e problem of continuity related to the two-month gap between the #rst and second workshops indicates the importance of maintaining momentum with this type of intervention. even when the workshops are spaced more closely together, one and a half hours is very little time within which to address the lack of experience of expressive writing and writing pedagogy. unlike in the kenyan section of this study, teachers in this school did not do any writing between the workshops, even though the value of practising the skills with learners and doing individual homework had been emphasised. � � � � � � � � �   ¡ � ¢   � £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © © ª � � « ¬ � ­ ¬ � � � � � ® ¯ � ° ± 92 reading and writing re"ection on the process of parallel research !is parallel research project was rooted in collaboration. it was out of the desire to explore the possibilities of collaboration between sil (kenya) and mill (south africa) that joint observation of children’s writing occurred. !is led to the shared realisation that, in both countries, teachers’ approaches to developing children’s writing were failing to take account of their capacity for creativity and/or expression. one of the strengths of parallel research was that it was not necessary for the research design to be exactly replicated in each setting. rather, each researcher could take account of the situations prevailing in each country to formulate an appropriate design. at the same time, the sharing of developing designs, and the process of the research enabled each researcher to learn from the other and to re%ect upon their own responses in the light of the other’s analysis. action research projects conducted in parallel settings enable researchers to learn from the process both within their own and in other settings. further, where #nancial constraints preclude large-scale research, small-scale action research studies undertaken by di"erent researchers provide a cost-e"ective means of using available resources to gain knowledge arising from diverse situations. finally, parallel research is a valuable way in which organisations working towards similar ends can collaborate in the achievement of those ends. for both the researchers involved in this project the experience of parallel research has been motivating and interesting. key #ndings and recommendations both researchers are careful to acknowledge that the short time of the intervention precludes the declaration of conclusive statements about its impact. nonetheless, there were clear #ndings which have emerged in both sites. !e non-threatening activities in the workshops encouraged teachers to write, though it appears that more engagement with re%ective and creative writing, (their own and others’) may be needed before the impact is seen in teachers’ discussions of their writing and in their facilitation of children’s writing. !e work undertaken thus far suggests that there are limitations in teachers’ knowledge, skills and con#dence with regard to writing and writing pedagogy. !e activities reported in this article sought to address these limitations and provide teachers with increased con#dence and strategies that they could use in teaching writing with their learners. � � � � � � � � �   ¡ � ¢   � £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © © ª � � « ¬ � ­ ¬ � � � � � ® ¯ � ° ± 93paula gains and barbara graham in-service primary school interventions aimed at improving literacy teaching o$en focus more on the teaching of reading than on developing learners’ writing skills. !is is highly problematic, given that students later in their school lives will be judged almost entirely on their ability to write e"ectively and meaningfully. !is study highlights the need for in-service and pre-service teacher education to place emphasis on writing pedagogy, and that such work needs to take place over an extended period of time in order for sustainable change to be e"ected. action research is a valuable means of analysing and improving practice. we believe that collaborative action research that explores and extends teachers’ writing skills and con#dence, combined with deliberate approaches to extending and improving writing pedagogy has the potential to make a di"erence to teachers’ approach to writing pedagogy in africa. only when teachers themselves have experienced the potential for writing pedagogy to give children “some space for decision-making” (dyson, 2001:1) and to reveal their “powers of adaptation and improvisation” (dyson, 2001:1) are we likely to see changes in learners’ exercise books in south african and kenyan primary schools. it is the hope of these researchers that we will then #nd texts that go beyond the scope of neat lines of copied text, and be invited into the written worlds of learners’ unbounded imaginations. references auerbach, e. 1999. !e power of writing, the writing of power: approaches to adult esol writing instruction. focus on basics: connecting research and practice, 3d. available url: http://www.ncsall.net/?id=341 calkins, l. m. 1986. !e art of teaching writing. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. department of education. 2002. revised national curriculum statement grades r-9 (schools) policy, languages: english home language. pretoria: department of education. dyson, a. h. 2001. where are the childhoods in childhood literacy? an exploration in outer (school) space. journal of early childhood literacy, 1(1): 9-39. elbow, p. 1973. writing without teachers. new york: oxford university press. emig, j. 1971. !e composing processes of twel"h graders. urbana: ncte. gains, p. 2010. learning about literacy: teachers’ conceptualisations and enactments of early literacy pedagogy in south african grade one classrooms. unpublished doctoral thesis, university of the witwatersrand. giddens, a. 1984. !e constitution of society. cambridge: polity press. halliday, m. a. k. 1978. language as social semiotic. london: edward arnold. janks, h. 2010. literacy and power. london: routledge. kenya institute of education. 2002. primary education syllabus volume 1. nairobi: kie. molteno project. 2004. breakthrough to literacy: teacher’s guide. cape town: maskew miller longman. � � � � � � � � �   ¡ � ¢   � £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © © ª ¥ � « ¬ � ­ ¬ � � � � � ® ¯ � ° ± 94 reading and writing van wyk, c. 2006. ouma ruby’s secret. johannesburg: gira"e books. wells, g. 2007. who we become depends on the company we keep and on what we do and say together. international journal of educational research, 46(1-2): 100-103. williams, e. 2007. extensive reading in malawi: inadequate implementation or inappropriate innovation? journal of research in reading, 30(1): 59–79. wright, n. 2007. building literacy communities of practice across subject disciplines in secondary schools. language and education, 21(5): 420–33. � � � � � � � � �   ¡ � ¢   � £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © © ª ¯ � « ¬ � ­ ¬ � � � � � ® ¯ � ° ± ² ³ ´ µ ¶ · ¸ ´ · µ ¹ º ¶ » ¶ · ¸ ¼ ½ ¾ ¿ à á ½ â à ¿ ã â âä å opinion �is is literacy! reading of photographs in research on san students’ literacy in a remote dweller school in botswana affiliation communication and study skills unit, university of botswana lone e. ketsitlile communication and study skills unit, university of botswana introduction i discuss here part of my larger study which investigated what san students and their non-san friends in a remote area dweller (rad) junior secondary school in botswana understand as literacy in school and at home. a narrative case study approach was used to gain an in-depth understanding of what students’ value and understand by literacy. findings across participants’ stories revealed that they saw literacy as those things that had value to them and these in%uenced how they read ‘the word’ and ‘the world’. storytelling, games, singing, knowledge of di"erent plants, basket weaving and sculpting were variously identi#ed as literacy by the six san and tswana participants. purpose of the study !e purpose of this discussion paper is to enquire about the following question: what do san children value and #nd meaningful in their home and school environments? how does this relate to the possibilities for literacy learning? !is work is taken from my phd study (ketsitile, 2009). !is larger study examines the struggles of san children in a di*cult schooling environment where they battle with speaking, reading and writing challenges, in english particularly, as well as the disparaging views of san children held by many of the teachers in the school. !e students struggle to #nd points of connection and interest with school work that bears no relation to their out-ofschool knowledge and family practices. gonzalez, moll and amanti (2001) talk of funds of knowledge as literacy that children bring to schools. !ey encourage teachers to recognize and tap from such knowledge. clearly, this was not being done at this junior secondary school and these photpgraphs start to examine what these out of school interests and knowledge might be. my phd research explores these concerns from other angles as well, including the recording and discussion of the narrative resources that these children get from the stories their parents rw& æ ç è ç é ê ë ê ì í î ë ï í é ð ñ ò ó ô õ ö ö × ø ê ù ú ê û ú é ê ë ë ë ü ý é þ ß abstract introduction early literacy in south africa philosophy with children reading picture books philosophically visual research methods and voice the research project findings: the data that ‘glowed’ teachers’ expectations of children as thinkers discussion conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) karin s. murris school of education, university of cape town, south africa robyn thompson philosophy in education in southern africa, south africa citation murris, k.s. & thompson, r., 2016, ‘drawings as imaginative expressions of philosophical ideas in a grade 2 south african literacy classroom’, reading & writing 7(2), a127. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i2.127 original research drawings as imaginative expressions of philosophical ideas in a grade 2 south african literacy classroom karin s. murris, robyn thompson received: 10 nov. 2015; accepted: 09 mar. 2016; published: 15 july 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract this article reports on a philosophy for children (p4c) literacy project in a south african foundation phase classroom that introduces an important new focus in the p4c classroom: the visualisation of philosophical ideas provoked by the picture book the big ugly monster and the little stone rabbit (2004) by chris wormell, giving voice to young children’s own imaginative ideas and beliefs (in this case about death). this research shows how a particular use of the community of philosophical enquiry pedagogy combined with the making of drawings necessitates a rethinking of what ‘voice’ means. we conclude that the children’s drawings bring something new into existence, thereby offering unique material and discursive opportunities for all children, including those who otherwise might not have expressed their ideas. introduction in this article, we report on an early literacy research project that focused on how young children respond philosophically1 – not artistically, or psychologically2 – to a carefully selected picture book. our findings show how the young children used drawings to create imaginative theories and beliefs (in this case about the concept ‘death’), and discuss how some of the research findings changed how robyn regarded the cognitive abilities of some of her learners in class and made us rethink what we mean by ‘voice’ in the classroom. this practitioner research is positioned in a field known as philosophy for children (p4c), and traditionally, its ‘community of enquiry’ pedagogy uses mainly oral communication in a pedagogical tradition known as ‘socratic’ (fisher 2001). named after the ancient greek philosopher socrates, the role of the teacher is that of a midwife, ‘to help others bring to birth their own ideas’ (lipman 1991:202). importantly, the enquiry mainly proceeds though oral dialogue, not through writing or drawing. in a circular seating, children think together and construct new meanings, for example, in a literacy lesson they generate and explore their own questions when reading a picture book together – aided by the teacher as guide and co-enquirer. these picture books are carefully chosen to provoke puzzlement and the deliberative semiotic ‘gap’ between word and image (nikolajeva & scott 2000), inviting young readers to engage in a range of embodied activities, such as giving reasons, expressing opinions, agreeing and disagreeing with peers and constructing their own arguments – thinking about activities that are key to comprehension (haynes & murris 2012). importantly, such an opportunity for interrogating texts includes, but also moves beyond, the comprehension type questions typically asked by teachers, such as ‘what happened in the story?’ or ‘what is the moral of the book?’. this socratic approach to teaching and learning draws on the imaginative thinking of both teacher and child, as neither knows the answer to the philosophical questions the children develop together. in this article, we limit ourselves to the discussion of drawings made by robyn’s grade 2 class during a series of p4c literacy lessons. previously, robyn had been experimenting with drawings as part of her regular p4c sessions and she had been struck by the richness and diversity of the drawings, in particular by some children in her class, those who usually do not speak at all. concerned about the limitations of the traditional p4c format she speculated what the material and discursive force of objects such as paper and pencils made possible for her learners – opportunities to philosophise through the visual. part of the aim of her research was to find evidence for her initial hypothesis that making drawings can offer unique opportunities for children to create their own imaginative theories and ideas about a text, which is different from how art is generally used in schools. she combined the community of enquiry method of p4c with a visual research method (thomson 2008) and inspired by the reggio emilia approach to education (malaguzzi 1998; rinaldi 2006). we start by offering a rationale for this practitioner research project in the context of current literacy teaching and policy in south africa and introduce reggio emilia’s metaphor of the hundred languages to make a case for the importance of the visual in meaning-making, not just for some but for all children. we then continue with an overview of p4c as the conceptual framework for both robyn’s teaching and her research design. after a justification of the use of one particular picture book as the key text for the educational intervention, we focus in more detail on the research site and describe how the philosophical work in the p4c lesson generated children’s own questions and drawings that surprised us. drawing on deleuze and parnet, bronwyn davies (2014:6) describes such an encounter with data as ‘an intensity. a becoming that takes you outside the habitual practices of the already known’. maggie maclure (2013:661) talks about data that ‘glows’, invoking, what she describes as ‘something abstract or intangible that exceeds propositional meaning … decidedly embodied [and] material-linguistic’. before exploring the drawings we explain the theoretical framework and focus on the concept of voice – as explored in justifications for the use of visual research methods (thomson 2008) and also add an onto-epistemic reconfiguration of voice, which moves beyond a focus on self. early literacy in south africa despite substantial investment in education made by the south african government over almost 20 years, many children in both independent and government schools are still failing to achieve basic literacy and numeracy skills in the foundation phase3 (national education evaluation & development unit [needu] 2013). learners experience great difficulty in comprehension and creative writing, which require thinking and reasoning skills (howie, venter & van staden 2006). the low literacy results have contributed to a radical change in the national curriculum – a move from outcomes based education (curriculum 2005) to the curriculum assessment policy statement, or caps in short (department of education [doe] 2011). the rationale for the research intervention was located within these new curriculum demands. however, the objective of the project was not to find evidence of philosophy with children in improving literacy outcomes, or to justify the use of p4c for the teaching of literacy (see elsewhere, murris 2009) but on the benefits of using drawings to create imaginative philosophical ideas about stories as part of the teaching of comprehension. the practice was also inspired by the reggio emilia approach to education. based on similar democratic and egalitarian principles, these two philosophies of education reinforce each other (murris 2016), creating what karen barad (2007) calls a ‘superposition’. one compelling justification for the use of the visual is that so many south african learners speak other home languages4 than the language of instruction (mostly english5). but our motivation includes and also moves beyond notions such as social justice and equity. we were also interested in reggio-inspired practices that include other ‘languages’ than reading and writing and involve a profound ontological and epistemological shift that includes the material (including our own bodies) and the environment in knowledge production. italian educator and philosopher loris malaguzzi, founder of the reggio emilia approach to early childhood education, famously expresses a new concept and theory through his poem the hundred languages. the metaphor not only credits children and adults ‘with a hundred, a thousand creative and communicative potentials’ but also offers a ‘strategy for the construction of concepts’ and is ‘a declaration of the equal dignity and importance of all languages, not only writing, reading and counting’ (rinaldi 2006:175). the beautiful poem6 laments how children have a hundred languages, but school and culture have stolen ninety-nine; they have separated the head from the body and demand from children that they think without hands. the metaphor refers at a practical level to the introduction of material-discursive tools for meaning-making in schools, such as visual arts, physical movements, videos, digital cameras, augmented realities and computers. rinaldi (2006:192–193) speculates that even malaguzzi himself might have underestimated the profundity of the concept. the claim he makes is that all languages carry the same epistemic dignity; that is, each language can play an equal role in knowledge production. furthermore, they communicate with each other, interconnect, and support the conceptualisation and the dignity of the others (rinaldi 2006). concepts are deepened by switching languages (vecchi 2010). the physical properties of the material of various media influence how a concept can be expressed, for example, by the use of string, blocks or clay to express a concept such as ‘love’ (forman 1994:37–38). when drawing children might discover ‘gaps’ in their knowledge and have to readjust the theories (forman 1994), thereby continuously building on and refining earlier thinking. each transformation generates something new, making the situation more complex, making understanding more precise. by drawing, for example, learners get rid of excessive, superfluous or misleading ideas: ‘with each step, the child goes farther and higher, as a spaceship with several stages, each pushing the rocket deeper into space’ (malaguzzi 1998:92). a drawing needs to be able to communicate; learners need to make their ideas visible to others in a much simpler, more direct way. thus, different languages interact with one another and create new understandings in the process. the imagination is part of the cognitive process here by expressing what is not there, sometimes in 2d, other times in 3d. this process does not only do justice to the material that plays a role in teaching and learning but also involves justice of an epistemic kind: children are positioned as rich, resourceful and resilient meaning-makers. this figuration of child is not only central in reggio-inspired practices but also in p4c. philosophy with children philosophy with children (p4c) is an approach to teaching and learning pioneered by american philosopher matthew lipman (lipman 1991). at its heart is the community of enquiry pedagogy that can be used to teach literacy (fisher 2001; haynes & murris 2009, 2012; murris 2014) as well as a way of listening to children’s own ideas about stories, hence an effective method for data collection. it can be defined as a practice of collaborative dialogue that engages a group of people in a more democratic search for conceptual understanding with a commitment to share perspectives, listen responsively and build on each other’s ideas.7 the pedagogy helps to achieve important literacy goals such as developing critical and creative reading skills. in p4c, children set the agenda of a literacy lesson by asking questions about a text. it is the search for answers to their own questions that is the dynamic of the enquiries that follow. teachers need to listen to these conversations in order to ask follow-up questions and are therefore more likely to hear what children ‘think for themselves’ (a goal of p4c) rather than what they might say to please the teacher as a researcher. hence, the choice of p4c for this research as it, arguably, generates more authentic data. bleazby (2012:96) argues that the aim of the community of philosophical enquiry pedagogy is to develop an imagination that is intelligent, and describes a typical p4c lesson succinctly as follows: a typical p4c class involves the shared reading of a narrative, containing philosophically puzzling ideas, followed by a classroom dialogue initiated by student questions and responses to the text. through formulating questions, articulating problems, defining concepts, constructing solutions, expressing opinions, providing reasons, and evidence, constructing criteria, searching for counter examples and evaluating arguments and ideas, students aim to reconstruct philosophical problems and, in doing so, make sense of their world. this process necessitates, as well as scaffolds, the development of intelligent imagination. drawing on john dewey, bleazby explains that the role of the imagination is central to reasoning about texts. the imagination is needed to draw on past experiences, to conceive of alternatives to problematic situations, to ‘suggesting means to reach those ends’ and ‘evaluating those means through considering their possible consequences’ (bleazby 2012:98). in short, through the imagination we can move beyond the here and now and imagine other possible ways of doing things – possibilities that also can be realised (bleazby 2012:99). understanding and transforming reality seem to go hand-in-hand, because for dewey the imagination also enables moral reasoning with its obvious connection to empathy (bleazby 2012:101). empathy requires a form of thinking that imagines other ways of seeing, thinking and doing – key to the teaching of comprehension. children’s literature offers rich opportunities for readers to put themselves metaphorically into the shoes of fictional characters across time and space (murris 2009). reading picture books philosophically print-based texts and ‘illustrated stories’ dominate the standard reading resources in south african schools. images in such stories function to help young readers decode the written words. therefore, they aim for the least possible ambiguity between word and image. such graded readers are very different from the many ambiguity-rich, complex picture books that are now available and ideal for the imaginative meaning-making activities central to p4c (haynes & murris 2012). in addition to using the textbooks and graded readers – regarded by the government as part of the solution to the current literacy crisis (as described in needu 2013) – robyn decided to work also with picture books in her own grade 2 class. useful multimodal texts for the foundation phase classroom, they draw on ‘multiple modes of expression’ (serafini 2009:11). they are short stories that engage the imagination and emotions (haynes & murris 2012), can be read in a short space of time and are accessible to a wide range of learners. in picture books, the meaning of the two different sign systems (the written and the visual) is far from fixed. there are not only two different languages or sign systems – the words and the images (lewis 2001) – but the graphic design also helps to tell a story (serafini 2009:11). in semiotics,8 there are also infinite sub-sign systems, for example, use of colour, place on a page (doonan 1983), choice of art style9 (browne & browne 2011) and the shapes. how these signs ‘interrelate, connect and influence each other’ depend on what children themselves bring to the narrative. the particular material-discursive characteristics of these ‘highly sophisticated aesthetic objects’ (sipe 2012:4) make room for children’s own voices. the teacher’s role in p4c is crucial in modelling open-ended philosophical questioning – especially the kind of second-order questions10 that follow on from children’s questions. so the teacher needs to listen carefully and respond to what is happening in the moment, for example, when children talk about their drawings. this is very different from the activity of asking children to draw a scene on the basis of something that looks fun to them (e.g. in soundy & drucker 2010:450), or what they like or dislike. in a philosophical use of children’s drawings, the teacher focuses on the contestable meanings of the abstract (philosophical) concepts embedded in their questions and expressed visually. for example, when children are puzzled about jack’s actions in the fairy tale jack and the beanstalk, the children’s questions will inevitably lead to the making of drawings about the meaning of concepts such as ‘big’, ‘good’, ‘evil’, ‘strong’, ‘brave’, ‘risk’, ‘trust’, ‘honesty’, ‘danger’, ‘death’, ‘wealth’, ‘greed’ and ‘protection’. although personal responses and anecdotes are encouraged and the connection with children’s own experiences and ideas are a necessary condition for analysing the meanings of these concepts, children’s responses (including drawings) are also critically compared and evaluated by their peers. the enquiry process focuses more on an examination of the justification given for the answer than on the answer itself, and in the process the reasoning skills for comprehension are developed. visual research methods and voice the use of drawings is gaining increasing attention in social sciences research as an alternative representational resource to talking and writing (mavers 2011; mutonyi & kendrick 2011), for meaning-making through the arts and visual literacy (hopperstad 2010; soundy & drucker 2010) and for visual research (clark & moss 2011; thomson 2008). the dominance of the spoken or written word in literacy research (kendrick & mckay 2009:54) has meant that children’s own drawings are often undervalued and underexplored as part of cognitive meaning-making processes (narey 2009; soundy & drucker 2010). in contrast, researchers such as kendrick and mckay (2009:54) draw on recent research ‘that demonstrates that children are able to express powerful and imaginative ideas and problems through visual modes’. they argue that ‘children draw to know, that is, drawing is one way that children create and express complex meanings about their world’ (kendrick & mckay 2009:53). in a sense, the arts are ‘an essential component in children’s ability to make meaning of their world’ (whitfield 2009:156). despite this trend, social sciences research still relies heavily on numbers and words. the use of images opens up powerful ways of seeing and knowing, and is more likely to ‘elicit raw emotions that cannot readily be expressed in words’ (cox et al. 2014). however, a philosophical analysis of drawings does not focus on what the visual represents but on the new that is produced through the drawing activities. therefore, the key question that guided our analysis is ‘how do the drawings produce new philosophical theories and concepts that matter to the children?’ from a research ethics point of view, drawings for data collection in early childhood education are highly encouraged as visual media are regarded as being more child-friendly and more likely to express what children really think (clark & moss 2011; thomson 2008), although thomson (2008:3) stresses that there is no such thing as an ‘authentic’ voice. she reminds us that ‘[p]ower relations of class, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality and age all constrain social relations and limit profoundly what can be said … as well as how it is heard’ (thomson 2008:6). she points out the clear advantage in using visual methods (for collecting richer research data) and argues that drawings are the product of specific adult–child relationships and interactions in time and space and that ‘… the notion of voice suggests both a particular point of view and also one that is not universal (thomson 2008:4). children and young people don’t speak as one – just like adults, they have different experiences, opinions and modes of expression’. therefore, as a hermeneutic activity, interpreting drawings will always be partial, subjective and tentative. the ambiguity and complexity involved in analysing children’s drawings might explain why they are used mainly for artistic expression (not for interpretation or as a cognitive meaning-making tool) or to support writing (emergent literacy) in schools. most teachers feel out of their depth (soundy 2012). drawing on britzman, thomson (2008:4) explains the three different meanings of voice (generally speaking: ‘having a say’): the literal (speech and perspective of the speaker), the metaphorical (qualities and feelings conveyed by the speaker’s words) and political (the right of speaking and being represented). we used these ideas to analyse the data. the research project the research site the research site (robyn’s own class) was a foundation phase grade 2 class consisting of 21 children at a private school on the east rand near johannesburg. at the time of the research their ages ranged from 7 years to 8 years, while four of the learners were 9 years old. the class was fairly evenly balanced with 11 girls and 10 boys. of the 21 children, there was one girl of indian descent; the others were white. the home language of 19 children was english (two afrikaans) with english as the medium of instruction at the school. of the 11 girls, three were on prescription medication for attention deficit disorders, while 6 of the 10 boys were on some form of medication for the same reason. these children have been identified by teachers (either in grade r or grade 1) as having some barrier to learning. procedures of data collection robyn conducted a small-scale research project in her own classroom. over a period of three months, she implemented an intervention (p4c), collected her data through audio taping the community of philosophical enquiry sessions, transcribed the oral discussions, collected children’s reflective journals and drawings, and made field notes (of her classroom observations and self-reflections). the philosophy for children process the planning and running of a p4c session are very different from a more conventional literacy lesson. the children were seated on chairs in a circle, not behind desks or tables, so that everyone could hear and see each other. robyn also sat in the circle but she had a different role in that she did not ask the children questions about the text – after the picture book had been read aloud. instead, she collected their questions by writing them down on a flipchart after an exchange of ideas in pairs. in order to give learners enough time to formulate good questions about the story, they were given ‘thinking time’. during this ‘thinking time’ – a time especially created for private and quiet reflection just after the story had been read aloud – the children were encouraged to draw11 their thoughts and questions about the story, without copying the images in the book. they were asked to record their initial feelings, thoughts or ideas about the story, and it had been made clear to them that their drawings did not have to be completed artworks but functioned as a meaning-making tool. the children were reminded that usual requirements such as spelling, neatness and colour were not important, but that individual expression mattered most. thinking time was followed by a community of enquiry whereby robyn’s role was to ask mostly probing open-ended philosophical questions in response to their own questions and their efforts to answer the questions they had chosen themselves. finally, children were given ample opportunities to make their own drawings as an essential part of the construction and communication of knowledge about the questions that had been raised in the enquiry and that were of importance to them. the picture book: the big ugly monster and the little stone rabbit robyn had chosen a picture book for this project with the idea in mind of stimulating their ‘imaginative intelligence’ (bleazby 2012). the children had not seen or heard it before. in particular, she wanted to record the children’s responses to the ‘gap’ or space that the artist chris wormell had created intentionally between words and images in his book, the big ugly monster and the little stone rabbit (2004). in this story, a lonely monster (figure 1) is so ugly, that nature shrivels up and dies, animals run away and even stone crumbles to dust. figure 1: the big ugly monster. there is one exception, however: a small stone rabbit which becomes the monster’s inseparable friend. they are happy together for a long time, until one day we see the monster wandering into his cave, never to come out again. the rabbit sits outside and waits. adults usually understand this page as signifying that the monster had died, but the children in robyn’s class looked puzzled and expressed uncertainty about the fate of the monster, so robyn suggested that they could draw the inside of the cave. put differently, the drawing activity was an opportunity to listening to children’s own ideas. the community of philosophical enquiry the data for analysis were all the children (nine) who contributed orally in the community of enquiry. moreover, robyn had conversations with seven (other) children as they were making their drawings. she recorded these conversations as field notes. the subsequent analysis of the drawings was related to two of the philosophical questions asked by the children following the reading of the story: ‘is the monster dead or alive?’ and ‘how do we go to heaven?’ robyn’s research aim was to find out how children who had been silent in the enquiry could participate visually through their drawings and add new meanings. later on, during the project, she became increasingly intrigued by the children’s interpretations of the monster’s ‘disappearance’. findings: the data that ‘glowed’ there was a much greater diversity of ideas about the concept ‘death’ in the visual material than had been expressed orally, as evidenced by the transcripts. also, all children had made drawings, whereas only about less than half had participated orally. this is an important social justice reason for including drawing routinely in all p4c sessions, and not just in the early years. moreover, as typical of the self-reflexive dimension of research, robyn had noticed how she had come up against her own expectations of a couple of boys with barriers to learning. she had not expected them to be able to cope with the intellectual demands of the philosophical tasks. hence, at the end of our analysis, we finish with a commentary on robyn’s role as teacher. but first we present the two questions the children raised and emerged as significant topics for the children judging from the joint examination and discussion of the children’s drawings and the field notes made by robyn. question 1: is the monster dead or alive? as adult readers, we had assumed that the monster in this story had died in the cave. some children had indeed drawn pictures with the dead monster in the cave (see figure 3). however, we were very surprised to see also drawings with monsters that were still alive (figure 4). figure 2: the rabbit sits outside and waits. figure 3: a drawing of the dead monster in his cave. figure 4: a drawing of the monster and the rabbit alive in the cave. it soon became obvious to us that the children had struggled to communicate visually what a dead body looks like as opposed to a body asleep. this is not surprising, as seeing a dead body is not experienced often and/or by everyone (figures 5 and 6). figure 5: is the monster dead or asleep? figure 6: is the monster dead or alive? both these children had expressed how the story connected with their own life experiences; they both had different explanations for their drawings. chris12 (figure 5) explained: ‘this is the way you draw dead eyes. i have seen this in cartoons. if you are dead, this is what it looks like.’ (male, aged 8) you can’t have eyes open to look’ (field notes, 2012). while alvin proposed that: ‘sometimes you die so quickly, you don’t have time to close your eyes.’ (male, aged 8) (field notes, 2012). when putting all the drawings together we noticed how different the children’s ideas were about the inside of the cave, and how in the material-semiotic act of drawing the children had created something new. many of their drawings subverted the ‘correct’ meaning of this particular page ‘in’ the book, that is, that the monster died of old age inside the cave. their imaginative intelligence had been made visible in their drawings by producing other possible readings of the text. furthermore, the community of philosophical enquiry sessions had also made it possible for the children to go ‘beyond’ the story and speculate about the technicalities involved in the afterlife. these were manifested in visual answers as expressed through the drawings. question 2: how do we get to heaven? during ‘thinking time’ (the time for private reflection after the story has been read), many of the children had drawn pictures about death; about what happens when we die and how we get to heaven13 – assuming there is one. it could be argued that talking about a concept such as heaven might silence the children who do not believe in heaven, for religious, cultural or other reasons. in p4c, children raise the topics for enquiry, even when uncomfortable or judged as inappropriate by adults facilitating or observing. the community of enquiry is a rare classroom space where children are allowed to participate in making decisions about the content of a lesson through democratic procedures (haynes & murris 2012). as stated before, the pedagogy positions children as rich, resilient and resourceful, not as fragile, vulnerable and in need of protection by an adult who is an epistemic authority, that is, knows better and best what children need, which is a form of onto-epistemic injustice (murris 2016). simply by virtue of being child (onto), young people are discriminated against because of their age and judged to be epistemically inferior. but children have their own philosophies that offer something new to the pool of ideas as robyn’s research suggests. many of the children positioned heaven as a place in the sky, looking down on the world. some also drew souls moving upwards in the sky to reach heaven. the concept of movement is difficult to express visually. in daniella’s picture (figure 8), an angel carries the body of her grandfather while the ‘powerful and strong’ god watches. her idea that souls get to heaven by being carried by an angel is clearly shown in her drawing. it is interesting that for her the burning gets rid of the flesh, but not the bones, and that the soul is like a ghost (like the person alive, but transparent). figure 7: chris’s theory of how we get to heaven. figure 8: daniella’s theory of how we get to heaven. chantel’s (female, aged 8) answer to the question ‘how do we get to heaven?’ involves an intricate pictorial representation of a staircase made of clouds that lead up to heaven. she had drawn two distinct pathways signposted ‘g’ for god and ‘a’ for angels and the deceased (figure 9). figure 9: chantel’s theory about how we get to heaven. the drawing shows the importance of god for chantel, because he is entitled to his own staircase. the children expressed their own ideas in various ways. kay put it as follows: i know how our souls get to heaven. i definitely know this one, [thinking, pulls a face and purses lips]…there are flesh eating bugs, they only eat flesh. not your skeleton – bones are hard for their teeth. they get into the box [coffin] and bite you. all your soul needs is just one hole from a bite. your soul crawls out the hole. (female, aged 9). below are four more examples of children’s theorising about what happens when humans die. each drawing shows a unique answer to the problem of how we get to heaven. we have included them, because they show how different they are as opposed to so much art work we see in schools. in philosophical work with young children, it has been noticed before (haynes & murris 2012) how eager many children are to discuss the topic of death, and also how imaginative and thought-provoking their ideas are. robyn’s research showed how the addition of the visual includes even more children. also, the ideas expressed by the children about this particular moment in wormell’s picture book confirm findings reported elsewhere (haynes & murris 2012:132–136) that children do not accept the adult ‘gap-filling’ between image and words (figure 2). interestingly, if the typical use of rhetorical14 comprehension questions in schools (e.g. ‘what happened in the cave?’) would have been used in this literacy lesson, ‘the’ ending of the story would not have been an open question, worthy of examination and philosophical exploration. what would have been missed is the possibility of considering that the monster is still alive as the correct answer, or arguably that staircases exist that help souls to ascend to heaven. teachers’ expectations of children as thinkers an important aspect of practitioner research is the teacher’s reflective process. through carrying out the research robyn’s ‘taken-for-granted’ thinking about some of the children in the class was disrupted. as discussed above, a number of the children in this class were on medication and usually struggle to write their ideas down. robyn observed how engaged they were this time with their drawings and wondered if this had been made possible because they were allowed to express their ideas visually. she also observed how her own attitude changed towards one particular child with barriers to learning as a direct result of the drawing activities and our discussions during the research process as we explain below. on the left-hand side, there is a domestic scene with tables, chairs, a television, the rabbit and the monster – alive. to the right of the monster is an arrow, pointing to a ‘second’ monster lying on the floor. the latter is separated from the first by a continuous zigzag line. there is no colour used in this portion of the picture. whilst this monster has circles for eyes, his mouth is an irregular line, almost a painful grimace. the lack of colour and the grimace of the mouth could indicate that perhaps this monster is dead. usually, a quick glance at the picture would have led robyn to conclude (perhaps with some irritation) that, as usual, there was no neatly coloured-in picture. moreover, the child, garth (male, aged 9), had drawn two monsters instead of one. surely this was incorrect as there were not two monsters but one in the book. however, when robyn looked more closely a complex representation of ideas became apparent to her. viewing the picture (figure 11) from left to right, there is a dynamic movement in the picture itself. the arrow clearly leads the viewer’s eye from a representation of the live monster to the dead one. in the next drawing, neil (male, aged 8), who sat next to garth, had also drawn a detailed picture showing the inside of the cave (figure 12). there are many similarities between the two boys’ pictures, which include the positioning of the picture on the paper, the entrance to the cave, the inside of the cave, the furniture and even the monster is similar in the way the body is drawn. figure 10: more theorising about how to get to heaven (a–d). figure 11: garth’s drawing of the monster’s cave. figure 12: neil’s drawing of the monster’s cave. the entrance to the cave is blocked by pebbles, shown by repetitive small circles and an arrow showing the way in. when neil had first heard the story and seen the pictures, he was convinced that there were more rocks at the entrance of the cave at the time of the monster’s death than at the beginning of the story. this intense engagement in his request to robyn to turn to the beginning of the story and back to the last scene of the entrance to compare the positioning of the rocks in order to be certain. he then suggested that maybe the monster had died in a rock fall when walking into his cave. this idea is depicted in his drawing. it is only by listening to what neil had to say about the picture as he completed his work, that robyn could make the connection between his illustration of the entrance of the cave and his interpretation of the turning point in the story. neil’s drawing clearly shows the scientific hypothesis that he had used to explain the ending of the story. the hypothesis is that if a rock falls, the monster will die. a particular rock (indicated by the arrow?) must have fallen and therefore the monster is dead. his drawing weaves together personal, scientific and philosophical strands of reasoning. robyn’s attentive listening to neil’s explanation of his drawing had made it possible for her to regard this learner in a very different light cognitively. discussion what the evidence from the drawings shows is how the critical combination of the carefully selected image in the picture book, the philosophical focus and the visual medium had made it possible for the children to generate their own imaginative questions and answers. this philosophical reading would not have been possible if robyn had asked closed questions about the story – questions that would have assumed that the monster is dead in the cave as the correct answer. in this project, the children had been invited to make drawings as an essential part of the cognitive and imaginative process of meaning-making in p4c. the drawings show clearly how the children used this medium to construct and brought something new into existence: their own new ideas about the turning point in this story, and in that sense were given a voice (in the ontological sense). the data also confirm kendrick and may’s claim that drawings give insight into spontaneous concept development, that is, into the meaning of concepts that have developed from children’s own experiences (kendrick & may 2009:55), in this case about death. and they were developing their own theories when, for example, trying to solve the problem of how souls move up to heaven. important in p4c is the relationships learners build with each other through responding to, and building on, each other’s ideas. in this dialogical exchange new ideas are given birth – out of nothing. there is no representation or repetition of what the teacher (or the author) believes what this moment in the story ‘is about’. it was significant that the two boys with barriers to learning had little difficulty in having ‘a voice’, compared with when they have to put their ideas in writing. the drawings gave them an opportunity to ‘have a say’ literally, as thomson would say, and to express their feelings. they were indeed given the political right to speak and to have their ideas represented. but for us, something even more profound happened. metaphorically speaking, these children drew them-selves into being (through their relationships with others) – each drawing is an imprint of a child’s self. their drawings brought their ideas into being, and this ontological and philosophical orientation poses a profound challenge to psychological stage theories. robyn’s research sees pictorial production as a semiotic activity that resists psychological stage theories of art development (kendrick & mckay 2009; soundy & drucker 2010). kendrick and mckay (2009:60) argue that children’s drawings have a ‘voice’ – they are an imprint of ‘each child’s self’. but, the communal nature of the enquiry process in p4c resists regarding the drawing as products of one individual. unlike the more standard or psychological self-concept, we propose a post-developmental concept of self (murris 2016). developmental psychology focuses on the development of the individual and fixes what children are capable of through predetermined discourses and expectations. this essentialising ‘devalues them by placing limits on how they see themselves, on how we see them, and on how we hear what they want to say’ (canella [2002] in cahill & gibson 2012:96). through thinking together philosophically with others in a community of philosophical enquiry and the material affordances of the paper and pencils, the children brought into creative existence their own ideas through thinking with others in a community. we suggest using drawings as a way of ‘listening’ to their voices without, for example, regarding a drawing as typical of a particular developmental stage (soundy & drucker 2010:448), which would imply denying the unique characteristics of the individual drawer. when the community of philosophical enquiry pedagogy is used as part of a literacy lesson, meanings are created, not transmitted, and children’s drawings are included as unique expressions of ‘intelligent imagination’ – as a way of ‘speaking’ with one’s own ‘voice’. however, the data suggest a fourth meaning of voice. voice, not ontologically tied to an individual body, but a voice that expresses what the community of enquiry has brought into existence. a voice that despite its individual expression, is nevertheless a communal voice, bringing some-thing new into the world, into existence in the shape of drawings. this communal voice (with individualised expression) is not a representational voice. a voice that can be substituted by anyone else in the community, but a voice that presents (brings into being) ideas that have not been expressed before (biesta 2006, 2010). each drawing therefore needs to be interpreted in the here and now without fixed ideas about children’s universal age-related capabilities. it would otherwise prioritise essence (essentialist general age-related ideas about childhood) over existence (the experience of what individual children in communities of enquiry as a matter of fact can do in the here and now). after all, the children had little difficulty in engaging with complex abstract concepts, such as ‘heaven’, ‘death’ and ‘soul’. these concepts are not concrete, but nonetheless the drawings show that these young children engaged with them meaningfully and creatively and without any apparent sign of psychological distress. cognitive stage theories are unable to categorise the imagination because they draw on the ‘other half’ of the child’s intellect (egan 1993). creative thinking moves beyond immediate experiences and the world-as-it-is. it is this intelligent imagination that p4c draws on and also fosters. as we have seen in the introduction, philosophical enquiry in the socratic tradition is a linguistic practice. it is grounded in listening to or reading texts (lipman 1991) followed by oral enquiries (fisher 2001; haynes 2008). we have argued that p4c sessions should include drawing (e.g. during thinking time) because it offers unique opportunities for children who are less likely to contribute orally, and offers one of the other ‘ninety-nine’ languages to all children. conclusion part of the aim of robyn’s research was to find evidence for our initial hypothesis that making drawings in the p4c classroom can offer unique opportunities for children to show their teachers that through drawing they can read texts philosophically, and that they can speak with their own voice through the thinking with others about philosophical topics such as death and what happens when people (or monsters) die. what surprised us was the power of the community of enquiry pedagogy through the drawing activities not only to include some, otherwise more reticent children, to contribute, but also noticed how the pedagogy necessitated a fresh way of thinking about voice in visual research. our philosophical readings of the children’s drawings (in combination with their oral contributions) show that the combination of a philosophical reading approach such as p4c, combined with the opportunity to include drawings in the way suggested in this article, is a powerful combination for early literacy. when analysing the children’s drawings philosophically, the children show diverse and original visual meaning-making of the abstract concepts embedded in the questions they explored together. furthermore, and perhaps even more importantly, the inclusion of the visual opens up significantly more possibilities for inclusion and active participation of the large majority of african language speakers in our mainly english-speaking government and independent schools. acknowledgements we would like to thank the children in robyn’s class for their participation in and permission for this research project. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have 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footnotes 1. in a philosophical approach, art is used to express a process of thinking (with no particular concern for the product or representational qualities). 2. we were more interested in children’s philosophical ideas about the concept ‘death’, than their feelings about deaths, as events in their lives; although the two are not disconnected, as the anecdotal can serve to illuminate more abstract investigations. 3. in south africa, the foundation phase ranges between ages 4 and 9 (grade r-grade 4). 4. south africa has 11 official languages. 5. although schools are under pressure by the government to use mother tongue instruction in the foundation phase, many schools are under pressure (e.g. by parents) to use english for instruction because the assumption is that it will maximise job opportunities. 6. see, for example, www.ganmalibu.com for the full text of the poem. accessed 08/03/2016. 7. see also bleazby’s description of a community of enquiry below. 8. semiotics is the study of signs and sign processes and the shared and shifting meanings attached to them. 9. see in particular browne’s fascinating autobiographical reflections on his choice of art styles for his picturebook little beauty (browne 2011:218–224). 10. see footnote 6. 11. this part of the community of enquiry process is often not included in ‘standard’ p4c sessions. 12. the children were indeed boys, but we have used pseudonyms. 13. the children had generated these two open-ended questions ‘what happens when we die?’ and ‘how do you get to heaven?’ themselves. 14. to rhetorical questions, teachers already know the ‘correct’ answers. abstract introduction and overview of argument methodology conclusion acknowledgements references appendix 1: assignment rubric appendix 2: assignment brief for story and reflection reading/writing short fiction assignment step 1: brainstorm ideas for an outline for a four-chapter complete story. about the author(s) belinda mendelowitz school of education, university of the witwatersrand, south africa citation mendelowitz, b., 2016, ‘“you’re in fundzaland”: pre-service teachers (re) imagine audience on a creative writing course’, reading & writing 7(2), a106. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i2.106 note: although this is a single-authored article, it reports on a course that was developed, taught and researched collaboratively. hence, most of the article is written in first person but the section on the curriculum is written in first-person plural to reflect this collaboration. informed consent was obtained from the six students and their identities have been protected by the use of pseudonyms. original research ‘you’re in fundzaland’: pre-service teachers (re)imagine audience on a creative writing course belinda mendelowitz received: 15 sep. 2015; accepted: 09 mar. 2016; published: 15 july 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract this study explores how collaborative writing for a digital platform can enable students to (re)imagine audience. although in the context of process writing peer feedback is foreground, in practice, its effectiveness is uneven. the digital revolution offers new opportunities for alternative peer feedback through collaborative writing and re-imagining self and other in the process. this study examines data from a creative writing course in which pre-service teachers wrote collaborative short stories for the fundza digital site and individual reflective essays about the process. the study’s research questions are the following: (1) what were the affordances of this multilayered audience for engaging the students’ imaginations? (2) how did this process of (re)imagining audience impact on students’ conceptions of themselves as writers? the data set comprised 16 collaboratively authored stories (published on the site) and 34 individual reflective essays. six of the latter were selected for detailed analysis. hence, the data for this study encompass detailed analysis of two groups’ reflective essays on the process of writing their stories. these groups were selected because they exemplified contrasting collaborative, imaginative writing processes. group 1 was familiar with the fundza audience and context, while group 2 struggled to imagine it. thematic content analysis was used for analysis. each essay was read first in relation to the entire data set, then in relation to the other reflections in the author’s group. the combination of gearing stories towards the fundza audience and writing stories collaboratively created two sets of audiences that writers needed to hold in mind simultaneously. analysis indicates that both audiences challenged students to make imaginative leaps into the minds of an unfamiliar audience, deepening their understanding of the writing process. it also highlights students’ mastery of writing discourses and increasing awareness of the choices authors make for specific audiences. theoretically, this study theorises audience in relation to imagination. a number of concepts have emerged from this research that may enable a more fine-tuned analysis of the audience – imagination nexus. structured freedom is an important thread that connects the central concepts of audience, imagination and collaboration, foregrounding the idea that imaginative freedom needs to be understood and worked with in nuanced ways. while freedom and imagination are closely related, the provision of free pedagogic spaces with specific constraints in creative writing courses can be extremely productive, as illustrated by the data analysed in this study. introduction and overview of argument audience is a central concept in writing and literacy pedagogies, yet it has seldom been conceptualised in relation to imagination. this study focuses on an undergraduate creative short story–writing course for pre-service english teachers, which foregrounds the relationship between audience, collaboration and imagination. the course has been developed and taught collaboratively and promotes collaborative practice for both lecturers and students. a fundamental principle of the course is that reading and writing are interdependent literacy practices and that writing is a social practice. this means creating opportunities for students to learn to look at a range of texts (their own texts, published texts and texts by other students) in new ways and to extend the notion of audience from writing for the lecturer towards the production of texts for multilayered audiences. this extended and authentic audience was created by gearing the students’ collaborative short chapter stories towards the fundza site and audience. fundza’s story site is a literacy project that promotes digital reading and writing for a south african youth audience of more than 35 000 readers. the fundza site houses the newly created wits teachers’ writing hotspot, which showcases the best stories from the course, selected by the course lecturers according to an agreed set of criteria (see appendix 1). i argue that while gearing the stories towards the fundza site created an authentic audience for the stories, the constraint of writing the stories collaboratively (in pairs mostly) created an equally important audience for the students’ composing process. both of these audiences required students to make imaginative leaps from their own perspectives into the minds of an unfamiliar audience and peer writing group members. hence, the writers needed to hold two sets of audiences in mind throughout the process. in this study, i explore the following questions: what were the affordances of this multilayered audience for engaging the students’ imaginations? to what extent was the focus on a specific site and audience enabling for some students and constraining for others? the answers to these questions emerge from an analysis of reflective essays students produced on the course. theoretical framework imaginative writing is frequently associated with a complete removal of constraints and absolute freedom to develop ideas as the writer desires (the binary opposite of structure). while freedom and imagination are closely related, this study considers what kind of freedom is most productive for imaginative writing, particularly in relationship to the affordances of different audiences. theoretically, this article works with a vygotskian view of imagination. vygotsky (2004) argues that imagination is the basis of all creative activity and is central to the production of new ideas and inventions in all areas of cultural life. he views imagination as being closely connected to human intellectual development and higher level thinking as well as emotional development. thus, vygotsky presents imagination as a mental function that synthesises cognition and affect. vygotsky (2004:269) also argues that imagination and freedom are inextricably linked and that one needs to have ‘inner freedom of thought, action and cognizing’ in order to imagine. however, it is important to note that vygotsky’s notion of imagination extends way beyond the individual (i.e. inner freedom of thought is only a pre-condition for imagining). rather, imagination entails collaboration between the individual’s mind and the social environment (john-steiner & meehan 2000). the richness of a person’s imagination will depend on the richness of experiences, cultural resources and tools that they can draw on (vygotsky 2004). i take vygotsky’s notion of imagination further and introduce a concept called structured freedom (mendelowitz 2010) into the field. this concept encapsulates the relationship between freedom, constraints and imagination. structured freedom facilitates intellectual and affective engagement and imposes structure that opens up possibilities of learners’ cognitive and imaginative engagement rather than structure that invites replication (mendelowitz 2010, 2014). the course discussed in this study explicitly scaffolded the space of structured freedom through a rich range of specific writing and reading activities. in addition, the gearing of the course towards collaborative writing of stories for the fundza audience created another level of structured freedom. students had to give careful consideration to their fellow group members and fundza readers as audiences, thus constraining, directing and opening their creative output. in the section that follows, i provide a brief overview of the role of audience in writing pedagogy, from the 1980s to the current digital writing age and its reconfiguration of audience. i argue that the focus on audience in process writing pedagogy has met with mixed success and that the advent of digital writing creates powerful possibilities for reimagining audience. despite the significant focus on audience in process writing pedagogy, the audience–imagination nexus has received limited attention. one of the major shifts from form focused and product-oriented writing pedagogy was the move to create a ‘community of writers’ (zamel 1987) in the writing classroom who are simultaneously writers and the target audience for the writing of their peers. process writing also repositioned the teacher as a reader and responder to students’ writing during the drafting phase and an evaluator of the final product (calkins 1986; elbow 1981; graves 1983; zamel 1987). in practice, the effectiveness of peer feedback is uneven and unpredictable. research has highlighted that peer response is ‘a big area of contestation’ in writing pedagogy (wilson 1994:29). in his research with teachers on a process pedagogy writing programme, wilson found that one of the biggest obstacles to the implementation of process writing was the difficulties teachers experience with peer response. one of the main reasons cited for this difficulty was that teachers frequently did not train learners to give and receive feedback productively. but even when training is provided, there is no guarantee of success. some peer feedback groups work better than others, often depending on the level of commitment, the relationships between group members and the extent to which group members have mastered the discourse to talk productively about a piece of writing (mendelowitz 2010). andrews and smith (2011) argue that school writing still has: too limited a sense of audience and function, so that writing becomes an activity that serves assessment requirements in school and the educational system, rather than a form of communication that can make a difference in the world. (p. 9) andrews and smith (2011) conclude that writing for a real audience is critical to generate student engagement in writing tasks and for higher quality writing products. the imagination–audience nexus (the mechanisms and processes through which young writers imagine and invent stories and audience) is beginning to receive some attention. mendelowitz (2010, 2014) argues that imagining audience can entail four imaginative moves: imagining the story for oneself and for an unfamiliar audience, using linguistic resources to create the story and enabling an outsider to imagine the scene. learners are encouraged to make something to: present, through opening their imaginative capacities and the use of evocative language. the process entails minimising distance and enabling the readers to project themselves into the story. this account of the imaginative–audience nexus can be applied to print-based or digital writing contexts. the digital revolution has significantly altered our understanding of audience and the nature of audience. the carefully delineated writing process, as discussed above, is no longer applicable in digital spaces. process and product frequently merge as composition and publication become one integrated entity. writers can post drafts as well as final products on the web, and feedback can be immediate from known or unknown readers (andrews & smith 2011). while audiences and writers in a pre-digital age were separated by time and space (with audiences mostly being relegated the role of passive recipient and interpreter), in new digital media the time and space between writer and audience has collapsed. the audience has a much more active role, which ranges from comments posted on facebook to fan pages or collaborative writing using synchronous technology. while the extent of audience participation in digital writing varies, what is not in question is the broader, multiple, local and global potential reach of audience in digital spaces. both andrews and smith (2011) and deumart (2014) discuss the collaborative and creative potential of writing in digital spaces in relation to audience. hull and stornaiuolo (2010) make some productive links between audience in digital media and imagination. they extend the concept of ‘transliteracies’ (the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media) to include the capacity to imagine self and other in the digital authoring process (thomas et al. 2007). this includes ‘the “critical and hospitable” dispositions necessary for self and other work – the eloquent negotiation and co-existence with unknown but imagined others’ (hull & stornaiuolo 2010 cited in andrews & smith 2011:127). so far, i have framed the relationship between imagination, audience and collaboration in a digital age, with structured freedom as the thread that links these three key concepts. in the sections that follow, i explore the applications of these ideas to the creative writing course that is the focus of this study. the curriculum the course aimed to create a space for english iii students to become writers through engaging with reading and writing processes intensively. while there have been various configurations of the course, the focus of this study is on the current version in which students produce stories collaboratively for the wits teachers’ writing hotspot on the fundza platform. students were required to engage with the specific audience, format, content and language of the fundza stories and its implication for the development of their own stories. stories for the fundza site are usually written individually. however, we decided to set up a collaborative writing assignment as the chapter structure of fundza stories seemed ideally suited for extending the collaborative writing focus of our course (see appendix 2: assignment brief) fundza publishes a chapter a day of stories written by young people, with themes, styles and discourses aimed at a youth audience, through a mobi and online publishing forum. these stories have a massive readership and are set up in a dialogic way such that readers can respond to and comment on each day’s chapter. the mobi forum is particularly cheap and accessible on reader’s smart phones. the chapter-a-day format has led to a certain kind of literary shape: namely, the kind of plot, scene and character which will motivate the reader to come back tomorrow for the next instalment. plots involving strategic placing of climax and motive, cliffhanger chapter endings and other devices to maintain reader interest have become the hallmark of many youth stories in the fundza catalogue (mendelowitz & lazar 2015). students were required to read a variety of different literary story types, including canonical stories, contemporary literary stories and several fundza stories. several classes were allocated to teaching and analysing these stories with the aim of providing both models and anti-models for students’ own writing. the term ‘anti-models’ refers to stories that students did not want to emulate. we use the term models and anti-models as springboards for the students’ own writing, not as templates for replication. as students’ own stories evolved, they were invited to identify which elements of the read stories they found interesting, worthwhile and influential and which they did not. in this manner, students became more reflexive and critical readers and writers. the constraints of writing collaboratively for the fundza site challenged the students to reimagine audience at a number of levels. the students started off the course as readers of the fundza stories. however, they soon became the audience for their own writing and writing produced by their peers, starting with short writing tasks. students were then required to write a four-chapter story for the fundza audience in pairs. once they formed their groups and began brainstorming and writing their stories, the collaboration included a carefully structured editing process. the lecturers and trained writing consultants were facilitators at every stage of the process. the collaborative pairs were then widened to include more varied and fuller class feedback. finally, the actual fundza audience and its interests were the projected audience of all the stories. every decision in the writing process was ultimately influenced by the fundza audience and the group collaborative processes (mendelowitz & lazar 2015). methodology each group wrote a story collaboratively and wrote individual reflective essays (see appendix 2). the broad data set is comprised of 16 stories that were published on the wits teachers’ writing hotspot, and the individual reflections (34 reflections). from these 34 reflections, i selected 6 reflective essays for detailed analysis. hence, the data for this study comprise a detailed analysis of two groups’ reflective essays on the process of writing the story collaboratively. most groups consisted of pairs. however, the two groups selected for analysis consisted of groups of three. hence, six reflections from two groups are analysed in detail from the broader data. the two groups (six reflections) were selected because they exemplified varied collaborative, imaginative writing processes. group 1 was familiar with the fundza audience and context, while group 2 struggled to imagine it. i use thematic content analysis to analyse the reflective essays. each reflective essay was read first in relation to the entire data set, then in relation to the other reflections in the relevant writing group. as imagination, collaboration and audience are the focus of this study, it was important to select and analyse the sample reflections per group and to see how the reflections provided insight into the individual and group process and how they articulated with each other. i analysed the data in relation to two key categories. these two categories are both concerned with imagining audience and facilitated an analysis of the role of audience in the reflections from a number of different perspectives as follows: category 1 – imagining audience by reading published texts (reading–writing relationship) category 2 – collaboration and audience: the constraints and affordances of peer and fundza audience it is important to bear in mind that reflective essays as a form of data have specific affordances and limitations. one cannot ignore the fact that the essays were evaluated by the course lecturers for a mark, and while many were fairly candid, it is possible that some students pandered to their perceptions of lecturers’ expectations. however, on the whole there is enough richness and range to consider the data valuable and insightful. data analysis group 1 consists of two black females (kedi and dimpho) and one black male (thabo). the three group members are close friends and worked well together. group 2 consists of three white females who are also close friends (mary, eve and rolene). although group 2 ultimately produced a coherent and effective story, they struggled with aspects of the collaborative process. both stories were engaging and gripping but entirely different in terms of genre, style characterisation and context. group 1’s story is a human drama about an orphan who is bullied at school. the story engages the reader at a powerful emotional level and is clearly located in an african setting, though not specifically south africa. in contrast, group 2’s story is a crime thriller which engages the reader by creating mystery and intrigue. however, group 2’s story does not have a strong south african setting. in terms of popularity with readers, there is not a significant difference between the two stories: group 1’s story got 12 likes, while group 2’s story got 8 likes. by comparison, the most popular stories on the hotspot site received 49 and 55 likes. group 1 received a total of 19 comments on their story, while group 2 received 17. the responses of the fundza readers to their stories seem to be predominantly shaped by the genre. responses to group 1’s story tend to be more emotionally and personally engaged, with particularly strong, extended responses to chapter 1. responses to group 2’s story were mostly predictions about the plot (whodunit?). however, as a response to a genre that builds towards a denouement, there were five quite elaborate responses at the end of chapter 6, commenting on the ending and quality of the story. in the section that follows, i present a detailed analysis of reflective essays from group 1 and 2 per analytic category. i begin with category 1. category 1: imagining audience by reading published texts (reading–writing relationship) the study and analysis of published short stories (both print based and fundza stories) played an important role in group 1’s evolving understanding of audience and craft. while some groups regarded the fundza stories as anti-models, this group identify strongly with the context, characters and themes of the fundza stories as it resonates with their own lives (i.e. they are part of the target audience). however, this easy identification was not without its limitations. kedi comments on this: ‘what really amazed me is the manner in which all these stories have characters that we can closely relate to. the stories depicted societal issues that did not force one to delve into one’s imagination to create a picture of what is happening in the story’. kedi is suggesting that the stories are so close to her real-life experience that limited imaginative effort is required to visualise the story. while tapping the familiar provides an easier access point into the stories, it creates a challenge of rendering the familiar in fresh and unclichéd, defamiliarised ways (mendelowitz & lazar 2015). kedi explores this challenge further in her reflection as follows: ‘we found ourselves trying to create characters and plots that resembled those from the fundza stories and after visiting the site to see more of the stories, we began to copy small saying and actions without noticing. this was negative because our characters became voiceless and i personally felt that i was using them because of the fear of becoming irrelevant for the audience’. kedi’s comment highlights the limitations of writing for a specific audience with exposure to many models of the target stories, and as part of the target audience themselves. they struggled to create a story with a fresh approach and found themselves in reproduction rather than creative reworking mode (vygotsky 2004). their solution to this problem was their decision to base the story in another african country ‘yet keep the experiences real and non-fiction’. it is interesting that kedi refers to the genre of the fundza stories as ‘non-fiction’, another indicator of the challenges of fictionalising the familiar and the everyday. however, despite these challenges, kedi shows that she has gained valuable insights about writing and audience from reading the fundza stories. kedi discusses specific stories in detail and reflects on their impact on her as a reader, then applies these ideas and crafting devices to her own writing process. she concludes that: ‘not him is the epitome of what suspense in a story should be. each chapter leaves one yearning for more. reading such stories plays a significant role on one’s own writing’. kedi was particularly inspired and excited by the realisation that ‘it is possible to create an antagonist who is introduced as a protagonist earlier in the story’. this device made her realise that there are a number of different ways to engage readers and that these devices can be used simultaneously: ‘this actually helped me realise that a story comes to life when you create events that the reader will relate to and also ones that will leave the reader in a shocked state, yet wishing there was more to read’. on the same theme of playing with the reader’s expectations, she also learned from another fundza story (for love or money) about doing a creative reworking of an existing story, using a modernised fairy-tale frame. dimpho and thabo do not provide as much detail about the reading–writing interface as kedi does. thabo, in particular, is more focused on collaboration and the affective element of the writing journey. both dimpho and thabo make special mention of the playa as a story that had a positive impact on them. dimpho comments that she particularly liked this story as it ‘gives the reader a vip pass into the head of all the concerned characters’. she is referring to the shifting narrative point of view of the story. thabo comments that he learned different techniques of telling a story ‘without being predictable but yet keeping the reader glued to what they are reading’. what he particularly appreciated about ‘the playa’ is the author’s use of everyday language which facilitated ‘a real connection to the text; he captured reality and put it so well in words’. it is worth noting that none of the group 1 members made mention of any of the more traditional print-based stories, preferring the fundza stories. this was not the case with a significant number of students who were critical of the fundza stories. group 2, for example, viewed the fundza stories mostly as anti-models. while the reasons provided for this were all literary, it is possible that they also felt positioned as outsiders by the fundza stories. mary is an avid reader and her preference is for canonical texts. hence, it is not surprising that her favourite text was the story of an hour by kate chopin. like kedi, she describes her response to this text as a reader and how she then applied some of the crafting devices to her writing: ‘throughout the text the reader is taken on a rollercoaster of emotion …. as the reader i loved this and tried to channel this form of story-telling while being descriptive on abstract things such as emotion but still keeping the mystery in the story’. while mary does not specifically mention any of the published fundza stories as positive or negative influences, she was inspired by the work of one of the tutors (fran), who is a fundza writer and shared a sample of her draft story with the whole english iii group. after hearing fran read her work and talk about her writing process, she was ‘filled with ideas’. she was particularly inspired by the quality of fran’s writing rather than the theme of fran’s story. she concludes that ‘it was with this quality in mind that i tried to write my own chapter for this short story’. this comment highlights the potential of creating opportunities for students to engage with writers directly and to gain insights into the messy and creative process usually hidden from view when one reads published works. in contrast, eve had a negative response to most of the stories studied on the course, and said that they ‘did not necessarily help me with my writing. i found some catching stories but also found boring and flat ones’. the only story that eve really enjoyed was ‘the playa’. like dimpho and thabo (from group 1), this story gave her insight into ‘what the character was thinking. this made me feel as if i was in the character’s head’. however, on the whole, she regarded the texts included in the course as anti-models. she realised that for a story to be successful, the story ‘needs to grab you and make you feel as if you are in the book itself’ and she felt this was lacking in the majority of stories provided. she concludes: ‘the texts that i have read on this course have influenced me positively. this is because i wanted my story to differ’. rolene makes a similar point in her reflection about the fundza stories serving as anti-models. after reading the two fundza stories in the course pack, she concluded that: this was not how i wanted our story to be, and my group agreed with me. i found these stories to be clichéd, excessive and overly sentimental. i also found these two stories to be very predictable, with no suspense to keep the reader interested. therefore, we chose to prioritise the detective genre to create suspense and to allow the romantic plot to be hinted at. although the two groups engaged differently with the stories, what is common to both sets of data is the focus on audience and the ways in which students moved fluidly between thinking about their own responses as readers, the crafting devices that facilitated these responses and its implications for themselves as writers. while students have had many experiences of analysing texts at school and in other university courses, the shift here is that they are looking at texts through a writerly lens. the second striking commonality is the students’ mastery of writing discourses and their increasing awareness of the choices one needs to make as a writer in relation to the impact one wants to have on an audience. these shared writing discourses also play an important role in the students’ reflections on collaboration and audience, the second analytic category. category 2: collaboration and audience: the constraints and affordances of peer and fundza audience group 1 and group 2 faced different challenges with the collaborative writing process. group 1 members felt challenged to meet their expectations of their fellow group members, while group 2 members experienced power struggles and conflict about some key elements of the decision-making process. these two contrasting collaborations highlight the constraints and affordances of collaborative writing for the fundza audience. they also illustrate the vygotskian idea of imagination as a synthesis of mind, social environment, experiences and cultural resources in different ways. group 1 mobilises the collaborative imagination productively, while group 2 members at time view the collaborative imagination as a hindrance to individual idea development and story ownership. dimpho describes how her hunger for a real audience was awakened after a talk presented to her class by dorothy dyer and roz haden from the fundza literacy trust. she comments: ‘by the time they left all i wanted was to write and have someone read my word and the response would not be in red pen’. however, she experiences a new level of performance pressure posed by her group members at the first layer of audience: ‘thabo had been teaching for 8 years before he came to wits. kedi is just a great writer herself. this pushed me to a level i had never seen myself on. there is a lot of expectation on them and their work. … i started writing in a way i’d never written before. that is a growth, one i am proud of. one i wouldn’t have experienced if i hadn’t taken up this challenge and worked with them as a group’. in a similar vein, thabo was initially anxious about collaboration and was concerned that he did not have much to offer the other two members of the group: ‘the fact that it was a group task really killed me. … my thoughts were weighing me down as i wondered what i had to offer these girls who have it all together’. thabo alternates between self-doubt and overwhelming excitement. he was excited by the first meeting when the group developed their storyline. however, the excitement is soon replaced by anxiety about the ‘insurmountable mountain’ that awaits them; the realisation that ‘an awesome story line’ is really just the beginning of a worthwhile but difficult journey. it is interesting that he does not initially recognise his teaching experience as a resource, yet this is recognised by dimpho. like mary from group 2, thabo experienced the talk by fran about her draft fundza story as a turning point: ‘it was if a wave hit me, then i learned that i actually needed to believe in myself again. just like humpty dumpty, i was picked up from the ground and put together again’. after this turning point, thabo begins to view the collaborative space as a safe space ‘where i could be allowed to be me and a space where i could make mistakes without being laughed at’. the realisation that even an experienced writer like fran struggles at times seemed to give thabo the permission to view the collaborative space as one that is rich in resources and learning possibilities, rather than a threatening space. of the three group members, kedi is the most confident writer. her initial resistance to collaborative writing was the concern that ‘my ideas are too good to be crushed’. however, she began to appreciate the opportunities ‘to think and see things through a new lens’. rather than focusing on the loss of her individual ownership of ideas, she concludes that the collaborative process was extremely generative, offering a wider spectrum of thought and thus removing the pressure of needing to generate an entire story individually. she concludes: ‘i have grown as a writer, courtesy of this course. this has assisted me in accepting the ideas of others people, their criticism and mostly their ability to redirect my thoughts and also decide about what actually goes into the writing piece and what does not’. what is striking about group 1’s collaborative process is the deep level of investment in the process. the stakes have clearly been raised to a new level in terms of peers as audience. students know that they will be allocated a group mark for the story and that one of the criteria is about story coherence and group process. they also do not want to let their partners down. here we see structured freedom in action, the freedom created by boundaries and structures that facilitate imaginative, affective and cognitive engagement. the constraints of having to negotiate with peers towards a final product forces a certain level of focus, discipline and carefully considered choices about craft, plot, characters and audiences. the other significant element is obviously keeping the fundza audience in mind at all times, and this too had difficult and constraining elements. this group constantly reviewed and revised their plot, content and language in relation to its imagined reception by the fundza readers. kedi commented: ‘when drafting the story for the first time, we questioned how the fundza audience will receive it, if the language will be understood and also if they can relate to it on some level. this made the writing more difficult because with every second scene or dialogue that occurred, i scrutinized and tried to correct things, even though there were no mistakes. the entire process has made one more cautious about what happens on the receiving end of the story’. thabo adds another insight to this discussion about the imagined audience. although previously i have said that group 1 are members of the target audience, they are on the older side of the age continuum. hence, they still need to do some imagining of a younger target audience. thabo describes this process as follows: ‘my writing processes were pretty much shaped by the fundza stories for simple reading. teenagers spend too much of their time on their phones and the fact that such writing reaches them like instant messages made me realise that in order to appeal to this group, one would have to be interesting in their way of telling a story so as not to lose them’. if i was writing this article 10 years ago or more, i would have concluded that these reflections indicate a shift from writer-based to reader-based writing (flower 1989:188). while this concept is still applicable to some extent, it cannot account for the radical shift in audience on digital platforms, particularly the more active role of audiences as responders. hence, thabo is referring to this specific audience of fundza readers who will make negative and positive comments about each chapter in real time. on the whole, group 2 focused more on the challenges of writing for each other as audience than on the fundza audience. this may be as a result of some conflict and power struggles within the group as well as their resistance to the fundza stories and audience. mary finds it easier to write individually, using her own style and voice. hence, it was a challenge to incorporate two other styles and voices into the story. she discusses the delicate balance needed between achieving a high-quality story and being sensitive to the other group members. however, she concludes on a positive note: ‘i was pleased with the end result as i believe we all communicated well with one another and really took each other’s opinions into account’. mary also refers to the wider community of writers and audiences in the class, including lecturer feedback and exposure to stories by other groups in the class. feedback from the two lecturers seemed geared to help the group to focus more strongly on the fundza format and context. this is not surprising given their ambivalence about the fundza stories as described in category 1. mary describes this feedback as follows: ‘after reading our first two chapters, dr n gave us the good piece of advice that the last paragraph of our chapter should be more gripping and entice the reader to continue reading. dr b suggested we root the story more deeply in south african culture. i believe this was valuable advice because these little details are what make the story more believable’. eve also found collaborative writing tougher than individual writing. she shared dimpho and thabo’s initial anxieties about meeting the expectations of group members. she comments: ‘although you have each done your own work and put effort in, it might not always be good enough for the others in your group and putting [the story/ ideas] together is difficult’. however, she concludes that despite their differences ‘we seemed to eventually put it together and get it done’. rolene describes her reaction when she first heard about the assignment, at the beginning of the course: ‘i was petrified because i felt that i was incapable of turning my thoughts and ideas into a story. i decided to take this assignment as an opportunity to develop and improve my creative writing skill’. rolene wrote the first two chapters and enjoyed the task of delineating and developing the different characters. however, rolene found the collaborative process extremely difficult. challenges included ‘ideas that clashed’ and six chapters that did not flow coherently. having introduced the characters in the first two chapters, she felt a strong sense of ownership for these characters and grew increasingly irritated as ‘my group members did not seem to understand the characters that we had created and so they kept changing the characters’ personalities’. maintaining coherence between chapters was a challenge. this was particularly the case for two specific chapters, which rolene argues are significantly different to the rest of the story. this seemed to be the result of a power struggle, in which one of the writers resisted the input and opinion of the other group members. rolene concludes: ‘despite this, i thoroughly enjoyed working with my group members because we were able to generate excellent ideas for the story which i do not think i would have managed to do on my own’. regarding the fundza audience, group 2 was, according to mary, careful ‘to keep the story within respectable bounds’ suitable for young people. in particular, they wanted to write a story that was ‘positive and uplifting’ and to avoid the heavy social issues such as rape and teenage pregnancy. this was a concern raised by a significant number of students in the broader data set. mary comments: ‘i believe that because we had an older high school audience in mind the story reflects the thoughts, feelings and language that a high-schooler might have and feel’. eve found writing for the fundza site ‘an exciting journey not only because you need to think about the audience but because it helped me through my writing process step by step. it helped me to decide what age group to look at and what this age group was after in a book’. in other words, eve found the constraints of a specific audience and format productive. interestingly, both mary and eve focus on the audience in quite a generic way, as children of a particular age with little explicit attention to the other defining features of the fundza audience. rolene focuses on the more practical aspects of writing for the fundza site – topic selection and format. while she enjoyed the freedom to choose a specific topic for the story, she found the chapter format restrictive, limiting the flow of their story. all three group members struggled to make the imaginative leap into the minds and experiences of an unfamiliar audience, hence needing to confront the limits of their collective imagination. from a vygotskian perspective, it could be argued that they lacked the cultural resources needed for the imaginative leap and were reluctant to mobilise these resources through alternative channels such as research or cultural informants. mary makes an insightful comment about the purpose of writing for a range of audience which reflects a deepening understanding of the audience–imagination nexus: ‘writing is about opening ourselves up to communication across boundaries whether they be cultural or social boundaries or the boundary of time and physical space’. i found this comment particularly interesting because this group seemed to struggle to imagine the fundza audience and were ambivalent about the fundza stories. they were determined to write the fundza stories on their own terms, while keeping the audience in mind – a delicate balancing act which was ultimately successful (given that their story was selected to be published on the site and received a positive response from readers). a striking feature of group 2’s collaborative process is the challenges of making creative choices when there is a bigger repertoire of ideas, styles and voices available. there were clearly power struggles around these decision-making processes, with group members showing different levels of receptiveness to group feedback. this conflict points to an important aspect of collaboration – there are inevitably ideas that get lost along the way. however, i argue that such conflict is an important part of the learning process. the three group members ultimately embrace the view that this was a positive learning experience resulting in ‘a more creative outlook and growth’ (mary), ‘an exciting journey’ (eve) that generated better ideas collectively ‘than i could have managed to do on my own’ (rolene). their process illustrates another element of structured freedom – some individual creative freedom was lost but as a result of these constraints there were definite cognitive and imaginative gains. although the two groups have different relationships to the imagined fundza audience, there are some interesting commonalities. both groups seem to view this audience through their teacher lenses. while thabo comments that they ‘spend too much time on their phones’, rolene constructs the audience as needing protection from certain ‘heavy topics’. hence, their constructions of teenagers also shape the ways they develop their stories. conclusion at the outset of this article, i problematised the limited writing pedagogy scholarship focused on the relationship between audience and imagination. i also argued that the focus on audience in process writing pedagogy has met with mixed success. this study has attempted to bridge this scholarship gap both theoretically and empirically. empirically, the most significant finding to emerge from this research thus far has been the productive constraints of collaborative writing for a digital platform as a result of the provision of multiple audiences, some digital and some in the classroom. clearly, there are no formulae for creating engaged audience–writer relationships in creative writing courses. a digital audience on its own will not guarantee more engagement, neither will collaborative writing. however, it does emerge strongly from the data that the combination of writing collaboratively for a digital audience created productive and focused writing/imagination/audience relationships. writing in collaborative groups generated a sense of accountability and investment that is sometimes absent in artificially created peer feedback processes on individual writing tasks. it also gave students access to a more diverse range of ideas, resources and tools for their stories, going beyond individual imaginings towards a shared story imagination. this illustrates the vygotskian notion of imagination as a collaboration between the individual and socio-cultural environments (john-steiner & meehan 2000). while group 1 members viewed this collective imagination as highly productive, group 2 members were more ambivalent about the losses of individual ideas and ownership during the writing process. however, they ultimately conceded that the collaborative journey enabled them to grow in new ways as writers. in addition, the focus on writing for a specific audience and platform bought the notion of audience into a sharp and fine-tuned focus. the specific fundza format of chapters with cliffhangers pushed students to consider regularly how to keep the audience engaged. while these two constraints (collaborative writing and the digital platform) at times created diluted stories, discomfort, anxiety, tensions and power struggles, i conclude that these constraints were ultimately productive and facilitated deep levels of imaginative and cognitive engagement. it should be noted that this imaginative-cognitive synthesis is evident in the student reflections, which contain carefully formulated ideas and creative play with language at times. theoretically, a number of concepts have emerged from this research that may enable a more fine-tuned analysis of the audience/collaboration/imagination nexus. structured freedom is an important thread that connects the central concepts of audience, imagination and collaboration, foregrounding the idea that imaginative freedom needs to be understood and worked with in nuanced ways. while freedom and imagination are closely related, the provision of imaginative pedagogic spaces with specific constraints in creative writing courses can be extremely productive. the possibilities of making writing ‘more real, for real audiences, and in preparation for the real world’ (andrews & smith 2011:38) are multiple. as i am writing this conclusion, the #fees must fall student movement is spreading like wild fire. south african students are finding new audiences for their protest locally and globally, mostly though social media. traditional hierarchies have been subverted as vice chancellors meet with students on their terms, literally sitting on the floor alongside students. the possibilities of writing for digital audiences are endless, and this most recent social movement illustrates this point in powerful ways. while the focus of this study has not been on political protest writing, the recent events are a reminder that there are powerful possibilities for enabling students and educators to rethink audience in even deeper, more immediate ways and its implication for classroom practice. acknowledgements thanks to karen lazar, navan govender and michelle friedman for a productive collaboration. thanks to karen lazar, toni gennrich, laura dison and the two reviewers for valuable comments on earlier versions. competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references andrews, r. & smith, a., 2011, developing writers: teaching and learning in the digital age, mcgraw-hill/open university press, berkshire. calkins, l., 1986, the art of teaching writing, heinemann, portsmouth. deumart, a., 2014, sociolinguistics and mobile communication, edinburgh university press, edinburgh. elbow, p., 1981, writing with power, oxford university press, oxford. flower, l., 1989, problem solving strategies for writing, 3rd edn., harcourt brace javanovich, new york. graves, d., 1983, writing: teachers and children at work, heinemann, portsmouth. hull, g.a. & stornaiuolo, a., 2010, ‘literate arts in a global world: reframing social networking as cosmopolitan practice’, journal of adolescent & adult literacy 54(2), 85– 97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1598/jaal.54.2.1 john-steiner, v.p. & meehan, t.m., 2000, ‘creativity and collaboration in knowledge construction’, in c. lee & p. smagorinsky (eds.), vygotskian perspectives on literacy research, pp. 31–48, cambridge university press, cambridge. mendelowitz, b., 2010, ‘the elusiveness of imagination: a case study of five teachers’ conceptions and enactments of imaginative writing pedagogy in gauteng classrooms’, unpublished doctoral thesis. mendelowitz, b., 2014, ‘creating classroom environments of imaginative (im)possibilities’, english in education 48(2), 164. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/eie.12041 mendelowitz, b. & lazar, k., 2015, ‘“even if it’s my story it can have your touch”: developing a culturally responsive writing pedagogy’, paper presented at wills conference, wits university, johannesburg, august 2015. thomas, s., joseph, c., lacceti, j., mason, b., mills, s., perril, s. et al. 2007, ‘transliteracy: crossing divides’, first monday 12(12). vygotsky, l.s., 2004, ‘imagination and creativity in childhood’, journal of russian and east european psychology 42(1), 7–97 (originally published in russian in 1930). wilson, d., 1994, attempting change: teachers moving from writing projects to classroom writing, boynton/cook, portsmouth. zamel, v., 1987, ‘writing: the process of discovering meaning’, in m.h. long & j.c. richards (eds.), methodology in tesol: a book of readings, pp. heinle & heinle, boston. appendix 1: assignment rubric assessment rubric a: creative story eng3080 2015 names & student numbers: appendix 2: assignment brief for story and reflection english 3/educ 3080 reading/writing short fiction assignment this assignment requires you to work with a partner from your class. you must write a story outline, a four-chapter story for the fundza site with your partner. you must also write an individual reflection on your reading and writing processes. section 1: creative story (150 marks) step 1: brainstorm ideas for an outline for a four-chapter complete story. the story must follow the fundza format the story must be geared at readers from age 13 to 22. however, if you are foundation/intersen phase teacher, you may write a children’s story (see fundza children’s link and format). step 2: write the outline read the fundza story sample (yellow pack, pp. 54-55) write your outline for a four-chapter story. step 3: write the story your collaboration may take different forms. for example, you may choose to separately write certain chapters and then share and meld them, or you may write the whole story together. either way there needs to be a lot of negotiation, constructive feedback, processing and co-working. each chapter must be 700–1000 words. the complete story may not be more than 4500–5000 words. you are encouraged to incorporate and adapt literary elements which you found interesting or powerful in the texts you have read. step 4: editing collaborative editing, correcting, overseeing, polishing and stitching together your final story –is crucial in bringing your process to its culmination in a clear, vivid and original story. you need to examine your story for consistency, coherence and continuity so that it hangs together as a unified narrative and is not fragmented. section 2: reflection (50 marks) this is an individually written part of the assignment. write a 1.5-page (1000 words approx.) text in which you reflect on your own writing processes in the course, and on your specific topic and story: briefly describe your own writing journey through this course, what you have learnt about individual as well as collaborative writing and the possible implications for your teaching practices. how was your own writing influenced negatively or positively by the range of texts you read on the course? provide a few specific examples. how did writing with the fundza site and audience in mind, shape your writing processes? reading2.pdf � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �� article an exploratory study of early letter-sound knowledge in a low socio-economic context in south africa shelley o’carroll wordworks (early literacy and language) abstract: !is paper explores one aspect of early literacy development in a low socio-economic context in south africa. assessments conducted with a sample of children from two disadvantaged communities in cape town indicated that in this context, almost half of the learners entering grade one were unable to recognise any letters. a grade r intervention conducted by volunteers showed that children from this context were able to learn letter-sounds in grade r through a programme that focused on teaching letter-sounds in the context of building language skills, emergent writing and concepts about print. in order to strengthen the e"ectiveness of the intervention, the volunteer programme was supplemented by support for the grade r teacher and teaching assistant. follow-up assessments of one of the intervention groups at the end of grade one revealed signi#cant correlations between early grade one letter knowledge and end of grade one word reading and spelling skills. !e #ndings of this exploratory study are in line with research that shows the importance of letter-sound knowledge in the earliest stages of learning to read. !is raises concerns about the historical lack of emphasis in the grade r curriculum on this aspect of early literacy development. although the study has a narrow focus and conclusions cannot be drawn about other aspects of early literacy learning in this context, the results suggest an urgent need for quality grade r teacher training programmes with a speci#c focus on emergent literacy. introduction provincial and national assessments conducted over the past eight years have con#rmed that a high percentage of south african children are not acquiring basic literacy skills in their #rst three years at school (department of education, 2003; western cape education department, 2009). in an attempt to better understand these low literacy levels, it is useful to not only consider what is happening in schools, but what characterises literacy learning prior to formal schooling. low literacy levels are not unexpected given that many children rw& � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # # $ � $ % � & % � � � � � ' ( � ) * 8 reading and writing from disadvantaged communities do not begin school with well established early literacy and language skills (willenberg, 2004; o’carroll, 2006; de witt, lessing and lenayi, 2008). !is is partly due to the fact that, until recently, many children were not part of a grade r programme. however, being in a grade r class does not necessarily guarantee a good preparation for learning to read and write. in a recent study across four provinces in south africa, de witt, lessing and lenayi (2008) found that although the children in the study attended grade r classes, they did not display basic early literacy competency. in her study of seven classrooms at #ve schools in an historically disadvantaged community in the western cape, willenberg (2004: 88) found that the children’s pre-school environments o"ered “inadequate quality and quantity of access to literacy resources and activities”. she also expressed concern about the “extent to which teachers are adequately equipped to promote children’s language and literacy development” (willenberg, 2004: 188). if the focus is to shi$ from tackling low literacy levels once children have failed to learn to read, to preventing reading failure, there is a need for research evidence on early interventions that are e"ective in improving early literacy competence. !is article focuses on one aspect of an early literacy curriculum: knowledge of letter-sound relationships. !e importance of letter knowledge for learning to read a detailed discussion of the merits of ‘phonics’ and ‘whole language’ approaches to the teaching of reading is beyond the scope of this article. it is nevertheless important to position the teaching of letter knowledge within the debate about pedagogy. traditionally, the teaching of letter knowledge would be located in the ‘phonics camp’. whole language theorists have argued that letter cues are not reliable, particularly in a language such as english where letters can represent di"erent sounds. in a whole language approach, children are encouraged to use the context or their prior knowledge to make predictions about words rather than using grapho-phonic cues. however, research on early literacy development suggests that the role of letter knowledge in early reading goes beyond debates about pedagogy. research has demonstrated that letter knowledge is a necessary foundation for learning to read and write and plays an important role from the earliest stages of literacy development (ehri,1997; 1998; 2005; stuart, 1995; stuart, masterson and dixon, 2000). in the earliest stages of learning to read, emergent readers might initially rely heavily on picture and context cues when reading, but once they know some letter-sounds, they can start to use these as cues to remember words. although there are many irregular english words where letters do not match sounds, � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # # + � $ % � & % � � � � � ' ( � ) * 9shelley o’carroll english is nevertheless written by means of an alphabetic writing system. !e majority of words can be read using letter-sound knowledge, and even an irregular word will have some letters that match the sounds in the spoken words (e.g. yacht). at this stage of their reading development, children are not systematically decoding words, but will be listening for beginning and end sounds in words and looking for letters that relate to these sounds (ehri, 1995). ehri (1997: 175) argued: readers who can form connections out of partial phonetic cues have an advantage over readers who are limited to visual cues in building a sight vocabulary. !is is because phonetic cue readers have a system they can use to remember words. in contrast, visual cue readers have to remember arbitrary, idiosyncratic connections. !is makes the words much harder to remember. without letter-sound knowledge, and an awareness that letters in written words are related to sounds in spoken language, emergent readers will see reading as remembering a visual sequence of letters using whatever cues are most helpful, such as word length and shape, and shapes of letters (e.g. the word look is o$en remembered by the two ‘eyes’ in the middle of the word). !ese links are arbitrary and are likely to mean that children frequently confuse words having the same letters. without letter knowledge, a child cannot begin to experiment with emergent writing and invented spelling. an important stage in the development of written language, invented spelling has also been found to be a predictor of later reading ability. mann, tobin and wilson (1987) used preconventional spelling skills as a predictor of #rst grade reading ability and tested whether there was an association between performance on a spelling test administered midway through kindergarten and a test of reading ability administered midway through #rst grade. !ey established that phonological accuracy scores correlated signi#cantly with word identi#cation and word attack scores. !ey also found that children who “tend to give a higher proportion of phonologicallyaccurate, preconventional spellings tend to become better readers in the #rst grade” (mann et al., 1987: 373). letter-knowledge in low socio-economic contexts given the importance of letter knowledge for early reading development, it is of concern that children from high poverty contexts generally begin school with less well-developed letter knowledge than their middle-class peers (stuart, 1990; bowey, 1995). stuart (1990) found that early di"erences in letter � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # # , � $ % � & % � � � � � ' ( � ) * 10 reading and writing knowledge and phonological awareness contributed to di"erences in early word reading skills and when letter-sound knowledge was used as a predictor of reading achievement, social class was no longer a signi#cant predictor. in another study, duncan and seymour (2000) assessed a sample of children between 4 and 8 years of age and found that low socio-economic status was associated with less well-developed letter knowledge, word reading and awareness of sounds. letter knowledge was the only foundation skill to distinguish socio-economic groups at pre-school and they speculated that “delayed acquisition of foundation literacy skills is traceable to a delay in acquiring letter-sound knowledge” (duncan and seymour, 2000: 145). is there evidence that intervention programmes that focus on letter knowledge and awareness of sounds are e"ective in low socio-economic communities, and does increased letter knowledge in%uence the development of reading and writing skills? blachman, ball, black and tangel (1994) carried out a classroom intervention with pre-school children from low-income, inner-city classrooms. !e intervention was conducted by teachers and classroom assistants in small groups in the classroom during lessons of #$een to twenty minutes. before the intervention, the children knew, on average, only two letter sounds. a$er an eleven week training programme, the intervention group was signi#cantly better than the control group on measures of letter-sound knowledge and breaking up words into sounds. although the intervention programme did not include any reading or writing, children in the intervention group were able to read signi#cantly more regular words than children in the control group. !ey also included more letters in their invented spelling. tangel and blachman (1995) were interested in whether the control children would ‘catch up’ in grade one. !ey followed the intervention group children when they started school and found that these children’s invented spelling and spelling continued to be better than control-group children at the end of grade one. !ese children produced spellings that were at least at the same level and in many cases more complete than those of a middle-class sample (treiman, 1993). !is was an encouraging #nding because the children were doing as well as middle-class children, even though they would have had fewer literacy experiences prior to starting school. in the south african context, two intervention studies have been carried out with grade one learners. nadler-nir (1997) developed a structured programme to teach phonological awareness and letter knowledge to grade one children from disadvantaged communities and found that the programme was “highly e"ective in improving phonological awareness, letter knowledge, reading and spelling skills” (nadler-nir, 1997: 80). she proposed that the results of the study showed that “phonological awareness and letter knowledge . / . 0 1 2 1 3 4 5 2 6 4 0 7 8 9 : ; < = = 2 1 1 > ? 1 @ ? 0 1 2 2 2 a b 0 c d 11shelley o’carroll training can help disadvantaged children to develop better self-teaching skills for the development of reading and spelling” (nadler-nir, 1997: 98). in another study with grade one children, o’carroll (2006) found that a short term intervention that included teaching of letter-sound knowledge, phonological awareness, reading and writing was e"ective in improving the word-reading and -spelling of children relative to a control group of children who started school at a similar level but had no intervention. !e children were learning to read and write in english as a second language. !e research is clear: interventions in low socio-economic contexts can make a di"erence to children’s letter knowledge, and this has an impact on levels of early word reading and spelling. learning to read in a second language: the role of letter knowledge !e ‘interactive model of reading’ used by gregory (1996) in her work with emergent bilinguals provides a useful framework for considering the role of letter knowledge in learning to read in a second language. !e model is concerned with how information such as the structure of language or the meaning of a text (higher levels of processing) in%uences analysis occurring at lower levels (letter-sound correspondences and word recognition). according to this model, there are four sources of information which children draw upon as they learn to read: lexical knowledge (clues about words); grapho-phonic knowledge (orthographic and phonological knowledge; clues about the patterns of letters in words and the sounds that they make); syntactic knowledge (clues concerning the structure of the language); semantic knowledge (clues concerning the meanings behind the words). gregory (1996) proposes that children learning to read in a second language use the same sources of knowledge as their monolingual peers, but that one source of knowledge may compensate for another as they learn in a second language. for example, grapho-phonic knowledge is potentially useful for children who are not pro#cient in a second language and who cannot rely on semantic and syntactic clues. children who have the skills to use graphophonic cues will be able to read words that are not in their spoken vocabulary, and if these spoken words are linked to pictures in books, this could be a useful way of adding to their english vocabulary. gregory (1996) proposes that books are important teachers of a second language to emergent bilinguals. she makes the important point that “children can learn to read before they have oral competence in the target language. indeed, it is clear that these young children are learning english through their reading. reading, then, can lead oral language development” (gregory, 1996: 89). . / . 0 1 2 1 3 4 5 2 6 4 0 7 8 9 : ; < = = 2 2 1 > ? 1 @ ? 0 1 2 2 2 a b 0 c d 12 reading and writing teaching letter knowledge: !e south african context while few would deny the importance of letter knowledge for learning to read and write, there is much debate about when and how to teach letters. in the revised national curriculum statement, learning outcome 3 (reading and viewing) includes the following reference to developing letter knowledge in grade r: “recognises and names some common letters of the alphabet such as the letter the learner’s name begins with” (department of education, 2003). !e recently published foundations for learning. assessment framework grade r (department of basic education, 2010) provides more detailed literacy milestones. by term !ree of grade r, learners are expected to be able to recognise “aurally and visually some initial consonant and vowel sounds especially at the beginning of common words” (department of basic education, 2010: 5), and by the fourth term, they should be able to recognise “aurally and visually, an increasing number of initial consonant and vowel sounds especially at the beginning of common words”. !e dra$ curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) for foundation phase, includes similar guidelines to what extent are these curriculum guidelines re%ected in teaching practices in grade r? a visit to a grade r class in a middle-class area might reveal opportunities for children to engage with letters in a print rich environment, as well as time allocated to a structured programme to teach letter-sounds. grade r teachers would be building on letter knowledge developed through incidental encounters with letters in children’s home environments. in middle class contexts, children would know most or all of the letter-sounds by the time they start grade one. !ey would be using letters in emergent writing, and as cues to read words in their environment. !is is in line with research that has shown that “on the basis of home experiences, middle class children typically start school with a good bit of knowledge about letters and sounds, and thus these children can generally make use of letter-sound correspondences in learning to read” (wallach and wallach, 1976: 188). !e ‘hidden curriculum’ in many middle class homes and pre-schools ensures that most children will learn to read at school because they have learnt to read already. a very di"erent scenario plays out in many pre-schools in disadvantaged communities, where one of the only resources for teaching letters might be an alphabet chart which is used as a stimulus for chanting the alphabet. teaching letters might typically involve children singing the alphabet song or reciting the names of the letters. teachers do not always understand the di"erence between letter-names and letter-sounds, and without opportunities to experiment with sounds in words and see the link to letters, the learning of letters tends to be at a rote level, with little understanding of how sounds in spoken words relate to e f g f h i j i k l m j n l h o p q r s t u u j h i v w i x w h i j j j y z h [ \ 13shelley o’carroll letters in written words. it is not uncommon for children from these contexts to begin grade one not knowing any letter-sounds at all. in willenberg’s (2004) study of the emergent literacy skills of children from disadvantaged communities in cape town, children were assessed at the end of their grade r year (mean age of 6 years 2 months). !e children in this sample achieved a mean letter recognition score of 7.32 (sd = 8.10). scores ranged between 0 and 26, with 34% of the children unable to recognise any letters. willenberg (2004: 191) noted that one of the grade r teachers in her study reported “being criticised by a curriculum advisor for introducing letter recognition activities to her learners”. in a study in a similar context, nadler nir (1997) found slightly lower levels of letter knowledge in the #rst term of grade one (mean letter knowledge of 5.2 (sd = 2.21) in an experimental group, and 3.5 (sd = 2.93) in a control group). in another study in a lower socio-economic group, o’carroll (2006) tested a sample of 53 children from two schools at the start of their grade one year (mean age of 6 years 10 months). !e mean letter recognition score was 3 (sd = 4.62). !e median score was zero and 43% of children were unable to identify any letters at all. a further 32% of children knew between 1 and 3 letters and only a quarter of the sample recognised more than 3 letters. study one: early grade one letter knowledge in a low socioeconomic context study one aimed to establish whether there is evidence that low levels of letter knowledge still prevail in disadvantaged communities. for this purpose, assessments of early grade one levels of letter-sound were conducted across two di"erent communities in cape town. participants two schools were selected that serve high poverty communities and are classi#ed as no fees schools. !e schools are english medium, with a majority of children who speak english as a second language. according to the provincial grade !ree assessments carried out in 2008, 23.7% of grade !ree learners at school a were found to have grade appropriate literacy skills. school b opened in 2008, with an intake of learners from grade r to grade !ree. !e 2008 assessments revealed that only 14.3% of grade !ree learners had grade appropriate literacy skills. e f g f h i j i k l m j n l h o p q r s t u u j q i v w i x w h i j j j y z h [ \ 14 reading and writing procedure and assessment tools children from both schools were tested in february of their grade one year. as far as possible, scores of children repeating grade one were not included in the results, although records of previous schooling were o$en incomplete for children starting school at school b. children were tested individually by trained volunteers. !e assessment was modeled on the multilingual phonics ability test (lomofsky, 2004). children were shown pictures of common items, asked to name them, say the beginning sound of the word and then write the letter for that sound. if they could not name the picture, they were told the name, and if they could not say the beginning sound, the sound was provided for them. children were not assessed on their knowledge of all of the letters. ten letters were selected (seven consonants and three vowels – c, b, m, s, t, f, r, a, o, e). reversals in the children’s writing were not penalised. results !e children’s letter production scores are reported in the table below: table 1: letter production scores of a sample of children from two disadvantaged communities in cape town mean age mean letter writing score /10 % of children who obtained zero school a (n=85) 6 years 3 months 1.7 (sd = 2.6) 49% school b (n=106) 6 years 10 months 2.1 (sd = 2.53) 42% !ese results con#rm that children in these contexts have limited exposure to letter-sounds in the year before beginning formal schooling. study 2: making a case for early intervention in the second part of this paper, the following questions were addressed: could letter-sound knowledge be taught in grade r through a volunteer intervention that included a focus on developing vocabulary, concepts about print, drawing and emergent writing? could a grade r teacher and teaching assistant be supported to teach letter-sound knowledge in the grade r classroom? e f g f h i j i k l m j n l h o p q r s t u u j z i v w i x w h i j j j y z h [ \ 15shelley o’carroll participants !e second part of this study involved an intervention in the grade r class at school a. !e majority of children in the class speak english as a second language. !e class is taught by a quali#ed english speaking teacher with the help of a xhosa-speaking teaching assistant. over the past three years, there have been between 47 and 56 children in the grade r class. !ere is no postprovisioning for a grade r teacher, so although school a is a no fees school, fees for grade r are r30 per month. procedure in february 2008, 22 learners from the grade r class were selected to participate in an intervention programme. children were selected randomly from those who would be turning six years of age during their grade r year, and would de#nitely be going to grade one the following year. five children had le$ the school by the end of grade r, and a further three children were excluded from this analysis because of high levels of absenteeism during the intervention. an intervention group of fourteen children remained. !e children worked in pairs with the same volunteer once a week for thirty to forty minutes, to build their literacy and language skills. on average, each child participated in fourteen lessons during the course of the year (either in the #rst half or the second half of the year). !e volunteers participated in a two hour training session and their teaching was mentored for the #rst three months of the programme. neither of the volunteers was a trained teacher, although one had worked at a pre-school. at the start of grade one, the fourteen children who had participated in the intervention in grade r were assessed individually by trained volunteers on measures of letter recognition and awareness of beginning sounds. only the letter knowledge scores will be reported here. letter knowledge was assessed using an adapted version of clay’s (1993) letter identi#cation test. children were shown a card with printed letters and asked what sound the letters made. in an earlier study in this context, this measure proved to be reliable, with an alpha co-e*cient of .915 (o’carroll, 2006). in 2009, in addition to 18 grade r children participating in the volunteer programme, the impact of the intervention was strengthened by giving guidelines to the grade r teacher and the teaching assistant for teaching beginning sounds and letter-sound knowledge in the classroom. in february 2009, the grade r teacher attended a workshop and was provided with some materials for use in the classroom. two workshops were arranged for teaching assistants e f g f h i j i k l m j n l h o p q r s t u u j ] i v w i x w h i j j j y z h [ \ 16 reading and writing to demonstrate how to use the intervention programme for teaching small groups in the classroom. !e grade r teaching assistant was given a pack of resources similar to those used by the volunteers. intervention programme !e volunteer teaching programme was based on an intervention developed as part of a doctoral study in disadvantaged communities in cape town (o’carroll, 2006). !e intervention exempli#ed a balanced approach to teaching early reading by including direct instruction in letter-knowledge and phonological awareness as well as emergent writing and book reading. each component of the lesson included a focus on building english vocabulary and spoken language. materials and resources for the lessons were developed for the local context. lessons typically followed the following format: 1. talking about a book or reading a story to develop language and concepts about print 2. drawing and emergent writing in response to the book 3. games to develop vocabulary, awareness of beginning sounds, lettersound knowledge and blending and segmentation skills (syllables and phonemes). letter-sound knowledge and awareness of beginning sounds were taught through the following activities: naming objects and pictures and identifying beginning sounds; sorting tasks to classify objects and pictures according to their beginning sounds and letters; forming letters using di"erent media: playdough, whiteboards, sand; games to reinforce letter-sounds using picture cards: bingo, memory games, board games; making little alphabet books. results assessments at the start of grade one in 2009 indicated that the average letter knowledge of the 14 children who participated in the intervention in grade r was 11.86 (sd = 6.18). !e scores ranged from 3-23. it was evident that lettersounds could be taught in grade r in this context, through a short term, low cost intervention. !e results of the assessments of the grade one cohort the following year (2010) are tabulated below. comparisons between three groups are possible: those that had attended grade r at school a and participated in the volunteer e f g f h i j i k l m j n l h o p q r s t u u j x i v w i x w h i j j j y z h [ \ 17shelley o’carroll intervention; those that had attended grade r at school a but did not work with volunteers; and those children that had attended community pre-schools or had no pre-school experience at all. table 2: letter identi#cation scores of children at the start of grade one (2010) grade r class (school a) volunteer intervention (n=18) no intervention (n=15) other pre-schools/ no pre-school (n=79) mean age 6 years 4 months 6 years 3 months 6 years 3 months mean letter identi#cation score 15.6 (sd = 6.7) 6.9 (sd = 7.4) 1.86 (sd = 1.86) !ese results con#rm the e"ectiveness of the volunteer intervention in teaching letter-sound knowledge. comparisons of mean scores of the two groups of learners in the grade r class at school a indicated that the intervention group mean was signi#cantly better than the average of the group who only received classroom teaching of letter-knowledge (t = 3.5, p = .001). !e ratio of one adult to two children provides an optimal context for learning, and a programme that is delivered by volunteers is a cost-e"ective model. signi#cant di"erences were also found between the mean letter-knowledge scores of the two groups who did not participate in the volunteer intervention: those in the grade r class at school a and those learners who attended other pre-schools or had no pre-school experience (t = .2.57, p = .021). !is result is not surprising, and it would be assumed that children who are part of a grade r class at a school would have an advantage. however, this is not necessarily the case. in the baseline tests conducted in february 2008, there were no signi#cant di"erences between the mean letter knowledge scores of children who had attended the grade r class and those from other pre-schools/no pre-school (mean letter identi#cation scores: grade r class at school a = 1.76 (sd = 2.17); other pre-schools/no pre-school mean score = 1.41 (sd = 2.11), t = .667, p = .507). study 3: an early advantage? !e third part of the paper explores whether there was any link between the letter knowledge scores of a sample of children at the beginning of grade one and their word reading and writing levels at the end of grade one. would ^ _ ` _ a b c b d e f c g e a h i j k l m n n c o b o p b q p a b c c c r s a t u 18 reading and writing children’s letter knowledge as measured by their response to an intervention in grade r be a useful indicator of further progress in grade one? context !e 2008 intervention group (n=14) had been assessed at the start of grade one in 2009. !e children were all in the same grade one class of #$y children and were taught by an experienced grade one teacher. she had been trained in the concentrated language encounter (cle) approach and regularly included language experience activities in her lessons (walker et al., 1984). one of the regular cle lessons began with the teacher asking the children a question and encouraging them to give a verbal response. one of the children’s responses was then chosen to be written by the teacher on newsprint and illustrated by the child for the ‘daily news’. a new page was added in the next lesson, and news from previous lessons was read by the children. letter-sounds were taught throughout the year through an alphabet chart and small group activities, using letters printed on cards. !e children were introduced to word-level reading through ‘sound families’ and spelling patterns (‘mat, fat, cat, hat, bat, pat’). !e children did not have their own readers and the text from a book was usually written on the board and then the teacher pointed to the words while the children read in chorus. procedure and assessment tools !e children’s letter knowledge was tested at the start of their grade one year, using an adapted version of clay’s (1993) letter identi#cation test (refer to study 2). fourteen children were re-tested at the end of their grade one year on a letter writing test in which the tester says a word, then reiterates the initial sound of the word and asks the child to write the letter for that sound (hannavy, 1993). standardised word-reading and -spelling tests were also administered. !e burt word reading test (gilmore, cro$, and reid, 1981) and the bas spelling test (elliot, 1996) were selected for this purpose. !ese measures had proven to be reliable measures in a similar context when administered to grade one children midway through the year (o’carroll, 2006). results correlations between scores on a test of letter recognition at the start of the year, and tests of letter writing, word reading and spelling at the end of the year are presented in the table below. ^ _ ` _ a b c b d e f c g e a h i j k l m n n c v b o p b q p a b c c c r s a t u 19shelley o’carroll table 3: correlations between scores on tests of letter knowledge, spelling and word reading tests conducted in november 2009 letter production spelling word reading letter identi#cation (february 2009) .87** .88** .82** ** pearson’s correlation is signi#cant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). !ese correlations are in line with the research literature and indicate that the children who had good letter knowledge at the start of grade one were also those who had good word reading and spelling scores at the end of grade one, while those who started with limited letter knowledge achieved low scores on tests of basic word level skills a year later. as a measure of response to intervention, the february letter knowledge scores partly re%ected children’s capacity for learning. !erefore it would not be surprising that those who had made the most gains in letter knowledge, also made the most gains in learning to read and write in grade one. children who learnt their letters more quickly in grade r might well be those that were more responsive to teaching. however, their good foundation of letter knowledge would have meant that they would have gained more from literacy learning opportunities in the classroom. learners who started grade one with a solid foundation of letters could use these letters as cues to support early word-learning. learners with limited or no letter-sound knowledge would have been forced to learn words using arbitrary visual cues. !ey would also have to learn spellings of words by rote, whereas children with lettersound knowledge might have been able to listen for sounds in words and represent these with known letters. !is seems to be a case of the ‘matthew e"ect’ in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer (stanovich, 1980). when the children were grouped according to their early grade one letter knowledge, they fell into three distinct groups at the end of the year. !e small size of the sample meant that statistical analysis of group di"erences was not possible. however, the following table shows interesting trends. ^ _ ` _ a b c b d e f c g e a h i j k l m n n c w b o p b q p a b c c c r s a t u 20 reading and writing table 4: end of grade one letter writing, word reading and spelling scores by group group 1 (n=4) group 2 (n=4) group 3 (n=6) letter identi#cation score (february) 3-8 letters 9-12 letters 14-23 letters mean letter writing score (november) 10.0 20.3 24.2 mean word reading score (november) 2.0 15.8 22.0 mean spelling score (november) 0.5 4.5 10.7 given the small sample size, the table above needs to be interpreted with caution. however, the pattern that emerges is that in this sample, limited early letter knowledge placed children at risk for reading failure, and a solid foundation of letter knowledge gave children a good chance of learning to read and write at the appropriate level by the end of grade one (test norms indicated children who have spent a year at school should be able to read 18-24 words and spell 9-12 words). !e words of willenberg (2004: 203) are apt: “(t)he developmental trajectory of most children appears to be well established at school entry. however, although it has been found that good teaching can improve a child’s developmental trajectory, what seems to happen more commonly is that schooling simply reinforces the emerging developmental trends and usually widens the gap between good and poor readers.” discussion !e results of this exploratory study con#rm the #ndings of a small body of research in the south african context, indicating that grade r children from disadvantaged communities are not beginning school with well-established letter knowledge. a small scale intervention showed that this is not because the children in this context are incapable of learning letters until they start grade one, but because they are not being taught. !is is partly due to a lack of locally developed, cost-e"ective resources and a lack of knowledge about how to teach letter-sounds as part of a meaningful, child centered curriculum. however, one of the reasons why many teachers have not focused on teaching letter knowledge in grade r is because of a lack of emphasis on this aspect of literacy learning in the curriculum. curriculum guidelines indicate that grade r children should know ‘some’ letters by the time they start grade r, but it would seem that the teaching of letter-knowledge is regarded as being primarily the responsibility of grade one teachers. priority is not given to the ^ _ ` _ a b c b d e f c g e a h i j k l m n n a b b o p b q p a b c c c r s a t u 21shelley o’carroll teaching of letters in grade r and the associated advantages of this important foundation remain a ‘middle class secret’. !e curriculum does not serve to level the playing #elds for children from low socio-economic contexts. south african curriculum documents are speci#c about the sequence and pace of teaching letter knowledge in grade one. according to the foundations for learning. assessment framework foundation phase, children should be able to identify the letter-sound relationships of #ve consonants and #ve vowels by the end of term one of grade one, and the letter-sound relationships of all single sounds by mid-year of grade one (department of basic education, 2008). !e teaching of letter-sound knowledge in grade one is done in parallel with teaching reading and writing of words, with pressure to meet the demands of the grade one curriculum. not only are children expected to learn ten lettersounds by the end of the #rst term of grade one, they are also expected to learn twenty-#ve sight words and build up short words using sounds learnt, e.g., c-a-t, cat. observations of children learning-to-read show that it can be a challenge to retrieve the sounds of newly acquired letters, while simultaneously having to blend these sounds to make a word. research on developmental change has shown that newly acquired knowledge can be di*cult to apply to new tasks (karmilo"-smith, 1992; 1994). miller and coyle (1999: 218) propose that “a certain amount of quantitative change in expertise may be required before qualitative shi$s in the organisation of this knowledge can occur”. many middle class children from four to six years of age learn letters in the homes, through incidental encounters with print and participate in a grade r programme that includes teaching of letters and many opportunities to experiment with hearing sounds in words. !is means that by the time they start grade one, letter-sound knowledge will be a well established system of knowledge, which can be applied to new tasks such as ‘building short words’. children from disadvantaged communities are expected to acquire the same knowledge in the #rst six months of grade one, while simultaneously using this newly acquired knowledge to learn to read and write words. in this regard, ferreiro and teberosky (1982: 280) have argued that “school is directed to those who already know. success in learning depends on the child’s condition when he or she begins receiving instruction”. as it stands, the grade one curriculum is geared towards middle class children who are learning letter-sounds in the years before schooling – at home and in grade r – and are therefore at a signi#cant advantage when they start grade one. it is no surprise that children who have a good foundation of letter knowledge by the end of grade r, are able to move quickly through the grade one curriculum, whereas those who start grade one with limited letter knowledge, struggle to learn twenty-six letters by the end of the second term, and have great di*culty in applying this new knowledge to tasks such as building words. x y z y { | } | ~ � � } � � { � � � � � � � � { } | � � | � � { | } } } � � { � � 22 reading and writing conclusion !e narrow focus of this article on one aspect of early literacy development in a speci#c context means that it is not possible to draw conclusions about other important foundations for literacy learning. at best, it might be the case that letter knowledge is simply one area of early literacy that is particularly poorly taught in grade r. at worst, low levels of letter knowledge might well be symptomatic of a general lack of emphasis on language and literacy learning in grade r. while, for the foreseeable future, many children will continue to be disadvantaged by contextual factors, quality ecd programmes can play a critical role in leveling the playing #elds and giving children from disadvantaged communities a fair chance of success. in her extensive analysis of programmes that are e"ective in closing the poverty gap, neumann (2009) argues that high quality early childhood programmes are non-negotiable if children from disadvantaged communities are going to have a chance of success. in south africa, this is echoed by du plessis (2001: 186-187) who proposes that “educational policy should therefore advocate that these children need better than average pre-school literacy introduction”, including a “speci#ed curriculum for the introduction of emergent literacy”. although the focus in the ecd sector has been on getting children into grade r classes, quality of provision is key to closing gaps for children from high poverty contexts. in this regard, willenberg (2004: 192) argues that “although providing access to grade r instruction is critical, that access will have no value unless it provides high quality curriculum and instruction”. quality of provision rests on teacher training that includes a strong emergent literacy component. in a country where the vast majority of children do not begin school well prepared to learn to read and write, the grade r curriculum has a key role to play in closing gaps for children who do not come from print-rich homes. !is does not mean that teachers need to introduce formal learning situations that are inappropriate for grade r. letters and sounds can be taught through play and in the context of developing children’s vocabulary and awareness of sounds in words. it is critical that the grade r curriculum gives teachers clear messages about important foundations for literacy that need to be laid in grade r. otherwise the curriculum serves to perpetuate the status quo. starting o" with limited early literacy skills, children from disadvantaged backgrounds are not able to meet the demands of the grade one curriculum, and this sets them o" on a path towards reading failure. x y z y { | } | ~ � � } � � { � � � � � � � � { { | � � | � � { | } } } � � { � � 23shelley o’carroll references ball, e., and blachman, b. 1991. does phoneme awareness training in kindergarten make a di"erence in early word recognition and developmental spelling ? reading research quarterly, 25: 49-66. blachman, b. a., ball, e. w., black, r. s., and tangel, d. m. 1994. kindergarten teachers develop phoneme awareness in low-income, inner-city classrooms. does it make a difference ? reading and writing: an interdisciplinary journal, 6: 1-18. bowey, j. a. 1995. socioeconomic status di"erences in pre-school phonological sensitivity and #rst grade reading achievement. journal of educational psychology, 87(3): 476-487. chiappe, p., siegel, l. s., and gottardo, a. (2002). reading-related skills of kindergartners from diverse lingusitic backgrounds. applied psycholinguistics, 23: 95-116. clay, m. 1993. an observation survey of early literacy achievement. auckland, new zealand: heinemann. department of basic education. 2008. foundations for learning assessment framework foundation phase. pretoria: department of basic education. department of basic education. 2010. foundations for learning assessment framework grade r. pretoria: department of basic education. department of basic education. curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps). foundation phase home languages. grades r3. final dra$. http://www.thutong.doe. gov.za/!utong/policydocuments/foundationphase/tabid/4751/default.aspx department of education. 2003. systemic evaluation 2003: foundation phase. pretoria: department of education. department of education. 2003. revised national curriculum statement grades r-9. teachers guide for the development of learning programmes. pretoria: department of education. de witt, m., lessing, a. and lenayi, l. 2008. an investigation into the state of early literacy of pre-school learners. journal for language teaching, 42(2): 1-10. dixon, m., stuart, m., and masterson, j. 2002. !e relationship between phonological awareness and the development of orthographic representations. reading and writing: an interdisciplinary journal, 15: 295-316. duncan, l., and seymour, p. 2000. socio-economic di"erences in foundation-level literacy. british journal of psychology, 91:145-166. du plessis, e. 2001. a conceptual framework for accelerating emergent literacy skills of disadvantaged pre-schoolers. phd dissertation, university of pretoria. ehri, l. 1995. phases of development in learning to read by sight. journal of research in reading, 18:116-125. ehri, l. 1997. sight word learning in normal readers and dyslexics. in b. blachman (ed.), foundations of reading acquisition and dyslexia (pp. 163-189). london: lawrence erlbaum and associates. ehri, l. 1998. grapheme-phoneme knowledge is essential for learning to read words in english. in word recognition in beginning literacy, j. metsala and l. ehri (eds.). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates, 3-40. ehri, l. 2005. learning to read words: !eory, #ndings and issues. scienti!c studies of reading, 9(2): 167-188. elliot, c. d. 1996. british ability scales ii. windsor: nfer nelson. x y z y { | } | ~ � � } � � { � � � � � � � � { � | � � | � � { | } } } � � { � � 24 reading and writing ferreiro, e., and teberosky, a. 1982. literacy before schooling. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. gilmore, a., cro$, c., and reid, n. 1981. burt word reading test. new zealand revision. wellington: new zealand council for educational research. gregory, e. 1996. making sense of a new world : learning to read in a second language. london: chapman. hannavy, s. 1993. "e middle infant screening test and forward together programme. teacher’s guide. windsor: nfer-nelson. karmilo"-smith, a. 1992. beyond modularity: a developmental perspective on cognitive science. cambridge, ma: mit. karmilo"-smith, a. 1994. self organisation and cognitive change. in brain development and cognition, m. h. johnson (ed.). cambridge, ma: basil blackwell, 592-618. lomofsky, l. 2004. multilingual phonics ability kit. cape town: university of the western cape. mann, v., tobin, p., and wilson, r. 1987. measuring phoneme awareness through invented spellings of kindergarten children. merrill-palmer quarterly, 33, 365-391. miller, p. h., & coyle, t. r. 1999. developmental change: lessons from microgenesis. in conceptual development: piaget’s legacy, e. k. scholnick, k. nelson, s. a. gelman and p. h. miller (eds). mahwah, nj: erlbaum, 209-239. nadler-nir, e. 1997. !e e"ectiveness of a multi-sensory phonological awareness and letter knowledge training programme for disadvantaged #rst graders. msc dissertation, university of cape town. neuman, s. (2009). changing the odds for children at risk. seven essential principals of educational programs that break the cycle of poverty. westport: praeger publishers. o’carroll, s. 2006. supporting early literacy development in a disadvantaged community in sa. focus on developmental change. phd dissertation, london university. stanovich, k. e. 1980. towards an interactive-compensatory model of individual di"erences in the development of reading %uency. reading research quarterly, 19: 32-71. stuart, m. 1990. factors in%uencing word recognition in pre-reading children. british journal of psychology, 81: 135-146. stuart, m. 1995. prediction and qualitative assessment of #veand six-year old children’s reading: a longitudinal study. british journal of educational psychology, 65: 287-296. stuart, m., masterson, j., and dixon, m. 2000. spongelike acquisition of sight vocabulary in beginning readers ? journal of research in reading, 23 (1): 12-27. tangel, d. m., and blachman, b. a. 1992. e"ect of phoneme awareness instruction on kindergarten children’s invented spelling. journal of reading behaviour, 24(2): 233-261. tangel, d. m., and blachman, b. a. 1995. e"ect of phoneme awareness instruction on the invented spelling of #rst-grade children: a one-year follow-up. journal of reading behaviour, 27(2): 153-185. treiman, r. 1993. beginning to spell. new york: oxford university press. wallach, m., and wallach, l. 1976. teaching all children to read. london: university of chicago press. western cape education department. 2009. media release: western cape’s literacy and numeracy challenges, from http://wced.school.za/comms/press/2009/75_14july.html willenberg, i. 2004. getting set for reading in the rainbow nation. emergent literacy skills and literacy environments of children in south africa. phd dissertation, harvard university. � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �     � ¡ � ¢ £ � ¤ £ � � � � � ¥ ¡ � ¦ § 25shelley o’carroll acknowledgements: !e writing of this article was made possible by a grant from the dg murray trust. !e opinions expressed in the article are not necessarily those of the funders. � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �     � ¨ � ¢ £ � ¤ £ � � � � � ¥ ¡ � ¦ § � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �     � ¤ � ¢ £ � ¤ £ � � � � � ¥ ¡ � ¦ § abstract introduction theoretical framework methodology findings and discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) trevor moodley department of educational psychology, faculty of education, university of the western cape, south africa shelley aronstam faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, south africa citation moodley, t. & aronstam, s., 2016, ‘authentic learning for teaching reading: foundation phase pre-service student teachers’ learning experiences of creating and using digital stories in real classrooms’, reading & writing 7(1), a129. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i1.129 original research authentic learning for teaching reading: foundation phase pre-service student teachers’ learning experiences of creating and using digital stories in real classrooms trevor moodley, shelley aronstam received: 03 feb. 2016; accepted: 19 july 2016; published: 24 oct. 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract teaching and learning, an evolving endeavour, is associated with many factors, with advancements in technology, playing an ever-growing role in the classroom. it is therefore important to include the use of interactive communication technologies (icts) in university curricula of teacher education programmes. universities ought to be creative in advancing autonomous learning among their students by providing opportunities for integrated and rich learning experiences. accordingly, the purpose of this study was to intentionally integrate icts in the planning and delivery of foundation phase reading lessons. this was achieved by providing authentic learning opportunities to final year foundation phase student teachers through the provision of training in the creation of digital stories (ds), collaborating within communities of practice (cop) (peers and other relevant parties), and then using their creations in ‘real-world’ classroom contexts. the aims of this study were to explore student teachers’ perceptions and experiences of developing ds in groups with minimal formal initial input and their use of ds during foundation phase (fp) reading lessons in real-class settings during teaching practice. data were collected via focus group interviews and participants’ reflection essays. the study’s findings indicate that the creation of their own ds provided rich, rewarding multidimensional learning experiences to student teachers. participants reported that they found the ‘assignment’ to be of real value, since it was directly linked to classroom practice, and despite the cognitive demands of the assignment; the nature of the task nurtured, an agentic disposition towards their own learning. participants further reported that the ds provided enthusiasm among young learners during the delivery of lessons and were of pedagogical value, despite experiencing some challenges in using ds during reading lessons. participants were of the view that the use of ds in advancing reading and literacy holds much pedagogical promise, because it resonates with the this generation of digital natives, the present generation of learners who have been born into a world where they interact with digital technology from an early age. introduction the important role of storytelling in young children’s learning experiences cannot be underestimated. matthews-denatale (2008:2) supports this view by emphasising the close link between storytelling and meaning-making (the essence of learning in our view). ohler further highlights the importance of storytelling in early learning experiences by stating: the story form becomes a way to shape curricula, build units of instruction and frame academic arguments. above all, stories become the cornerstone of constructivist learning in which students become heroes of their own learning adventures. (2008:9) ohler also stresses that the structure and rhythm of a story, as well as the emotional connection it elicits, assists with the recall of important information which might have been overlooked, if presented in the form of a lesson, lecture or report. our lives are increasingly being permeated by the use of technology, even in the ways we learn. prensky (2001) emphasises this view by claiming that learners have changed because of the advent and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century and its progression into the 21st century. in fact prensky (2001:3) describes the current generation of learners as ‘digital natives’ – referring to people born during or after the introduction of digital technology, and those born before this period – as ‘digital immigrants’. he further states that students graduating at present have spent less than 5000 h of their lives reading and over 10 000 h playing video and/or computer games. prensky also posits that the widespread use of technology and digital natives’ high levels of interaction with it, has resulted in them thinking and processing information fundamentally differently from their predecessors (prensky 2001:3). the majority of educators probably fall outside the category of digital natives. they therefore need to review and align their teaching methodologies for more relevant and effective learning experiences among their learners, the digital natives. educators should therefore consider the role of technology in the classroom even when teaching literacy to young learners. therefore, beers, beers and smith (2010:8) caution that we can no longer only consider a single method of teaching reading and literacy to children. prensky highlights some of the challenges educators (digital immigrants) face today in teaching the current generation of learners. firstly, many educators speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age) and therefore find it challenging to teach a generation of learners that speak an entirely new language (2001:2). secondly digital natives appear to prefer the rapid receipt of information. this means that they prefer their graphics before text and games to ‘serious’ work: such digital natives demand instant gratification. thirdly, many teachers who are digital immigrants assume that learners are the same as they have always been and that the same methods that worked in the past will work for learners today (prensky 2001:3). these challenges seem to suggest a misfit between the type of learner today and the manner in which the curriculum is being delivered. this misfit may explain the constant complaint by many educators that learners find the classroom boring. prensky too, highlights the misfit between digital natives and their digital immigrant teachers by posing the following question: ‘today’s learners are different. is it that digital natives can’t pay attention, or that they choose not to?’ (prensky 2001:4). educators today need to reconsider both the content and methodology in their classrooms. children born into any new culture learn a ‘new language’ easily. therefore teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style that best suits their learners. that does not necessarily mean changing the meaning of what is important or excluding the traditional curriculum. but as educators of the 21st century we need to adapt materials to the language of digital natives. the debate is no longer whether educators should use digital media, but rather how to use new media in a productive, creative way that will support learners in our classrooms. today learners inhabit a digital and oral world yet they reside in classrooms where the printed word is the predominant medium of instruction. digital stories (ds) thus offer children the opportunity to interact with content in ways familiar to them. ‘for many, digital is the language they speak and media is the environment in which they feel comfortable’ (ohler 2008:11). ‘technology plays an important role in the development of extended learning partnerships’ (beers et al. 2010:149). technology challenges teachers to think outside the box. with technology in mind teachers need to be aware that children today live in a world that is different from the last century. therefore in order for learners to have ‘equitable opportunities to participate in a world that is changing rapidly, teachers need to ensure that children have the necessary fundamental skills’ (beers et al. 2010:150). when planning and structuring classroom programmes and curricula, teachers need to incorporate different media into learning environments to accommodate 21st century students. the tradition of using printed books (hardcopies) as the primary means of teaching reading has been increasingly questioned as interactive communication technologies (icts) increasingly feature in teaching and learning. in fact, more than 10 years ago, kress (2003) argued that the screen replaced the book as the central medium of communication. techniques of sound, image and colour continue to have enduring effects on the form and function of reading as digital modes which offer different and unique ways of communicating the meaning of a message. teachers have a responsibility to incorporate digital technologies into their literacy programmes to prepare learners by means of new modes of reading and writing that are prevalent in their world; not just limiting them to using traditional paper readers and big books (javorsky & trainin 2014:607). there are different definitions of digital storytelling. robin (2008:222) considers ds to include the conventional means of creating a story through topic selection, doing research and then writing a script. the story is then transformed and enhanced in digital format using a computer and employing various digital multimedia such as images, audio and video. matthews-denatale (2008:2) quotes the digital story association’s definition of digital storytelling as ‘the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling. … stories have taken many different forms. stories have been adapted to each successive medium that has emerged, from the circle of the campfire to the silver screen, and now the computer screen’. ds can be an effective way of teaching literacy to young learners who, according to kikokawa (2010), live media-saturated lives: they are consistently exposed to different media such as mobile phones, laptops, the internet, video games and other electronic visual media. ds should be understood within the context of the curriculum in the classroom. reading text is no longer only linear and static. it does not only refer to words on a page. nowadays, images play a more important role in conveying information in an educational setting. written texts can be highly visual but the teacher needs to take into consideration the links between visual and written words by exploring and experimenting with texts. when teachers take into consideration that dialogue and discussion are a vital part of the learning strategy then visual literacy should be used as a guideline in learning how to formulate questions relating to and incorporating the visual text (ohler 2008:14). the screen and the book are two different forms of media; they have a lot in common in terms of reading. they both require the reader to interpret text through decoding, analysing, predicting and identifying words. ds in a multimedia environment offers the opportunity for pictures to be animated and this feature can be used as a cueing system to assist readers who are struggling to read. however, animation and constant movement can hinder young children and distract their attention away from the words in the text. visual media is an ideal way of attracting reluctant readers and has the potential to teach the basic skills of reading and writing as well as enabling young children to focus their attention on specific aspects of teaching reading (kress 2003). digital literacy has added a further dimension to a complex discussion about phonics versus whole language in the teaching of reading. dialogue about books versus multimedia is taking place in educational forums around the world and studies are being conducted on the strengths and weaknesses of its use in classrooms. educators need to recognise the emergent proficiency that children can bring to a multimedia learning environment as they expose children to new words in rich and meaningful contexts (kress 2003). teachers need to decide how best ds can support and enrich the reading programmes in their classrooms. they should address the aims of teaching children to read by providing a secure foundation in developing the skills of reading with accuracy, fluency, comprehension and enjoyment. theoretical framework the theoretical framework for this study links the theory of reflective practice (schön 1983, 1987) with authentic learning theory (reeves, herrington & oliver 2002; rule 2006). reflective practice has become a common term used to describe a variety of activities in teacher education programmes (loughran 2002). schön (1983, 1987) defines reflective practice at its best as an experience which involves thoughtfully considering one’s own experiences in applying knowledge to practise while being coached by professionals in the discipline. reflective practice is an evolving concept that has been influenced by various philosophical and pedagogical theories (florez 2001). reflection can be described in three phases, or modes: (1) reflection in practice, or the dynamic, ‘thinking on your feet’ a teacher does during a lesson; (2) reflection on practice, the reflection that occurs post instruction, when a teacher thinks in hindsight about the lesson, student engagements, and other components of the experience; and (3) reflection for practice, the thinking about future experience informed by the past practice … what now needs to occur coming from the reflection of the past (schön 1983). the project described in this article, was designed to offer student teachers the opportunity to become actively involved in their learning when creating their ds. the intention was to promote learning and skills development in different domains, without the comfort of providing student teachers (as learners) with a detailed script of how and what to do. thus, the project was designed with the intention of engaging student teachers in authentic learning. ryan et al. (2009) claim that authentic learning experiences significantly enhance professional learning. authentic learning resonates with the notions of situated learning and communities of practice (cop). situated learning focusses on the relationship between learning and the social relationships in which it occurs (lave & wenger 1991:14). situated learning focusses on the learner acquiring skills through participation in the process rather than gaining abstract knowledge (lave & wenger 1991:14). at its core, situated learning is characterised by the process of legitimate peripheral participation which emphasises that learners acquire knowledge and the mastery of skills through participation in cop (p. 29). cop imply that participants share understandings concerning what they are doing and what that means in their lives and for their communities (p. 98). after reviewing a number of journal articles dealing with the subject of authentic learning, rule (2006) identifies four overarching themes that support authentic learning. these themes are 1) the activity involves real-world problems that mimic the work of professionals in the discipline with presentation of findings to audiences beyond the classroom; 2) open-ended inquiry, thinking skills, and metacognition are addressed; 3) students engage in discourse and social learning in a community of learners; and 4) students are empowered through choice to direct their own learning in relevant project work (rule 2006:2). in another review of literature related to authentic learning, reeves et al. (2002:563) identify ten design characteristics of authentic activities: (1) relevant to the real world; (2) not clearly defined giving learners the responsibility to clarify task goals and specific actions needed to complete the task; (3) involve complex tasks that learners have to perform a considerable period of time; (4) encourage multiple perspectives and the use of a variety of resources; (5) encourage collaboration, (6) provide opportunities for reflection; (7) they can be applied across different subject areas, thus promoting interdisciplinary perspectives, (8) they can be easily linked to assessment; (9) they provide valuable outputs that can be of use in the real world; (10) the nature of the tasks allow for multiple solutions rather than arriving at a single correct solution after having followed a script. methodology description of the study as a literacy lecturer, the researcher concurs with leu, kinzer, coiro and cammack as noted in larson (2010:15) that in ‘today’s classrooms, reading instruction, along with the broader notion of literacy instruction, is undergoing tremendous transformations as new technologies demand new literacy skills’. thus, this pilot project was carried out in 2013 with final year pre-service foundation phase (fp) students in the education faculty at a university of technology located in the western cape. there are different definitions of the term, ‘literacy’. one such definition is proposed in the education for all global monitoring report (unesco 2005) that defines literacy as a set of demonstrated skills, particularly the cognitive skills of reading and writing. the international literacy association (ila) highlights the need for educators to integrate icts into their existing literacy programmes (larson 2010:15). one of the ways of doing this is to clarify and outline what constitutes text. bearne (2005:16) highlights the evolution in the meaning of ‘text’ by stating that young readers have access to a large range of texts ‘in different combinations of modes and media so that “text” has come to include not only words-plus-images but moving images, with associated sound-tracks too’. with the aim of intentionally integrating icts in the delivery of foundation phase (fp) reading lessons, final year fp student teachers were given four sessions of input on traditional storytelling and digital storytelling. instructors from the university’s teaching and learning higher education development unit delivered and demonstrated to students how to plan and design a storyboard and produce a digital story. the following categories were addressed: elements of a story, story mapping templates, pre-production, production and post -production. software ‘movie maker’, powerpoint, artwork, images and copyright constraints were discussed. support was provided with voice recordings, sound, music and assembling the final product. students worked in groups of four. these groups were self-selected, based on language: the students had to write a script that they could use with their learners when they went into their chosen schools during teaching practice. production of the stories took place both on and off campus during the student’s free time. before their final completion, student groups had the opportunity to present their stories to the rest of their peers and to two of their lecturers and some of the staff from the university’s higher education support unit. students were given feedback on changes that could be implemented before they used them in their teaching practice classrooms. aims of the study the aims of this study was to explore student teachers’ perceptions and experiences of developing ds in groups with minimal formal initial input and their use of ds during fp reading lessons in real-class settings during teaching practice. after teaching practice, students were required to write a reflective essay about their experiences in designing their own ds in groups and their experiences of using ds in actual fp reading lessons. given the research aims of the study, it was deemed appropriate to conduct the study within an interpretivist paradigm of enquiry which does not subscribe to a single objective, observable reality: reality is socially constructed with multiple interpretations and realities related to a single event (merriam 2009). methodology within the interpretive paradigm can be described as ‘interactional, interpretive and qualitative’ in nature (terre blanche & durrheim 1999:6). in line with the interpretivist paradigm, a qualitative research approach was followed. qualitative researchers have an interest in how people make sense of their world and experiences of the world (merriam 2009:13). ‘qualitative research provides information about the “human” side of an issue – that is, the often contradictory behaviors, beliefs, opinions, emotions, and relationships of individuals’ (mack et al. 2005:1). prior to the commencement of this study, ethical measures were taken, and included: gaining permission to conduct the study form the faculty ethics committee of the university concerned, emphasising the principles of informed consent, voluntary participation and withdrawal, anonymity and confidentiality for all participants. it was emphasised that the study was independent of students’ academic progress and that those who chose not to participate would not be disadvantaged in any way. thus all final year students received training and a task in developing a digital story. data collection two modes of data collection were employed in this study as a means of triangulating the data to improve the validity of the study. firstly, participants were required to write a reflective essay about their perceptions and experiences of designing ds in groups and use these ds in real-classroom lessons during teaching practice. the researchers intentionally did not give participants too many prescriptions in writing their reflections because we were hoping that an unstructured approach to writing would reveal what perceptions and experiences individuals considered significant enough to warrant mention in their essays. participants were already familiar with the writing of reflections, because reflections are an integral aspect of the university’s fp undergraduate degree curriculum, with a particular focus on specific theoretical input about reflection in their previous year of study. this input included learning about the value of reflective practice in teacher education (korthagen 2001; shulman & shulman 2004), the challenges of learning to become reflective practitioners and different writings related to reflective practice. secondly, two focus group interviews, with eight participants per group, were conducted to explore participants’ perceptions and experiences about designing ds in groups and also using the ds when delivering reading lessons in fp classrooms during teaching practice. data analysis data were analysed using a process of thematic analysis involving six recursive steps (braun & clarke 2006; clarke & braun 2013). the steps included the researchers: familiarising themselves with the data, coding the data, identifying themes from the coded data, reviewing themes to gauge the extent to which they represent the data set and whether themes could be refined, by defining and naming the themes and lastly writing up the themes in a coherent and meaningful manner that is manifest in the results and discussion section. firstly, the written reflections were analysed and themes were identified. next, the focus group interviews were transcribed and analysed to identify themes. validity of the study was secured by each of the researchers firstly individually analysing and coding the data sources. next each researcher constantly compared the analyses of the two sources of data. lastly the researchers teamed up to compare their individual analyses and deliberate on the final analysis of the data. findings and discussion in response to the first aim of the study, the study’s findings indicated that student teachers’ experiences of developing ds within groups provided them with multiple opportunities to enhance technological and pedagogical content knowledge within cop. a number of themes were identified and included those that resonated with reeves et al. (2002) ten characteristics of authentic learning, rule’s four themes related to authentic learning as well as schön’s model of reflection (1983). the themes are: real and meaningful learning through the creation of digital stories participants mentioned that the ds assignment had real value beyond the stereotypical role of assignments for the purposes of assessment. the creation of their own ds provided student teachers with an authentic learning opportunity to develop valuable skills and knowledge relevant to the real world (reeves et al. 2002:563) of professional teacher-training. student teachers used the ds during actual reading lessons in real schools, with learners in the presence of their mentor teachers. the nature of these endeavours resonated with reeves et al. (2002:563) who consider that authentic learning ought to produce valuable outputs for use in the real world. the learning activity corresponded with rule’s (2006:2) contention that authentic learning involves presenting the products of learning (ds in this instance) to an audience (fp learners and mentor teachers) while ‘mimic[ing] the work of professionals in the discipline’ (rule 2006:2) (teaching actual reading lessons during actual lessons). the meaningful learning gained by students in creating their own ds is aptly summed up by chung’s (2006:45) claim that students produce their own knowledge when creating ds and invest ‘emotional substance’ in their narrations which highlight the authentic learning character of such an activity. the following excerpts substantiate this view and reflect the authentic learning characteristics and/or themes discussed in this section: as a student teacher i am really thankful that i have been introduced to ds and how to create them. this is a useful tool that i will be able to use in my own class next year. if ‘d’ [d.s. workshop facilitator] hadn’t given us the training i would not have known about the different software programmes. i had written an ordinary story but never thought about doing it digitally until we got this assignment. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] i am actually glad that we drew the pictures for the story and didn’t take pictures from the computer. the children mentioned it – they were ‘wow look at the pictures did you draw them miss?’ in a way it makes it more authentic. i am so proud of what i did because i don’t see myself as a drawer. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] when i think of children today and where they are at – watching tv, playing video games, computers etc. if you don’t go along with all that you are going to lose them because that is what excites them, it is their world. you need to think about what they want and not what the teacher wants. it’s their needs, their interests that’s important. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] student teacher agency and improvisation in creating digital stories after receiving some training in designing ds, participants were asked to design their own ds that would be appropriate for use during reading lessons in the fp. thus, they were not expected to adhere to a preconceived list of strict criteria. the findings revealed that participants took initiative in finding information and support from different sources with respect to different aspects of the digital story creation. individuals within groups identified their own strengths and identified support networks outside the group such as family members with relevant ict skills, and self-teaching by using free instructional digital story creation software on the internet. they improvised by using mobile phones as substitutes for headphones. consequently, and characteristically of authentic learning activities, students were left with the responsibility of clarifying task goals and specific actions (reeves et al. 2002:563), empowering themselves by directing their own learning (rule 2006:2), and learning from multiple perspectives and using different resources (reeves et al. 2002:563). the following excerpts illustrate the agentic efforts of groups in clarifying their own task goals and taking specific actions: i did the technological aspects because i had worked on photo story before. we all worked on the text together and decided who was going to be the narrators. ‘n’ scanned and uploaded the pictures as i wasn’t able to do that. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] the training was good. it was a nice foundation for us to explore on our own. you can’t be afraid of the technology, you just need to play around with it. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] i recall ‘d’ [d.s. workshop facilitator] explaining what photo story would allow me to do. she showed us a videoclip on how to put it together but i took myself through the process and played around once i had downloaded the programme. i experimented. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] there is so much that you can really do with the programme, you have to really sit and explore. you need to know the different programmes. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] i’m really glad we drew our own pictures as opposed to using somebody else’s. you think more about it and ways to use it. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] the creation of digital stories: a complex and daunting task developing ds was daunting as it compelled student teachers to consider pedagogical content knowledge when designing stories and at the same time developing and accessing a host of ict skills and knowledge in order to produce stories in digital format. participants reported that they felt intimidated initially about creating ds, but that the eventual outcome was awesome and motivated them to produce more stories in digital format, even though the process involved a substantial amount of time. they mentioned that ds creation provided learning and entertainment, which was quite unlike their experiences in doing assignments in the traditional paper and pencil format. the assignment task reflected the authentic learning characteristics of being open-ended (rule 2006:2), complex and time-consuming (reeves et al. 2002:563). xu, park and baek (2011:189) highlight the complex nature of creating ds by claiming that ds are a form of communication: as they are created, students apply critical thinking skills while selecting the appropriate media to convey the story’s message to the audience. they provide the student with a learning environment to apply communication skills, work collaboratively, and think critically while addressing content and technology standards. the pedagogies thus employed in facilitating student teachers’ learning in the creation and use of ds reflect o’hara’s (2007) view that pedagogies need to change if learners are to be adequately prepared to thrive in the emerging global knowledge society, o’hara (2007:937) highlighted the need for pedagogy ‘to shift from its current primary focus on the mastery of content to one on process – from a focus on “knowledge” the noun, to a focus on “learning” the verb’. o’hara (2007:937) underlined the need for pedagogy to focus more on open-ended emergent outcomes than predetermined outcomes. the following excerpts reflect the open-ended, complex and time-consuming nature of the assignment task: it shows the children that we as student teachers can draw. it takes time. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] we changed the narrator quite a few times because i heard myself and my first few attempts i read very quickly. i realised i was reading for myself. it took me a while to read slower. i read to my younger cousins which helped a lot. every time i read i would keep them in mind and then once i was done i had them listen to the story. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] next time you should tell the students [student teachers] to create a story before they come to the training. we were worried that we didn’t have enough time for our scripts. you want to sit and put effort in. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] we all had different jobs especially with the narration, recording, putting together, software etc. we tried to use what was our strengths. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] learning within communities of practice in a higher education setting as participants created ds in groups, they reported that they had to listen to individual views when making decisions. participants accessed in-group resources (pedagogical and technical skills) and identified resources outside groups, especially in relation to technological skills and knowledge required in creating ds. the collaboration that occurred in developing ds are consistent with wenger’s (1998) claim that cop are characterised by three elements, namely: mutual engagement, joint enterprises and a shared repertoire. members of a cop engage with each other through mutual engagement in an activity (joint enterprise). members negotiate meaning with one another as they go about pursuing the goals of the activity (wenger 1998:73–82). the task encouraged and demanded multiple perspectives and much collaboration thus subscribing to the notion of a cop. through this cop approach to learning, a variety of stories were created by different groups of students for different fp grades. the students then shared the stories with each other, thus enhancing students’ learning experiences and demonstrating the value of the learning task. the individual as well as the collaborative efforts and initiatives taken by the student teachers in creating ds reflected a shared epistemic agency which is: the capacity to enable a deliberate, joint, object-oriented interaction … express[ing] different qualities of the knowledge co-construction process. the epistemic aspect refers to the active involvement of the group with knowledge and its materialization into knowledge objects. … sharedness implies that agency is not the expression of each individual member’s activities or pursuits but is, rather, the expression of joint efforts at the group level …, shared epistemic agency is seen as an emerging, recursive capacity that manifests itself and unfolds during the interaction. (damşa 2014:255) the following excerpts reflect the authentic task characteristics of collaboration (reeves et al. 2006:563) within a cop (rule 2006:2) and encouraging multiple perspectives: we all came together and discussed the assignment and then we wrote down ideas and collaborated with the actual story. we all wrote it together. none of us can draw so ‘n’ drew the outline of the pictures and we coloured them in. we all dived on google for images for her to copy, use or trace. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] we were sitting together as a group and i said i have a story and ‘c’ said she had also written a story. so we looked at the two and settled on mine. it was in afrikaans so we translated it, condensed it and put it into a format that kind of flowed together. the essence of the story remained the same. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] i don’t think teachers know that you can actually make a story like this. at the schools there are young teachers out there who are advanced with ipads etc. but are still not teaching using digital media. they are busy and don’t share and work together. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] reflection: a key characteristic of authentic learning and professional teacher education students’ reflections included elements of schön’s (1983) conceptualisation of reflection as involving three modes or phases, namely: (1) reflection in practice (teacher reflecting while teaching‘thinking on your feet’), (2) reflection on practice (the reflection that takes place post instruction) and (3) reflection for practice, (reflecting about possibilities related to future lessons based on past teaching experiences). the following excerpts demonstrate reflection in practice: the sound wasn’t clear and the children were getting restless so i turned the sound off and decided to read the story instead. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] when opening the story the timing was too fast so i paused every slide when reading it and then pressed play. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] the following excerpts demonstrate reflection on practice: i was disappointed because i hadn’t achieved my outcomes. i wanted to have quite an in-depth discussion with the learners because there was so much meat to the story and it links to life skills. time constraints and also the children said they were nervous to answer questions as you and the camera were in the classroom. normally we have lovely discussions and everyone is so chatty. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] i didn’t get to finish the shared reading part. i think it failed slightly as the children weren’t able to read along in terms of the shared reading. the pace of the narration was too fast for them. it’s tricky to slow it down too much because it’s not so enjoyable to listen to a story that is a bit slow. so i should have made another version and keep the picture longer and read along with the sound off as you suggested. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] i should have practiced more using the technology. i knew what i wanted and needed to do with the computer but i stumbled a bit and the computer failed me so i didn’t know what to do for a while there. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] the more children read the more fluent they become and the more they pick up so i should show it a few times and have a series of lessons. there was too much detail for one lesson. the narrations are good because they model how one is supposed to read with expression and changing of voice tone. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] the following excerpts illustrate reflection for practice: my children could cope with the pace but i think what i’ll do it differently next time is introduce the life skills lesson first, explore all the concepts and then have a story where i model the reading. i will have a version of the story with sound and without sound. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] if i did this again i would not change the characters but change the background and add more detail. i am a visual learner and tend to thrive on colour but i thought it might be too busy and distracting. i think a better background in the pictures would have benefitted the pictures in the story more. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] now that i am back at varsity i have been thinking about lessons. in future i will let the children come up with the pictures, a series of pictures, sequence them and then we can work together and do a shared writing activity and come up with a story that goes with the pictures. then we can all go through the process of putting the story together. the children are capable of doing this they just need a little bit of help. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] so i think what i should’ve done or what i should do when i edit it again is let the narration play and then lengthen the slide time. if the learners are following the text they can then look up and see the picture before it goes to the next one. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] in relation to the second study objective regarding participants’ experiences and perceptions of using the ds during fp reading lessons, there were many positive experiences and challenges that were experienced. the following themes emerged. the novelty value of digital stories in promoting learner interest and engagement almost all participants mentioned that ds created much excitement among fp learners during the reading lessons. they emphasised that ds generated much learner interest and engagement during the reading lessons: reflecting bran’s (2010:1791) contention that digital storytelling stimulates an increased interest in both creator and audience. ds therefore provided edutainment, a form of learning that blends entertainment with learning content with the aim of enhancing learning through increasing interest, engagement and an affective association with what is being taught (garzotto & forfori 2006:114). however, a [very] few participants mentioned that ds stories did not hold much novelty value during the lessons since their learners were quite familiar with technology given their backgrounds. one student mentioned that learners: watch c beebies and they watch the magic school bus and they watch all sorts of youtube videos, all the time that it’s not really a big deal for them. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] another student highlighted the importance of creating a ds that was cognitively challenging enough for learners not to become easily bored. the following excerpt illustrates this view: my children didn’t really like it, it was boring, it was too young for them but i had a whole session with them and i asked them what they like and what they don’t like and one of the things that they said was, one; they could read everything. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] the following excerpts reflect how the use of ds captured the attention of fp learners: after the lesson the learners could not stop talking about the d.s. and how ‘cool’ it was. they begged for more. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] learners paid so much attention and they were interested in all the dynamics of the whole new technological way of telling a story. they were totally swallowed up by the story, the look on their faces was heart-warming as they really paid attention to the story. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] the d.s. evoked interesting fantasies by the children. the discussion was more extensive, even those learners who struggle with reading were now able to be part of it without feeling exposed or afraid to share their feelings and opinions. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] i felt i could have done a story about anything and the learners would have liked it. it was all about experiencing a different and exciting mode of telling a story. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] the pedagogical value of digital stories in fp reading lessons despite some technical challenges experienced (discussed in the next theme) many participants were of the view that the use of ds stories enhanced the educational value of the reading lessons. they reported that fp learners seemed to experience the lessons as more meaningful, appeared to remember the content more clearly than with an ordinary reading lesson and were better able to recall the story. these observations illustrated the potential of ds as powerful teaching and learning tools (robin 2006). these perceived pedagogical benefits may be linked to the multimodal (auditory, verbal and visual) nature of learning through the use of ds. research has shown that multimodal learning generally seems to be more effective than traditional, unimodal learning. the addition of visuals to verbal (text and/or auditory) learning may lead to significant gains in basic and higher-order learning (cisco 2008:14). the following excerpts reflect participants’ sentiments regarding the pedagogical value of ds: it appears that when children see/hear a story that is not static but moving they seem more able to reflect and relate it to their own lives. they seem to have their own interpretation about the same story. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] i seem to be using higher order questions with my d.s. and the children could answer, it could be because of the pictures and how excited the children were to watch the screen. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] technological challenges in using digital stories during reading lessons some of the participants experienced challenges in using technology during reading lessons. these challenges were due to factors such as: inadequate infrastructure and ict services at school such as computer and data projector availability; as well as participants’ limited technological knowledge and experience in using ds. the different components (e.g. text, sounds, images, animations, verbal narrations) of a digital story should complement each other through appropriate integration so that the digital story is presented in an effective manner (chung 2006:36). one of the technical challenges mentioned was the pace of the narration which was too fast and did not allow learners enough time to listen to the narration and at the same time read the text appearing on the screen. in some ds the background music was too loud and overshadowed the narrator’s voice at times, while a few students reported that the automated turning of the ds pages did not synchronise well with the pace of narration. such challenges are reflected in the following excerpts: not all classrooms are equipped with smartboards. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] some of the slides were moving too fast therefore only the fastest readers were able to follow, the rest fell behind. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] the pages were turning too quickly and i was not sure how to slow this down. the scanner did not scan the pictures properly so i had to redo again. i would also have liked to add more sound effects to the story but i struggle to pause and do this. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] when playing the story on the overhead i noticed that the beautiful colours which we had drawn had not been reflected properly. the colours changed to green and black and this made the story dark. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] participants reflected that in future they would conduct a ‘dry run’ before using a ds in a real lesson. curriculum integration and differentiation through the use of digital stories participants mentioned that ds provided opportunities for curriculum differentiation within a subject and the integration of learning across subjects. for example, the life skills subject’s theme of space was used to create a story about space used in a reading lesson. curriculum integration is an important consideration in the formal education of young learners. all children have distinct learning styles and by integrating curriculum a teacher is more likely to reach more learners in a way that attracts them. an integrated curriculum fuses subject areas, experiences, reallife knowledge together to make a more fulfilling learning environment for children. an integrated curriculum is all about making connections, whether to real life or across disciplines, about skills or about knowledge (drake & burns 2004:7–8). thus, the use of ds encouraged an interdisciplinary approach to learning; another characteristic of authentic learning according to reeves et al. (2002:563). the following excerpts illustrate this point: i was able to use the same story to consolidate different activities for the different ability groups. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] it seems that lots of the stories we have created can be linked to life skills, e.g. bullying, diversity, gender issues, friendship, morals. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] it seems that the reading lesson extended into the life skills lesson. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] i used the pollution theme which linked to the ds we basically did a shared writing and also an independent writing lesson that related to the crab in the story to see how they could help with pollution. the opportunities for integration are endless. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] assessment and digital stories some of the participants demonstrated that assessment could be integrated during lessons involving the use of ds. classroom assessment has the potential not only to measure and report learning but also to promote it (wren 2004). the author also maintains that assessment is an essential element to assist teachers to inform their instruction. due to learners’ different reading levels, it is necessary for teachers to design literacy instruction that meets the needs of the individuals. burns (2005) recommends questioning as a formative assessment that involves learners: verbal questions can be used to probe learner responses. the questioning strategy can provide teachers with insight into the learners’ thinking and reasoning and guide teachers and improve instruction for future lessons. incorporating learners’ reasoning into classroom discussions makes assessment an integral aspect of classroom instruction (burns 2005:27). the following excerpts reflect how questioning and other tasks were used as a means of assessing learners’ understandings during the ds lessons: the use of prompt questions kept them interested and involved in the story. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] i considered bloom’s taxonomy and it really helped me a lot to question the learners and reach them on different levels. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] in the introduction i mostly used higher order questions to check their understanding. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] i used the story for a shared reading and the writing as a platform to ask questions and teach the elements of a story. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] everybody got the same input and had the same text. i was then able to do ability graded tasks but still the same context to assess their comprehension. [female final year foundation phase student teacher] conclusion this study demonstrated that the creation of ds by student teachers, was an effective way to promote collaboration, student agency, and the acquisition of pedagogical and technology skills among students within a university curriculum. participants clearly expressed how the creation of ds had provided a challenging but authentic learning opportunity to them. this study also found that the use of ds in fp reading lessons has the potential to enhance learning and motivation among young learners. technology is changing both in the way children read, as well as approaches to teaching reading. reading success can be enhanced when technology is appropriately integrated with quality content to meet specific learning needs (lamb & johnson 2011:56). given the complex and dynamic world of teaching and learning, it is recommended that more research be conducted to explore the use of ds in fp classrooms with regard to student diversity in terms of: reading levels, diverse mother tongues as well as multigrade classrooms, the latter being a feature of many rural schools in south africa. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions s.a. was responsible for preparing the participants in the design of their digital stories, the data collection, as well as the introduction and literature review of the article. t.m. was responsible for the theoretical framework, methodology as well as the discussion of findings of the study. references bearne, e., 2005, ‘multimodal texts: what they are and how children use them’, in j. evans (ed.), literacy moves on: popular culture, new technologies, and critical literacy in the elementary classroom, pp. 16–30, heinemann, portsmouth, nh. beers, c.s., beers, j.w. & smith, j.o., 2010, a principal’s guide to literacy 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study literature on writing pedagogy methodology and analytical framework research findings discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) epimaque niyibizi department of educational leadership and management, university of johannesburg, johannesburg, south africa department of humanities and language education, school of education, university of rwanda-college of education, kigali, rwanda emmanuel sibomana the wellspring foundation for education, kigali, rwanda juliet perumal department of educational leadership and management, university of johannesburg, johannesburg, south africa citation niyibizi, e., sibomana, e. & perumal, j., 2019, ‘learning to teach writing through a distance education programme: experiences of rwandan secondary school english teachers’, reading & writing 10(1), a206. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.206 original research learning to teach writing through a distance education programme: experiences of rwandan secondary school english teachers epimaque niyibizi, emmanuel sibomana, juliet perumal received: 06 june 2018; accepted: 21 jan. 2019; published: 07 may 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: writing is among the most important skills, and globally it has received more emphasis in literature on language teaching than reading, speaking and listening. however, a paucity of studies is observed in sub-saharan africa, particularly in contexts where english is being taught as an additional or foreign language, as is the case in rwanda. research shows that learners who can write well in different genres and for different purposes tend to do well in all curriculum subjects and subsequently beyond school education. the key challenges are the inadequacy of materials and teachers’ inability to teach writing well, especially through distance education programmes. objectives: this study investigates the effectiveness of materials used at the university of rwanda-college of education’s distance education programme to train high school teachers on writing pedagogy for english teaching. method: the study adopted a qualitative approach to report on the findings from textual, document analysis of distance education materials, argumentative essays and focus group discussions with 80 of 599 in-service teachers, who responded to designed and redesigned sections on writing pedagogy. results: the findings indicate that teachers’ knowledge and skills in both writing and writing pedagogy are not addressed effectively by the materials designed. this negatively affected the quality of their own writing abilities and those of their students. conclusion: the article recommends reconceptualisation of distance education materials to equip in-service teachers with propositional knowledge and procedural knowledge on writing pedagogy. keywords: writing pedagogy; distance education; english teachers; procedural knowledge; university of rwanda’s college of education. introduction and background to writing through distance education globally, various studies show that writing has received more emphasis in the literature on language teaching than reading, speaking and listening (ciobanu 2011; dornbrack & dixon 2014; hedge 1993; ralfe 2009; shin 2006), but with relatively low priority in the field of teacher education for english as a second language (esl) (norman & spencer 2005; shin 2006; uysal 2007). however, it remains an overlooked area of investigation in relation to pedagogical content knowledge (pck) and l2 (second language) teachers’ classroom writing, which continues to be an under-appreciated component of teachers’ knowledge’ (hlas & hildebrandt 2010:5). ur (2004) notes that communicative writing activities are less common in teaching materials compared to those related to the other language skills. research in africa also shows that limited proficiency in english is observed in different parts of africa, not only with regard to writing skills but also other language skills. moreover, williams (2011) and kamwangamalu (2000) observe that the majority of african people still experience poor proficiency in english. such a situation was observed in malawi and zambia (williams 1996, 1998), in south africa (makalela 2015), in anglophone african countries as a whole (samuels 1995) and in rwanda (niyibizi 2015; samuelson & freedman 2010; sibomana 2016a; williams et al. 2004), to name but a few. apart from english-speaking countries, poor proficiency is also observed in african countries that used portuguese as an international language (heines 1992) and those countries that use french (kasanga 2012). it is evident that poor proficiency in english is likely to be a common phenomenon in different parts of africa, and probably in different parts of the world. the situation is unlikely to be any different in the great lakes region, including rwanda. a closer look at the education system shows that, similar to other countries, rwanda also has the pressing need to have well-qualified teachers, who are proficient in foreign languages like english. the 1994 genocide against the tutsi in rwanda, which resulted in the death of many teachers, exacerbated the already existing problem of teacher shortage in terms of numbers and quality when schools reopened in 1995. in 1999, for example, a survey found that up to 65% of secondary school teachers were underqualified (rwanda ministry of education 1999). the problem of effective training of english teachers until 1994 was the result of a lack of colleges that focussed on the training of english teachers per se. consequently, there were very few qualified teachers of english before 1994. the problem was compounded when english became the medium of instruction for all subjects at all levels of education, from 08 october 2008, when the rwandan government modified the then trilingual policy (kinyarwanda, english and french as media of instruction) which was in effect in all rwandan schools and replaced it with english as the sole medium of instruction for all subjects, from primary school up to university level (ministry of cabinet affairs 2008). the implementation of the new policy commenced at the start of the 2009 academic year, where all subjects were to be taught in english, while all other languages such as french, kinyarwanda and kiswahili were taught as subjects (rwanda ministry of education 2009). in an endeavour to revitalise the education system, the government of rwanda created the kigali institute of education (kie) in 1999. this institution is now known as university of rwanda-college of education (ur-ce). its primary mission was to address the shortage of qualified teaching staff at the secondary school level (mukamusoni 2006), by offering on-campus teacher education and in-service teacher professional development through a distance education (de) programme. this de programme uses printed self-study materials (modules) as the main teaching and learning resource. since its inception, the target population of this programme has included high school teachers of english. this article draws from a larger study which investigated the role of the ur-ce’s self-study materials in addressing the professional development needs of secondary school english teachers in rwanda (sibomana 2014). it reports on the findings from a textual analysis (bezemer & kress 2008; mckee 2005) of english module content, the mediation of this content or how the content is captured and represented in these materials. it also investigates the responses of selected teacher-learners of english to both the ur-ce de materials and to a redesigned version of a section in the ur-ce de pedagogy module. the section focusses on knowledge and skills related to writing and pedagogy on writing. the motivation to focus on teaching writing stems from the recognition of the importance of writing skills in schools, in academic, as well as in social and professional achievements (norman & spencer 2005; ralfe 2009). leki (2001) contends that teaching learners to write well constitutes an essential part of education. writing is at the centre of assessment, because extended writing constitutes 25% of the marks in the secondary school english national examination in rwanda (niyibizi et al. 2018). hence, teaching writing is or should be one of the priority areas for teachers of english in rwanda, and as such demands attention. the study this article is premised on a larger study which investigated the role of de materials in addressing the professional development needs of high school english teachers in rwanda (sibomana 2014). more specifically, this article investigates the writing pedagogy as taught to secondary school english teachers who were following the ur-ce de programme. the programme consisted of english, french and education. the study sought to answer the following research questions: how do rwandan secondary school english teachers mediate the content on teaching writing as explained through de? what shortcomings do english teachers observe in the writing pedagogy module and what improvements do they suggest? which approach, when considering the product-, processgenreand integrative approaches, do they perceive to be more effective in teaching writing through de? literature on writing pedagogy writing as a difficult skill for english as a foreign language practitioners according to some scholars (e.g. shin 2006; tangpermpoon 2008), writing is the most difficult skill for developing learners of english as a foreign language (efl) or esl. this is because it requires a certain amount of l2 background knowledge. it can be an anxiety-generating activity and learners may not enjoy it (tsui 1996). these are some of the factors that complicate the teaching of writing, especially in esl and efl classrooms (antoniazzi 2005; tangpermpoon 2008), and which may have contributed to the teachers’ neglect of teaching writing, causing it to become the ‘cinderella’ of the four language skills in the history of language teaching (ciobanu 2011). evolution of writing pedagogy approaches the history of writing pedagogy has been characterised by successive approaches to writing, each with strengths and weaknesses. historically, when teaching writing, teachers used to focus on the final product of learners’ writing activity; they focussed on the product approach, at the expense of what learners do to produce it, which involves the process approach (tsui 1996). more recently, there has been a shift of focus to writing as a process of developing organisation as well as meaning (richards & smit 2011; tsui 1996) or ‘the making of meaning out of chaos’ (zamel 1982:199). instead of emphasising the qualities of the final product, the process approach emphasises the skills that learners can develop at the different writing stages, which may facilitate their writing. after all, as mccormick (1986, in antoniazzi 2005) argues: … if the piece of writing gets better but the writer has learned nothing that will help him/her [sic] on another day on another piece, then the conference (or the exercise, or the corrections) was a waste of everyone’s time. (p. 36) in addition, the feedback and input received at the different stages of the writing process are likely to improve learners’ ability to communicate (scheckle 2009), as well as the quality of the product of writing itself (zamel 1982). these are some of the benefits of the process approach. however, critics of the process approach argue that it is difficult to assess, does not necessarily lead to a good end product (ivanic 2004), fails to take into account the cultural and political dimensions of writing (peterson 2012) and views the writing process as one universal process rather than as plural processes (breuch 2002). another comparatively recent approach is the genre approach (hyland 2007; kim 2006). this approach has its origins in a critique of the process approach, pointing out that the latter does not deal sufficiently with the linguistic knowledge that learners require to write texts with particular generic features, for example, a set of instructions or a narrative (kim 2006; ralfe 2009). the proponents of the genre approach argue that the process approach is not sufficiently concerned with the knowledge and skills required to develop and process ideas during the planning and drafting stages. they also argue that it has a very restricted view of writing, as it presumes that writing proficiency develops only through the repetition of the same writing procedures irrespective of the nature of the texts (the genre) being written (kim 2006). for them, the form of a text will be determined by its social function and context, and therefore, the practical processes of writing are only a small part of the writing event (ivanic 2004). however, the genre approach is also not without its shortcomings. for example, ivanic (2004) points out that the approach overlooks accuracy and content in favour of ‘appropriacy’ (which she views as controversial) for specified purposes in the specified social contexts. the above three approaches (product, process and genre) are sometimes considered different and separate, and this confirms that: … a good piece of writing which achieves its purpose is the successful product of a process, and part of that process will have been an introduction to the appropriate genre. thus, all three approaches should be taken into consideration. (ralfe 2009:156) currently, scholars in the field of writing pedagogy advocate an integrated approach combining the reciprocal strengths of each of the three writing approaches (tangpermpoon 2008). effectiveness of using an integrated approach in teaching writing teachers need a certain level of knowledge about writing to effectively apply the different approaches discussed above. it should be noted that, while second, additional or foreign language teachers should be able to use the language proficiently (hlas & hildebrandt 2010), the in-service teachers enrolled in the ur-ce de programme are still in the process of learning and mastering english skills, including reading and writing pedagogy. referring specifically to writing, hlas and hildebrandt (2010) argue that teachers need to be precise in their writing, because most of their written texts are meant for learners. in other words, teachers need both propositional knowledge and procedural knowledge (bertram 2011; carr 1995; wagner 2002) related to writing and writing pedagogy. they also need theoretical knowledge on how to write and how to teach writing on the one hand, and practical abilities to write and teach writing effectively on the other (muller 2012). in addition, the pedagogy used in (language) teacher education needs to be effective and enjoyable as, among other factors, the ability to teach writing effectively depends on teachers’ own writing experiences as learners (dornbrack & dixon 2014; pardo 2006). hence, various scholars tend to view the integrative approach as more effective than other individual approaches. methodology and analytical framework this article adopted a qualitative design, focussing on writing pedagogy as taught to a cohort of secondary school teachers. qualitative design was dictated by the fact that document analysis was used as the main source of data, based on the content which was selected from one module (module 7) that focusses on writing pedagogy to empower teachers with knowledge and skills to teach writing. this module was one of the ur-ce de materials for 559 teachers who followed the programme combining french, english and education. the mediation of the content was selected on the specific section page of the selected module. textual analysis, according to mckee (2005), focusses on an understanding of likely interpretations of texts by people who consume them, leading to implications of such interpretations. this article focussed on a section in the pedagogy module (module 7) that is aimed at developing ur-ce de. a sample of 80 in-service english teachers participated in the study covering the document analysis, argumentative essays and focus group discussions. they were selected from all the four provincial centres in rwanda, among the cohort of 599 teachers who followed the ur-ce de programme in 2010–2013. their performance, which was based on both high and low achieving categories, was taken as a basis for selection. hence, 20 in-service teachers (10 with the highest marks and 10 with the lowest marks in the pedagogy module (module 7) were selected in each province, making a total of 80 participating teachers. hence, eight focus group discussions were organised in total. there were two focus groups in each of the four provinces, with each group consisting of 10 students. they were selected using a purposive sampling technique (maxwell 1997; tongco 2007) based on their performance in assignments and examinations. this number seems relatively small compared to 599 in-service teachers who were studying the french–english–education combination, but it would have been difficult to work with a larger number for document analysis, argumentative essay and focus group discussions. the textual or document analysis was conducted in two phases. the first phase consisted of the english teachers’ critical analysis of the selected section on writing pedagogy in module 7. they pointed to limitations which may have negative pedagogical implications in teaching writing. in the second phase, the authors redesigned the section that was analysed based on the findings from the participating teachers’ feedback from phase one. the redesign was informed by what de scholars consider as aspects of good self-instructional materials, which also helped in addressing the shortcomings identified in phase one section in module 7. these aspects of good self-instructional materials include four components, namely: (1) anticipatory and constructive feedback to learners on their learning progress (kintsch 2009; lockwood 1998; moll 2003); (2) activities that engage learners in active learning (lockwood 1998; phillips 2007, rowntree 1992); (3) a conversational/interactive style (abedi & badragheh 2011; mishra & gaba 2001; richards 1995); and (4) a ‘teaching through questioning’ strategy (duron, limbach & waugh 2006). it is to be clarified that feedback here refers to comments and observations made by designers of de materials on learners’ work such as assignment and other learning activities, as well as on learners’ progress. feedback is recognised as ‘an assistance mechanism, a key factor for successful learning, offering support to the learning process’ (ypsilandis 2012:169). in line with good self-instructional materials, examples of de materials that have received recognition for their quality were used to inform the redesign of a section of the ur-ce module 7 that focusses on the teaching of writing. such quality reference de materials are (1) theory and practice of english language teaching, (2) language, literacy and communication and (3) language in learning and teaching (lilt). all these three materials have won awards in recognition of their high quality and effectiveness as distance teacher education materials, as highlighted in reed (2010). in this regard, in 2000, theory and practice of english language teaching won the inaugural nadeosa (national association of distance education organisations of south africa) award for excellence. the language, literacy and communication won the 2004 nadeosa award for excellence while lilt has been highly commended by the nadeosa awards committee (reed 2010). regarding the writing pedagogy approach, the authors redesigned the section by adopting an integrated approach and took the de in-service teachers through the process of producing a good argumentative essay for practical activity. after the redesign, the section was given to a group of 80 participating teachers to study as learning material. the 80 teachers were then interviewed in focus groups of 10 each. they critically reflected on both the section in the ur-ce pedagogy module and the redesigned section, based on their experiences with the ur-ce de materials, and how they helped them in teaching writing in their own classes. they were given argumentative essays in the redesigned section as well. it should be noted that ur-ce de in-service teachers are equipped with general teaching skills and knowledge (kie 2009), but with limited proficiency in english like many other rwandan university students (kagwesage 2012; niyibizi, makalela & mwepu 2015; niyibizi et al. 2018; sibomana 2016b) despite being teachers of language subjects. their reflections on textual analysis, argumentative essay and focus group discussions were transcribed and, for those participants who chose to respond in kinyarwanda or french, their responses were translated into english. the analytical framework was guided by aspects of quality de materials on writing skills development and writing pedagogy, as drawn from quality materials mentioned above. such analysis was also supplemented by descriptive and interpretive approaches (elliot & timulak 2005) for the participants’ responses. research findings the findings from the textual analysis of the ur-ce de materials, the redesigned section and the focus group discussions with 80 in-service english teachers present new insights into the development of their pedagogical knowledge to teach writing. findings on the section on writing pedagogy in university of rwanda-college of education’s distance education module 7 textual analysis established that the writing pedagogy section in module 7 provides in-service teachers with general information about writing, such as what writing is, the techniques for teaching writing and difficulties in writing; however, general reference to writing pedagogy is very limited. for instance, the selected section on writing pedagogy in module 7 includes texts entitled ‘techniques for teaching writing skills’, ‘difficulties in writing’ and ‘functional writing’, which are reproduced in table 1. table 1: section on writing pedagogy. the textual analysis of this section revealed that, despite its suggestive title of techniques for teaching writing skills, the section provides very little practical guidance on how to teach writing, as it does not give teachers advice on teaching methods or approaches. rather, it only lists activities in which learners could be involved in the development of their writing, without any indication of how teachers should initiate these. bearing in mind that the section is designed for in-service teachers who do not have a pedagogic background (kie 2009), this section on writing pedagogy is likely to be of very little help to them. similarly, in the text about difficulties in writing, the shortcoming is that these in-service teachers are not given any examples of how to assist their learners to organise their ideas. this explains that ‘procedural knowledge’ (carr 1995; muller 2012) or ‘knowledge-how’ is backgrounded and sometimes ignored. from the analysis on functional writing, the textual analysis revealed that the module designers do not provide clear guidance to teachers on how to help their learners to undertake the tasks. it is unlikely that the instructions in the above paragraph will enable the teachers to teach their learners as to how to write functional texts or to develop grammatical and organisational skills. hence, from this analysis, we contend that presenting learners with an example of a text does not provide sufficient guidance for the learners to be able to write a text in the same genre. rather, teachers need genre-specific knowledge and skills in order to present and discuss model texts in such a way that their learners can also produce texts similar to these. we also claim that this section on writing pedagogy is likely to be of very little help to teachers. the teachers’ responses to questions about the ur-ce materials seem to support this claim, as illustrated in the excerpts from focus group discussions. teachers’ responses to the section on writing in the university of rwanda-college of education’s distance education materials before elaborating on the participants’ responses, it is important to note that ur-ce de in-service teachers have limited experience with writing and the teaching of writing. indeed, research has indicated that rwandan university students, in general, have limited exposure to writing in english, thus resulting in poor english writing skills (glatthaar 2014; mutwarasibo 2013; sibomana 2014), and rwandan in-service teachers, in particular, share the same experience (niyibizi 2015; sibomana 2016). this implies that even the in-service teachers, who were studying for the diploma, are still at a disadvantage. therefore, they indicated that they had high expectations regarding writing and writing pedagogy from the ur-ce de materials. however, they indicated that these expectations were not fully met in module 7. rather, their responses expressed disappointment regarding the section on writing pedagogy, as is evident in the following excerpts: ‘my opinion on this section on teaching writing at high school is that the content is purely theoretical … i haven’t seen any example that can inspire a teacher [in teaching writing]. it implies that expecting changes in our teaching habits as a result of reading these modules is an illusion.’ (teacher 3, male, senior 2) ‘reading these modules will not have a considerable change on our teaching habits especially because no practical examples were provided.’ (teacher 1, female, senior 1) ‘as an in-service teacher, i have gone to university to study how to teach writing to other people. but when i arrived there, the module shows me the types of writing, but on how to teach writing in the classroom there is little. that is a very big problem. you can read and finish the whole ur-ce pedagogy module without understanding how to write an essay or how to teach it.’ (teacher 10, male, senior 2) some participants indicated that, in addition to not helping them develop their knowledge and skills for teaching writing, the section does not address their own writing knowledge and skills. teacher 6 expressed this as follows: ‘in this module, there is nothing you can consider that can help you in teaching writing, because here they are telling us in the introduction in few words what writing is, only that, and types of writing and objectives. but they are not telling us how can you start when you want to write an essay, what can you do?’ (teacher 6, female, senior) these remarks suggest that the section neither helps participants to develop their writing skills nor does it indicate to them as to how to proceed in helping learners to develop writing skills. their responses imply that the designers of module 7 left or omitted critical information on writing pedagogy practices. findings on the redesigned section the redesigning of the section was informed by the findings from textual analysis and by recent research on writing pedagogy, particularly the integrative approach to teaching writing (clarence-fincham et al. 2002; ralfe 2009). adopting an integrative approach, the redesigned section added information on writing stages, such as choosing a topic, pre-writing, drafting, revising, proofreading and publishing. practical examples were provided by taking the participants through the process of writing a coherent, cohesive and logical argumentative essay. to model the writing process, the section used a topic that is relevant to the participating in-service teachers’ context because, as peterson (2012) suggests, writing should not be separated from the social context in which the act of writing takes place. thus, for example, the topic: it is better to study in a boarding school than in a day school is topical and context-relevant because the government of rwanda is currently phasing out the boarding school system in order to use the money saved to build more day schools and increase access to free basic education. therefore, teachers are likely to identify with the topic, which is in line with the sociocultural approach to language teacher education. according to this approach, the content of a teacher education programme and related mediation should be linked to the contexts in which the teachers work (freeman & johnson 1998; johnson 2006; johnson & golombek 2011; perumal 2012, 2013). the illustrative example in the process of writing, which was modelled for participating, focussed on clustering, as one of the strategies for gathering ideas. it was a practical example of the main parts of an essay (introduction, body and conclusion), which starts with clustering, as one of the stages of the writing process that begins with a key word or central idea placed in the centre of the page (or the blackboard) around which learners write down all their ideas associated with the topic, using individual words or short phrases (ralfe 2009). figure 1 illustrates how this process appears in the redesigned section. figure 1: an example of a cluster in the redesigned section. this diagram shows that clustering is different from a list because the words or phrases are in a pattern which shows connections between the ideas. clustering can take the form of a diagram or a mind map (ralfe 2009). it draws from a process theory of composition which focusses on writing as a process with a series of recurring stages rather than a product (murray 2003). this integrative approach is in line with what is advocated in the literature on teaching writing; before we know how to teach writing, we must first understand how we write (zamel 1982), because teachers who do not have any understanding of what good writing looks like are often ill-equipped to teach it (tulley 2013). in fact, teachers who cannot write well may have poorly developed ideas of what writing processes are (uysal 2007). hence, such teachers may not understand problems involved in writing (pardo 2006). furthermore, the section adopted a teaching through questioning approach (duron, limbach & waugh 2006; ur 2014), which consisted of asking the participating teachers to carry out practical activities at each stage in the process of writing an essay, providing feedback and building on it (feedback) to present subsequent content. table 2 includes the redesigned section, where the questioning approach was applied to the mediation of clustering. table 2: redesigned section on writing pedagogy, with examples on feedback and clustering process. by including the practical activity, the redesigned section aimed both to provide the participating teachers with a model of an argumentative essay and to help them to produce their own essays and have practical tips on how to teach it. thereafter, they were interviewed on such practices. we argue that comparing the redesigned section with the one provided by module 7 designers offered them a platform to reflect on their knowledge and skills regarding writing and teaching writing. findings on teachers’ responses to the redesigned section the data from the interviews with the eight teachers indicated that they responded as ‘satisfied customers’ (reed 2005) regarding the value of the redesigned section in helping them to become effective writers and to teach writing effectively. they all indicated that the section took them through the writing process, leading to a well-written argumentative text (product) and indicated to them (through practical examples) how to teach writing. for instance, teachers indicated that: ‘the section prepares the reader to be a teacher in such a way that even the learner who will be taught by this teacher will say, “i have learned something”.’ (teacher 21, male, senior 4) ‘as a teacher, if i get this document, and i go and enter the class with this document, it is enough. with this section, i can teach writing effectively.’ (teacher 7, female, senior 2) another teacher expressed his appreciation of the redesigned section in the following words: ‘i was really surprised when i saw this section. i thought that if we had seen this section before, we would have been devoting more time to teaching writing … if we were not on school holidays, i would immediately prepare a lesson on writing because i realised that … in fact, i would like to ask you for a copy of this section so that we can use it because we have found the modules not helpful regarding teaching writing … if it were possible, this section should be incorporated in the modules for future ur-ce de intakes.’ (teacher 38, male, senior 1) these comments suggest that the participants found something important in the redesigned section, something that responded positively to their needs with regard to their own writing knowledge and skills, and to teaching learners how to write. in contrast to what they said about the section in the ur-ce module 7, the participants indicated that the redesigned section is practical and shows how the different parts of an essay are written, how they are linked together and how to write and teach writing step by step. while writing pedagogy scholars (e.g. sheridan 2009; turner 2007) are critical of this linear approach to writing, we suggest that it is a way to start, especially with efl teachers whose knowledge of english is limited. moreover, hedge (1993) indicates that the process approach is not necessarily linear but a recursive activity in which the writer moves backwards and forwards between drafting and revising, with stages of re-planning in between. the teachers also pointed out that the redesigned section provides practical and relevant examples to illustrate the methodological steps, techniques and stages of teaching writing from the beginning to the end and encourages reflection on what one reads. some participants expressed their views as follows: ‘in the redesigned section, the teacher has a role in the teaching/learning process, but s/he is also mindful about the role of the learner and the difficulties this one may face in finding answers for the questions.’ (teacher 12, male, senior 3) ‘it avoids confusions by providing a step by step procedure of conducting a writing lesson … it also gives detailed examples, uses diagrammes and a model of a lesson plan to illustrate the process of teaching writing.’ (teacher 5, female, senior 2) as the remarks of teacher 5 imply, the redesigned section addressed some confusions and misunderstandings that they had about teaching writing. in commenting on the lessons learnt from the redesigned section, teacher 44 indicated that he learnt that writing, in all its stages, should not be taught in one period (which is different from what he used to do) and that learners need to have a say in choosing topics to write about. teacher 15 said that after reading the redesigned section, he realised that teaching writing is not as difficult as he imagined. he felt that he needed to stop focussing on grammar and start teaching writing more often in his class. teacher 38 learnt how to choose a topic, both for his learners and for himself. teacher 7 learnt that good writing needs to be planned and written in stages. these views suggest that the participants preferred the redesigned section to the section on writing pedagogy in module 7. however, some participants were critical about the lack of theoretical information on how to approach the learning/teaching activities in the redesigned section. the lack of this information may have been a reason why some participating teachers used the activities for assessment rather than learning purposes. for instance, teachers 1 and 18 pointed out that they read the entire redesigned section first (without answering the activity questions) and answered the questions later without re-reading the content to see how much they had learnt. by approaching the activities in this way, these teachers missed some important points, because the presentation of content in this section builds on activities and related answers and feedback. in other words, the learner needs to complete the activities to (better) understand subsequent content. discussion the responses to the two sets of materials suggest that the teachers interviewed, who are working in an efl teaching context and who have limited experience of writing in english, lack some of the writing knowledge and skills needed both to produce well-written texts and to teach their learners to do the same. findings from focus group discussions indicated that almost all 80 participating teachers responded positively to materials that offered explicit (step-by-step) guidelines for their own writing development and for teaching writing to secondary school learners, together with explanations for the guidelines suggested. this finding supports the argument forwarded by uysal (2007) that when teachers of writing are provided with a writing course in which they practise writing themselves, their practices may change. indeed, ‘teachers who have not experienced meaningful writing projects themselves may not appreciate the writing problems their students face’ (kennedy 1998, in uysal 2007:2) and may have few resources to draw on in their teaching (leki 2001). thus, foreign language teachers’ basic writing skills, which serve as a foundation for the development of writing pedagogy, should not be taken for granted. courses which are aimed at developing teachers’ own writing skills and knowledge are as important as those aimed at developing their ability to teach writing to their learners. the participants’ responses also suggest that these teachers prefer materials or approaches that actively engage them in activities that are aimed at helping them to learn, especially when the knowledge and skills being developed are directly applicable to classroom tasks such as teaching writing. active and practical learning activities are particularly important in teacher education programmes if trainers of teachers want to adopt active and learner-centred teaching approaches in their classes, given that teachers tend to teach by replicating the practices of their own teacher training classrooms (freeman & johnson 1998; lortie 1975; murdoch 1994; singh & harris 2010). furthermore, the responses suggest that these teachers value materials that show understanding of the context in which they operate. this finding is in line with the sociocultural approach to language teacher education, which has been referred to earlier. if such attention to context is absent from teacher education programmes, there is a risk of producing teachers who may know what to teach but who, according to johnson and golombek (2011:2), do not have ‘the essential procedural knowledge to confront the realities of the classroom’. this may lead to their knowledge and skills being ‘disconnected in any substantive way from the practical goal-directed activities of actual teaching’ (johnson & golombek 2011:2). therefore, context-based learning activities and integrative approaches in teacher education programmes are important because they are likely to help teachers to enact culturally and contextually the responsive writing pedagogies (pardo 2006). university of rwanda-college of education distance education materials, like the section copied from module 7, do not contain such activities and this constitutes one of their weaknesses. conclusion the findings discussed in this article indicate that a distance teacher education programme may fall short of some of its targeted goals. the three research questions that were posed for this study: (1) how do rwandan secondary school english teachers mediate the content on teaching writing as explained through de?; (2) what shortcomings do english teachers observe in the writing pedagogy module and what improvements do they suggest?; (3) which approach, when considering the product-, processgenreand integrative approaches, do they perceive to be more effective in teaching writing through de? were answered, as revealed in the findings from the document analysis, textual analysis, argumentative essays and focus group discussions with the participating teachers. the striking finding is the kind of mismatch between the writing goals stated in the module and the pedagogical practices in learning how to teach writing. for instance, despite ur-ce’s stated intention of helping its students ‘to improve their general knowledge as well as their academic and professional education’ (kie 2009:1), the analysis of the materials, the responses of selected teachers to these materials and the pedagogically oriented redesigned section suggest that this goal has not been met. it appears that the existing material, specifically module 7 on english writing pedagogy, does not empower these teachers to become effective writers and teachers of writing. indeed, some of the participants indicated that their de materials do not provide them with writing experience. we argue that failure to meet the goal of enabling english teachers to become effective writers and teachers of writing is a cause for concern given the central role of writing in national examinations in english and in most other subjects. we suggest that the ur-ce de materials be reconceptualised so that a revised version combines propositional knowledge with procedural knowledge (fantl 2012; meadows 2013). we also suggest that these two types of knowledge be more carefully mediated to both teachers and the designers of de materials and that the revised version be aligned to the demands of the school curriculum and the national examination. this article reports on a case at the rwandan university, but designers of distance learning materials for english teachers in contexts other than rwanda may find it helpful to use the findings reported in this article to inform a review and redesign of their materials. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contribution the author contribution is related to conceptualising the theoretical and methodological sections of the article. all authors co-authored through rewriting, 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https://doi.org/10.1076/call.15.2.167.8191 zamel, v., 1982, ‘writing: the process of discovering meaning’, tesol quarterly 16(2), 195–209. https://doi.org/10.2307/3586792 abstract introduction theoretical framework and literature review research method and design data presentation, analysis and interpretation discussion pedagogical implications and conclusions acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) rockie sibanda department of languages, cultural studies and applied linguistics, faculty of humanities, university of johannesburg, johannesburg, south africa citation sibanda, r., 2019, ‘mother-tongue education in a multilingual township: possibilities for recognising lok’shin lingua in south africa’, reading & writing 10(1), a225. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.225 original research mother-tongue education in a multilingual township: possibilities for recognising lok’shin lingua in south africa rockie sibanda received: 14 dec. 2018; accepted: 10 june 2019; published: 29 aug. 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: mother-tongue education in south african primary schools remains a challenge to policymakers. the situation is problematic in multilingual lok’shin (township) schools where the lok’shin lingua is not recognised as ‘standard’ language. this article raises the controversial possibility of positioning of lok’shin lingua in a formal education langscape. objectives: the article’s first purpose is to highlight recent international and local research which depicts controversies surrounding mother tongue instruction in primary schools. the second purpose is to conceptualise lok’shin lingua as a dialect present in children’s everyday vocabulary. method: data was gathered through a qualitative approach using interviews. the interviews were conducted with parents and educators at a township in south africa. results: findings show notable differences in school language of instruction and the languages children speak outside school. conclusion: mother tongue teaching is problematic as it is incongruent with learners’ language repertoires. therefore, a call is made for the recognition of lok’shin lingua in educational contexts as a way to promote more research into mother-tongue education. keywords: dialect; home language; lok’shin lingua; langscape; township; mother tongue; multilingual; standard language. introduction mother-tongue education has been recognised as having potential benefits to young children’s performance in school (stoop 2017). since south africa attained independence in 1994, mother-tongue education has been highly debated. the student protests at universities across the country in the past two and a half years, demanding among other things mother-tongue education, have occasioned provocative discussions on this issue. in south africa, like elsewhere in the world, mother-tongue education is considered a fundamental human right (trudell et al. 2012). this fundamental right is enshrined in section 29(2) of the constitution of the republic of south (rsa 1996). research has shown that children’s first language or mother tongue is the optimal language for literacy and learning throughout primary school (unesco 2008a). over the years, de varennes, a french-canadian linguist has underlined the patent value of mother-tongue education, also highlighted by international research and international organisations such as the united nations (eloff 2017). for example, research done in mali, between 1984 and 2000, showed that learners who received instruction in their mother tongue had a 32% higher pass rate than those taught in french (eloff 2017). educationists have proposed that african language learners should be taught in their mother tongue for at least the first three years of school before switching over to english (foley 2007). during those three years, english is taught as a core curricular subject. however, research has shown that it takes longer than three years to fully learn a language and recommends that children should learn through a language they know well for the first six years of schooling (bloch cited in cook 2013). in south africa, african language-speaking children are taught in their mother tongue for only three years, after which they switch to english in grade 4. this switch foregrounds english as the ‘main’ language of learning and teaching (madiba 2013). under these circumstances, particularly in urban areas, mother-tongue education is highly contentious. this contention is partly due to the diverse language composition of urban populations. the languages spoken in the urban areas differ considerably from standard rural versions (cook 2002; matentjie 2010:40). the linkage in this discussion should concern mother tongue and lok’shin (township) lingua from the onset. this should reflect why, in this discussion, mother tongue theories foregrounded in this study are employed in essentially making a case for lok’shin lingua. furthermore, the written forms of standard african languages remain in many ways archaic, limited and context-bound and seemingly incongruent with the modern scientific world (foley 2007). as foley (2007) further notes, the official african languages are only able to function as media of communication at such levels as interpersonal conversation. as they currently exist, standard written forms of the african languages have not yet been developed to the point where they can carry academic discourse effectively to function as full-fledged languages of learning and teaching, even at foundation phase level (matentjie 2010). south africa’s major african languages do not have much literature that can facilitate effective classroom instruction. there are instances where teachers have to construct their own passages for comprehension tests (venter cited in cook 2013). taking the above argument into account, mother-tongue education seems to be a barrier to learners’ progress in the early years of education. it can be argued that instead of enhancing classroom performance in township schools, mother-tongue education mostly advantages first language afrikaans and english speakers in more affluent schools. for township learners, the standard african languages may in fact not be their native dialects (cook 2009), whereas, as owen-smith (2010) notes, their english and afrikaans-speaking counterparts use their own languages from grade 1 to 12. the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) report on literacy teaching and learning concurs with this observation, as it reveals that most of the learners who ostensibly performed best wrote the test in their home language (eloff 2017; spaull 2017). poor academic performance in township and rural schools that is highlighted in pirls 2016 can be mainly attributed to teaching in a language different from what the children speak. as ongoing research shows, it is important to challenge the common assumption that mother-tongue education is necessarily helpful and empowering for african language speakers if it is based on the popular idea of what a ‘mother tongue’ is (krause 2018). to explain this situation, muller (2013) provides a useful and succinct summary of the language and learning complexities in schools. according to muller (2013), when implementing mother-tongue education, the first critical mistake is the assumption that all schools are in the same situation, whereas they are not. in support of this observation, setati and adler (2000) point out that schools in rural areas have relatively homogenous language settings, whereas urban schools have diverse and very fluid langscapes.1 it can be maintained that this misconception largely accounts for the ineffectiveness and low academic achievement in rural and township schools. to address the low academic achievement, proponents of mother-tongue education suggest teaching in the language that children speak at home (krause 2018). the notion of the mother tongue refers to the codified standard version of standard african languages such as isizulu, setswana or sesotho. these standard languages were transcribed in most cases by 19th century european missionaries, based on how they understood and conceptualised the way people spoke in the immediate vicinity of the rural mission stations (krause 2018). implementing mother-tongue education is problematic because it overlooks the variegated linguistic situation in south africa. there is documented evidence of at least 25 different languages spoken in south africa (lemmer 2002) where the 11 official languages are just a proportion of the full range of tongues. theoretical framework and literature review education models promoting mother-tongue education when considering schooling models that could work in south africa, academics and policymakers often cite the ‘immersion programmes’ of french-canadian schools (genesee 2004; lindholm-leary & borsato 2006). the appropriateness of this model for the south african situation can be questioned for various reasons. firstly, compared to south african learners, most of the learners attending french-canadian schools come from homes with affluent socio-economic backgrounds, where vocabulary and literacy practice in the mother tongue has had a strong foundation from the home (genesee 2004). secondly, these canadian schools are staffed with truly bilingual teachers who are well trained in the practice of second language acquisition, even if they are content teachers (for example, mathematics and science). thirdly, these schools are true immersion programmes where learners are not allowed to use their language at all, only french is allowed (genesee 2004; genesee & holobow 1989). finally, the school day is extended with a rich variety of practices, both curricular and extra-curricular, which are supported via well planned language development resources (genesee 2004). also from canada is cummins’s (1981) widely cited work supporting arguments for mother-tongue education. this is also questionable, considering that south africa has multiple mother tongues whereas the canadian situation under which cummins’s additive bilingualism evolved has french and english (banda 2010:61) as official languages, although canada is a pluralist society with one of the most diverse national populaces. similar to canada, south african is a pluralist society. for instance, in a typical township classroom one can find 50 learners who speak 12 different mother tongues between them, especially in gauteng (muller 2013). most of these learners are exposed to many languages spoken in their localities. children from such multilingual settings are disadvantaged linguistically both at home and at school. at home their parents’ mastery of home language and english or afrikaans is usually relatively low and at school their educators struggle with english because they are not mother tongue english speakers. in many instances these teachers are often the only exposure to english that the learners have. this observation is not an indictment of teachers but of teacher training. an argument can therefore be made that the problem in township schools has as much to do with the medium of instruction as with classroom practice. additive bilingualism underpinning the current south african language in education policy (liep) is the ‘additive bilingualism’ paradigm (welch 2012). theoretically, the liep recognises the importance of mother tongue instruction for at least the first six grades as an essential step in ensuring the development of literacy and numeracy. however, in reality mother tongue instruction only happens in the first three years of schooling, then there is a switch to english, or afrikaans to a lesser extent, in grade 4 (taylor & coetzee 2013). in 2009, the commission set up by the department of basic education reported the transition to english in grade 4 as problematic (department of basic education 2010). surprisingly, the commission recommended that english should be introduced even earlier, in grade 1, arguing that it would facilitate a better transition (owen-smith 2010:32). this recommendation suggests that a small amount of english acquired by learners over three years should be sufficient to facilitate a switch to english in grade 4 (owen-smith 2010:32). for example, the threshold project, conducted in south africa, showed that many black learners had difficulty adjusting to the switch from mother-tongue education to the english medium of instruction in standard 3 (grade 5). the research found that learners could not transfer knowledge acquired in the first language to english nor vice versa (hoadley 2012:189). although children who have little exposure to second language may be better prepared for school, they will need ongoing support to acquire sufficient proficiency in it. lightbown (2008) warns that becoming completely fluent in a second language is not as easy as many people have claimed, but rather it takes several years. nicholas and lightbown (2008) explain that the pace of learning an additional language, and the effective instruction or support for children to learn an additional language, depends upon whether the child has developed literacy in the first language. it is argued that in order to succeed in academic subjects, children need to continue developing their first language (lightbown 2008). subtractive bilingualism in contrast to the additive bilingual approach is the subtractive or immersion approach. in this approach mother tongue is initially used as a medium of instruction but it is soon replaced with the target language, which, in the south african context, is predominantly english (alexander 2006). in the south african context, the complete immersion model seems impractical because of certain contextual factors. firstly, there are no resources for this model in south african schools. secondly, only 8% – 9% of south african population are first language english speakers (statssa 2015). many of these first language speakers are not interested in becoming teachers. they do not find teaching as more appealing and lucrative than other options often available to them (muller 2013). therefore, children are taught by many south african teachers who are not mother tongue english speakers and struggle with english themselves (muller 2013). the common subtractive bilingual model or approach is the ‘straight-for-the-target language’ (heugh 1993) approach where, in the south african context, non-english-speakers are taught in english from preschool. however, both local and international research clearly shows that ‘subtractive (straight for l2) and early transition programmes do not facilitate successful results’ (heugh 2005a:65–66). early immersion in a second language (l2) is considered detrimental to the cognitive growth and literacy development of the learner (heugh 2005b). the long-term effect of subtractive bilingualism is that learners eventually regress in both languages and, even worse, can lose their home language’s cognitive and academic proficiency skills (baker 2006; cummins 2008). the direct consequence of this is that the learner’s language proficiency, in a sense, does not develop beyond the basic interpersonal communicative skills (bics) level. mother-tongue education the sociopolitical problems underlying mother-tongue education in south africa date back to the apartheid era. the apartheid nationalist government policy to preserve ethnic identities went to the extent of attempting to create monolingual societies out of multilingual south africa (banda 2010). apart from separating people according to race and language group, the apartheid regime insisted on mother-tongue education which was flawed for various reasons. firstly, although 11 official languages are recognised in south africa, only afrikaans and english were (and are still) accorded higher status. secondly, literature shows that typically a south african uses at least two languages depending on context. black people, particularly those in urban areas, have been known to use three or more languages (de klerk 2002; slabbert & finlayson 2000). in most south african contexts, it is likely that the child’s home language will be one or more local or regional dialects, sociolect or non-standard variety different from the written standard (plüddemann 2010:6). these children are unable to perform academically in standard language because they have surface-level fluency in their home language. in order to address the language problems in education, government enacted the liep (department of education 1997), within which there is provision for schools to determine their own language policy in consultation with the parents and the community (ncoko, osman & cockroft 2000). although, the liep gives parents the right to choose the language through which they want their children to be taught (department of education 1997), the power to determine the language policy of a school rests with the school governing bodies (sgbs). the interpretation of this provision has been the object of significant legal contestation, as is evidenced by the number of court cases pertaining to language policies in afrikaans medium schools in particular. for example, in the case between the sgb and rivonia primary school versus member of the executive council (mec) for education, gauteng province and others, contestations over the admission policy and school capacity were highlighted (mestry 2017). although, well intended, the implementation of the liep has thus far been ineffective (van staden, bosker & bergbauer 2016) because it fails to address the complex situation where schools teach in a language that is nonetheless different from what the learners speak at home (howie, venter & van staden 2008). this presents problems in implementing mother-tongue education in a language that children identify with; hence, a case for the recognition of lok’shin lingua can be made. arguably, lok’shin lingua is part of township identity. it is the lingua of cognition in which learners interact and form concepts for self-expression, facilitating learning. research method and design site the current study takes place in kagiso, a multilingual township2 in the western part of the gauteng province of south africa. the diverse multilingual composition of kagiso township is a result of the current political and socio-economic conditions in south africa. the advent of independence in south africa in 1994 allowed free movement of people within provinces. gauteng, considered to be the economic hub of south africa, experiences an influx of migrants from other provinces because people seek employment opportunities in johannesburg and pretoria and their surrounding areas. the migrants from other provinces, in particular, bring into gauteng different local languages that are predominantly spoken in other provinces. kutlwano primary school,3 where the research participants are drawn from, is one of the six primary schools located in kagiso. at the time the initial study was conducted, only setswana and isizulu were the languages of learning and teaching in the foundation phase (grades r–3) and there is a switch to english in the intermediate phase (intersen phase).4 the learner population in this primary school comprises only black children from multilingual backgrounds, reflecting the cultural and linguistic diversity in the township. research methods of enquiry this article is part of a larger study that examined early childhood literacy practices in a multilingual township. a qualitative research design with a case study approach was used to guide the study of early childhood literacy practices of grade 3 children in kagiso township in the west of johannesburg, south africa. data was collected over a period of 9 months, through in-school and out-of-school observations, interviews and conversations with educators and family members of learners who participated in the study. this research approach presented opportunities to develop an in-depth account of meanings of literacies of young learners. it also supported the need to understand how language and social context transect to promote comprehensive classroom instruction and literacy development, particularly in the foundation phase. the aim of the broader case study was to explore early childhood literacy practices in a multilingual township. however, the current study was not the initial aim of the broader case study but a result of an incidental finding; as such a research question emerged: how can research on mother tongue instruction help to recognise lok’shin lingua as standard dialect across a range of contexts, including school? data presentation, analysis and interpretation interviews with teachers pen portrait 1: ms hamba the disciplinarian ms hamba is a foundation phase teacher at kutlwano primary school. she is in her early 50s and has been teaching the foundation phase for more than 30 years. she teaches one of the three setswana medium classes. although setswana is not her mother tongue, she is fluent in setswana as she grew up in mahikeng in the north west, a predominantly setswana-speaking province. she is married to a setswana-speaking husband. her loud and authoritative voice seems to instil strict discipline in her class. she makes learners who do not do their homework or misbehave in class do their school work while kneeling or squatting on the floor for the entire 30 min of the lesson. vignette 1: ms hamba interviewer:    what seems to be the problem? ms hamba:    the problem is mother tongue. learners have a very weak foundation in mother tongue. interviewer:    does this apply to both home language and english? ms hamba:    the isizulu or setswana they learn in class differs from what they speak at home. i think their home language is affected by their environment. interviewer:    what is wrong with their environment? ms hamba:    you find that the father of the child is tswana and the mother is venda and the child plays with zulu children. the child gets confused. these children don’t understand even their home language. they don’t have a proper home language. interviewer:    how then do they learn? ms hamba:    those from good crèches learn much better in english but they have problems when they learn in setswana in foundation phase. interviewer:    what happens with those who are not from good crèches? ms hamba:    those experience serious problems in english, especially in grade 4 when they switch to english only. english is foreign to them. it is white people’s language for model cs.5 this extract epitomises the complexities of multilingualism in the gauteng schools. as ms hamba points out, it is probably extremely difficult for township children to have a solid foundation of home language because of the mixed language setting in their families. this leads them not to have a ‘proper home language’. as ms hamba indicates, the isizulu or setswana that children learn in class differs from what they speak at home, because that is mostly a mixture of different languages. arguably, nothing is wrong with the children’s mother tongue, but the problem is the notion of ‘mother tongue’. drawing on krause’s (2018) provocative comment, claims can be made that today’s african languages and so-called mother tongues are not defined by the way urban dwellers speak but by how white missionaries codified them decades ago. ms hamba observes that children who attended ‘good crèches’ (preschools) speak ‘good english’ while those who did not attend good ones lack english proficiency, which is assumed to be predictor for success. although children from ‘good’ crèches or preschools are said to speak better english, they experience problems in setswana. what seems problematic is their early exposure to english in crèches that use the straight-for-target language (english) approach (ball 2014). the straight-for-english approach may make children lack competence in their home language (ball 2014), leading to poor mastery of both english and the mother tongue (banda 2010:51). english is also associated with race and social class, as ms hamba terms it: ‘white people’s language for model cs’. the former model c schools denote both race and class superiority mostly associated with white people and the black middle class. the educators’ preference of english seems to support english dominance and neglect of african languages. however, this preference for english instruction can be problematic for different reasons. firstly, most educators in township schools are essentially products of an inferior bantu education system and they lack english proficiency (christie & collins 1979). for example, interview transcripts of educators in this study were found to be riddled with several language errors ranging from incorrect use of tense to unintelligible sentence fragments. it seems impractical to expect educators who themselves are not confident and proficient in english to teach learners in that language. based on this observation of the educators’ lack of language proficiency, one could ask whether the problem in township schools is a result of learning or teaching. pen portrait: ms fakude the pure zulu ms fakude is a foundation phase teacher with 20 years of teaching experience. she is a zulu mother tongue speaker from kwazulu-natal, a predominantly isizulu-speaking province in south africa. she prefers to be interviewed mainly in isizulu (parts of the transcript have been translated to english). ms fakude teaches one of the two isizulu medium grade 3 classes. vignette 2: ms fakude interviewer:    usho ukuthi abamuzwa utisha uma ekhuluma i-setswana noma isizulu? [you mean learners don’t understand when a teacher speaks setswana or isizulu? (author’s own translation)] ms fakude:    ulimi lwebele alufani nolimi lwasekhaya. lufuna umuntu oluncelile. njengoba uzwa uma ngikhuluma, mina ngingumzulu phaqa, wasenatal. ozakwethu laba abazalelwe lana egoli bakhuluma isizulu sasemalokishini. inkinga njalo yikuthi isizulu sibanzi njalo siyahlukana izigodi nezigodi. amanye amagama aso ajulile. [mother tongue is different from home language. it needs one who is born with it. as you can hear when i speak, i am a pure zulu from kwazulu-natal. my colleagues born here in johannesburg speak township zulu. the other problem is that zulu is so broad and differs from one area to another. some of the zulu words are very deep (author’s own translation)]. interviewer:    how does all this affect the children you teach? ms fakude:    it’s a pity for my young learners who are exposed to the wrong zulu and many other languages at a very young age. they mix zulu with other languages such as setswana, xhosa or swati. they tend to throw in a lot of xhosa and swati words partly because they think it is cool and mainly because those languages resemble zulu. here in kagiso they’ve their own zulu dialect. ngempela angazi ukuthi yini abayikhulumayo [honestly, i don’t know what (language) they speak (author’s own translation)]. interviewer:    is this zulu dialect acceptable in the classroom? ms fakude:    although this dialect differs in accentuation from the one spoken in kwazulu-natal (kzn), i think it should be accepted here in gauteng as another version of the standard language. because even in kwazulu-natal many different varieties are spoken from place to place. interviewer:    when you teach content subjects in zulu are your learners able to grasp key concepts? ms fakude:    that is a major problem because isizulu, like other african languages, borrows a lot from english and afrikaans as we do not have zulu equivalents for some words. in vignette 2, there is evidence that ms fakude prides herself of being a ‘pure zulu’ from kwazulu-natal. by using belittling terms such as ‘township zulu’ and ‘wrong zulu’, it is apparent that she disparages the ‘inferior’ form of zulu spoken in johannesburg. although she despises her colleagues’ inferior zulu, ‘isizulu sasemalok’shini’ [township zulu], she acknowledges the existence of different zulu dialects even in kwazulu-natal. donnelly (cited in dowling 2011:362) sheds light on the existence of important sub-varieties of several national languages in south africa where children who speak mpondo, bhaca, cele and other smaller nguni6 languages, are ‘forced to declare themselves arbitrarily as “xhosa” or “zulu,” even where these “dialects” are mutually unintelligible with the standard language’. according to ms fakude, township dwellers speak isizulu mixed with other languages. findings of the current study show that many households in townships are multilingual which is problematic to mother-tongue education, as de klerk (2002), notes: many south africans, especially those in urban areas, are highly multilingual, and it is often difficult to identify a single first language for a particular child or assess children’s proficiencies in the languages they speak. (p. 38) as ms fakude admits that isizulu is localised, she suggests recognition of township isizulu as another dialect, just as the different isizulu dialects spoken in kwazulu-natal are recognised. interviews with parents pen portrait 3: mr miya speaking his mind mr miya is a parent of one of the five learners participating in the initial study. he is isixhosa speaking while his wife is setswana speaking. in his home, he prefers using setswana with his family. as a general worker in a factory, mr miya is rarely at home because he works long hours. he usually leaves for work when his children are still asleep and returns when they are already in bed. besides his busy schedule, mr miya actively participates in the affairs of the school where this study is conducted. he is the chairperson of the sgb, which among its main functions decides on the language policy of the school. mr miya is very opinionated on school curriculum issues and other matters concerning the school. he is also doing distance learning studies in theology at the university of south africa. vignette 3: mr miya interviewer:    why do you say children don’t understand when teachers speak pure setswana? mr miya:    teachers in this school teach a north west type of setswana. setswana has different dialects which are problematic. you can speak north west setswana and i speak gauteng setswana. what is written in books is pure setswana. because i’m used to my second grade setswana, the book setswana seems different. interviewer:    does it mean that children don’t understand the standard setswana written in the books? mr miya:    yes, that’s what i mean. in the whole of kagiso we’ve our own style of speaking setswana. you go to mohlakeng, they’ve their own style of speaking tswana. you go to carletonville and khutsong, they speak their own different type of setswana. even in zeerust, mafikeng and rustenburg, they speak different setswana. you go to taung, klerksdorp, kimberly, their tswanas are not the same. i don’t have to like pure tswana but it has to be taught properly. if our children are not taught their own language, it will die. the next generation won’t even know this language. interviewer:    does it mean that some of the teachers don’t know the language? mr miya:    their approach to teaching is wrong. i may not be eloquent in pure tswana but i make an effort to learn. teachers must learn real setswana from pure batswana. there are many pure tswana speakers in our township that speak real tswana. ke buwa ka bo mafikizolo ba mo kasi a bareng ‘nna ke motswana tota’ [i mean those new arrivals in the township who say, ‘i am a real/pure motswana’ (author’s own translation)]. some teachers are just afraid to learn pure tswana from an ordinary person. they think that uneducated people will not take them seriously. those uneducated people are the ones who know the real language, the idioms and all those things. interviewer:    what is your definition of being educated? mr miya:    education is not books. my mother seated there could know a lot more about my xhosa language than a professor of xhosa who knows what he just reads in books. she may know folk songs and their meanings and different xhosa rituals, which form our culture and language, which educated people don’t take seriously. so the teachers don’t learn from the people who have got the knowledge and the know-how. interviewer:    what do you think about materials such as books and worksheets that are used in schools? mr miya:    most of the words in the department of education books are not written in standard tswana. they’re just written in township street-tswana. interviewer:    so how are teachers linked to this? mr miya:    if teachers see errors, they must correct them so that they teach children the right thing. since our teachers don’t know the right language, they teach our kids wrong tswana, which means our children balimele [are doomed (author’s own translation)]. government must rethink the issue of standard language. yes, we must protect our language but we can’t be judged on rural language in this day and age. in vignette 3, mr miya describes standard setswana using terms similar to those of ms fakude: ‘pure’ and ‘real’. these terms seem to denote authenticity. in his view, township setswana is ‘wrong’, ‘second grade’, ‘gauteng setswana’ as compared to ‘north west setswana’. mr miya’s remarks exemplify the intricate complexities of the diverse setswana structure located not only within the multilingual gauteng townships, but in south africa as a whole. standard setswana taught in school is positioned in physical space based on different regional dialects spoken in south africa. an interesting aspect from this extract is the difference between the afrocentric and western conceptualisation of standard language: while in the west standard language is associated with middle class and higher education levels (trudgill 1974), in africa it is associated with rural populations (deumert 2005; mesthrie 2002), most of whom might not even have any formal education. to accommodate the changing language forms, mr miya suggests a review of standard languages to incorporate the evolving dialects. if mr miya’s view is to be taken into consideration, reviewing the standard languages could be a costly and lengthy process requiring commitment from academics, cultural groups, government departments and bodies such as pansalb. a question has to be posted on how far the review could go without completely annihilating the standard languages which are the pride and sense of identity of many south africans. pen portrait 4: ms zungu the gauteng zulu ms zungu is the aunt and guardian of thandi, one of the learners participating in the initial study. she has a high school level of education and a qualification in hospital auxiliary service which involves assisting patients in hospitals. ms zungu speaks freely about her background and gives insight into thandi’s life and the activities that she engages in at home. she seems interested in the education of her daughters, mpho and thandi. ms zungu outlines the challenges that her children face at school, particularly with setswana and isixhosa, and describes the nature of assistance they get. ms zungu is isizulu speaking and prefers having the interview in isizulu. vignette 4: ms zungu interviewer:    how are the children progressing in school? ms zungu:    thandi has problems with setswana because it is not our home language. if she fails home language she won’t proceed to the next grade. the setswana that she does at school is not our language. here in this house we speak township zulu. she doesn’t even know how to count from 1 to 20 in setswana. whenever she has problems she seeks help from others. interviewer:    in which language do they learn? ms zungu:    thandi is in grade 3 so she does all her subjects in setswana, except the english subject. mpho is grade 6 so she does all hers in english and does xhosa as a subject. by the way when mpho started grade 1, the school was supposed to offer xhosa, zulu and setswana. she was put in xhosa class because the zulu class was cancelled as there was no one to teach it. interviewer:    how important is setswana and isixhosa? ms zungu:    in order to be promoted to the next grade they must pass both the african languages and english. mpho failed last term, in march, because she got a level 3 [40%] in isixhosa. although she had levels 6s [70%] and 7s [80% +] in all other subjects. she cried and said, ‘mum i did well in all other subjects but i failed xhosa because we do it only once a week’. interviewer:    what do you do when thandi needs help with setswana? ms zungu:    thandi gets help from my brother’s wife, ipotseng. ipotseng is originally from rustenburg and speaks pure setswana. my mum can also speak setswana because she attended a roman catholic school (where setswana was the lingua franca) but mum is a local girl. i’m also a local girl. although mum did setswana at school, she struggles to help thandi because the level of setswana in these kids’ books is too high. interviewer:    who helps mpho with xhosa? ms zungu:    mpho usually gets help from our neighbour, noma. you see, noma is a pure xhosa, straight from eastern cape. ukhuluma isixhosa sasemakhaya [she speaks rural xhosa]. although she works, she helps mpho when she is available, even at night. interviewer:    what did you mean when you said you and your mum are local girls? ms zungu:    oh, i mean that we were born in the township. you see, i am zulu but i don’t speak the kzn zulu. i speak township zulu. people born here in the township speak many different languages although they may not be fluent in them. two important issues pertaining to language emerge from this extract: the issue of progression and promotion and the linguistic background of learners. according to the current policy on promotion and progression in primary school, learners are required to pass both the home language and first additional language. ms zungu finds mother tongue difficult for her children who speak a different language at home. mpho’s problem seems to be the school’s over-emphasis on english and neglect of xhosa which is taught by a non-xhosa speaking teacher who is not fluent in the language. mpho also alleges that xhosa is taught only once a week although it is a critical subject which suggests a lack of commitment by the school in teaching the subject. since the initial study did not focus on grade 6, mpho’s allegation could not be verified. of importance, ms zungu uses the term, ‘local girl’, priding herself on her township identity which is associated with a sense of belonging and her lok’shin lingua. according to ms zungu, township dwellers speak many languages although they may not be fluent in any of them. however, ms zungu claims that her mother is fluent in setswana, which she attributes to her attendance at a roman catholic school. this rationale is somewhat flawed because it cannot be that her ability to speak setswana is only attributable to her attendance of a roman catholic school. not everyone who attended a catholic school is able to speak setswana. besides the possibility of the medium of instruction or lingua franca at the school being setswana, there could be additional contributory factors such as regular interaction in setswana in her environment. discussion two key themes emerge from the data: the relevance of rural-based standard languages and possibility for urban lok’shin lingua in mother-tongue education. i am a pure zulu (mina ngingumzulu phaqa): relevance of rural-based standard languages one of the key themes emerging from these extracts is the issue of language and identity. ms fakude finds speaking ‘pure’ zulu an important aspect of her sense of identity as opposed to inferior ‘johannesburg zulu’. according to hodgson (2002), people who speak isizulu that is not mixed with other languages are regarded ambassadors of their language. ms fakude draws attention to her pronunciation and accentuation of isizulu. as in the findings made by nongogo (2007), ms fakude foregrounds her ‘pure zulu’ ethno linguistic identity in her remark, ‘njengoba uzwa uma ngikhuluma, mina ngingumzulu phaqa, wasenatal’ [as you can hear when i speak, i am a pure zulu from kwazulu-natal]. this common remark among isizulu-speaking people denotes a sense of pride and ‘ethnic purity’, as highlighted in words such as ‘pure’, ‘original’, ‘real’. ms fakude’s remarks show her uncompromising rigidity towards mother tongue education as dowling (2011:346) observes: ‘african language teachers generally regard any questioning of the “standard,” static varieties of african languages as tantamount to racism and as disrespectful of the culture’. she expresses concern that her colleagues teach learners ‘wrong zulu’. in a separate interview she laments the destruction of mother tongue and calls for its preservation: ‘azibuyele emasisweni’ [let’s go back to our roots]. her call is consistent with many linguistic groups calling for the need to ensure that the youngest members of their communities keep their linguistic heritage through mother-tongue education (ball 2014). a corpus of examples produced by unesco (2008b) attests to growing interest in promoting mother tongue-based education, and to a wide variety of models, tools and resources being developed and piloted to promote learning programmes in mother tongue education. despite her conservative stance, ms fakude calls for recognition of lok’shin lingua as an official dialect. i speak gauteng setswana: possibility for urban lok’shin lingua mr miya’s remark, ‘i speak gauteng setswana’, identifies a language form with an urban geographical space. he admits to speaking an inferior setswana that he describes as ‘second grade’. mr miya highlights the relationship between language and identity where the urban dialects are associated with ‘urbanness’ or being modern. for example, he uses the demeaning term ‘bo mafikizolo’ [new arrivals] to describe those who speak the so-called standard language which, according to township perceptions, is not ‘up-to-date’ with the modern township lingua. studies on the emerging urban forms of african languages done elsewhere in africa have shown that the younger generation finds more status and prestige in the urban varieties than the rural-based standardised languages (banda 2010). although mr miya admits to speaking gauteng setswana, he does not condone its fallibility. although he advocates teaching of proper setswana in order to preserve its existence for the future generation, he calls for a review of standard languages to meet urban contexts. it is possible that these township dialects have evolved to accommodate social and technological developments that more isolated linguistic contexts preclude, so speakers mix languages where there are no equivalent isizulu terms. in conclusion, the current standard languages are considered irrelevant to the current linguistic structure. urban dwellers associate them with ruralness and backwardness. in stark contrast to this perception is the pride of upholding standard languages. for example, ms fakude says ‘mina ngingumzulu phaqa’ [i am a pure zulu], a common term among proud isizulu speakers. similarly, mr miya cites an equivalent term used by the batswana who are proud of their language, ‘nna ke motswana tota’ [i am a real/pure motswana]. featuring in both isizulu and setswana articulation is the emphatic first person: ‘mina’ and ‘nna’. this highlights a sense of pride in one’s identity. these expressions of zulu-ness and tswana-ness affirm pride in one’s ethnicity (nongogo 2007). pedagogical implications and conclusions from the data, what seems problematic is the over-emphasis on spoken mother tongue as the sole predictor for success in school. evidence from research shows that exposure to more complex lexicons and grammar is through reading, not just speaking. for example, macdonald’s (1990) case study found that the setswana-speaking learners’ insufficient grasp of the linguistic structure of english seriously limited their ability to read (and particularly to read for meaning) in english. thus, spaull (2016:3) points out that ‘children who have not learnt to read cannot read to learn’. therefore, the ability to produce written texts to develop literacy is related to reading and comprehension as research reveals that the ratio of new vocabulary in writing is three times more than that used in spoken conversation (spaull 2017). as has been highlighted, spoken language proficiency on its own does not always lead to success in school. there seems to be a correlation between achievement and ability to read for meaning. the pirls 2016 results show that learners who had very poor test scores in indigenous african languages were unable to read for meaning (spaull 2017). besides the inability to read for meaning, poor performance in african languages can be attributed to other factors such as shortage of african language textbooks and poor comprehension skills. most textbooks are only available in english, which children cannot read for comprehension. there is also evidence of poor classroom practices as most teachers who lack confidence in their subjects depend heavily on textbooks, particularly in content subjects. instead of improving the pedagogical ability of teachers, government seems obsessed with provision of textbooks. a typical example is the limpopo textbook saga in which failure to deliver textbooks in schools has been a debatable issue. data from the study suggests that the language forms or dialects of children do not just disappear in the townships but emerge in the classroom. this calls for the recognition of each dialect as constituting a well-developed linguistic system with its own rules for variations from the standard language. in other words, speakers of dialects express linguistic differences, not linguistic defects as mostly assumed by schools (pearson & stephens 1994:33). in the process of making each individual learner a speaker of standard language, schools could eradicate a particular dialect (pearson & stephens 1994:33). evident in the current study is the existence of dialects or language forms in south africa that are defined by geographical locations. in pursuit of recognition of townships as geographic locations with a recognisable language structure the following question is posed: how can research on mother tongue instruction help to recognise lok’shin lingua as a standard dialect across a range of contexts, including school? this pedagogical challenge requests elevation of township lingua to a recognised dialect. given the south african context, the concept of ‘mother tongue’ is increasingly becoming ambiguous and flawed considering the rural-urban migration and the changing langscape (slabbert & finlayson 2000; webb 2009). the supposedly ‘pure’ languages are found to bear only a loose family resemblance to the way modern people in both rural and urban areas actually speak. we have to accept the distinctive dichotomy separating rural-based dialects from their urban varieties. a call for regional language education would be more appropriate as it would mean recognising the urban lok’shin lingua as a ‘regional dialect’ that could be more functional in implementing a comprehensive mother-tongue education for urban learners. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that there is no financial gain or personal relationship with participants or other parties that may have had inappropriate influenced the writing of this article. author’s contributions r.s. collected and analysed the data and put the paper together to meet the requirements of reading & writing journal. ethical consideration this article followed all ethical standards for carrying out research without direct contact with human or 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witwatersrand council on education, wits school of education, 09 october. footnotes 1. the word ‘langscape’ is used by linguists to refer to the linguistic make up of a particular community, environment or place and purpose of language practice (muller 2013). 2. designated residential areas for black and mixed race people under the group areas act 1950, during the apartheid years. 3. a pseudonym used to protect the identity of the school and participants. 4. intersen is a combination of intermediate and senior phases where intermediate is grade 4–6 and grade 7 is senior. 5. schools meant for white children before 1994. 6. languages including isizulu, isixhosa, siswati and isindebele. reading2.pdf book reviews douglas young, julie van der vlugt, siyalo qanya, lydia abel, aarnout brombacher, jonathon clark, di donaldson, peter johnston, yusuf johnson, case rijsdijk, corrie schoeman and gail solomons. 2010. understanding concepts in mathematics and science, volume two: a multilingual learning and teaching resource book in english, isixhosa, isizulu, afrikaans. cape town: maskew miller longman, 432 pages. isbn 978-0-636-09859-6 (hardback). understanding concepts in mathematics and science volume two (ucms2) continues the pioneering work which was !rmly established in 2005 with the publication of the !rst volume of ucms. both volumes are the brainchild of the concept literacy project based at the university of cape town, in collaboration with rhodes university and the university of kwazulu-natal. "e thrust of these two volumes is to promote literacy around key mathematical and scienti!c concepts. while ucms1 focused on 56 concepts in the general education and training (get) band, ucms2 progresses to the further education and training (fet) band where 68 key concepts from mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography and life sciences are outlined using a contextualised and multilingual approach. as with the !rst volume, the fundamental philosophy underpinning ucms2 is that learners and educators who are able to understand critical concepts in their own language will be able to transfer this understanding to learning and teaching contexts where english is the medium of instruction. accordingly, each of the 68 key concepts is described in 4 di#erent languages – english, afrikaans, isixhosa and isizulu. ucms2 is an attractive hard-cover book and is robust both in terms of structure and content. "e main content of the book is sub-divided into 68 units, each dealing with a particular key concept. ucms2 is also extensively illustrated with explanatory diagrams and photographs. "ese illustrations, along with the compactness of each short unit, give the book an appealing and accessible feel. as such, ucms2 is an excellent resource for both teachers and learners and would be a valuable addition to any classroom. rw& � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 103book reviews "e prologue to ucms2, entitled “how to use this book”, gives a helpful overview of the di#erent sections and the underlying intention behind each section. "is is a useful guide to navigating through the book and using each of the sections to maximum e#ect. "roughout the book there is a strong emphasis on the role of language in teaching and learning complex concepts in mathematics and science, and both volumes of ucms provide teachers with appropriate resources to support and foster knowledge formation in these learning areas. in addition to being a useful resource for conceptual development, one of the main contributions of ucms is its valuable input to the discourse surrounding the development of standardized registers for mathematics and science in indigenous languages. in this regard, the second volume of ucms has strayed a little from the utility of the !rst volume. volume one concluded with an extremely useful multilingual equivalence list in which words relating to key concepts were presented in all four languages. "is provided a quick and easy means of looking up and translating speci!c words. no such equivalence list (other than a contents table of the 68 key concepts) is provided with volume two, and while it is understood that ucms is not a dictionary i believe that the inclusion of a multilingual index would have enhanced both the convenience and usefulness of the book. "e emphasis of volume two seems to be in the description and illustration of the key concepts. however, the discussion around these key concepts is largely in english, and as such the multilingual nature of the book tends to take something of a backseat. to use an extreme case as an example, the unit on functions is thirteen pages long while only six lines in the entire unit are devoted to each of isixhosa, afrikaans and isizulu. "us, while the concept of a function is broadly outlined in four di#erent languages, not much support is o#ered to allow learners and teachers to discuss the concept in an indigenous language. "is aspect of the book was better handled in volume one where many of the units were subdivided into multiple key concepts, each of which was described in four di#erent languages. "e two volumes together raise a number of interesting linguistic issues and have certainly opened my eyes to the challenges to conceptual development that exist in a language that lacks a standardized register for mathematics and science. by way of example, the isixhosa word unxane can mean either a quadrilateral or a parallelogram. to have a single word which can represent, in a hierarchical system, both the parent group and a subdivision of the parent group opens up a veritable mine!eld of misunderstanding and shaky conceptualisation. � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 104 reading and writing in conclusion, the strength of these two volumes lies in their multilingual approach to concept literacy, and i believe that this is the arena in which ucms has the potential to contribute both meaningfully and dynamically. "e translation of key concepts into indigenous languages by no means gives a de!nitive lexicon. indeed, this is just the beginning of the process, but the well-researched translations contained within ucms provide a valuable contribution to the debate around the standardization process. "is is the aspect that i believe should gain focus as ucms branches out into other indigenous languages, as this will ultimately enhance the primary focus of the whole enterprise – the multilingual promotion of concept literacy. duncan samson, rhodes university � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � abstract introduction research problem theoretical framework literature: a brief review methodology ethical consideration presentation of findings short message service english paragraphs mxit’s mobile instant message english paragraphs discussion of findings conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) nandipha ngesi department of arts, walter sisulu university, south africa nhlanhla landa department of english, university of fort hare, south africa nophawu madikiza faculty of social sciences and humanities, university of fort hare, south africa madoda p. cekiso department of applied languages, tshwane university of technology, south africa baba tshotsho faculty of social sciences and humanities, university of fort hare, south africa lynne m. walters department of teaching, learning and culture (tlac), texas a&m university, united states citation ngesi n., landa, n., madikiza, n., cekiso, m.p., tshotsho, b. & walters, l.m., 2018, ‘use of mobile phones as supplementary teaching and learning tools to learners in south africa’, reading & writing 9(1), a190. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v9i1.190 original research use of mobile phones as supplementary teaching and learning tools to learners in south africa nandipha ngesi, nhlanhla landa, nophawu madikiza, madoda p. cekiso, baba tshotsho, lynne m. walters received: 11 dec. 2017; accepted: 31 may 2018; published: 25 sept. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract one of the major challenges in teaching english to speakers of other languages is the issue of inadequate contact time between teachers and learners and between learners and comprehensible english language input. this paper emanated from a burning desire to help learners in south african educational institutions, especially those in remote areas, increase the opportunity for learner-teacher-content contact. the deployment of mobile phones, as tools to supplement teaching and learning off-campus and after school hours, is presumed in this study to be one attempt to increase contact time for learners. a qualitative research methodology, which is interpretive in nature, was used. the study used a descriptive case study research design. it used a sample of 44 learners, drawn from grade 9 english first additional language learners in one school in the eastern cape. the participants were sampled, using purposive and volunteer sampling techniques. mobile phones were used to collect data, which was in the form of short message services (smss) and mxit messages. a questionnaire with open-ended questions was also used to collect data about learners’ perceptions of the use of these devices in the educational process. the data were analysed by incorporating elements of both content analysis and discourse analysis. despite the fact that some participants were of the view that sms would corrupt their language and spelling, findings indicate that most sms and mxit texts produced by participants displayed full sentences, punctuation marks, correct spelling of most words, acceptable grammar and proper sentence use. further, findings indicated that while sms and mxit communication were largely characterised by short hand and informal writing, when learners were aware that they were using these platforms for learning purposes, the traditional rules of formal writing applied. we conclude that mobile devices can improve the language acquisition of second language learners. we recommend consideration of the official inclusion of mobile devices as supplementary learning tools in the learning programme in south africa. introduction the use of mobile phones for teaching and learning purposes in some schools in south africa is not a new phenomenon. there have been trials focusing on the use of short message services (smss) (chaka & ngesi 2010; chaka, ramothea & ngesi 2010). elsewhere, hagos (2008), ling and baron (2007), meurant (2007), and wood et al. (2009) have reported on the use of smss and instant messaging to support teaching and learning. texting, the common term used for writing and sending smss and instant messages (ims), is, therefore, a common phenomenon in experiments to improve teaching and learning. despite their potential to aid the teaching and learning process, mobile phones are still disliked and outlawed in schools in south africa. this has been attributed to two major issues: the likelihood that they will be disruptive in classrooms and misused by learners (fried 2008). all major stakeholders in the education sector believe that the use of mobile phones to have negative consequences. instances of misuse have been reported in some schools in south africa (bosch 2008; ford & batchelor 2007). more specifically, the source of mistrust of mobile phone technology in the classroom stems from its potential contribution to the deterioration of grammar, poor language use, bad spelling and a lack of good writing by learners, mostly of the english language (chaka et al. 2010; tagliamonte & denis 2008; vosloo 2009; wood et al. 2009). all this, however, does not mean mobile phones are not in the classroom (junco 2012; sana, weston & cepeda 2013). the addiction of learners, and the young people specifically, to mobile phones in south african schools and institutions is unquestionable. even with stringent rules preventing the bringing of mobile phones to high school, these still found their way into the classroom. this makes the mobile phone a technological gadget of choice among the youth of school-going age. this also points towards the potential of these devices in aiding the teaching and learning process (ling & bertel 2013). according to north, johnston and ophoff (2014), the main reason south african students use mobile phones is for socialising, as well as for safety and privacy, less through making phone calls than through text messaging. most young people never turn off their phones, use sms and/or instant messaging (im) in class and always check their phones for missed calls or messages (north et al. 2014). in fact, no other age group sends anywhere near the number of text messages as teenagers and young adults (ling & bertel 2013). in a south african context, there may be some rules on not bringing the mobile phones to class in many schools. however, recently, in some provinces like gauteng, the department of basic education has provided all high school learners with ipads. the mail & guardian dated 02 april 2012 reported that ipads have brought about a new attitude to learning at schools in the gauteng province. they further reported that the use of ipads in schools, whether it is a disadvantaged or private school, vastly improves pupils’ engagement and involvement in lessons. responding to an interview with the mail & guardian, chairperson of the programme for educational tablets in schools (pets) foundation, michael rice, told the mail & guardian that the cultural and psychological issues around information communication technology (ict) in schools cannot be underestimated, yet have hardly been recognised or researched (mail & guardian 2012). therefore, this study is very crucial as it adds to the literature on the increasingly growing debate on whether to integrate mobile phones in the education system of south africa and of several other african countries. it grapples with the major issues in the allowance of cell phones in class, especially in the province of eastern cape where the study was conducted. the findings of this study might change the attitudes of education officials, governing bodies and teachers towards welcoming initiatives to introduce ict into classrooms. further, it gives useful insights into the usefulness of mobile technology in both secondary school and university education. research problem mobile phones are a technological device of choice among both the in-school and out-of-school youth in south africa (kreutzer 2009). mobile phones come with very important platforms, among them smss and mxit. the latter has become the preferred mode of personal communication and chatting for the youth in south africa and is used by 92% of south african students. facebook messenger, with 55%, and blackberry messenger (bbm), with 48%, are a distant second and third, respectively (shapshak 2015a, shapshak 2015b). at the same time, schools and all educational institutions are facing challenges of limited resources and time constraints where contact between learners and instructors and with course content are concerned. we set out to explore the potential of mobile phones to improve students’ access to learning material off the school environment. the study sought to explore ways of increasing contact between learners and content in the target language. the question that guided the study was whether mobile phones could be used as supplemental teaching and learning tools to learners of english as a first additional language (efal). we were also interested in establishing the views of learners pertaining being taught through mobile phones after the standard school hours and on the impact of these devices on the educational process. theoretical framework the study of essay content was premised on discourse analysis (da), which comprises a series of interdisciplinary approaches to the analysis of discourse. as stated by brown and yule (1983), da includes pragmatics, conversation analysis (ca), ethnography of communication, interactional socio-linguistics, systemic functional linguistics (sfl) and critical discourse analysis (cda), among others. specifically for this study, da also comprised elements of conversation theory, presence learning, relationality (chaka & ngesi 2010; chaka et al. 2010), incidental learning (kabilan, ahmad & abidin 2010), new media writing (chaka & ngesi 2010), cultural historical activity theory (kang & gyorke 2008; rambe 2010) and exchange theory (hatter 2002; shi et al. 2006). da is associated with social action as influenced by ideology, making it closely linked to pragmatics. discourse analysis functions to construct the social world (adjei 2013). it helps the analyst understand form, meaning and mental processes that go into discourse construction and use (van dijk 1995). the sub-research question for the pre-participation questionnaire was: what are the participants’ views about being taught and learning through mobile phones and mxit before participating in the study? the questionnaire schedule in this regard had five items (questions) which were meant to elicit responses, providing further details to the sub-research question. the latter was part of the main research question of the study which was formulated thus: can mobile phones and mxit be used as mobile supplemental teaching and learning tools to grade 9 efal learners at james kobi junior secondary school (jkjss) outside school hours? participants in this study were then required to respond to these five items. literature: a brief review in south africa, education inequality remains one of the indelible legacies of the apartheid era segregationist policies. for poor resource communities, and in rural settings where education systems cannot meet societal demand, rapidly evolving mobile technology is providing new opportunities for learning. south africa has been embracing these devices to expand educational curricula, to increase efficiency and quality alike (edtechnology tours 2017). mobile devices are much less cost prohibitive and less infrastructure heavy than computers, which gives them the greatest potential for delivering ict-based education to marginalised learners, the poor, refugees and migrants, and those living outside of urban areas. mobile technology represents an important avenue by which to reduce the gap between the poor and the rich in contemporary society where access to knowledge and information is increasingly vital (van weert 2005). with the advent of smart phones and other small, inexpensive and powerful tools, a newer term is gaining momentum in education: mobile learning, or m-learning. similar to e-learning, m-learning refers to any learning that is mediated through the use of a mobile device (churchill, lu & chiu 2014). godwin-jones (2017) argues that mobile learning is expanding the learning environment and that mobile phones ‘do not seem likely to be going away anytime in the foreseeable future’. the proof is in the numbers. mobile phone use has gone beyond expectations, with 89% of south africans owning a mobile. south africa is also the continent’s leader in app downloads, usually an indication of higher smartphone adoption, with 34% of phone users making downloads from app stores (world economic forum 2017). the education potential of mobile phone technology is being hyped. recently, the us-based television channel cnn declared that mobile technology had ‘immense’ potential to transform africa’s ‘dysfunctional educational system … as mobile phones – cheaper to own and easier to run than pcs – gain ground as tools for delivering teaching content.’ (parr 2013) studies have been conducted into the effectiveness of mobile phones and the texts, or smss, they carry in enhancing teaching and learning in an academic environment (chaka & ngesi 2010; oyinloye 2009; south african institution for distance education [saide] 2008). they have found that the major function of the mobile phones in an educational context is purely logistical. students receive notices about learning schedules, examination time tables and venues, course marks and other announcements. stone and briggs (2002) established that learners preferred smss, specifically the free messaging service whatsapp communication to electronic mail. al-khalifa (2008), for example, established that, by using their mobile devices, students were able to receive prompt course information. further, the study established that 93% of the students preferred receiving announcements via an sms, like twitter, to visiting the course blog for updates. mobile phones also gave students access to course materials. because of widespread poverty, many south african students are unable to afford a hard copy of the books required for a course. however, they can download the text and related readings, videos and websites on their mobile phones. they also can access the internet to expand and deepen their knowledge of course content. according to ed technology tours (2017), mobile devices can provide students with the ability to access and easily use course materials while on the go. they ‘enable just-in-time, informal, chunk-sized learning that is adapted to a south african context of long commutes and cramped family settings in townships’. learners need to be able to study and read in ‘short, effective bursts’ when they can, to leverage those moments and turn them into learning opportunities (ed technology tours2017). researchers in a saide study established that learners could effectively use mobile phones to collaborate with their counterparts, using a communal style of learning that is most compatible with the culture of south africa. students also can communicate with scholars through smss, sending images and even making phone calls to renowned experts (saide 2008). a project called dr math, for example, connected 30 000 high school students with undergraduates at the university of pretoria’s faculty of engineering for homework help. ‘for many children in south africa, this is the most qualified tutor that they will have access to’, says steve vosloo, a mobile learning specialist at unesco (2017). more recently, several scholars have conducted studies in which they established that mobile phones improved the performance of learners when properly integrated into the teaching and learning processes (haruna et al. 2016; jairus et al. 2017; kimura 2007). and students are ready to embrace mobile learning (chaka & govendor 2017). another study by sharples, taylor and vavoula (2005) revealed that using mobile devices can ‘facilitate knowledge-centred learning by providing efficient and inventive methods to which students can learn with understanding – meaning that they deepen their understanding of a specific subject matter than merely memorising large amounts of information’. the ability to create and share content through mobile phones and the online apps that come with them, empowers learners in their learning and gives them a sense of pride and responsibility (laurillard 2007; palalas 2011). there is a limit, however, to what students and instructors can do using mobile phones. the impediments to doing certain types of academic activities exclusively on a mobile device, challenge even the most creative faculty; although elements of these courses may be used on a mobile device, the entire course is not something that could be effectively conducted on a mobile device. written assignments are especially problematic. while oyinloye (2009) and chaka and ngesi (2010) have experimented with using sms for writing purposes, other scholars note that most high school and college courses require some form of lengthy written work that is too difficult to complete on a small, hand-held device. in this case, instructors might design less text-dependent assignments, such as blogs, podcasts or digital stories, or provide students with access to more traditional devices, that is, laptops or desktop computers. researchers have also experimented with twitter and facebook as supplemental tools for teaching and learning (al-khalifa 2008; english & duncan-howell 2008; project tomorrow 2010; schroeder & greenbowe 2009). further, facebook has also been found to be a useful tool for supplementary teaching and learning (schroeder & greenbowe 2009). the aim with facebook would be to encourage learners to discuss course content outside of the controlled classroom context. english and duncan-howell (2008) concluded that a tool like facebook could be used for affective purposes, such as group reinforcement, encouragement and support, which would be very appropriate in the south african context. of course, the use of facebook for learning purposes comes with such challenges as tensions between lecturers’ teaching styles and student notion of learning, challenges of redundant postings, intergenerational tensions between lecturers and students, constraints of time and limitations of collective responsibility (rambe 2010). borau et al. (2009) concluded that twitter was a useful tool for learning communicative and cultural competence anytime and anywhere and a convenient medium for social and collaborative learning if used appropriately. besides, twitter served as a quick and easy platform for informal communication and for reading (borau et al. 2009). mobile phones have not been embraced enthusiastically by everyone in the educational community. the national association of school governing bodies (nasgb), in fact, called for a ban on the use of cell phones in south african schools (dunlop 2017). supporters of the ban point to the potential for student distraction and classroom disruption. such challenges as misbehaviour, online bullying, issues of privacy and self-representation, and addiction to social networks have been raised as well. making course materials easily usable in a multitude of formats (i.e. both text and audio) can make it possible for students to complete their reading while on the go, but there are disadvantages to this as well. it is not as easy for students to actively take notes while reading in this way. students may be multi-tasking (e.g. driving while listening to the text reading for the day), which will likely result in a lack of reflection and less deep processing of the material (burak 2012). one of the greatest concerns is that the abbreviated text style of english, used on mobile phones, will make its way into official school writing and examination scripts. called sms language, it resembles code rather than language. it may be incomprehensible to speakers of standard english, which is associated with academic and professional achievement and the educational systems of english-speaking countries worldwide (weiss 2009). some scholars believe that sms language used on mobile phones will degrade their students’ language usage. high school teachers of english as home language for afrikaans-speaking students in the western cape viewed smss as having a negative effect on students’ writing, reflected in incorrect punctuation, non-conventional spellings and shortened sentences. the educators expected this to lead to poor grades and diminished knowledge of standard english (geertsema, hyman & van deventer 2011). other researchers determined that this was not the case. freudenberg (2009) found that young people were avid users of smss and proficient in text speak when sending and receiving messages and chatting with friends. despite this, the samples of written work did not contain a great number of incidences of sms language, but they could produce written work that adhered to the formally approved standards of written high school english. a number of sms speak features were indeed present in their formal written work, which indicates that mobile phone usage had some impact on their written work. however, not all of the non-standard features could be attributed to the influence of sms speak, as some of the spelling and punctuation had been noted in the written english of learners even before the advent of the mobile phone (freudenberg 2009). the evidence suggests that grammatical violations in the text messages of children, adolescents and adults do not reflect a decline in grammatical knowledge. according to the yoza project website (https://m4lit.wordpress.com/about-the-project/) which details a programme that uses mobile phones to teach children to read and write (dunlop 2017): remember that this is generation txt, who apparently can’t spell or write properly…, but what is clearly evident is that when they read they know their spelling from their splng. researchers concluded that the general lack of sms speak in the written work of these learners is the result of being able to assess when it is and is not appropriate to use a certain variety of language: young people seem well aware that different types of communication require different ways of writing. as thurlow, lengel and tomic (2004:124) explain: standard english may be the agreed norm for writing a college essay or a business letter, it’s by no means the norm when speaking on the street – no one really speaks like they write! as long as young writers can maintain this awareness, then the violations of grammar common in digital communication need not be perceived as a reduction in writing skill, but rather as the addition of an alternative, casual style to the writer’s repertoire. methodology we used a descriptive case study research design, as we were interested in participants at case level, and relied on a descriptive framework for analysis of data. one of the most important features of a case study is its flexibility to allow examination of ‘a phenomenon in its natural setting’ and allowing use of many methods in the collection of data (baxter & jack 2008; benbasat, goldstein & mead 1987:370; johansson 2003; rowley 2002). a case study inquiry, such as the one completed here, also involves intense descriptions of a phenomenon or case (henning, van rensburg & smit 2004). given the above design, the methodology is qualitative and interpretive in nature. this was informed by the qualitative data that the study relied on, which consisted of open-ended survey questions and discourse made up of the elements of essays: written words, sentences and short paragraphs. words and sentences were the short stretches of discourse, while shorter paragraphs were longer stretches of discourse (brown & rodgers 2002; henning et al. 2004). data were collected using two methods, a document analysis and questionnaires. document analysis was used to collect data from mobile phones, while questionnaires were administered to the participants. there was a pre-participation questionnaire and a post-participation questionnaire. sample participants were 44 learners sampled from a group of 198 learners doing efal in grade 9 at jkjss in mthatha district of south africa’s eastern cape province. james kobi junior secondary school, which serves grades 1 to 9, draws learners from the northcrest, a township 5 km east of mthatha. some learners also come from several neighbouring informal settlements. at this school, english is taught as a first additional language. traditionally, this is equivalent to english as a second language and english as a medium of instruction, as applied to south africa before 2001. students and teachers are expected to use english as a medium of instruction (department of education 2003). unfortunately, limited resources do not allow for the full-time use of english to facilitate learning. with six hours per day contact with the teachers, students do not have adequate exposure to a comprehensible english language input. based on the belief that mobile phones could supplement teaching and learning after school hours, we incorporated the devices in the lessons of the experimental grade 9 group. mobile phones were easily accessible to these learners who already had these technological tools. the first additional language aims at improving learners’ acquisition and use of the english language. the participants were also sampled, using the volunteer sampling technique, which refers to a scenario where participants volunteer to participate in a study (strydom & delport 2001). instrumentation two sets of instruments were used to collect data in this study. the first set consisted of mobile phones and mxit, while the second set comprised two types of questionnaires. the mobile phone data were in the form of smss, whereas the mxit data were in the form of mobile instant messages (mims). the data were collected in five distinct phases. the third and fourth phases concentrated on mim data, while the last phase involved administering a post-participation questionnaire. the pre-participation questionnaire consisted of the following five open-ended items: what do you use smss and mxit for when you are at home? do you think you should be allowed to use mobile phones (cell phones) and mxit at school? (provide a reason for your response) do you think mobile phones and mxit can be used for teaching and learning purposes both at home and at school? (provide a reason for your response) do you make use of the sms and mxit language in your school work? (provide a reason for your response) should the language used in smss and mxit be taught at school? (provide a reason for your response). for the sms data, participants were asked to write two short paragraphs (in english) on the following topics: self-esteem and my role model. in this case, the mim data were derived from two short english paragraphs and mxit sessions on english adjectives, synonyms, idioms, direct and indirect speech. the topics for the two short mxit paragraphs were: (1) what you liked and did not like about the teachers’ strike, (2) that day was a mess or (3) what i like about mxit. the post-participation questionnaire comprised the following open-ended item: write two short paragraphs about what you liked and what you did not like about using smss and mxit for teaching and learning in the project in which you participated. except for questionnaires which were administered at school, all the other activities in this research project were given to participants through the two respective technologies (smss and mxit) for them to do at home. thus, the researchers enlisted the services of at least four assistant researchers to help conduct this research study. the study itself spanned 30 weeks spread over one year (2016). data analysis the data in this study were analysed by incorporating elements of both content analysis and da. content analysis refers to analysing the content of data texts with a view to establishing the relationship that content items have with one another. it entails coding and sorting the data content into relevant categories (e.g. messages, themes and patterns) that can be developed into theoretical constructs (brown & rodgers 2002; henning et al. 2004). for the current study, the data content comprised words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs and chat exchanges produced by participants in the form of questionnaire responses and through sms and mim texts. in the context of this study, da involves two senses. in the first sense, it is about working on data and analysing it as part of discourse (interrelated chunks of extended speech, writing, conversation or communication and not just discrete words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs and conversational exchanges) (see brown & rodgers 2002; henning et al. 2004; also see cameron 2001; sinclair & coulthard 1992; stubbs 1983; tannen 1984). in the second sense, it refers to analysing statements, exchanges or language specific to certain contexts of use. in relation to the present study, written words, sentences, paragraphs and chat exchanges produced by participants are viewed, on the one hand, as part of a larger discourse constituting either speech, writing, conversation or communication. on the other hand, participants’ words, sentences, paragraphs and chat exchanges, especially in connection with smss and mims, are perceived as forms of discourse mediated by both mobile phones and mxit. that is, in this context, participants’ words, sentences, paragraphs and chat exchanges are regarded as part of the discourse of sms and the discourse of mim, respectively. therefore, this data analysis method consists of a typology of both classical writing features and new media writing and/or new mobile literacy features as mediated by new media technologies like mobile phones and mxit (chaka & ngesi 2010; chaka et al. 2010). ethical consideration permission to conduct the study in the study area was obtained from relevant authorities, the principal of the school and the schools district manager. both learner participants and parent participants signed informed consent forms. further, participation in the study was voluntary and the participants were made aware of their rights, including the right to withdraw from the study at any point should they deem it necessary. presentation of findings the pre-participation questionnaire for high school learners focused on the participants’ use of smss and mxit at home, the views of learners on whether or not mobile phones should be allowed in school, what learners thought of the use of mobile phones for teaching and learning, both at school and at home, and the challenges the learners assumed could be associated with the use of mobile phones for teaching and learning of efal. a total of 44 participants (31 boys and 11 girls) participated in the high school pre-participation questionnaire. the specific sub-research question pertaining to the pre-participation questionnaire was: what are participants’ views about being taught and learning through mobile phones and mxit before participating in the study? the interview session began with the following sub-question: what do you use short message services and mxit for when you are at home? responding to this question, 35 participants, out of 44, mentioned that they used smss and mxit for communicating with friends, for staying in touch with friends, for meeting new friends and for fun, while 8 participants said that they used these two applications for getting information. one participant was not sure why he was using these two applications. participants also cited that using these two tools for sending text messages was cheap and affordable. the following are six unedited responses from the participants: ‘i use smss and mxit to stay in touch with my friends and to meet new friends.’ (p1, female, grade 9) ‘i use mxit for chating for fun and know wat i don’t know and ask about school works or what has been done at school when i don’t came like home works.’ (p13, female, grade 9) ‘we use mxit at home because if we can carch our friends and talk.’ (p44, male, grade 9) ‘i use smss and mxit at home so that i can get knowledge and information in a small cost of airtime/money expence. i use mxit to keep updated from the school work from my class mates, for example, when i was sick and didn’t go to school.’ (p12, male, grade 9) ‘i use mxit to communicate with others, for example, friends family or classmates. and it’s very cheap for young people and old people. if you want to communicate cheap.’ (p21, male, grade 9) ‘i use smss when i need something or when i miss someone. i use mxitinorder to have a chance to talk to my friends without calling them. i also use mxit when i need help on my school work so they help me.’ (p4, female, grade 9) with regard to the above sub-question, participants indicated that they used smss and mxit at home for chatting with friends, for finding new friends, for having fun and for getting information and knowledge. they also highlighted the cheapness or cost-effectiveness of these applications. this means that these two applications serve as virtual platforms for chatting, friendship, fun, establishing new friendships and for sourcing information and knowledge for participants. in the first instance, these two technologies – as examples of social media technologies – tend to function as socialisation platforms for participants; in the second instance, they appear to be information and knowledge sharing tools for participants. do you think learners should be allowed to use mobile phones (cell phones) and mxit at school? (provide a reason for your response) in response to the above question, 29 participants were of the view that learners should be allowed to use mobile phones and mxit at school, while 15 of them were against this view. the following are the five unedited sample responses to this item: ‘yes, because us as learners sometime we learn things maybe we discover things we did not know.’ (p4, female, grade 9) ‘yes, because if you are left by your transport and you don’t have enough airtime to make a phone call you use mxit/sms.’ (p17, male, grade 9) ‘yes, if it would be for learning, i think it could be cool. communicating with your teacher without noise.’ (p6, male, grade 9) ‘no, because it is not in the school timetable, and it is disturbing because most of the learners don’t have phones and some are not allowed to mxit.’ (p10, female, grade 9) ‘no, because the learners use phone for bad things and listening to music while the teacher teaching.’ (p3, male, grade 9) ‘i don’t think it is good for learners because some may use them in a wrong way in such a way that they do bad things and that makes the word of ‘mxit’ dirty, while mixt doesn’t have a problem but it’s just that it goes with your self-discipline.’ (p13, female, grade 9) responding to the above sub-question, participants provided a variety of responses. firstly, when asked if learners should be allowed to use mobile phones and mxit at school, most participants felt that these two technologies should not be used at school because they were disruptive. they also indicated that these technologies were not part of the school curriculum. secondly, when polled about the use of mobile phones and mxit for teaching and learning purposes at home and school, a majority of the participants expressed the view that they should. they mentioned that they could be used for additional and/or follow-up teaching and learning, for providing space for learners who are scared to talk in the presence of other learners and for enabling learners to communicate with their teachers. do you think mobile phones and mxit can be used for teaching and learning purposes both at home and at school? (provide a reason for your response) in responding to this item, 35 participants said that mobile phones and mxit could be used for teaching and learning purposes both at home and at school, whereas seven of them believed that they could not be used for teaching and learning purposes. two participants were not sure. the following is the unedited sample of participants’ responses to the above item: ‘yes, because when we miss understood something at school we can ask it again through mxit.’ (p5, female, grade 9) ‘yes, i think it should be caurse at schools we teach about technology how it works and at homes it should be the same because when you have close friends they mybe help your parents understand it.’ (p17, male, grade 9) ‘yes, i think it’s a good thing to use mxit for teaching because we can learn more prove the point that older parents think mxitit’s not good for use.’ (p41, male, grade 9) ‘yes, because some learners get afraid to ask questions about what they haven’t understood during the lesson at school and they get a chance to ask their teachers through mxit and smss.’ (p36, male, grade 9) ‘yes, because it can teach children/kids to communicate maybe a person does not have enough airtime and has only one sms that person can use abr to communicate.’ (p2, female, grade 9) ‘yes becauselet’s say i am at home, idon’t know a answer for my home worki use mxit and at home i will talk to my teacher and say i did not understand your question earlier.’ (p33, male, grade 9) ‘no, it must be used at home because it will help know other things and understand them correctly when you are at home with on one disturbing and at school it must not be used as i said it will disturb.’ (p20, female, grade 9) ‘no, because it’s inappropriate and it will distract in our learning areas and spelling, if you may not concentrate in school and at home.’ (p16, female, grade 9) in response to the above question, the majority of learners indicated that mobile phones and mxit can be used for teaching and learning purposes both at home and at school. they saw mxit as a good strategy to supplement the lessons taught at school. they also mentioned that since we live in the world of technology, sharing technology with their parents at home will also benefit their parent and dismiss the misconception that old people do not like technology. learners also mentioned that smss and mxit are good for independent learning as they assist those learners who are scared to ask questions in class. do you make use of short message service and mxit language in your school work? (provide a reason for your response) in relation to this item, 37 participants indicated that they did not make use of sms and mxit language in their school work, while five participants agreed that they did use it. two participants were not sure. below are the unedited sample responses from the participants in response to the above item: ‘no, because our teachers don’t allow it.’ (p25, male, grade 9) ‘i don’t because i am able to separate sms/mxit with my school work.’ (p27, male, grade 9) ‘no, because we are not allowed to write that language at school.’ (p8, male, grade 9) ‘no, there’s no reason for that a person can easy learn the language. and also spellings would not be correct.’ (p43, male, grade 9) ‘no, because i know that some teachers do not understand the language very well.’ (p11, male, grade 9) ‘no, because the other teachers might not understand it and they might not like it and it might confuse me too i won’t understand or the spelling of other words.’ (p5, female, grade 9) ‘no, because i think it is no allowed because is not a school language or i write when i am mistaken.’ (p3, male, grade 9) ‘no, because the mxit language is for cell phones only. i don’t make any mistake because i know that i have to use full words not like mxit.’ (p30, male, grade 9) ‘yes, sometimes i use it by mistake and short my words not finish them.’ (p1, female, grade 9) ‘yes, but not all the time but if i did that it may be a mistake. i didn’t mean to do that.’ (p23, male, grade 9) ‘yes, because there is a word your don’t now bat your now or mxit word.’ (p7, male, grade 9) ‘yes, sometimes that happens a lot i think what causes that is to much mxing can cause that.’ (p44, male, grade 9) the above responses reflect learners’ views about the use of sms and mxit language in their school work. most participants said that they hardly used such language in their school work. however, others hinted that they did. this shows that learners were aware of the context in which sms and mxit language was supposed to be used. therefore, this does not rule out the positive benefits of sms and mxit, as long as learners are made aware of the contexts in which these are supposed to be used. short message service english paragraphs adding to the information solicited through interviews, participants were asked to write one short paragraph (in english) on the following topic, self-esteem, using their personal mobile phones. the aim was to address the following two sub-questions: can smss serve as a medium for writing short english paragraphs by jkjss’s grade 9 efal learners outside school? is it possible for smss to function as a platform for instant feedback to jkjss’s grade 9 efal learners outside school? figure 1 portrays two unedited sample sms paragraphs (together with their relevant feedback and scores) on the topic, self-esteem, and the time at which they were sent to the research team’s mobile phone handset. figure 1: (a) sample short message service paragraph submitted by learner to teacher; (b) sample comment sent to learner from research team’s phone. figure 2 is a participant’s sample sms paragraph together with feedback and a score on self-esteem. figure 2: (a) sample short message service paragraph by learner; (b) feedback short message service by research team. in responding to the sms topic, participants produced a variety of short paragraphs. for example, participants’ sms paragraphs on the topic, self-esteem, ranged from substantial paragraphs to mid-range paragraphs to one line and two-line paragraphs. these paragraphs were sent to the one of the researchers’ mobile phone handset at different times in the evening, as reflected in figures 1 and 2. above all, each participant’s paragraph on the topic was accompanied by a comment and a grade. as exemplified by figures 1 and 2, most of the sms paragraphs produced by the participants displayed, within the sms environment, the following classical writing features, namely, full sentences, punctuation marks, correct spelling of most words, acceptable grammar, appropriate use of words and proper tense use. moreover, few of these sms paragraphs even employed some linking words or transitional markers and what could be viewed as introductory, supportive and concluding sentences. of course, some of the paragraphs had certain words misspelt; did not use an apostrophe where it should have been used; did not have capital letters at the beginning of the sentences; and used capital letters within sentences when this should not be the case; or combined two words into one word through the use of an ampersand (the symbol &); had run-on sentences and others displaying incomplete sentences and/or thoughts. a critical point to highlight with respect to these sms paragraphs is that, in line with the model of analysis and the theoretical framework employed in this study, they are instances of a conversation and new media writing. as instances of the former, these paragraphs are bound to exhibit such features as outlined above. mxit’s mobile instant message english paragraphs in addition to sms paragraphs, participants were asked to write one short mim paragraph using mxit on the following topic: what you liked and did not like about the teachers’ strike. the paragraphs were intended to respond to the main research question and two sub-research questions formulated as follows: can mobile phones and mxit be used as mobile supplemental teaching and learning tools to grade 9 efal learners at jkjss outside school? is it possible for mims to function as a platform for instant feedback to jkjsss grade 9 efal learners outside school? the following two unedited sample mim paragraphs (accompanied by their relevant comments and scores) indicated how participants responded to the topic: what you liked and didn’t like about the teachers’ strike? as is the case with sms paragraphs above, mim paragraphs in this section serve as instances of a conversation and new media writing. this is so in spite of some of them displaying some of the features identified under the first set. for that matter, all of these mim paragraphs need to be viewed against the backdrop of the variables: incidental learning (kabilan et al. 2010), social learning, presence learning, relationality (chaka & ngesi 2010) and chat (kang & gyorke 2008; rambe 2010). as instances of both conversation and new media writing, these paragraphs are typified mostly by casualness, informality and incomplete thoughts. when attempting to respond to these mim topics, participants produced two sets of short mim paragraphs. for example, the first set of paragraphs consists of paragraphs that make use of the conventional english orthography. these mim paragraphs also bear the following classical writing features: full sentences, punctuation marks, correct spelling of most words, acceptable grammar, appropriate use of words, and proper tense use. other features these paragraphs have are proper sentence construction (topic, introductory, supportive and concluding sentences), linking or transitional words, unity of ideas, and coherence. by contrast, the paragraph displayed in figure 3 is striking for being a long run-on sentence which, except for the use of an apostrophe, is wholly unpunctuated. however, these two mim paragraphs share one more feature in common: the absence of textisms. figure 3: learner’s mxit mobile instant message: (a and b) sample mobile instant message paragraphs and feedback between learners and research team. discussion of findings regarding the usefulness of the sms and mxit, the findings of this study revealed that these two applications served as virtual platforms for chatting, friendship, fun, establishing new friendships and for sourcing information and knowledge for participants. in the first instance, these two technologies – as examples of social media technologies – tend to function as socialisation platforms for participants; in the second instance, they appear to be information and knowledge sharing tools for participants. the use of smss for friendship purposes ties in with porath’s (2011) view that most teenagers, especially most american teenagers, regard their mobile phones as indispensable as they employ text messaging for connecting with their friends. the same sentiment is echoed by thurlow (2003) who points out that most united kingdom (uk) adolescents tend to use text messages for friendship maintenance. this finding is also supported by bosch (2008) who conducted a similar study in cape town, south africa. bosch concluded that mxit and mobile phones are used by cape town adolescents, particularly girls, for developing personal relationships as they are cost-effective. in the same vein, kreutzer’s (2009) pilot study reports that learners from a cape town secondary school indicated that they used mobile phones for personal communication purposes. the findings of the study also revealed that some learners felt that sms and mxit should not be used at school because they were disruptive and were not part of the school curriculum. participants’ view that mobile phones and mxit are disruptive at school and that they are not part of the school curriculum dovetails with the general practice of banning these technologies at most schools locally and abroad. for example, porath (2011) states that mobile phones are banned in most k-12 schools in the united states (us) as they are regarded as disrupting learning and interfering with it. likewise, mavhunga et al. (2016) make an observation that in most south african schools (both public and private) learners are required to switch off their mobile phones. she stresses that if learners are caught using their mobile phones, they (mobile phones) are immediately confiscated – and in some schools the confiscation can last for the whole year. with regard to the use of sms and mxit language in their school work, participants revealed that they hardly used such language in their school work. the assertion that learners hardly use sms and mxit language in their school work has also been observed by dansieh (2011). according to dansieh, this assertion has much to do with the negativity generally associated with text messaging in formal school writing contexts. such negativity is also reported, for instance, by geertsema et al. (2011) in their project conducted at gauteng’s independent secondary schools. the idea that mobile phones and mxit could be used for additional and/or follow-up teaching and learning as expressed by participants in this study, tallies with huang and sun’s (2010) project that used mobile technologies to support multimedia english listening in japan. it also has a resonance with case studies reported by valk, rashid and elder (2010) in which mobile phones were employed for teaching and learning purposes among school children in the non-formal distance sector of philippines, mongolia and bangladesh. in the same breath, participants pointing out that mobile phones and mxit serve as a space in which learners can freely communicate with their teachers seems to correspond with begum’s (2011) assertion that classes based on text message help shy learners interact with their teachers in a more free and relaxed manner than do face-to-face classes. the findings of the study also revealed that sms paragraphs exhibit, in a way, both unity and coherence. this particular observation seems to correspond with chaka and ngesi’s (2010) project on writing mobile phone paragraphs using smss by grade 8 learners at one secondary school in mthatha. it also reflects some of the elements that oyinloye’s (2009) project examined. however, the latter had a wider scope: it investigated whether mobile phones improved students’ writing skills in essay writing at selected nigerian senior secondary schools. in this case, its focus was on aspects such as expression, content generation, organisation, tense and punctuation. the study further revealed that participants’ paragraphs lacked the usual textisms, both linguistic and contextual, characterising much sms language. this is so despite the fact that participants submitted their paragraphs as smss. this observation seems to correspond with the view that most learners tend to avoid using textisms when required to produce formal writing (vosloo 2009; wood et al. 2009). the study further revealed that the participants’ mim paragraphs had the potential to facilitate both incidental and social learning and helped participants to engage in these types of learning. the former entails learning per chance, or through errors (kabilan et al. 2010) or through trial and experimentation. the latter relates to learning as a social activity (chaka & ngesi 2010). for example, when participants write mim paragraphs using mxit, they are able to see one another’s paragraphs and incidentally learn from one another’s paragraphs as mxit simultaneously displays all the texts of all the currently online or logged in participants. incidental learning in this context is similar to classical observational learning. in the mim paragraphs mentioned above, currently online participants are displayed in the small window panels atop each mxit screenshot. moreover, when writing mim paragraphs, participants are able to engage in social learning as mediated by mxit. conclusion the study sought to explore the potential of mobile phones to improve students’ access to learning material off the school environment. specifically, the study sought to explore ways of increasing contact between learners and content in the target language. the study was also interested in establishing the views of learners pertaining being taught through mobile phones after the standard school hours and on the impact of these devices on the educational process. the results of the study proved that both mobile phones and mxit are viable technologies to use for mobile supplemental teaching and learning purposes. this is more so as these two technologies proved to be not only viable but also sustainable in this study because of both their pervasive nature and their affordability. the study also demonstrated that text messaging in the form of smss and instant messaging in the form of mims can be used as mobile applications for mediating supplemental teaching and learning of efal to a group of grade 9 learners at kjss outside school hours. in this context, the study recommends that the use of these two mobile applications for supplemental teaching and learning purposes be explored at jkss. this should not be confined to supporting the teaching and learning of efal but should include supporting the teaching and learning of other learning areas at jkss as well. the major limitation of the study is that the supplemental instruction activities were done while learners were at home. while the results are crucial for the integration of sms and mxit as technologies boosting learner contact with content in the target language, the study does not offer sufficient pointers on whether the integration of mobile phones in the school set up is possible, although of course very beneficial. further research can explore the integration of mobile phones in core curricula activities during school time. in addition, research can explore the use of even more applications associated with mobile phones for instruction at different levels of the education system in south africa and elsewhere and in relation to instruction in general and not just in efal cases. acknowledgements the authors thank the learners who participated in the study. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions both n.n. and n.l. took the initiative to conduct the study. they were both responsible for conceptualising the title of the manuscript, collecting and analysing the data. n.m. was responsible for the introduction and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. m.p.c. was responsible for the discussion of findings and put the final draft of the manuscript together. b.t. was responsible for the methodology section and analysed the data. l.m.w. added to the literature review, refined the introduction and edited the manuscript. references 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http://partners.becta.org.uk/upload-dir/downloads/page_documents/research/reports/childrens_use_of_mobile_phone_text_messaging.pdf world economic forum, 2017, the future of jobs and skills in africa: preparing the region for the fourth industrial revolution, viewed 20 january 2018 from: https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-and-skills-in-africa-preparing-the-region-for-the-fourth-industrial-revolution abstract introduction literature review the relationship between exposure and digital skills relating digital citizenship to development conceptual framework: activity theory applying activity theory to the development of digital citizenship in south africa methods and approach data analysis research findings the interaction between the university and the home systems discussion conclusion and implications research limitations and future research acknowledgements references about the author(s) sam takavarasha department of information systems, university of fort hare, south africa liezel cilliers department of information systems, university of fort hare, south africa willie chinyamurindi department of business management, university of fort hare, south africa citation takavarasha, s., cilliers, l. & chinyamurindi, w., 2018, ‘navigating the unbeaten track from digital literacy to digital citizenship: a case of university students in south africa’s eastern cape province’, reading & writing 9(1), a187. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v9i1.187 original research navigating the unbeaten track from digital literacy to digital citizenship: a case of university students in south africa’s eastern cape province sam takavarasha, liezel cilliers, willie chinyamurindi received: 10 dec. 2017; accepted: 18 june 2018; published: 06 nov. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract unlike the millennials from the industrialised world who were raised amidst an increasingly online and socially networked society, their south african counterparts at previously disadvantaged universities have some weaknesses similar to those of digital migrants. these weaknesses are caused by the limited exposure millennials in south africa have to digital devices and internet connectivity. in spite of these impediments, their future careers in an increasingly globalised world require them to behave like, transact and engage with full-fledged digital citizens from the global north. digital citizenship is the ability to use technology safely, responsibly, critically, productively and civically. this raises intellectual curiosity about the extent to which the african millennial is prepared for a world that expects them to be digital citizens. this article, therefore, investigates the challenges faced by the south african millennial as they navigate an unusual route to digital citizenship. we adopted the activity theory for a mixed-methods study that consists of a survey of 148 questionnaires and 15 in-depth interviews. the findings show that while university-going millennials acquire digital literacy, their development of digital citizenship is affected by lack of mentors and access (i.e. connectivity and devices) at home and lack of soft skills training (i.e. online safety, digital etiquette and inadequate information literacy) at the university. introduction each day the world is becoming increasingly digital/your students begin to use more and more technology devices at home and in the classroom. but, are they prepared to be good digital citizens? just as you teach your students the rules of society, it is imperative that you teach them the rules of the digital world, and how to be safe and responsible with technology. (ribble 2011:14) the digital competence of young people has been addressed in the literature from different perspectives (howard 2011; kritzinger 2016; mcmahon 2014; mossberger, tolbert & mamilton 2012; ribble 2014; takavarasha, chinyamurindi & cilliers 2017; white 2013). white (2013) posits that the 21st century educators need to teach new skills in addition to the traditional ones for them to address the needs of the new era as articulated by howard (2011). drawing from scholars who suggest that technology has changed the mind of people, white (2013) posits that educators must revisit what they teach and how they teach in the information age where students are constantly exposed to technologies. based on the mcluhan’s (1964) dictum which suggests that humans shape their tools and the tools, in turn, shape humans, white (2013) posits that the current state of communication technologies calls for the training of new skills for students to fit in a new paradigm. on this basis, he proposes a new module, ‘digital fluency’, that must address the continuously evolving needs of the information age students. this article will argue that what is taught must depend on the needs and background of the learner. the information age student from the global south faces different circumstances and therefore requires peculiar training. in the context of digital exposure, the term ‘millennial’ is an age-specific term that simplifies and masks the skills and resource gaps between youths from the global north and global south. the assumption that millennials have higher digital competence than their older counterparts has also been debunked by practitioners who found no link between digital nativity and digital skill (idcl 2014). as will be discussed later, such differences in resources and skills are the ones that shape the millennials’ paths to digital citizenship. farmer (2011:292) defines digital citizenship as ‘the ability to use technology safely, responsibly, critically, productively, and civically’. as the well-being of people in the information age increasingly depend on the use of information and communication technology (ict), it is important for educators and parents to promote the acquisition of digital skills. more than mere digital literacy, this paper focuses on digital citizenship as a culmination of both digital fluency and online etiquette (batista 2003; jackson 2003). it discusses digital citizenship in the context of developing nations where both digital literacy and access are limited by low income and poor infrastructure. we use engeström’s (2001) activity theory (at) sensitising an investigation of the importance of social background on the pathway from digital literacy to digital citizenship by south african millennials from disadvantaged backgrounds. as part of its developmental agenda in an increasingly connected world, the united nations has set targets for improving ict skills and access over the next 15 years. for instance, sustainable development goals (sdg) 16.10 aims to ensure public access to information. on the other hand, national governments have also set targets that are aligned with the agenda for 2030 in order to fight poverty and enhance the capabilities of their citizens. in the context of an information-driven economy, it is critical to close the ict skills and usage capacity gap among their citizens. this calls on educators to focus on the millennials in the underprivileged parts of the developing world who constitute the majority of the young population of the world (united nations 2015). in 2013, the government of south africa launched the national development plan 2030 with a view to address livelihoods and capacity gaps among other things (ndp 2030, 2013). the ndp 2030 proposes improvements in school infrastructure including full access to high-speed broadband as well as human capacity. this leaves the ball in the court of educators and parents who are expected to complement each other in developing the millennials into the full digital citizens. such an endeavour commences with an in-depth understanding of the unusual road that the young people from previously disadvantaged communities must travel on their way to becoming the information age actor, dubbed the digital citizen. it is only through such an understanding that we the educators can develop digital literacy programmes and bridge the capacity gap between the millennials from previously disadvantaged communities and their counterparts in egalitarian societies. the route taken by developing countries has been a subject of intellectual debate among digital divides scholars of information systems. that may question our intentions to expect the african digital citizens to be similar to their western counterparts. some scholars have problematised the notion of catching up with the west as another doomed attempt to mimic the west at the expense of following our own context development trajectories (rapley 2004). whether one views digital citizenship through the lens of context or not, this paper seeks to provide a background for either of the options by investigating how the african millennials are navigating their way to digital citizenship. the authors contend that human development strategies are strongest when they are informed by a solid understanding of past and present states of a phenomenon against the desired outcomes. in order to investigate the plight of the millennials from previously disadvantaged communities in developing countries, we conducted this research at a previously disadvantaged university in the eastern cape province of south africa. most of the students at the university’s three campuses come from rural areas that lack electricity and connectivity in the homesteads. there has been a drive by the south african government to improve ict access as part of its development plan (ndp 2030, 2013). these improvements have not yet reached the wider population and there is a huge cohort of the millennials that will have to acquire digital literacy under difficult conditions. this has been caused by a lack of infrastructure and material and instructional support at both the home and educational institution level. this article adopts at for analysing the route that millennials from previously disadvantaged countries navigate on their way to full digital citizenship. the study is meant to unpack the way they develop digital citizenship and then analyses how it differs from the ideal situation that colleagues from privileged communities and developing countries face. it investigates the rules of the community and the tools available to the millennials who are currently enrolled at a previously disadvantaged university in the eastern cape province of south african. the study assumes that the difference in their development will be because of the rules at home and school, support of community at home and school, and access to tools (ict access) at home and school. this study uses university students because they are an appropriate unit of analysis for accessing digital citizenship. this is also because they are millennials who have ict training and constant internet access at their universities. because of the aforementioned reasons, it is fair to say that university students have basic qualities of digital citizens as articulated by mossberger et al. (2012). the objectives of this research will be met by addressing the following question: what challenges do south african millennials experience in their attempt to become digital citizens and what steps are being taken at the home and educational institutions to develop millennials into digital citizens? to answer this question, mixed-methods research consisting of a survey and in-depth interviews was used at two university campuses in eastern cape province. after this introduction, the rest of the study is organised as follows: literature review, theoretical grounding, research methods, findings and discussion. literature review digital literacy has been a critical issue since the advent of web 2.0 environment when internet users became potential contributors of information instead of mere recipients. after web 2.0, the internet occupies an unprecedented stature as a convivial tool as articulated by ameripour, nicholson and newman (2010). this is because of the continuous convergence of audio, visual and textual technologies, which allows it to surpass illich’s (1973) characterisation of the telephone as a convivial tool. a tool of conviviality is technology, which allows each user to ‘enrich the environment with the fruits of his or her own vision’ (illich’s 1973:21). it is, however, disturbing to note that the african millennial is yet to fully experience the business, social, and educational benefits of the internet because of the lack of digital fluency and other constraints (counted & arawole 2016). the activity of millennials on social media is an appropriate unit of analysis for assessing the development of digital citizenship by south african millennials. this is because over three-quarters of millennials are on social media (mackey 2016; pew research 2010). this article presents the ethical, competent, civil and safe user and beneficiary of online facilities as a digital citizen that the african millennial must endeavour to become. as digital citizenship is often confused with many digital competence terms like ‘digital nativity’, ‘digital literacy’ and ‘digital fluency’, it is important to clarify its usage in the context of this study. the terminological confusion emanates from the fact that these terms overlap and they are often associated with a demographic segment that shares age and ict competence. these are the so called millennials or digital natives as described below. prensky (2001) refers to digital natives as a generation of technologically savvy people who were born in the digital era. this population segment is also known as the next generation, generation y and google generation. they are contrasted with digital immigrants who were born before the widespread use of computers. unlike the natives, the digital migrants are the internet users who adopted computing in their adult life. when prensky invented the term ‘digital natives’, he was referring to people born after 1980 (prensky 2001). his subsequent definition of digital nativity includes ‘digital wisdom’ to the age component. digital wisdom goes beyond knowing how to use technologies to include the capacity to critically evaluate and to make pragmatic and ethical decisions in cyberspace. a close reading of wang, myres and sandram (2012) shows that they equate digital fluency with digital nativity. we problematise that definition because we believe that digital fluency can be achieved through training, yet digital nativity is an age-related characteristic that can neither be lost nor acquired. another related term is ‘digital literacy’, which refers to one’s capability of, and competence or skill for using icts (gilster 1997). other scholars use it interchangeably with terms like ‘computer literacy’, ‘information technology (it) literacy’, ‘digital competence’ and ‘ict competency’ as articulated by wang et al. (2012). many scholars define digital literacy as a combination of technological expertise and information literacy. in addition, they include the capacity to transform and communicate digital information in a competent way. this includes critical thinking and evaluation, e-safety, creativity, collaboration, effective communication, functional skills, ability to find and select information, and cultural and social understanding (binkley et al. 2011; erstad 2010). such a definition leaves little difference between digital literacy and digital citizenship and highlights the lack of consensus on the definition of both terms. ribble (2014) also identifies nine qualities of digital citizenship that are strikingly similar to those of digital literacy. these include etiquette, communication, education, access, commerce, responsibility, rights, safety, and security or self-protection. the relationship between exposure and digital skills there is a perception that the people of the industrialised countries are more technologically savvy than those of developing countries. this is based on the fact that ict access and skills training are better in industrialised countries than they are in developing countries. ecdl (2014) suggests that ict skills are neither age nor access determined. this questions any idea that the millennials in countries that provide the highest levels of access are any better than those who lack it. they propose that only standardised training can improve superior ict literacy. while there is an obvious nexus between ict training and digital literacy, there is no evidence that disconfirms that standardised training is more prevalent in industrialised countries. this calls for an investigation of the effect of access and skills, and hence digital citizenship. against this background, the incumbent study endeavours to investigate the digital skill development process of students from previously marginalised universities who also hail from disadvantaged communities. while the literature has shown that they are less exposed than their counterparts from privileged societies, it is important to assess how their underprivileged backgrounds shape their route to digital citizenship (counted & arawole 2016). arguing from a functionalist perspective, van dijk and hacker (2003) identified three internet inequalities that they related to access. these include psychological access, material access and usage access. psychological access refers to a lack of basic digital experience because of their lack of interest, computer phobia and the unattractiveness of the new technology. material access refers to a lack of computing equipment and connectivity. finally, usage access refers to a lack of digital opportunities by a user who possesses both psychological and material access (van dijk & hacker 2003). other studies have related poor digital access to the socio-historical contours of the social exclusionary policies of the apartheid era (kruger et al. 2006). the long-term effect of these policies contributes to the lack of awareness and low income of the previously disenfranchised communities of south africa. digital training: according to jochems, van merrienboer and koper (2004), optimum implementation of e-learning must combine pedagogical, technological and organisational imperatives. digital training may be formal or informal; the organisational perspective must include the university and the home environment. the pedagogical perspective is, however, restricted to the formal university and school curriculum. many computer literate people did not undergo any ict training. they learned how to use icts in school, home or work. this informal training must be viewed as exposure because the prominence of its role suggests that it cannot be downplayed in any assessment of the development of digital citizenship. the other vital perspective of digital training is the tools discussed below. access to digital tools: these are the devices, gadgets and various software and hardware artefacts that influence one’s ability to learn how to use digital platforms for engaging in social, business and educational activities in a responsible and safe manner. relating digital citizenship to development the focus of information systems (is) research has been around the potential of is to improve people’s livelihoods using icts. digital divide studies, in particular, have compiled a list of impediments to ict-enabled development that includes poor access and low ict literacy among other things. as given as it may seem, it is important to assess the difference between the digital literacy of millennials from the developing world and those from the industrialised world. this will, among other things, show where the gaps are and it is a critical step towards addressing these gaps through the education system. the australian council for educational research (2016) identified parameters for measuring digital literacy across different countries. it posits that any global learning assessment of digital and ict literacy must include aspects of digital and ict skills that range from basic skill to advanced competent use of icts. in view of this, we suggest that the competence of the african millennials must be assessed from diverse levels of digital and ict skills. the council also suggests that digital learning and ict literacy should be comparable across industrialised, low-income and developing countries. finally, it posits that it should permit assessment of all subgroups of people in a population but continue to produce comparable standards across a diverse people. research on digital literacy in developing countries like south africa must follow the australian council for educational research (2016) model because it captures digital literacy and ict literacy. this will take the curriculum development approach above the trap of technological determinism, which has been problematised as technological determinism for assuming that social change can take place because of technological deployment alone (avgerou 2010). the literature suggests that there is a complex socio-technical interplay where the human actors shape the tools that open possibilities for higher levels of human creativity (kuutti 1996; leont’ev 1978). a digital curriculum that acknowledges the dualism between technical competence and information literacy will situate the digital literacy training above the product model of curriculum development which is ideal for artisanal crafts. it will enable the process model, which is amenable to the socio-technical realms of education and information systems (bednar & welch 2017). it must be argued that the information systems domain has been viewed as a craft that requires technical skills development. as a result, some digital literacy educators teach it as another artisanal trade arguably because their graduates are expected to be able to perform certain technical skills in the workplace. computing or computer science can be a natural science subject which fits the positivist epistemological school. however, its application to different industries has created several new e-world domains that are not amenable to positivism (klein & hirschheim 2012). the integration of computing into these disciplines invokes the need to train soft skills, like digital etiquette from the socio-technological lens as articulated by ciborra (2004). the research context: the unit of analysis for this study is an institution of higher learning in the eastern cape province of south africa. it is one of the institutions that were underprivileged during the apartheid era. south africa is a sub-saharan african country that became a democracy in 1994. the socio-political environment of the apartheid era resulted in social inequalities that still affect south africans. it has a gini-coefficient of 0.66–0.7, which makes it one of the most highly unequal countries in the world (mail & guadian 2018). south africa’s apartheid has been widely documented for its impact on the social progress of previously disadvantaged communities of black people. in addition to their educational (hale 2010; keswell 2004) and economic endeavours for these communities, through its homeland policy, the apartheid system separated south african education along the lines of the ethnic enclaves that shaped separate economies for black people and white people. it also resulted in the migrant black labour force which left schoolgoing kids under infirm and elderly people. this is said to have created social ills that negatively affected the education of black students (rakhometsi 2008). the same phenomenon is said to have also affected the post-apartheid reconstruction efforts that were meant to reverse the institutionalised inequalities (thobejane 2013). the institution under study is a previously disadvantaged university, which is mainly attended by students from impoverished rural areas in the eastern cape. it is situated in the former ciskei. the eastern cape has been reported to have the second lowest internet access at 37% in south africa. at least 11.3% of the population access the internet through educational institutions and internet cafes, while in 2014 the majority of the population (80%) accessed the internet through mobile devices (mybroadband 2015). while the institution has three campuses, this study was conducted at the two biggest campuses. most of the students who are enrolled at these two campuses are below the age of 23, unlike the third campus where the student profile tends to lean towards more mature, working adults who are outside the target population of this study. conceptual framework: activity theory the interaction between human actors and technology has been analysed through different socio-technical theoretical lenses by is scholars. of particular interest are latour’s (1994) actor–network theory (ant), which sees no difference between human actors and artefacts, and vygotsky’s (1978) cultural-historical activity theory (chat), which draws a distinction between the two. in this study, we adopt at, as it allows us to analyse the development of digital citizenship in the context of developing countries. activity theory is ideal for this process because of its ability to conceptualise human actors’ use of tools (like icts) to act upon objects in order to get a certain outcome in an activity system which is governed by contextual rules and roles or agency of different actors. we adopt at for the purpose of analysing the way human subjects (i.e. young people in the developing world) interact with ict tools as they navigate a particularly unique route to digital citizenship. activity theory also allows us to assess this interaction in a context-specific manner. various is scholars have emphasised the need for contextualism in unlocking the ingredients of appropriate policy and emancipation of its users (johnson et al. 2009). activity theory suggests that a subject uses tools to act upon an object within the context of an activity system. it was founded in 1920 by vygotsky, luria and leont; entered the western world in the 1970s; and was popularised in the western world by yrjo engestrom through his work at the center for research on activity, development and learning (cradle). this theory has evolved from the first generation to the third generation and there is an ongoing effort to develop its fourth generation version. the first-generation at is presented in figure 1, while the second-generation at is presented in figure 2. figure 1: first-generation activity theory. figure 2: second-generation activity theory. activity theory provides a rich analytical technique for identifying tensions and contradictions that arise from the interaction of actors in an activity system. it is based on the assumption that knowledge is built through an understanding of the interaction between tools and artefacts. in addition to the transformation that the subject inflicts upon the object, the subject is also influenced by the object, thereby forming an interactionist activity system (kuutti 1996; leont’ev 1978). this interaction takes place in an activity system and it presents the activity as its key unit of analysis. as the activity is key, the analysis must identify the significant activities and their subject and object (hasan & kazlauskas 2014). activity: an activity is defined as a holistic and high-level construct like conducting a project (leont’ev 1981). it is a more comprehensive process than the word ‘activity’ is understood in english. hasan and kazlauskas (2014) posit that the activity is situated much higher up the hierarchy of subactivities or goal-oriented actions and operations that are executed in the process of achieving the overriding goal. kaptelinin (1996) posits that an activity must be understood in the context of the cultural and historical environment in which it is embedded. the subject is the doer that acts upon the object and it is the central actor in a particular activity. as a result, the researcher must analyse the activity from the subject’s perspective. the object is the deed or the thing being done. it is, therefore, the endeavour that the activity is meant to achieve. it embodies the problem situation or the objective of the activity system (spinuzzi 2011). the tools are the apparatus that mediates between the subject and the object to bring out the outcome, which is the desired result (see figure 1). the rules are the cultural norms and regulations that determine or shape the interaction of players with the activity. these include the government policy, strategic plans of the institution or organisation, and discipline-specific rules that must be complied with by the subject in the process of executing the activity. the division of labour component captures the different roles that are performed by different players towards the execution of the activity. it is, therefore, critical to assess which player performs what role in the activity. finally, the community represents the environment and the context under which the activity is being carried out. activity theory is depicted in three distinct generations, namely, the first, second and third generations. the first-generation at simply consists of a subject and an object that are mediated by tools (robertson 2008) (see figure 1). the second-generation at, however, places the activity at a collective level by including the rules, community and division of labour that affect the undertaking of the activity (engeström 2001). finally, the third-generation at expands on the second-generation at by including connected activities (see figure 3). the dual-activity system depicts the outcome of the interaction of two activities when they come into contact with each other to produce an outcome (engeström 2001). this study, therefore, adopts the third-generation at because of the two digital exposure activity systems (school system and home system) that we analyse in the development of the emerging african digital citizen. figure 3: third-generation activity theory. applying activity theory to the development of digital citizenship in south africa mwanza and engestrom (2003) present eight parameters that can be used for identifying and analysing the contradictions and tensions that can arise from the interaction of actors in an activity system. in the following section, we discuss each of them as they apply to the development of digital citizenship in south africa: activity: when analysing an activity system, mwanza and engestrom (2003) propose that we ask what sort of activity we are interested in. our application of at to the development of digital citizenship in south africa is interested in analysing the learning process that young south africans undergo in their endeavour to become digital citizens. this must open the challenges and opportunities they experience as they endeavour to become full digital citizens. object(ive): in answer to the objective component of at, mwanza and engestrom (2003) admonish the researcher to ask ‘why is the activity taking place?’ the activity (development of digital citizenship) is taking place because the brick and mortar world is now shifting into the e-world where social, business and educational activities are now taking place in cyberspace. digital citizenship will enable young south africans to fully participate in the digital era with the right ‘norms of behaviour for the use of technology’ (ribble 2014:2) and to have ‘a sensible and reasonable approach to online interaction’ (miles 2011:1). subjects: this refers to who is involved in carrying out the activity. the young south african university student is the one from whose perspective the activity will be analysed. we contend that this must not be taken literally because when viewing the activity through the lens of the subject like a student, the subjects may not have an all-round view of the entire system. as a result, our analysis of critical elements that the subjects are not exposed to will lack verbatim evidence but rather the reviewers’ analysis. tools: this refers to by what means the subjects are performing the activity. the tools in this activity are icts and online platforms such as social media and commercial as well as educational sites. our application also includes the technological gadgets like mobile phones, personal computers and internet connectivity. this is because we view connectivity as an enabler without which communication modes like social media will be impossible. rules and regulations: these indicate any cultural norms, rules or regulations governing the performance of the activity. the rules and regulations include the rules that govern access to and use of ict tools and the platforms like social media and commercial as well as educational sites. these constitute a key aspect of context as they define what is possible in the current environment. division of labour: this component indicates who is responsible for what when carrying out an activity and how those roles are organised. this refers to the various roles that are being played by teachers and parents and/or guardians in helping the development of digital citizenship. we also include the students on the list of the specialist actors that perform the above roles. community: it refers to the environment in which the activity is being carried out. the community and the environment in which the activity is unfolding are the university community and the home community. the university includes the halls of residence because they are part of the university system. the home environment is the area where the student comes from, whether village or urban, and its community, like public libraries, shopping centres and community amenities. this includes the parents, guardians, teachers, neighbours and friends of the young people. outcomes: it refers to what is the desired outcome of carrying out the activity. the desired outcome is for the emerging south african digital citizen to develop the full qualities of a digital citizen that are described in the next section, that is, to identify and strategise the execution of what is necessary to develop a millennial who can participate in the digital engagement safely, responsibly, productively and civically (mwanza & engestrom 2003). methods and approach this study used engeström’s (2001) at as a conceptual lens for identifying and analysing the challenges that are faced by south african millennials in their attempt to become digital citizens. we used the third-generation at for assessing any tensions and contradictions (engestrom & sannino 2011) that may exist between the university and the home communities that are grooming the african millennials into digital citizens. the study operationalised the components of third-generation at on the home and university activity systems. we adopted an interpretivist paradigm as articulated by klein and myres (1999). as a result, this led to our writing style in the first person to declare the internal realism perspective from which we (the authors) interpret the research findings. while at is often viewed as an epistemological stance, we complemented it with two key principles of interpretive case studies to enhance the conceptualisation of both contradictions and contextualisation (klein & myres 1999). these are the principle of dialogical reasoning, which requires ‘sensitivity to possible contradictions between the theoretical preconceptions guiding the research design and actual findings’, and the principle of contextualisation, which calls for ‘critical reflection of the social and historical background of the research setting’ (klein & myres 1999:72). in addition to the challenges faced, we investigated the capacity gap by assessing the african millennials’ situation against the ideal expectations of the digital citizen as articulated by al-zahrani (2015). a sequential mixed-methods research approach consisting of a low-resource survey and interviews (creswell 2009) was used for collecting data on the capacity gap of the upcoming south african digital citizen. a sequential mixed-methods design was chosen to enable the researchers to analyse and reflect on the findings from the first phase before proceeding to the second phase. this was done through a research design that combines exploratory and confirmatory research phases. a total of 148 questionnaires were administered to students at two campuses of a university in the eastern cape province, followed by 15 interviews. the interview guide for the qualitative research phase was, therefore, designed for getting an in-depth understanding of the reasons behind the survey findings. while the interview phase was mainly confirmatory, it was also used for exploring the gaps emanating from the methodological limitations of the quantitative phase. this, therefore, employed the in-depth interview for conducting both exploratory and confirmatory investigations on the themes which could not be investigated using closed questions that were employed in the survey phase. the quantitative phase uses a survey for investigating quantifiable aspects of digital citizenship through a self-assessment of digital competence on a likert scale. it focuses on facebook since it was found to be the main driver of internet uptake in africa (ria 2012; stork et al. 2013). it is the most highly used internet site by the millennials who constitute 42% of south africa’s facebook users (kemp 2016; mackey 2016). this probes digital citizenship themes like personal security, digital skills and frequency of usage, while digital etiquette and information literacy are assessed through semi-structured interviews. the questionnaire was designed as closed questions in the form of a likert scale with four options, which include disagree = 1, disagree strongly = 2, agree = 3 and agree strongly = 4. based on our previous experience, the neutral option was excluded in order to discourage students from using it to avoid answering survey questions. we attempted to design simple and easy questions to ensure that the respondents would get the same message without misunderstanding them. a pilot study was conducted in order to validate the questionnaire for user-friendliness. a few snags were identified through user feedback and these were documented and used for refining the final version of the questionnaire. the ethical approval to conduct the study was granted by the university of fort hare research and ethics committee. data analysis quantitative data were analysed using spss, while qualitative data used a drawing from selective use of grounded theory analysis approach. the data were cleaned and imported into spssv24 where descriptive and test statistics were conducted using frequencies. the qualitative phase used selective coding (glaser 1992) by drawing from the selective use of grounded theory methodology for analysis only as articulated by matavire and brown (2011). after the first two interviews, a preliminary coding of the data was conducted. the coding process was repeated after each interview to assess the emergence of new codes. the process seemed to have reached saturation after the researchers conducted 15 interviews. research findings this section presents the results of both the survey and interviews. in table 1, the demographic distribution of the participants shows that more female students (56%) participated than male students (44%). it also shows that more secondand third-year students (84%) participated than fourthand first-year (16%) students. about 81% had a good and excellent experience with social media, while over 70% used social media several times a day. table 1: demographics and frequencies. the descriptive statistics show that most of the student (55%) were aware of how the personal information posted on the internet will be accessible to other people. only 51% knew that the junk mail they received was related to the information they posted on internet sites. the descriptive statistics for the rest of the questionnaire is provided in table 2. table 2: frequencies. phase 2 result this section presents a summary of the results of the qualitative research phase in table 3. the findings on each of the components of the at are categorised according to both home and the university activity systems. this is meant to make it easier for the reader to compare and contrast the findings from the two activity systems. table 3: quotes form interviews divided per variable the interaction between the university and the home systems activity outcomes: the university and the home systems are complementing each other to produce an incomplete digital citizen who has more technical skills than digital etiquette. this is because of inadequacies on both university and home communities (see figure 4). figure 4: university and home activity systems. the university activity system: it is teaching technical skills for students to be productive during their university education and future work. the home activity system: this system is funding the student’s education and giving no further assistance than the values and the mores that are inculcated during the student’s upbringing. it is failing, however, to complement the skills developed at university because of inadequate connectivity, mentorship and lack of devices in some cases. tools: the ict tools that are available to the students at home are fewer than what they have in the university activity system. in addition to the personal devices like laptops and smartphones that some of them also have at home, they also have university wi-fi and computer labs at their disposal. one participant puts it: ‘at home [access] is a struggle with expensive data as you know… i can’t even use my laptop because connecting it to the internet is very expensive at home, so i use my phone.’ (ai1, female, 19) there is, therefore, no continuity of access which is essential for continuous digital exposure. rules: the home activity system has no rules that control the online activity of the millennials. the rules at home tend to regulate when not to use icts rather than the student’s online behaviour, as one participant advised: ‘no, there are no rules, and that is because they have no much knowledge about the internet and the only thing that they would say is that i am old enough to know not to do something that would be offensive to other people or too private. also that you cannot stay on the phone while you have something you should be doing or you can’t be on the phone while eating, so the rules are such things only.’ (mi3, male, 21) division of labour the findings show less enabling actors in the home compared to the university activity system. for instance, very few participants had any influence from friends, neighbours and institutions like libraries while they are at home. this is because of the lack of capacity, as well as rural to urban migration, as respondent mi2 put it: ‘in rural areas one thing is that people who have already acquired skills they would be able to teach those who don’t have; they move out of the village to better city and we are left alone to hustle the skills on our own.’ (mi2, male, 22) participant si10 who comes from an urban community had a different experience: ‘i had a neighbour who was studying engineering at ibika. he was advanced in technology, so i used to follow him. he owned a computer and a smartphone, and i was always with him. however, i was young then, and all i knew about technology was watching movies on his laptop. he was the person who motivated me to get an interest in the computer world.’ (si10, male, 22) as discussed later, the university system had technical training, helpdesk backup and peer assistance. community unlike the university, which had an ict helpdesk, lecturers and peers that can help, the home activity system had some parental guidance and little technical help from a few libraries and internet cafes. participant mi2: ‘specifically using the internet i was never taught at home, using microsoft i was taught that at a community centre but unfortunately they didn’t have internet; they were just teaching basic microsoft word and excel. accessing internet there was no one to teach, you would go to the internet café and get someone to assist you with connection; how you do it is your struggle, no one teaches you.’ (mi2, male, 22) discussion in this section, we discuss the findings presented in the previous section in line with the objectives of this study. our analysis shows that the challenges that are being faced by the south african millennials in their endeavour to become digital citizens emanate from university curriculum, as well as their historical background and socio-economic situation. while our research findings show that they must make do with inadequate internet access at home, their digital skills are acceptable. this is because they are compelled to acquire digital literacy at university and also because they are active on social media. they, however, lack digital citizenship qualities, for example, the ability to protect their personal privacy on internet sites. about 81% rated their social media experience as excellent or good, while only 41% of them were confident in their ability to protect themselves on internet sites. they also need to teach themselves the soft skills (like digital etiquette) and e-commerce that they are not being taught at university. our research revealed that while the university system has scope for incubating good digital citizenship, the current syllabus, unenforced rules and poor access on the home front make it difficult for millennials to develop digital citizenship. figure 5 presents a high-level summary of the main barriers that inhibit the development of digital citizenship both at home and university activity systems. figure 5: the barriers that inhibit the development of digital citizenship. third-generation at enabled a comparative investigation of the home and university systems that are expected to complement each other in the process of developing south africa’s millennials into digital citizens. the research findings show tensions and shortcomings between the two systems. these tensions and some constraints – socio-economic and historical contextual factors – have a negative impact on the development of digital citizenship. the university system was technocentric and the home system had an indirect impact on ethics. instead of collaborating in both training and provision of technology, that is, connectivity and ict devices, we found that the home community did not allow the students to perpetuate the technical training acquired at university. on the other hand, the university was not enhancing the ethical values from home. this is because of the lack of mentors and digital tool (i.e. devices and connectivity) at home, as well as the technical focus of the university curriculum. as a result, the combination of both systems failed to produce digital etiquette. this leaves it all to chance as interviewee mi3 put it: ‘i think it is a state of mind because, on my facebook, some people would post things that i feel they are offensive to others. to me, i think it is a different story which goes with who you are and whether or not you care about other people. so i wasn’t really taught how to behave on the internet, i think i do my best and maybe i am not doing right according to other people.’ (mi3, male, 21) the contradiction within the home activity system is that the student has morally unfettered access without any cyber ethics rules at home where their ubuntu (humanness) is expected to come from. olinger, britz and olivier (2005) describe ‘ubuntu’ as an african ideology whose ethical values are capable of solving africa’s political strife and ethnic conflict. we found that some ubuntu cultural values from one’s upbringing (i.e. from the home system) were said to contribute towards responsible online behaviour. this is, however, affected by the knowledge gap that develops between parents and students. it is also exacerbated by the concomitant change in the students’ status when they return from university to their underprivileged community. the students acquire respect as the educated digital expert; yet they still need the community’s moral guidance in their ongoing transition from digital literacy to digital citizenship. as the interviewee ki14 put it: ‘at home, there are no rules they don’t mind if i’m using my laptop.’ (ki14, female, 20) we found that this is because the parents have no capacity to monitor the student’s online behaviour as they do on offline platforms. the irony is that where connectivity allows, the students are freer at home to do what they cannot do at university; yet the home is supposedly the bastion of ubuntu. these contradictions in the activity system (engestrom & sannino 2011) must be viewed from the causal effects of their historical context as articulated by moulder (2016). south africa’s apartheid legacy is responsible for the illiterate parentage, access gap and resource gap identified in the underprivileged communities where the majority of millennials came from. the university activity system was found to be playing a significant role in providing basic skills, exposure to mentors and unlimited access. the university was, however, lacking in the development of millennials who can use technologies responsibly, safely, critically, productively and civically as expected from digital citizens (ribble 2014). this is arguably because the university operates in silos and therefore no department has a specific endeavour to train the virtues of digital citizenship to every student. the students, therefore, need to develop these virtues on their own. as participant pi15 advised, they were never taught to post positive content. he does it because his sister was once raped: ‘i can’t say i have been taught but i would like to believe some of the content i post on my twitter is productive. for example, when i post about things like rape because it is a subject i care about sharing since my sister was once raped.’ (pi15, male, 22) another respondent ti4 expected students to learn digital etiquette on their own. she suggested that those who suffer cyberbullying are unaware of the tools provided by social media platforms. in her words, she said: ‘… it’s just that people are ignorant, for example, if you are using facebook, it tells you that this is how you should conduct yourself, like if someone posts something that i don’t like then i have a right to report it so it can be removed. so everyone who is using the internet knows, it is just that they are reluctant to learn about how to conduct themselves.’ (ti4, male, 20) an analysis of the university’s rules shows the contradiction of willingness to tackle cyber mischief, as well as an unwillingness to teach their students to confront it and overcome it when they get exposed on unrestricted platforms like their own devices. in other words, they impose rules that address the symptoms without developing the student’s capacity to withstand the online vices that they will face outside the university network. by blocking access to unacceptable sites without teaching civility and responsibility, they are missing the opportunity to prepare their students for the unbridled access that they have on the home system. this may arrest some contagion at the university, but it forfeits the opportunity to teach digital citizenship, more so because there is no university curriculum that teaches digital etiquette. our research reveals that the ethics and etiquette that the participants purport to possess emanate from their upbringing and less from formal training. there are, however, some isolated degree programmes that were found to be instilling values that may foster digital civility in the students. this includes a course in nursing and another in information systems. a nursing student mi3 said: ‘we are also taught in our courses in nursing departments how to interact with other people and not harm them’. (mi3, male, 21) an information systems student also advised that they had learnt about personal security and cyberbullying: ‘… yes i remember very well the lecture was by dr ni. she spoke about cyberbullying and that we should respect others. she also spoke about restricting the amount of information you give out online and on social media to avoid cyber bullies.’ (mi3, male, 21) as can be seen in figure 2, the tools that facilitate access and training and usage do not facilitate continuous learning. the access limitations of the home system do not complement unlimited access at the university. when the student leaves university for semester break or after-hours as well as on completion of studies, they access changes from unlimited (wi-fi) to intermittent if not non-existent (data bundles). continuous learning is necessary in a fast-changing domain like ict literacy where new technologies must be matched with further studies. our concern is that the inhibitors (like access cost and lack of devices and electricity) that millennials face at home, that is, when they are not at the university, are capable of negating the progress made at university. the university system provides basic aspects of literacy through two courses, namely clt and basic computer literacy. at the university of (name withheld), clt is a compulsory module that contributes credits to the university degree, whereas basic computer literacy is an optional course that one can skip by simply writing the exemption test. however, if one skips bcl there are no repercussions as it has no credits. both courses prepare the student for the technical skills that enable the students to do their assignments on computer irrespective of the fact that they had no prior knowledge of computing. while it may give room for computer literate students to avoid the bcl module, there is no clearly defined route to exemption, just as there is no enforcement for those who need to take both clt and bcl. the students were found to have different levels of computer skills. for instance, one student, si5, advised that she was far behind colleagues from better off backgrounds. in her own words, she said: ‘there was a huge gap … they had that privilege of knowing how to use a computer, for example, typing and me i still had to first familiarise myself with the keyboard. … they knew how to use the internet which i did not know, so there was a lot of catching up on my side even though we were of same age i was way behind with knowledge of computer use and internet.’ (si5, male, 19) the university community was also found to have a vast capacity to develop digital citizenship if its resources were coordinated to do so. it has educators, ict helpdesk technicians and fellow students who can foster the development of the millennials’ digital fluency. these aspects of the university activity system need to be harnessed for developing digital citizenship. for instance, we found that students help each other informally. respondent mi2 said: ‘actually, some of them (friends) learned a lot of things from me because i am curious by nature and so that’s how i know things then i shared the skills i got, i would say i have learnt some things from them and gave them some things. we teach each other.’ (mi2, male, 22) this opportunity for the cross-pollination of skills in the university could be formalised through the teaching and learning centre where students work as tutors. the ict helpdesk also had the underutilised capacity to help develop digital skills. according to respondent ni6, they were helpful: ‘they [ict support] give me support like ict when i have a problem with my laptop i do go to them and they fix it for me so that i can be able to use it and also access the internet.’ (si5, male, 19) this potential was not being utilised by all who could benefit from it. for instance, respondent mi2 a fourth-year student, had never benefited from the ict helpdesk: ‘… the ict staff i have never been engaged with them for help with internet or computer use, i just know they work with these digital staff around campus and i don’t know anything about them having to do with students.’ (mi2, male, 22) the university activity system would realise its full capacity by advising all students about the role of the ict helpdesk. we also found that the students lacked the skill to conduct e-commerce, which is an important aspect of digital citizenship. this was, however, a rare exception of some is students. the rest of the participants had not received any training to buy and sell on the internet. most of the respondents had not bought anything online. one student confirmed that he had taught himself how to buy online. about 59% suggested that they feared financial loss on the internet. this was confirmed by an interviewee, si8: ‘not yet but i am looking to buy something right now, but i am still sceptical because i don’t trust it that much’. (si8, female, 20) this suggests that the key aspects of digital citizenship could only be developed by chance rather than through formal training. our comparison of the home and the university activity systems showed that the home activity system suffers from the lack of access and low exposure to other internet users that students can learn from. unlike the university where they have friends and lecturers to help with skills training, at home most have no computer literate friends who can mentor them. their parents are not computer literate and they lack internet access. as stated by one participant: ‘… [in] my hometown bizana most people know nothing about using mobile devices or the internet. as a result, even when i asked for money to go to the library they would not understand why i need to go to the library. most of them advised that they use mobile data bundles for accessing the internet.’ (mi2, male, 22) in terms of rules of internet access and usage, we found that there were no rules on the home activity systems, basically because the parents are totally uninvolved in the children’s online activity. there were some rules on the university system which forbade them to access illegal sites and to watch television (tv) series. the rest of the forbidden sites are blocked by the system. conclusion and implications this article makes its contribution by highlighting the challenges that the african millennials face on their way to digital citizenship. while the home activity system has socio-historical challenges, the university has an opportunity to refocus and help reduce the challenges that their students face. by focusing on digital skills while marginalising information literacy and digital etiquette, the educators are upholding temporary tools above their permanent purpose. such technological determinism is downplaying the ephemeral nature of technologies and the need to inculcate transferable skills that will help the student to safely and civically process information in a continuously evolving information age with new cyberspace vices and new technological devices. teaching the millennials about how to use technology without teaching them online safety, information literacy and civility will make them victims and perpetrators of cybercrime. their productivity in the information age jobs will be lower than expected as they suffer from the effect of cybercrime. this calls for a revision of ict literacy training modules to include the digital fluency that is required for good digital citizens. it also calls for the need to change teaching strategies by using learners to support other millennials in the communities of both the university and the home activity systems. research limitations and future research this research was conducted among university students. while they have the age and access which are expected of digital citizens, their situation cannot be uncritically inferred to the rest of south african millennials. the findings of this research, therefore, need to be read with due cognisance that university students have better training and better access than other millennials who come from the same backgrounds. future research must investigate how the ubuntu cultural virtues can be transferred to the digital front. it must also use practical testing exercises for assessing both the information literacy and digital wisdom (prensky 2001) of african millennials. this will show the inadequacy of the current university training that marginalises soft skills like information literacy and digital etiquette. this article has operationalised the use of engeström’s (2001) activity system by presenting the south african millennial as the subject or human doer, the digital training process as the ‘object’ or the thing being done, while the development of digital citizenship as the outcome. we have found that the millennials are walking a tightrope to digital citizenship because of inadequacies on both the home and the university systems. the home system lacks access (i.e. mentors, connectivity and devices), while the university system lacks soft skills training (i.e. information literacy, safety and etiquette). the two activity systems under consideration have the capacity to produce digital citizens if the home community improves digital tool and rules, while the university must include digital etiquette in its compulsory digital literacy curriculum. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions w.c. conceptualised the study and collected the data. l.c. conceptualised the study, did the data analysis and assisted with the final editing of the manuscript. s.t. conducted the literature review, wrote the manuscript and assisted with the editing of the manuscript. references al-zahrani, a., 2015, ‘toward digital citizenship: examining 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update your personal details regularly to ensure contact with you throughout your professional term as reviewer to reading & writing. please do not hesitate to contact us if you require assistance in performing this task. publisher: publishing@aosis.co.za tel: +27 21 975 2602 fax: +27 21 975 4635 agnes chigona andre steenkamp arua e. arua berit g. lundgren brenda spencer bulelwa makena candice livingston catherine kell chaka chaka clare verbeek dan kasule daniella gachago denise m. allen douglas fisher sharan badiger elizabeth g. seeco eileen m. scheckle eleni griva elizabeth pretorius elsemieke wishart hanlie dippenaar jørgen e. christensen jacob w. alant jacqui dornbrack janet l. condy jay blanchard john w. foncha johnson l. rose judith mutemeri kamal h. soureshjani karen roux katherine e. arbuckle kathryn au kelly mcneal ketsitlile lone kristin van der merwe laura m. drennan laura dison lisa zimmerman lorna dreyer louise olivier madeleyi mbelani margaret a. hill maria d.c.l. gomes muchativugwa hove mzwamadoda p. cekiso naomi a. boakye peter plüddemann peter rule restytuta nalyazi robin irey rose-marie mccabe sandra j. land sarah howie stanley w. theron sydney f. maluleke titi j. fola-adebayo uju c. ukwuoma vasanthie padayachee wilfred t. molotja we appreciate the time taken to perform your review successfully. acknowledgement to reviewers http://www.rw.org.za� http://www.rw.org.za http://www.rw.org.za http://www.rw.org.za/index.php/rw/user http://www.rw.org.za/index.php/rw/user mailto:publishing@aosis.co.za abstract introduction literature review and theoretical framework methodology findings and discussion implications conclusions and recommendations acknowledgements references footnote about the author(s) joel m. magogwe communication and study skills unit, university of botswana, botswana unity m. nkateng communication and study skills unit, university of botswana, botswana citation magogwe, j.m. & nkateng, u.m., 2018, ‘genre analysis of essays in the social sciences: the case of botswana students’, reading & writing 9(1), a137. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v9i1.137 original research genre analysis of essays in the social sciences: the case of botswana students joel m. magogwe, unity m. nkateng received: 12 apr. 2017; accepted: 23 june 2017; published: 22 jan. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract writing is a challenging but requisite skill at university and other life situations. at university, essay writing is generally challenging to first-year students across disciplines or faculties. this study therefore describes the writing challenges of the faculty of social sciences students at the university of botswana. to that end, this study asks the following research questions: (1) what writing tasks are first-year students in the faculty of social sciences given? (2) what problems do the students encounter when writing essays in the faculty of social sciences? (3) what kind of assistance do students receive on writing essays? this article is underpinned by the english for academic purposes genre analysis framework. all in all, the findings of this study point to the need for a more intensive writing programme for first-year students at the university of botswana in which both faculties and the communication and study skills unit will cooperatively assist students with writing. students’ responses clearly indicated the need for such collaboration. introduction writing is a challenging but requisite skill at university and other life situations. at university, essay writing is generally challenging to first-year students across disciplines or faculties (ahmed 2010; nesi & gardener 2012; nkateng 2013). in the light of that, this study describes the writing challenges of the faculty of social sciences students at the university of botswana. at the university of botswana, essays are written in english, the official medium of instruction at the university and other levels of education in botswana. as second language learners, botswana students across all levels struggle to write in english. to address this problem, the university of botswana offers compulsory communication and study skills courses to all first-year students. briefly, these courses teach subject-specific academic and professional communication topics using relevant teaching and assessment approaches selected by the lecturers who teach them. these courses are informed by the english for academic purposes (eap) discipline. to provide context for this study, it is important to note that botswana is a southern african country located between south africa, namibia and zimbabwe. literature review and theoretical framework this article is underpinned by the eap genre analysis framework. eap is a branch of the english for specific purposes (esp) discipline (robinson 1991). esp is goal directed and propounds that learners do not learn the english language for the sake of it. they learn it because they use it in their specific professional or academic lives. eap’s foci are language and associated institutional and disciplinary practices, such as referencing and writing, which people need to undertake to study or work in english medium higher education. the main objective of eap courses is to teach the language, both general academic language and subject-specific language, as well as language-related practices such as summarising and writing introductions. eap courses usually focus on the process of writing – planning, organising, presenting, rewriting, and proofreading. typical writing skills that are the foci of eap include research and using sources, writing different text types as well as different genres and using an appropriate style with some degree of accuracy. genre analysis genre analysis has been defined by various scholars such as miller (1984), who defines it as a classification of typified acts of communication (cited in herring, scheidt & wright 2004). however, this study is premised on one of the most influential researchers on genre analysis, john swales, who, with his analysis of the rhetorical structure of the introductions of research articles, established a method for the analysis of the rhetorical structure of different genres (luzon 2005). according to swales (1990): a genre comprises a class of communicative events members of which share some set of communicative purposes. these purposes are recognised by the expert members of the parent discourse community, and thereby … communicative purpose is both privileged criterion… (p. 58) discourse community according to swales (1990) refers to a community in which a particular type of written text is shared. swales posits that in a discourse community, the language medium is mainly a written text, that the use of language is essentially functional and that in a discourse community people become members of the community of their own will. according to swales (1990), examples of genre include research papers, essays, theses, letters, poems, recipes and news broadcasts. many genre-based studies have analysed genre structure or the different rhetorical moves that conform to the genre, lexico-grammatical features or the function of tenses in the genre, the use of nominalisation, the type of vocabulary and textualisation or the conventional use of specific linguistic features in certain genres. rationale and justification rather than treat different disciplines as singular discourse communities with the same writing conventions, this study focuses solely on the faculty of social sciences under the guarantee that most recent research has focused on tasks from a single discipline (e.g. braine 1989; carson 2001). again, different researchers have found that there are different variations across disciplines (bazerman 1981; becher 1987). furthermore, lecturers in different faculties of the universities expect students to write according to the expectations of their host faculties. healey (2000:173) claims that ‘there is a strong perception among [academic] staff that there are significant differences among disciplines in what academics do and how these activities are described and valued’. according to hyland (2000), students’ needs must be clearly researched and it should be borne in mind that different subjects may have different needs at different levels in different institutions or countries. with that in mind, the authors of this article undertook this research with the objective of addressing the students’ writing problems. congruent with this objective is the notion that the central role of the eap lecturer or course designer is to find out what learners need, what they have to do in their academic work or courses and help them to do that better in the time available. secondly, eap recognises that tertiary students possess different learning needs, which cannot be addressed by teaching them the same type of english language (coffey 1984). notably, in some parts of the world, for over 20 years the types of writing tasks given to students have been examined in eap context, especially in science, engineering and business (braine 1995; davis 1998; luzon 2005). but, as far as the authors of this study are concerned, there is no research similar to this one that has been conducted in botswana. this research thus sheds light on the written communication in the social sciences, and its findings contribute ideas on the design of academic writing skills syllabus for the social sciences and suggest where emphasis should be put when teaching. to that end, this study asks the following research questions: what writing tasks are first-year students in the faculty of social sciences given? what problems do the students encounter when writing essays in the faculty of social sciences? what kind of assistance do students receive on writing essays? methodology seventeen essays written by faculty of social sciences first-year students in their various departments were examined. the essays were reviewed and analysed using swales’s (1990) genre analysis framework of moves as a guide. swales notes that there is a regular pattern of ‘moves’ and ‘steps’ that appear in a certain order in the majority of introductions investigated. a move then becomes ‘a unit that relates both to the writer’s purpose and the content that s/he wishes to communicate’ and ‘a step is a lower level text unit than the move’ (dudley-evans & st. john 2003:89). most importantly, the objective of this study was not to analyse the essays under investigation at the ‘text’ level but only at the level of the ‘move’. to analyse the essays, the organisation of the whole essay and its sections were examined, the purpose and style of writing the essay were identified and language features were studied too. to cater for inter-rater reliability, the two authors first individually read the essays and identified emerging patterns in terms of the organisation of the essays, their purpose and style and language problems. then the authors met, compared their assessments and came up with a rubric, which they then used again to re-scrutinise the essays. the sample of students in this study was conveniently selected from the lecturers’ classes. the students were conveniently sampled in the sense that they were easy to reach by their lecturers who are the authors of this study. there were no specific criteria required to select the students, and all those willing to submit their essays were encouraged to do so. eleven of the 17 students were voluntarily engaged in face-to-face interviews to get their views, experiences and problems they encounter when writing essays. the lecturers announced that any students interested in participating in the interviews could volunteer but only 11 agreed. the open-ended interview questions asked the students to identify the writing assignments or tasks they were required to do in the social science faculty, to indicate why they were or were not satisfied with their writing, to identify the problems they encountered when writing academically, how much and what kind of assistance they received in writing academic essays and what they thought could be done to assist them to improve their writing. for ethical considerations, the students were asked to volunteer to participate in the research and they were also assured that information obtained from their essays and interviews would not be divulged without their consent and that it would mainly be used for the purpose of this study. the interviews, each of which lasted for approximately 20 min, were recorded and later transcribed by the authors. limitations firstly, the findings of this study should be accepted against the understanding that essay writing is not the only type of writing done in the social sciences. other types of writing include reports, research papers, literature reviews and case studies. secondly, only first-year essays were analysed and issues of writing in the social sciences discussed in this article are confined to the findings from that level only. in addition, the essays reviewed in this study came from students from different departments of the faculty of social sciences, and thus the findings are not subject-specific. as already indicated, the sample of students in this study was conveniently selected from the authors’ classes. findings and discussion what writing tasks are first-year students in the faculty of social sciences given? first-year students who participated in this study gave divergent answers to this question, although they all agreed that most of the time they wrote essays for continuous assessment. one of the students summed this up by saying: ‘we don’t really do a lot of writing now, maybe in the future. i am not even quite sure about the kind of essays we write, but i think in future we will write an argumentative essay.’ [student a, female, first year] another one indicated that she was not sure about the types of essays they wrote, but they had been asked to discuss reasons why one of the political parties in botswana engaged in some activities. another student indicated that they did a lot of essay writing and that the type of writing tasks they did depended on the types of questions they wrote. other students indicated that they were given essays where they had to define key terms, while others said they were given questions where they had to go out to collect data or research. all in all, 59% (n = 10) of the 17 essays analysed were discussion type essays. discussion essays require students to discuss issues surrounding a particular topic, usually that are debatable or open to argument. given that students who participated in this study came from different departments within the faculty of social sciences, it is possible that they were required to write different types of texts or essays in their various departments. however, it is important to note that almost all of those who were interviewed pursued the same programme of study, degree or academic plan. another objective of this study was to analyse the organisational structure of the essays in terms of purpose, style and language features. ahmed (2010) states that a coherent essay consists of an introduction, a thesis statement, rhetorical support and a conclusion. the authors of this article expected that the students’ essays would have all these three parts. all the 17 essays had an introduction, defined key words, provided relevant topics and provided a conclusion. most essays were introduced with the following statements: ‘the aim of this essay is …’ or ‘the purpose of this essay is to …’. interestingly, in most essays, the purpose of the essay was not concordant with the development of the essay. these findings suggest that students need to develop the skill of writing creative introductions in order to make their essays more interesting or scholarly. students also confused essay writing with report writing. for example, in one essay the student wrote an abstract and called it an introduction. another essay was subdivided like a research report with headings and subheadings such as ‘abstract’, ‘introduction and background’, ‘theoretical framework’, ‘findings’ and ‘recommendations’. this suggests the need to ground the students in genre-based pedagogy so that they can distinguish the different writing genres in their discipline. ideas in all the essays were incoherent and not well developed. the paragraphs were not properly linked or cohesive. one of the interviewees indicated that ‘i need help with writing coherently and sometimes i drift from one topic to another’. according to ahmed (2010): producing a coherent piece of writing is an enormous challenge, especially in one’s second language. this is magnified by the fact that the rhetorical conventions of english texts – the structure, style, and organization – often differ from those in other languages. (p. 211) it seems that the faculty of social sciences students need guidance on the process of writing and that feedback should be given during each stage of the process so that the students can appreciate the systematic development or unfolding of ideas during the writing process. one of the interviewees indicated that they only got feedback after marking or when they were asked to resubmit the essay. therefore, stage-by-stage feedback is highly recommended. in so far as writing perceptions are concerned, students claimed to be coping well, although they identified a number of areas where they needed assistance. these include: ‘understanding the topic’, ‘quoting’, ‘paraphrasing’, ‘referencing’, ‘arranging ideas’, ‘insufficient vocabulary’ and ‘linking paragraphs’. one student said: ‘i need more help in referencing and paraphrasing, and i really find it difficult to use my own words.’ [student b, male, first year] at the micro-level, the omission of words in the essays showed that students did not proofread their essays before submitting them. for example: ‘these youth face many ^ while they are in sex work industry.’ [student c, female, first year]1 some essays contained informal language such as that used in oral presentations. for example, ‘these young sex workers don’t go to hospitals because they fear the horrifying experiences they’ll receive. after all they are humans like we are.’ [student d, female, first year] plagiarism was another common problem in the essays, and students did not acknowledge their sources. finally, this study sought to find out how much assistance students received in writing essays. one student indicated that their public administration tutor taught them how to format an essay and how to interpret an essay question. another student said: ‘this semester we were given an assignment in political science and i was assisted by a third year student on referencing. at the library we met somebody who told us the same thing.’ [student b, female, first year] the same student indicated that she was happy that their communication skills lecturer gave them a passage and asked them to reference and paraphrase. the third student indicated that their communication skills lecturer ‘took us to the library and gave us detailed information on how to use the library and the internet, but our public administration tutor just explained the topics’. a fourth one claimed that: ‘i have never been helped in political science, but in communication skills i don’t think we have touched on writing. definitely communication skills and political science should work together to improve our essay writing.’ [student d, female, first year] the fifth student said: ‘i don’t think what is being done is good enough, we need more time on writing. more time is being given to presentations in communication skills.’ [student e, male, first year] finally, the sixth student said: ‘i don’t think our public administration tutor and communication skills lecturer are working together. they assume that one is covering what the other is not covering in class.’ [student f, male, first year] these findings suggest that writing support given to first-year students should be more organised. this further suggests the need for collaboration between the faculty of social sciences and the communication and study skills unit (cssu), which offers academic writing advice. in summary, the findings of this study show that first-year faculty of social science students who participated in this study confirmed that they wrote essays more than other types of writing. although students perceived their writing to be generally good, the findings suggest that they confused essay writing with other forms of writing such as report writing. they also acknowledged making writing errors, most of which included challenging skills of paraphrasing, quoting and referencing. other common writing problems at the university of botswana related to paraphrasing are overlong sentences normally caused by comma-splices, run-on ideas and redundancy. these sentence writing problems seem to be caused by mother tongue interference in writing. all in all, the findings of this study point to the need for a more intensive writing programme for first-year students at the university of botswana in which both faculties and the cssu will cooperatively assist students with writing. students’ responses clearly indicated the need for such collaboration. implications several implications arise from the findings of this study. firstly, the students were asked to identify different types of writing they did in their faculty or respective departments. as shown in the findings section, they gave divergent answers to this question, although they all agreed that most of the time they wrote essays for continuous assessment. this suggests that the students were not well acquainted with the various writing genres in their discipline. in order to address this confusion, it is important to make the students aware right at the beginning of their studies that different courses require different written assignments. zhu (2004) shares the same sentiment. in addition to raising awareness about the different genres, students should be familiarised with differences between these written academic genres. the analysis of the essays in this study showed that some students used the report writing rhetorical mode or style to write an essay. they should, therefore, be made aware that different genres require different structures (e.g. abstracts, introductions and sections) and linguistic devices (e.g. words showing the writer’s stand or identity). this proposition is supported by dudley-evans and st. john’s (2003) assertion that: in the academic context, students are required to produce specific writing genres such as essay, summary, critical review … and focus on the distinguishing regularities of structure of different text types can help learners build a repertoire of the organization and the relevant language forms of different genres. (al-khasawneh & maher 2010:2) students should also be made aware of the nature of audience for which different genres are written. for example, they should be aware that academic writing style is for the academic community (such as lecturers and peers) and that professional writing style is used for the professional audience (or non-academic readers). to support the above suggestion, zhu (2004) asserts: it is important to teach second language learners how to write for different audiences, academic and non-academic, and help them develop the ability to organize and present information based on an assessment of audience needs. (p. 132) students should also be made aware of common english as second language (esl) writing errors or problems such as ‘understanding the topic’, ‘quoting’, ‘paraphrasing’, ‘referencing’, ‘arranging ideas’, ‘lack of vocabulary’ and ‘linking paragraphs’. awareness-raising on its own may not be sufficient to address students’ essay writing problems. establishing collaboration between faculty of social sciences content lecturers and cssu lecturers offering eap courses may bring another solution to the writing problems. this is because lack of collaboration may cause confusion for the students in terms of conflicting and contrasting specific writing requirements from content lecturers and cssu lecturers. the findings of this study showed that the support students were getting from their faculty needed to be more organised and that the cssu should provide support that addresses specific writing needs of the students. in a similar study, lea and street (1998) conducted interviews in which learning support staff questioned whether academic staff was aware that they were asking for specific ways of writing knowledge from their students. similarly, collaboration can also be encouraged between students themselves. for instance, zhu (2004) posits that: writing courses and instructors could help second language learners further develop teamwork skills. in cooperative groups, members must know how to negotiate a common task as well as their individual responsibilities, how to provide input and feedback on others’ work, and how to reach consensus when conflicts arise. finally, in conjunction with content lecturers, it is imperative for the cssu to develop writing materials that will help the faculty of social sciences learners acquire some of the genres that they will be required to understand and eventually produce as part of their academic studies or research. based on this analysis, they could design eap teaching materials, which would enable students to use certain linguistic and stylistic strategies that could enable them to become accepted members of their discourse communities. conclusions and recommendations the findings of this study have unearthed very important issues that need to be considered in an attempt to provide writing support for the social sciences esl students and by extension students from all university faculties. firstly, the findings showed the need to raise students’ awareness of different writing genres and their integral differences and uses. secondly, a more organised writing course is imperative through collaboration between content lecturers and cssu lecturers. the two should conduct a needs assessment and syllabus review and use the results to design a fully fledged writing skills course for social science students and by extension for all faculties. for example, the analysis of essays in this study revealed that there was a need for students to be taught referencing, in-text citations and the use of paraphrasing. this study further recommends research investigating types of writing done in all faculties of the university of botswana and in all departments in each faculty. the research may unearth the discrepancies existing between content courses and eap in terms of the type of content and relevant approaches of teaching the essays and other writing genres. this interdisciplinary research can be conducted by both content lecturers and cssu lecturers. acknowledgements we are deeply indebted to students who participated in this study as respondents and to colleagues who offered advice during the conference where this article was presented. this study would not have been possible without their help. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions both j.m.m. and u.m.n. agreed to write on this topic and to design the study. u.m.n. was responsible for collecting the data after both of them had agreed on the method and procedure of data collection. both of them analysed the data. j.m.m. was more responsible for putting the article together, and both of them edited and finalised it. references ahmed, a.h., 2010, ‘students’ problems with cohesion and coherence in efl essay writing in egypt: different perspectives’, literacy information and computer education journal (licej) 1(4), pp. 211–221. https://doi.org/10.20533/licej.2040.2589.2010.0030211-221 al-khasawneh, f.m.s. & maher, s., 2010, ‘writing for academic purposes: problems faced by arab postgraduate students of the college of business, uum’, esp world 9(2), 1–23. bazerman, c., 1981, ‘what written knowledge does: three examples of academic discourse’, philosophy of the social sciences 11, 361–388. https://doi.org/10.1177/004839318101100305 becher, t., 1987, ‘disciplinary discourse’, studies in higher education 12, 261–274. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075078712331378052 braine, g., 1989, 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cambridge university press, cambridge. healey, m., 2000, ‘developing the scholarship of teaching in higher education: a discipline based approach’, higher education research and development 19, 169–189. https://doi.org/10.1080/072943600445637 herring, s.c., scheidt, l.a., bonus, s. & wright, e., 2004, ‘bridging the gap: a genre analysis of weblogs’, in proceedings of the 37th annual hawaii international conference on system sciences, 2004, january, ieee, january 5–8, 2004, pp.11–21 hyland, k., 2000, disciplinary discourses: social interactions in academic writing, longman, london. lea, m. & street, b., 1998, ‘student writing in higher education: an academic literacies approach’, studies in higher education 23(2), 157. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079812331380364 lea, m. & street, b., 2006, ‘the “academic literacies” model: theory and applications’, theory into practice 45(4), 368–377. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4504_11 luzon, m.j., 2005, ‘genre analysis in technical 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we appreciate the time taken to perform your review(s) successfully. agnes chigona alphonsus adebiyi andre steenkamp arua e. arua boitumelo t. ramoroka bulelwa makena caroline pade-khene catherine langsford cornelia g.a. smith sharan badiger eleni griva emmanuel mgqwashu emmarentia kirchner fetson kalua hossana twinomurinzi jacqui dornbrack james k. njenga janet condy janet douglas katherine e. arbuckle kelly mcneal keoneeng magocha laura dison laura m. drennan liezel cilliers lynne walters madeyandile mbelani madoda p. cekiso margaret a. hill maria do carmo l. gomes maxine schaefer nhlanhla landa peter rule pineteh angu riana a. steyn rose-marie mccabe sam takavarasha sarath samaranayake tendani mawela tesfaye a. gidalew titi j. fola-adebayo willie t. chinyamurindi https://rw.org.za https://rw.org.za https://rw.org.za https://rw.org.za/index.php/rw/user https://rw.org.za/index.php/rw/user mailto:publishing@aosis.co.za reading2.pdf � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �� � opinion �is is literacy! reading of photographs in research on san students’ literacy in a remote dweller school in botswana affiliation communication and study skills unit, university of botswana lone e. ketsitlile communication and study skills unit, university of botswana introduction i discuss here part of my larger study which investigated what san students and their non-san friends in a remote area dweller (rad) junior secondary school in botswana understand as literacy in school and at home. a narrative case study approach was used to gain an in-depth understanding of what students’ value and understand by literacy. findings across participants’ stories revealed that they saw literacy as those things that had value to them and these in!uenced how they read ‘the word’ and ‘the world’. storytelling, games, singing, knowledge of di"erent plants, basket weaving and sculpting were variously identi#ed as literacy by the six san and tswana participants. purpose of the study $e purpose of this discussion paper is to enquire about the following question: what do san children value and #nd meaningful in their home and school environments? how does this relate to the possibilities for literacy learning? $is work is taken from my phd study (ketsitile, 2009). $is larger study examines the struggles of san children in a di%cult schooling environment where they battle with speaking, reading and writing challenges, in english particularly, as well as the disparaging views of san children held by many of the teachers in the school. $e students struggle to #nd points of connection and interest with school work that bears no relation to their out-ofschool knowledge and family practices. gonzalez, moll and amanti (2001) talk of funds of knowledge as literacy that children bring to schools. $ey encourage teachers to recognize and tap from such knowledge. clearly, this was not being done at this junior secondary school and these photpgraphs start to examine what these out of school interests and knowledge might be. my phd research explores these concerns from other angles as well, including the recording and discussion of the narrative resources that these children get from the stories their parents rw& � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # $ $ % & � ' ( � ) ( � � � � � * + � , 96 reading and writing and other elders have told them over the years, none of which receive any recognition from the school, in the classroom . participants i employed what researchers call snowball, chain or network sampling to #nd my participants (merriam, 1998). i spoke to two informants #rstly, who then introduced me to others. i told the participants that i would like to work with them closely by interviewing, observing and listening to what they had to say about their past and present schooling experiences and what they valued in their school and out-of-school lives. $is would help me to understand their views of literacy in and out of school. to provide anonymity i have given them di"erent names and in many cases ones that are english translations of their setswana names. my non-san informants love and peace told me stories about the san students they knew. i asked them to #nd san students who might collaborate with me as informants or as co-participants. $ey introduced me to done and news who agreed to work as san informants. $en done and news introduced me to mr. president who agreed to be a participant.5 he in turn introduced me to his best friend, knowledge who agreed to participate. later done and news introduced happy to me and she agreed to participate. love and peace told me some stories about trust. $at led to asking trust to participate and he agreed. also, love and peace introduced me to drought who agreed to be a participant. a&er i interviewed drought, she led me to receiver because she thought she was a better singer than her. in sum, i collected data from 2 nonsan informants (love and peace), 2 san informants (done and news) and 6 participants (mr. president, knowledge, happy, trust, drought, receiver). i have summarized some information about these children in the table below. table 1: participants and informants pro#le name age gender form/grade mr. president (participant) 15 male form one = grade 8 knowledge (participant) 14 male form one = grade 8 happy (participant) 14 female form one = grade 8 drought (participant) 15 female form one = grade 8 receiver (participant) 16 female form 2 = grade 9 5 he had told me his name was the same name as a former botswana leader. from that day, i started to call him mr. president whenever i met him around school. � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # $ $ % ) � ' ( � ) ( � � � � � * + � , 97communication and study skills unit, university of botswana and lone e. ketsitlile name age gender form/grade trust (participant) 14 male form one = grade 8 done (informant) 14 female form one = grade 8 news (informant) 15 male form one = grade 8 love (informant) 14 female form one = grade 8 peace (informant) 14 male form one = grade 8 photography as a method of data collection photography is an important method of data collection (grbich, 2007). a given photograph can be ‘read’ in many ways depending on one’s culture, background and beliefs. according to clandinin and connelly (2000: 115) photographs help us to construct our lives and “are rich sources of #eld texts for the construction of social narratives”. i gave the six san participants disposable cameras to take pictures in their environment and school. love, one of my non-san informants showed the others how to use the cameras. a&er that, each student took some pictures as a test. $en, i asked them to take pictures of the things that represented literacy or had meaning to them. a&er the pictures were developed i met with each student to ask them to explain why they took a particular picture. $is further shed light on students’ experiences, perceptions and ways in which they make meaning. in this activity, the students described what was in the photograph and why they took the photograph. pink (2006) pointed out that as researchers, we can make a lot of sense from visuals and photographs. i asked enquiring and open-ended questions, like, “what is going on in this picture?” and “why did you take this picture?” $e value of photography is that it allows for the visual image to be ‘read’ according to a given culture and within a given historical context, thus, providing a rich source of research information (grbich, 2007). � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # $ $ % ' � ' ( � ) ( � � � � � * + � , 98 reading and writing making meaning from selected photographs figure 1: plant used in successful hunting mr. president explained a photograph where he had taken some very green plants. to me, they looked like ordinary plants but, he explained that the plant was very important in hunting. for a successful hunt, one needs to burn the root of the plant and then tie it to some branches to trap small animals like rabbits. “if we were taught such interesting knowledge in science, students from gaborone and other places would bene#t. but, i do not think they will be interested,” reasoned mr. president. “$ey look down on such knowledge,” he explained. figure 2: knowledge’s friend tshepho in ‘germany’ � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # $ $ % . � ' ( � ) ( � � � � � * + � , 99communication and study skills unit, university of botswana and lone e. ketsitlile behind the hostels was a barren, dusty #eld that the san students called ‘germany’. ‘germany’ was much smaller than the school’s o%cial sports #eld and from close observation, i could tell knowledge and his friends had put a lot of work into it. $ey had cleared all the grass from the #eld and erected some pillars that proudly represented football posts. two or three balls made of cloth, plastic, paper; anything the boys came across could be seen in the middle of the #eld. ‘germany’ was a safe haven for these boys. knowledge explained that playing was very important to him and his friends. figure 3: two girls playing morabaraba game happy loved this game so much because it was fun and exciting. she missed home because she played a lot with her siblings and cousins during the school holidays. she felt that there was not much play time in school. figure 4: traditional baskets � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # $ $ % % � ' ( � ) ( � � � � � * + � , 100 reading and writing $is is literacy to receiver as she learnt how to collect the grass needed for making the di"erent baskets. in addition, her mother and aunts taught her how to weave and read the patterns in the baskets. figure 5: lerete la ga rankurunyane trust’s view of literacy included knowledge of the di"erent plants. he showed me a photograph of a plant he took called lerete la ga rangkurunyane. $e plant is used medicinally to protect a newborn baby from harm. $e plant is ground into powder and given to the baby in liquid form. some of the powder is applied on the baby’s head. figure 6: drought’s friends singing ‘morabaraba’ song � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # $ $ � � � � ' ( � ) ( � � � � � * + � , 101communication and study skills unit, university of botswana and lone e. ketsitlile one of the photographs that drought took to help me understand what literacy meant to her was of a group of her friends singing the morabaraba song. she took this photograph because she loves singing and she also values the messages in songs. she sang me a song on passion killings that warned batswana on the dangers of passion killings. drought thought the song important because it can help to reduce passion killings and suicide. unfortunately she was nervous about singing at school because the non-san students would laugh. conclusion participants’ ways of reading and knowing the word and the world need to be included in the school curriculum for the bene#t of not only san students but non-san ones in botswana. in addition, appropriate pedagogic strategies that draw on these resources and build comfortable bridges to standard school knowledge need to be adopted in classrooms to enable san children to succeed in school. references clandinin, d.j., & connelly, f.m. 2000. narrative inquiry: experience and story in qualitative research. san francisco: jossey-bass publishers. gonzalez, m., moll, l.g., & amanti, c. 2001. funds of knowledge for teaching: using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. !eory into practice, 31(2): 132-142. grbich, c. 2007. qualitative data analysis: an introduction. $ousand oaks, ca: sage. ketsitlile, l. e. 2009. san junior secondary students’ understandings of literacy in school and at home: a case study. unpublished phd thesis. university of athens, georgia. merriam, s.b. 1998. qualitative research and case study applications in education. san francisco: jossey-bass publishers. pink, s. (2006). !e future of visual anthropology: engaging the senses. new york: routledge. / 0 1 0 2 3 4 3 5 6 7 4 8 6 2 9 : ; < = > ? ? 4 3 4 3 @ a 3 b a 2 3 4 4 4 c d 2 e f abstract introduction methodology findings and discussion conclusions and recommendations acknowledgements references about the author(s) lineo r. johnson department of adult education and youth development, university of south africa, south africa citation johnson, l.r., 2016, ‘cultural and social uses of orality and functional literacy: a narrative approach’, reading & writing 7(1), a119. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i1.119 original research cultural and social uses of orality and functional literacy: a narrative approach lineo r. johnson received: 05 oct. 2015; accepted: 11 july 2016; published: 26 oct. 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract lesotho’s educational system and development are largely influenced by missionaries and colonisers who taught the three ‘rs’ (reading, writing and numeracy skills) to the basotho. most of those enlightened basotho were to carry on the duties of either educating others or as missionary workers. some became clerks, interpreters, police officers, nurses and sunday school teachers. this article is an account of a functionally literate mosotho male adult learner who was herding livestock and taught himself reading and writing skills. in his narrative, hlalefang (not his real name) compares literacy to money and a watch or a clock. he further expresses how people like him have managed to muster some basic and restructure the cognitive and oral history and archival memories, through intuitiveness. the story is based on the work of paulo freire where culture influences the discourse of literacy. a qualitative narrative story-telling approach was used to relate hlalefang’s lived-experiences as he navigated his ways and challenges using orality acquired through various life encounters. this inspirational cultural narrative demonstrates that culture and social uses are imperatives in functional literacy. the article challenges those in adult education, literacy, development practitioners and policy-makers to consider some aspects of culture and to be innovative in their approaches to multi-literacies. introduction lesotho is a landlocked and mountainous country completely surrounded by the republic of south africa. studies show that 90% of the total area of lesotho’s 30 350 km is only suitable for ruminant grazing (zvomuya 2013). livestock management plays a critical role in the development of the mountainous areas of the country. livestock development in the mountainous areas was predominantly mounted on the premise that the extensive range and livestock population represented by far the greatest potential asset to be developed generally. given the scarcity of arable land and other means of economic production, the majority of basotho depend on livestock as a source of income, with 86% depending on subsistence farming, including livestock (setoi 2012:8). however, with the advent of the south african mining industry, lesotho’s economy came to depend heavily on south africa, with migrant labour remittances becoming a major source of revenue for the country. because of its topographical landscape, the country experiences severe cold winters with the highlands and foothills experiencing snowfalls and freezing temperatures sometimes dropping below zero degrees celsius. it is during the four winter months’ period of may to august when the grass is dry and scarce in the lowlands, that livestock is driven to the uninhabited mountainous parts of the country for livestock management. the lesotho disaster management authority (dma 2002), reported that every year at least 5–20 herd-boys die from being snow-trapped in the mountains, sometimes alone. the social uses of literacy (soul) research conducted in the 1990s emphasised the importance of secondary orality as a social practice in people’s understanding of what they do, the values they attach to their actions, and the ideologies and practices in their everyday lives (prinsloo & breier 1996). one way of looking at the process is the secondary orality which refers to writing and its social function of orality (ong 1982). this article sought to highlight the cultural influence of livestock management and development in the context of literacy – reading, numeracy and counting, and how many basotho men have benefited using livestock as part of their residual oral literacies and social uses to develop writing and reading skills. based on paulo freire’s literacy work in latin america, the narrative relates the practical, critical and reflective knowledge where hlalefang’s beliefs and cultural practices were shaped into knowledge through critical reflection and indigenous knowledge systems (freire & macedo 2013). the article challenges literacy researchers, educators, and practitioners to recognise and acknowledge the contribution of indigenous, cultural and traditional models and views where they best promote the functionality of literacy and development of rural african societies. literacy is power and has the ability to order social processes consciously and unconsciously socially, economically and politically. the article concludes with challenging africans, that while literacy discourse has evolved due to social changes, the indigenised primary literacies – which refers to primary orality and indigenous and to residual orality and literacies, is an interface between spoken (social usage of literacy) or literacy. background the country has ten administrative districts, and three distinct geographical and climatic regions; the lowlands, foothills, and highlands. with the mountain terrain and the effects of climate change, uncontrolled overgrazing and desertification and soil erosion, the country is experiencing a gradual decrease in livestock. the ‘formal education system in lesotho follows a 7-3-2-4 structure with seven years of primary schooling, which is divided into lower primary (standards 1–4) and upper primary (standards 5–7)’. the author further observes that schooling is not compulsory particularly in the highlands and foothills where the difficult terrain presents a serious challenge for the provision of infrastructure, including for education (setoi 2012:6). in lesotho, herders and domestic workers are classified as non-participants in literacy matters. they fail to participate in the schooling system for various reasons, like ‘living in the most remote and mountainous regions of the country; culturally, herding is seen as an important domestic function and a rite of passage to adulthood and also because poverty often necessitates families hiring out herders for income generation and the mismatch between the formal school system and their needs but as their age and literacy needs are not comparable with the standard participation age’. mohasi (2006) is cited in united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) commission lesotho (2008:14) stating that in lesotho, herders and domestic workers are classified as non-participants in literacy matters. it is this situation that necessitated the need to revisit this situation. lesotho has adopted the universal definition of literacy which says ‘a person is a literate who can with understanding both read and write a short simple statement on his everyday life’. a person is ‘a functionally literate who can engage in all those activities in which literacy is required for effective functioning of his or her group and community and also for enabling him or her to continue to use reading, writing and calculation for his or her own and the community’s development’ (unesco commission lesotho 2008:26). the commission further put emphasis that all literacy programmes on functional literacy should promote the use of locally available resources for income generation purposes. unlike many developing countries, there is a notable demographic of higher illiteracy rate of 17% for males comparable to only 5% for females. many studies attribute this to the cultural practice where males in the foothills and highlands herd livestock while girls attend school. the migrant labour issue also contributes to the plight of boys after herding livestock; they go to the mines leaving the women at home to run the household. this has largely been influenced by this traditional practice where males herd livestock from a very tender age, after which they leave for the mines in south africa (government of lesotho 2015). lephoto (n.d.) refers to the distance education institutions in lesotho and observes that the student body of these institutions consists mainly of adult women who drop out from the formal institutions, with an average age of 30. however, she further notes that the distance education institution, the clientele of the lesotho distance teaching centres (ldtc) comprises herd-boys and the rural populace who need literacy and occupational skills to improve their lives. nevertheless, setoi’s (2012) contestation of this long-lived notion about literacy and education statistics in lesotho reveals that participation and enrolment in literacy programmes from 1997 to 2007 reflect that 70% of students were men. setoi further shows that data from 2010 reflect that literacy enrolments have significantly declined. for decades, the government of lesotho was under the impression that women have overwhelmingly outnumbered men in literacy programmes. this study, although based on the narrative of an individual man, is inclined to confirm setoi’s findings that basotho men, in fact, have a lot to offer in terms of ‘literacy or literacies’ and rich orality culture. literature review literacy or illiteracy is a concept with many interpretations by different scholars. all of them agree that the concept can best be defined according to social uses and their functionality and that the literacy construct is linked to formal, non-formal and informal education domains. different theories, models, and approaches to literacy have gained currency and the debate about which model is the best continues. this article discusses three theoretical models of literacy as they are related to and understood in the narrative of hlalefang. each model has its own advantages and shortfalls at personal, national and multinational levels. the lesotho’s ministry of education and training (moet 2008) states the vision of basotho by 2020, where the basotho shall be a ‘functionally literate society with well-grounded moral and ethical values; adequate social, scientific and technical knowledge and skills’. this denotes a society equipped with the basic (3rs – reading, writing and counting), and functional skills among others. this article also interrogates the three philosophical models of literacy – autonomous, ideological and integrated views of functional literacy. within the three models, the cultural and social uses of literacy become paramount as it relates to hlalefang’s narrative. autonomous view of literacy rogers, patkar and saraswathi (2004) and street (2014) define the autonomous view of literacy as a model in which functional literacy as the process and content of learning to read and write relating to the preparation for work and vocational training as well as a means of increasing the productivity of the individual. it is a form of functional literacy for social use. the autonomous or missionary view of literacy as observed by street (2005) is a technical commodity which has to be acquired homogeneously and uniformly. this view assumes that people need and use literacy in a similar manner and for the same reasons. lyster (1992) further observes that the autonomous viewers of literacy tend to be more economically inclined as they associate literacy with civilisation, progress, development and social mobility, and, of course, to be more functional in their environments. street (2003:78) further observes that literacy is ‘loaded with ideology and policy formulations that make it hard to do ethnographic studies [in this case, other indigenous literacy experiences] of the variety of literacies across contexts’. there are other points of view that the autonomous model is narrow minded and biased. street (2005:417), for instance, observes that the ‘autonomous’ model works from the assumption that literacy in itself – autonomously – will have effects on other social and cognitive practices. it is assumed that the acquisition of literacy will in itself lead to, for example, higher cognitive skills, improved economic performance, greater equality, and so on. it is not holistic and it generalises literacy, its uses and its recipients. in the context of this article, it is therefore deduced that literacy is a heterogeneous concept because there are multiple literacies and their uses are many and varied. this article speaks to the indigenous uses and benefits of literacy applied by a person regarded or underestimated by the definition of literacy in the lesotho context. ideological model of functional literacy literacy is an ideological concept. cook-gumperz (2006) asserts that literacy is not simply the neutral, technical skill of reading and writing but something which is embedded in social relations. it is fundamentally a social practice and is therefore ideologically bound, linked, interpreted and understood according to a certain ideology, social institutions, structures and relations of power in place in a given context (street 2014). a workplace literacy programme which is initiated to encourage workers in a particular work environment to learn, be it a new policy in the company, or a new procedure or practice, would reflect the company’s ideological needs, control and benefits (searle 2011). literacy is therefore ideologically embedded and promotes a certain way of thinking and belief system (freire & macedo 2013). according to dale and newman (2005), literacy is a political and a developmental tool. martin (2008) cites the importance of learning organisations in the promotion of ideological literacy. while the authors emphasise literacy at the workplace looking at the difference between service institutions, business or private and public services, literacies differ because they follow a certain ideology embedded in their mandates and different objectives for which the organisations or institutions are formed (roberts 2010). integrated model since 1976, the unesco’s definition of literacy has not changed much; it has remained the same albeit its modifications and additions. literacy is about development, and in its strategic planning report (2014:36), unesco takes an ‘integrated, holistic approach to literacy, recognising that it is acquired and developed throughout life via formal, non-formal and informal learning processes’. unesco recognises that: there is a continuum of literacy levels and that the minimum level of basic skills varies with individuals’ life context. notions of what constitutes a minimum threshold of functional literacy are changing as a result of progress in science and technology. (unesco, 2014) an integrated view of literacy as described by kalua (2012) and scull, nolan and raban (2013) emphasises a theory or an approach with a number of variables including literacy practices and literacy events; types of literacies and their social domains; roles and networks to provide support system; literacy as a communication tool; literacy as a cognitive thought process; values and their awareness of them and literacy in history. the integrated approach takes literacy as a social fabric. it is a holistic view. the integrated approach was postulated by paulo freire (as cited in gee 2015) when he emphasised the importance of critical awareness by learners and educators alike, the so-called action-reflection method. unesco’s (2014) plan refers to basic literacy skills, comprising reading, writing, and computing, as the foundation skills enabling people to function effectively in today’s text-mediated knowledge societies and to make informed life choices. this article focuses on the cultural aspects that are brought about by the narrative of counting livestock as a literacy tool, in other words, cultural and social uses of functional literacy. cultural and social uses of functional literacy african traditional or customary education is largely acquired through informal processes. the language behaviour, and values for individuals to become effective members of their communities are learnt through tribal legends, proverbs repeated by the fireside, and are passed on orally by the elders to the young ones. riddles, myths, idioms and folktales are repeated so that generations can know their histories and be able to relay them to the subsequent generations to come. in lesotho, such traditional practices are upheld through traditional, customary and informal education. this rich legacy of informal processes has since evolved and been adapted to other modern informal processes or socialisation. modern technology, multi-media, and social media have become informal processes that have replaced many of the oral, communal ways of transmitting knowledge, skills and attitudes. nafukho, amutabi and otunga (2006) observe that in precolonial africa, education including literacy emphasised social responsibility; job orientation; political participation and spiritual and moral values. it is, therefore, pertinent to acknowledge that african literacy was meant for a specific purpose and use – that of creating a functionally literate person, able to fulfil moral obligations including being able to provide for themselves within their surrounding environment. literacy is influenced by social, cultural, economic and political dimensions in every society and, in turn, it influences how such dimensions are structured. an example provided by breier, taetsane and sait (1996:55) of the taxi industry shows that literate and illiterate drivers must learn to ‘navigate the way through the literacies of their profession (driving)’. these informal processes are the strategies of survival in a world of varied literacies. this means that environments have literacy potential if inhabitants in such environments are willing to learn. in uganda, rogers et al. (2004:119) showed how agricultural production and entrepreneurship contributed to the functional adult literacy programmes. the authors, however, raised concerns that ‘such programmes are not based on real research into the literacy practices which are normal in the specific economic activity they advocate’. the question is why? is it because researchers are not investigating these literacy practices or literacy practitioners are not bringing them to the attention of the policy-makers? this omission remains a challenge for countries like lesotho. hence, this article is adding its voice to showcase these practices and how they should be included in the economic and social data of various countries. lesotho should follow this example of documenting these evidence-based programmes and include social and cultural uses of functional literacy in livestock management. rogers (2006) emphasised the importance of training of literacy educators (tole), in the whole equation, in elevating the platform for multi-literacies. methodology this study adopted a qualitative ‘narrative story-telling’ as a methodology in an effort to relate a life story of a mosotho man who started acquiring reading, writing and numeracy as a herd-boy and continued to explore literacy and orality through cultural and social uses throughout his life. de vos et al. (2011:313) observe that narratives or biographies construct the history of a life interpreted and analysed in such a way that the ‘subjects speak for themselves’ without necessarily representing the social and cultural work; however, the two must be brought together. narrative approaches to the study of lives reveal the extent to which these problems have been conditioned by empirical rather than narrative or biographical standards of truth and by a preoccupation with obtaining information at the expense of understanding expression (sandelowski 1991:162). the focus of this article is on the importance of the social and cultural uses of literacy, and hlalefang was selected through his conversations through story-telling with the author of this article. he happened to be known to the researcher who found some of his indigenous knowledge conversations highly educational experiences which could contribute to the indigenous knowledge system. the researcher took a special interest in writing some of his experiences. when the researcher made a decision to have hlalefang’s conversation to the next level, the researcher explained to him that he was going to write some of his conversations, and related all ethical issues to him, requesting his consent to participate. a series of unstructured open-ended questions addressing cultural and indigenous views, social uses of literacy and their influence of literacy approaches in the contemporary world were the research questions that guided the study. the interviews were done over a period of two years with hlalefang, a 52-year-old mosotho man who only went to school up to standard 4, the end of the lower primary level (setoi 2012). in his article, abiona (2006) also regards the use of story-telling, oral and narrative approach as a methodology and learning from indigenous education through the culture using animal kingdom. while his account was based on riddles, idioms and fairy-tales, he acknowledges the importance of oral narration as part of developing cultures and countries that have to be celebrated by researchers. the narrative analysis also applies where interviews relate not just to the life span but also to accounts relating to episodes and to their interconnectedness (bryman & bell 2014). the researcher analysed hlalefang’s stories iteratively, going back and forth to verify some of his narratives. his conversations were unstructured, and sometimes where contradictions arose, the researcher was able to address questions to verify the trustworthiness of his responses. he was allowed to talk about his numerous indigenous experiences as a herd-boy, a young married man and his current welfare. the researcher selected some of these experiences that were suited to the cultural and social uses, as a focus of the research. some conversations which were considered not relevant to the study, were not used in this article. the researcher took some notes as the conversations continued, and codes and themes were formulated according to their relevance to the study, and its theoretical framework. themes such as livestock literacy, weather and the clock metaphor, autonomous, ideological and integrated models were some of the themes used for the study. within a period of two years, seven interviews were held with hlalefang, where he related to childhood experiences with livestock as a herd-boy and his self-drive in literacies with livestock and time. the researcher prepared an ethical consent form for hlalefang and read it to him and explained that in research, hlalefang must consent to the processes. the ethical issues included his right to remain anonymous, confidentiality of information and the right to withdraw. findings and discussion hlalefang started his narrative by setting the background for his story. most of the findings were reported as direct interviews by hlalefang. but because they were conducted in sesotho, the researcher translated them verbatim: i used to live in the lonely mountains surrounded only by my flock of sheep, goats, cattle, horses, donkeys, mules and my guard-dogs for those four to five winter months from may to september. the whole flock sometimes was estimated at a total of 2000–3000. i did that for almost 10 years because i started at the age of 10 years. a ranch (motebo in sesotho) extends for many kilometres with rich grass for grazing, and, despite the severe cold, i was always happy to see my animals feeding well and coming back from the ranch fat and ready to be slaughtered for cultural festivities. i was proud because i knew my boss was also happy. my neighbour on another ranch was about 8 km away; your only company is your flock of animals or passers-by who would also pass after a long period of silence, except when you talk to your animals. ‘how did you count your livestock and keep a record of your estimate counts with such large numbers? how were you able to know how many cattle and sheep you have?’ the response: when you first arrive at the ranch, you must have a plan of how you [are going to] arrange your animals (flock). this includes sleeping arrangements for different types of animals. you set rules for them by arranging them accordingly. for a few days, in the beginning, that is the main task, until they know how they should assemble at the kraal (open space). animals are like people; they are taught rules and obedience. once the first task is done, others follow the course. the second task is to observe how they make friends with each other and how they determine their own order. it is most likely that there will be a pattern you easily pick up on how they relate to each other. it is these sleeping patterns that will make you realise immediately when one is missing or has changed positions. another important aspect is to know the décor [colour] of your flock. big animals especially (cows, horses and donkeys) have colours and through that one is able to know them. similarly, small animals (sheep, goats) also have their own marks which you can use to differentiate them from each other. once these basic preparations are done, after maybe the first month, then you can start counting your livestock. among all these [animals], there would also be pregnant females about to or already giving birth; the preparations include a nursing ‘mothers’ kraal. the stock-taking is therefore done monthly. after every 10 counts, you take a stone and put it in a bag; you do that after every 10 counts until when you have to say 10 stones in your bag, you know you have 100 sheep. stock-taking can take up to a week, because after sheep-counting, you have to know how many lambs there are as well. so you systematically use stones as milestones so that when the owner comes, you are able to recall the sequencing and explanations of each stone. sometimes you use different sizes of stones. if you were clever, before leaving home you bring along the exercise books and a pencil to jot down notes. if you had forgotten it at home, on the ranch, there are no shops where you can buy an exercise book and a pencil for notes. livestock literacy in use kalua’s (2012) view of the integrated approach to literacy emphasised roles, values, thought processes and awareness, individual and social histories. the planning processes that go into hlalefang’s classroom environment of animals bear testimony to an integrated model and how integrated this level of literacy has become. an order, cultural, family and caring values are maintained as he prepares his environment. functional literacy is not only about being able to function but is also about social order; it is also systematic and involves thought processes. a process of discovery postulated by paulo freire as cited in gee (2015) used ‘generative themes or words’. with livestock, herd-boys use ‘generative stones’ to count. taxi drivers breier et al. (1996) use observation, trial-and-error, apprenticeship, coaching from others and informal education processes. in the context of this article, the livestock herd-boys use similar processes and mechanisms, including generative stones in their functional and integrative approach to literacy. this study posits that such literacy concepts should be taken seriously as evidence-based approaches to literacy as unesco (2014) suggests. contrary to cardiero-kaplan’s (2002) opinion that the functional literacy approach does little to engage texts and stories critically or to engage the historical and lived contexts of [students] lives, this narrative proves that, in fact, texts and stories relate to lived contexts in primarily oral literacy. this article argues that the literacy approaches in the context of lesotho should be able to relate to what the culture can offer through livestock, weather and time issues, not primarily with reading, writing and counting, however, universal such factors may be. the challenges are not with learners but with appropriate interventions, such as curriculum design and development and whether educators are willing to use their learners’ experiences, resources, contexts and environments. if taxi drivers and herd-boys can read, write and count using materials around their professions then literacy educators should be ready to adapt and use such experiences to take literacy to the next level with the learners (breier et al. 1996). the discussion leads us to the next approach, the ideological model. weather and the clock ‘metaphor’ – cultural approach to literacy: the best time to count the flock is when animals are sleeping because one is able to go round them without movement or interruptions. at night when the moon is bright, one is able to do the counting very well. it is done with the use of the moonlight. hlalefang said he would predict weather conditions by observing and assessing the behaviour of his animals and their reaction to certain sounds, being restless or sleepless including the quietness of the night itself; sometimes his dogs’ barking denoted certain weather conditions; listening to the voices of the birds in the sky; if an intruder is nearby or in the vicinity (either a wild animal or another person). these were some of the many things (literacies) that hlalefang learnt from the rural environment. in the four month winter period, hlalefang learnt weather patterns using the rural environment, animals, and their behaviours. weather conditions are very important to the basotho and livestock in winter, as stated by the lesotho disaster management authority (2002). every year in winter, media reports are written about herd-boys killed by snow in the mountains showing that they were not aware of the weather conditions. for hlalefang, the weather is very important and is a skill that herd-boys must learn, to avoid fatalities: weather and time are important aspects of livestock management. one lives by knowing when to do things. during the day, a herd-boy will tell you what the time is by observing the direction of the sun, people’s shadows and the mountains. years after his experiences, hlalefang was still able to tell the correct time without wearing a wristwatch or looking at a clock. this article asks the question: whose ideology is literacy benchmarking? are we interpreting literacy according to its social and cultural uses or a universal ideology, according to the western culture? this article is not denying that illiteracy exists, but it interrogates the interpretation of illiteracy and the influence of ideology in the definition of literacy. the literacy weather model is being neglected by both the lesotho disaster management authority (dma) and other literacy organisations including the government of lesotho, because they are looking at literacy as being able to read and write for universal reasons, not for what herd-boys need. cardiero-kaplan (2002:375) puts it that a functionally literate person is generally considered an individual who can read and write ‘well enough to understand signs, ads, newspaper headlines, fill out job applications, make shopping lists, and write [cheques]’. this is taken from the context of the modern world and therefore, the definition falls short in that it does not really consider other literacies like that of livestock counting, and or driving literacy. unesco’s (2014) interpretation of basic literacy skills comprises reading, writing and computing, as the foundational skills enabling people to function effectively in today’s text-mediated knowledge societies and to make informed life choices. ‘unesco will, therefore, strengthen evidence-based advocacy to make a development case for investing in literacy. it will promote research to analyse aspects of literacy and its impact on education and other development agendas’ (unesco 2014:36). this article highlights the evidence-based issues raised with regard to the cultural functional literacy needed to manage livestock and understand weather and time. conclusions and recommendations for decades, research studies agreed that in lesotho women are more literate than men. the latest studies are reviewing this old paradigm to question some of the discourses. this study takes setoi’s (2012) arguments a step further regarding cultural and social literacy. the basotho should wake up to the unesco (2014) vision and call where evidence-based advocacy in cultural and social uses of literacy should be highlighted, to rectify the misperception that basotho men are not literate. as basotho, we have to question literacy ideologies that we have followed for many decades and review our own meaning of literacy in relation to social and cultural uses while still embracing the universal and contemporary forms. the literacy agenda should be brought back to the drawing board where policy-makers, researchers, literacy educators and practitioners should consider the indigenous ways of knowledge and skills embedded within the basotho literacies and primary oral communities. the basotho complacency about literacy issues should be counteracted with the awareness of their rich indigenous and cultural approaches to literacy. if basotho men can teach young herd-boys to predict severe weather conditions, snow fatalities that happen every year can be avoided. this study recommends that the lesotho dma should work with literacy organisations like the ldtc and others to develop livestock-weather-related literacy curriculum to circumvent the loss of lives for herd-boys in the winter season in lesotho. this article concludes that basotho men, particularly those in rural areas who were brought up as herd-boys, have much to offer with their indigenous knowledge and literacy skills, and this should be further researched and supported. lesotho as a country should further revisit its own definition of literacy and broaden its scope to include the multi-literacies and experiences such as the livestock and weather and time literacies. the unesco’s education strategy for 2014–2021 should be a platform used by lesotho to document its rich cultural legacy that can contribute effectively to the indigenous knowledge trajectory in the 21st century. this idea further stated that when we talk about literacy and/or functional literacy, we immediately are talking about reading and writing, a process which reorders cognitive processes and challenges primary oral communities and indigenous knowledge in oral communities (ong 1982). the study adds its voice in support of a new paradigm shift that started with setoi (2012). with new developments and demographic changes in basotho society, the country should redefine its own conception of literacy to include and document indigenous and cultural aspects in its literacy data. the study, therefore, recommends that new literacy conceptions be devised and adopted in lesotho. furthermore, the rightful space and position of literacy 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accepted: 07 nov. 2018; published: 03 dec. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: student reading challenges have been reported worldwide. in many classrooms around the world, teaching students appropriate strategy-use has been a technique used to improve comprehension and improve reading proficiency. however, strategy-use instruction per se may not produce holistic results. objectives: this article reports on an extended strategy-use instruction to improve students’ reading proficiency in a particular subject area. the technique of role-play, as well as an integration of affective strategies, was used to improve the cohort of first-year students’ reading of subject-specific texts. method: the intervention was conducted by way of tutorials. a questionnaire was used to elicit students’ views and opinions after the intervention. the responses were analysed using content analysis of emerging themes. results: students reported benefiting from the intervention with respect to reading their assigned texts, as well as increased motivation. conclusion: it is recommended that strategy-use instruction include other innovative techniques such as role-play to improve students’ reading proficiency in a specific subject. introduction an issue of concern in the south african education system is the low literacy levels of learners. reading is of great importance in education, and in particular, in academic performance. failure to develop reading proficiency at school level impacts heavily on academic performance at tertiary level (pretorius 2002). according to boakye (2011), reading challenges become glaringly evident at tertiary level, especially in the case of students who are not learning in their home language and have been disadvantaged by various socio-economic issues in south africa, such as the legacy of apartheid, inequality in education and poverty. reading challenges hinder these students’ successful academic performance, especially in disciplines such as sociology where students are required to do large volumes of reading as part of their coursework. sociology is, however, not unique in this respect; many modules at university level have the same requirement with regard to the volume of reading. the texts can be lengthy and may contain complex and technical vocabulary (roberts & roberts 2008:131). at first-year level, students are usually introduced to texts by sociologists such as emile durkheim, max weber and karl marx, all of which may seem inaccessible to students who are unable to read independently. roberts and roberts (2008:126–127) noted that sociology students tend not to do their prescribed reading because of the extent and complexity of the texts. these authors claim that avoiding reading course material prevents students from contributing in class discussions, and consequently, they underperform in the module. a similar trend was found by boakye (2017a) at the university of pretoria, south africa, where the current study was conducted. the author found that majority of first-year sociology students do not read their assigned texts. these students were experiencing reading challenges, which led to poor reading or failure to read texts. consequently high failure rates were recorded for the module (university of pretoria department of sociology 2014). although introducing compulsory tutorials reduced the failure rate, a number of students continued to complain about reading challenges (boakye 2017a). anecdotal evidence gathered from discussions with lecturers and tutors in the department of sociology confirmed that reading challenges and a lack of reader engagement with texts were some of the major factors contributing to the high rate of failure. in view of this ongoing concern, a reading intervention was undertaken with these first-year students. the intervention sought to introduce the students to a variety of reading strategies in order to improve their reading comprehension and critical reading abilities. in addition, it sought to highlight the affective dimension of reading in order to help students form personal connections to the texts they read and to their study materials in general, as well as improve their affective reading levels. the aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy of this reading intervention with respect to first-year sociology students at the university of pretoria, south africa. literature review reading literacy a number of south african reading researchers have argued that students’ poor reading ability at tertiary level is a direct result of poor reading ability at school level (howie et al. 2017; pretorius 2007; pretorius & lephalala 2011; taylor & yu 2009; van staden & bosker 2014; zimmerman 2014). studies on the teaching of reading literacy in south african primary schools reveal a number of gaps, such as low exposure to texts and poor reading instruction. for example, van staden and bosker (2014:5, 8) point out that reading skills are introduced to learners too late at school, and little time is spent on reading instruction. she reports that the majority of grade 4 teachers surveyed across the curriculum spent less than 2 hours on reading. zimmerman (2014:7), in her observations of the teaching of reading comprehension in grade 4 in a number of south african schools, found that the teaching of reading literacy is poor during the foundation phase at primary school. by the time they reach grade 4, learners have a reading comprehension backlog accumulated over previous years of schooling, and as a result grade 4 teachers have to teach at a slower pace and a lower level. of even more concern is that zimmerman (2014) found a number of teachers lacking the skills required to teach reading literacy, and particularly comprehension. consequently students are inadequately prepared to read and comprehend texts independently (zimmerman 2014:7). zimmerman and smit (2014) note similar trends in their studies and express particular concern about teachers’ poor understanding of teaching reading comprehension. in other words, they posit that a number of south african teachers do not succeed in generating the ability to comprehend reading material beyond information retrieval and do not encourage written responses (zimmerman & smit 2014:6). they also noted in their observation that successful teachers had declarative knowledge of teaching reading comprehension skills and utilised theoretical models of comprehension and a variety of reading comprehension strategies as needed in response to students’ needs (zimmerman & smit 2014:6). pretorius and klapwijk (2016) explored the literacy practices of teachers in rural and disadvantaged areas and found they did not include appropriate reading strategies. this was confirmed by boakye’s (2017a) study. her survey showed that the majority of first-year sociology students stated that reading did not receive much attention in their schools, and instruction was for a limited time and given haphazardly. the students further confirmed that deep engagement with texts was not required at school level and they found a huge gap between reading at tertiary level and reading at school level (boakye 2017a). unfortunately, very little is done at tertiary level to bridge this reading gap. as roberts and roberts (2008) have noted, sociologists expect their students to be able to read, and do not take into consideration inadequacies or challenges students may be facing because of inadequate teaching at school. at tertiary level, there has been limited research on the state of students’ academic reading ability. however, reading challenges are experienced by students all over the world. bean (2011) identifies 11 reasons for students’ reading difficulties, such as schools (and the academy) that reward surface reading; lecturers’ teaching of reading material, rather than encouraging students to work independently; students’ difficulty in engaging with unfamiliar ideas; students’ inability to critically digest the argument of a text; students’ inability to understand and engage with the text; students’ resistance to spending time on deep reading; students’ difficulty with syntax and vocabulary; students’ inability to adjust their reading strategy according to the text’s genre; and lecturers’ and authors’ assumptions that students have access to ‘cultural literacy’. these issues result in a lack of ‘deep reading’, which involves conscious engagement with a text for learning and enjoyment purposes (bean 2011:166). it also means that students do not internalise a text, an activity that roberts and roberts (2008) highlight as a mark of efficient reading. pretorius’ (2000, 2002) research, which focused on psychology and sociology students at tertiary level, suggested that students’ reading ability was in decline then, inter alia because of historical and socio-economic issues (2000:45). it seems after more than 10 years, it is still in decline (boakye 2012). she (2000:43, 2002:169) contends that low reading literacy levels are predominant among l2 learners as a result of their poor inferencing and comprehension skills, which are essential for understanding texts and engaging with them. because of these low reading literacy levels, a number of these students find it difficult to produce accurate or detailed representations of complex psychology or sociology texts (2000:45). pretorius (2000:46). concludes that a lack of interventions allows these problems to persist, giving rise to a cycle of failure. in response, the current study seeks to provide ways of addressing these challenges by means of integrated strategies and to contribute to the limited body of research on reading at tertiary level. reading strategies literature investigating the state of reading literacy in south african schools as well as the limited studies at tertiary level seem to indicate reading strategies as a focal point. according to hosseini et al. (2012:1357), if the end product of reading is comprehension, then reading strategies can be understood as the ‘quintessence of successful comprehension … at any level of processing’. appropriate use of reading strategies is important, as it plays a crucial role in assisting students to comprehend the texts they read. hosseini et al. (2012:1361) advocate for the necessity of applying reading strategies, as it has a positive effect on reading comprehension and critical thinking, especially among second language learners. in other words, utilising reading strategies helps to facilitate deep reading, deep thinking, well-rounded understanding and internalisation of texts (hosseini et al. 2012:1361–1362). while there have been several interventions to counteract the south african literacy crisis at school level, there has been limited response to how this crisis affects tertiary education studies and how it should be addressed. boakye (2017a) suggests a possible solution in terms of response theory. in her presentation of a multifaceted model for designing reading development programmes for l2 learners at tertiary level, she includes affective and social aspects (boakye 2011). she points out that university students may not necessarily have the required literacy levels, especially if coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. as a result, they often struggle to cope with required reading (boakye 2011:111). as a possible solution to this dilemma, she argues for literacy interventions that utilise an affective dimension in reading literacy instruction. this approach, she explains, encourages reader engagement through a focus on ‘motivation, attitude, interest, and self-efficacy’ (boakye 2011:111). in addition, guthrie and wigfield (2000) argue for engaged reading as, according to them, it can compensate for the effects of ‘low family income and poor educational background’. in their engagement model, guthrie and wigfield (2000) posit that deep reading and better comprehension of texts can be achieved through engagement, which can be obtained through integrated reading instruction. boakye (2011:117) adapts the model to the south african context and argues for a socio-affective approach to reading intervention. her intervention with first-year tertiary students in an academic literacy module was shown to improve students’ affective reading levels, particularly the aspect of interest, motivation to read and deeper engagement with texts (boakye 2017b:14). in addition, the intervention boosted the self-confidence of students in weak reading groups, which increased their motivation to read (boakye 2017b:15). thus, both high and low risk students were found to have improved in affective reading level and were motivated to read not only academic texts but also for pleasure. this points to the importance of reading interventions to be sensitive to socio-economic status and the affective dimension in reading literacy instruction. reading in a subject field in relation to reading texts in a specific subject, roberts and roberts (2008) investigated deep reading among sociology students and found that the majority of students do not engage in deep reading and neglect to read their course material. they highlight reasons why sociology students neglect to read their course material, and propose a possible solution to students’ apathy towards course literature. they (2008:125) argue that university students fail to read for understanding because high school education encourages regurgitation of information, rather than requiring students to find personal relevance in a text. according to bloom’s taxonomy, memorising information is the least complex educational learning objective (anderson et al. 2001). education that focuses on retention of information results in ‘surface learning based in episodic memory or short-term memorisation for a day or two, rather than deep learning that is transformative of one’s perspective and involves long-term comprehension’ (roberts & roberts 2008:127). this superficial reading is further encouraged by the academy that offers rewards for basic memorisation, further fostering a ‘simplistic cost/benefit process’ that most often results in students doing the minimum reading for the maximum output (roberts & roberts 2008:129). the authors note that while content quizzes have been suggested as a remedy for this issue, quizzes are time-consuming and ‘reinforce the rational choice approach that is part of the problem’ (roberts & roberts 2008:130). these issues are particularly true for the first-year sociology students who are the subjects of this study. in view of the issues discussed above, roberts and roberts advocate for the use of ‘reading responses’. this method requires students to read a text and summarise it or respond to it in one of several ways (roberts & roberts 2008:131–132). the various forms that a reading response can take are drawn from howard gardner’s forms of multiple intelligences in relation to bloom’s more complex educational objectives. students were assessed on their reading responses weekly while their examinations targeted ‘big ideas, analysis, synthesis, [and] evaluation’ (roberts & roberts 2008:133). results from the study showed that the sociology students read more of their coursework and actually read with purpose (roberts & roberts 2008:134). while reading responses offer a short-term reward, they introduce students to reading strategies that will hopefully shift the focus away from an emphasis on achieving grades to ‘reading for the sake of learning from it’ (roberts & roberts 2008:134). this shift in focus can perhaps be achieved because reading responses aim to incorporate an affective dimension into reading by allowing students to work in modes with which they are comfortable, such as music and visuals. while this study is relevant and achieved success, the model may not fit seamlessly into the south african context, which comprises learners from different educational and social backgrounds who possess varying competencies. another intervention of similar approach was conducted by parrott and cherry (2011) using structured reading groups to facilitate deep learning (2011). parrott and cherry (2011:354) acknowledge the difficulty in getting sociology students to engage in deep reading of their coursework texts. however, they propose a slightly different approach, which assigns students to ‘reading groups’, each of which has a different, rotating role: discussion leader, passage master, devil’s advocate, creative connector and reporter (parrott & cherry 2011:354). the groups meet throughout the semester, and before each meeting students must complete a number of readings and then prepare for the role they have been assigned (parrott & cherry 2011:354). the strategy has two underlying ideas: firstly, to encourage students to commit to deep reading, and secondly, to use the information they have engaged with for a particular purpose, such as discussing ‘hot topics’ (parrott & cherry 2011:354–355). in studying the efficacy of these reading groups, parrott and cherry (2011:360) found the method not only popular among students, but it also increased the likelihood of students reading course material, helped them to understand the texts and helped them to make connections between the information and everyday life (parrott & cherry 2011:361). in other words, the reading groups helped students achieve the course outcomes of ‘developing a deep understanding of course material, using course concepts to better understand social processes, and being able to use class information to discuss current social issues’ (parrott & cherry 2011:354–355). the reading groups also fostered a sense of accountability that motivated students to do their readings, as not doing so would mean letting the group down (parrott & cherry 2011:361). the authors also argue that this method improves upon the method previously proposed by roberts and roberts (2008) in that the work is done not individually but also in groups, which teaches teamwork skills (parrott & cherry 2011:355). a similar method was employed in this study. affective factors in reading these teaching techniques highlight the affective aspects of reading as a means of improving students’ reading comprehension. according to grabe and stoller (2011), the affective dimension is pertinent to reading comprehension as it contributes to students’ willingness to read frequently and to become involved in their reading. the affective factors focused on in this study are motivation, self-efficacy, attitude and interest. motivation is defined as ‘the individual’s personal goals, values, and beliefs with regard to the topics, processes, and outcomes of reading’ (guthrie & wigfield 2000:405). in order to increase students’ motivation, they were required to read and share their understanding, taking on different roles. bandura (1986:391) describes self-efficacy as ‘people’s judgements of their capabilities to organise and execute’ various actions in order to achieve certain goals. thus, students’ self-efficacy can be understood as how they view themselves as readers: whether they believe they are competent and successful readers or not. students’ self-efficacy levels were targeted through scaffolding of the texts to be read, as well as discussions that took place in small groups among peers where students felt comfortable to share their views. attitude can be perceived as ‘a sense of “liking” or a continuum with positive and negative extremes’ (mckenna 2001:147). mckenna (2001:147) suggests there are two parts to reading attitude, namely attitude towards reading for pleasure and attitude towards reading of academic texts. the intervention sought to instil a positive attitude towards reading of academic texts. while interest relates to two forms of curiosity, namely personal and situational, personal interest is perceived as internal and is the ‘enduring attraction to a topic even before a particular text is read’ (boakye 2017b; hidi & anderson 1992:216; schiefele, krapp & winteler 1992:152). situational interest, on the other hand, is ‘short-lived emotional states’ drawn from a particular context (hidi & anderson 1992:216). interest therefore differs from attitude and motivation, as it does not rely on particular goals or past experiences to be present in an individual (hidi & anderson 1992:216). in order to develop students’ interest, texts were subjected to lively discussion and connections were drawn between texts and students’ personal and everyday life issues. boakye (2017b:4) posits that by giving attention to these affective factors students develop the desire to read. they are able to form personal connections with the texts and enjoy reading. the cognitive outcome of the development of affective reading is the application of appropriate reading strategies, which leads to efficient reading and deeper comprehension (boakye 2017b:4; grabe & stoller 2011; guthrie 2008). this is particularly important for non-native english speakers and students from low socio-economic backgrounds who, because of limited exposure to reading materials, have low reading literacy levels and consequently become easily frustrated while reading, which causes them to develop negative attitudes towards reading (pretorius 2000). in view of the issues discussed and reading challenges of students at tertiary level, as well as the limited research on reading at tertiary level, an intervention was undertaken with sociology students to improve their reading of sociology texts, using the cognitive strategies in parrott and cherry (2011), integrated with affective strategies. the aim of the study was to assess the effect of innovatively combining cognitive and affective strategies through tutorials with a view to improving students’ reading of sociology texts. the following research questions were posed for the study: what are students’ opinions of the intervention techniques (integrated use of strategies) used during tutorials to improve their reading ability? do students’ opinions of the intervention techniques used during tutorials indicate positive outcomes? methodology research design the methodology comprised both quantitative and qualitative analysis. although data were collected through verbal means (open-ended questionnaire), the data were analysed using both qualitative and quantitative methods. verbal data were analysed using content analysis to provide percentages, and specific examples were used to support the resulting percentages. the methodology therefore comprised both quantitative and qualitative analysis. according to hsieh and shannon (2005:1278), in conventional content analysis, verbal data can be coded into categories and then described using statistical analysis. they state that this approach is referred to by morgan (1993) ‘as quantitative analysis of qualitative data’ (hsieh & shannon 2005:1278). they point out that such a design would aim to describe a phenomenon, in which researchers would avoid using preconceived categories but rather allow categories to flow from the data. participants the participants were first-year sociology students at the university of pretoria. the students were registered for various programmes in different faculties. only a limited number of students proceed to major in sociology; the majority take sociology as an ancillary subject at first-year level. although they had lectures twice a week in a large group, they also had to attend a 1 h tutorial consisting of about 20–25 students once a week to discuss texts and topics taught during lectures. the tutorials were conducted by postgraduate students who had taken sociology as a major subject or obtained a high mark for their first-year sociology exam. a workshop was conducted to train tutors in the integrated instructional approach of the intervention. although 425 students were registered for the first-year sociology module, only 254 completed the questionnaire. other students may not have attended tutorials during the week of data collection or may have opted not to complete the questionnaire because it was voluntary. intervention and research instrument the intervention was organised around prescribed texts. the first semester sociology course comprised readings on emile durkheim, max weber and karl marx. in previous years, tutors merely attempted to explain the texts to the students during tutorials. during the intervention, excerpts were taken from sections of these readings. students were divided into groups, and the group leader had to assign a role to each member. the different roles were first explained by the tutor to the group as a whole. depending on his or her assigned role, a student had to summarise the text in his or her own words, find meanings of unfamiliar words and concepts, or connect the text to everyday life issues. during tutorials, students engaged with the texts, with each member contributing according to his or her assigned role in a non-threatening environment. each group then presented to the whole class, followed by a class discussion of the texts, with the tutor providing positive feedback to guide the students. the intervention lasted for 12 weeks and came to an end when the tutorial sessions for the semester ended. at the end of the intervention, students’ opinions and experiences of the intervention were elicited by means of a questionnaire. the questionnaire consisted of a likert scale section that focused on specific issues and an open-ended section that aimed to determine students’ opinions on the intervention. the open-ended section, which is reported on in this article, required students to comment on and explain how the tutorials and the role-play reading activities influenced their: (1) reading of sociology texts; (2) understanding of concepts; (3) writing of sociology assignments; and (4) writing the sociology examination. they were also asked to provide any additional comments they wished to make regarding the intervention. data collection and procedure during the first week of the second semester, the questionnaire was administered during tutorials to elicit students’ opinions and experiences of the techniques used to facilitate comprehension of the texts during the first semester. ethical requirements were complied with. in addition to obtaining ethical approval from the faculty of humanities, students were assured of anonymity. they were alerted to the fact that their participation was voluntary, and they had to sign an informed consent form to indicate their willingness to participate. data analysis students’ verbal responses to the open-ended questions were analysed using emerging themes. the categories or themes therefore emerged from the data, as explained by hsieh and shannon (2005). the predominant themes were first identified and coded. they were then counted, calculated and presented as percentages to show their predominance. some questions were not answered by some of the students, so although there were 254 students the total number of answers for each question was different. for each question: (1) reading of sociology texts; (2) understanding of concepts; (3) writing of sociology assignments; and (4) writing the sociology examination – predominant themes were identified and counted. the total for each of the five emerging themes in each question was calculated as a percentage. in other words, the number of times a specific theme occurred was divided by the number of students who had answered that question and multiplied by one hundred. the major themes in the responses were identified as follows: (a) the techniques helped students to understand what they read, even difficult concepts; (b) the group discussions in particular were helpful; (c) the mind-map and role-play activities aided understanding; (d) students initially struggled with the assigned readings but the tutorial activities helped them overcome the challenges; (e) the intervention was not helpful; (f) students were still having difficulty with reading the texts. question 5 required students to provide any other information they wished to add. in presenting the findings, examples for each theme or category are provided from the data (hsieh & shannon 2005:1279). thus, in addition to the percentages, verbal examples are provided to shed more light on the predominant emergent themes. ethical consideration ethical clearance was applied for, and obtained from the faculty of humanities, university of pretoria, south africa. findings and discussion the results are presented below according to the questions (1 to 5) and the themes (a to f) that emerged under each question. a summary of the data showing the responses as percentages is provided in table 1. thereafter, the responses showing the emergent themes for each question are presented in figures 1–5. figure 1: student responses to question 1 as percentages. figure 2: student responses to question 2 as percentages. figure 3: student responses to question 3 as percentages. figure 4: student responses to question 4 as percentages. figure 5: students responses to question 5 as percentages. table 1: emergent themes and responses as percentage from the results given in table 1, it is clear that a large majority of students (q1: 91%; q2: 90%; q3: 90%; q4: 93%) experienced the intervention as positive and felt it assisted them with their sociology classwork. less than 10% (i.e. 7%) of the responses for questions 1 to 4 were negative. the few students who gave negative responses indicated that the intervention was not helpful and that they were still experiencing reading challenges. unfortunately for the fifth question, where students were to provide further information, a large number of students (more than 70%) did not provide any information. the responses to each question are presented graphically and discussed. figures 1–5 show the responses as a percentage according to the emerging themes. although an overwhelming majority of students gave positive responses, there were a few negative responses. for example, in question 1, only 4.12% of students indicated that they were still having difficulty with the reading of their texts; and 1.62% indicated that they did not find the intervention helpful. however, compared to the positive responses regarding the benefits of the intervention (91%), the negative responses were very few and did not reflect the overall assessment of the intervention. nevertheless, the fact that these responses were present calls for an investigation to determine what problem(s) this specific group of students could have. the few students (2.88%) who did not find the intervention beneficial and who reported that they were still struggling with their assigned reading could be students who had done very little reading in their home language or in english. they may have come from low socio-economic backgrounds and may have attended poorly resourced schools where there was no focus on reading development. as a result, they may have had limited exposure to texts, which could have led to their still facing challenges in reading despite the intervention. a similar trend was found in the responses for all the questions. responses that did not match any of these major trends were placed in the non-category classification. as indicated in the previous section, the answers to the five questions suggested that the intervention generally produced a positive outcome. the responses to the individual questions are discussed below. in question 1, students were asked to comment on and explain how the tutorials and role-play activities assisted them in their reading of sociology texts. the majority of students (91%) reported that the tutorials helped them understand sociology concepts and the assigned readings. a quarter of the students reported that being taught reading strategies during tutorials was extremely helpful. some students stated that the tutorials helped them to understand and use appropriate reading strategies, realise the benefit of summarising texts that they read and enabled them to relate the texts to the real world. others said that the intervention ‘helped [them] grow as a reader and a student’. less than 10% of respondents found they did not derive adequate benefit from the tutorials. some of these students were negative towards sociology as a compulsory module, rather than the intervention itself, while other negative comments generally expressed frustration at the volume of reading that had to be done or the academic nature of the tutorials. with nearly 80% of all respondents reporting that the intervention had a positive outcome, we can conclude that, according to the students’ reports, the intervention had a positive influence on improving students’ reading of academic (sociology) texts, which had, until then, been a challenging task for the majority of them. a similar trend was found in the responses to questions 2, 3 and 4. in the responses to question 2, (‘comment on and explain how the tutorials and the role-play reading activities assisted you in understanding sociology concepts’), 90% of the students responded positively. in addition, more than half of the respondents reported that the tutorials helped to develop their understanding of texts. some students said that the tutorials helped them put sociology concepts into their own words, which allowed them to grasp the meaning easily and helped them to remember the concepts better. others also indicated that the group discussions meant that others offered examples of how the concepts worked in real life, which helped facilitate a deeper understanding of the concepts. a student who indicated that she was still struggling reported that, while the readings still seemed difficult, if she applied what had been taught in tutorials, she felt that she would have found it easier to engage with the concepts and the reading of the texts. when asked in question 3 how the tutorials and role-play activities assisted with writing sociology assignments, 90% reported overwhelming success. less than 1% of all respondents said that the tutorials did not help. students frequently praised the tutors who helped them with structure and organisation. they also explained that the assignments were ‘fun’ as they felt confident in using their own ideas as well as the ideas generated by the debates that took place during tutorials. some responses are given below: ‘[the assignment] was fun to write and [it gave] a great platform to express opinions in answering the question. the debates in tutorials were also helpful.’ (s1, female) ‘[the assignment] was easy because we developed a sense of working together.’ (s2, female) ‘i was able to write more and faster because i understood.’ (s3, male) ‘this has been a challenge for me, but i am improving. the activities in tutorials are really helpful.’ (s4, female) similar trends were found in the responses to question 4, which required students to comment and explain how the intervention assisted them in writing the first semester sociology examination. a large number of students commented that they could recall relevant examples and ideas easily because these had been thoroughly discussed during tutorials. others noted the value of doing the readings before the exam as it helped contextualise and reinforce the class content and tutorial activities. a slight downside to the responses is that a few students reported that they were still struggling and others indicated that the tutorials did not help, as they continued to struggle until the end. this may suggest that students who perceived the intervention negatively at first perhaps saw the value of the intervention at the end of the semester. it further suggests that intervention is a process and outcomes are gradual but eventually beneficial. some students’ responses to question 4 are given below: ‘it was difficult if you did not attend tutorials. tutorials helped me a lot.’ (s5, female) ‘i gained a lot of knowledge that i used in the exam.’ (s6, female) ‘tutorials helped me understand all the questions.’ (s7, male) ‘i was able to write a proper essay that earned me good marks. eventually difficult ideas became clearer.’ (s8, female) in question 5, students were asked to give additional comments. unfortunately, 70% of students did not respond. however, the majority of the students who responded gave positive feedback. there were a few students who commented that they were still having some difficulty in reading their assigned texts. the specific comments included difficulty with understanding concepts, as well as the level of language and the length of the readings. nevertheless, the majority commented that they had improved while others explained that the activities and discussions during tutorials had resulted in their forming a bond with their tutorial group members and the tutor, which encouraged them and enabled them to persevere in reading the assigned texts, to participate in class activities and to write assignments. this social aspect of reading seems to have played an important role in their motivation and reading development. according to research, social literacy develops motivation and contributes to reading improvement (chinn, anderson & waggoner 2001; mcrae & guthrie 2009). others commented that they had come to appreciate the ability to read and that the tutorials were a key factor in improving their reading proficiency. others added that the intervention could be extended to include tutorial study groups during examination period: ‘tutorials are the best method of learning.’ (s9, female) ‘i would be failing if it wasn’t for the tutorials.’ (s10, female) ‘the readings become interesting because of the discussions and applications to real life.’ (s11, female) ‘sociology texts are easy to understand when one chooses to work on them.’ (s12, male) considering the high percentage of students who responded positively to the intervention, who indicated that the intervention was helpful and that it helped them to improve in various ways, it can be concluded that the integrated approach to reading of subject-specific texts was successful. students stated that the strategies they were taught and the role-play improved their reading, and to quote one of them, ‘helped [us] grow as readers’. according to hosseini et al. (2012) and other reading researchers, such as guthrie (2008) and anderson (2003:1), appropriate use of strategies enhances reading comprehension and ensures success in learning. the use of appropriate strategies enabled students to approach difficult and often complex texts in a way that demystified the texts. scaffolding of the texts could also have contributed in making them easier to understand. the use of role-play made the students read their texts and they seemed to have done so with a positive attitude, as they wanted to perform their roles successfully. parrott and cherry (2011) found a similar motivation for the students in their study, as they read their text in order not to disappoint their peers during the role-play. according to grabe and stoller (2011) and guthrie and wigfield (2000), when students are motivated, they are willing to read even difficult texts and make an effort to understand them. thus the students seemed to have applied deep reading in an effort to understand and be able to contribute to group discussions. this led to the majority of students reporting better understanding of texts and concepts. robert and robert (2008) and parrott and cherry (2011) found that when given reading responsibilities for group discussions, students did their reading in order not to disappoint the group. in addition, because of the discussions that ensued in the groups, more meaning and insights were given with regard to the texts by various students in the group, resulting in the majority of students understanding the texts better. on the affective dimension, students reported that it was fun and enjoyable. these affective aspects contributed to increasing students’ willingness to read and do so deeply. according to grabe and stoller (2011) and guthrie (2008), high motivation and interest in addition to a positive attitude propel students to read and to read frequently to obtain the benefits thereof. it is therefore recommended that a reading intervention at tertiary level target the reading of subject-specific texts using an integrated approach to help improve students’ comprehension of texts and concepts, as well as their affective reading levels. conclusion considering that a number of first-year students face challenges in reading, and in particular reading texts in their subject field because of inadequacies at school level, interventions have become necessary to help these students improve their reading of academic texts. an intervention was introduced to improve first-year sociology students’ reading of sociology texts, which were dense, complex and contained many difficult concepts. the intervention focused on innovative techniques such as role-play and other activities that integrated cognitive and affective teaching techniques. students worked in groups during tutorials and took on different roles when engaging with texts. questionnaires completed by students after the 12-week intervention showed that the majority had benefited from the intervention. in relation to each question, seven themes were identified: (1) better understanding of concepts and the assigned reading materials; (2) the tutorials and group discussions were helpful; (3) mind maps, role-play and other strategies helped with understanding; (4) challenges and difficulties were experienced but understanding improved towards the end of the semester; (5) students still had difficulty with comprehension and were still facing huge challenges; (6) they did not find the tutorial helpful. whereas less than 5% reported challenges and difficulty even after the intervention, the majority (91%) reported improvements in their reading as a result of the intervention. therefore, combining affective and cognitive techniques with innovative activities helped to improve students’ reading of academic texts that they had hitherto found very challenging. although students overwhelmingly agreed on the positive effect of the intervention techniques used in tutorials to improve their reading comprehension, no follow-up test was performed to confirm these positive outcomes. it would be beneficial for a follow-up study to include a preand post-test of students’ reading comprehension in order to compare these with the results from the present survey. acknowledgements the authors thank the students, tutors and lecturers of the sociology department for making this research possible. the research was supported by a competitive support for unrated researchers grant from the national research foundation. competing interests the author declares that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contribution n.a.y.b. was responsible for conceptualising the title of the manuscript and collecting and analysing the data. m.m.l. was responsible for the introduction and presentation of data and graphs. both authors were responsible for the literature review, 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from the pirls 2006 in south africa’, south african journal of education 34(3), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.15700/201409161101 abstract introduction balanced reading instruction research design and methods findings and discussions conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) deborah k. namugenyi department of teacher education and development studies, kyambogo university, kampala, uganda citation namugenyi, d.k., 2019, ‘balanced reading instruction for improving teachers’ instruction of reading comprehension to runyankole-english bilingual children’, reading & writing 10(1), a205. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.205 original research balanced reading instruction for improving teachers’ instruction of reading comprehension to runyankole-english bilingual children deborah k. namugenyi received: 22 apr. 2018; accepted: 15 may 2019; published: 12 dec. 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: reading comprehension is a challenge among bilingual children. reading comprehension difficulties are likely to be attributed to the strategies teachers use during their instruction of reading to these children. objectives: in light of this, the purpose of this study was to establish the effectiveness of a balanced reading instruction programme in empowering teachers with strategies for improving their instruction of reading comprehension in both the native language and english. method: qualitative participatory action research was used in the design and implementation of the balanced reading instruction programme. participants were four grade 3 teachers as direct participants and 40 children as indirect participants in ‘nkps’ (pseudonym) primary school, mbarara municipality, uganda. data was collected through focus group interviews, observation, document analysis, and a researcher’s reflective journal. data was collected in accordance to the participatory action research cyclic process through which the programme was implemented. results: results showed that teachers’ participation in the balanced reading instruction programme empowered them with better strategies such as phonics instruction and formulating carefully graded questions on different texts, to teach reading comprehension first in children’s native language (runyankole) and then in english. conclusion: the study being action-oriented and working in collaboration with teachers in one single school offers its conclusions from the findings to be transferred to similar contexts. it is recommended that a large-scale intervention should be conducted for improving teachers’ instruction of reading comprehension to bilingual children. keywords: balanced reading instruction; reading comprehension; bilingual children; runyankole; participatory action research. introduction the native language and english are taught concurrently to ugandan children aged 6–8 years in lower primary classes (grade 1–3). this is done to ensure that the literacy skills attained in the native language will help children learn english as a second language (national curriculum development centre, ncdc 2007). the instruction of the two languages is in accordance with the language policy of uganda that states: community languages/local languages should be used as a medium of instruction from primary one to primary four (6–9 years), with english being taught as a subject in these classes. thereafter, from primary five to primary seven (10–12 years), english should be used as a medium of instruction and taught as a subject as well. the community languages should be taught as a subject in these classes. english language would continue to be used as a medium of instruction at the levels of education in uganda (secondary schools and tertiary institutions. (uganda government 1992:15–17) thus, the lower primary (grade 1 to 3) school curriculum is designed such that teachers ought to engage children in various reading activities when teaching the native language and english. these activities include associating words with pictures, completing pictures and words, reading and completing sentences, reading and comprehending different texts, reading and describing different texts (garton & pratt 1998; ncdc 2007). it is through these activities that children are expected to acquire different literacy skills to excel in their academic subjects at school, as well as for lifelong learning. such skills include decoding skills, comprehension skills and skills for critical analysis of texts (barrat-pugh & rohl 2000). in spite of the teachers’ engagement with children in different reading activities in both their native language and english, children’s literacy levels at primary three level (grade 3) have remained low in both the native language and english. the national assessment of progress in education (nape) report (2011) indicated that the literacy levels of primary three children have remained low, particularly reading comprehension (uganda national examination board, uneb 2011). the nape report pointed out that the low levels of literacy were attributed to children’s difficulties in comprehending what they read in standardised stories in either their native language or english. in addition, children experienced challenges in describing what they read in the standardised stories which were an indicator of reading comprehension difficulty. the findings are illustrated in figure 1. figure 1: children’s proficiency in reading comprehension in english and native language. the uneb (2011) asserts that children’s reading comprehension difficulties are probably attributable to inappropriate instructional strategies employed by teachers when teaching reading. in addition, the unesco (2014) report on teachers’ issues in uganda pointed out that the reading comprehension difficulties among uganda bilingual children could be attributed to teachers’ lack of sufficient pedagogical skills and classroom practices. these views imply that teachers’ inappropriate instructional strategies of reading could be a major cause of reading comprehension challenges among bilingual children. therefore, the researcher was compelled to investigate, design, adapt and implement a balanced reading instruction programme as an intervention to empower teachers with instructional strategies that could improve their instruction of reading comprehension in both the native language and english. the study was directed by the research question: how do teachers respond to the balanced reading instruction programme? balanced reading instruction balanced reading instruction is a comprehensive strategy whereby children are taught explicitly, systematically and consistently how to understand the structure of language, as well as construct meaning from different texts. in balanced reading instruction, children’s phonemic awareness skills, decoding skills and comprehension skills are developed (kelly 1997; zygouris-coe 2001). balanced reading instruction comprises phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, vocabulary knowledge and comprehension (learning first alliance 2000; zygouris-coe 2001). phonological awareness is concerned with the development of awareness of sounds of language. it involves identification and manipulation of sound structures in the spoken word of a particular language (garton & pratt 1998; joubert, bester & meyer 2013). children ought to learn the correspondences between the individual sounds of language, the phonemes and the letters that represent the sounds if they are to master the reading and writing processes (garton & pratt 1998). phonemic awareness is part of phonological awareness which is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words and is linked directly to phonics which relates to letters they represent (chou, wang & ching 2012). alphabet knowledge is concerned with recognising and naming letters, both upper and lower case, and knowing the sounds they represent. learners need to know the sounds that are associated with each letter or with groups of letters. they also need to know that sounds map onto the printed letters (antonacci & o’callaghan 2004). direct instruction of alphabet knowledge in the early grades has proven to prevent reading difficulties among children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds (foorman et al. 1998). vocabulary knowledge encompasses understanding the breadth and the depth of vocabulary. the breadth of vocabulary refers to the number of words the reader knows, while the depth of vocabulary refers to the multiple presentations of known words (proctor et al. 2009). good vocabulary supports the development of reading comprehension, whereas too many unknown words in a given text disrupt reading for comprehension (oakhill & cain 2004). comprehension is a process in which a reader chunks words into phrases and selectively recalls ideas in individual sentences, understands or infers relationships in terms of what is actually happening when a reader comprehends (irwin 2007). comprehension occurs at word, sentence and passage levels; children must decode and know the meaning of words in order to comprehend what they read (manset-williamson & nelson 2005). for children to read and comprehend a given text, they need to decode and recognise by sight the words in the text, understand the meaning of the words and sentences, relate the meaning of sentences to the text, activate and use prior knowledge to infer meaning and understanding and continually monitor their understanding of the text (mc naughton & mc naughton 2012). harvey (2013) asserts that for primary school students to comprehend what they read, they need to engage in activities for vocabulary development with regard to word identification, decoding and comprehension. they should also be taught reading comprehension strategies such as predicting, visualising, making inferences, activating prior knowledge and summarising ideas in the text. au (2006) argues that when teaching learners from diverse language backgrounds, teachers should use explicit instruction of comprehension strategies. this explicit instruction should include teacher-directed instruction, explicit explanation which involves telling students exactly what they are to learn and why, modelling or demonstrating how strategies are carried out, guided practice, independent application of strategies and rich literature experiences (au 2006; manset-williamson & nelson 2005). torgesen (2005) contends that an intervention such as balanced reading instruction requires that teachers are well-trained and experienced in order to effectively implement the intervention measures incorporated in the programme. as teachers implement the balanced reading instruction, they should give intensive, explicit instruction on a daily basis for 20 to 45 min to enable children to make steady and significant progress in their reading comprehension (pikulski 1997; zygouris-coe 2001). wharton-macdonald, pressley and mistretta (1998) point out that during the implementation of the balanced reading instruction, teachers need to make use of small, ability-group instruction. small group instruction assists teachers to give learners opportunities for practice as well as receiving immediate feedback from them (pikulski 1997). torgesen (2005) asserts that researchers who design and implement an effective reading instruction intervention ought to take into consideration the need for well-trained and experienced teachers who are persistent in their efforts not to leave any child behind. the above literature directed the design and implementation of the balanced reading instruction for this study. the researcher adapted and incorporated components of the balanced reading instruction and instructional strategies in the programme for the study. the strategies included phonics instruction, explicit instruction of reading comprehension on a daily basis, small group instruction, modelling, guided practice, teacher’s modelling or scaffolding, literacy engagement and story book reading. activities for sound recognition and vocabulary development were included in the programme for this study. development and usage of materials such as cut-out letters from cardboard boxes and teacher-made texts were also incorporated in the programme. through participatory action research (par) the study aimed to establish the effectiveness of the balanced reading instruction programme in equipping teachers with strategies that could enable them to improve their instruction of reading comprehension to bilingual children in both the native language (runyankole) and english. research design and methods this study used a critical qualitative research paradigm to investigate the balanced reading instruction programme for improving teachers’ instruction of reading comprehension of bilingual children in the context of uganda. neuman (2003) asserts that critical qualitative researchers work in collaboration with participants primarily to reflect on and improve the phenomenon under study in its natural setting. this research paradigm aimed to obtain participants’ views, opinions, behaviours and understanding of the phenomenon through the use of focus group interview discussions, direct observation and document data (creswell 2014). in this study, teachers’ instruction of reading comprehension in both runyankole and english was the phenomenon addressed through the balanced reading instruction programme. the critical qualitative approach enabled the researcher to understand teachers’ instructional practices of reading comprehension in their natural settings which were the classroom context and the school. the approach made it possible for the researcher to work together with teacher participants to design, adapt, implement, reflect and evaluate the balanced reading instruction programme with regard to teachers’ improvement of their instruction of reading comprehension in the native language (runyankole) and english. participatory action research was employed in this study. this research is an interactive process with an action-reflection cycle. the researcher and the participants jointly identify the problem in their practice and plan, implement and reflect. then they evaluate the action in order to improve their knowledge and practice (eliana, milenkiewicz & bucknam 2008). the par action-reflection cycle process begins with identifying or diagnosing the problem, planning for change or action, acting and observing the processes and consequences of change, reflecting on these processes and consequences, re-planning, acting and observing again, reflecting again and evaluating (kemmis & mctaggart 2007; mc niff & whitehead 2002). as researchers engage themselves in the par cycles, they improve their knowledge and understanding and implement the change in accordance with data findings (eliana et al. 2008). pain, whitman and milledge (2007) assert that par as an action research is driven by: a democratic model in which people can produce, own and use knowledge, participants who have a stake in the phenomenon being researched, participants’ collaboration and working together at every stage of research and result-oriented action or improvement. the primary objective of par is to leave its participants motivated and energised in order to act on the modified change or improvement. this is done through involving participants in the study that enables them to improve on their practice. researchers of par also focus on investigating the phenomenon under study within its natural setting, for instance the school or community (eliana et al. 2008). kemmis and taggart (2007) state that the success of par is not whether the participants have faithfully followed the cycles but rather whether they have obtained a strong and authentic sense of development and progress or improvement in their practices. with the par process in mind, the researcher worked in collaboration with the education officer, mbarara municipality and head teachers of primary schools and identified ‘nksp’ (pseudonym) primary school where the native language (runyankole) and english were taught to children of lower primary classes. as a result, the issues of teacher’s instructional strategies of reading comprehension in both languages would be easily represented in this setting. in addition, the school was specifically selected as its children come from families of low economic status who engage in subsistence farming. it is therefore difficult for the parents in this school to adequately provide the conventional reading materials to their children, hence requiring inventive programmes to address reading comprehension gaps. the teacher participants of this study were also from ‘nksp’ primary school. four grade 3 teachers were purposively selected on the recommendation of the head teacher of the same school. the teachers were specifically chosen because they were teaching reading to children of primary three. these teachers had also had experience in teaching reading to children of lower primary classes, and thus could understand and articulate the views and opinions on teaching reading comprehension in both the native language and english. forty grade 3 children were also selected in this study as indirect participants because they were the children being taught by the four teachers. the researcher preferred to use primary three teachers with their children because it is in this class that teachers are expected to teach a variety of comprehension strategies to children. thereafter children could use the strategies to comprehend texts in different story books as well as be able to read fluently (antonacci & o’callaghan 2004). the balanced reading instruction programme was implemented in relation to the action-reflection cyclic process of par for a period of 24 weeks. the first phase of par is identification of the problem (week one). during this phase the researcher made exploratory visits to the school as the study context. in these visits she sought permission from the head teacher to gain access to the school and the participants. the head teacher signed the consent form as evidence to allow the researcher to conduct the study in the school. the teachers also signed consent forms in agreement to participate in the study. through the focus group interview session, the researcher in collaboration with the teacher participants sought to find out the specific challenges of reading comprehension among bilingual children. during the session, teachers’ responses clearly brought out they had instructional gaps, in particular in teaching reading comprehension, as one of the major causes of reading comprehension challenges for bilingual children in this study. the second phase of par (planning for change and action), which lasted for 1 week, dealt with designing the balanced reading instruction programme as an intervention. this programme was to address teachers’ instruction gaps in the teaching of reading comprehension to bilingual children. in this phase, teachers and the researcher analysed and discussed in detail each of the components of the balanced reading instruction that the researcher explored from the literature. these components were: explicit instruction of phonological awareness, alphabet principle, vocabulary development and comprehension. they then discussed the strategies that would be incorporated in the programme to include: phonics instruction, guided reading practice, reading aloud, extensive reading practice, small group instruction, teacher modelling or scaffolding, literacy engagement and ongoing assessment (chou et al. 2012; kelly 1997; zygouris-coe 2001). thereafter, the researcher and teacher participants adapted the components and strategies and designed the balanced reading instruction programme that the participants could use to improve their instruction of reading comprehension in both runyankole and english. table 1: biographical information of teacher participants. the third phase of par (action and observe) involved explicit instruction using the adapted strategies and activities in the balanced reading instruction programme. the purpose of phase three was to utilise the content and strategies of the programme in the instruction of reading comprehension to bilingual children in the classroom context. since teachers’ responses in phase one of par indicated that they had gaps in the instruction of reading comprehension, it was decided that the researcher would conduct interactive professional development sessions. the participants participated in sessions that emphasised the explicit instruction of alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness instruction, vocabulary development instruction, comprehension instruction and the development of reading materials and activities. the sessions were purposely conducted in order to equip teachers with strategies to teach the fundamentals of reading comprehension, as well as comprehension strategies. for instance, teachers obtained phonics instruction as a strategy to teach sounds of the alphabet and phonological awareness. in addition, they acquired the skills to make reading materials such as cut-out letter cards and syllables from strips of cardboard boxes obtained from the school surroundings as well as teacher-made texts. in the case of reading comprehension, the teacher participants attained the skill of inculcating comprehension strategies among children, as well as construction of carefully graded questions. after the interactive professional development sessions, it was acknowledged that intensive explicit instruction should be conducted in runynkole before being introduced to english. this phase took a period of 21 weeks. the teachers and researcher collaboratively decided to devote 15 weeks to the instruction of runyankole as it was the medium of instruction and the first language of the participants. in addition, teachers’ mastery of the instruction of reading comprehension in their first language would support them to effectively teach comprehension in english (cummins 2005). in the period of 15 weeks teachers systematically carried out their instruction from the alphabet principle to comprehension in small groups of 10 children for 1 h on a daily basis (chou et al. 2012; torgesen 2005). in the last six weeks, teachers concentrated on teaching reading comprehension in english while using the same components and strategies of the programme. the fourth phase of par dealt with the evaluation of the balanced reading instruction programme. since the methodology of this par was critical qualitative in nature, in collaboration with the teacher participants, the researcher reflected on and evaluated the programme. this phase was done in the last week of the implementation of the programme. the purpose of the evaluation phase was to establish the effectiveness of the programme towards improving teachers’ instruction of reading comprehension to bilingual children in both runyankole and english. data was collected at every phase of the implementation of the programme. focus group interviews were utilised to collect information from teacher participants. the sessions were guided by a focus group discussion guide that comprised open-ended questions (krueger 2002). focus group interviews are structured as small group interviews focusing mainly on interviewing people who are similar in some way and collecting information on a particular topic under study. emphasis is put on respondents’ insights, responses and opinions during the focus interview sessions (program development and evaluation 2000). krueger (2002) advances that the participants for focus group interviews should range from 5 to 10 people per group, carefully recruited and of similar type who can bring out in-depth information about a specific topic. patton (2002) states that focus group interviewing aims at gathering high-quality information in a social context where people can consider their own views in the context of the views of others on a specific research topic. he further advances that focus group interview sessions, if well conducted, have advantages that include: enhancing data quality through interactions among participants, quick assessment of a relatively consistent shared view of a great diversity of views, cost-effective data that is collected from a number of people at a specific time and enjoyment of sessions by participants. three focus group interviews were conducted with grade 3 class teachers as participants of this study. the first session was conducted in the planning for change and action stage of the programme. the researcher led the session while guiding the teachers to focus on identifying the current strategies they use in teaching reading comprehension to bilingual children and their effects on children’s reading comprehension. the outcomes of the focus interview session became the basis on which the researcher and the teacher participants discussed and adapted the balanced reading instruction programme. the second focus group interview session was conducted in the action and observe cycle which dealt with the implementation of the planned strategies, materials and activities in the programme and its impact on the teachers’ instruction of reading comprehension to bilingual children. the participants’ views assisted the researcher to get feedback on the progress of the programme in improving teachers’ instruction and its effects on children’s reading comprehension. this interview session enabled the researcher to gather high-quality information from the participants in an interactive and relaxed context (patton 2002). the discussion sessions were video recorded and then transcribed. the third group focus interview session was conducted in the evaluation cycle purposely to gather information on the effectiveness of the balanced reading instruction programme in empowering teachers with strategies for improving their instruction of reading comprehension in both the native language (runyankole) and english. this is in agreement with patton (2002) who states that a focus group interview is one of the strategies researchers could use to obtain participants’ perceptions to evaluate the outcomes and impact of research projects. conducting focus group interviews could be a challenge to researchers in that time for a particular individual to respond can be restrained. further, the number of questions asked could be restricted in the group setting. it is also likely that the individuals whose viewpoint is a minority perspective may not be inclined to speak up and risk negative reactions (patton 2002). therefore, to address these challenges in this study, the researcher played the role of a moderator and mediated the discussions. she made sure the discussions were not dominated by one or two participants. each participant was given an opportunity to freely express their opinions on the question under discussion. the researcher also used four questions per group interview session discussion in order to provide time for the teachers to freely express their views, opinions and ideas (krueger 2002; patton 2002). in addition to the data collected from the focus group interviews, the researcher observed a number of lessons in which the balanced reading instruction programmes was explicitly applied in the instruction of reading comprehension to children in their native language (runyankole) and english. kawulich (2005) defines observation as a systematic description of events, behaviours and artefacts in the social setting chosen for the study. patton (2002) points out that observation as a date collection strategy assists researchers: to describe the study setting, the activities carried out and people and participants’ perspectives on the study question. opie (2004) points out that when using the observation strategy, the observer can either be a participant or a non-participant. in the case of observer as participant, there is interaction with those being observed but the observer does not take part in the activities in which they are engaged. a non-participant observer does not interact with those being observed. in this study, the researcher was a participant observer as teachers taught different aspects of reading compression to children in runyankole and english. while playing the role of the observer as a participant, she listened to interactions between the teachers and children as they explicitly utilised the strategies and activities in the programme. she also listened to children’s responses as they participated in oral and written activities (wajnryb 1992). in addition, the researcher wrote her observations as field notes in a reflective journal. the lessons she observed were videotaped. however, her activities during the observation (such as videotaping and taking notes as field notes) were made known to the class teachers and children. the observations of different lessons assisted the researcher to obtain first-hand information on teachers’ participation in the teaching and learning context. opie (2004) points out that observation can be challenged by observer interpretation, is time consuming and thus detrimental to researchers. in the case of this study, the lessons observed were videotaped in order to check against observer bias and misinterpretation. owen (2014) points out that document analysis deals with analysing documents in order to gather information on a particular subject under study. in this study, the documents from which information was gathered about the effectiveness of the balanced reading instruction programme for teachers included lesson plan books, children’s activity books and assessment sheets. teachers’ lesson plans were analysed in order to obtain feedback on their preparations and usage of strategies and activities as planned in the different phases of the balanced reading instruction programme. analysis of children’s activity books and assessment sheets provided data on feedback about teachers’ instruction of the aspects of reading comprehension. data from the documents was used to corroborate data from observation and focus group interviews in order to increase the credibility of the findings (bowen 2009; owen 2014). bowen (2009) further asserts that documents can be an effective strategy to collect data when events can no longer be observed or the respondents have forgotten the details of the events. in this study, document analysis was used to triangulate data collected through observation, focus group interviews and the researcher’s reflective journal. in so doing, potential biases that could have arisen from using one data collection strategy were decreased, which increased the credibility of the study (bowen 2009). nonetheless, document analysis can be a challenge to the researcher in terms of being time consuming when the documents are collected, reviewed and analysed (bowen 2009). in this study, the researcher addressed this challenge by working in collaboration with teachers and identified ways of keeping and maintaining children’s activity books and assessment sheets throughout the period of 24 weeks for the study. this assisted the researcher and teacher participants to track the children’s feedback in regard to teachers’ improvement in their instruction of reading comprehension in both runyankole and english. for instance, children’s assessment records were filed and kept by teachers. children’s activity books were kept by teachers in the teachers’ cupboards and were distributed to children at the time of the lessons and thereafter collected. these methods thus made it easier for the teachers to retrieve and collect the documents at the end of the study. data was also collected using a researcher’s reflective journal. the data collected in the reflective journal included the researcher’s reflections on the entire process of the implementation of the balanced reading instruction programme. it also contained notes on reflective sessions held at different phases of the programme. in these reflective sessions the researcher and teacher participants shared their views on strategies well utilised in the instruction, challenges faced and how they were dealt with by adapting the programme and how the strategies assisted children to improve their reading comprehension. lesson observations were also written in the researcher’s reflective journal under the heading of field notes. the reflective journal assisted the researcher to reflect on her actions and experiences as data during the analysis phase of this study. it also provided the researcher with an opportunity to reflect on what was occurring in the study. further, the journal enabled the researcher to keep record of decisions and issues that were particularly important in tracing the progress of teacher empowerment and children’s reading comprehension (chou et al. 2012; department of economics and social affairs 2006). this data were analysed and enabled the findings of the study to be presented with minimal researcher bias (anney 2014). data were analysed through content analysis and inductive strategies. content analysis was used to analyse videotaped data of focus group interviews, lesson observations and data analysed from documents (maryring 2000). content analysis units were used to identify and group data into similar patterns across interviews, lesson observations and data from documents. inductive analysis was used to establish recurring similar ideas, opinions, and responses across all data from focus groups interviews, lesson observations, documents and the reflective journal. similar groups of data were then integrated and categorised into themes and sub-themes (creswell 2007). the data analysis was done in accordance with the research topic, question and methodology of the study. ethical consideration ethics clearance was obtained from the university of pretoria before the commencement of data collection in the field. thereafter, permission was sought from the principal education officer, mbarara municipality and the head teacher of the primary school (‘nksp’) in order to gain access to the school, teachers and children. creswell (2014) points out that for researchers to obtain approval of authority to access the study sites and participants, they need to write letters specifying the purpose of research, duration and its outcomes. the researcher prepared the letters of permission for the education officer and the head teacher and the informed consent forms for the participants (the teachers of primary three classes) well in advance for approval by the faculty of education ethics committee of the university of pretoria (ec 15/11/04). findings and discussions the aim of this study was to establish the effectiveness of a balanced reading instruction programme at empowering teachers through par with strategies they could use to improve their instruction of reading comprehension to bilingual children. the implementation of the programme was conducted in four phases in relation to the cyclic process of the par of this study. the second phase dealt with the conceptualisation of the programme (planning for change or action). in the conceptualisation process the researcher in collaboration with the teachers identified and discussed the components and activities of the programme. they further discussed, incorporated and adapted instructional strategies to use in the implementation of the programme. however, the findings from the teachers’ responses indicated fears of uncertainty about using the methods of the programme. in regard to their uncertainties regarding strategies, without any provocation, participant ta/1 a said: ‘teaching sounds is a challenge in both the local language (runyankole) and english because we attained few strategies to teach them’. in agreement with this participant, participants tb/2, tc/3 and td/4d further explained: ‘teaching is not a challenge in sounds but also in other areas such as blending of sounds, vocabulary, and reading comprehension in both runyankole and english.’ (tb/2, tc/3 and td/4d, females, teachers) in regard to the few strategies attained, all the participants reported that they lacked prior training to effectively teach aspects such as sounds, vocabulary development and reading comprehension in runyankole and english. they particularly pointed out that they needed a programme that could help them to teach children to understand what they read. for instance, participant ta/1 had this to say: ‘if we could get ways of teaching correct letter sounds, formulation of words, and reading comprehension in both runyankole and english, then we will benefit from this programme. even the parents of our children are complaining that our children do not read.’ (ta/1, female, teacher) teachers’ responses highlighted that the balanced reading instruction programme was paramount in equipping them with strategies to teach the prerequisites of reading comprehension, as well as reading comprehension strategies. thus, the researcher, in agreement with the participants, conducted interactive professional development sessions before the actual implementation of the programme. the third phase (action and observe) of the programme focused on the implementation of the reading instruction programme. in this phase, the teacher participants were trained in the teaching of sounds, vocabulary development and reading comprehension. this was done through interactive professional development sessions. thereafter they conducted explicit instruction in reading comprehension, first in runyankole and then in english in the classroom context. the findings indicated that teachers’ participation in the programme assisted them to attain strategies such as phonics instruction to teach the alphabet of runyankole and english, as well as blending of sounds to formulate words. for instance, in unison all the teachers said: ‘aaah!!! hati nitumanya entaniso eriahagati yalifu y’orunyankole n’oruzungu. [aaah!!! we have known the difference between the alphabet and their corresponding sounds of runyankole and english].’ (ta/1, tb/2, tc/3 and td/4, females, teachers [author’s own translation]) they further explained that: ‘we can also assist our children to formulate words using vowels and syllables such as o-mu-ti; e-mpa-ngo; sl-ee-p; c-o-mb.’ (ta/1, tb/2, tc/3 and td/4, females, teachers) this implies that they would not mix the sounds of runyankole and english when teaching letter–sound recognition. with regard to teaching comprehension the teachers’ responses indicated that they ably taught reading comprehension in both runyankole and english. for instance, participant ta/1 said: ‘i can ably teach reading comprehension in both runyankole and english but more especially in runyankole. my children answered the questions on the story while writing in full sentences. i need to help them to do more practice in reading books individually and set questions on the stories for them to answer.’ (ta/1, female, teacher) the fourth phase (evaluation) focused on the balanced reading instruction programme. in this phase the researcher in collaboration with the teacher participants sought to find out whether the programme had made an improvement to teachers’ instruction of reading comprehension to bilingual children. teachers’ responses revealed that strategies such as phonics instruction, cut-out letters, individual reading of texts and story books and the formulation of carefully graded questions improved their instruction. in responding the strategies used in their instruction participant tb/2 said: ‘before the programme, we were teaching while mixing sentences and words. we did not know to teach sounds. we would begin with teaching sentences to children, yet the children did not know the sounds. but now, i have learnt the systematic way of teaching reading that is from sounds to syllables, then to words and sentences and finally to reading stories and texts.’ (tb/2, female, teacher) participant tc/3 also responded: ‘we have learnt the systematic way of teaching reading comprehension which is good!’ (tc/3, female, teacher) the findings also indicated that participants gained skills in the formulating of questions that provoked children to comprehend what they read. for example, participant tc/3 also responded: ‘formulating questions about the story. my children can use the story and answer the questions very well. for example, ahabwaki nyina kengoro nanabisa akanake [why is the mother of kengorois bathing her baby?] this type of question enables me to guide children to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of bathing children.’ (tc/3, female, teacher [author’s own translation]) with regard to teachers’ participation in the programme, the findings revealed that the teacher participants acknowledged that they attained confidence and love to teach reading comprehension in runyankole as well as english. for instance, participant td/4 said (raising her arms, very happy, stressing her confidence): ‘thank you madam. i take this opportunity to thank you!!! since this programme started, i feel confident that i can firmly teach reading comprehension even if i am transferred to another school.’ (td/4, female, teacher) participant ta/1 added: ‘at the beginning of this project, i had a lot of fear that the strategies we trained in this programme were not similar to those we have been using to teach reading comprehension. so, i saw these strategies new to me. but now we can use them to teach very well.’ (ta/1, female, teacher) in summary, the findings of the study indicate that the strategies teachers used before the programme were not appropriate in the instruction of reading comprehension. thus, teachers’ participation in the programme enabled them to obtain new strategies that enhanced reading comprehension among bilingual children. conclusion the findings of the study answered the question of how teachers respond to the balanced reading instruction programme. through their participation in the programme, the teachers attained new strategies of teaching sounds, vocabulary and reading comprehension in both runyankole and english. the study also revealed that the strategies the teachers used before their participation in the programme were ineffective in enhancing reading comprehension among bilingual children. teachers’ self-esteem and positive attitude towards teaching reading comprehension in both runyankole and english was pointed out as a result of participation in the programme. this study therefore makes a contribution to teachers’ instruction of reading comprehension in the native language to countries such as uganda whose emphasis is placed on using the native language as a medium of instruction in children’s primary education. it also makes a contribution to teachers’ instruction with regard to strategies they could utilise to address children’s reading comprehension first in the native language and then in english. the study was qualitative in nature, as well as par in nature. it focused on grade 3 teachers in one single school as a study context. the findings therefore cannot be generalised to all grade 3 teachers in mbarara municipality primary schools and all other teachers of grade 3 in other geographical contexts in uganda. thus, this study could be used to provide a researched-based programme for improving teachers’ instruction of reading comprehension to bilingual children. this study recommends that research should be carried out on the instruction of reading in both the native languages and english nationwide in order to identify the challenges teachers experience in the instruction of reading comprehension and point to the government to provide appropriate intervention programmes. a large-scale intervention should be conducted for improving teachers’ instruction of reading comprehension in the native language of bilingual children. acknowledgements i would like to acknowledge prof. ina joubert and prof. nkidi phatudi for their constructive criticisms and guidance while carrying out my study. competing interests the author declares that no competing interest exist. author’s contributions i declare that i am the sole author of this research article. funding this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references anney, v.n., 2014, ‘ensuring the quality of the findings of qualitative research looking at trustworthiness criteria’, journal of emerging trends in educational research and policy 5(2), 272–281. antonacci, a. & o’callaghan, c.m., 2004, portraits 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k-3 classrooms, florida literacy and reading center, university of florida, viewed 26 february 2015, from http://flare.ucf.edu abstract introduction and background reading skills and extensive reading reading habits and reading strategies reading bags as a reading promotion strategy metacognitive reading strategies problem-solving strategies support strategies global reading strategies theoretical framework research questions research methodology population and sampling instrument data collection procedure data analysis results discussion conclusions and recommendations acknowledgements references appendix 1 about the author(s) tsebe wilfred molotja language unit, department of language, social sciences, economics and management studies (lsems), university of limpopo, south africa mahlapahlapana themane department of education studies, university of limpopo, south africa citation molotja, t.w., & themane, m., 2018, ‘enhancing learners’ reading habits through reading bags at secondary schools’, reading & writing 9(1), a185. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v9i1.185 original research enhancing learners’ reading habits through reading bags at secondary schools tsebe wilfred molotja, mahlapahlapana themane received: 08 dec. 2017; accepted: 05 may 2018; published: 30 aug. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract the importance of getting children off to a good start in reading cannot be overstated. successful academic performance at primary and secondary school level is partly dependent on the ability to read. it is believed that good learners are those who are proficient in reading. however, many learners are struggling to read and, therefore, struggle to academically succeed in other subjects. the problem of not being able to read transcends negatively on learners’ academic achievements. this study proposes a strategy towards motivating learners in developing better reading habits through the distribution of reading bags. the mixed-method approach was adopted in conducting this study. learners’ reading strategies were first identified by administering a survey on reading strategies. about 14 student-educators volunteered in distributing the questionnaires at their respective schools during their teaching practice sessions. the questionnaires were distributed to 155 learners who voluntarily participated in the study. data were analysed using the statistical package for social sciences (spss) software for descriptive statistics. the results indicated that most of the learners use global reading strategies, with the least utilising the problem-solving strategies and the support reading strategies. the researchers recommend the usage of reading bags as a strategy to motivate learners to develop good reading habits, which will then lead to the usage of all three strategies, in particular, the problem reading strategies. introduction and background it is globally known that children usually struggle with reading in english as a second language at various grades of their schooling (chizwina 2011; gallagher 2009; mokhtari, reichard & gardner 2009). this contributes negatively towards their academic success. research indicates that success in academic performance hinges on the ability to read (national reading strategies 2008). the results from the surveys conducted in the national reading strategy indicated shockingly low levels of reading ability across the country in south africa (national reading strategy 2008:4). in addition, the results from studies conducted by the proficiency in international reading literacy study (pirls 2016) and the annual national assessment (2014) indicate that there are low literacy levels among grades 4 and 5 learners. this is contrary to the aims of the national department of basic education. the aim of the national development plan is that children should have access to, and benefit from a high-quality education system, which hinges on the ability to read. therefore, the problem of children not being able to read becomes a national one and may impede the achievement of developmental goals as set in the national reading strategies (2008) and the national development plan (2011:267). in arguing for the importance of being able to read, palani (2012:91) states that being able to read effectively is the most important avenue of effective learning and academic achievement. it is therefore necessary that learners engage in good reading habits to improve their reading ability. learners have to be introduced to pleasure reading to form good reading habits, which will then transcend into improved academic reading skills (scott & saaiman 2016:1). it is at primary level that learners need to be exposed to reading for pleasure, in developing academic reading skills, which are to be applied in different schooling subjects in secondary and tertiary institutions. however, this ideal is not true for most south african children by the time they complete their primary schooling. as part of the interventions to remedy this lack of desire to read for pleasure, we sought to make use of reading bags as a strategy for promoting reading. therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the use of reading bags to inculcate the love for reading among secondary school learners living in impoverished social settings. reading skills and extensive reading many definitions have been suggested for reading, which may apply differently to reading contexts. arkarsu and harputlu (2014) view reading as a complex processing skill in which the reader interacts with the text in order to create meaning. the possession of good reading skills is therefore a key towards accessing information and deciphering meaning out of texts (ralenala 2003; chiang 2016:1). chiang (2016) argues that for the development of good reading skills and habits, learners should be exposed to reading at an earlier age. the ability to read and comprehend is critical not only for lifelong learning but also for adequate functioning in society (mcnamara 2007:28). literature has also linked the development of reading skills to extensive reading (day & bamford 2004:5; stoller 2015). day and bamford (2004) explain extensive reading as focussing on the rapid reading of books. this means that learners should be exposed to a lot of reading, either reading for pleasure or reading academic books. extensive reading has benefits for students in academic contexts. grabe (1991) states that it helps students in their development of automaticity, enhances their background knowledge, improves comprehension skills, as well as promotes confidence and motivation (ralenala 2005). in addition to the above risks, frequent reading also has a positive impact on learners’ acquisition of new vocabulary (acheaw & larson 2014; chiang 2016; scott & saaiman 2016:3). nhapulo, simon and van herreweghe (2017:1) claim that the aim of extensive reading is to ‘cultivate’ students’ ability to read a long text and still gain understanding and to read and understand words and sentences at first glance without the need to reread. reading habits and reading strategies reading habits are defined as well planned and deliberate patterns of study which have attained a form of consistency on the part of students toward understanding academic subjects and their performance (acheaw & larson 2014:12). a study by wulundari (2016) found that there is a positive significant correlation between students’ reading habits and their comprehension levels. when reading habits become internalised and occur subconsciously, then the reading process becomes a meaningful one. walundari (2016) argues that the development of self-concept and good reading habits can foster an improvement in academic achievement. students with good reading habits tend to comprehend easier than those with poor reading habits. the more students are exposed to reading different texts, the more they develop positive attitudes towards reading. the meaning-making process involved in reading will only become successful with the use of appropriate strategies. reading bags as a reading promotion strategy a reading strategy is defined as a ‘tool or plan for facilitating and extending comprehension’ (mcnamara 2007; molotja 2016; routman 2003). henia (2003) describes a strategy as a conscious and flexible plan that readers apply to particular texts and tasks. for example, mcnamara (2007:6) defines reading comprehension strategies as: ‘… a cogntive or behavioural action that is enacted under particular contextual conditions, with the goal of improving some aspect of comprehension’. in addition to the above, cekiso and madikiza (2014:1) view reading strategies as ‘specific actions, behaviours, steps or techniques that learners use to improve their progress in comprehending, internalising and using a second language’. reading bags are seen as a strategy for promoting reading among learners. their use is not only good for developing comprehension but also for making learners relax. acheaw and larson (2014:9), argue that ‘students who read magazines at intervals learn to relax, cool their brain, avoid mental fatigue and live a disciplined life in the school’. this demonstrates the influence that reading novels and other texts might have on learners. reading bags may be used in addressing the problem of inadequate reading and limited vocabulary (stone 2013:2). it is through the exposure to reading novels and other texts that learners acquire the skills to summarise, synthesise, integrate and critically analyse information from texts. learners need to have the skills to be able to read fluently and critically (boakye 2017; grabe & stoller 2002; molotja 2016; shafie & nayan 2011; stone 2013). the use of reading bags may help to develop these skills among learners. the study by greene and serro (2015) focussed on motivating students to read through the use of literacy bags. the study found that there is a positive correlation between the usage of literacy bags on one hand and professional reading and critical reading on the other. the use of reading bags in the english class can serve as a motivating factor to learners (greene & serro 2015:2). english teachers do have some influence over their learners in the classroom, and as such can instil positive motivation in their learners when they introduce good reading habits in the form of reading novels. they serve as role models and literary sparks for learners (greene & serro 2015:2). students need to be aware of different reading strategies and how they can use these strategies in different academic reading contexts. metacognitive reading strategies there are various strategies which can be employed in developing learners’ reading habits. some of these strategies are known as metacognitive strategies. these are self-regulating thoughts that monitor cognition, while cognitive strategies process the language for the task. in view of the discussion made above, metacognition is, therefore, very important across the curriculum and an emphasis on metacognition needs to accompany instruction in each of the school disciplines (negretti & kuveeta 2011:23; pammu, amir & maasum 2014:2; zohar & dori 2012:1). for learners to acquire these reading strategies, they should have developed the positive attitude towards reading. in addition to the above, mokhtari and reichard (2002) and mokhtari and sheory (2002) argue that it is important for learners to be aware of their metacognitive reading strategies, which lead to better reading comprehension strategies. stone (2013) argues that the teaching of reading comprehension strategies will therefore include generating one’s own questions, summarising parts of a text, clarifying word meanings and comprehending text passages and predicting what might come next in the text. in addition to the comprehension strategies, chiang (2016:2) advocates for the introduction of free voluntary reading (fvr). the fvr’s approach is that learners should be encouraged to read out of the desire to read. it encourages reading in a low-anxiety and input-rich scenario. the researcher believes that the introduction of ‘reading bags’ as a technique towards developing reading habits will encourage learners to read. the technique also relates to fvr, known to improve reading habits and reading proficiency. an important aspect of using ‘reading bags’ is that it is anxiety free, as learners choose their own novels and read in their own time. it is through reading english novels that learners acquire the input they need for developing academic reading skills (chiang 2016). these novels are easily available as they are provided through reading bags. the novels selected by learners enrich their vocabulary, grammar, speaking, listening and writing skills. in emphasising the importance of developing reading skills or habits, stoller (2015:2) maintains that the best way to teach learners how to read is through reading itself. it is through the reading bags that students were encouraged to read. problem-solving strategies yuksel and yuksel (2012) describe problem-solving strategies as those which require learners to adjust the reading rate, re-reading difficult texts and pausing to think about what they are reading. these strategies are important because they require learners to cross-examine the text before they can decipher any meaning. they are developed solely for the purpose of addressing problems emanating from the interaction with the text (mokhtari & sheorey 2002). support strategies the support strategies are basic support strategies students employ in comprehending the text, such as the use of a dictionary, taking notes, highlighting and underlining certain words or phrases (mokhtari & sheorey 2002). these strategies serve as cues in enhancing the comprehension of a text where textual cues become incomprehensible to learners. students get support by referring to the meaning of a word in the dictionary, highlighting important sections in the text and later cross-examining these for clearer understanding. global reading strategies the global reading strategies are: … intentional, carefully, planned techniques by which learners monitor or manage their reading, such as having a purpose in mind, previewing the text as to its length and organization, or using typographic aids and tables, and figures. (mokhtari & sheorey 2002:12) theoretical framework this study is underpinned by vygotsky’ theory of social learning (1978). the theory states that children learn language first to meet their social needs, after internalising. this leads to the development of higher order thinking and cognitive skills. this is what vygotsky (1978) refers to as the zone of proximal development (zpd) (savas 2009:397; woolfolk 2010). the zpd is described as: … the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. (vygotsky 1978 as cited in savas 2009:397) the cognitive development of students is related to their performance at university. this is shown through vygotsky’s theory of zpd which is related to the metacognition theories of language learning and teaching. the cognitive development of students is important in order for them to acquire cognitive academic language proficiency skills (cummins 2009). a student who has reached the zpd is ready to advance to a stage where he or she can venture into abstract thinking and higher order activities, with the help of someone who is the expert. the reader will then be able to comprehend texts through the application of the schema he or she has on the text. he or she either applies the bottom-up reading strategies or the top-down reading strategies in his or her writing (nordin et al., 2013). research questions the study aimed at answering the following research questions: what are the reading strategies employed by learners at secondary schools? does the use of reading bags improve learners’ reading strategies and reading habits? research methodology a quantitative descriptive cross-sectional design was used to measure the shift in reading strategies after the use of the reading bags strategy to inculcate the love for reading. population and sampling a total of 155 learners in schools, identified by volunteered student-educators from the capricorn district in limpopo province, enlisted for the reading project. learners were sampled out of their interest in the students’ presentations from grade to grade on reading. these learners were from a historically disadvantaged background where english is used as a language of learning and teaching. however, they do not have the command of the english language to engage in their academic activities as required. fourteen student-educators volunteered to be ambassadors of the reading project and administered the project at their respective schools of choice during their teaching practicum in the first semester and second semester of the 2017 academic year. the schools were conveniently sampled as per the proximity to the student-educator’s teaching practice choice. instrument the survey on reading comprehension strategies adapted from mokhtari and reichard (2002) was used to collect data. the instrument is used for a large subject population, representing students with equivalent reading abilities, ranging from middle school to college. the instrument consists of 21 questions which ranged from support-reading and global reading and the problem-solving strategies. the internal reliability coefficient for its above subscales ranged from 0.89 to 0.93 and reliability for the total sample was 0.93, showing a reasonably dependable measure of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. data collection a total of 185 questionnaires on metacognitive reading strategies (mokhtari & sheorey 2002) were distributed to the sampled learners. these questionnaires were distributed before learners could be introduced to the reading bags and again after they have been introduced to the reading bags. in all, 155 questionnaires were returned and 30 were either misplaced or not returned at all. procedure data were collected in two phases: in phase one, the questionnaire was administered to identify reading strategies that learners used in their reading before they embarked on the reading project. thereafter, different novels were distributed to learners as part of the ‘reading bags’ to encourage learners to read. these novels were chosen out of learners’ interest and also their availability. learners were given choices to read whatever novel or passage they came across, irrespective of whether it is in the bag or not (stoller 2015:3). english language educators were also requested to look for novels in the library which might be of interest to the learners and place them in the bags. in phase 2, which was in the second semester, the survey of reading strategies was again administered to learners by student-educators. all together 155 questionnaires were administered to the same group. data analysis the analysis of data for the pre-intervention reading questionnaires was carried out focussing only on the reading strategies employed by learners. these were categorised into support reading strategies, global reading strategies and problem-solving strategies (figure 1). the questionnaires for post-intervention reading were analysed for descriptive statistics using the statistical package for social sciences, version 17, for frequencies in percentages. figure 1: reading strategies pre-intervention questionnaire results showing the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. results descriptive results figure 1 presents the pre-intervention questionnaire results before the reading bags were employed to inculcate good reading habits. the results show that the learners score 27% for global reading strategy, 48% for problem solving and 41% for support reading. this is different from the post-intervention reading results as illustrated in the graph below where learners’ performance improved. figure 2 represent learners’ performance with regard to global reading strategies. there is an improvement of 72.3% in performance. the subquestions indicate the levels at which learners perform under the global reading strategies. the global reading strategies possess 13 subcategories which are learners’ abilities to apply guessing when coming across new information; critically analysing and evaluating information; using contextual cues to help understand the text; using tables, figures and pictures in text to enhance understanding; being able to sift the important from the non-important; being familiar with text structure; and having a purpose in reading. figure 2: post-intervention questionnaire results showing the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies inventory: global reading strategies. figure 3 represents learners’ performance when applying the problem-solving skills. learners’ performance has shown an improvement of 80%. the problem-solving skills are important to learners in sharpening their thinking skills. they include the application of guessing, re-reading, picture formation, thinking, paying close attention to information, adjusting reading speed and reading slowly and carefully. figure 3: post-intervention questionnaire results showing the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies inventory: problem-solving strategies. figure 4 represents the support reading strategies employed by learners. learners performed at 70%, which displayed an improvement. the use of support reading strategies includes the application of thinking, translating, asking oneself, cross-examine the text, paraphrasing, referencing materials, underline or circle information, taking notes and reading aloud skills. figure 4: post-intervention questionnaire results showing the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies inventory: support reading strategies. discussion the preliminary results show that learners were aware of the strategies they use in their reading. this is shown by a high percentage of the use of the problem-solving strategies (48%). their performance in global and support reading skills displayed a low performance of 27% and 41%, respectively. the results of these strategies are in response to the first research question on what reading strategies learners in high schools employ. the preliminary results indicate learners are aware of these strategies, even though their percentages are low. the intervention through the introduction of the reading bags has led to an improvement in learners’ reading strategies. learners reported a high percentage of 72.3% for global reading strategies, 80.2% for problem-solving strategies and 76.4% for support reading strategies. the results indicate the positive effect of using reading bags to enhance learners’ reading habits and develop useful strategies in academic reading. these results are also in agreement with the literature reviewed on reading (chiang 2016; stoller 2015). this is also evident from the comments given by learners during their interaction with student-educators. these results are in agreement with the results by mokhtari and sheorey (2002) and yuksel and yuksel (2012) on the use of problem-solving strategies as being critical to the reading process. the results are also in agreement with the results of zhang and wu (2009), which indicated that the use of learners’ global, support and problem-solving skills is positively linked to learners’ proficiency level in english skills and fosters good reading skills. it is, however, worth noticing the improvements in the post-reading test as shown by the percentages in all strategies. the results of this study also confirm what ismail and tawalbeh (2015) maintained when arguing that metacognitive reading skills engage learners in a high level of metacognition, or monitoring of their own thinking, during the reading process. the global reading skills’ results indicate the correlation between the learners’ application of the thinking skills when interrogating their texts. the reading programme had a positive impact on learners’ performance as shown in the improved performance in the support, global and problem-solving strategies. conclusions and recommendations the main objective of the study was to investigate the metacognitive reading strategies employed by learners at the selected schools. the study also set to investigate the effects of the introduction of the reading bags project as an intervention strategy to encourage learners to read. preliminary results from the administration of the metacognitive reading strategies found that learners do apply reading strategies, even though their responses displayed a low percentage. the administration of the metacognitive reading awareness strategies inventory after the intervention programme displayed an improved performance in the application of the reading strategies (appendix 1). the researchers would like to recommend that learners should be encouraged to read through programmes which are interesting to them. this will inculcate good reading habits at a young age, which will help to improve their use of reading strategies and overall reading proficiency. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this paper. authors contributions m.n. made the conceptualization of the study and wrote the first draft. p.k. did literature review and edited the article. all authors read and approved the final manuscript. references acheaw, m.o.& larson, a., 2014, ‘reading habits among students and its effect on academic performance: a study of students of koforidua polytechnic’, library philosophy and practice (e-journal), paper 1130, viewed n.d., from 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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.12.164 zhang. l.j. & wu, a., 2009, ‘chinese senior high school and efl students’ metacognitive awareness and reading-strategy use’, reading in a foreign language 21(1), 37–59. zohar, a. & dori, y.j., 2012, metacognition in science, 3(springer 2012), springer dordrecht heidelberg london. appendix 1 metacognitive awareness of reading strategies inventory (version 1.0) name_______________________________ gender______________________ age_____________ directions: listed below are statements about what people do when they read academic or school-related materials such as textbooks or library books. five numbers follow each statement (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), and each number means the following: 1 means ‘i never or almost never do this’. 2 means ‘i do this only occasionally’. 3 means ‘i sometimes do this’ (about 50% of the time). 4 means ‘i usually do this’. 5 means ‘i always or almost always do this’. after reading each statement, circle the number (1, 2, 3, 4, or 5) that applies to you using the scale provided. please note that there are no right or wrong answers to the statements in this inventory. table 1-a1: type strategy scale abstract introduction methodology ethical considerations findings discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) peter rule centre for higher and adult education, stellenbosch university, south africa sandra land adult and community education unit, durban university of technology, south africa citation rule, p. & land, s., 2017, ‘finding the plot in south african reading education’, reading & writing 8(1), a121. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v8i1.121 original research finding the plot in south african reading education peter rule, sandra land received: 24 oct. 2015; accepted: 30 mar. 2017; published: 07 sept. 2017 copyright: © 2017. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract this article argues that we have lost the plot in south african reading education. to find it, we need to move beyond the predominant mode of reading as oral performance, where the emphasis is on accuracy and pronunciation, to reading as comprehension of meaning in text. while reading research in south africa has been conducted mainly in school contexts, this case study is of a school and adult basic education and training centre in a rural kwazulu-natal community near pietermaritzburg. it found that an oratorical approach to reading dominated in both settings. it suggests that developing the way in which teachers understand the teaching of reading and transforming the teaching practices of those who teach as they were taught in the education system of the apartheid era are key to improving the teaching of reading. introduction the dire state of south african reading performance, indicated by consistently low rankings in both national and international studies, shows that we have lost the plot in the teaching of reading. the situation demands that we find the plot in reading education so that we can improve the story of reading quality in our education system. it is widely known that south africa has performed very poorly in internationally administered literacy tests over the last two decades, with wide discrepancies between the performance of the richest and poorest south african students. in 2011, the southern and eastern african consortium for monitoring education quality (sacmeq iii) ranked south african school children’s reading 4th out of 15 african countries for the richest 25% of children and 14th out of 15 for the poorest 25% (spaull 2011). progress in international reading literacy study tests in 2006 and 2011 also pointed to the poor performance of south african children, with no statistically significant improvement between 2006 and 2011 (mullis et al. 2012). south africa’s own annual national assessment (ana) results indicate that, while there has been some improvement in home language performance, results for first additional language remain below 50% across grades (department of basic education 2014). draper and spaull (2015) analysed data from a national education and evaluation development unit (needu) of south africa study and reported that 41% of a sample of grade 5 rural english second language learners were ‘non-readers of english’. as zimmerman (2014) has acknowledged in this journal, while quantitative data exist on the extent of the problem, there is a paucity of research on the strategies teachers actually use to teach reading literacy and reading comprehension. what little in-depth research exists on the topic has been done mainly in schools (pretorius 2014; pretorius & mampuru 2007; verbeek 2010; zimmerman 2014), but reading in adult education and community contexts in which schools are located has been neglected. the little scholarship that exists on the relation between adults’ and children’s reading in a south african context (machet & tiemensma 2009) and in other african contexts such as zambia (chansa-kabali, serpell & lyytinen 2014) and zimbabwe, kenya, uganda and tanzania (ngwaru 2014) indicates that parents’ positive attitudes towards and practice of reading in the home encourage children’s emergent literacy. this study focused both on a primary school and the adult centre, which operated on the same premises in a rural setting in kwazulu-natal – what we call two educational settings at one site. it thus investigated the teaching of reading at primary school level as well as at adult basic education levels in these respective settings, within the context of a rural community. the study comprised seven separate but interlinked masters-level (m.ed.) studies on various aspects of reading at the school and the adult centre (mather 2012; mkhize 2012; nehal 2013; nkosi 2012; pillay 2013; rajin 2013; sivnarain 2013). together, the studies provide a fascinating bird’s-eye view of reading and literacy, not only in the school and adult centre but also in the wider community in which they are located. the purpose of this article is to report how reading was taught in the two settings, how teachers understood their teaching of reading in this rural community context and the implications for understanding the teaching of reading more widely. we begin by outlining the context of the research and by reviewing appropriate literature. we go on to describe the case study methodology adopted. our overview of key thematic findings includes foci on the teachers’ experiences of learning to read and of learning to teach reading and then on the actual teaching and learning of reading in the primary school and adult centre. we conclude with a discussion of the findings and recommendations arising from this. context of research the school and adult centre are situated in a rural area about 20 km from pietermaritzburg in the province of kwazulu-natal, south africa. the settlement is surrounded by sugarcane farms. most employed residents commute to town by bus or taxi. according to the 2011 census figures on the local municipality, 34% of young people were unemployed and could be seen at the time of the research congregating on the dusty streets. the census indicated that levels of literacy were relatively low: of those aged 20 and older, 18.6% had no schooling while the primary enrolment rate was 89.9%, only 12.4% had completed secondary schooling only 1.3% had higher education. the majority of households had an income of less than r20 000 per year, with the figure reaching over 80% for those households dependent on agriculture (statistics south africa 2011). a protest by young people against poor service delivery during the period of research indicated their frustrations with unemployment, lack of infrastructure and poor living conditions. the school was neatly kept with a flourishing garden; it was secure, disciplined and functioned comparatively well, having achieved the best results in the admittedly poorly performing municipality, which had a matric pass rate of just 20% (statistics south africa 2011). the school had 23 teachers and 995 learners at the time of the research, a ratio of 1:43.3, with 23 classrooms and a computer laboratory. it was run by a fully constituted and functioning governing body. although the school had a library corner in the staff room, the donated books were dusty, disused and mainly inappropriate for the learners at this school. the adult centre used the school premises after hours. it offered adult basic education and training (abet) levels 1, 2 and 4. it had about 20 learners and four educators, some of whom were also school teachers or parents of children at the school. literature review most south african children do not learn to read well. although the ana tests (department of basic education 2014) show a marked improvement in scores for home language literacy for children across the grades between 2012 and 2014, only 48% of grade 9 children achieved a literacy rate of 50% or more. in 2014 ana tests in first additional language (which is english for most south african children), only 48% of grade 6 children and 18% of grade 9 children achieved more than 50% literacy. even these scores may be overoptimistic. in spite of radical changes in official policy and substantial investment in education since the end of apartheid, schools that were disadvantaged in that era still tend to perform extremely poorly, and their plight is disguised in national averages, which are boosted by marks obtained by children at traditionally privileged, well-resourced and high-performing schools (spaull 2012). to illustrate, in the 2007 sacmeq measures of grade 6 scores, only 57% of children at schools falling in the lowest wealth quartile could read and understand a simple text, while 96% of children at schools in the highest wealth quartile could do so, indicating the bimodality of the south african education system (spaull 2012:7). in its report on the 2014 ana tests, the department of basic education acknowledges that in grade 9: many learners in both home language and first additional language struggle to respond to questions that require the use of their own words …[and] learners are unable to interpret a sentence or give an opinion when required (department of basic education 2014:10). reasons for this may lie in educational practices and understandings that were developed in the era of apartheid and remain ingrained in the system. even in schools that are now adequately resourced and effectively managed, learners’ performance is in many instances stunted by limitations in teachers’ understanding and capacity. a common finding in school-based research is that teachers simply do not have knowledge of effective reading pedagogies and, as a result, cannot teach reading effectively in spite of their efforts to do so (taylor 2014). this shortcoming cannot be blamed on the teachers themselves. a study of the teacher education programmes at the five most prominent institutions offering teacher education in the country shows that, while all of them seek to graduate effective teachers, there are significant variations among them in both theoretical and practical aspects of training and, alarmingly, that: across all five institutions, there may be insufficient focus on equipping student teachers to guide ip learners to become proficient readers and writers/producers of texts in a range of genres and modes. in particular, little or no attention is given to reading pedagogies across the sample. (taylor 2014:17) why there is not a concerted move by planners of teacher education programmes to close this glaring gap is difficult to understand, especially when evidence of south african learners’ poor performance in literacy is repeatedly and sensationally trumpeted across the country in news reports (e.g. coan 2014). a possible legacy of literacy taught in missions, with the associated activity of reading the bible aloud, is that teachers in sub-saharan africa have traditionally tended to view reading as primarily an oral performance rather than a cognitive exercise in accessing meanings in text (trudell & schroeder 2007). this, overlaid with the overt restriction on critical thinking and expressing opinions that characterised bantu education, has possibly shaped the approach of south african lecturers and teachers to learning and teaching (nkabinde 1997). this could be the cause of the enduring difficulty in transforming the character of teaching and learning in our classrooms that was foreseen as early as 1997 by educationalists and still bedevils our education system (msila 2014). current measures of reading such as the ana tests require learners to understand the meaning that writers of texts intend to convey and to give their own responses to this meaning. this requires teachers to enable their learners to read so that reading becomes a process of: perceiving textual features and relating these to schemas of letters and words selecting some of these to convert to concepts integrating lexical, semantic and syntactic information in text to construct meaning comprehending what the writer intended to say relating what is understood to what has been previously read and understood predicting the content of the text beyond the part currently in view recognising how elements of the information relate to each other and which are the most important monitoring one’s own comprehension and strategising about what to do to fill gaps or resolve ambiguities (grabe 2009; reichle, warren & mcconnell 2009). readers who are expected only to read aloud with acceptable pronunciation and a degree of fluency can be seen to succeed with only the first three of these components of the reading process. as allington (2014:16) points out, overemphasis on oral reading speed results in ‘students who can read aloud faster and more accurately but whose silent reading comprehension has not improved’. the development of oratorical reading skills is within the reach of poorly trained reading teachers partly because these skills are simpler than those of reading with authentic cognitive engagement and because usually it is clear when a word has been read correctly or incorrectly. when readers are expected to respond to texts in their own words and offer opinions that might be mutually exclusive but equally acceptable, poorly trained teachers flounder. it is likely that inadequately performing teachers of reading would fulfil their task better if they understood reading less in terms of readers’ oral performance (what we term ‘oratorical reading’) and more in terms of readers’ accumulation of information as they go through the reading process described above. a useful image for this gathering of information might be readers as travellers discovering the landscape they travel through, based on what they see, what they remember having seen and what this leads them to expect to see. the landscape model of reading (rapp & van den broek 2005) describes an efficient reader gathering information from: text currently in view memory of information gained in text directly preceding that in view memory of information gained from the text read so far readers’ existing knowledge outside the text, but relating to it. readers who gather information in this way as they read construct mental representations of the meaning contained in texts; as their reading improves, so does the accuracy of the mental representation. when they are able to critically evaluate the content of text in relation to information remembered from experience, or gained from other texts and other sources, they can be said to be competent readers. methodology the study adopted a case study approach (rule & john 2011), as the first step in an envisaged action research project. the case was the local ‘learning community’, comprising the primary school and the adult centre. the focus within the case was reading practices, and the teaching and learning associated with these practices in the school and adult learning centre, as well as in the homes of adult and child learners. the problem of poor reading performance was identified by teachers in an initial exploratory meeting with staff from both the adult centre and the school. following this, the ultimate aim of the project as decided by the teachers and university of kwazulu-natal (ukzn) staff was to research reading in the school and adult centre in order to work with teachers in improving their teaching of reading for understanding. the seven students’ research foci fell within the broad parameters of this project and included reading assessment (nehal 2013), beliefs and practices of reading teachers (nkosi 2012), parental involvement in children’s schooling (rajin 2013), life histories of teachers of reading (sivnarain 2013), teachers’ reading development strategies in relation to their readiness to implement the recently introduced curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) (mather 2012), reading development of adult learners (pillay 2013) and reading practices in the home (mkhize 2012). in order to act on the findings of the study, a process of continuing feedback and training sessions were put in place with teachers at the school and adult centre. an enabling factor was that one of the teachers was an m.ed. student on the research team. these measures allowed for a close collaboration between the research team and staff. a range of methods of data collection was used by the data collectors involved in this project. they included interviews with the school principal, 6 school teachers, 3 abet teachers, 3 abet learners, 10 parents and 1 abet district subject advisor; focus groups with 8 parents; home visits with 2 families involved in the school and abet centre; site observations; classroom observation of intermediate phase, senior phase and abet lessons; and document analysis of learners’ exercise books and school documents. researchers conducted continuing qualitative thematic analysis of the data, which in turn informed further data collection. a summary of the foci, sources and methods of each study is presented in table 1. table 1: focus, sources and methods of constituent studies. this particular article drew on a cross-cutting analysis of the students’ work, identifying four key themes: teachers’ experiences of learning to read, teachers’ experiences of learning to teach reading, the teaching of reading in the primary school and adult centre, and reading in the home environment. ethical considerations the research project proposal was scrutinised and approved through the ukzn ethics committee process. permission was obtained from the school principal and centre co-ordinator, as well as from the provincial department of education. the project observed principles of informed consent in explaining the research project to participants in english or isizulu, according to the participant’s preference and advising them that participation was voluntary and that they were free to withdraw at any time. it also protected their anonymity by withholding the name of the school and centre and allocating pseudonyms to individual participants. the principles of non-maleficence and beneficence were also observed in feeding back findings to the participants and arranging workshops to address challenges arising from the research. each student followed ethical principles in gathering data for their own study, as well as for the project as a whole. findings teachers’ experiences of learning to read teachers had different experiences of learning to read. in some of their homes, parents read newspapers and books, thus modelling reading, and in others, they did not (mather 2012). although none attended a formal pre-school, some were read to at home by parents or older siblings, which gave them an advantage: ‘they [parents] monitored my reading so when i went to school i was ahead of my peers’ (nehal 2013:76). one teacher was taught to read and write vowels and to count from 1 to 5 by his mother, a nurse, before going to school (nkosi 2012:69; sivnarain 2013:54). in some homes, although literacy practices were not sophisticated, and although the children did not go to well-resourced schools, a high value was placed on literacy (sivnarain 2013). however, most encountered reading for the first time at school: ‘there was no support at home because my mother had to move away for work reasons and i lived with my grandmother who could not read or write’ (nehal 2013:76). haphazard but possibly useful support sometimes came from other children: some teachers remember regularly playing a game they called ‘teacher and learners’ where one child would pretend to be a teacher and teach younger children things they had learned in school (sivnarain 2013). all teachers experienced the teaching of reading at school in a similar way. reading was taught using alphabetic and syllabic approaches through a bottom-up synthetic process of learning letters, linking them with sounds and combining them to make words. as one teacher put it: ‘consonants with vowels were the basic e.g. ma me mi mo mu’ (nkosi 2012:78). reading was assessed as reading aloud, and marks were allocated for individual oral reading performance. this was based not on comprehension of the passage, but on fluency and pronunciation. there was no written assessment of comprehension of reading. reading was about memorising sounds and decoding words. one educator remembered being ‘taught a song about the letter names of the alphabet to assist with memorising’ (nkosi 2012:73) and this extended to later grades: rote learning was the preferred method of learning. [the educator] talked about poems and history notes that they were able to recite at length without having any understanding of what they actually meant. (p. 73) another educator stated that they were not taught how to analyse a text critically: ‘in fact we are just supposed to vomit what we have been taught’ (mather 2012:70). learning to teach reading besides the formative experiences of being taught how to read at home (some) and at school (all), some teachers also encountered, albeit unevenly, teaching of reading at tertiary level, whether this was at a teacher training college, university of south africa distance learning courses or a full-time university, as well as at an in-service training level through workshops run by the department of education or non-governmental organisations (ngos). one educator felt that he was ‘not adequately trained to teach reading’ at college and learnt most of what he knew about teaching reading by attending in-service workshops (mather 2012:71). another reflected that ‘not much training was given … to teach children how to read’ (sivnarain 2013:49). in these contexts, teachers learnt to use visual methods to teach reading, such as the use of flashcards, pictures associated with particular words and pictures in storybooks. the focus of meaning-making was on individual words in isolation rather than on larger segments of texts such as sentences or paragraphs or the text as a whole (mather 2012). from in-service workshops, they learnt to draw on supplementary materials, such as the newspaper supplement learn with echo and its cartoon story mkhize. however, teachers did not develop a consistent and comprehensive understanding of teaching reading. this resonates with taylor’s (2014) finding that teachers lack knowledge of effective pedagogies to teach reading. teachers understood from their training and from curriculum documents that comprehension was an important aspect of reading. however, few were able to translate this understanding into pedagogical strategies and activities in the classroom. regarding the adult educators, the abet subject advisor indicated that ‘few educators know how to teach reading’ because they had not been trained to and lacked the relevant skills. they were not able to link reading to speaking, listening and writing (pillay 2013:49). this was confirmed by lesson observations of adult classes. teaching of reading on the whole, instruction of reading, both in the school and the adult centre, reflected the teacher’s beliefs about reading as the decoding of visual symbols and an oral process of reading aloud. this took the form of the teacher modelling reading aloud for the children, with particular attention to pronunciation and fluency, and then asking learners to read aloud either in groups or as a class: sometimes i can read and then ask them to read … and then i will tell them, ‘you were supposed to read like this and this word you were supposed to pronounce it’. (mather 2012:71) teachers of adult learners also saw themselves as models of reading with an emphasis on accuracy and correct pronunciation: ‘as soon as learners made mistakes [the teacher] swiftly stopped them and corrected the words that were not properly pronounced’ (nkosi 2012:74). observations of reading classes revealed similar patterns: the teachers follow the directions in the caps document as they understand them, doing ‘shared reading’, which usually takes the form of reading a short text aloud to the class and then getting the class to repeat that and ‘group guided reading, where children read the story aloud to each other’. no practice or guidance in silent reading took place, and in the school classrooms, there was almost no guidance with understanding beyond the level of single words (mather 2012; sivnarain 2013). for formal assessment, individuals read aloud to the teacher. little or no written work took place in preparation for or in response to reading. teachers further indicated their understanding of reading primarily as decoding by identifying the main problem that their learners experience as ‘pronunciation’ (mather 2012). observation of adult classes indicated that learners were able to ‘read fluently without experiencing problems decoding the words’ but ‘lacked the skills to fully comprehend’ the text (pillay 2013:43). the educator seemed to ‘kill interest in the text by getting learners to read the passage repeatedly’ (pillay 2013:48) without getting them to engage in the contextual meaning of the text and its relation to their prior knowledge. while these emphases on decoding, accuracy, pronunciation and oral performance were the rule, there were exceptions. one of the adult educators emphasised the importance of understanding reading both in his expressed beliefs about reading and in his actual teaching of reading. he understood reading as a meaning-making activity: ‘i think for readers it is simply reading words and understanding what they are reading about’ (nkosi 2012:71). he used strategies such as asking learners questions about the text they had read, getting learners to discuss texts among themselves after they had read them, engaging in dialogue with learners about texts and giving them worksheets ‘where they had to apply the information that they extracted from the text’. he also emphasised the importance of understanding the perspective of the writer and being able to ‘read between the lines’. this was the same educator whose mother had taught him to read before he went to school and who was busy with postgraduate studies on adult education. regarding reading resources, while the school had some resources such as readers and textbooks at the appropriate level, it experienced shortages of materials: two or more learners typically shared a textbook. the adult centre, on the other hand, had virtually no resources appropriate for adults. one adult educator used a grade 6 children’s reader for her abet level 4 class. others wrote notes on the board from school textbooks. the abet subject advisor confirmed the paucity of materials: ‘there is not much channelled to the learning and teaching support material (ltsm)’ (pillay 2013:44). this meant that the unit standard ‘learners must be able to read and view a number of different texts developed for different purposes, audiences and contexts’ could not be achieved. in general, however, teachers of both children and of adults used the same methodology to teach reading that was used by their teachers to teach them at primary school, with a few modifications based on what they had come to know about the coming caps directives and some reading teaching strategies they had learnt later. besides the exception mentioned above, even teachers who professed a belief in reading as understanding did not teach reading comprehension. this indicated a tacit belief that ‘as long as learners can pronounce words accurately it meant that they were able to read’ (nkosi 2012:76). reading in the home environment the studies pointed to the critical role of parents as the ‘first teachers’ of their children and as exemplary readers (desmond 2004). many children at the school came from homes that had no or minimal reading materials: ‘old newspapers and adverts are the only thing our children can read’, said one mother. a father reported reading ‘hymn books that we use in church’ to his children (rajin 2013:71, 73). adult learners indicated that helping their children with their homework and understanding written communication from the school, for example, invitations to meetings, and information about and consent for school excursions, were part of their motivation for learning. it is heartening to note that, in spite of the problems described in this paper, they did make real progress. as one adult learner put it, ‘now i can … teach my children how to write the homework at home … or to read something or read a book’ (pillay 2013:54). they felt able to communicate with their children’s teachers by writing notes to them. they felt more confident about attending school meetings, talking to teachers and reporting back to their children on what was discussed. adult learners also reported being able to pass on information from pamphlets about health issues (tb or cholera) obtained from the clinic to their families and to read the bible to them. mkhize’s (2012) study of ‘learning families’ with children at school and parents attending the adult centre confirmed the value of family reading activities. the foundation phase children of adult learners spoke very positively about their parents’ learning: ‘i feel very excited because they set an example that we must go to school to learn and pass and be successful. they encourage me to learn’ (mkhize 2012:63). they referred to the family – parents and children – sitting together at home and doing their homework: ‘when someone is having a difficulty with something, he asks someone for help … we help each other’. parents reading at home motivated their children to read: ‘“they also want to read,” an adult learner said of her two pre-school children’ (pillay 2013:55). it is well worth noting that the children found reading at home much more enjoyable than reading at school. although these children did not have books at home besides the textbooks they brought from school, they read newspapers that their parents sometimes brought home and the bible and hymn books. this study indicated that there was more emphasis on real comprehension at home than at school. as one mother said about stories that she read to her children: ‘we discuss the details, the feelings and what would i have done … they discuss what they have read, and i ask them questions and they explain where they can’. and another mother: ‘we discuss our understanding of the text; we discuss and share the word of god’ (mkhize 2012:90–91). discussion grabe (2009) states that reading is most importantly a comprehending process, and comprehension is the basis for readers’ accumulation and synthesis of information in the landscape model of reading described above. yet the evidence from observation of reading classes in the school and adult centre indicates that this aspect was given the least attention compared to aspects such as decoding and pronunciation, with written comprehension given virtually no attention. this clearly resonates with the way teachers were themselves taught to read through a synthetic, bottom-up process of moving from consonant and vowels, to syllables, to words, sentences and larger texts, largely through oral performance. this indicates a generalised pedagogical understanding of reading as oral, decoding, primarily in groups or classes, with attention to accurate pronunciation. classroom assessment rewards oral performance that demonstrates the ability to decode accurately and fluently, with scant attention devoted to the learners’ ability to comprehend the text and construct a mental representation of its meaning. given these emphases, it is not surprising that learners struggle with comprehension questions in the ana tests. of course, decoding is an essential part of reading, and accuracy and fluency are important attributes of competent reading, but if these are not linked to comprehension, they have little value outside of a particular kind of classroom-based performance genre. this kind of oratorical reading, which divorces form from meaning and decoding from comprehension, does not enable learners to engage in authentic reading, which always involves making sense of texts. the strong link between the way that teachers were taught to read and the way that they teach reading suggests that there is a cycle of oratorical reading reproduction that continues to undermine learning to read and reading to learn in school and adult centres in south africa (see figure 1). figure 1: cycle of reproduction of oratorical reading. as indicated in our literature review, this oratorical ‘plot’ of teaching reading is widespread in our education system (pretorius 2014; verbeek 2010) and is not effectively ‘replotted’ in the training of teachers on how to teach reading in our higher education system (taylor 2014). this is not a virtuous circle but an educationally emaciated and emaciating cycle, which is a consequence of the deliberate emphasis of apartheid era education on unquestioning acceptance of presented form. it is based on a monotonous reading plot that, in the absence of a conscious replotting of teacher education, replicates itself from one generation to the next. unless this self-replicating pattern is deliberately, vigorously and intelligently transformed, south africa will continue to occupy the bottom rungs of reading performance, with all the associated implications for further education, citizenship, employment, productivity and south africa’s profile as a learning nation. finding the plot in reading education: some pointers we need to devise deliberate strategies to break the cycle by paying explicit attention to redirect the way that we teach educators to teach reading and the way that we support reading in schools. we recommend that the following strategies are incorporated into the training of teachers of reading in south africa: teacher trainers should engage critically with educators’ prior experiences and assumptions about teaching reading by raising questions such as: what does reading mean to you? how were you taught to read? what aspects of reading did your teachers see as important? what did you read at home and at school? one way of doing this is to get trainee educators to write a ‘reading biography’ in which they describe and reflect on their own history of reading and learning to read. they could then compare and evaluate experiences. develop an understanding of all the elements of the reading process, recognising that decoding should lead to, and cannot replace, understanding of the text: ‘reading is, after all, about comprehension’ (pretorius 2014:68). give teachers thorough training in effective approaches of how to teach reading, such as the ‘reading to learn’ methodology (rose 2005), direct instruction and scaffolding techniques (van staden 2011). create opportunities for educators to practice teaching reading in a supportive environment, including support in how to read to children. reading materials used in training should be appropriate and accompanied by training, mentoring and monitoring in their use (nassimbeni & desmond 2011). use the practical teaching components of teacher training courses to give educators critical support and guidance in implementing effective reading teaching of reading strategies in a supportive environment. create teachers’ reading clubs in schools so that they can share their reading experiences and support each other’s teaching of reading (pretorius 2013). equip educators to create a culture of reading in schools, supported at a district level, where reading is on the daily school agenda, through giving them a range of easy to implement strategies to make the most of ‘drop everything and read’ periods, school libraries as transformational spaces for lifelong learning rather than merely depositories of books, incentives for reading a target number of books and establishing learners’ reading clubs (paton-ash & wilmot 2015; pretorius 2014; pretorius & mampuru 2007). explore creative ways of linking learners’ home and school contexts; for example, through encouraging and supporting family literacy practices (land 2005, 2011; rule & lyster 2005), linking school reading to indigenous knowledge and oral traditions and involving parents and caregivers in school activities in culturally affirming ways such as gardening and planting projects (ilima) and writing up traditional stories. in addition, parents should be encouraged to read aloud to their children at home (or older siblings could do so where parents are not literate), books that are enjoyable and not just educational should be read and a variety of fiction materials that draw the reader and listener in will inspire more interest in reading. conclusion drawing on a case study of reading at a primary school and adult centre in a rural kwazulu-natal community, this article has shown that an oratorical approach to the teaching of reading predominates in both settings; a finding that resonates strongly with reading research in other south african contexts. this oratorical emphasis is linked to teachers’ own formative experiences of learning how to read, some of which were less than adequate. in order to address the ensuing limitations, a deliberate strategy to transform the way that teachers are trained to teach reading needs to be developed and implemented in teacher training programmes. this strategy should engage directly with teachers’ prior experiences of and assumptions about the teaching of reading, model teaching processes that foreground comprehension, develop ways of supporting teachers in their teaching of reading in schools and adult centres and draw on the cultural resources of local communities. acknowledgements the authors acknowledge the following masters graduates whose studies contributed to this article: n. mather, j. mkhize, m. nehal, i.n. nkosi, a.e. pillay, k.s. rajin, r. sivnarain and m. shabane for their role. they also thank the principal, centre manager, teachers, parents and learners of the primary school and adult centre who participated in the study and made it possible. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions p.r. and s.l. jointly designed and co-ordinated the overall research project, oversaw the data collection and analysis in the project, analysed the dissertations that provided the data for this article and wrote the manuscript. 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literature review theoretical framework methodology results discussion and conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) sister l. songxaba department of continuing professional teacher development (cptd), walter sisulu university, south africa adriaan coetzer institutional research and planning, walter sisulu university, south africa jacob m. molepo faculty of educational sciences, walter sisulu university, south africa citation songxaba, s.l., coetzer, a. & molepo, j.m. 2017, ‘perceptions of teachers on creating space for code switching as a teaching strategy in second language teaching in the eastern cape province, south africa’, reading & writing 8(1), a141. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v8i1.141 original research perceptions of teachers on creating space for code switching as a teaching strategy in second language teaching in the eastern cape province, south africa sister l. songxaba, adriaan coetzer, jacob m. molepo received: 01 june 2017; accepted: 26 sept. 2017; published: 08 dec. 2017 copyright: © 2017. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract this research reports on the findings regarding the perceptions of teachers towards creating space for the use of code switching as a teaching strategy in afrikaans learning and teaching in the isixhosa-speaking environments of the transkei region. the aim of this investigation was to establish whether or not code switching can be used as a teaching strategy. a sample of 13 teachers from 12 schools was purposefully selected. a qualitative approach was used. interviews and semi-structured questionnaires were used for data collection. the teachers admitted that they code switch during afrikaans classes. it also transpired that teachers perceived code switching as the best way to facilitate understanding. the recommendations postulate a gradual move from a high tolerance of code switching in the lower classes to a low tolerance thereof in higher classes. introduction there are 11 official languages in south africa (sesotho, tswana, swati, venda, tsonga, afrikaans, english, ndebele, xhosa and zulu) which, according to the constitution of south africa, enjoy equal status. this, however, is not so in the academic and corporate environments. english still plays a dominant role in these areas (du plessis 2014; van der walt 2009) and the indigenous languages are scarcely used or at most are included in a code-switched form in conversation or teaching (except when they are taught as subjects). this article seeks to investigate teachers’ perceptions regarding the use of code switching (cs) as a teaching strategy in the teaching of afrikaans second language in the eastern cape, where learners who speak isixhosa as first language (l1) learn afrikaans as a second language (l2) in a formal context. the speech accommodation theory of giles (1971) underpins this article. scholars have approached cs from many different angles and have produced phonological, morphological, grammatical and societal perspectives on the phenomenon (berthold, mangubhai & batorowicz 1993; myers-scotton 1979; šabec 1995). only a few scholars have investigated the use of cs as an aid in teaching and learning afrikaans. scholars such as rose and van dulm (2006) and stone (1995) have made contributions to this field with their studies on english-afrikaans cs in western cape classrooms, and on cs in sociolinguistic codes of the afrikaans-speaking mixed-race community, respectively. no studies have been conducted in this field in the eastern cape. the main problem identified here is that in real-life situations, learners do code switch, but in the classroom, their cs is technically forbidden by the pre-1994 purist language policies, which maintain that only the target language should be used in the language classroom. thus, while post-apartheid language policies (e.g. the language-in-education policy and the language policy for medium of instruction) give all 11 south african languages equal status, the mindset of many parents and teachers is still bound by the purist stance on language teaching. as such, they regard cs as ‘language pollution’ (kamwangamalu 1989) and believe that cs leads to linguistic decay. one of the features of the post-apartheid educational context of south africa is that learners from various linguistic backgrounds are often intermingled in single classrooms. this calls for a reconsideration of the purist stance in l2 teaching (mati 2004; mhlawuli 2002), as monolingual l2 teaching poses comprehension challenges to non-mother tongue speakers of the target language (maccabe 2013; songxaba 2016). this article endeavoured to establish whether educators believe that cs can be used as a l2 teaching technique in the secondary schools of the eastern cape region of south africa. as such, this article focuses on the use of cs for educational purposes. literature review there is a plethora of definitions assigned to cs, of which a few will be mentioned here. gumperz (1982) defines cs as the juxtaposition of passages of speech belonging to two different grammatical structures or systems within the same conversation. according to kamwangamalu (1992), lehitse (1988), myers-scotton (1993a) and numan and carter (2001), cs is the alternating use of two or more linguistic varieties (languages, dialects of the same language or registers of the same language) at the word, phrase or clause, or sentence level in the course of a discourse. scholars such as shridar and shridar (1980) and singh and sharma (2011) differentiate between cs and code mixing, in that they define code mixing as intra-sentential mixing (occurring within a single sentence at word, phrase or clause level) and cs as inter-sentential mixing, occurring between sentences in an extended stretch of discourse. for the purposes of this article, cs will be used as an umbrella term referring to all forms of language contact irrespective of the level of occurrence. research confirms that cs is a world-wide phenomenon, which occurs in various social and educational contexts (madonsela 2016; moodley 2010; singh & sharma 2011; shin 2010; van der walt 2009). language scholars have different perceptions concerning the use of cs in teaching situations. some scholars, such as li (2008), madonsela (2016), moodley (2010) and mahofa and adendorf (2014), view cs in a positive light. they claim that cs has great potential for helping the bilingual teacher to achieve context-specific teaching and learning goals like clarifying difficult concepts and reinforcing a student’s bilingual lexicon. despite the positive arguments posited by the scholars above, some language scholars view cs in a negative light, arguing that cs is a sign of linguistic decay or a strategy to compensate for diminished proficiency, and the unsystematic result of not knowing at least one of the languages involved very well. proponents of this viewpoint include appel and muysken (1987), heredia and brown (2009), lyons (1968), lawrence (1999), romaine (1996) and li (2008). the above contradicting notions are observable in the present research setting, where some teachers do not allow children to code switch because they view cs as a language impairment, while others see it as academic gain and happily incorporate it as a teaching strategy in their language classrooms. tonkin (2004) observes that languages are not contained in textbooks, but in the minds and on the lips of living people. as a result, languages change constantly in response to the pressures and demands of the social contexts in which they are used. the situation and the language groups that a speaker interacts with often influence his or her language choices, thus leading him or her to code switch so as to enhance mutual understanding. in agreement with this assertion, finlayson and slabbert (1997:128) cite an interviewee who said, ‘when i speak with a zulu, i speak zulu, when i speak with a tswana, tswana and so when i speak with a person with one language i speak the language of him/her’. because the classroom is a social setting where learners and teachers from various linguistic backgrounds interact, a challenge that presents itself to teachers is which languages to employ in the learning situation. such decisions are often, as mentioned earlier, further complicated by the prescriptions of the language policies of south africa. the language in education policy (liep) (1997) states clearly that in terms of the new constitution of the republic of south africa, the government, and the department of education, recognise that our cultural diversity is a valuable national asset. hence, these institutions are tasked, among other things, with the promotion of multilingualism, the development of the official languages and creating respect for all languages used in the country, including south african sign language. the standpoint of this policy confirms language equity and intends to dispel any tendency of undermining minority languages. those who view cs in a positive light (gough 1996; vinson 2013; van der walt & kidd 2012) contend that language is a medium of communication and a vehicle to transfer cultural values and learning. where one of the interlocutors is not fluent in the other language, his or her counterpart meets him or her halfway by means of cs. though cs is not an independent language per se, in practice, it shares the same communicative values of all accepted and official languages, because it enables people (such as teachers and students) to understand one another. furthermore, it does not seem probable that, in a multilingual environment, any one language can be free from the influence of others. to illustrate this, mati (2004) argues that to a considerable extent, african language speakers experience the reality of the western world as it has been conceptualised in english. he further explains that the conceptual web that english weaves around african language speakers leads to large-scale lexical influence, with cs being the norm rather than the exception, particularly in urban settings. the prevalence of cs in south africa attests to a particularly close integration of english lexis into african languages. in the language education classroom, difficulties and frustrations have been and are still being experienced in teaching afrikaans second language. the problem lies with getting learners to speak ‘suiwer afrikaans’ (pure afrikaans). this refers to a type of afrikaans that has no trace of cs, and which is spoken by mother tongue speakers of afrikaans who have been introduced to the standard version of the language from a young age. this implies that, in the classroom, teachers are not allowed to include a word or sentence from another language other than the one being taught or the one that is a medium of instruction. where purist language policies are enforced, afrikaans classes are tense, and the learners speak in an artificial manner (compared to the spontaneous way in which they communicate with each other outside the class, where they freely mix the languages they understand) (songxaba 2016:12–13). the main issue that this article seeks to explore is whether teachers believe cs can be used as a teaching or learning strategy in the teaching of afrikaans second language, in order to create classroom environments that are more conducive to the learning of afrikaans as an l2. having experienced how afrikaans is taught as an l2 in the researched area, the researchers are aware of the frustration experienced by both teachers and learners when well-designed teaching aids, gestures and facial expressions utilised in delivering lessons fail to yield the preconceived results because of a lack of a mutually understood lexicon. sometimes, the language classroom situations demand the use of cs to enhance learner understanding of the language, but both learners and teachers are hindered by the fact that the assessment of learners does not allow trans-linguistic coding. the authors of this article feel that if the prevalence of a monolingual approach to the teaching of afrikaans second language is not addressed, the l2 learners’ performance in afrikaans will continue to suffer because of the incongruence between classroom language realities (cs) and the purist assessment of learners’ afrikaans skills (e.g. questions set in afrikaans only). this discrepancy is caused by the fact that the cs that takes place in the afrikaans second language classroom is not yet provided for in the curriculum, even though the south african language policy is advocating for language equity. afrikaans teachers use cs to facilitate teaching but in language assessment, on the other hand, no cs is allowed. this poses an academic dilemma for the learners because they answer incorrectly not because of lack of intellect but because they do not know certain afrikaans words that are key to the question (maccabe 2013:174). they end up guessing. if the question papers were set such that the difficult afrikaans terms were translated in the home language or languages of the non-mother tongue learners of afrikaans, the present situation would change. the acceptance of cs is still problematic as it is not explicitly catered for in any curriculum-prescribed language teaching and learning methods. probyn et al. (2002) found that despite the instruction of the liep that all schools should have a language policy, very few schools have language policies. this ignorance of schools and school governing bodies about language policies could lead to the maintenance of monolingual approaches to language teaching. the language policy for medium of instruction document (1992:5) provides the relevant questions needed to address the above concerns. it highlights some important issues that need serious consideration in implementing the country’s language policies. the need to address the policy implementation flaws is intended to prevent a situation in which language policy documents become mere white elephants. the main question that comes to the fore in this line of reasoning is: how should cs be perceived in light of the language policy documents? traditionally, the monolingual approach to language teaching and learning demanded strict adherence to the conventional grammatical rules of the target language to the total exclusion of the mother tongue. concerning the rigidity of language teaching, tonkin (2004) warns that: foreign language teachers, for their part, teach standard forms of language that may be far removed from the experience of many native speakers. they give little attention to non-standard forms. they may be right to do so, since their goal is to equip their students to succeed in an elite environment; but emphasis on standard forms may make it more difficult for their students to perceive the sheer diversity of linguistic expression and its function in the target society. in fact, their students may not fully understand what language is, and how it functions in society generally. (p. 1) the above citation alerts language practitioners to the tendency of l2 teachers to subject their learners to a traditional approach of l2 language learning that could affect learners’ acquisition of second languages negatively. in the present research setting, teachers are known to use cs in the process of teaching and learning afrikaans to l2 learners, but the assessment of afrikaans is only done via the standard form of the target language. thus, a discrepancy exists between what prevails inside and outside the classroom (where cs is the norm). according to foertsch (1998), the ways in which children communicate in their home cultures are critical to the development of written language models of reading and writing. he further argues that the home language of learners provides the foundation of the emergence of reading and writing behaviours and if there is a mismatch between the structures, values and expectations of the home language and school language, learners may be at a disadvantage for success in early reading tasks, and thus spend their entire school careers attempting to catch up. in line with this claim, mahofa and adendorf (2014:87) point out that the l1 of learners should be fully utilised in the learning and teaching of mathematics word problems. in the light of this assertion, the researchers believe that bilingual teaching, coupled with bilingual assessment, can alleviate the discrepancy described earlier. this article seeks to contribute to our knowledge of the usefulness of cs as an appropriate teaching and learning strategy. in order to address the research problem, the following research questions were asked: what medium of instruction do teachers use in the teaching of afrikaans second language? what opinions do teachers have about the use of cs in the classroom? to what extent do teachers allow cs during afrikaans second language assessment? can cs be used in the teaching of afrikaans second language to assist learners? the findings of this article might be useful for curriculum designers and material developers who prepare language materials for afrikaans second language classrooms. it is also hoped that the findings of this research will not only create an appreciation of the challenges of teaching in an isixhosa-afrikaans bilingual setting, but will also sensitise all stakeholders to deal with these challenges with empathy and understanding. because cs is an international phenomenon (see allen 2007; shin 2010; yousif 2012), this study might be relevant to other countries faced with similar bior multilingual teaching situations. theoretical framework this research is underpinned by giles’s (1971) speech accommodation theory. he postulates the five important subcategories of speech accommodation, three of which were seen to be relevant to this research: having an awareness of what the addressee prefers and to switch accordingly establishing common ground to meet the addressee halfway with language employing measures to make yourself understood. this theory underlies the present investigation. the question was whether or not the teaching situation was intending to meet the addressee (learners) halfway to assist them with their l2 learning, or just to satisfy the requirements of the curriculum, which in most instances uses assimilation approaches (lemmer, meyer & van wyk 2012), disregarding the linguistic and educational needs of the learner. methodology to fulfil the aim of the study, a qualitative approach was employed, which was, broadly speaking, based on the interpretive paradigm. nieuwenhuis (2008:59–60) concludes that the ultimate aim of interpretivist research is to offer a perspective of a situation and to analyse the situation under investigation to provide insights into the way in which a particular group of people make sense of their situation or the phenomena they encounter. here, the aim was to investigate and interpret the opinions of the teachers with regard to the use of cs as a teaching strategy and therefore the interpretive paradigm was deemed fit for this investigation. sample the sample was drawn from a population of 59 afrikaans teachers from the researched area. forty-nine schools in the area offered afrikaans as a subject. from this sample, 12 schools were selected – the choice of these schools was guided by the fact they were offering afrikaans at all grade levels (afrikaans second language was being phased out in the remaining schools, and was taught either in grades 11 and 12 or in grade 12 only). the participants consisted of 13 teachers purposefully selected from the 12 schools. the sample included teachers from remote rural areas as well as from schools in urban areas. most afrikaans teachers in the researched schools were l2 speakers of afrikaans; the implication of this is that cs is unavoidable during lesson presentation, as the teachers’ l1 was an african language. research instrument, procedures and data analysis to solicit information from the participants, face-to-face interviews were conducted. the main focus of the teacher interviews was to establish from them whether they view cs as a teaching strategy when teaching afrikaans second language. though it would have been advantageous to use single response questions owing to their easy processing, open-ended questions were included in order to probe more into the meanings the interviewees attached to their responses. at the same time, this enabled the researchers to see some behaviours such as gestures, expressions and mannerisms that could not have been revealed through single response questions. more important was the idea of interacting with the participants in their natural setting (which is the schools where they are teaching). this helped to ensure that the participants were at ease as they participated in the interviews (as opposed to the potentially threatening situation of a strange place). researchers like mcmillan (2008) attest to the benefits of this procedure when they point out that ‘[t]he setting influences the way humans behave and, therefore, it is not possible to understand the behaviour without taking into account the situational characteristics’. each interview session took 30–35 min, and was video-taped for later analysis. the researchers also made field notes. after the completion of the interview process, the data were analysed. the recorded field notes and video tapes of the responses from participants were transcribed and the data were coded. following this, relevant themes emerged, which were further analysed in order to mine the data for information relevant to the research questions. broadly speaking, the responses from the participants provided valuable background information against which cs can be used as a possible teaching aid. in what follows, the identified themes are outlined, with reference to some of the responses that led to the identification of these themes. results teachers’ opinions on code switching and on the value of mixing isixhosa and afrikaans in the teaching of afrikaans all the teachers who participated in the study expressed positive opinions of cs in their afrikaans lessons. they all approved of using cs as a teaching aid in the l2 language lesson. the participants’ reaction to the question on the value of mixing languages in the teaching of afrikaans was also quite unanimous. eighty per cent of the respondents were of the opinion that cs assisted learners to understand better. these are verbatim responses in favour of cs by two participants: the value of mixing isixhosa and afrikaans is increased understanding of lessons. [p12, female, teacher of grade 11, senior secondary school g] it facilitates learning. [p9, female, teacher of grade 10, senior secondary school g] however, some participants were of the view that cs did not necessarily improve communication skills. a grade 8 teacher explained: ‘there is no value in mixing languages, because this retards learning.’ [p7, female, teacher of grade 8, senior secondary school b] this was supported by another teacher: ‘mixing languages weakens the second language.’ [p3, male, teacher of grade 8, senior secondary school c] the use of afrikaans as the only spoken language in afrikaans classes to the interview question ‘is afrikaans the only language that is spoken during afrikaans lessons?’, all participants admitted that they code switch to isixhosa during afrikaans lessons. the responses below are verbatim answers that were given by the participants. a teacher from a senior secondary school answered: not at all. mixing language is unavoidable. [p8, female, teacher of grade 10, senior secondary school a] this was echoed by a teacher from another secondary school who stated: ‘if you only speak afrikaans, you get nowhere with the lesson.’ [p6, male, teacher of grade 10, senior secondary school b] the same sentiment was evident from the responses of the teachers from senior secondary schools. both these teachers (grade 10 and grade 9) also said that cs was inevitable in the classroom: ‘i have to translate, otherwise they do not understand.’ [p11, male, teacher of grade 10, senior secondary school d] and ‘students struggle when you use afrikaans only.’ [p2, female, teacher of grade 9, senior secondary school f] in their responses, it also surfaced that monolingual teaching does not yield positive results in that learners struggle to understand the lesson when only afrikaans is used but they understand better when the teachers code switch. code switching in assessment when asked if cs was allowed in the assessment of afrikaans second language (interview question ‘are the students allowed to code switch in the tasks and examinations?’), all participants stated that cs is not allowed in the assessment. this is indicative of inequalities in the teaching and learning situation. in the examinations, the non-mother tongue learners struggle to master the questions while their mother tongue counterparts do not experience this hardship. the following verbatim responses illustrate this stance: ‘no, they are not allowed to code switch in the assessment.’ [p10, female, teacher of grade 11, senior secondary school c] this was supported by another teacher, who pointed out: ‘no. if they code switch, they are penalised.’ [p4, female, teacher of grade 9, senior secondary school d] if cs is allowed in the teaching and learning scenario, why is it banned from assessment? challenges faced by teachers in assessing afrikaans the teachers in this sample explained that learners are not allowed to code switch in the assessment. this results in them failing the examinations. to this effect, a teacher remarked: ‘the learners’ answers display lack of understanding of the language in which the question is asked.’ [p5, male, teacher of grade 8, senior secondary school k] another teacher concurred: ‘their answers show lack of understanding of the question.’ [p3, female, teacher of grade 10, senior secondary school f] this finding is in line with maccabe’s (2013:174) statement that l2 learners often fail because of numerous language-related problems, and not necessarily because of a lack of intellect. to the question seeking to establish ways in which the learners can be met halfway with afrikaans during teaching and assessment, 55% of the participants suggested that cs should be employed in the primary school, secondary school and also in the first years of tertiary education until the students attain full mastery of the target language. in corroboration with this notion, du plessis (2014) says: in reality some black first-year students at higher education institutions (heis) do not fully understand the concepts explained in class (in english); and do not have the level of fluency in english to express themselves clearly in tasks and assessments. (p. 1194) discussion and conclusion the study sought to establish how teachers perceived the use of cs as a teaching strategy in the l2 classroom, where the l2 learners are l1 speakers of isixhosa (on most counts). the teachers interviewed in this study answered with a unanimous ‘no’ when asked whether they use only afrikaans in the l2 classroom. thus, there was clear evidence that teachers use cs to augment their teaching strategies. all the teachers in the sample stated that they code-switched in the afrikaans l2 class, partly because of their own incompetence and partly because learners did not understand when only afrikaans was spoken in the classroom. while it transpired that the prevalent medium of instruction is some form of cs in the afrikaans l2 classroom, it was clearly stated by educators that cs is not allowed in the assessment of afrikaans second language. rather, assessment takes place only in standard afrikaans, which the learners fail because they do not understand the instructions and questions in the question paper. ironically, the teachers were l2 speakers of afrikaans too, and thus not equipped to teach learners the standard version of afrikaans in which the assessment had to take place. the teachers pointed out that the reason for resorting to cs was to assist the learners to understand afrikaans lessons. but what does it help to understand code-switched lessons when assessment maintains a purist stance? in this regard, the authors of this article suggest that cs be infused as a teaching strategy not only to assist in the teaching of afrikaans second language, but also to assist l2 learners to understand the target language and comprehend all questions in the assessment. we therefore recommend a gradual move from a high tolerance of cs (in lower classes) to a low tolerance of cs in higher classes. the diagram in figure 1 suggests the manner in which this gradual accommodation of cs can be infused throughout the learning career of afrikaans l2 learners. figure 1: gradual accommodation of code switching in afrikaans second language. points a–b represent the duration of teaching and learning, which can be one teaching period, a week, a month or a year, or even the whole duration of learning over a period of years. point c represents the spike of cs application and tolerance. point d represents the least degree of cs application and tolerance. according to this figure, cs use and tolerance need to be high at the beginning of the learning cycle. the representation is based on the pedagogical principle of moving from the known to the unknown. the more the unknown is mastered, the more the known becomes redundant and is reduced, that is (in this context), the more afrikaans is mastered, the less cs will be needed (adapted from songxaba’s, 2016:175–176, gradient accommodation model). it became clear from this study that the subcategories of speech accommodation, first introduced by giles in the 1970s, are still relevant today. in line with the predictions of speech accommodation theory, the teachers in this sample had a clear awareness and understanding of their leaners’ communication needs, and they code-switched accordingly in the l2 language classroom, essentially because they knew that this was the only way to move forward in a lesson. given that the teachers were also l2 speakers of afrikaans, it is likely that they also employed cs to make themselves understood in class. the participants made clear efforts to meet their learners halfway in the language learning process, but this accommodation was only evident in the use of cs as a language teaching strategy. because of existing language-in-education policies and curriculum expectations, learners’ needs could not be accommodated (using cs) in any of the assessments that the l2 learners had to complete. naturally, this study was limited by its small sample, and the results cannot be generalised to the larger population. even so, the unanimous view of this sample of afrikaans second language teachers in the eastern cape is that cs is the only way to get learners to understand content in the l2 classroom. this begs for further research into this field, particularly focusing on how cs could be incorporated in the curriculum in an accepted and ‘standardised’ way, not only as a teaching strategy but also as an aid in l2 language assessment. the power dynamics at play depicted a gloomy picture of the plight of non-mother tongue learners in the afrikaans classroom. the incongruence between the code-switched teaching and the monolingual assessment puts learners at a disadvantage. this state of affairs leads them to underperform, not because they do not have sufficient intellect, but because of a myriad of language problems (maccabe 2013:174). this view is in line with foertsch’s (1998) contention that if there is a mismatch between the structures, values and expectations of the culture of the home language and the culture of the school or second language, learners may be at a disadvantage in early language tasks, such as early reading and writing, and thus they will spend their entire school careers attempting to catch up. delpit (1988:280–298) concurs with this notion in his claim that it is particularly important for children of mixed race to be proficient at using the ‘language of power’. this state of affairs inevitably leads to an unfortunate situation where the children of minority groups have to first assimilate the language and culture of the dominant group before they can smoothly progress in their academic careers. thus, their use of the language is controlled by the power dynamics that are at play in the institution of learning and in the politics of the day. mbatha and plüddemann (2004) support this view when they say: despite the officialisation of isixhosa and other african languages following the ushering in of the democratic dispensation in 1994 and the explicit promotion of multilingualism in the language-in-education policy for public schools, african languages continue to have a cinderella status in education. 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(eds.), 2011, annual review of south asian languages and linguistics, de gruyter mouton, berlin. songxaba, s.l., 2016, the use of afrikaans-english-xhosa code switching in the classroom, scholars’ press, saarbrücken, germany. stone, g., 1995, ‘the lexicon and sociolinguistic codes of the working-class afrikaans-speaking cape peninsula coloured community’, in r. mesthrie (ed.), language and social history. studies in south african sociolinguistics, pp. 277–290, david phillips, cape town. the language policies for medium of instruction document, 1992, ‘language policies for medium of instruction: an information document for discussion by parents, teachers and principals’, etic reporter 16(2&3) 4–16. tonkin, h., 2004, ‘language and society’, issues in global education 178, 1–24. van der walt, c., 2009, ‘the function of code switching in english language learning classes’, per liguam 25(1), 30–43. van der walt, l. & kidd, m., 2012, ‘acknowledging biliteracy in higher education assessment strategies: a tale of two trials’, in d. aintzane, d. lagasabaster & j.m., sierra (eds.), english-medium instruction at universities, multilingual matters, bristol, uk. vinson, j., 2013, why translanguaging is the future!, viewed 05 may 2013, from http://bilingualeducationtranslanguaging.bravesites.com yousif, j.d., 2012, ‘code switching and code mixing: a case study of child bilingualism in iraq’, journal of the college of arts university of basrah 62, 48–63. abstract introduction methodology ethical considerations data analysis results discussion of findings conclusion recommendations acknowledgements references about the author(s) sister l. songxaba department of continuing professional teacher development, faculty of educational sciences, walter sisulu university, mthatha, south africa limkani sincuba department of continuing professional teacher development, faculty of educational sciences, walter sisulu university, mthatha, south africa citation songxaba, s.l. & sincuba, l., 2019, ‘the effect of social media on english second language essay writing with special reference to whatsapp’, reading & writing 10(1), a179. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.179 original research the effect of social media on english second language essay writing with special reference to whatsapp sister l. songxaba, limkani sincuba received: 04 oct. 2017; accepted: 20 may 2019; published: 30 july 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the eastern cape province in south africa is a multilingual province where isixhosa is the most widely spoken indigenous language. learners seldom use english at home, and it remains, largely, the language of learning and teaching used at school. with the advent of dynamic technology, learners are widely exposed to social media, and those who use the language of social media networks tend to include it in their academic activities at school. objectives: the purpose of this article is to report on the orthographic errors in english second language grade 10 essay writing caused by the use of social media, particularly whatsapp. method: the study was carried out at three randomly selected high schools in one district in the eastern cape province, south africa. the study used a quantitative approach to data analysis, but with a survey research design. random sampling techniques were used to select 180 learners from three schools. the data collection instrument consisted of learners’ narrative essays. the data were analysed quantitatively and are presented using tables and graphs. the orthographic errors in the essays were identified and quantified. results: the findings of this investigation shed light on the influence of social media on learners’ writing. some of the findings included use of abbreviations, unnecessarily shortened words, and use of numbers instead of the complete word form. conclusion: recommendations are made on how teachers can help learners avoid this erroneous use of language in their writing. suggestions are also made on how textbook writers and the department of basic education can assist and support teachers in this process. keywords: orthographic errors; social media; essay; whatsapp; english second language. introduction language is a systematic means of communicating ideas using sounds, gestures, signs or marks. it is the code used to express oneself and communicate with others. communicating is to share information, or to share what one knows and to interact with others. it involves a system of combining words to create meaning. thus communication involves language, and language, therefore, remains potentially a communicative medium capable of expressing ideas and concepts as well as moods, feelings and attitudes (habermas 1979). language is not merely a tool that helps human beings express thoughts and feelings but is also a way of becoming civilised. it is an important link in today’s world of globalisation. writing is a way of communicating and conveying ideas and feelings from one mind to another mind. the hallmarks of good writing are the hallmarks of good communication. the skill of writing is developed through composition writing (swain 2005). essay writing forms a fundamental tool in second language learning. this is evidenced by the highest marks allocated to the essay (paper 3) during the examination of english second language (esl) from grade 10 to 12 in south africa’s curriculum assessment policy statement (caps) (department of basic education 2015). at the same time development and technological advancement has seen writing of formal english on the decline and much of this is attributed to whatsapp communication. writing is an ‘intricate’ and complex task; it is the ‘most difficult of the language abilities to acquire’ (allen & corder 1974:177). its level of difficulty varies between native speakers who think in the language being used and non-native speakers who think in their own native language (allen & corder 1974:177). while writing, non-native speakers have, in general, to think about rules they need to apply; rules that native speakers are supposed to have automatised. jabeen (2015) asserts that people learn languages when they have opportunities to understand and work with language in a context that they comprehend and find interesting. alsaawi (2015) states that writing is a method that transfers spoken language from being heard to being seen and consequently read. in order to represent spoken language in a written script, a system must be invented and for that reason precisely implemented. thus, the formal english writing system is the one that native speakers and second language learners should strictly follow. jabeen (2015:15) says that english is the predominant foreign language taught in schools in europe, south america, asia and africa. it is suggested that english is more widely spoken and written than any other language, even more than latin has ever been. it is also suggested that english might now be the first truly global language, being the dominant or official language in over 60 countries. in south africa, english is used in education, administration and mass media. the english language as stated is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world (akinwamide 2012). furthermore, padilla and mcelroy (2005) as well as villareal and van der horst (2008) state that the labour market demands that professionals have at least a basic knowledge of the english language to get a job with an income that ameliorates their socio-economic status. therefore, if english is used inappropriately and incorrectly in essays, for example the use of whatsapp language, it might pose communication difficulties for the learners who write them and for their educators who read them. if learners have a habit of using social media such as whatsapp language in their day-to-day writing, then they may not be able to write appropriately in formal job situations. roelofse (2013) contends that exposure to new literacies found in new technologies undoubtedly impacts the way in which second language learners perceive the world. furthermore, the amount of contact with these social utilities certainly influences literacy practices by learners. new technologies do not merely alter the way people live their lives but it affects the way they think. moreover, davies (2012:21) in roelofse (2013) argues that ‘texts of the new technologies have mutated into complex hybrid systems that have made new demands on reading and writing, viewing, social exchange, and communication’. facebook is no exception in that the use of this social network site requires a multimodal approach of embedding and combining words and written texts from numerous sites. in the same sense, the social medium, whatsapp is perceived by the researchers as having the same contaminating effect on learners’ essay writing skills. in this regard, social media is a ‘dialogue’ and ‘means [of] engaging with people’ (coons 2012:44). in support of this argument roelofse’s (2013) research emphasises the alterations in written communication brought about by transformation in electronic media communication in the use of facebook. roelofse collected data from educators to substantiate the argument that there is a significant and measurable effect of social media and this is articulated in the question: ‘have you witnessed any grammatical errors in written work that could be attributed to facebook-speak?’ two out of the five educator participants answered “agree” and the remaining three answered “strongly agree”. when asked to specify, the teachers were given a space to identify more precisely the kinds of errors found in learners’ work. teacher n stated that, ‘learners’ language use is so poor that they cannot express themselves. the use of the wrong verb often changes the meaning of a fact’. teacher m stated: ‘students shorten words and sentences. they don’t start sentences with capitals and forget about punctuation’. teacher d wrote that ‘spelling and the answering of questions in as short as possible ways with incorrect spelling was evidenced’. finally, teacher p observed that ‘learners like to use abbreviations for certain words that are commonly used with electronic media such as “u” or “lol”.’ david (2001), cai (2001) and dovey (2010) concluded from their study that writing is an important tool in education and in the working environment, hence it is important that it is not polluted by social media scripts such as whatsapp. social media language generally pollutes grammar, spelling and sentence construction to name but a few aspects of writing. such errors in writing are said to pollute the text. norrish (1987:7) defines an error as a systematic deviation when a learner has not learnt something and consistently gets it wrong. cunningworthy (1995:87) concurs and adds that errors are systematic deviations from the norms of the language being learned. these two scholars use the phrase ‘systematic deviation’ in their definitions of an error which can be interpreted as a deviation that happens repeatedly. errors can also be classified as inter-lingual or intra-lingual (richards & schmidt 2002:267). inter-lingual errors can be identified as transfer errors that result from a learner’s first language features, for example grammatical, lexical or pragmatic errors. on the other hand, intra-lingual errors are overgeneralisations (richards & schmidt 2002:379) in the target language, resulting from ignorance of rule restrictions, incomplete applications of rules, and false concepts hypothesised. orthography is the correct way of writing a particular language. the term orthography comes from the greek language and means ‘correct way of writing’. the conventional spelling system of a language is therefore part of its orthography. orthography is the standardised procedure of a writing system, which includes spelling, pronunciation, word break and emphasis. punctuation, word break and emphasis are not major problems for learners, but spelling is a problem for the majority of learners. in the english language, spelling plays an important role in the writing process (franklin 2014). languages have either deep or shallow orthographies. if a sentence has incorrectly spelt words, the meaning and message of the sentence may be distorted. for precise meaning and precise communication words need to be spelt correctly. frequent use of wrongly spelt words in an essay may erode the direct intended meaning of communication. whatsapp may promote word cutting and such word cuts may be confusing for different people and even be meaningless for some readers. whatsapp’s casual means of communication may lead to the decay of formal essay writing skills. the efforts of linguists are to perfect and sharpen language efficiency; therefore, whatsapp language has to be closely monitored so that it does not have a negative influence on the essays written by learners. short word writing by learners may be viewed by linguists and language teachers as a decline of language proficiency in writing. forms of whatsapp text messaging mostly involve the use of pictograms and logograms. words are either shortened by using symbols to represent the word, or using symbols whose names sound like a syllable of the word. a text may consist of words or an alphanumeric combination. for example, texting ‘to date’ could be rendered as ‘2d8’, ‘for you’ as ‘4 u’ and ‘before’ as ‘b4’. to text ‘to whom it may concern’, for example, one could simply write ‘twimc’. ‘love you with all my heart’ could also be texted as ‘luwamh’ (bbc focus on africa 2006:25). the impact of social media writing was also observed in students’ academic writing by jabeen (2015:58–59). jabeen reported that many factors were responsible for affecting a learner’s language. one such phenomenon which was also analysed in the study was the use of short wording in the writing that is not allowed in formal writing. examples of some of these words were: plz for please, b/w for between, & for and, b4 for before, thnx for thanks and thanku for thank you. many other such mistakes are found in the analysis of the errors. the study also highlights the phenomenon of social media language being used so frequently that students use it unconsciously in their academic writing (jabeen 2015). several syllables of a word can also be substituted by using numerical sequences. it is also possible to use numbers alone to communicate a whole passage. such writing may erode the progressions of grammar, spelling and good sentence construction in formal english writing. it seems that whatsapp language may influence or become predominant in learners’ communication, if not dealt with. learners using english as a second language may not be able to write correctly and appropriately in english, if their writing is highly influenced by whatsapp language. allaith and joshi (2011) point out that literacy is appraised not only by reading and writing accuracy, but also by the correct spelling of words. spelling mastery indicates one’s level of education while spelling errors reveal inaccuracy. nesamalar, saratha and teh (2001) point out that learners’ writing skill deficiencies are a cause for concern among academics and parents, considering that their writing component is given higher credit (marks) in school examinations. writing of essays, therefore, has to be given more attention so that negative influences such as whatsapp and other social media do not impact negatively on the academic writing of learners. goals of the study this article sought to investigate the effect of whatsapp on orthographic errors in esl essay writing. the study was part of a larger study on orthographic errors in esl learning. against this background, the researchers sought to investigate the influence of social media such as whatsapp on learners’ orthographic errors in essay writing. to this end, the study aimed to address the following research question: to what extent does whatsapp influence the predominance of orthographic errors in english second language learners’ essay writing? methodology songxaba (2016:63) states that methodology culminates in techniques and procedures or processes used in the process of gathering data. methodology means the philosophy of the research process. the article adopted a quantitative approach to data analysis, but used a survey as the data collection tool. this methodology benefits the article because the researchers sought a more objective tool to investigate this phenomenon. as njobe (1992) states: … analysis based on statistical computations is seen as being more objective. in the latter the researcher is being more guided by the outcome of the statistical computations even against [his or her] own wishes and beliefs. (p. 23) leedy and ormrod (2005:105) shed light on this notion when they explain that quantitative research deals with human problems based on testing a theory composed of variables, measured in numbers and analysed using statistical procedures. terre blanche, durrheim and painter (2011:563) concur, saying that quantitative research is research in which data are collected or coded into numerical forms, and to which statistical analyses may be applied to determine the significance of the findings. quantitative research involves the counting and measuring of events and performing a statistical analysis of a body of numerical data (burke & larry 2008). the assumption behind quantitative research is that there is an objective truth in the world that can be measured and explained scientifically (babbie & mouton 2001:233). above all, quantitative data can be easily summarised and it is this that facilitates the communication of findings. a survey research design was followed in this research, as data were collected through surveys. the research sites were not named so as to protect their identity, and codes were given to their names: x, y and z. the researchers gathered information on orthographic errors in english first additional language (eng fal) essay writing of grade 10 learners. the researchers used quantitative research so as to probe the current use of whatsapp. in order to identify and determine the use of whatsapp language, the researchers counted the mistakes and errors made by the participants. data collected were analysed and the results were presented in tables, figures and graphs. to quantify the errors committed, pie chart graphs were used to present the data collected. on the pie charts the errors committed by the respondents were shown using percentages. special emphasis was placed on the influence of whatsapp writing on orthographic errors made by the three groups of participants from research schools x, y and z. population and sample a sample of 522 grade 10 learners from three senior secondary schools (namely x, y and z for the purposes of this study) constituted the population for this article. the three schools were randomly selected from one district in the eastern cape, south africa. all the participants in each research site were given numbers from 1 to 80. every fourth number from research sites x and z was taken as a participant for this research article. however, in research site y every second number was taken since they were fewer learners doing grade 10. thus a sample of 180 participants in grade 10 was randomly selected from the three schools. the number of participants from each research site is shown in table 1. table 1: number of participants per research site. instrumentation data were collected using narrative essays written by the learners in english. the learners were given five narrative essay topics to choose from and wrote an essay on the topic of their choice. the respondents wrote the essays following the stipulated essay writing rules taught in the class, namely mind-mapping, first draft, proofreading, making corrections and final work. the written work was done and submitted via the whatsapp platform. the learners are taught narrative essay writing skills in esl from grade 3 in south african schools. five topics were given in each research site. these topics were: ‘i thought my life had ended’ ‘when i open the door’ ‘my life was a mess’ ‘i never thought the friend i trusted would be the one’ ‘when i opened my eyes’ the learners were asked to write 250–300 words in 2 h in their respective sites under the supervision of their eng fal teacher during school hours. ethical considerations permission to carry out the study was obtained from the provincial department of basic education of south africa. the respondents gave informed consent in writing by filling in a form provided by the university. permission from the three schools was given in writing by the principals of those schools. confidentiality was guaranteed by the researcher as respondents did not write their names on the essays. codes were used in alphabetical order to identify essays submitted, as such data collected could not be linked to respondents. consent was sought from the participants of the three researched schools in the eastern cape and from the parents of the learners under 18 years of age. it was explained to the participants that they had the voluntary right to take part or withdraw from participating at any time of this research. data analysis the submitted essays were marked by the researchers and analysed manually by the same researchers. errors identified were classified according to use of whatsapp language error (wle), whatsapp language error use of numbers (wln) and use of words with letters that were omitted. graphs and tables were used to present the data. pie charts showing percentages of the errors identified were also used. an explanation was given under each aspect of data using tables and graphs. results the following observations were made regarding the impact of whatsapp on respondents’ academic essay writing. use of whatsapp language errors table 2 shows some of the sentences written by the respondents using whatsapp language in the essays they wrote. table 2: whatsapp language error committed by respondents in this study. table 2 shows that respondents resorted to whatsapp language in writing certain sentences in the essays given. for example, learners wrote: ‘my dad was (@) work’ instead of [at], while some wrote ‘i (wz) not full’ instead of writing [was]. whatsapp language error use of numbers respondents wrote numbers instead of writing words where applicable. table 3 has some examples written by the respondents. table 3: whatsapp language error use of numbers. table 3 shows that respondents used numbers instead of words when writing for example; ‘it (wz mi 1 tm)’ [it was my first time], ‘i (ws thkg tht 2 dy …)’ [i was thinking that today], ‘(jxt b4 we lft)’ [just before we left]. whatsapp words used by the learners respondents used words with letters that were omitted and were mostly used in whatsapp language. learners’ use of a number of words from whatsapp language in some cases made reading and making sense of their written essays difficult. for example, some of the words they wrote were: ‘hi /he, slp/sleep, wen/when, nvr/never, dat/that, de/the’, as shown by a few of the examples in table 4 and types of predominant orthographic errors in figure 1. figure 1: types of predominant orthographic errors frequency. table 4: whatsapp words used by the learners in their written essays. respondents’ frequencies of spelling orthographic errors figure 2 presents frequencies of spelling orthographic errors among the participants in this article. the data for this graph were drawn from table 4. figure 2: respondents’ frequencies of spelling orthographic errors (n = 6). respondent 42 from school z (z42) had the highest number of spelling errors committed, followed by respondent 50 from school x (x50) and respondent 5 from school y (y5) which had an average level of spelling errors. however, respondent 1 from school x (x1) and respondent 42 from school y (y42) had the lowest spelling errors committed in this study, as shown in figure 2. respondents committed a number of spelling errors. seventy-five per cent of the respondents used numbers instead of words, 57% used poor sentence construction and 90% omitted some words in their essays. discussion of findings the effect of whatsapp language errors on writing was observed in the respondents’ academic essay writing. respondents wrote sentences using numbers instead of words and abbreviations. for example, some wrote ‘bf’ (before), ‘2dy’ (today), ‘1tm’ (first time). the orthographic errors throw light on the social constructivist notion of error analysis, which suggests that learners bring into the classroom concepts they may be using outside the classroom, for example on social media and cell phones. as they communicate in an informal manner on these platforms, the language used on whatsapp is then internalised and reproduced by the respondents in their academic essays. such writing by the respondents may suggest that they are using whatsapp social media in their day-to-day life. their informal language structures resurface in the formal written work as it did in the essays analysed for this study. the use of whatsapp language by the respondents in the formal written essays made reading, understanding and marking of the work very difficult since the researcher had to try to decipher what the participant intended to say. young (2009:56) states that another way of shortening communication in english is through the use of ‘emoticons’. this is an intriguingly new and still evolving linguistic trend which tends to delight, annoy or puzzle people as they read a piece of work – as was observed by the researchers while they were reading the essays analysed for this article. the negative effects of learners abbreviated writing in academic work, according to lecturers from the ghana academic affairs department of the wa polytechnic registry (2006), were generally: poor (52%), reflected reading problems (33%) and delayed the script marking process (19%). these issues negate the positive impact of text messaging as generalised. the use of phone abbreviations in texting also has a negative impact on grammar, as well as learners’ writing in general (chang, 2012). similarly, the results in this article are closely related to those collected by sarfraz (2011), who established that among the errors collected from essays, one unique error was identified which may likely open new areas of research in error analysis of english writing of non-native speakers. one of the respondents wrote ‘lyf’, and ‘fite’, in the essay and later on in the same essay these misspelled words appeared with the correct spellings (‘life’ and ‘fight’). currently, the reduced forms of words are frequently used for the short message service (sms) and on the whatsapp platform. this shows the negative influence of these technologies especially on second language learners who are committing unnecessary errors despite having the right understanding or at least a limited knowledge of rules of the target language. in the current study respondents used whatsapp language, omitted words and used numbers where they needed to have used words in the essays they wrote. the negative effect of text messaging can only worsen the performance rating of students and therefore necessitates intervention to stop the language decay. the above stance is supported by the wa polytechnic (2006) study. the researchers at wa polytechnic state that an appreciable number of students struggle with grammar, lexis and structure as a result of text messaging. this encourages abbreviation and non-conformity with grammatical rules. the researchers therefore contend that this could worsen students’ written communication skills rather than improve them. the researcher of the current study found it very difficult to understand what the respondents were writing when using whatsapp language in the essays they wrote. such use of whatsapp language was found to be common in the academic writing of essays and was felt to weaken the academic level of an essay, as it is informal and may even irritate a reader that such work was submitted. the researchers felt strongly that learners may need to be discouraged from the use of whatsapp language by teachers at all times so that mastery of formal english language writing of essays should be encouraged, as learners need to be proficient in formal writing for academic and future career purposes. where the respondents used whatsapp language to write their essays, they appeared very casual and resulted in a lack of interest in reading the work. similarly, young (2009) contends that some writing styles are increasingly overly casual and one should be hesitant to imitate them. likewise, from the findings obtained from the survey conducted among wa polytechnic staff and students, it is evident that whatsapp text messaging could pose a threat to student writing skills and therefore must be discouraged in student assignments and examinations. the written communication skills of learners are already generally poor; therefore, all efforts should be made to help students write correct and appropriate english in all communications. fourie’s (2014) view is that the poor academic performance of learners who use chat ‘lingo’, acronyms and abbreviations can ‘cross-contaminate’ their academic reports, assignments and tests. this factor alters even their behaviour and affects their academic performance. ironically, learners who choose to use whatsapp excessively know that this activity may be influencing their behaviour and attention. whatsapp certainly affects learners’ academic performance when they are less aware of their poor language use in assignments and tests (fourie 2014:86). the researchers can confirm that whatsapp may influence learners essay writing skills, if not used correctly. the findings from the study showed the use of ‘@’, for example, in a sentence instead of ‘at’ indicating a ‘cross-contamination’ in learners academic writing. conclusion a number of orthographic errors that have resulted from the use of whatsapp seems to be predominant in learners’ writing given the technologically advanced era of the 21st century. this article has shown that in applying error analysis, a number of errors in learners’ writing can be attributed to the influence of whatsapp messaging. the systematic analysis of these errors is very important. error analysis serves as a linguistic analysis and it provides deep insight into the process of language learning. error analysis also provides numerous solutions to various language learning-related problems. the findings of the present study on whatsapp errors will empower language teachers as well as course and syllabus designers in designing teaching and learning materials that will help learners avoid these errors. by applying whatsapp error analysis techniques and methodologies to make learners aware of the errors, educators would be able to make language teaching and learning more effective and assist learners in producing better written essays. recommendations in the light of the findings of this research, the following recommendations are made: english fal essay writing skills should be taught effectively to learners at all levels of learning in the classroom. to help learners recognise the modern whatsapp errors, learners need to be given well-defined essay writing rules, for example planning, mind map, paragraphing, introduction, body and conclusion, and some samples of their written essays may need to be transcribed and distributed to them for correction and analysis so that they learn from their mistakes. english fal learners need effective feedback about the whatsapp errors along with appropriate remedial processes to curb the errors and monitor the recurring process as a conscious process to minimise errors. english language continues to carry the status of ‘required to pass’ in our schools, colleges, universities and the corporate workplace worldwide. from the data collected and analysed for this study, the level of english language proficiency of the learners may be said to be far from satisfactory. correct writing of english ought to be a priority for learners and educators. the department of basic education should convene essay writing workshops at departmental level and at school level to educate and encourage teachers on how to teach and mark essays in order to help avoid these errors. english teachers in schools should be encouraged and empowered since their job description requires highly proficient english and proficiency in the conventions of formal written english in order to teach learners. acknowledgements i hereby acknowledge dr songxaba, my supervisor, who worked day and night for the success of this article, my husband mthandwa sincuba, my daughter nokulunga sincuba, my son mbongeni sincuba and my niece nosipho ndlovu who had to do without me when i was working on this article. most importantly i thank god for sustaining me throughout the journey of this article. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. author’s contributions s.l.s. offered guidance throughout the writing of this article. she was also responsible for the chronological arrangement of the subheadings and proofreading of each aspect of the article. l.s. is the main writer of the article. l.s. selected the topic, did the background literature search around the topic and conducted the research. the findings culminated in the writing of this article. funding this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references akinwamide, t.k., 2012, ‘the influence of process approach on english as second language students’ performances in essay writing’, elt 5(3), 16–29. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v5n3p16 allaith, z.a. & joshi, r.m., 2011, ‘spelling performance of english consonants among students whose first language is arabic’, reading and writing 24(9), 1089–1110. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-010-9294-3 allen, j.p.b. & corder, s.p., 1974, techniques in applied linguistics: language and learning, oxford university press, new york. babbie, e. & mouton, j., 2001, the practice of social 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social sciences, uct press, cape town. villareal, r. & van der horst, a., 2008, ‘tourism competitiveness strategy of the dominican republic’, journal of tourism research 1(1), 14–28. wa polytechnic, 2006, an investigation into the causes of poor performance of students in communication skills, a report submitted by the communication skills committee to the academic board, viewed 06 march 2017, from http://www.mobilearn.org/download/results/guidelines.pdf. young, p., 2009, writing and presenting in english: the rosetta stone of science, elsevier, london. article information author: monica hendricks1 affiliation: 1institute for the study of english in africa, rhodes university, south africa correspondence to: monica hendricks postal address: po box 94, grahamstown 6140, south africa dates: received: 14 june 2012 accepted: 21 feb. 2013 published: 15 apr. 2013 how to cite this article: hendricks, m., 2013, ‘”not waiting for the initiative to arrive”: teachers promoting and sustaining reading’, reading & writing 4(1), art. #24, 6 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v4i1.24 copyright notice: © 2013. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ‘not waiting for the initiative to arrive’: teachers promoting and sustaining reading in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • teacher professional development and reading • research methodology, questions and theoretical framework • findings: 'not waiting for the initiative to arrive'    • understanding    • practice    • tools    • disposition    • vision • implications for ongoing teacher professional development • conclusion • acknowledgements    • competing interests • references abstract top ↑ the phases of post-apartheid curriculum reform starting with curriculum 2005, to the revisions ushered in by the national curriculum statements and the recent curriculum and assessment policy statements display a trend toward increasing prescription in terms of content to be taught and allocation of curriculum time per subject, both of which are useful. in order to prepare school teachers for these ongoing curriculum reforms and an increased assessment burden, the national and provincial education departments have held regular workshops and provided bursaries for teachers to embark on academic studies in their teaching field. in addition, estimates are that non-governmental sources have spent r1 billion annually since 1994 on school improvement and teacher development programmes. introduction top ↑ despite these factors, teachers’ limited content knowledge (taylor & vinjevold 1999) and poor time on task (hammerness et al. 2005) continue to bedevil south african schooling. it is self-defeating to criticise instrumental, performative criteria of teachers’ and schools’ performances, such as standardised learner testing and integrated quality management systems, without suggesting alternative ways to encourage and measure teacher professional development. besides increasing regulation and performative criteria, which concentrate on external measurable outcomes, what is needed are ways in which to foster critical self-reflection and autonomy amongst teachers and researchers, so that learning is intrinsically motivated. recent theories of teacher professional development hold that teachers develop within communities of practice and that two different kinds of knowledge are important: knowledge learnt within teaching contexts (such as a university course) and knowledge developed within professional contexts (such as one’s own classroom) (hammerness et al.; fine 2005:382). whilst it is the norm for initial teacher education to combine these two knowledge areas, it is rarer for in-service, professional teacher development courses to do so. however, two in-service courses specialising in english first additional language at rhodes university, an advanced certificate in education and bachelor of education, bring together these two different knowledge areas. the university-based part of these courses focuses on building teachers’ content knowledge, whilst in the school-based course component tutors observe lessons and guide teachers’ reflections in order to build their pedagogical knowledge. this article examines whether teachers who completed these courses were able to sustain the programme of reading for pleasure that they began during the course, once the course ended and they were on their own in their classrooms, no longer being mentored through regular classroom visits and shared reflections with a course tutor on a lesson observed. given the evidence that many teachers are not proficient readers (thomson 2009), was the regular reading teachers did as part of their studies sufficient for their own reading to be a habit? had teachers learnt enough about the importance of reading for pleasure to continue to sustain their classroom libraries independently? what independent initiatives did teachers take to broaden their reading programmes? several aspects of the present educational context in south africa make a powerful case for finding sustained and innovative ways of promoting and enhancing literacy in school. foremost amongst these is learners’ low levels of literacy in all south african languages (especially african languages) as evidenced in international tests such as the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) (howie 2002) and national tests such as the annual national assessment (motshekga 2011). it is common knowledge that most poor eastern cape homes have little for children to read beyond a bible and community libraries are rare in rural areas (nelson mandela foundation 2005). this means that in order to develop grade-appropriate literacy, learners are almost completely dependent on their schools to provide them with books, and teachers to use those books effectively. yet, unfortunately, whilst 92.77% of state schools nationally have no library materials or librarians (equal education 2010:21), the government is cutting budgets to school libraries and reducing the provision of non-textbook reading materials (hoffman 2010:51). where books and reading materials are brought into schools (and there are many non-governmental organisations [ngos] doing this, for example, biblionef and rally to read, to name but two), language teachers are expected to operate school libraries and see to it that these resources get used because there is no national policy on school libraries or dedicated funding for such libraries, or librarians (paton-ash 2012). much anecdotal evidence and research (e.g. hunt 2007) suggest that books brought into a school without an existing library or programme of reading are often not used. perhaps the reason is that the main responsibility to establish, resource and run a school library falls on the language teachers. these language teachers usually receive no training and are simply expected to take on this worthy, but extra, work in addition to coping with full teaching loads and ongoing curriculum changes (chisholm et al. 2005). teacher professional development and reading top ↑ hammerness et al. (2005:382) as well as the new teacher education framework (nzimande 2011) agree that teachers’ professional development should include disciplinary learning (content knowledge) and practical learning (learning from practice or work-integrated learning). in order to build the english teachers’ disciplinary knowledge and reading repertoire, the bachelor of education (bed) and advanced certificate in education (ace) courses have a literature component that includes a range of fiction (poetry, novel, drama, short stories) and factual genres. teachers are also required to spend an hour reading each day during course contact sessions, usually toward the end of the day, enjoying books they have chosen from a small classroom library, and are encouraged to continue with their own personal reading at home.in terms of work-integrated learning, the teachers receive a set of classroom library books (from an ngo, such as biblionef or the zenex foundation), and hands-on training about the practicalities of implementing an extensive reading programme with their learners, such as setting up accession registers and a book-borrowing system. teachers are also introduced to classroom strategies aimed at promoting extensive reading, for example, paired reading, and activities such as creating a log of new words and favourite quotes from books read (gawith 1990), and tasks to link reading and writing, such as book reviews. finally, teachers have an assignment, spaced over 18 months, which requires them to write a report on their extensive reading programme and to track six learners’ progress. for the duration of their studies, therefore, teachers have a certain obligation to promote extensive reading in their classrooms. in 2010, i had an opportunity to find out whether teachers promote and sustain their reading programmes as the institute for the study of english in africa (isea) hosted a conference, mainly for alumni of our teacher education programmes. from 2003–2009, the isea had 65 ace and 27 bed graduates from its teacher professional development programmes, who came from districts including bizana, butterworth, fort beaufort, grahamstown, king williams town, lusikisiki and mount fletcher. these alumni were invited to write a report on how they had sustained their extensive reading programmes. they were given a writing frame and about three months to write their reports. seven teachers handed in written reports of their reading programmes at the 2010 conference, several with accompanying photographs, and one teacher presented a verbal report at the conference. early in 2011, another teacher (making a total of nine) invited the isea to the launch of his reading programme at his new school. it was a formal event, attended by teachers and learners, parents and district officials. i interviewed him about his reading programme. so, nine out of 92 isea alumni, just fewer than 10%, could provide evidence of independent, autonomous action to promote reading for pleasure with their learners. research methodology, questions and theoretical framework top ↑ the first seven teachers gave consent for me to copy the reports that they presented at the conference and conduct a document analysis for research purposes. i interviewed the remaining two about their reading programmes and they consented to my using the interview data. not a single teacher requested anonymity; instead, all were keen to have their names and photographs included in any report or conference paper that i wrote. i therefore provide the names of the teachers. i include the districts in which they taught to indicate their geographic spread and mainly rural location in the eastern cape. i do not, however, name their schools. as i was interested primarily in understanding how and why these teachers had sustained their reading programmes, some of the questions investigated include: • which teachers sustain their classroom libraries and reading for pleasure programmes? • what enables some teachers to sustain their classroom libraries and reading for pleasure programmes independently? • do teachers who sustain their extensive reading programmes have a supportive collegial circle? early models of professional development (e.g. fuller & brown 1975) posited developmental stages: survival, mastery and, finally, a stage where student teachers either settle into routines and become resistant to change or they become … concerned about their impact on pupils and responsive to feedback about their teaching. (quoted in furlong & maynard 1995:68) whilst these stages confirm my experience of how teachers develop, they do not explain why some teachers remain at stage one or two, or how a teacher can move from one stage to the next. the advantage of the hammerness et al. (2005) model is that it provides a more dynamic understanding and analysis of teacher professional development. hammerness et al. (2005:385) propose a model of teacher professional development which highlights the contextual factors and relationships that enable or constrain teacher professional development. their model suggests five dimensions that ‘competent beginners and accomplished teachers need to know and be able to do in order to teach challenging content to diverse students’. these five interrelated dimensions are: • understanding (deep knowledge of content, pedagogy and students). • practices (developing, practising and enacting a beginning repertoire). • tools (conceptual and practical resources for use). • dispositions (habits of thinking and action regarding teaching). • vision (images of the possible) (hammerness et al. 2005:386). finally, the model proposes that these five interrelated dimensions of teacher professional development operate within a learning community. this model was employed as an analytical tool in order to analyse teachers’ reports about their reading programmes because it enabled one not only to differentiate between disciplinary and practical learning, but also to identify elements of the teachers’ professional identity. the categories of dispositions (habits of thinking and action regarding teaching) and vision (images of the possible) form the core of teachers’ professional identities and animate their ‘teacherly’ disciplinary and practical knowledge. my aim in employing this model was to identify and understand what motivated these teachers to act independently and autonomously, rather than in response to regulations. findings: ‘not waiting for the initiative to arrive’ top ↑ of the nine teachers whose reports i analysed, four taught in the mount fletcher district, two in the fort beaufort district and one each in the bizana, king williams town and lusikisiki districts. their reports are analysed in terms of the five dimensions of the hammerness et al. (2005) model: • understanding • practices • tools • dispositions • vision. also, i considered the extent to which these teachers formed, or considered themselves part of, a learning community with regard to reading for pleasure. understanding in his report, mr bushula of fort beaufort articulates an understanding, not only of professional knowledge (a systematic, step-by-step pedagogy), but also a research-informed, academic knowledge of the purpose of reading for pleasure: ‘research has shown that reading provides the opportunity for learning to occur outside the classroom and that there is a wide range of learning benefits from reading. having that in mind, i decide to use the books that were donated by zenex foundation to form a classroom library. as a language teacher, i knew that extensive reading was one of the weapons to develop my learners’ proficiency in second language … a good teacher always knows his/her learners. i decided to embark on an implementation plan so as to enable the extensive reading programme to make progress. firstly, i decided to choose a variety of books according to their levels. secondly, i introduced the books to the learners … thirdly, i gave my learners the books to read silently. the fourth step was to incorporate other activities that promoted reading, e.g. discussions and reviews that were based on the books that they were reading. the fifth step was to introduce strategies that were helpful in extensive reading, e.g. library orientation and frequent visits to the public library.’ (mr bushula) practice ms ndamase’s report on her extensive reading programme provides compelling evidence of reading as a habit, a regular practice, in her grade 4 and 5 class in the lusikisiki district. according to the report, children are sitting and reading, engrossed in the activity. three boys are completely focused on their books: their body posture is relaxed, with one bent over his book. all are intent on their reading and none appears to notice when their teacher takes the photograph. sustained, independent reading in this class is familiar, comfortable and enjoyed. further examples of practices associated with reading were reported by mr mafunda (mount fletcher), ms nomangola (mount fletcher) and ms ndovela (bizana). their learners participate eagerly in debates, language festivals and reading activities such as library week. mr bushula’s learners and school were involved in a language festival on heritage day, literacy days and are often given an opportunity to comment at the school assembly on recent news that made headlines. tools practices need to be sustained by tools, both material and conceptual. amongst the most important material tools are books, both textbooks and non-textbooks, to read for pleasure. all these teachers made efforts to find more reading resources by asking colleagues and community members for books and magazines to add to their small classroom library stock. mr kepe (king williams town) is an example of a teacher with the conceptual tools (a conviction of the importance of reading for pleasure) who found the material tools to realise his vision. in 2009, a year after mr kepe graduated from the ace course, his school, together with the donation of classroom library books he received as an ace student, was destroyed in a storm. without a school, mr kepe spent about three months reporting to the district office as a displaced teacher. eventually, in april 2010, he was deployed to another school in the same district which had no non-textbooks for learners to read for pleasure. despite being new at the school, mr kepe was so convinced of the benefits of extensive reading that he initiated a school reading club from scratch. he started with a small donation of books from an eastern cape provincial official involved in adult education. the books were in english and isixhosa, which may explain why he was able to interest not only colleagues who taught english but also isixhosa teachers. just over a year after joining his new school, mr kepe was able to launch a school reading club. some teachers, for example mr setsubi (mount fletcher) and ms ndamase, wrote to ngos such as soul city and love life and asked education district officials for books. mr setsubi, especially, has been extremely successful in acquiring books and resources for his very big school. ms nomangola, like mr kepe, was a teacher who moved from her original school to a new school in the same district, but her reactions are strikingly different. in her original fairly small remote school, she was encouraged to maintain her extensive reading programme because she and other teachers saw the benefits for learners. she and other colleagues attributed the improved matric results between 2004 and 2007, an increase from 20% – 30% to 50%, to the learners’ additional reading at school. then, in 2008, she moved to a bigger school, which had books from biblionef and two mobile libraries donated by telkom. the material tools for extensive reading were there, but the teachers’ practice was to focus exclusively on reading prescribed books. she writes: ‘in the new school i felt very small because it was a bigger school as compared to the one i was coming from. i decided to wait and copy the style of the teachers who were already there. i waited for them to tell me about biblionef but they didn’t. in their styles they used to do the first few chapters [of the prescribed books] with the learners thoroughly e.g. to work for the character and analyse them, the setting of the story, the style of the author and then allow the learners to read on the following chapters on their own and prepare themselves for the assignments and tests’. (ms nomangola) the following year, a fellow english teacher was trained as a librarian, but the library books were still not used. it was only in 2010, after a visiting academic based at the isea (dr eva yerende), went to mount fletcher and enquired at her new school about reading that ms nomangola was motivated: as from the day i was visited by dr [yerende] from rhodes i felt renewed again … we [she together with the english teacher/librarian] started to count [the books] and they are 200 books: 70 novels, 80 short stories and 50 drama books. they are all written in english as our school is using english as a medium of instruction. learners are going to use them for the extensive reading. disposition how does understanding become part of teachers’ disposition? in this instance, do teachers themselves read for pleasure and are they authentic reading models capable of enthusing others (colleagues and learners) to read? three teachers in particular expressed how they lived and actualised their disposition as readers:‘i always encourage teachers from grade r up to grade 9 to encourage learners to go to the library for information, [rather] than to always ask information from teachers and elders’. (mrs batyo-qithi) ‘i believe that teachers should first read the books before introducing them to the learners. teachers should be readers themselves’. (mr bushula) mr setsubi regularly brings 150 copies of the local free newspaper, east griqualand fever, to school and, together with the other language teachers, formed a book club where ‘teachers bring their old books they have read, magazines to read at school and we circulate these’. vision all nine teachers demonstrate vision ─ an image of themselves and their learners as people who read for pleasure. such a vision should not be assumed, given the rural eastern cape context where, as noted, homes have little for poor children to read, community libraries are rare (nelson mandela foundation 2005) and only a tiny number of schools have libraries (equal education 2010). what is interesting is not only these teachers’ vision of themselves and their learners as readers, but the ways in which they instil this vision. they are reading enthusiasts and individuals who are highly motivated to find extra books for their fledgling school libraries. mr rala (of fort beaufort) who described himself as ‘not waiting for the initiative to arrive’ articulates this independence and autonomy. then there is mr kepe, who took active steps to realise this vision at a new school with no books to read for pleasure, whilst mr bushula could enthuse his colleagues and extend his classroom reading project into a whole-school reading club. mr mafunda envisages his learners and parents as not only as readers, but as writers ─ he developed a newsletter to publish community stories. with regard to forming a learning community, the distances between dispersed rural schools, generally poor road surfaces, unreliable telephone connections and unstable internet connectivity all make it difficult for these teachers to stay in touch and form a community of people who like to read and promote reading for pleasure at their schools. despite the challenges of a rural context, all nine teachers, to varying degrees, collaborated with their colleagues, motivated them to join in promoting reading for pleasure at their school and thereby forming a learning community. mr kepe and mrs batyo-qithi included not only their immediate school colleagues but also university-based colleagues, parents and education district officials as part of their reading learning community: ‘in 2008, my school was chosen as a centre for a ‘cluster library’. i was given a half triangle in this classroom and the shelving was erected. there is a librarian in our district now who also encouraged me to make the library active’. (mrs batyo-qithi) forming a learning community is perhaps the most important part of the hammerness et al. (2005) model because such a community is a space for sharing innovations and best practices, the key to teachers’ taking initiative and becoming self-regulating, autonomous agents. when the intellectual stimulation and critical feedback provided by formal tuition subsides, darling-hammond and mclaughlin (1995) suggest that teachers need to develop learning communities at their schools. implications for ongoing teacher professional development top ↑ teachers need sustained professional support in order to improve their classroom literacy practices, beyond what a twoor three-year course can offer (darling-hammond & mclaughlin 1995). such a supporting network for teachers’ professional development could include education district officials, university-based academics and professional associations.the establishment of permanent forums for the nurturing of ongoing professional development is critical and there are several encouraging signs that teachers are developing associations where the professionalisation and transformation of educational practice can flourish. as an example, the eastern cape english educators’ association was launched in 2010 (wright 2010). national policy and adequate funding for school libraries and librarians are needed to address the problematic fact that many school (and classroom) libraries fall into disuse because over-burdened language teachers fail to find the time to keep them functioning. paton-ash (2012) suggests that a dedicated librarian is necessary, not only for a school library to function properly, but also to shift common perceptions amongst teachers that libraries and regular reading are peripheral to learning and literacy. another possibility to promote reading and the use of books in schools may be the presidential expanded public works programme, which may provide an innovative means of bringing together the nexus of thousands of unemployed young people (paton 2010) and the many over-loaded teachers (chisholm et al. 2005). many young people on the expanded public works programme are assigned to schools and education district offices as clerks. rather than this empty title, it may be more useful for schools, and more productive for the youth, for them to have a job description such as literacy coach so that they have a more specific, educational role in schools. whilst problems of low literacy pervade the entire schooling system, the most effective point to make a difference is in primary schooling, particularly at the foundation and intermediate phases – within the early years (caswell & glover 2004). i believe that young people who have matriculated have a sufficient level of literacy to be able to be trained and guided in order to function as literacy coaches for children in the early years of school. not only would such literacy coaches be authentic, local reading models where these are scarce, but their own reading skills would be enhanced and teachers would have some support in running school libraries and extensive reading programmes. conclusion top ↑ without a rigorous tracker study, it is impossible to know the exact number of teachers who continue to promote reading for pleasure in their classrooms. it is telling that once their academic course is over, this evidence suggests that barely 10% of these teachers could provide evidence of their ability to sustain a reading programme, or initiatives to promote reading for pleasure at their schools. this does not necessarily mean that 90% of teachers require regulation, but rather that most teachers need learning communities at their schools and districts, a supportive network of education district officials, specialist librarians and university-based academics, and professional associations.the answers to the two related questions posed earlier, about what enables some teachers to sustain their classroom libraries and reading programmes independently and whether teachers who sustain their extensive reading programmes have a supportive collegial circle, are complicated. the collegial ties that teachers form during an academic course of study do not necessarily foster a learning community of the sort envisaged by hammerness et al. (2005). neither does such study enable an individual teacher to continue his or her own personal reading, or sustain a classroom-based reading programme. the essential driver of that capacity likely relies on both teachers’ and teacher educators’ intrinsic motivation to read and, through lived experience, their ability to ignite that enjoyment and sense of purpose in their classrooms. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationship(s) which may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references top ↑ caswell, l. & glover, t., 2004, becoming lovers of books: student literacy outcomes in a literacy collaborative school, center for reading recovery and literacy collaborative, lesley university, cambridge, ma.chisholm, l., hoadley, u., wa kivulu, m., brookes, h., prinsloo, c., kgobe, a., mosia, d., narsee, h. & rule, s., 2005, educator workload in south africa, hsrc press, cape town. darling-hammond, l. & mclaughlin, m., 1995, ‘policies that support professional development in an era of reform’, phi delta kappan 76(8), 597–604, viewed 28 october 2011, from http://www.oest.oas.org/iten/documentos/investigacion/randd-engaged-darling.pdf equal education, 2010, we can’t afford not to, two tone printers, cape town. fuller, f. & brown, o., 1975, ‘becoming a teacher’, in k. ryan, teacher education, 74th yearbook of the national society for the study of education, national society for the study of education, chicago. furlong, j. & maynard, t., 1995, ‘stages of student development’, in j. furlong & t. maynard (eds.), pp. 68–99, mentoring student teachers, routledge, london. gawith, g., 1990, reading alive!, a&c black publishers, london. hammerness, k., darling-hammond, l., bransford, j., berliner, d., cochran-smith, m., mcdonald, m. & zeichner, k., 2005, ‘how teachers learn and develop’, in l. darling-hammond & j. bransford (eds.), pp. 358–389, preparing teachers for a changing world, jossey-bass, san franscisco. hoffman, r., 2010, ‘cut only the fat’, mail and guardian, 3–9 december 2010, p. 51. howie, s., 2002, english language proficiency and contextual factors influencing mathematics achievement of secondary school pupils in south africa, universiteit twente, twente. hunt, g., 2007, ‘failure to thrive? the community literacy strand of the additive bilingual project at an eastern cape community school, south africa’, journal of research in reading 30(1), 80–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9817.2006.00327.x motshekga, a., 2011, ‘statement on the release of the annual national assessments results for 2011’, viewed 21 october 2011, from http://www.info.gov.za/speech/dynamicaction?pageid=461&sid=19525&tid=36106 nelson mandela foundation, 2005, emerging voices, hsrc press, cape town. nzimande, b., 2011, policy on the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications, department of higher education and training, pretoria. paton-ash, m., 2012, ‘issues and challenges facing school libraries: a case study of selected primary schools in gauteng province, south africa’, unpublished master of education half-thesis, rhodes university, grahamstown. paton, c., 2010, ‘time bomb’, financial mail, 25 march 2010, viewed 10 may 2010, from http://www.financialmail.co.za/article.aspx?id=104597 taylor, n. & vinjevold, p., 1999, getting learning right, joint education trust, johannesburg. thomson, c., 2009, ‘”living” sacrifice and shame: phenomenological insights into continuing, “distanced” education student experience’, south african journal of higher education 23(4), 795–808. wright, l., 2010, ‘why english teachers need professional associations’, teaching english today, 1.1., viewed 10 february 2012, from http://www.teachenglishtoday.org article information author: madoda cekiso1 affiliation: 1department of english (education), north-west university, south africa correspondence to: madoda cekiso postal address: private bag x1290, potchefstroom 2520, south africa dates: received: 14 june 2012 accepted: 27 sept. 2012 published: 27 nov. 2012 how to cite this article: cekiso, m., 2012, ‘effects of strategy instruction on the reading comprehension and strategy awareness of grade 11 english second language learners in the eastern cape’, reading & writing 3(1), art. #23, 8 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v3i1.23 copyright notice: © 2012. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. reading comprehension and strategy awareness of grade 11 english second language learners in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction       • purpose of the study • current theoretical perspective • problem statement and research objectives • rationale of the study • research method    • design    • subjects    • instrumentation    • data collection procedure    • teaching procedure    • data analysis • results • discussion of results • implications • conclusion • acknowledgements    • competing interests • references • appendix a    • predicting what is to come in a text       • presentation       • description of the teaching procedure       • evaluating students’ strategy development abstract top ↑ the aim of this study was to examine the reading strategies used by grade 11 english second language (esl) learners and the possible effects of reading instruction on their reading comprehension and strategy awareness. a quasi-experimental pre-test and post-test control group design was used. the participants included a total of 60 grade 11 learners from a high school. the results of this study indicate that (1) learners who received reading strategy instruction scored both statistically and practically significantly higher marks on the reading comprehension test than those in the control group and (2) explicit instruction in the use of reading strategies was essential to bring about the increased use of reading strategies of learners in the experimental group. the study has implications for learners, teachers, university students and lecturers. introduction top ↑ in recent years, there has been an increased focus on reading instruction in primary, secondary and higher education (lei 2010).the literature has shown that comprehension strategy instruction, including multiple reading strategies, have been justified in being beneficial to helping learners become strategic readers and improve their reading comprehension (klapwijk 2012; medina 2011; fan 2010; antoniou & souvignier 2007) . thus, it is necessary to provide learners with a reading strategy instruction which focuses on teaching reading strategies that can help them become strategic readers. strategic reading, according to alfassi (2010) requires that learners intentionally engage in planned actions under their control, in the manner that proficient readers do when they encounter difficulty in comprehending a text. alfassi further points out that those strategic readers must become cognisant of their performance limitations, intentionally weigh their options and wilfully execute compensatory procedures. thus, reading strategies instruction is directed towards teaching learners a repertoire of reading strategies that will allow them to develop a sense of conscious control of their cognitive processes. in a south african context, the need for a reading strategy instruction should be seen against the poor reading performance of the learners at primary, high school and tertiary level. according to pretorius (2002), reading is a powerful learning tool, a means of constructing meaning and acquiring new knowledge. moreover, reading is the cornerstone of instruction for all learners regardless of their ability level because it sets the foundation for future progress and success in virtually all other facets of life (scott 2010; luckner & handley 2008). however, poor reading comprehension is cited as a fundamental feature of academic underperformance in south africa (pretorius 2002; granville 2001; dreyer 1998). many learners in the high schools demonstrate a low level of strategy knowledge and lack of metacognitive control (dreyer 1998; strydom 1997). according to nel, dreyer and kopper (2004:95), many south african students enter higher education underprepared for the reading demands that are placed upon them. analysing the reading assessment profiles of a group of first-year university students at potchefstroom, nel, dreyer and kopper (ibid: 95) revealed that those students experienced problems across all aspects of the reading process (i.e. vocabulary, fluency, reading comprehension and reading strategy use). yet, there is little evidence to suggest that learners at any level will acquire the reading skills and strategies that can improve their reading comprehension if they have not been taught (tannenbaum, torgesen &wagner 2006). the literature has revealed that awareness and monitoring of one’s comprehension processes are important aspects of skilled readers (alexander & jetton 2000; makhtari &reichard 2002). the same authors further point out that such awareness and monitoring processes are often referred to in the literature as metacognition, which can be thought of as the knowledge of the reader’s cognition about reading and the self-control mechanisms they exercise when monitoring and regulating text comprehension. one of the objectives of the current study is to explore whether reading strategies awareness is a better predictor of reading comprehension. the results of a similar study conducted by ilustre (2011) in the philippines showed that amongst the three subscales of metacognitive reading strategies, only problem solving strategies correlated positively with text comprehension. purpose of the study in order to meet the reading needs of learners, educators are pressed to develop both effective instructional means for teaching reading comprehension and the use of reading strategies. thus, this study seeks to examine the contribution of reading strategy instruction to the reading comprehension and strategy awareness of grade 11 esl learners with a view to offering suggestions for the development of effective reading strategy instruction so as to improve learners’ reading comprehension and strategy awareness skills. specifically, the study seeks to address the following research questions:1. what does the reading comprehension and reading strategy use profile of the grade11 esl learners portray? 2. do learners in the experimental group who received strategic reading instruction attain statistically and practically significantly higher scores on the reading comprehension test and do they differ significantly in terms of their use of reading strategies? current theoretical perspective top ↑ how readers extract meaning from a text has long been a focus of attention because the process of extracting meaning gives learners invaluable information about readers’ cognitive processes during reading (salataci & akyel 2002). in addition, studies conducted on reading instruction and reading strategies indicate that strategy instruction with a focus on comprehension monitoring can help less skilled readers overcome their difficulties in reading (franco-fuenmayor, kandel-cisco & padron 2008; salataci & akyel 2002; pretorius 2002; grabe & stoller 2002; granville 2001; anderson 1999). in addition, oxford (1990) points out that it appears that successful language students have the ability to orchestrate and combine particular types of strategies in effective ways according to their own learning needs. thus, strategy teaching is an important part of teaching a second language and constructing meaning is the goal of comprehension (dalton & proctor 2007). in addition, mckeown, beck and blake (2009:28) point out that recent research on comprehension has certainly provided increased understanding of the comprehension process and broad and general knowledge of what makes for effective instructional practice. according to antoniou and souvignier (2007), the main aims of strategy training are monitoring understanding, enhancing understanding, acquiring and actively using knowledge, and developing insights. in addition, cubukcu (2007) points out that to be effective, students must have a wide array of reading strategies at their disposal and know where, when and how to use these strategies. the literature on strategy instruction has shown that there are two different approaches to teaching reading strategies. these are explicit instruction and implicit instruction. according to hall (2009), explicit instruction is a systematic instructional approach that includes a set of delivery and design procedures derived from effective schools research merged with behaviour analysis. hall further points out that there are two essential components to well-designed explicit instruction: 1. visible delivery features are group instruction with a high level of teacher and student interactions. 2. this concerns the less observable, instructional design principles and assumptions that make up the content and strategies to be taught. according to van keer (2004), explicit reading strategies instruction and engaging learners in interaction with the text promotes learners’ reading comprehension ability. in addition, van keer states that even when children do not use effective comprehension strategies on their own, explicit reading strategies instruction is a feasible tool for teaching learners to apply them successfully. the current study has been triggered by this view because it seeks to improve the reading comprehension and strategy use of disadvantaged learners. the literature reveals that explicit instruction in reading comprehension is the widely recommended method of improving learners’ reading comprehension and strategy use (franco-fuenmayor, kandel-cisco & padron 2008). on the other hand, the us department of education (2008) points out that implicit learning is acquisition of knowledge about the underlying structure of a complex stimulus environment by a process which takes place naturally, simply and without conscious operations. in addition, dalton and proctor (2007) point out that implicit reading strategy instruction refers to a reading environment that provides the learner with a variety of embedded features that are designed to support individual learning needs whilst being sensitive to the interactive nature of the reading process. dalton and proctor further point out that those learners who struggle with creating meaning are supported in an apprentice model of reading strategy instruction where scaffolds decrease as learners’ understanding and selfregulation improves. problem statement and research objectives top ↑ the role that reading comprehension plays in the process of learning is widely documented (shanakan, callison, carriere, duke, pearson, torgesen, et al. 2010; luckner & handley 2008; coleman 2003). these studies and many other similar studies point to the fact that reading comprehension forms the basis for the learning process. thus, learners who read without comprehending what they read have fewer chances of succeeding academically than learners who read with comprehension. however, studies conducted in south africa at primary, high school and tertiary level reveal poor reading comprehension by learners. for example, a pilot study was conducted by dreyer (1998) in a multilingual classroom in the north west province amongst grade 8 learners on a reading comprehension test. the results showed a failure rate of approximately 75%. systematic evaluations conducted recently on the reading performance of learners in south africa showed no improvement. the systematic evaluations conducted by the department of education, provincial departments of education as well as international bodies, show that learners in south african schools performed poorly when tested for their ability to read at age-appropriate levels (national reading strategy 2008:5). specifically, the results of the systemic evaluation held in 2005 amongst the intermediate phase learners, showed that 14% of learners were outstanding in their language competence; 23% were satisfactory or partly competent, but a large majority of 63% were below the required competence for their age level (south african national reading panel 2008:6) the above-mentioned reading comprehension results are a cause for concern. specifically, the current study has been triggered by the above-mentioned state of affairs as far as reading comprehension is concerned in south africa. amongst the factors that improve learners’ reading comprehension is training in the use of reading strategies. in the literature review the benefits of training learners to be strategic readers has been highlighted. thus, the current study seeks to examine the effect of reading strategies instruction in order to inform instructional practice in reading comprehension. rationale of the study top ↑ based on the reading situation highlighted under the problem statement, the current study is necessary so as to improve the reading comprehension of learners by training them in the use of reading strategies. if teachers are made aware of the benefits of reading strategies instruction, they are likely to improve their instructional practice and as a result improve learning outcomes. research method top ↑ design the research approach used in this study was quantitative. this kind of research approach usually involves collecting and converting data into numerical form so that statistical calculations can be made and conclusions drawn. according to macmillan and schumacher (2001), designing quantitative research involves choosing subjects, data collection techniques (such as questionnaires, observations or interviews), and procedures for gathering data and implementing treatments. the quantitative research approach was suitable for this study as its design was quasiexperimental, it analysed data through statistics and had a treatment group that was used to measure the impact of the reading strategies instruction. a quasi-experimental pre-test and post-test control group design was used in this study. according to moore (2008), a quasi-experimental study is a type of evaluation which aims to determine whether a programme or intervention has the intended effect on a study’s participant. in this study there were both a control and experimental groups. the reading comprehension test scores for each group were compared before and after the study. the reading comprehension scores were also compared for both groups before and after the study. subjects the accessible population was comprised of 60 grade 11 xhosa-speaking learners taking english as a second language (esl) in one high school in east london in the eastern cape. this school was selected by means of convenience sampling. in convenience sampling, the selection of subjects from the population is based on easy availability or accessibility. the major disadvantage of this technique is that researchers have no idea how representative the information collected about the sample is to the population as a whole. however, the information can still provide some fairly significant insights and be a good source of data in exploratory research (ary, jacobs & razavieh 2005). the subjects were in two intact classes in order to prevent disruption to the normal teaching routine at the school. one class was randomly assigned, using a random numbers table, to the experimental group (n = 30) and the other to the control group (n = 30). the ages of the subjects ranged from 18–22 and the sample consisted of both boys (n = 19) and girls (n = 41). instrumentation the following instruments were used in this study:• the reading performance test in english advanced level (roux 1996) was used to determine the students’ reading comprehension in english within the range of senior secondary performance levels (i.e. grades 10, 11 and 12). this standardised test consists of 50 items. questions are based on prose, passage, advertisements, a film review, a cartoon and two close-test passages. all the questions are in multiple-choice form consisting of four options per item. this test was used as a pre-test and a post-test. • a reading strategies questionnaire based on the work of oxford (1990) and pressley and afflerbach (1995), was used to determine learners’ use of reading strategies. this test was also used as a pre-test and a post-test. data collection procedure all subjects took the tests (e.g. reading strategies questionnaire and reading comprehension tests) during their regular classroom periods and both groups were taught by the same teacher. all participants received uniform instructions on how to complete the questionnaire, which was taken on the first day by both groups. the reading strategies questionnaire was followed by the reading comprehension test in english which was used as a pre-test and was administered to both groups (control and experimental) on the following day. the experimental group received the reading strategy instruction which lasted for three months. for the control group there was no strategy instruction. their lessons were presented in the normal way (i.e. no strategy development or practice was used). in a study conducted by dreyer (1998:23), she stated that the three-month interval between administration is deemed long enough to control any short-term memory effects. considering that the subjects were not provided with the correct answers after the pre-test, even were they to remember how they had answered a question the first time, they had no way of knowing whether that answer was correct. at the end of the third month both groups (control and experimental) were given the same tests (reading comprehension test and strategy questionnaire) as post-tests. at the end of the study, the control group received the same reading strategy instruction and amount of instructional time that was received by the experimental group during the study. teaching procedure each session over the course of the three months included the following stages similar to those of wilhelm (2001):1. how to use the strategy. 2. why, when and where the strategy should be used in actual reading. 3. teacher modelling. this entailed the use of think-aloud on how to perform the strategy in the actual context of reading. 4. teacher scaffolding. this entailed the use of strategies on a temporary basis so that once the learners were able to accomplish the task successfully, the scaffold was gradually decreased or removed. learners practised what they were capable of doing on their own and the teacher intervened only when support was needed. 5. independent learner practice. learners practised the use of strategies independently and verified the use of procedures. 6. integrated use with other materials. the teacher gave ample practise with school materials and integrated the use of think-aloud with other lessons and content reading. the aim was for learners to apply these strategies independently and think in their heads whenever they encounter a text. the strategies to be developed were presented in the following format: • ‘before reading’ (e.g. making inferences and predicting what is to come in a text) • ‘during reading’ (e.g. guessing the meaning of words from the context, identifying the main idea in a text and rejecting or confirming predictions and inferences) • ‘after reading’ (e.g. summarising). the major focus in the reading strategy instruction was on explaining the main features of a particular strategy and explaining why that strategy should be learned (i.e. the potential benefits of use). the benefit of use was linked to the learners’ reading profiles. in this way, students could see the necessity of reading strategy use, as well as the link to their reading comprehension. an example of the instructional procedure followed in this study is available in appendix a. data analysis a t-test was used in this study. the t-test is one type of inferential statistics. it is used to determine whether there is a significant difference between the means of two groups. in the current study the t-test was used to determine whether the mean scores of the experimental and control group differed reliably from each other (cf. tables 1 and 2). cohen’s effect size was used to calculate the difference between two means. cohen (1977) uses the following scale for the d-values:small effect          d = 0.2 medium effect       d = 0.5 large effect          d = 0.8 results top ↑ in terms of reading strategy use, the results (pre-test) indicated that there were no statistically significant or practically significant differences between learners in the experimental and control groups (cf. table 1). table 1: the pre-test reading strategy use profile of grade 11 esl learners: experimental group versus control group. specifically, the results of the reading strategy analysis indicated that the learners in the experimental group and the learners in the control group did not significantly differ in the use of the strategies at the before-reading, during-reading and after-reading stages. the post-test results, however, indicated that the learners in the experimental group used certain strategies statistically (p < 0.05), as well as practically, significantly (small to large effect sizes), more often than the learners in the control group (cf. table 2). table 2: the post-test reading strategy use profile of grade 11 esl learners: experimental group versus control group. the post-test results cited in table 2 revealed an improvement in the frequency of usage of the reading strategies by the learners in the experimental group. during the pre-reading stage, the frequency of use of the following reading strategies improved ‘i briefly skim the text before reading’ (experimental group pre-test – 2.99; post-test – 3.60) and ‘i often look for how the text is organised and pay attention to headings and sub-headings’ (experimental group pre-test – 2.55; post-test – 2.98). during reading strategies and after reading strategies also showed some improvement in terms of the frequency of usage of reading strategies during those stages.the pre-test reading comprehension scores of the grade 11 esl learners in the experimental and control groups indicated that there was not a statistically significant difference in their mean scores on the reading comprehension test (cf. table 3). table 3: the reading comprehension test profile of grade 11 esl learners: experimental group vs. control group. the pre-test reading comprehension scores indicated that both experimental and control groups scores were weak and below 50% (experimental group – 37.53; control group – 36.73). their weak reading comprehension may have had a negative effect on their performance in the language class and also in other content areas. the situation is true if one considers that reading comprehension has come to be the essence of reading (tannenbaum, torgesen & wagner 2006), essential not only to academic learning in all subjects areas but also to professional success and to lifelong learning (pritchard, romeo & muller 1999; rings 1994; strydom 1997). an analysis of the post-test reading comprehension scores of grade 11 esl learners in the experimental and control groups indicated that learners in the experimental group achieved statistically significantly (p < 0.05) higher mean scores on the reading comprehension test in comparison to the grade 11 esl learners in the control group (cf. table 2). discussion of results top ↑ the results of this study indicate that a well-developed reading strategy instruction programme can have a strong positive effect on the grade 11 esl learners’ reading comprehension and reading strategies development. in other words, the results indicate that reading strategy instruction can and does make a contribution in increasing the reading comprehension and reading strategy choice. this finding is consistent with other reported research (e.g. van keer & verhaeghe 2005; lau & chan 2003; alfassi 1998; dreyer 1998; kern 1989).the learners in the experimental group improved their performance in the comprehension test significantly after the intervention, whereas the learners in the control group did not improve their performance on the comprehension test. thus, the findings portray the intervention as a viable method for enhancing the reading comprehension of the grade 11 esl learners. the findings in this study support the previous studies on the effect of reading strategy instruction on learners’ reading comprehension (alexander & jetton 2000; dale, duffy, roehler & pearson 1991; glaser 1990; wittrock 1998). to determine whether the instruction affected the use of the reading strategies, the frequencies with which the participants used reading strategies before and after instruction were compared in both groups. findings also revealed that explicit instruction in the use of reading strategies was essential to bring about increased use of reading strategies for learners in the experimental group. considering that the more the strategies were used the better the results for students in the experimental group demonstrated that there was a need to promote strategy awareness and application in the learning and teaching of the english language. specifically, the following reading strategies were utilised more frequently by learners in the experimental group: • i briefly skim the text before reading. • i often look for how the text is organised and pay attention to headings and sub-headings. these results are congruent with previous research confirming the positive effect of explicit strategies instruction on reading comprehension achievement (e.g. li 2010; cubukcu 2007; van keer & verhaeghe 2005; pressley et al. 1989). the results of this study also indicated that the learners’ ability to use reading strategies is the most critical factor determining their reading comprehension. thus, the close relationship between strategy use and reading comprehension provided support for the possibility that educators should enhance learners’ reading comprehension through explicit reading strategies instruction. implications top ↑ there are a number of practical implications for the above findings and discussion. the primary goal of reading instruction is to improve learners’ reading comprehension. this study has revealed that explicit instruction in reading strategies can improve learners’ reading comprehension. thus, teachers at primary high school and tertiary institutions should teach learners how to use reading strategies in order to improve their reading comprehension. the literature has revealed that the situation at tertiary institutions demands knowledge of reading strategies in order to be successful as learners are exposed to huge volumes of reading material. the results of this study suggest that explicit instruction in reading strategies can improve the learners’ reading comprehension. this suggests that teachers need to design reading strategy instruction that focuses on explicit instruction. the results of the study have shown that those learners who use a wide range of reading strategies comprehend the texts they read better than those who use limited reading strategies. this requires that teachers should help learners identify their reading strategies. this could be achieved by using reading strategies inventories. such inventories are likely to inform the teachers and learners as to which reading strategies learners currently use. having that information will assist the teachers in designing reading strategies instruction that focuses on reading strategies that are new to the learners. conclusion top ↑ in the above discussion an attempt was made to address the two research questions on which the study is based. the most important outcome of this study is that the use of reading strategy instruction and learners’ reading strategy awareness play a significant role in improving their reading comprehension. in other words, learners who receive strategy training generally read better than those who do not. as for the relationship between perceived strategy use and reading comprehension, this study revealed that strategy use did positively affect reading comprehension. thus, teachers should assess learners’ awareness of strategy use, raise awareness of the importance of strategic reading and of the repertoire of strategies available to aid reading comprehension. the study further revealed the importance of training students in the use of reading strategies. the literature has shown that strategic awareness and monitoring of the comprehension process are critically important aspects of skilled reading. as a result of the reading strategy instruction, some strategies were utilised significantly more frequently by learners in the experimental group after the intervention. thus, this study provided the english second language teachers with a better understanding of the benefits of reading strategy instruction. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the author declares that he/she has no financial or personal relationship(s) which may have inappropriately influenced him/her in writing this paper. references top ↑ alexander, p.a. & jetton, t.l., 2000, learning from text: a multidimensional and developmental perspective, in kamil, m.l., mosenthal, b.p., pearson, p.d., & barr, r. 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national reading panel, 2008, department of education, republic of south africa, pretoria. salataci, r. & akyel, a., 2002, ‘possible effects of strategy instruction on l1 and l2 reading’, reading in foreign language 14(1), 1–17. scott, r.m., 2010, ‘word study instruction: enhancing reading comprehension’, the literacy and numeracy secretariat. shanakan, t., callison, k., carriere, n.k., duke, n.k., pearson, p.d., schatschneider, c. & torgesen, j., 2010, improving reading comprehension in kindergarten through 3rd grade, institute of education sciences. strydom, j.f., 1997, the counselling needs of students in a resource-based learning programme. unpublished dissertation, university of free state, bloemfontein. tannenbaum, k.r., torgesen, j.k. & wagner, r.k., 2006, ‘relationship between word knowledge and reading comprehension in third grade children’, scientific studies of reading 10 (4), 381–398. united states department of education, 2008, institute of education sciences national assessment of educational progress, long-term trend reading assessment. van keer, h., 2004, ‘fostering reading comprehension in fifth grade by explicit instruction in reading strategies and peer tutoring’, british journal of education 74, 37–70. van keer, h. & verhaegher, j.p., 2005, ‘comparing two teacher development programmes for innovating reading comprehension instruction with regard to teachers’ experiences and student outcomes’, teaching and teacher education 21, 543–562. wilhelm, j., 2001, improving comprehension with think-aloud strategies, scholastic professional books, new york. wittrock, m.c., 1998, ‘cognition and subject matter learning’, in n.m lambert, & b.l. mccomb (eds.), how students learn: reforming schools through learner-centered schooling, washington, dc: american psychological association, pp. 31-120. appendix a top ↑ predicting what is to come in a text presentation in the introductory session, the teacher and students brainstorms the meaning of ‘prediction’. the teacher then explains to the students the meaning of ‘prediction’. he further explains the rationale for use of predictions, how, when and where to use them, how to evaluate use of the strategy (prediction) and how to apply it to other tasks and contexts. description of the teaching procedure the teacher works with the entire class and models how making predictions works before, during and after reading. the teacher records the learners’ responses on a large chart paper. the prediction chart, as a framework, consists of two headings: predictions and support. it aims at organising thinking and helps learners sort out whether predictions come from clues in the text or their own experiences. as reading proceeds, the teacher stops once or twice and invites learners to predict. the teacher then tells the learners that if after reading they notice that the predictions made earlier are not correct, they will be forced to change their predictions after reading. the teacher then advises the learners to look for ‘clues’ in the text as they make their predictions. evaluating students’ strategy development the teacher then introduces another text and asks the learners to mark the words in the text that support or help them correct their predictions. the learners’ attention is drawn to clues that lead to their predictions. additional questions will include the following: ‘did you need to change your prediction? where? why? how did you know your prediction needed changing?’ after finishing the story, the teacher invites the learners to return to the prediction chart to confirm or adjust their ideas. the adjustments are then written on the chart with a different colour marker pen so that the learners can easily compare initial predictions with what actually occurred in the story. abstract introduction collaborative initiatives ethical consideration conclusion and recommendations acknowledgements references about the author(s) laura m. drennan unit for academic literacy, centre for teaching and learning, university of the free state, south africa citation drennan, l.m., 2017, ‘traversing the spaces of higher education through writing’, reading & writing 8(1), a126. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v8i1.126 original research traversing the spaces of higher education through writing laura m. drennan received: 04 nov. 2015; accepted: 07 mar. 2017; published: 24 apr. 2017 copyright: © 2017. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract writing functions as an important tool that spans various spaces in higher education. moving away from a ‘skills approach’ to writing, this article argues that the writing centre serves as an intermediary between students and academic lecturers. the article discusses how the current practices at the writing centre promotes the development of writing as a key construct that spans a number of spaces in higher education. the article draws on the collaborative initiatives with two different disciplines. the data collection on stakeholders’ responses indicates that a more structured, purposeful writing-intensive approach needs to be undertaken within the disciplines in order to address institutional objectives of access and success in higher education. introduction this article is written from the perspective that writing is an important tool that traverses several spaces in higher education. drawing on the collaborative efforts between the writing centre and disciplinary experts, the article looks at how current writing centre practices move towards facilitating the development of academic writing, which traverses these various higher educational spheres. advocating an academic literacies approach, the article discusses the role of writing within the social space, the space of academic citizenship, as well as the merging physical, teaching and learning spaces. the social space contrary to popular misconception, writing is not a discrete skill that can be taught in isolation and merely applied across disciplines (archer 2010; clarence 2012b). the act of writing is more complex than this. writing is a central process through which students learn new subject content and gain discipline-specific knowledge (lea & street 1998:158). each discipline is a social space within which students need to learn and master the unique ‘ways of understanding, interpreting and organizing knowledge’ (lea & street 1998:158) in a particular discipline, referred to as discourse (gee 2001). in order for students to become members of a particular community of knowledge, they are expected to become proficient in that particular discourse. the assumption that writing is a generic skill that can be transferred is based on the idea that the conventions of academic writing at university are standard (clarence 2012b). however, language and activities are determined by a particular community of knowledge (hyland 2002; strevens 1988), so too are the ‘conventions’ of writing discipline-specific. moreover, the writing conventions within the social spaces of various disciplines are also contested among the various stakeholders: the university as an institution, academic staff members and students (lea & street 1998). these stakeholders have different expectations and interpretations of university writing. clarence (2012b:128) is in agreement that writing is part of a contested social space, where ‘writing itself is part of negotiating and constituting that space’. within this contested space, there are three primary perspectives of student writing within higher education, essentially encapsulating one another: ‘study skills’, ‘academic socialisation’ and ‘academic literacies’ (clarence 2012b; lea & street 1998; street 1997). lea and street (2006) define these perspectives as follows. firstly, the study skills approach requires that students acquire a number of skills that can be applied in other subject areas. this view maintains that low proficiency that can be rectified by means of addressing various surface language features. secondly, the academic socialisation perspective involves ‘socialising’ the student into the ‘culture’ of a particular community of knowledge. however, one of the problems underlying this approach is the assumption that students need to be taught the customs and practices of a ‘relatively homogenous culture’ pertaining to academe (lea & street 1998:159). the third perspective, the approach advocated in this article, is that of ‘academic literacies’. this approach is concerned with notions of discourse and power, where students are required to be aware of numerous communicative practices to the extent that they are able to switch between practices, depending on the setting. the academic literacies perspective maintains that writing is part of a process of negotiating meaning rather than acquiring a set of skills necessary for success in higher education studies (lea & street 1998:159). this article supports this approach, because it aligns with the view that literacies are discipline-specific and that students need to be equipped with the skills that allow them to function within and become a member of a particular discourse. lillis (2001) does, however, point out that these various perspectives coexist within the same pedagogic scope, with various higher education stakeholders advocating different perspectives, thereby contributing to the contested nature of this social space. the space of academic citizenship writing practices are also used to control access to higher education, where ‘access’ students struggle to be acknowledged as legitimate students (burke 2008). they are often viewed as lacking ‘real’ academic literacy and therefore have to work towards assuming an alternative position in the academy (van rensburg 2011). in order to become an accepted member of a particular community of knowledge and be seen as a respected ‘academic voice’ that ‘resonates with other “voices”’ (burke 2008:199), these students need to develop and establish their own voice. in this way, writing can also be seen as being a constituent of the space of academic citizenship. burke (2008:200) clearly articulates the link between writing, higher education as a contested social space and the space of academic citizenship: ‘writers are socially situated subjects and the meanings they produce through their writing are constituted through the contested and multiple discourses at play in different social fields’. the notion of academic citizenship raises concerns about epistemological access, particularly in the case of ‘access’ students. the new south african educational policy [department of higher education and training (dhet) white paper 2013] advocates the widening of access to tertiary institutions in an attempt to accommodate students entering higher education from disadvantaged backgrounds. the majority of ‘access’ students are second-language learners who come from a schooling system that has not adequately provided them with the essential learning experiences, concepts and schemas necessary for success within higher education (thesen & van pletzen 2006). despite these challenges, higher education institutions are still expected to ensure that students meet the required course and content goals in their studies. this is challenging because many students do not possess the critical literacy skills in order to succeed at university, as a result of inadequate prior learning. the term literacy refers to fluency in the particular discourse of a field of study; while discourse refers to the way in which language is used in a particular community of knowledge so that one can ‘identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or “social network”’ (boughey 2002:296; gee 1990). in terms of literacy, one of the key skills necessary for success in higher education is critical thinking, which requires that students define their ‘own beliefs in the context of existing knowledge’ (baxter magolda 2003:232), as a trademark of an educated person is this sense of self and the facility to apply knowledge in various contexts. critical thinking, therefore, involves students becoming aware of their principal role in the production of knowledge. students need to make a shift from merely accepting knowledge from authorities in their field of study to constructing it for themselves (baxter magolda 2003). in order then for a student to become an accepted member of a particular discourse and a recognised citizen of the academy, tertiary institutions need to make an asserted effort to develop students’ critical thinking skills as a core skill in shaping students’ academic literacies (lea 1999; lea & street 2000). various movements, such as writing-across-the-curriculum (bohr et al. 2016; condon & rutz 2012; mcleod & soven 1992; young 2003) and writing-in-the-discipline (wid) (bean 2011; condon & rutz 2012), advocate writing as a tool to promote critical thinking as a means to empower students. the former movement supports the notion that students ‘write to learn’, where writing facilitates deep-level learning of course content. wid involves developing students’ ability to write within a particular discipline, familiarising them with discipline-specific writing conventions (bean 2011). writing is essentially an instrument for thinking, thus the communication of ideas and writing feature in all disciplines in higher education. writing is used to develop the facilities and proficiencies most valued in various disciplines (condon & kelly-riley 2004). rivard (1994:970) recognises the importance of writing as a process, ‘not only for learning about something or acquiring knowledge, but for generating a personal response to something, for clarifying ideas, and for constructing knowledge’. rivard (1994) argues that critical thinking is key in producing students who are lifelong learners, one of the primary objectives of education. in order to improve student writing, their abilities as thinkers need to be addressed. they should be challenged to use knowledge towards authentic problem solving and towards integrating new information with existing knowledge (rivard 1994:970). in this vein, burke (2008:199) postulates that writing serves to offer students opportunities to explore various ideas and combine them towards understanding and internalising numerous concepts and experiences being explored in their studies. the development of critical thinking can be achieved by means of providing students with sufficient opportunities to stimulate their thinking, integrate ideas and essentially improve both their thinking and writing skills (tsui 2002). in order to provide students with opportunities, instead of emphasising the finished product of writing, educators need to focus on the process of writing and the skills this fosters. writing functions as an ‘important tool for thinking and learning about disciplinary content, as well as a necessary means of assessing content knowledge’ (clarence 2012a). by means of writing and rewriting, as well as providing students with constructive feedback with which they are required to engage, students are guided to reflect critically on their performance and development (tsui 2002:748). such an approach, however, requires much commitment and time on the part of academic staff. providing students with constructive feedback on their writing assignments in addition to teaching content is very time consuming. furthermore, it requires that content lecturers take responsibility for and cognisance of the literacy needs of individual students and that they are familiar with pedagogy and methodology of academic literacy necessary to address these needs. the merging physical, teaching and learning spaces the writing centre as a physical space in south africa was conceptualised to address the challenge of academic literacy among historically disadvantaged students in higher education. writing centres are expected to take cognisance of a number of factors. these include the predominantly second-language (l2) nature of the tertiary education scene at many higher education institutions and that many of these students’ prior learning is not as it should be. this is particularly the case for those from disadvantaged communities. another factor that needs consideration is the necessity for students to acquire discipline-specific discourses (archer 2010:496). writing is one of the principal means of assessment in higher education. addressing students’ writing needs is therefore linked to promoting student access and success in higher education (archer 2008). the writing centre faces several challenges within this context. one of these is the perception that the writing centre serves as a remedial centre where students’ language ‘deficiencies’ can be ‘fixed’ (archer 2010), thereby functioning as an extension to existing academic development initiatives (archer 2012). this perspective is grounded in the ‘study skills’ view of student writing, which maintains that writing constitutes a number of atomised skills that can be taught in isolation and applied across the curriculum (clarence 2012a; lillis 2001; street 2004). another issue, linked to this perspective, is that students do not visit the writing centre as often as necessary to develop their academic writing skills. writing should be acknowledged as a process that requires several drafting sessions geared towards fostering students’ critical thinking, as well as the acquisition of course content and skills necessary for success in their studies. the core function of a writing centre should be the development of ‘better writers, not better writing’ (boquet & lerner 2015:170). the sporadic, once-off attendance of sessions at the writing centre makes it very difficult to rigorously measure the effect of writing centre initiatives. a reasonable response to these challenges is to work towards changing the perception of the function of the writing centre. instead of a ‘fix-it shop’, the writing centre should be viewed as an intermediary between students and lecturing staff. the writing centre is in a position to address aspects of teaching and research that are difficult to achieve in classrooms (boquet & lerner 2015). the one-on-one service provides students with opportunities to discuss and negotiate meaning, in accordance with the academic literacies approach to student writing. content lecturers and tutors might know what kind of writing is expected in their particular field, but they are often unable to isolate the particular writing conventions of the discipline-specific discourse and communicate these to students (clarence 2012a; lillis & turner 2001). boughey (2005:287) asserts that by making the rules and conventions regarding what ‘count[s] as knowledge’, the great divide between student and lecturers could be bridged. the writing centre can serve as a mediator in bridging this gap, thereby assisting institutional objectives of access and success. a feasible route to take regarding the work done by the writing centre is one of close collaboration between writing centre practitioners and the content lecturers in the disciplines. the following initiatives are representative of the partnership between lecturing staff and writing centre practitioners towards addressing the discipline-specific writing needs of tertiary students. collaborative initiatives the following section describes collaborative initiatives with the medical faculty and the philosophy department. in each case, the nature of the collaboration as well as various stakeholder perspectives on the initiatives will be discussed. collaboration with the medical faculty nature of collaboration the writing centre worked with academic staff from the medical faculty towards improving first-year medical students’ critical reflective writing skills. students were expected to write critical reflective essays based on their experiences of a group visit to local clinics. the assignment instructions required that students address certain prompts with regard to the three stages of critical reflection. three contact sessions were scheduled for these students. the first was a general presentation on critical reflective writing to a group of 80 students, which was compulsory. students worked independently to answer certain questions geared towards creating awareness about critical reflection, followed by feedback in the plenary. the second intervention was a compulsory, tailor-made workshop during which students were divided into five groups of 20. the goal behind the small-group workshops was to facilitate student engagement with discipline-specific workshop materials that were generated specifically to help students unpack the assignment topic and address various prompts they had selected to answer. the materials were designed explicitly to help students address three components of critical reflection that were outlined in the assessment rubric provided by the medical faculty, as the content lecturer had highlighted students’ inability to distinguish between the kinds of information required for each stage of the critical reflective process. genuine student responses from previous years’ submissions informed the design of the materials to assist students to unpack the process. students shared their experiences and ideas during the small-group workshops, discussing and negotiating where to place certain components of information within the reflective framework. the final intervention constituted voluntary individual sessions with a writing consultant at the writing centre, where the consultant assisted students with their individual writing needs pertaining to the assignment. the following excerpts from the small-group workshop materials illustrate how activities were scaffolded to allow students to explore and unpack various ideas, merge them towards comprehending and internalising their own experiences and finally construct knowledge for themselves in a personal response (burke 2008; craft 2005; rivard 1994). example: what was special about the clinic visit? what? (the facts) i spoke to the patients who were waiting and asked them some questions. so what? (my interpretation) i could see that they were genuinely suffering, that they appreciated my taking an interest in them and that they were grateful. now what? (what did i learn from this?) it requires a little effort on my part to mean something to someone. when i am a doctor one day, i am going to make an asserted effort never forget to see my patients as people. activity – group work: work in pairs to answer the following questions. talk to your partner about the answer you would give to the following questions, and then write down your response: what did you learn that you did not know before (about yourself, your fellow students, the people at the clinic, the services that are available)? here you need to demonstrate thoughtfulness about the learning experience in terms of what happened or what you experienced (‘what?’). now think about how your original assumptions are challenged with regard to this prompt (‘so what?’). think about what you have learned from this experience (pertaining to the prompt) and what it could mean for your future (‘now what?’). student perspectives of the 80 students registered for the medical course, 52 consented to complete the workshop evaluation questionnaire after the small-group interventions. the questionnaire comprised two divisions: a demographic section consisting of nine single-option, multiple-choice questions, followed by a section evaluating the efficacy of the workshop materials. questions in this section included whether students found the workshop helpful, whether they understood the assignment topic better after the workshop, whether they better understand the required structure of the assignment in question and whether they consider such writing workshops necessary for approaching writing tasks. the final six questions were open-ended, briefly requesting students to comment on what they liked and did not like about the workshop and whether they still felt uncertain about something that was covered in the workshop. the following figures illustrate student perspectives regarding whether the workshop aided their understanding of the assignment topic (figure 1), whether they better understood the required structure of the assignment in question (figure 2) and whether they deemed such workshops necessary towards the approach taken to writing tasks (figure 3). figure 1: post-workshop understanding of the assignment topic. figure 2: post-workshop understanding of the required assignment structure. figure 3: necessity of workshops to assist students’ approach to assignments. the majority (94%) of students’ responses indicated that they found the small-group workshops helpful in terms of their understanding of the assignment topic and 98% of students indicated that the workshop helped them understand the required assignment structure. the majority (96%) also stated that they deem such workshops necessary towards the approach of assignments in their discipline. students’ open-ended responses on the evaluation form demonstrate how students appreciated the opportunity to hear the views of others. critical reflection is used to encourage students to discover different ideas so that they broaden their perspectives and work towards constructing knowledge for themselves (baxter magolda 2003; bean 2011; lea & street 2000; mezirow 1990) and developing their authentic voice. this sort of academic experience supports students’ alignment of new information with existing knowledge, thereby promoting deep-level learning and internalisation of key constructs and experiences. students said that they: ‘enjoyed consulting with [their] peers about ideas’ and enjoyed: ‘the interaction between [students] and the lecturer’. students commented that: ‘the [writing] consultant was very engaging, helping [them] to gain perspective’. similarly, one student remarked that: ‘the discussion made [them] aware of different ideas and it made [them] look at the task from a different perspective’. another student commented that the workshop presented the: ‘opportunity to stop and think first, and also to [ask] any questions’. after participating in three different writing interventions hosted by the writing centre, students’ critical reflective assignments were assessed by their content lecturer. the medical department marked students’ work using a rubric designed specifically for the critical reflective essay by the content lecturer. the assessment criteria constituted five sections. the first component tested students’ ability to interpret the purpose and importance of reflection; the second tested self-growth and development; and the third assessed the impact on learning. these three components were labelled ‘what?’, ‘so what?’ and ‘now what?’, respectively. the last two criteria were mechanics and structure, and overall impression of the assignment. the rubric included two sections for the assessment of standard or level one for the student to self-assess and the second for the content lecturer’s assessment, graded according to a four-point system. four points were awarded for ‘superior’ work, three for an ‘adequate’ submission, two points for ‘minimal’ effort and one point for an ‘inadequate’ response. figure 4 shows the percentages scored by students on their reflective essays. of the total cohort of 80 students, 34 students attended individual sessions, 33 of whom received distinctions for their final submissions to their content lecturer. figure 4: medical students’ performance on critical reflective essay (%). collaboration with the philosophy department nature of collaboration the work with the philosophy department is exemplary of inter-disciplinary collaborative partnerships. the content lecturer was very eager to employ second-language teaching methodology in his content classes in order to improve students’ performance in the course. there was much discussion and collaboration with regard the specific writing needs of the philosophy students. the feedback received from students and the content lecturer was used to inform and improve on the development of workshop materials for this particular cohort. for example, after the very first collaborative intervention with this department, it became clear that students did not understand the assignment prompt clearly. this resulted in much discussion between the content lecturer and writing centre practitioners around the formulation of assignments and test questions to accommodate the literacy needs of students in the course, the majority of whom were second-language learners of english. furthermore, student and writing consultant feedback also indicated that students found the texts in the course very difficult and they struggled to understand the course content as a result. the lecturer was advised to focus particularly on promoting students’ access and comprehension of key texts in the course. compulsory comprehension tests based on prescribed reading allocated to students were then introduced into the course. one of this content specialist’s primary concerns was students’ inability to answer essay-type questions. writing workshop materials were developed for small-group sessions with the students, which focused particularly on answering the particular essay topic assigned for philosophy. the materials were carefully scaffolded towards assisting students to respond to the assignment due in the course, incorporating genuine philosophy students’ sample responses from previous years to teach the principles of academic essay writing for the discipline. the workshop materials focused particularly on unpacking the assignment topic, the structure of the academic essay, the formulation of a good introductory paragraph and developing an argument in an essay. following the writing workshops were compulsory individual sessions at the writing centre, during which consultants focused on students’ individual writing needs. the individual sessions at the writing centre were geared towards conversations around meaning making and promoting the development of students’ own voice. both the workshops and the individual sessions provided students with the opportunity to clarify their meaning, listen to the opinions of others and use these to stimulate their thinking and construct knowledge for themselves. the sessions furthermore provided students with constructive feedback that facilitated engagement and critical reflection. stakeholder perspectives of the 67 students registered for philosophy, 55 completed the workshop evaluation form, the format of which was outlined in the previous case study. all 67 students attended at least one individual session at the writing centre after the workshop. the following responses to the open-ended questions on post-intervention evaluation forms serve to highlight student perspectives of the various writing interventions. regarding the focal points of the workshop materials, students commented that: ‘[the workshop materials] test [their] understanding of the topic to check where [students] are struggling’; in other words: ‘[the workshop] broke down the topic into simpler words’. students said they liked: ‘the explanation of [what] the structure of the assignment should [look like]’ and that they: ‘liked the manner in which everything was explained with examples … [that it made it] simpler to visualise and understand what is expected of [students in terms of their] assignment[s]’. students’ gave very positive feedback concerning individual writing sessions at the writing centre. one student mentioned that: everything was simplified and explained in a way that [they] could understand. the [writing consultant] took time to go through the assignment with [them] to [identify] errors and other things. it was really helpful. other students commented that: ‘[they] are free and … can ask when [they] don’t understand, unlike in class when everyone is listening’ and that the consultant: ‘focuses on the student’. students indicated that they liked the: ‘intimate sessions [that are] not crowded’. the individual sessions also provided opportunities for conversations around meaning making. students: ‘liked getting someone else’s perspective and input … and hearing different ideas’. the one-on-one sessions created room for students to: ‘address any concerns that [they] had about [their] assignment. [the session] allowed [for their writing] to be critically reviewed before final submission’. students seemed to enjoy: ‘sharing [their] own views on how [they] understand the essay and the topic’. as one student’s feedback indicated, the occasions where students can negotiate meaning making regarding a particular assignment topic and how they understand it are rare. figures 5, 6 and 7 illustrate students’ responses on post-workshop evaluation forms. overall, students either agreed or strongly agreed that the workshop assisted in their understanding of the assignment topic and required format. also, their answers demonstrate that they deem such writing workshops necessary for approaching assignment topics. figure 5: post-workshop understanding of the assignment topic. figure 6: post-workshop understanding of the required assignment structure. figure 7: necessity of workshops to assist students’ approach to assignments. the content lecturer provided feedback on students’ performance in the course. he was very supportive of the writing initiatives for his students. he was of the opinion that the combination of his changed approach to teaching on the course with regard to accommodating second-language learners and the writing interventions presented by the writing centre, had a positive impact on students’ performance. he reported that 46% of students obtained a score of between 50% and 74%, and 41% of students obtained a distinction for the subject. although it is difficult to determine to what extent the writing interventions, in particular, impacted on students’ performance, given the change in the lecturer’s approach to teaching as an additional factor, the students’ results do support the assertion that very close collaboration between disciplinary experts and writing centre experts can prove promising for student access and success within higher education. ethical consideration students’ right to privacy was respected with regard to the research conducted. no identifying information has been included in the paper. furthermore, students consented to complete anonymous evaluations of the various interventions discussed in the article. conclusion and recommendations the purpose of the article was to illustrate how the current practices at the writing centre promotes the development of writing as an important tool that straddles various spheres of higher education. writing is not a generic skill that can be taught in decontextualised writing courses and transferred to the various subject areas. instead, it serves as a tool to negotiate meaning and construct knowledge within various social spaces. in terms of the space of academic citizenship and epistemological access, the development of discipline-specific writing skills is essential if students are to be acknowledged as respected members of specific communities of knowledge. writing encourages the development of the facilities and proficiencies most valued in various disciplines. the writing centre serves as a physical space that promotes the development of writing as a critical skill within these various spaces in tertiary education. by means of collaborative partnerships between writing centre practitioners and academic staff members, the writing centre can serve as an intermediary between content lecturers and students. the two collaborative initiatives investigated in the article were perceived positively and it appears that the interventions might have had a positive impact on students’ writing performance, although it is very difficult to demonstrate the direct impact of such collaborative initiatives. such inter-disciplinary collaboration should be promoted and students’ writing needs, regarding discourse-specific writing conventions, need to be studied further and in more depth. the identification and teaching of discipline-specific writing interventions can facilitate students’ acquisition of and fluency in specialised discourses. in this way, writing centres can 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department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, south africa mumthaz banoobhai department of and educational studies, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, south africa moses makgatho department of technology and vocational education, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, south africa citation maboe, e., smith, c.g.a., banoobhai, m. & makgatho, m., 2018, ‘implementing tablets to teach reading in grade 5’, reading & writing 9(1), a197. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v9i1.197 original research implementing tablets to teach reading in grade 5 ethel maboe, cornelia g.a. smith, mumthaz banoobhai, moses makgatho received: 06 feb. 2018; accepted: 17 may 2018; published: 27 july 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract literacy is regarded as a fundamental skill for people to communicate successfully in all areas of life. in the light of the poor performance of learners, an investigation concerning reading is imperative to enhance literacy in south africa. this study explores the use of tablets to enhance english reading among learners in grade 5 from selected primary schools in atteridgeville. the sample consisted of 12 learners, six teachers and six parents. tablets form part of connectivity because modern technology is used to draw the learners into listening and reading english. technological pedagogical content knowledge focuses on the use of modern technology to enhance teaching and learning in education. the study followed a qualitative approach involving a case study. focus group interviews and observations were used as research instruments. the findings of the investigation reveal that learners using tablets have an advantage, because modern digital natives enjoy the use of technology to communicate and learn, which enhances their reading and learning. tablets provide learners with the opportunity to experience technology physically and independently. audiobooks used on tablets were a great help to facilitate reading development in english, especially with regard to vocabulary branching and correct pronunciation. funds are still a problem because the use of technology does not happen in all educational environments. introduction teaching the millennials demands more than the usual teacher-orientated approach of enforcing silence when learning in the classroom. it requires innovation and adaptation with regard to the way teachers approach the learners who are far more accustomed to using technology than a few years ago. technology has changed the insistence on learner-centred approaches as successful modern learning has become linked with technology-driven lessons that naturally involve learner-centredness without having to focus pertinently on being learner-focused. the integration of digital technologies, more specifically tablets, into learning and the reading experiences has become a priority for many teachers who have to keep abreast with modern inventions and how these influence the learners. available apps grow exponentially on a daily basis. literacy is also evolving and embraces the skills needed to function in a technological society. literacy has also become an intricately interwoven part of our daily comprehension and the understanding of the world around us (sara 2009:3). reading is defined as the cognitive process to interpret symbols and make meaning of a text. reading can, therefore, be interpreted as making meaning from print. it involves: identifying the words in print which is called recognition constructing meaning and understanding from the print which is called comprehension coordinating and identifying words so that reading becomes automatic and accurate – an achievement identified as fluency (leipzig 2001:1). problem statement because of technological inventions, teachers need to adapt the way they teach learners and learners need to be taught how to make use of technology to further their learning and education. a question that arises is the following: how can technology be fruitfully used in the modern classroom to improve reading? poor reading results in schools have raised the concern of finding ways to improve reading performance (gauteng primary literacy strategy 2010:6). readers are technologically orientated, yet technology is not used to its full potential (royer 2002:234). learning with technology is teacher-centred rather than learner-centred. if schools want teachers to use technology to enhance learners’ learning, then it is important to address these issues. new ideas come and go and are rarely sustainable (zarfass 2001:104). to avoid ‘initiative fatigue’, schools must focus not only on introducing new technology, but also on implementing and promoting the use thereof. whilst every school is different, with different needs and resources, there are several factors that facilitate technology implementation and can help address the challenges mentioned above, making the school’s efforts to develop reading more successful (glazer, hannfin & song 2005:57). factors that facilitate implementation will play a role in every stage of the intervention, from the initial planning and exploration phase to help to sustain the intervention once fully implemented. learning can be enhanced through e-learning and mediation tools such as tablets are needed to distribute the content to be covered in the learning situation (aparicio, bacao & oliveira 2016:29). literature review theoretical background: technological pedagogical content knowledge a prominent theory of relevance to this study is technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack). tpack focuses on the nature of knowledge needed by teachers to integrate technology into the learning experience. shulmans (1986:8) identifies tpack as an effective theory to apply when integrating pedagogy and the researchers view it as relevant, because it focuses attention on the way the content is taught highlighting educational and academic content, bearing in mind the importance of the teachers’ ability to use the technology effectively. the acronym tpack is explained as: t: technological knowledge – this knowledge involves the overall knowledge to implement different technologies effectively. p: pedagogical knowledge – this knowledge comprises teachers’ deep knowledge about the processes or methods of teaching and learning including assessment. a: academic knowledge – this knowledge refers to the teachers’ academic knowledge of the subject and how it can be communicated using technology. c: content knowledge – this aspect comprises teachers’ knowledge about the subject matter to be learnt or taught as content which is part of the prescribed syllabus. k: knowledge – this is the basis of the tpack approach as it forms an integral part of all the different fields of the tpack theory (koehler & mishra 2009:60–70). it is best illustrated in figure 1. figure 1: technological pedagogical content knowledge. technological pedagogical content knowledge serves as the foundation of efficient teaching with technology, requiring and understanding the unique concepts when incorporating technologies. pedagogical techniques make room for using technologies such as tablets to teach the prescribed content. concepts not often encountered can pose challenges in teaching and learning. using technology can help to overcome some of the problems that teachers and learners face with reading, prior knowledge and theories of epistemology. knowledge of incorporating technologies in lessons to stimulate prior knowledge can aid in developing new epistemologies and reinforcing old ones (koehler & mishra 2009:67). tablets are used to implement audiobooks that offer a way to recapture enthusiasm for reading. the learners listen to the story recorded at a slower than usual pace (the recorded book method) which reduces much of the stress involved in reading. in order to become a proficient reader, a learner needs a combination of listening to comprehension and decoding skills by making use of technology to connect with the text. repeated listening exposes learners to correct reading methods and pronunciation and stimulates interest. as the learners become independent readers, they need more options of interesting material and stimulating programmes which they may read alone or with peers. the power of audiobooks (via the use of tablets) to transform struggling readers can be attributed to a simple formula which presents material that is interesting because it is close to the learners’ lived experiences (carbo 1996:26). tablets apple introduced the ipad, a revolutionary tablet that came with an easy-to-use operating system, in 2010. pongue (2010:4) observes that this tablet, as big as an old-fashioned paperback, has a high-revolution touchscreen function that is sharp enough to make reading books a pleasure. technological inventions and developments are changing the way learners learn in schools. according to eberwein (2013:1), the curriculum is fluid and dynamic to adapt to change and to implement new inventions. using tablets to teach reading can customise the learning experience and promote learners’ reading skills (larson 2015:169). tablets offer the option of audiobooks. tablets are capable of holding the digital equivalent of hundreds of printed texts without the added bulk or measurable mass. this initiative hopes to ensure that all learners in gauteng achieve the required outcomes and leave the educational institution with such knowledge, skills and qualifications that will give them the best chance of success in their adult life. engelbrecht, nel and hugo (2013:221) advocate a modern approach to learning that promotes the use of technology. when these resources are available, technology can enhance learning. robles de melendéz and beck (2007:430) propose the incorporation of technology in classrooms. they are also of the opinion that technological equipment can make a huge difference in communicating with the modern learners and parents at home, especially when a variety of cultures are involved. in addition to the more traditional forms of literacy of using paper, pencil and print texts, modern students interact with new digital literacies, embracing tablets. tablets help learners learn a wide range of materials faster. reading aloud has long been acknowledged as a crucial component of effective reading programmes and, by some, it is considered to be the single most important activity for building knowledge which is required for reading success. teachers believe that the use of tablets enriches classroom education and motivates learners to learn. the tablets can hold hundreds of textbooks on one device, plus homework, quizzes and other files, eliminating the need of physical storage of books and classroom materials. e-textbooks on tablets cost less than printed textbooks. it can also save the school money because the price of tablets continues to drop, making them increasingly affordable (larson 2015:169). tablets contain many technological features that cannot be found in print textbooks, because they give users the ability to highlight and edit texts and write notes without ruining a textbook for the next user. tablets allow learners to produce original work that will be a game changer. printed textbooks are very heavy and can cause injuries to learners. paediatricians and chiropractors recommend that learners carry less than 15% of their body weight in a backpack. according to the us consumer product safety commission, during 2011–2012, more than 13 700 children aged 5 –18 were treated for backpack-related injuries (larson 2015:169). klein and myers (1999:68) maintain that educational technology, in general, and tablets, specifically, hold the possibility of making the school a more efficient, friendly and personalised place for children. if you have a tablet-based approach, you can become informed faster and more effectively (klein & myers 1999:68). using technology in the classroom does not drive teaching, but rather creates a learning environment that offers more exciting learner-centred learning opportunities. schools frequently ignore the broad capacities computers have for instructional support, isolating them from the learning process rather than integrating them into learning areas of the curriculum. implementing the tpack principles, focusing on how to use technology (tablets) and how to take into consideration the content and the pedagogical approaches to teaching effectively, teachers can incorporate technology to equip learners to prepare the lesson that they will teach in their classrooms. teachers are beginning to use technology as a tool to promote learners’ ability to reason and solve authentic problems. the use of existing technology, such as tablets to aid in transforming classrooms into dynamic centres, aims at achieving purposeful and experiential learning facilities, raising an awareness to authentic action (moersch 1999:53). when teachers thoroughly integrate technology into the classroom, a constructivist learning environment to promote pedagogy and cognitive knowledge can evolve. the learning environment is a place in which learners work together and support each other as they use a variety of information resources in their guided pursuit of learning goals and problem-solving activities. a constructivist learning environment frequently encompasses many different applications of media and technology (middleton & murray 1999:110). in spite of the few apparent commitments to technology by some schools, it appears that many teachers use computers or tablets to support their current traditional teaching practices, rather than as a tool to promote more innovative, constructivist practices (cuban 2001:20). learners now embrace and use computers in more sophisticated ways than teachers and their parents (fuller 2000:511). listening practices tablets are considered a valuable learning tool because of their format. unlike traditional books or a video programme, one can learn from audiobooks on tablets whilst doing other tasks. such tasks include doing exercises and travelling with public or private transport. using tablets can help learners to relax and is a useful way to multitask and sustain interest. common practices to enrich literature lessons in the classroom engaging audio lessons using tablets include: replaying: depending on one’s degree of attention and interest, it is often necessary to listen to segments of an audiobook more than once to allow the material to be understood and retained satisfactorily. replaying may be performed immediately or after an extended period of time. listening: people may listen to an audiobook (usually an unabridged one) using a tablet while following along in an actual book. this will help learners to learn words that they may not learn correctly if they were only to read the book. this can also be a very effective way to learn a new language. multitasking: many audiobook listeners choose the format because it allows multitasking during otherwise mundane or routine tasks such as exercising, doing house chores or playing. entertainment: audiobooks (using technology such as tablets) have become a popular form of travel entertainment for families or communities (larson 2015:171). when teaching learners to read english books using tablets, it is important to focus on assisting them to understand and become aware of the smallest sounds (phonemes). speech sounds influence meaning and interpretation. the learner should be guided to segment words and blend phonemes into sounds. the most useful way is to teach the short and long vowels (over 300) and the different sounds of the ‘c’ and ‘g’. direct instruction of whole words is also crucial for phonic analysis. the words ‘m-a-t’ and ‘b-ea-t’ consist of three phonemes and they are then sequenced and blended to produce spoken words. the teacher starts building onto the knowledge of sounds of the alphabet by teaching whole syllables and then proceeds to single sounds. through phonemic awareness, the learner comprehends the alphabetic principle. blending is crucial to decode new words and segmenting is necessary to learn how to spell (choate 2004:66). phonics need to be taught in order to equip the learner to read. phonics deals with the automaticity of sound–letter links. the learner should be able to recognise symbol sound correspondences and identify sounds. they should be able to identify them even if they sound similar but use different symbols. the learners need to say the word and understand the meaning of what is said. the 26 letters constitute the 44 phonemes in the english language. when writing english words, the alphabet letters are used in different combinations. it is crucial to note that different groups of letters can represent the same sound, for example, ‘tried’ and ‘light’ use the ‘ie’ and ‘i’ letters to communicate the same sound. word recognition deals with the ability to listen to the sounds or to read the word in the text and recognise its meaning. it requires visual and auditory discrimination, memory and phonemic awareness (nel & nel 2012:92–93). when using tablets to teach reading, it stands to reason that letter and sound recognition will play a role in learning to read. applying the technological pedagogical content knowledge framework to pedagogy the understanding of the complex relationships among content, pedagogy and technology is a crucial, focal area. the standard approach suggests that teachers simply need to be trained to use technology. by demonstration of their proficiency with current software, teachers will be able to successfully incorporate technology into their classrooms. shulman (1996:12) describes this emphasis as a form of applied technocratic rationality, a view that technology is self-contained and has an independent integrity and that to unlock its potential and power requires merely learning certain basic skills. this aforementioned statement implies that knowing technology automatically leads to quality teaching when using tablets in the classroom to teach reading skills. koehler and mishra (2005:98) assert that traditional methods of technology training for teachers, mainly workshops and courses, are ill-suited to produce the deep understanding that can assist teachers in becoming intelligent users of technology to teach reading in the classroom. it is necessary to do in-depth research on the specific needs of teachers in schools to understand their unique needs. there is a need for a learning environment to facilitate the development of a culture in which participants learn and grow. this community of learners must be diverse and should utilise an array of knowledge. the online learning environment provides the framework for creating such mediation, as well as the ability to bring together a limitless perspective on any subject imaginable. e-learning is a synchronous online tool and is a mediator. the social area is achieved through the different types of communication, collaboration, cooperation and interaction that happen among the moderator and the learners online (nehme 2000:247). the international society for technology in education (iste) (2009) identifies conditions described as necessary to effectively leverage technology (including the use of tablets) for learning. they are: a shared vision: proactive leadership creating a shared vision for educational technology among all educational stakeholders embracing teachers and support staff, learners, parents and the community must be facilitated. empowered leaders: stakeholders at every level must be empowered to be leaders in effecting change, implementation planning. consistent and adequate funding: ongoing funding to support technology infrastructure, personnel, digital resources and staff development must receive attention as well as equitable access. skilled personnel: the department of education should focus on equipping teachers, support staff and other leaders skilled in the selection and effective use of appropriate e-learning and information and communication technologies (ict) resources, implementing an ongoing framework. learning: technology-related professional learning plans and opportunities must be created to dedicate time to practise and share ideas. technical support: consistent and reliable assistance must be provided to assist with maintenance and renewing and use of the digital resources curriculum framework. learner-centred learning: planning, teaching and assessment must centre on the needs and abilities of learners, assessment and evaluation. engaged communities: partnerships and collaboration within communities must support and fund the use of digital learning resources. support external context: policies and initiatives at the national, regional and local levels should be proposed to support schools and teachers. in order to achieve sustainable and successful outcomes, a shared vision has to be a belief that technology is beneficial, as defined by different communities of users or practice and education models, and to be embraced with an open mind by all involved. teachers should be guided to develop their capability to engage actively and collaboratively with learners. effective integration and essential conditions should positively impact learning and it should be galvanised to support learners fully (eickelmann 2011:75). the current research undertaken, focused on the practical implementation of tablets to teach reading and focused on ways to improve teaching using tablets. methodology design thyer (1993:94) defines research design as a detailed plan or a blueprint of how the study should be conducted. in the process, the researcher needs to select the sample of schools at which they will conduct the study, collect the data for testing the hypothesis, and analyse the results generated by interviews and open-ended questions. the design of this study is descriptive. creswell (2009:5) identifies qualitative research as a specific, descriptive design. this study also involved a case study design. the term ‘case study’ is linked with a small number of units that are studied in detail (welman, kruger & mitchell 2005:193). a qualitative approach the study followed the qualitative research approach to explore personal experiences and responses of teachers, parents and learners to describe the methodologies of teaching reading, using audiobooks in the intermediate phase with specific reference to grade 5. mcmillan and schumacher (2010:322) identify the following specific criteria as part of a qualitative research approach. qualitative research happens in a natural setting and meaning is created by attempting to understand the respondents’ behaviour in a specific context bearing in mind gender, racial, class and social and technological factors. information in qualitative research is extracted directly from the source and the researchers should be close to the participants in that they understand the environment and needs of the participants. descriptions are captured as part of the narrative to improve the interpretation of the data. bless, higson-smith and sithole (2013:16) emphasise that the researcher in qualitative research focuses on what the respondents feel and think about a particular phenomenon. reality is interpreted from the respondents’ frame of reference. population and sampling according to bless et al. (2013:162), the people about whom the researcher wants to determine some characteristics are called the population. thus, in this instance, the population consists of the selected and sizeable number of possible candidates who participated in the study. the participants were six english teachers (english referring to the subject taught), 12 grade 5 learners and six parents. the study was conducted in the grade 5 english class at two selected primary schools in atteridgeville and even though it was the english home language class, the focus was on english second language (esl) as the african students attending the school have different mother tongues. qualitative research aims at studying people in their natural context and is inductive and holistic, and does not aim at generalising. it aspires to identify new knowledge that is transferrable to other units of the population (bless et al. 2013:162). as the selected process is qualitative, purposeful sampling was used. bless et al. (2013:172) contend that purposeful sampling is based on the judgement of the researcher. participants were purposefully selected, bearing in mind that they should all be second language speakers of english and that both genders were involved by including an equal number of male and female participants. results were shared and the two schools were able to benefit from the results. purposeful sampling is based entirely on the view of the investigator, because the sample consists of the elements that mirror most characteristics of the selected population. data collection the study involved a case study. in order to have a well-developed data collection method, the researcher needs to consider the rationale and logistics of the data collected and a plan for data collection (punch 2009:160). we set out parameters for each of the questions stated in the study. parameters entail the choices of data to be collected, whom to collect it from and how frequently. it is essential to select the instrument most appropriate to the study in order to assimilate the necessary information. the qualitative approach relies on the text and image of evaluation and has ‘unique steps in data analysis, and draws on diverse strategies’ (creswell 2009:173). semi-structured focus group interviews a set of questions was carefully compiled and submitted to the respondent (interviewee) in the research project (de vos 2001:152–153). the researcher arranged for special appointments to conduct relevant interviews, so that the interviewees could participate in semi-structured focus group interviews at schools a and b with the different groups of teachers, learners and parents. open-ended questions were prepared in advance and an interview schedule was developed to guide the researcher during the interviews, and participants were assisted and encouraged to share their experiences and views regarding the teaching materials and training of teachers regarding the programme (maree 2010:294). bless et al. (2013:200) claim that focus groups are used more commonly in qualitative research. the researcher draws up a list of questions to stimulate responses. the participants may discuss the issues among each other. a careful debate among the participants can spark off new knowledge. this method may facilitate the respondents to learn from one another. the facilitators have to use their skills to ensure that the discussion is balanced and that dominant participants allow all to participate. a small focus group should have 6–10 participants, but we involved 24 participants to ensure rich data. if a heterogeneous group is used, the facilitator must pay attention to power dynamics and ensure that silent people also express their views. the facilitator must not take sides and should take care of the learners in a neutral manner (bless et al. 2013:214). there is a huge push towards the interactive constructivist approach; however, when implementing instructional technologies, there are many challenges with regard to teacher support because of a number of factors such as old-school teachers who are reluctant to use technology because of a fear of the unknown. there are many supporters of this, and they provide a convincing argument. one of the first and most vocal ideas to promote this type of meaningful learning is the use of computers to provide a powerful tool for learning (papert 1994:35). data analysis the idea was to conduct a qualitative study to explore and understand the nature of the phenomenon in question (merriam 1998:80). the qualitative study was conducted in the english class, focusing specifically on reading by using tablets containing audiobooks. in qualitative research, the researchers are key instruments as they are the ones who personally go and collect the information via means of ‘examining documents, observing behaviour or interviewing participants’ (creswell 2009:175). the researchers conducted interviews with the participants and coded the responses. coding can be described as marking the segments of the data using descriptive words (niewenhuis 2013:99). descriptive codes were used because they facilitated the interpretation and included a theme that could be linked with the codes. the researchers also used interpretive codes, because they relate to reasons, explanations and motives. wahyuni (2012:70) is of the opinion that an interpretivist research paradigm can be linked with socially constructed, subjective interpretations of questions. it was feasible to use simple predetermined questions to group the possible topics nested within the questions asked. themes were then identified as proposed by creswell (2005:243). the themes centred on the use of the tablets in class referring to practical aspects, challenges using tablets and reading development, learning about phonology (sounds). boeije (2002:396) focuses attention on the value of comparing responses extracted from the interviewees. the responses were, therefore, compared to achieve an improved understanding of the phenomenon of using tablets to teach reading. boeije (2002:398) suggests that it is crucial to distinguish between the information gathered from different groups and to establish which themes emerged when studying the data of the different groups. these variations in perceptions are revealed in the next discussion. participants the participants were all teachers, learners and parents from selected primary schools in gauteng in the atteridgeville environment. the details of the participants are provided in table 1. table 1: demographic information of the study participants. findings (results) figure 2 shows the classroom situation with the researcher involved in her investigation, busy engaging with the learners using tablets. figure 2: tablets implemented to read. themes practical use of tablets and reading development teachers from school b were advantaged as they had sponsors donating tablets for the entire school. the sponsor serviced the tablets to support the school. even upgrades were performed to keep up with the latest downloads to enhance the speed and functional operation of the tablets. this school was privileged and the learners’ reading abilities developed well because of the use of technology. teachers reported that they made use of technology and prepared the audiobooks before the lessons by selecting appropriate reading material to use for reading aloud sessions when engaging with tablets. they prepared the tablets which came with stories uploaded for the use of grade 5 learners. teachers prepared the tablets containing audiobooks and ensured that they were charged and ready to be used during the reading period. the group leaders collected the tablets and distributed them to fellow group members. learners listened to the rules for using the tablets in class. the rules were initiated to protect the equipment. the stories listened to on the tablets were i wish i could fly by elaine macdonald (2013) and audio recorded by cathy mccabe specifically for the intermediate phase. the questions that were designed to go along with the stories were provided in writing to make the most of the reading lesson. listening with comprehension was meaningful. the listening activity was also substituted by combining it with writing down the answers to the questions. teachers said: ‘using technology is really a blessing as if classes are interesting, you have fewer discipline problems. i am very positive about using technology as i am a young but enthusiastic teacher. i do not mind the extra preparation to remind the learners about the rules and all the essential conditions of using the tablets.’ (tf4, school b) ‘we use our tablets very fruitfully and i can hardly imagine my english classes without them. once you have grown accustomed to the use of the tablets, you cannot do without them. we do not use smartphones so much for reading as the tablets are very handy and because each learner can use them, it is very convenient. even though the tablets can also record, it is faster detected by the teacher if the learner is not using it for the purpose of listening to the recordings. the sound is done by connecting the tablets to one speaker which is then operated by the teacher. we do not use earphones as well to deal with the sound. we have detected an increasing willingness to participate as learners feel engaged and they learn the correct pronunciation.’ (tf6, school b) the findings on teachers’ responses prove that the use of tablets as audiobooks in the second language acquisition (sla) classrooms can improve reading development. all learners showed progress; some rapidly and some steadily. they gradually developed recognition of phonics and the ability to answer questions, because they read aloud and saw the words at the same time. assessment of their oral marks after having used tablets for six months showed an improvement in pronunciation and reading speed. school a used smartphones to overcome the lack of tablets and the smartphones were just handled by the teachers. when comparing the teaching of school a with the success achieved in school b, it was evident that the use of tablets was more effective. learners the learners were keen on cooperating and realised the privilege of using the tablets. it was encouraging to hear that the tablets were handled with care in school b. nobody damaged them on purpose as the teacher explained the rules before using them. the learners also recited the rules along with the teacher to understand the consequences, should they not listen and obey. it should be noted that school a did not have tablets available and the teachers introduced listening to stories via cell phones. the responses from learners in school b revealed that the use of tablets was more efficient than the use of smartphones as incorporated in school a, where there was a mere listening to stories without holding the cell phones, as the teachers just connected speakers to her cell phone. the learners could handle the tablets in school b themselves, had better visual stimulation and felt more involved with the technology in their hands. they were also very much aware of the rules of using technology. one learner said: ‘reading lessons using tablets is really a great opportunity to learn. using the tablets is easy and we focus very well when interested in listening to our audiobooks. i learn new words and i become more fluent when reading after having listened to the stories from the tablets.’ (lf4, school a) another learner was of the opinion that: ‘using a tablet is much different from using text books, as the sound is very fascinating and we can hear the correct sounds. we also follow how the words are spelled and it also helps since the tablets provide pictures as well. my vocabulary has already increased since we started using our tablets at school. i remember when i was reading a story during a reading week in the school hall when participating in assembly. i felt as confident as i could experience the benefit of my improved pronunciation. we participated in spelling bee competitions and i felt that i could spell better because of the use of the tablets in class.’ (lm7, school b) one of the learners who knows how to read in a group taught the weaker learners to follow her, and then they re-listened to the audiobook. the learners were very much engaged in the reading and listening skills, and they also practised their speaking skills when reading aloud with and without the audiobooks on the tablets. reading aloud: learning about sounds reading aloud helped them to pronounce words correctly and it boosted the learners’ self-confidence so that they could read fluently. learners with visibility and auditory barriers can benefit when using audiobooks on tablets, because they can use their listening ability to listen to the story rather than looking at it. those who have auditory problems can also benefit because they look at how words are spelled and can be guided by the pictures in the storybook. the challenge is proper training on how to effectively implement audiobooks in the classroom using tablets. the department of basic education should seriously reconsider the use of audiobooks in the classroom as a strategy to enhance reading development and to bring back the love of reading to the technologically-orientated generation of learners. the findings of the learner responses reveal that learners are technologically orientated. however, some of them did not know that they could use smartphones, tablets, ipads and computers to listen to audiobooks. learners are far more interested in listening to audiobooks than in reading from the book. they wanted to use tablets in other learning areas too. from the comparison of the responses of the learners and teachers, it was evident that both the groups were positive about using tablets in both schools, even though school a did not have tablets. teachers had to put in the effort to prepare everything before the lessons, but the learners participated enthusiastically and adhered to the rules. parents from the comparison of the responses of the parents and the teachers and learners, it was clear that even though parents were aware of technology, they did not have enough knowledge about what was available on the tablets apart from games, to contribute to improved reading skills. some parents think that listening to an audiobook on a tablet does not constitute real reading and, perhaps, could even be considered cheating; this perception is only true if the reading process is conservatively defined as decoding the words in a book. however, many literacy skills and strategies used by audiobook readers are comparable to those used by text readers. wolfson (2008:107) argues that the ‘only difference is that we have substituted the visual understanding of written words with the auditory understanding of written words’. listening allows learners to enjoy a good book while they are multitasking, for example, while mowing the lawn, practising sports, cleaning their rooms or relaxing at home. parents; however, identified the use of tablets at home as an opportunity to enrich family time. the theme of family time thus featured with parents, whereas teachers and learners were more focused on reading strategies and academic benefits. one parent said: ‘i think listening to stories from tablets together as a family offers opportunities for shared literary experiences and a springboard for conversation about the story. as parents we will be giving our children support and motivation to read independently and it will boost their self-confidence. due to funds of buying data i suggest that the department of education can buy tablets or any stakeholder to sponsor schools with tables that have stories that they are using in class.’ (pf5, school b) attitudes and motivation the attitudes towards the use of technology have both positive and negative attributes. learning a second language using technology comprises both a teacher’s and a learner’s involvement. the role of the teacher is to offer control purposes, while the learner’s control provides the opportunity to obtain the lessons that have been recorded. learners are also required to listen to the pronunciation. research shows that the success of technology used in the educational settings largely depends on teachers’ attitudes towards technology use (albirini 2006:373). a teacher said: ‘the technology in class gives the learners a sense of independence and the joys of being in school every day. the learners become critical thinkers and they even try to construct their own sentences when working in groups.’ (tf2, school a) another teacher said: ‘they participate in recapturing the essence and the delights of hearing stories beautifully told by extraordinarily talented storytellers. decoding is important when teaching learners to read but, understanding the message, thinking critically about the content, using imagination, and making connections are at the heart of what it means to be a motivated reader.’ (tm3, school a) it is clear that the teacher is more focused on the educational function of the tablet, whereas the learners focus more on the enjoyment thereof. audiobooks motivate learners, model sound of interpretive reading and introduce learners to books above their reading level. this could also be reflected in the reading style and tone, and whether there are certain tones that convey the read-aloud function more efficiently. some parents think that listening to an audiobook does not constitute real reading and, perhaps, could even be considered cheating; this perception is only true if the reading process is conservatively defined as decoding the words in a book. however, many literacy skills and strategies used by tablet (audiobook) readers are comparable to those used by text readers. wolfson (2008:107) argues that the ‘only difference is that we have substituted the visual understanding of written words with the auditory understanding of written words’. one parent said: ‘i think listening to stories from smartphones or tablets together as a family offers opportunities for shared literary experiences and a springboard for conversation about the story.’ (pf5, school b) vocabulary learners learnt new words and became more fluent when reading after having listened to the stories from the tablets. some of the struggling learners improved especially in school b where they had used tablets for the past year as a resource during reading lessons. struggling learners can now read alone by following the story lines at their own pace. the learners can even compete in reading competitions that are held at school as well as district level. the parents’ responses reveal that they used their tablets to text messages and communicate most of the time. they were pleasantly surprised by the use of the tablets as audiobooks in school and were grateful that it could be used so efficiently. being informed, they supported the use of tablets and audiobooks as part of their children’s reading enhancement. struggling learners learners with learning disabilities who listen to audiobooks demonstrate increased literacy skills and reading ability. the language of teaching and learning involves the mother tongue (african languages) which makes it difficult for some learners to understand. those learners who struggle with reading and writing are motivated by technology, because they are more literate in new literacies and employ scaffolded, traditional literacy (sylverster & greenidge 2009:294). struggling learners’ comfort level using technology exceeds that of their teachers and parents, and consequently, they confidently explore new devices or other technological tools. although learners are exploring technology at a rapid rate, teachers and parents often do not recognise the importance of the skills learners develop through independent use of tablets. the successful utilisation of audiobooks in the classroom depends mainly on the teacher’s enthusiastic attitude towards technological tools. one teacher said: ‘i see struggling learners pay attention and improve when listening to audiobooks. they gradually develop recognition of phonics and the ability to answer questions because they read aloud and see the words at the same time.’ (tf2, school a) challenges perceptions about the value of networking or the use of internet run deep – especially as it applies to teaching children. there are numerous ways to measure the value of technology in private schools where they use technology as part of their curriculum. parents reported that technology was in many instances a caretaker at home when they did not have time to spend with their children because of other duties. access to internet is somehow a challenge as many respondents reported that they either did not have data or were reluctant to pay for the information at the internet café. a participant said: ‘even though the school has internet, not all the learners benefit, because they have to do the assignments at home and if you don’t stay near the school you don’t benefit.’ (pf2, school a) it became apparent that parents recognised the value of using smartphones, but for many children, internet access was still a problem at home. without wi-fi, data must be purchased. parents have also become more informed about healthy social communication and reported that spending too much time on cell phones interferes with family communication. recommendations the following recommendations are made: audiobooks using tablets can be used in classrooms to improve the learners’ level of reading, especially those who are struggling to read. even though teachers are aware of the use of tablets, they still need more training to equip them to learn more about technology application. their tpack should be improved in order to know how to share content using technology. parents should be informed about the use of tablets to improve their children’s reading and learning and they should be assisted to access appropriate reading books to help their children online. parents should also realise that technology has become an integral part of learners’ reading development and their daily lives. tablets are a need for a modern child and parents should avail themselves to provide their children with the necessary technology to support their education. the department of basic education should work hand-in-hand with schools to ensure that all staff know how to use audiobooks as part of their curriculum. the department of basic education should assist schools to obtain funding for technological equipment such as tablets, internet connections and ipads. the learners should be motivated in using their own smartphones as part of their reading development by downloading free audiobooks. the schools should have more reading competitions to encourage interest in reading ability among the learners. parents should be able to download audiobooks for their children and read for them at home. conclusion the study revealed the benefits of using tablets to teach. the implications of the aforementioned findings are that technological content knowledge should be stimulated in school and in the home environment, because owning a tablet is not enough. knowledge regarding how to use technology is still a problem. tablets must be used in a manner that can support learner’s development. much research still needs to be conducted on the use of technology in the educational environment, because not all schools have access to the use of tablets. future research could focus on the availability and funds provisioning for equipping schools with tablets. modern learners require adaptation of the old-fashioned focus on reading books in the form of hard copies only. learners are so technologically orientated that teaching reading is hardly possible without the use of technology. involving tablets to teach audiobooks provides learners with the valuable and enjoyable experience of using their own imagination to visualise the stories narrated. technology enhances reading anywhere, because technology equips learners with immediate connectivity in order to read and enjoy. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions c.g.a.s. and e.m. conceptualised the article, wrote the first draft and did the literature review. e.m. did the data analysis, m.b. edited the article and assisted with the methodology. m.m. contributed by identifying the theory and assisted with the structure of the article. all authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript. references albirini, a.a., 2006, ‘teacher’s attitudes toward information and communication technologies: 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accepted: 16 nov. 2017; published: 26 feb. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract there has been limited attention towards the affective aspect in literacy development; yet, reading attitude, an affective component, is a significant element within literacy instruction. this makes a compelling case for investigating grade 3 learners’ attitudes towards reading. in this study, a situational analysis was conducted as phase 1 of the research process before implementing a responsive reading programme at a primary school in grahamstown, south africa. in an effort to explore grade 3 learners’ attitudes, experiences and perspectives about reading, the study adopted the use of drawings, which is a child-centred approach. learners were required to draw their perspectives or experiences about reading. in analysing the drawings, a range of semiotic theorists were integrated. findings of the study indicate that by using drawings as a methodological tool, learners were able to provide detailed insights about their daily experiences with reading, attitudes towards reading and their varied individual views about reading. such information gathered was vital for future consideration when implementing a responsive and extensive reading programme. introduction much focus has been placed on areas of measurable reading achievement, such as fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. this has resulted in reduced attention towards the affective component in relation to literacy development; yet, attitude as an affective component is a significant element within literacy instruction owing to its relationship with reading success. this article presents a subset of the results collected during phase 1 of a larger study that was undertaken for my doctoral thesis. the main objective of the study was to investigate the nature of grade 3 learners’ attitudes towards reading. the main study consisted of three different phases. phase 1 of the study was the situational analysis or pre-intervention phase, which was then followed by phase 2, the actual implementation phase of the extensive reading programme (erp) and finally phase 3, which was the evaluation of the erp. in phase 1 of the study, drawings were used alongside other data collection instruments such as focus group discussions. the drawings and the focus group discussions were used as methods of gathering learners’ current attitudes and perceptions about reading. according to freire (1984), education should be about acknowledging the knowledge that learners bring to the classroom. therefore, this study acknowledges that in the classroom, each learner is unique and possesses knowledge that is unique based on the individual’s historical, sociocultural and linguistic context. hence, in this study, before implementing a reading programme, there was a need to understand and get a glimpse of the participants’ attitudes and perceptions about reading. the learners’ drawings about reading helped to uncover the reading narratives that learners bring to school and those that they acquire at school that might influence them to approach or avoid the reading activity. the results of phase 1 of the research reported on in this article show how learners effectively used drawings to represent their experiences and attitudes towards reading. the analysis of these drawings guided by a range of semiotic theories further indicates that learners have varied perceptions and experiences about reading, which might cause them to approach or avoid reading. findings of this study have important implications for nurturing reading in the foundation phase (fp), which should be taken into account by teachers and other stakeholders interested in literacy development, so as to effectively cater for diverse learners and improve literacy levels. in addition, the information gathered through the drawings was used to help in designing and implementing a responsive reading programme. the importance of attitude in reading this study on learners’ attitude towards reading stems from a concern that much emphasis placed on reading proficiency and other reading skills has often led teachers to ignore the importance of children’s attitudes in the process of becoming literate. yet, cosgrove (2003) argues that instilling positive attitudes towards reading is just as fundamental as teaching decoding skills and comprehension strategies, as a positive attitude is essential for mastery of the printed page. sainsbury and schagen (2004) argue that the emotional response to reading is the primary reason most non-readers do not read. there is also a perceived decline in interest for reading after the early years of schooling. it is therefore important for educators to implement early interventions in an effort to curb the attitudinal decline of learners (mckenna, ellsworth & kear 1995). this study is important at a time when nationwide literacy results indicate that most of the south african learners cannot read (spaull 2013). research projects such as progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) (2006, 2011) and the national education evaluation and development unit (needu) (2013), focusing on testing reading levels in south africa, show that learners in this country perform significantly below the expected assessment standards. in order for learners to develop into successful readers, they must possess both the skill and the will to read. as noted by guthrie and wigfield (2000), motivation is what activates behaviour; hence, learners need to be motivated to read in school for academic purposes and they also need to engage in reading for their own enjoyment. however, grabe and stoller (2013) state that the extent to which learners engage in reading (positively or negatively) both at home and at school is influenced greatly by their attitude towards reading and also their ability to read. as stated in the pirls 2011 assessment framework, learners’ attitudes towards reading are a central factor affecting reading performance. a learner’s reading attitude plays a key role in whether or not he or she becomes a competent reader (mullis et al. 2011). according to mckenna et al. (1995) and sainsbury and schagen (2004), learners who have a negative attitude towards reading are less likely to read voluntarily and will overall read less than their reading-positive companions and generally achieve lower levels of learning when compared with their peers. over time, the ability gap between learners becomes larger (guthrie & wigfield 2000). likewise, mckenna and kear (1990) state that a poor reading attitude may contribute to aliteracy, a situation when fluent readers choose not to read when other options like television and video games exist, as noted in the studies conducted by the national endowment for the arts (nea) (2007) and mokhtari, reichard and gardner (2009). the big challenge for teachers and other stakeholders interested in education and literacy development is not only about getting learners to read but also about getting them to enjoy reading (clark & rumbold 2006). at the fp level, learners trudge through set readers in class in the presence and assistance of a teacher (hoadley 2016), but there is no guarantee that they will open another book when they get back home or during their spare time. therefore, good readers are those who have a positive attitude towards reading, and who read for pleasure. if children do not enjoy reading when they are young, they are unlikely to do so when they are older (clark & rumbold 2006). learners’ attitudes towards reading have been found to have an effect on both engagement and achievement in reading (mullis et al. 2011). given the relationship between reading achievement and attitude, guthrie and wigfield (2000) state that it is important to promote learners’ level of engagement early in their education. it is vital that learners learn to read efficiently at an early age as difficulties may impede upon self-concept and self-esteem in later years when peer relations and pressures become more evident (myoungsoon & heekyoung 2002). gillespie (1993) states that: ‘for students to be successful readers they must have a positive affective predisposition toward reading instruction’ (p. 336). once a positive attitude is developed, reading achievement and reading time increase (alexander & filler 1976). given the importance of positive attitudes towards reading, it is crucial that learners be given every opportunity to become involved in reading and practise so that they will eventually become successful readers. strickland and morrow (1990) state that continued exposure to books helps in the development of children’s vocabulary and gives them a sense of story structure, which assists in the process of learning to read. interestingly, day and bamford (1998) state that the most important point about attitudes is that they are subject to change as they are not concrete. in the current study, the researcher sought to establish the attitudes of learners towards reading by using drawings before implementing a responsive reading programme with the aim of positively influencing learners’ reading attitudes and nurturing positive reading habits. drawings: a methodological tool to reveal learners’ attitudes towards reading a number of researchers (ajzen 2005; baker 1992; eagly & chaiken 2007; moodley 2003) have considered measuring attitude as a difficult task, as it is not directly observable and is also very subjective. moodley (2003) postulates that attitude cannot be measured directly or accurately because people’s thoughts and feelings are hidden components that cannot be measured directly. likewise, ajzen (2005), who presents attitudes and personality traits as similar concepts, emphasises that both attitudes and traits cannot be observed because they are not part of a person’s thoughts and feelings. eagly and chaiken (2007) also stress the challenge of measuring attitude by stating that ‘an attitude is inside the person, not directly observable and is manifested by covert or overt responses’ (p. 584). a general overview of the development of attitudes throughout school years and in many studies conducted has been documented through surveys and meta-analysis. for example, in previous studies (walberg & tsai 1995; yamashita 2013), attitudes towards reading have been assessed by learners’ written responses to written statements about reading. baker (1992) posits that ‘this measurement of an individual’s attitude is unlikely to reveal their attitude perfectly’ (p. 18). this discussion reveals the challenge of investigating attitudes. to provide a solution to the challenges in measuring attitudes, the present study explored the use of children’s drawings to determine their attitudes towards reading. christensen and james (2008) state that drawings are a relaxing and enjoyable activity that children choose both in and out of the classroom as a medium through which to communicate their experiences, feelings and beliefs. in addition, drawing enhances communication which makes it an appropriate approach in exploring the reading experiences of young learners without being restricted by either their home language (hl) or their second (additional) language (l2) to fully express themselves. a limited number of educational studies have used visual images such as drawings to investigate a variety of issues in the classroom context. for example, in south africa, murris and thompson (2016) used drawings as a way of investigating how young children responded to a particular picture book. similar to the current study, kendrick and mckay (2004) used young children’s drawings (aged 5–6 years) as a method of investigating their perception and understanding of literacy across the broad context of their lives. malchiodi (1998) claimed that unlike questionnaires with predetermined statements, drawings provide a multidimensional view of children, as drawing tasks are open-ended, unstructured and not constrained by language. drawings are also child-centred, fun, imaginative, expressive and engaging for most young children in the foundation phase (fp). theory informing the study the use of drawings in this study acknowledges that all modes of meaning-making are equally significant; thus, the study recognises that there are multiple literacies. as a result, the study adopts a broad definition of literacy that goes beyond being just able to read and write or decode but incorporates the child’s ability to communicate using a variety of means of representation, including drawings. the study adopts vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory as a theoretical framework. specifically, it recognises the following: drawings are a way of knowing, a particular kind of speech and mediating tool within and across cultures in children’s learning. young children are situated as learners by the societies in which they are nurtured and educated. the child is a co-constructor of meaning and an active player in his or her own world. the relationship between the child and the environment enables us to understand the social and cultural setting into which the child is born. the role of the ‘more knowledgeable other’ (mko) and collaboration is significant in children learning to read. in addition, the study integrated a range of semiotic theorists in analysing the learners’ drawings. furth (2002) considers that there are three interpretive principles involved in the descriptive analysis of pictures. the first principle is to note the child’s initial impression of a picture that describes his or her feeling. the second principle is to systematically comb through the picture objectively for several elements or characteristics such as words in the drawing and figures presented in the drawing, and the surrounding world. haring and sorin (2014) refer to this step as content analysis. the third principle involves a synthesis of the observations gathered into a report. the fourth principle involves affording learners an opportunity to talk about their drawings so as to validate their own initial interpretation of the drawings, as suggested by malchiodi (1998). methodology this is a qualitative, interpretative study which made use of learners’ drawings for a situational analysis phase. according to cohen et al. (2007), an interpretative study is characterised by a concern for individual experiences, and the aim of the research is to learn from a phenomenon, while also attempting to initiate change. it ultimately seeks to be transformative. in the current study, drawings were used to explore learners’ attitudes towards reading before the implementation of a reading intervention (phase 2). the prompt for the drawings was ‘draw a picture of reading and write about your drawing (caption the drawing). it can be a drawing of your feelings about reading or your experiences with reading’. this was followed by follow-up focus group discussions with a subset of the sample to explain and discuss in detail their drawing. based on my experience as a researcher, the majority of grade 3 learners in township schools struggle to communicate in english, and a number of them also struggled with reading in their hl; therefore, the discussions were conducted in isixhosa. in addressing the ethical issues of the study, a condition was laid out that only those learners with signed consent forms from their guardians would be allowed to be part of the study and that participation was voluntary. all grade 3 learners in the selected school were invited to participate in the study. all the 37 learners that were given consent forms brought them back all signed. the participants were made aware of their right to anonymity and to withdraw from the study at any point in time. in the data presentation, 10 selected learners’ drawings were used. these were presented with pseudonyms to protect their identity. research question the main research question of the study was: what is the nature of learners’ reading attitudes in grade 3? in addition, the aim of the study was to use drawings as a methodological tool to investigate learners’ attitudes towards reading. research site and participants this article presents part of a larger study that was conducted with two grade 3 classes from two primary schools that were accessible, convenient and located in close proximity to grahamstown. the research site a, reported in this article, is a township school in grahamstown, which is historically disadvantaged and a no-fee paying public school. the state bears all the costs with no contribution from the learners’ parents. at this particular school, from grade r to grade 3, isixhosa, which is the learners’ hl, is used as a medium of instruction, and learners in grade 4 switch to using english, which is a language of teaching and learning, and for most learners in this context, it is their second language. the article presents findings from 10 learners’ drawings (5 boys and 5 girls) out of a sample of 37 grade 3 learners (17 girls and 20 boys) aged between 9 and 11 years. a number of the learners struggle with reading and writing in the english language and are from underprivileged and impoverished backgrounds. therefore, the use of drawings was appropriate, as it did not require high literacy skills. it was considered inclusive as all children, including those who otherwise might not have expressed their ideas, were allowed a rare insight into their lives and thoughts. the presented learners’ drawings were selected on the basis of having clearly captured learners’ attitudes and experiences about their reading, which was the focus of the study. the drawings are also a good representation of the rest of the drawings that were collected from both research sites. the method of using children’s drawings to understand their reading attitude as applied adds to the uniqueness of this study. procedure the drawings were administered to all the participating learners on the same afternoon in the learners’ classroom. the prompt question was read out to the participants in both languages, which is isixhosa their hl and english, which is an additional language. learners were given enough time to process the question, draw, caption and even colour their drawings using the crayons that were provided. following the drawing process, the researcher met with the learners in focus groups to explain their drawings. the focus group discussions were organised in such a manner that each group consisted of four members. the length of the focus group discussion varied between 30 min and 1 h. in instances where the discussions took a shorter duration, it was because the group lacked involvement and some learners’ responses were very short, in most cases one word answers. with their drawings in front of them, learners were free to explain and discuss their drawings in a language they were comfortable in. talking about their drawings allowed the participants to voice their perspectives about their drawings and to improve their communication skills. malchiodi (1998) states that it is important that learners be given an opportunity to explain their drawings in order for the researchers to understand the learners’ interpretations of the drawings. their explanations also helped to validate my initial interpretation of the drawings, for example, where and when the reading activity took place. data analysis the unit of analysis was the literacy event portrayed in the drawing. in the process of analysing these drawings, a range of semiotic theories were integrated. the first step in the process of analysis was writing down the first impression, that is, viewing the drawing as ‘mysterious’ (malchiodi 1998:19). informed by kress and van leeuwen (1996), the next step was to get an idea about what is in the drawing (looking for what natural or human objects are present in the drawing). after this step, a discussion with the learners in focus groups of four learners was held. each learner was given an opportunity to talk about their drawing and the accompanying text in each drawing. the final step was the synthesising of the findings and looking for emerging themes in the drawings. the following section presents and discusses the findings of the study, with examples of different drawings about reading portrayed by the selected participants. discussion and analysis of the findings the analysis of the learners’ drawings resulted in five categories of reader experiences as will be discussed in detail in the following sub-sections. the first category consisted of learners who perceived reading as an activity which happens in a formal setting with the assistance of a teacher. in the second category, the learners viewed reading as a social activity while in the third category learners viewed reading as an isolated activity. in the fourth category, the learners were aware of the positives associated with reading which in turn motivated them to read more. finally, there were learners who indicated that the setting or reading environment hindered them from enjoying reading. hence, they had mixed attitudes towards reading (i.e. love–hate relationship with reading). reading in formal settings and domains the context, in other words, the environment in which reading is presented, has the potential to influence the learner to either engage in or avoid the reading task as represented in figure 1 and later on in figure 5. further elements of the reading environment that are crucial are a pleasant and informal atmosphere, where one has a choice of what to read, that is, the genre and the language to read in. one of the most striking aspects in which learners represented their reading was that reading mostly happened at school, in confined spaces. as shown in figure 1, some learners’ drawings presented reading as an activity taking place at school in the presence of the teacher. this is understandable because the majority of south african learners from disadvantaged backgrounds and print-poor communities have limited access to reading material (fleisch 2008). there is also lack of reading material especially in african languages and many learners stay with parents who have little time or ability to read with their children. during the focus group discussions about their drawings, learners stated that they portrayed reading as an activity happening at school because of lack of reading material at home. figure 1: reading in formal settings and domains: (a) i like to read my book and (b) i like to read in english. my teachers taught me how to read. for example, based on my initial interpretation of the drawing (step 1 of the analysis), phila’s unique drawing of reading (figure 1a) portrays himself standing behind his desk, holding a book and asking for his teacher’s guidance. he clearly positions himself as a reader. in front of the desk is his teacher pointing at the chalkboard. an assumption can be made that this particular learner’s perception about reading is: ‘it happens at school, in the presence of a teacher to help or guide one’s reading’. [phila, male] the teacher is assumed by the learner to be the mko (vygotsky 1978) and has to be present to initiate and facilitate reading activities. within the confines of a classroom, reading is a scheduled activity with the teacher. as such, reading is perceived as a subject that one has to be guided or instructed to do without taking the initiative. in our focus group discussion (step 4 of the analysis), the learner confirmed the researcher’s initial interpretation of the drawing: ‘this is me in my black trousers and school blazer, i go to the teacher each time i don’t understand anything or when i need help with difficult words’. [phila, male] the other three members of this particular focus group were in agreement with the fact that in their classroom they considered their teacher as a role model who supports their reading activities. according to rimensberger (2014), the way learners perceive their teacher will affect their attitude towards reading. having supportive teachers promotes learners’ feelings of control and confidence in their ability to succeed. in addition, learners indicated that at school they depended on their teachers to read for the learners. this is understandable because these learners are not yet proficient readers. in addition, the limited access to reading resources makes it difficult for each learner to have opportunities to read independently. the teacher therefore often reads aloud for them. however, in an interview conducted by koen from city press (2015), bloch highlighted that lack of access to reading material and reading opportunities can negatively impact on learners’ reading attitude as learners need to continually read in order to appreciate and love reading. reading as a social activity traditionally, reading has been viewed as a purely individualistic skill. however, two learners in this article presented reading from a completely different perspective. they presented reading as a social activity. the sociocultural theory of learning regards reading as a social skill and emphasises active participation and interaction of the learners involved. in a social learning context, learners have the power to choose what to read, when to read and how to read. they view reading as a pleasurable, fun activity rather than a chore. this is indicated in the drawings (figure 2) with upturned mouths and smiles, which are perceived as cultural conventions symbolising happiness and joy (kress & van leeuwen 1996). also evident in the drawings (figure 2) is the presentation of reading as an activity that one does in the company of someone else. shared or paired reading was evident in these learners’ drawings. learners explicitly captioned their drawings as reading with their siblings or friends. for these learners, home, family and school were the focal points of reading. when reading is presented to the learners as an activity that the reader is entirely in control of, learners tend to like and enjoy reading, which results in positive attitudes towards reading. figure 2: reading as a social practice: (a) mandla’s picture (b) thandi’s picture. these drawings reflect learners’ knowledge and acceptance that reading is a social activity and that it can maintain friendship or family relationships. for example, in the focus group discussion, one mentioned (figure 2a): ‘i always find time to read with my sister, she is doing grade 8 and can read well in english’. [mandla, male] thandi’s caption of her drawing (figure 2b) clearly shows the social nature of reading with her friend as they laugh, joke and ask each other about their reading. drawings about learners’ reading with friends or siblings may suggest that there is lack of parental involvement when it comes to reading activities happening at home. siblings and friends are the ones who seem to read for these learners more than their parents. in this particular context, it seems the parents are illiterate or absent in the learners’ lives. reading as an isolated activity generally, reading has been seen as a necessity for one to succeed at school and to be able to get a job and not as an enjoyable activity (rimensberger 2014). hence, traditionally, it has been perceived as an isolated activity. it is expected that during reading, one sits quietly alone and gets lost in the world of reading. however, the social interaction during and after reading instils the joy of reading. in most fp classrooms, the idea of reading alone might be daunting for some learners, while for others it is the only time they get to read at their own pace and discover the joys of independent reading. however, this immediately formalises the activity and presents reading as an activity that occurs separate from one’s everyday routine – meaning that a special time and a place has to be set aside for reading; yet, reading can happen anywhere at any given time. while some learners presented reading as a social activity (figure 2), others did not portray family members, friends or siblings as part of their reading activity. through their drawings, learners presented reading as an activity that they did on their own. as shown in figure 3, learners drew pictures of themselves seated and reading alone. they mentioned that they preferred to sit in a quiet place and read, so as to concentrate and understand what they are reading. during focus group discussions, the following was stated (figure 3a): ‘i like to sit alone and read quietly without any disturbance’ [thandi, female] figure 3: reading as an isolated activity: (a) i feel very happy reading this book and (b) reading. another (figure 3b), said: ‘you see ma’am, some children read out aloud, at the end you focus on them and not your reading. i prefer reading alone in a quiet place’. [siya, male] considering the background in the drawings and the facial expressions of the people in the drawings, one can infer that it is a quiet, formal environment, and learners are content with what they are doing. reading as a purposeful activity in the selected sample of learners, two learners highlighted the purpose of engaging in reading. having an awareness about the positive gains of reading and the purpose of reading (i.e. excitement, contentment and improving one’s reading skills) might be a motivation for learners to read. learners have to feel the need for reading before they engage in the activity and enjoy what they are doing. in figure 4a, noma mentioned that she feels content when she is reading a book in isixhosa, while jabu’s caption in figure 4b states that he feels good when he is reading in english. figure 4: imagined identies as readers: (a) i feel content when i read an isixhosa book and (b) i feel so good and i like to read english. in the follow-up discussion, the two learners mentioned how they loved reading in their preferred languages, including isixhosa, the mother tongue of the learners in the studied group. they also highlighted the need to learn to read proficiently in english as they were aware of the status of the language and the importance of being bilingual. the explanations of these drawings provide insight into how these learners see themselves as readers in the current context as emergent bilinguals. reading as an activity that one can love or hate drawings of four learners provided an insight into the learners’ reading experiences and how the love or hate relationship they have towards reading is manifested. in figure 5, the concept of reading is understood and represented as an activity that one can love or hate, depending on the situation and circumstances. for example, in the drawing in figure 5a, luvo explained that he loved reading but did not like reading a particular genre (folktales). he added that each time he was asked to read such stories, he felt like crying and other learners laughed at him; hence, the tears running down his face. figure 5: love–hate relationship towards reading: (a) i do not want to read folktales and (b) reading is enjoyable, but i am angry because my father shouts at me. in figure 5b, sisa mentioned that she liked reading but the negative attitude towards reading was noted as being influenced by what happens during reading. in the drawing and interpretation, the learner mentioned that her father shouts at her when she is reading: ‘i love reading, but my father shouts at me when i make mistakes’. from my experience and observation, typically this is what untrained and impatient parents do in our society. reading time for many children is not a pleasurable activity as there is no room for mistakes. such actions instil fear and affect learners’ confidence and motivation in reading. for learners to read and be lifelong readers, reading has to be presented as an activity that is enjoyable, fun (social activity) and not accompanied with pain and frustration (whittingham & huffman 2009). it became evident that the two learners needed some form of intervention; as a result, a decision was made that during the implementation phase, rules will be made so that learners will not laugh at each other. although it was beyond the scope of this research, the research assistant, familiar with the community, shared sisa’s feelings with her parents and made them aware of the importance of presenting reading as a pleasurable activity to their little girl. through different individual experiences with reading, learners have conceptualised and presented reading in varying ways as discussed, thus responding to the following research question: what is the nature of learners’ reading attitudes in grade 3? data collected from the learners’ drawings therefore confirm kendrick and mckay’s (2009) claim that ‘drawings give insight into spontaneous concept development, that is, into the meaning of concepts that have developed from the children’s own experiences’ (p. 55). when i initially shared these findings with the two grade 3 teachers and later with the school principal, they were all overwhelmingly surprised at the ability of their learners to express such complex understandings of reading. they were also not aware of some of their learners’ history and experiences about reading, which led to the individual learner either approaching or avoiding the reading activity. implications of the findings the findings from the data allowed me to reflect on areas that needed attention so as to be able to develop an appropriate reading programme that would cater for all the learners by addressing the tensions and contradictions that surfaced as hindering effective reading. some important insights that emerged during this phase are listed below: implement a bilingual programme, as this was expressed by the learners. in explaining their drawings, they had varying language preferences (i like to read in isixhosa or i like to read in english). scaffold reading in both english and isixhosa, as these were emergent bilingual learners. also, some learners expressed the need to learn to read in both languages during our focus group discussions. expose learners, as part of scaffolding reading, to different exciting reading activities before, during and after reading so as to nurture positive reading attitudes. give learners opportunities to choose what they want to read, when to read and how to read so as to allow them to enjoy reading and take charge of their development. provide a variety of reading material across different languages (isixhosa and english) so as to cater to every learner’s needs. it was shown that not all learners like reading folktales, a popular genre in the fp (see figure 5a). establish a reading environment guided by a sociocultural perspective which presented reading as a fun activity not a chore, and allowed for collaborative learning and interaction. in this setting, there was room for mistakes and learners were not scolded or laughed at but instead were motivated to read. teach various reading strategies. the extensive reading programme afforded learners an opportunity to be read to, to read on their own and to read with or for each other. as shown in the drawings, some learners preferred reading with their peers, some preferred to read individually while others saw their teachers as role models when they read aloud. these insights informed the implementation of the actual erp which was carried out in phase 2 of the research. conclusion this study shows the importance of first conducting a situational analysis in a literacy intervention. the first phase of situational analysis reported on in this article provides crucial information about learners’ attitudes, reading experiences and their perspectives about reading so as to be able to implement a reading programme that will cater to the needs of all the learners. the study also challenges other researchers to see the importance of using drawings to obtain a better understanding of learners’ literacy experience. in addition, the use of drawings with young learners afforded learners an opportunity to express themselves; even the weakest learners in the classroom expressed themselves without any verbal language limitations. therefore, the inclusion of a drawing activity in this study opened possibilities for inclusion and active participation of the majority of the participants. vygotsky (1978) states that drawings are the earliest representations of experience of children and that they stimulate their narrative impulse to create stories. finally, participants of this study produced unique drawings of their reading into which their personal and social histories were woven. as a researcher, the drawings gave me a glimpse into the experiences that learners have had with reading both at home and at school which might have positively or negatively influenced their attitudes towards reading. therefore, this collection of drawings indicate that through learners’ drawing of their reading experience, researchers and teachers can come up with additional ways of investigating and understanding learners’ constructions of reading. had this study relied solely on learners’ responses to a questionnaire or interviews about their reading, it could have resulted in limited insights about learners’ attitudes towards reading and their reading perspectives and experiences. acknowledgements the author would like to thank the grade 3 learners from the two research sites for their participation in this study and their permission to use data collected throughout the research process. competing interests the author declares that there are no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced the writing of this article. references ajzen, i., 2005, attitudes, personality, and behaviour, 2nd edn., 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whittingham, j.l. & huffman, s., 2009, the effects of book clubs on the reading attitudes of middle school students, reading improvement 46(3), 130–136. yamashita, j., 2013, ‘effects of extensive reading on reading attitudes in a foreign language’, reading in a foreign language 25(2), 248–263. abstract introduction the advanced certificate in teaching programme in south africa key findings about lisa’s english as first additional language pedagogic practices discussion final thought acknowledgements references footnote about the author(s) faith k. kimathi school of education, university of kwazulu-natal, pietermaritzburg campus, scottsville, south africa carol bertram school of education, university of kwazulu-natal, pietermaritzburg campus, scottsville, south africa citation kimathi, f.k. & bertram, c., 2020, ‘oral language teaching in english as first additional language at the foundation phase: a case study of changing practice’, reading & writing 11(1), a236. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v11i1.236 original research oral language teaching in english as first additional language at the foundation phase: a case study of changing practice faith k. kimathi, carol bertram received: 27 mar. 2019; accepted: 09 june 2020; published: 27 aug. 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: despite south africa’s huge investment in professional development, there is not a lot of research that shows that teachers change their teaching practices by attending formal interventions. this article focuses on english as first additional language (efal) and explores how one grade 2 teacher changed her practice of oral language teaching while enrolled for an advanced certificate in teaching (act) programme. the programme was offered to foundation phase teachers to improve their teaching knowledge and ultimately change their teaching practices. objectives: the article explores one teacher’s oral language teaching and use of teacher resources in a township school. the purpose is to understand how her instructional practices changed or did not change during the 18 months while she was enrolled with the act programme. method: data were collected over 18 months by observing six video-recorded literacy lessons, corroborated with interviews and field notes. these were analysed using principles of teaching efal espoused in the programme’s intended curriculum. results: the two exemplars offered demonstrate a gradual shift in teaching of oral language and use of resources by the end of the programme. the teacher code-switched appropriately most of the time and adequately used various strategies. she created opportunities to develop learners’ oral vocabulary; however, explicit sentence building was absent. findings further revealed that the teacher’s engagement with many collaborative professional development activities, school support, together with her goal-achieving character, contributed to instructional changes. conclusion: this study highlights that there are a number of other factors, such as the school context, the teacher’s motivation and other informal learning opportunities that support teacher learning from a formal professional development intervention. it also advocates for more robust studies on how a teacher’s practices change as a result of formal professional development opportunities. keywords: south africa; english as first additional language; professional development programme; foundation phase; oral language; teaching change. introduction in south africa, professional development (pd) interventions are perceived as mechanisms through which teachers can acquire higher teaching credentials, improve their content knowledge and competencies of the subject they teach and ultimately improve learners’ performance (department of basic education & department of higher education and training 2011). studies on pd interventions in the last two decades indicate that despite the efforts to upgrade teachers’ qualifications and provide developmental courses in various subjects, teachers seldom change their teaching practices (adler & reed 2000; bertram 2011; fleisch 2016; meyer & abel 2015). in the context of teaching language and literacy at the foundation phase1 (fp), the pd interventions have been criticised for generic designs and failure to prioritise contextual or teachers’ needs (murris 2014). most programmes seem to apply western models which have not been tested empirically in the global south contexts (stoffelsma 2019). studies on pd have revealed that fp teachers’ attendance at language and literacy or mathematics interventions seems to have superficial or no impact on their teaching practices among rural and township schools (blease & condy 2014; brodie, lelliott & davis 2002). it is against this backdrop that this article offers insights about one fp teacher’s teaching of oral language during a formal pd intervention to understand how the programme impacted on her teaching practice in a township school. according to curriculum assessment policy statements (caps), teaching of language and literacy in home language (hl) and english as first additional language (efal) at the fp is associated with acquisition of listening, speaking, reading and writing skills (department of basic education [dbe] 2011). the school curriculum document clearly highlights the benefits of the explicit teaching of language skills to the early graders. scholars argue that children who do not acquire these skills by the end of grade 3 are more likely to struggle in their future academic endeavours (fleisch 2008; murris & thompson 2016; national education evaluation and development unit [needu] 2013). according to murris (2014), caps is grounded on social constructivism principles but most fp teachers lack the knowledge base /or are not able to make sound pedagogical decisions to enact these principles. there is extensive research about the teaching and acquisition of efal reading, phonics, vocabulary and writing skills at the fp (cilliers & bloch 2018; pretorius 2014; sibanda & baxen 2018; spaull & hoadley 2017). however, we have limited literature on teaching oral language or the impact of pd interventions on oral language instructional practices. this case study addresses this gap. the south african dbe has successfully implemented a range of structured pedagogical interventions such as the gauteng primary literacy and mathematics strategy (gplms) in gauteng, and primary school reading improvement programme (psrip) and early grade reading study (egrs) in north west and mpumalanga. the aim of these programmes is to fulfil the dbe’s vision and mission to improve the teachers’ content knowledge, increase the number of early graders who can fluently read and write in hl and efal, and improve the instructional practices and learners’ outcomes (de clercq & shalem 2015; kotze, fleish & taylor 2018). related classroom studies in north west and gauteng reveal that most teachers depended on traditional approaches such as rote learning or choral approaches and keep within familiar discourses during classroom interactions before these interventions (needu 2014; prinsloo et al. 2015). teachers employ ‘authoritarian roles doing most of the talking’ a few individual readers or active engagement with vocabulary or writing activities (hoadley 2012:189). similar projects in western cape, eastern cape and kwazulu-natal (kzn) resonate with these findings (spaull & hoadley 2017). the common consensus in these studies is that pd interventions should enable teachers to improve their teaching of language and literacy at the fp. internationally administered literacy tests have constantly shown poor results in the last two decades among south african learners (spaull & hoadley 2017). the 2016 progress international reading literacy study (pirls) indicates that 78% of south african children barely comprehend what they are reading (howie et al. 2017). the findings echo a pre-pirls study which revealed that 58% of grade 4 learners could not read fluently or decode texts in either their hl or second language (spaull & hoadley 2017). these results also concur with south africa’s own annual national assessment (ana) results (dbe 2016) despite the fact that the government has been spending larger amounts of its budget on education than any other african country in the last 20 years. the dbe consistently attributes learners’ poor performance in international and local assessments to a number of factors, such as poor language and literacy knowledge among fp teachers, poor teaching methods, the poor social economic status (ses) in rural or township communities and other multifaceted national challenges (dbe 2016). in particular, empirical evidence reveals that inadequately conceptualised language knowledge among fp teachers is the main cause of learners’ poor outcomes in language and literacy (dbe 2016; fleisch 2008; pretorius 2014). in addition, what teachers learn and the impact of pd programmes on language and literacy instructional practices is still a concern in the field of research (dbe 2016; kotze et al. 2019). historical arguments partially blame the poor learners’ performance in language to the apartheid schooling system which offered different curricula for different races. these historical systems shaped the post-apartheid bimodal performances in which 30% of the privileged learners continue to achieve within the expected grade while 70% of learners perform poorly in rural areas. the first post-apartheid school curriculum (an outcomes-based, learner-centred approach) did not consider these contextual differences or provide a clear sequence of how to teach english language and literacy. so, many of the poorly trained fp teachers continue to struggle not only with their own english proficiency but also with implementation of the school curriculum (murris 2014; slonimsky & brodie 2006; spaull & hoadley 2017). effective pd for teachers is perceived as one way of improving literacy teaching in the eastern cape, kzn, limpopo and north west – areas subjected to high levels of poverty and unemployment over decades (fleisch 2008; needu 2013). research show that children’s literacy development probably can reduce poverty by enhancing positive and sustainable development, leading to better living standards (nag, snowling & asfaha 2016; rule & land 2017). against this background this article focuses on one teacher’s oral language teaching in a township school in kzn. the article explores the teacher’s teaching approaches, interactions and use of resources to develop her grade 2 learners’ oral language proficiency. the main intention was to gather insights into how instructional practices shifted (or not) during the period she was enrolled with the advanced certificate in teaching (act) programme. the research question is: how did the teacher’s oral language teaching and use of resources change during the 18 months she was enrolled with act programme? the overarching concepts informing this qualitative study are effective pd interventions, teacher professional growth and the communicative approach of efal teaching. the principles of teaching efal stipulated in the language act programme’s intended curriculum were used to analyse data collected in 2014–2015 for a phd study (kimathi 2017). as the study is a case study, we cannot claim any form of generalisation of our findings. however, the insights contribute to the scholarship of teaching efal in a similar context or among teachers with limited access to in-service programmes. the article also offers valuable insights to the designers of language and literacy pd activities in south africa and other similar contexts. this case was purposively selected and pseudonyms were used to ensure confidentially of the school and the participant. consent letters were sent to the participant in line with university and dbe ethical considerations. conceptual understanding of professional development activities for teachers according to day (1999) and desimone (2009), pd interventions refer to learning experiences and activities intended to improve teachers’ knowledge and classroom practices. factors such as teachers’ biographies and personalities, social histories, peer groups, teaching preferences, school context, quality of external activities, as well as broader policies, determine the outcomes of pd activities (fraser et al. 2007). dependent on the context, teachers’ gains from pd activities are diverse, and range from emotional and social support to practical and cognitive knowledge which are essential to improve teaching practice (day 2004). professional development programmes are often offered as a particular formal initiative, underpinned by collaborative approaches for teachers to acquire new ideas, review and extend ‘their commitment as change agents to the moral purposes of teaching’ (day 1999:4). this manifests in the idea that teachers learn as a result of attending specific events such as in-service programmes within a given study time (opfer & pedder 2011). often short events like workshops are perceived as collaborative interventions intended to improve teachers’ knowledge and classroom practices (lundgren, scheckle & zinn 2015). however, research shows that these activities are ‘quick fixes’ to teacher knowledge deficiencies with no regard to the complexities of how teachers learn to teach or the contextual challenges (brodie et al. 2002). we agree with scholars who argue that formal pd programmes may or may not lead to a teacher learning or instructional changes (brodie et al. 2002; lundgren et al. 2015), and acknowledge that teacher learning can happen as a result of a range of activities: informal learning, collaborative communities and structured programmes. clarke and hollingsworth (2002) offer a teacher growth model that illustrates how teachers can shape ‘their own professional growth and positive changes through reflective participation in professional programmes and in practice’ (p. 948). the authors affirm that interaction of different variables within teachers’ spheres determines the nature of individual professional growth and teaching changes. these conceptualisations concur with complexity theory’s view of teacher learning as a dynamic process influenced by three systems (individual teacher, school context and external stimulus). these systems consist of subsystems which ‘combine differently from one person to another at different times’ (opfer & pedder 2011:374). this means that attending a workshops or pd event is not enough to change teaching practices. we ground our study within these complex conceptual understandings of pd and change in teachers. the stand of the curriculum on english as first additional language teaching the caps for efal at the fp encompasses four main learning areas (listening, speaking, reading and writing) with the integration of thinking, reasoning and language structure in the four areas (dbe 2011). the aim of caps is to strengthen the content knowledge of fp teachers and indicate how the teacher can put the theoretical knowledge into teaching practice. specific content and preferred pedagogic practices are stipulated regarding what to teach over a year, divided into coverage per week or per term within the allocated timeframes (dbe 2011:18–23). the fp curriculum takes an additive bilingualism approach where efal proficiencies are meant to be built on the prior hl proficiencies. according to this approach, hl refers to the ‘mother tongue language’ and assumes that learners come to school able to understand and speak their hl. the additional languages curricula assumes that learners do not necessarily have knowledge of the language. thus, learning of efal is done simultaneously with the hl, with the intention to increase the learners’ ability to understand, speak and write in their hl, then transferring the literacy abilities and building the new language (dbe 2011; needu 2013). studies on teaching and learning of efal indicate that learners who fail to master the literacy competencies in their hl struggle to learn efal (sibanda & baxen 2018). in contrast, children growing up in high ses homes with adequate resources, develop a significant vocabulary, decoding skills and general knowledge at an early age in their hl (crawford-brooke 2013). the caps recommends teaching oral language (listening and speaking) as a foundation of developing early graders’ emergent literacy in their additional language (dbe, 211:12). oral language is the foundation of learning a language usually acquired in a child’s hl and ‘consists of phonology, grammar (syntactic), morphology, vocabulary, semantics, discourse and pragmatics’ (crawford-brooke 2013:1). the school curriculum further states that the teaching, learning and assessment of efal are grounded in a communicative approach. according to this approach, language acquisition is a slow holistic process mostly acquired informally. in teaching, language is assumed to be a tool to understand a specific message. this means that formal teaching of grammar structures is not enough for learners to develop, practise and perfect efal skills. children need to hear the language, make sense of what they hear from the teacher and interact with the environment, prior to speaking the additional language to absorb the grammar and vocabulary (dbe 2011:10). the caps does not offer a single approach to teaching additional languages. it supports the integration of a communicative approach with teaching of language structure (meaning and form) to improve the hl or efal on the learners’ level of language development which concurs with language studies (crawford-brooke 2013; sibanda & baxen 2018). in grade 1, teachers should expose children to numerous environmental prints in english or display familiar visuals like traffic and shopping signs and adverts to develop children’s spoken language. the teachers should label some objects in both hl and efal to support incidental learning. building ‘word walls’ and labels in the classroom continuously exposes children to simply sighting words thus building their vocabulary and grammar (dbe 2011:16). to improve learners’ confidence in oral and written vocabulary, fp teachers are encouraged to facilitate more independent reading using suitable graded readers. this concurs with scholars who argue that a child with a good knowledge of vocabulary and grammar develops the code-related skills and advanced language skills needed for comprehensive reading. however, there is no consensus on whether reading development is influenced by vocabulary acquisition only or all components of oral language (foorman et al. 2015; schaffler, nel & booysen 2019). what about becoming a competent user of efal? according to caps, learners must practise speaking what they learn and speak simple one-word or two-word utterances. learners’ spoken language should be standard (memorised songs, action rhymes) and phrases like ‘good morning, how are you?’, ‘i’m fine, how are you?’ (dbe 2011:10). gradually, as children begin to understand efal, they will informally start peer conversations. the teacher ought to create opportunities for all learners to develop their spoken language. for instance, using a scaffolding technique (modelling and support) where learners can act out stories told by the teacher, generate simple peer conversations and then retell the stories. as they progress, the teacher gives them more oral language tasks. for example, the teacher will introduce oral recount (e.g. telling people about what we have done), for example ‘yesterday, we went to town, then we went to the library’ (dbe 2011:11). the recounting approach provides a bridge between spoken and written language at the fp. the efal school curriculum supports the notion that oral language acquisition among children requires effective interaction with play, songs, poems, stories, clear explanation and feedback from the teachers, small group instructions, audio-media reading, observing familiar visuals, representing thoughts graphically, critical literacies, and other creative opportunities within enjoyable and relaxed environment (crawford-brooke 2013; schaffler et al. 2019; sibanda & baxen 2018). if teachers develop this conceptual knowledge and effective strategies, learners can acquire and comprehend 1000–2000 contextual words by the end of grade 2 (dbe 2011:22) and become confident english speakers. according to this outline, the content to support fp teachers in how to teach oral language and support learners’ acquisition of efal skills confidently, is accessible in the school curriculum but implementation of this policy is still problematic. the advanced certificate in teaching programme in south africa the act programme was offered to practising teachers who have at least a national professional diploma in education (npde) or an equivalent after-school qualification of three years at the south africa national qualification framework (nqf) level 5. the aim of the programme was to enhance the content knowledge and competencies of the fp teachers in mathematics, hl and efal. the assumption is that teachers will develop an understanding of the fp curriculum and new practical knowledge to benefit their teaching practices (hill 2010). the act programme at university of kwazulu-natal (ukzn) was specifically launched in 2013 for fp practising teachers. the act programme offered by ukzn consisted of eight modules with 16 credits each, as presented in figure 1. figure 1: the structure of the advanced certificate in teaching intended curriculum. each of these modules consisted of two booklets – a learning guide (comprising learning content) and a student guide (act structure and assessment requirements). these modules were delivered within a minimum duration of two years or maximum of three years through a part-time mode of delivery to enhance the accessibility and individual learning pace among the participants. apart from face-to-face interactions over the weekends and holidays, interactive contextual support through classroom-based tasks was a convenient learning method. there has not been a great deal of systematic research to track teachers’ gains from similar programmes (mukeredzi, bertram & christiansen 2018). understanding teachers’ gains from formal programmes that impact their teaching is crucial for enhancement of other pd interventions. this article also aims to contribute to this field. table 1 offers the principles of teaching efal highlighted in the act programme intended curriculum. the authors used the principles to measure the teacher’s pedagogical shifts table 1: advanced certificate in teaching programme (english as first additional language) intended curriculum in relation to teaching english as first additional language at the foundation phase. research design this study takes a qualitative approach which is typical of descriptive case studies (yin 2009) to understand one teacher’s instructional practices of developing oral language with grade 2 learners. the study also reflects on the teacher’s understanding and experiences on how the act programme influenced her teaching practice. we are aware that case studies are criticised in relation to generalisability. however, the strengths of a case consist in its ability to generate a rich description using multiple data within a specific setting (simons 2009; yin 2009). therefore, single cases like our study can be realised in similar contexts or insights, and in accumulation may form the basis from which longitudinal studies can draw. the study context the context of the study is kzn province with a large rural population. in particular, 16.4% of kzn’s population has little or no education (stats sa 2018) to contribute meaningfully towards the literacy development of their own children or support the teaching process (rule & land 2017). the province has consistently yielded some of the lowest ana literacy scores in the country (dbe 2016). the school is located in the middle of a township (formerly a black residential area) over the undulating green slopes of ethekwini municipality, 65 km from pietermaritzburg. it is no-fee public school with permanent buildings and basic classroom resources such as chalkboards, teaching aids and learners’ desks and seats. most of the learners come from a poor socio-economic background and rely on the national school feeding programme which boosts school attendance. isizulu is the medium of instruction in the fp and the hl of approximately 99% of the fp learners. the participant lisa (pseudonym) is a black african female in her mid-40s, who completed high school in 1990. lisa has been teaching in the township school for 16 years, 10 years as a grade 3 teacher before joining grade 2. on a part-time basis she acquired her first professional qualification, the npde and subsequently completed a short course on life orientation teaching skills in 2010. during the data collection period in 2014–2015, lisa’s classes consisted of 42 and 44 learners. lisa claimed to have attended more than five dbe workshops in 2011–2013 on how to teach efal. from our observations and interactions, lisa portrayed the image of a self-motivated and creative goal-achiever. this was evidenced by the self-designed posters, colourful and well-arranged learning space, and a variety of posters, most of them labelled in both hl and efal. the fact that she designed and provided funds to sew book bags for all her learners reflects an innovative and self-motivated personality. data collection the data examined was part of a doctoral study which explored the professional learning of three purposively selected grade 2 teachers. for this article, author 1 revisited the phd data for an in-depth understanding of one teacher’s experiences and implementation. the aim was to understand how the act programme may have contributed to any pedagogic shifts. therefore, only one teacher’s (lisa) data was re-examined to explore her instructional practices of teaching oral language during efal lessons. data were collected over 18 months consisting of six classroom videos, interviews and field notes (in february 2014, august 2014 and october 2015). data analysis this article uses the principles of teaching efal at the fp as the analytic tool to comprehend the pedagogical shifts and use of resources. the principles are espoused in the act programme’s intended curriculum as summarised in table 1. two kinds of analysis were carried out to understand the oral language teaching and how the act programme may have contributed to any changes in instructional practices video recorded or observed in class. firstly, lisa’s story was generated after careful reading of video transcripts and corroborated by what lisa said during the interviews and observation field notes. lisa verified the story and alterations were made. the narrative illuminated lisa’s knowledge and skills that she claimed to have learnt from the act programme about oral language teaching and how the programme impacted her teaching. secondly, to analyse lisa’s oral language teaching and use of resources, we created specific episodes of the lessons from the video transcripts which were deductively scored against a set of indicators. the 12 key indicators (presented in table 1) were generated from the five principles of teaching efal according to the act programme. we used the indicators to make sense of the teacher’s talks, interaction with the learners, peer conversations and use of resources during the lesson (see kimathi 2017 for details). key findings about lisa’s english as first additional language pedagogic practices this section presents findings to illustrate teacher lisa’s oral language teaching and use of resources during the period of her enrolment with the act programme at ukzn in 2014–2015. firstly, we offer a short summary of a phonics lesson which was observed, and audio recorded on 12 february 2014 (at the beginning of the programme). this was because it was not possible to capture an oral language lesson in term 1 due to caps content prescription and classroom logistics. secondly, two excerpts of lisa’s oral language teaching which were video recorded in september 2014 and october 2015 are offered. lesson 1 – 14 february 2014 lisa used the chalkboard to write simple english words. she predominantly read the sounds and simple english words written on the chalkboard and the learners repeated whatever she said. after a period of 20 min of this strategy, lisa instructed the learners in hl only to copy the words in their exercise books. the teacher monitored the learners as they sluggishly did the activity. the execution of the lesson was inconsistent with a slow pace. some learners did not have pencils or exercise books and the teacher had to offer the few pencils in the cupboard to some learners. informal conversation with lisa revealed the dbe had not delivered the workbooks and other learning resources. she also highlighted that poor parents did not buy stationery for their children. in addition, the phonic interactive resources were few in the school. these resources were donated by the soul action (educational non-governmental organisations [ngo] initiative) who had an on-site coaching programme for the fp teachers from 2013. there were only three posters (from the previous year) in the classroom and two were labelled in hl. a cupboard with some pencils, chalk and books stood next to the teacher’s table. the learners were seated in rows within the crowded classroom. the lesson displayed implicit instruction and limited tasks (isolated single word oral reading). learners’ choral responses and repeating whatever the teacher said depicted ineffective strategies of teaching and limited opportunities for active interaction. the choral responses portrayed deficient teaching of phonics and little understanding by the learners. the words and phonics written on the board were of low cognitive demand. these kinds of classroom interactions were consistently overheard by the researcher across the other fp classroom block. we now offer also two excerpts (box 1 and box 2) of lisa’s oral language teaching which were video recorded in september 2014 and october 2015. since we did not get an opportunity to video record an oral language lesson earlier in the year, lesson 2 was observed and recorded when the act the programme was in progress in september 2014. lisa’s class consisted of 42 learners in this year. lesson 3 was observed and recorded when the act programme was ending in october 2015. lisa’s class had 44 learners in this particular year. this means these two vignettes describe different grade 2 learners. box 1: lesson 2. box 2: lesson 3. according to the principles of teaching efal in this episode, lisa in lesson 2 sustained a good balance between hl and efal and used them appropriately. she explicitly introduced the lesson in efal and repeats in isizulu for clarity. she kept reminding the learners to speak in english throughout the lesson. lisa had prepared the resources to use in contrast to the phonic lesson which we observed in february 2014, when there were no resources apart from the chalkboard. meaningful repetition, familiar visuals and mutual communication were evidenced when explaining the sounds of the letters, word patterns, and rhymes. these were meaningful strategies to support word identification. she was able to integrate the teaching of vocabulary with phonics, explicit teaching of the words but within low cognitive demand. lisa provided clear feedback to the whole class in response to individual errors (focus on the ‘thumb’ not the ‘hand’). learners were actively searching for different sounds on the flip-cards and writing phonics on the mini boards. thus, the teacher provided reasonable opportunities for learners to speak in english, listen to teachers’ simple instructions and used familiar strategies to develop their oral vocabulary. these methods concur with the principles of bilingualism and strategies of building vocabulary among the young children. we argue that lisa presented a moderate integration of formal teaching and krashen’s natural theory to acquiring an additional language, which had been taught in the act programme. the third of lisa’s oral language lessons was recorded in october 2015 with 44 grade 2 learners. this was as the end of the two-year act programme. lesson 3 illustrates a gradual instructional shift with more teacher-learner interactions, an increase in teacher’s confidence, more integration of resources when teaching, and learners were offered more opportunities to participate. for example, lisa in a sequenced manner used repetition effectively most of the time, an oral recount approach and questioning technique to encourage learners to speak and interpret the various activities in the two episodes. interactive discussion covered what, who, why and when aspects within their level of understanding of efal. she was also able to introduce different words which were familiar to the learners in episode 2. she used repetition and questioning technique to guide learners to build short sentences and corrected learners’ errors or misconceptions in this episode. the learners listened and repeated the sentences or the words. learners gained some confidence evidenced by their participation in short oral conversations with the teacher. according to lisa some of the teaching techniques were modelled by the soul action programme during a coaching session for the fp teachers in the school. we argue that lesson 3 indicates that lisa had gained more conceptual knowledge about teaching efal and was able to enact this knowledge practically in the classroom. she was able to blend the formal teaching of vocabulary and enhanced purposeful listening and authentic speaking among the enthusiastic children. she monitored the learning tasks, promised to display their works the next morning in the classroom (lesson 3). the next day, the colourful worksheets were displayed. according to the act intended curriculum and caps, at grade 2, learners should be more exposed to effective interaction with play, songs, poems, stories, small group instructions, observing familiar visuals, representing thoughts graphically and other creative opportunities within an enjoyable and relaxed environment which lisa tried to create during this lesson. the interviews and field notes data revealed lisa had a better understanding of how to make use the print-rich environment and resources at the end of the act programme in october 2015. resources such as strategy games, sight words, puzzles, posters, mini boards, plus consumables had been provided and modelled by the soul action programme. learners were seated in small groups which was a change from the row seating arrangement observed in february 2014. ‘the reason why i changed the seating arrangement again [2015], so that the learners can see each other and share things’, lisa said. this also created good peer interaction and teamwork as learners mingled freely and shared the crayons in lesson 3. lisa also said that she learnt problem-solving techniques from act and soul action programmes. this motivated her to tailor 44 book bags to create space on the learners’ tables. the blue well-tailored bags with the extra books acted as ‘lumbar support cushions’ on each child’s little chair. discussion we contend that the three lessons described above are indicative of a shift in oral language teaching, a shift in using resources and creating a good learning environment. this was measured against lisa’s application of principles of teaching efal (espoused in act module 6) with two different classes of learners in 2014 and 2015. to recap, lisa’s oral vocabulary lesson 2 (september 2014) was observed seven months after she had enrol in the act programme. she predominantly used a question-and-response technique, implicit instructions, repetition of familiar words, but learners did not have confidence to communicate in english. the choral responses were in hl and portrayed deficiency in oral vocabulary and concentration on letter-sound relationships with little comprehension by the learners. these kinds of literacy teaching were consistently overheard by the researcher from the other fp classroom block. with reference to lesson 3, these grade 2 learners seemed to have gained more confidence and responded to the teacher’s prompts and constructed short sentences by september 2015. significant improvement in the quality of and increased frequency in lisa’s responses to learners’ errors and misconceptions was observed between lesson 2 and lesson 4. there also seemed to be a shift in lisa’s classroom environment which became more print-rich in 2015 compared to the data collected in 2014. the print-rich classroom conformed to the caps minimum requirements and supported the efal principles privileged in the act intended curriculum in terms of the storage of resources, recognition of a reading corner and a variety of readers. having a well-structured print-rich classroom environment is vital, especially in disadvantaged contexts. however, to improving learner’s oral vocabulary depends on consistency and how teachers meaningfully use the resources (hill 2010; stoffelsma 2019). lisa progressively integrated the picture and charts and increased interactive discussions in lesson 3 in 2015. while we argue that although lisa’s practice had changed, there is still room for improvement. for example, the learners in lesson 3 engaged in a creative colouring task rather than a task which would support oral competency, while the task was also at a low cognitive level. the lesson also did not encompass any opportunities for learners to write sentences. according to caps, the teacher needs to extend learners’ writing abilities in grade 2 and grade 3 (dbe 2011). lisa claimed that the objective of lesson 3 was to develop learners’ proficiency in oral english and that sentence writing was planned for the next lesson. this implies that lisa was very aware of the caps requirements although writing opportunities were limited in the lessons observed (kimathi & bertram 2019). we argue that the instructional shifts observed were gradual and influenced by a range of factors that cannot be attributed only to the act. firstly, lisa’s commitment to her own personal growth together with her peers even before enrolling in the act programme seemed rooted in her belief that teaching is her vocation. ‘teaching the young kids is my calling’, she noted. such moral obligation requires a self-driven and enthusiastic disposition which was confirmed during the august 2014 interview. lisa indicated she had implemented subject advisors’ new ideas about the caps document and dbe workbooks during the dbe workshops in 2013–2014. she also engaged with other initiatives that offered collaborative platforms to reflect on their teaching practices, discuss context challenges and possible solutions. lisa indicated that act programme offered her and her peers opportunities to compare their teaching practices and to obtain new knowledge. teachers were able to use new knowledge and understanding as a mirror to reflect on their experiences, linking them to personal imagination and needs. lisa engaged with other external professional development aids, such as dbe workshops whose mission was to support the interpretation and coverage of caps. the action soul coaching programme modelled teaching strategies and offered a range of resources to be used by the fp teachers. that means that lisa’s pedagogical shifts cannot be attributed to the act programme only. lisa’s school has a supportive school management team (smt), in which the deputy principal consistently interacted with the researchers during the data collection phases. lisa confirmed that the smt provided teaching resources, regular teacher assessment, encouraged collaboration and organised substitute teachers during the act programme face-to-face learning sessions. this kind of school support concurs with the needu report that ‘school smts should structure and lead systematic learning opportunities for teachers, through regular discussions on matters of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment’ (needu 2014:58). results of the analyses clearly indicate the interplay between the act programme, coaching from other external pd activities in the context, lisa’s commitment and effort, appropriate teaching resources, compliance with caps and school support, together, impacted on lisa’s instructional practices and professional learning. these echo international findings that a teacher’s ability to effectively implement new knowledge is strongly dependent on their beliefs, cognitive level, resilience, motivation, professional identity, values, and commitment to their professional learning and service, as well as on the school context in which they teach and the nature of the professional development intervention (day & gu 2007; korthagen 2017; opfer & pedder 2011). however, to fully understand the relationship between these factors requires further research. final thought although our findings were drawn from one case, the findings illuminate how teaching practice may change within the constraints of a township school in south africa. thus, understanding such cases, offers insights to pd providers and school communities, purposed to improve the teaching of various components of teaching efal at the fp. the act programme provided lisa with knowledge and principles about teaching efal, and the data shows that changing teaching practices is a slow process influenced by an interplay of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. the key factors in this case include teacher commitment to learn new concepts and execute them successfully, school support and coaching of teachers in their contexts, and subject-oriented pd activities for theoretical and procedural knowledge. outside of the pd programme, this case study shows that change in teaching practice is influenced by the context, teachers’ beliefs and attitudes. overall, the implication of our findings relates to piper et al.’s (2018) suggestions that collaboration between effective pd activities, appropriate resources, technology and structured coaching are a suitable model to achieve sustainable language and literacy teaching in the sub-saharan context. acknowledgements the authors would like to extend their sincere appreciations to the school, the grade 2 teacher and the learners who participated and allowed us to use the data collected for this study. competing interests both authors participated in the preparation of the manuscript and have no competing interests to declare. authors’ contributions f.k.k. is a post-doctoral fellow and the primary researcher who is reporting on her phd study. she is also the primary writer of the article. c.b. is the supervisor, host of this fellowship and has contributed to the article by providing guidance regarding focus and structure. ethical consideration the participant signed consent forms and permission was granted by kzn department of basic education (ref 1/102/2014) and ukzn higher degrees and ethics committee awarded ethical clearance (ref. hss/0098/014d). funding information this research did not receive any specific grant from any funding. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data 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gauge, pp. 77–83, children’s institute, university of cape town, cape town. stats sa, 2018, poverty on the rise in south africa, viewed 12 october 2018, from http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=10334. stoffelsma, l., 2019, ‘english vocabulary exposure in south african township schools: pitfalls and opportunities’, reading & writing 10(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.209 yin, r.k., 2009, case study research, sage, los angeles, ca. footnote 1. first phase of formal learning (grade r to grade 3) in the south african schooling system. abstract introduction literature review theoretical framework intervention programme method findings and discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) suzanne beck faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, south africa janet l. condy faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, south africa citation beck, s. & condy, j.l., 2017, ‘instructional principles used to teach critical comprehension skills to a grade 4 learner’, reading & writing 8(1), a149. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v8i1.149 original research instructional principles used to teach critical comprehension skills to a grade 4 learner suzanne beck, janet l. condy received: 01 dec. 2016; accepted: 20 may 2017; published: 25 aug. 2017 copyright: © 2017. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract the current approach to reading comprehension instruction is not producing the desired outcomes. provincial, national and international tests indicate that more than half of south african learners cannot read, understand and answer basic comprehension questions. this research project was informed by vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory. a case study was conducted with a ten-year old grade 4 boy who experienced difficulty with understanding comprehension questions. a six-week intervention was designed to improve his comprehension abilities and to identify instructional principles that were appropriate for him. interviews and observations were conducted and inductively analysed. findings showed that the learner was well equipped to retrieve explicitly stated information but struggled with higher-order level questions such as drawing inferences or evaluating content. certain instructional practices were more favourable than others when teaching reading strategies. introduction south africa participates in many provincial and national assessments for both literacy and numeracy, for example: provincially, the western cape education department (wced) conducts annual systemic tests annual national assessments (ana) were conducted nationally between 2011 and 2014 and internationally, the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) is conducted every five years. in the national department of basic education’s report on the annual national assessment of 2014, minister motsheka stated that: … it is hoped that effective testing will afford learners the opportunity to demonstrate relevant skills and understanding and also assist the education system with diagnosing learner shortcomings… can provide valuable feedback to schools, teachers, learners and parents. (national department of basic education [ndobe] 2014:1) not only are these test results supposed to provide necessary diagnostic information to the schooling community but to lecturers and researchers in tertiary institutions where one of the authors of this research was a post-graduate student. this particular case study was conducted in her grade 4 class in an urban quintile 5 school. the department of basic education classifies schools in five quintiles, poorer and no-fee schools make up quintiles 1 and 2 while quintile 5 schools are considered the ‘richest’. this classification is based on the economic status of the learners who attend the school (gower 2008:15). the amount of subsidisation that the school receives from the education department is directly proportioned according to the school’s quintile ranking. we begin by analysing the three assessments in order to answer the research question ‘what instructional principles are used to teach a grade 4 learner more critical comprehension skills?’ in 2015, the wced published their results of the systemic tests in language for grade 3 and provided a breakdown of the skill percentage passes. as this study’s focus is on ‘comprehension’, only the results of the related two sub-skills are included, which include: reading and viewing, and thinking and reasoning. we have selected to highlight only the quintile 5 wced systemic results for grade 3. as can be seen by the results described in table 1, the wced’s systemic results for quintile 5, grade 3 language results indicate that just over half the students evaluated exhibited a basic understanding of the grade 3 literary skills. it is pleasing to note that the marks have improved slightly from 2013 to 2015. however, when looking more closely at the comprehension subskills’ results of reading and viewing, and thinking and reasoning, it appears that less than half of the grade 3 learners understood these types of questions. table 1: western cape education department’s 2015 systemic test percentage of learners who passed language in grade 3 and a further description of the results of the two comprehension sub-skills. the 2014 annual national assessments (ana) were conducted in grades 3, 6 and 9. the results are indicated in table 2 and again the researchers focussed only on the grade 3 literacy results of the learners who passed. motsheka (ndobe 2014:1) claims: many learners in both home language and first additional language struggle to respond to questions that: require the use of their own words. therefore, summarising a text using own words, becomes extremely difficult. learners are unable to interpret a sentence or give an opinion when required. table 2: the 2014 annual national assessments results for grade 3 of learners who passed. similarly, when one examines the international results from the pirls 2011 grade 5 comprehension tests, more than half of south african learners only reached the low international benchmark as can be seen in table 3 (howie et al. 2012). table 3: progress in international reading literacy study 2011 international benchmarks of reading achievement. the results of the pirls indicate that the majority of south african learners are unable to draw straightforward inferences and integrate ideas (combrinck, van staden & roux 2014). according to mokhtari and reichard (2002), such unskilled readers regard reading as a decoding process rather than a meaning-making process and often do not realise that they do not understand what they have read. what is consistently reinforced about south african learners from the results of these three tests, according to spaull et al. (2016), is: …. less than half of all learners learn to read for meaning in this critical period. these weak foundations provided in grades 1 – 3 constitute one of the major factors leading to poor learning outcomes in later grade. (p. 4) this research project was conducted in an english grade 4 classroom in a public, mainstream primary school situated in a low to middle socio-economic urban area. this quintile 5 school had a teacher-to-pupil ratio of 1:38 with annual school fees of r1 800. after working in this grade for two years, the researcher identified that many of her learners performed below average in reading comprehension. this restricted her learners during home language lessons and assessments as well as constrained participation in lessons and assessments of other subjects. most learners were able to answer questions about explicitly stated information but were unable to draw inferences, make connections to the text or evaluate content. many of her learners did not understand that the aim of a comprehension exercise was the acquisition of information. in formal assessment tasks, where learners were given a text and a set of questions, they appeared to read the text once, without stopping to process and question information. they would then answer questions without further reference to the text. these learners did not seem to be equipped with the skills and strategies to gain complete comprehension and process written information: as a result of this, many learners were underachieving. literature review this section discusses: definitions of literacy, comprehensions in terms of skills, instructional practices such as explicit teaching, guided reading, and whole and small group reading. two definitions of literacy are examined. the current foundation and intermediate phase curriculum in south africa is the curriculum assessment and policy statement (caps) document (ndobe 2011) which was implemented in 2011. this document defines literacy skills in the foundation phase (grades r-3) as: listening and speaking, reading and phonics, and writing and handwriting, while thinking and reasoning, and language structure and use are underlying skills. in the intermediate phase (grades 4 – 6), listening, speaking and language usage skills are further developed and refined but with an emphasis on reading and writing skills. the reading skills include developing proficiency in reading a wide range of genres to reflect on the purpose, audience and context of texts and to develop learners to become more critical and creative thinkers. the caps (ndobe 2011) document states that ‘comprehension’ should be taught but does not prescribe how it should be taught: as a result, many teachers opt for an implicit approach when teaching comprehension, meaning that they do not teach reading comprehension and its related strategies in isolation or in a clear, unambiguous manner but rather assume that learners will improve their comprehension ability by simply completing comprehension exercises without any instructional input. according to international authors mullis et al. (2009), the authors of the pirls 2011 assessments, they define comprehension as: … reading literacy is defined as the ability to understand and use those written language forms required by society and/or valued by the individual. young readers can construct meaning from a variety of texts. they read to learn, to participate in communities of readers in school and everyday life, and for enjoyment. (p. 11) in south africa, grade 4, the start of the intermediate phase, is frequently characterised by learners who face comprehension difficulties (mcnamara, ozuru & floyd 2011) as they try to ‘understand and use the written language forms required by society’ (mullis et al. 2009). learners move from ‘learning to read’ in the foundation phase to ‘reading to learn’ in the intermediate phase (sanacore & palumbo 2009) where the emphasis of comprehension shifts to ‘constructing meaning from a variety of texts … and for enjoyment’ (mullis et al. 2009). all learning becomes dependent on the learner’s ability to understand the written word, whereas the focus was previously on the ability to pronounce the written word. if learners lack the ability to comprehend or use comprehension strategies effectively by grade 3, they will fall behind their peers and find it difficult to catch up (flynt & cooter 2005; geary 2006; prado & plourde 2011). comprehension requires the reader to metacognitively combine the meanings of individual words into a coherent sentence, and then assimilate multiple sentences to create an overall understanding of the text (mcnamara et al. 2011). if children encounter difficulties with these two steps and do not have a set of strategies to assist them in understanding the text on their own, they will lose interest (prado & plourde 2011). reading strategies are associated with decoding texts, understanding words and constructing meaning from texts (combrinck et al. 2014). there are multiple reading strategies that can assist children with reading comprehension. duke and block (2012) emphasise predicting, questioning, visualising, drawing inferences and summarising as effective metacognitive strategies. taylor et al. (2000) include the importance of small group instruction and the use of higher-level questioning in their raft of strategies. creating mental pictures of what is being read and using background knowledge to make connections are two more strategies to help readers develop their comprehension skills (prado & plourde 2011). instructional practices when working with comprehension support explicit teaching as opposed to implicit teaching of reading (prado & plourde 2011). reading comprehension can be improved when these reading strategies are taught (klapwijk 2012; oyetunji 2013). according to cambourne (2004:33), ‘explicit teaching refers to the practice of deliberately demonstrating and bringing learners’ conscious awareness to those invisible processes, understandings, knowledge and skills they need to acquire if they are to become effective readers’. explicit teaching includes teachers providing reasons and purposes for the choice of texts to work with and reasons for activities conducted with texts. prado and plourde (2011) believe that the goal of explicit reading strategy instruction should be to improve the reader’s comprehension skills. equipping learners with reading strategies enables them to read independently, that is, when the teacher is not present. teachers who explicitly teach effective literacy behaviours and who role model critical reading and writing skills help learners who come from homes where this is not provided. implicit teaching refers to the practice of deliberately leaving it to the learners to discover and work out these skills for themselves. south african teachers seldom teach reading strategies explicitly either because they believe that it is too time-consuming or because they feel inadequately trained to do so (klapwijk 2012). teachers who attempt to transfer reading strategies implicitly are actually testing rather than teaching these strategies (oyetunji 2013). flynt and cooter (2005) as well as prado and plourde (2011) believe that children need to see reading strategies modelled and be led through guided practice before they are given time to practise independently. combrinck et al. (2014) state that practising reading strategies alone may not be enough for the reader. metacognitive instruction about how and why we use strategies and guided practices may be more beneficial to the child’s progress. moss and young (2010:95) state that ‘… guided reading enables students to try certain skills and strategies with your support’. the teacher normally selects the texts, offers guidance (cohen 2008) before the reading begins and monitors the students reading performance. moss and young (2010:95) suggest that when planning a guided lesson, the teacher must take into consideration the purpose of the strategy to be taught, choose a text appropriate to the level of the learner and plan how the text, reading and discussion will be introduced. during the lessons, the teacher needs to monitor and observe the learners reading and involve the learner in discussions on the text. to reflect on the lesson, the teacher needs to reflect on whether the purpose of the lesson was achieved, how the learner engaged with the text and the strategies used. duke and block (2012) concur with the above researchers and extend their ideas by emphasising that it is essential for teachers to create a motivating environment for children. teachers can show learners the benefits of reading by offering them choices in the topics and texts that they read. cambourne (2004:27) states that ‘… how we teach is just as important as what we teach’. taylor et al. (2000) highlight the importance of small group instruction when teaching reading and reading strategies. small group instruction is beneficial, specifically to learners who experience learning difficulties: it allows instruction to be tailored to the learner’s specific need(s). donald, lazarus and lolwana (2007:86) argue that through ‘… speaking, reading, writing and interacting within a particular discourse, people internalise that way of thinking.’ as teachers and children interact in small groups with comprehension exercises, the form of language that is used shapes the way they begin to think, and shapes their construction of knowledge. hence, this small research project, underpinned by vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory, aimed to investigate instructional principles that were necessary to teach a grade 4 boy more critical comprehension abilities. theoretical framework lucy (1988) cites vygotsky’s theory of socio-cultural development and states that individual human development is a social process in which culture is the main determining factor. social interactions, which take place in the child’s immediate and external environment, play a significant role in the child’s development and allow children the opportunity to acquire knowledge and develop processes. to benefit optimally from such interactions and problem-solving experiences, a learner should be actively involved in the process. donald et al. (2007:86) state that vygotsky ‘… has helped us understand that the development of cognition in children is related to the social construction of knowledge… passing on values, information and ways of understanding through social interactions.’ santrock (2011:50) explains that ‘the importance of social influences, especially instruction, on children’s cognitive development is reflected in vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development (zpd)’. the zpd differentiates the gap between what a child can do on their own without help and what a child can do with adult guidance or more capable peers. in assuming responsibility for early tuition, the adult instructor scaffolds the process through language: the adult uses speech to guide the child. the responsibility is transferred to the child when they can use their own speech to interact with others, for ‘self-talk’ purposes and eventually as internal speech to direct their behaviour (lucy 1988). the level of achievement of a child and the level of potential achievement are clearly distinguished by vygotsky (bruner 1997:131). it is the ‘teachers and more competent peers who direct student’s social and cultural experiences’ (bruner 1997 cited in wertsch 1990:90). ‘scaffolding’ is when learners begin to internalise the new learning of the lesson, and assistance is gradually withdrawn. adults, or more knowledgeable others, help learners to answer difficult questions or to solve problems by them asking leading questions (vygotsky 1978 cited in wittmer, petersen & puckett 2013). the purpose of scaffolding is to help students acquire knowledge and skills they would not have learned on their own. as the students demonstrate mastery of the content, the learning aids are faded and removed. over the course of a teaching session, a more skilled person – a teacher or advanced peer adjusts the amount of guidance to fit the child’s current performance. when the student is learning a new task, a skilled person may use direct instruction. as the student’s competence increases, less guidance is given. scaffolding is often used to ‘… help students attain the upper limits of their zpd’ (horowitz et al. 2005:105). intervention programme the focus of the six-week intervention programme was to equip the grade 4 learner with reading strategies which would help improve his critical thinking abilities when working with comprehension exercises. the pre-test comprehension passage, taken from the pre-pirls tests was called ‘two giant dinosaurs’ and covered three levels of questioning, namely focussing on and retrieving explicitly stated information (low international benchmark), making straightforward inferences (intermediate international benchmark), and examining and evaluating content, language and textual elements (advanced international benchmark). this passage did not contain any interpreting and integrating ideas (high international benchmark). the intervention programme took place during the regular intervention class, a weekly language support class for learners who are at-risk of not progressing to the next grade as a result of not meeting the required standard of achievement in english (50%). this group lesson was held for an hour a week and from the third week an individual half-hour session was included for the learner on which this case study is based. one aspect of effective reading strategy instruction is small group instructional practice (taylor et al. 2000) which allows for more individual attention and focus. throughout the intervention programme, each lesson started with the teacher explicitly stating the purpose of the lesson (moss & young 2010) and which strategy would be covered during the lesson. an essential component of reading strategy instruction is the concept of explicit teaching (cambourne 2004). the researcher was mindful of vygotsky’s sociocultural theory which suggests that individual human development is a social process: in order for learners to develop optimally, they must be involved actively in the process (lucy 1988). hence, the text was read jointly by the teacher and the learners. the teacher paused along the way to model various reading strategies with the main focus being on the strategy for the day (cohen 2008). once finished with the text, the teacher modelled the activity linked to the strategy using the ‘think-aloud’ process. according to mclaughlin (2006:223), the think-aloud process provides a ‘…model for active thinking during the reading process’ when teaching reading strategies such as: ‘previewing, visualizing, monitoring, self-questioning, making connections, knowing how words work, summarising and evaluating’. the guided practice began, either with the learners re-reading the same text or reading a different text. the learners were encouraged to ‘think-aloud’ and ask questions while reading and completing the respective activity. the teacher supported the reading and activity process by scaffolding within the zpd, recognising when to gradually withdraw and allow the learners to ‘…internalize the new learning’ and to demonstrate mastery of the content (vygotsky 1978 cited in wittmer et al. 2013). the objective for each reading strategy was to move from teacher-directed activities (direct explanation and modelling) to shared responsibility activities (guided practice and application) and eventually for the learner to achieve independence when working with the strategies (mclaughlin 2006). to support the emotional development of the learner, a behaviour modification chart was introduced. the aim of this chart was to encourage the learner to identify areas in which he thought he had done well during the lesson and for him to develop a more positive self-esteem. method an interpretative case study was conducted using a six-week intervention programme to assist a grade 4 boy’s understanding of reading strategies to improve his comprehension abilities and to identify which instructional practices the learner best responded to. henning, van rensburg and smit (2007:20) describes interpretivist research as looking for frames that shape meaning within social contexts. a mixed method research design was used in this study. at the beginning of the intervention programme, a pre-test was conducted to diagnostically identify the comprehension skills, strengths and challenges of the learner. after the six-week intervention programme the same test was given as a post-test. these results are discussed in the findings section. the 10-year-old grade 4, male learner was purposively selected as the sample on the basis that he experienced comprehension difficulties in making straightforward inferences and examining and evaluating content, language and textual elements. he was already attending the intervention classes offered by the teacher. the learner’s grade 3 teacher was interviewed because she had ‘comprehensive knowledge’ (cohen manion & morrison 2007) about this learner and had tried to address his specific comprehension difficulties the previous year. the researcher was able to gain a deeper understanding of how his poor comprehension skills affected his academic performance in the previous year, as well as the role that reading strategies played in his comprehension. multiple data collection methods were used in this mixed methods research project. cohen et al. (2007) state that there are multiple views of reality and it is imperative that a variety of perspectives, voices and views be taken into account when collecting data. a semi-structured interview was conducted with the learner’s grade 3 teacher during august 2015. this type of interview was selected in order to allow the interviewer and respondent ‘freedom and flexibility’ (cohen et al. 2007:355). these interviews gave the researcher an opportunity to enter into another person’s perspective and return to events and experiences in the past that she was unable to replicate (merriam 2009). the researcher asked the grade 3 teacher about her understanding of the caps document in relation to comprehension skills, how she went about teaching comprehension skills in her class and whether she utilised different reading strategies. the teacher was further asked questions about this specific learner’s reading and comprehension skills as well as her intervention programme she had used the previous year. open-ended questions allowed the researcher to probe for in-depth answers as well as observe ‘non-verbal reactions’ (kumar 2011:150). observations were used as a ‘purposeful, systematic and selective way of watching and listening’ to the learner (kumar 2011:140). an observation schedule was used in order to gain first-hand experience of what difficulties the learner experienced when faced with a comprehension exercise and what, if any, reading strategies he accessed. the focus of the observations was on the learner’s level of participation in the lesson and how he engaged with the teacher, group, texts and activities. his behaviour was observed to identify when and how the researcher needed to mediate. observations took place during school hours when the learner was given a task which involved comprehension, as well as during the intervention classes after school hours. the learner was observed individually and in a group setting. merriam (2009) describes data analysis as a meaning-making process of data. the goal of data analysis is to uncover emerging themes, patterns and understandings (patton 2002). data were inductively analysed by transcribing the interviews verbatim and evaluating the observations. the collected data, along with the results of the pre-test and post-test, were compared in order to identify common themes that were relevant to the study. once these themes were identified, they were coded: each theme was given an abbreviation. the researcher was then able to ‘quantify the main themes in order to provide their prevalence, and thus significance’ (kumar 2011:277). validity is seldom easy to establish (cohen et al. 2007). in order to minimise bias, the researcher took the findings to the participants for confirmation and approval. the interview participants were able to tell the researcher whether the findings ‘… reflected their opinions and feelings accurately’ (kumar 2011:185). by using multiple data collection methods (weekly observations and two interviews), the researcher was able to identify common themes and achieve triangulation (cohen et al. 2007). in order to improve the trustworthiness of this research project, it was conducted in an ‘ethical manner’ (merriam 2009). written permission from the western cape education department, cape peninsula university of technology, the school principal, the learner’s past grade 3 teacher and the learner’s parent was obtained. the nature of the study and the intentions of the researcher were explained to all participants (leedy & ormond 2005). to ensure the confidentiality of the participants, their responses were kept anonymous. findings and discussion the purpose of this case study research aimed to investigate instructional principles that were necessary to teach a grade 4 boy critical comprehension abilities. after inductively analysing the observations, two interview transcripts as well as the reading comprehension preand post-tests, the following two themes became evident: level of questioning reading strategy instructional practices. level of questioning table 4 provides data on the informational pre-and post-test comprehension results. the pre-test results indicate that the learner was able to deal with questions which required retrieval of explicitly stated information (e.g. what did diplodocus eat?) but was unable to draw straightforward inferences (e.g. why did t. rex need to have such large jaws?) and experienced difficulty when examining and evaluating content, language and textual elements (e.g. how do the pictures of the t. rex and diplodocus help you learn about these two dinosaurs?). it was interesting to note the drop in scores for questions requiring the retrieval of explicitly stated information from pre-test to post-test, while the other more critical comprehension skills improved. the drop in scores for the retrieval of explicitly stated information may be explained by the researcher not focussing on these questions as the learner achieved 100% in the pre-test. table 4: results of the pre-and post-test comprehension results. during the interview with the learner’s grade 3 teacher, she said the following about the types of activities she used when teaching reading comprehension: we always discuss the ‘who, what, where, when and how’ questions when we read a text… [teacher, female, grade 3, 56] during the intervention programme, the researcher observed that the learner was eager to participate and was verbally responsive to questions that required recall of explicitly stated information but that his enthusiasm dwindled and he ‘appeared uninterested’ when more critical questions were posed. it was evident that the learner had worked with explicitly stated information regularly and that he had had sufficient practice in this area. his ability in the other areas of reading comprehension such as, making straightforward inferences and examining and evaluating content, language and textual elements, was not well developed. exposure to, and practice of, higher order questions were not sufficient to enable him to answer these types of questions. he needed a set of strategies: modelling and guiding metacognition were used to do this (combrinck et al. 2014). reading strategy instructional practices throughout the data collection process, it became evident that specific instructional practices were better suited than others for the teaching of reading strategies for this grade 4 boy. one of the earliest observations the researcher made was the way in which the learner responded during small group instruction in comparison to the classroom environment. he ‘participated actively’ during small group instruction but he appeared uninterested and disengaged in the classroom environment. the researcher noted the following in her observations regarding the learner’s attitude to the lesson when it took place in a small group: he appeared to be engaged with and interested in the lesson. [the researcher, female, grade 4 teacher, 23] the learner appeared comfortable, ‘less anxious’ and was more willing to take risks when working in a small group. this relaxation and cooperation were evident when he volunteered to answer a question even when he was unsure whether he had the ‘correct’ answer or not. another observation made by the researcher regarding favourable instructional practices was the use of ‘explicit instruction’ (cambourne 2004:33). initially, the researcher observed that when working on a comprehension exercise, the learner ‘started to answer questions immediately’ without looking through the whole text. when answering questions, he ‘did not refer to the text and answered (incorrectly) all questions from memory’. this observation was echoed by the learner’s grade 3 teacher: …the learner struggled to read and understand at the same time … he was good with oral activities but avoided writing and answering comprehension questions. [teacher, female, grade 3, 56] this may look like the learner was impulsive. however, the researcher believed he possessed very few, if any, strategies such as making connections, predicting, questioning, monitoring, visualising and summarising to utilise when he encountered difficulty. in some instances, the learner ‘became distracted’ and lost interest in the comprehension exercise (prado & plourde 2011). when asked about the approach the grade 3 teacher used when teaching comprehension, she said the following: i don’t tell them the exact strategy…i won’t say “today we are learning about inferring information or similarities and differences.” …i don’t use that terminology. [teacher, female, grade 3, 56] she added: i will just guide and lead them through the activity… [teacher, female, grade 3, 56] the explicit teaching of reading strategies required the researcher to model the strategy, allow for guided practice, and then the learner had an opportunity for individual application where he practised these strategies independently (prado & plourde 2011). this method of teaching distinguished between what the learner could do by himself without help and what he could do with adult guidance. during the observations, the researcher noted the following about the learner’s response to the explicit teaching of the reading strategy ‘monitoring’: he appeared unfamiliar with the concept…he seemed to lose interest when i started to model the strategy. [researcher, female, grade 4, 23] in contrast to the observations made by the researcher, as well as the responses from the grade 3 teacher, the post-test results indicated that explicit, small group instruction was of value to the learner and improved his reading comprehension ability. in the interview, the teacher mentioned an important point that the caps document prescribes what skills the learner must acquire but does not prescribe how they must be taught. the document just lists the types of questions … the document doesn’t tell you how to go about teaching it. [teacher, female, grade 3, 56] research surrounding the teaching of reading strategies has shown that teachers seldom spend time on the development and instruction of reading comprehension (klapwijk 2012). the interview with the grade 3 teacher revealed that she integrated comprehension with language lessons: i always integrate it (comprehension) into a whole language lesson … comprehension is learnt on a daily basis not always in english, even in subjects like maths … [teacher, female, grade 3, 56] many teachers believe that teaching reading strategies is too time consuming and many feel inadequately trained to do so (klapwijk 2012). as the process of explicit teaching can be time consuming on the teacher’s part, many teachers elect the alternative method – implicit teaching. this choice results in comprehension being tested rather than taught (oyetunji 2013). these points are confirmed by spaull (2015) who state that in south africa our schools are: ‘… characterised by wasted learning time, incomplete coverage of the curriculum, weak subject and content knowledge among teachers, low cognition demands placed on learners and exceedingly poor educational outcomes’. recommendations while extracting explicitly stated information is a crucial skill, it is suggested that the focus of teaching reading comprehension be expanded to include deliberate instruction of higher order comprehension skills. the teaching of metacognition should be implemented from the start of a learner’s school career enabling the learner to access and utilise this skill throughout the school career. learners should work with informational texts early on in the foundation phase in an attempt to prevent comprehension challenges faced by learners in grade 4 upwards. given the literacy and comprehension failures evident in south africa, greater attention should be placed on reading comprehension in the language curriculum. the use of reading strategies coupled with explicit instruction has proven to be beneficial in improving comprehension ability. it is recommended that learning, teaching and support material be better developed to support the explicit teaching of many different reading strategies. a further recommendation is that initial teacher education programmes offer training in the teaching of reading strategies, focusing on instructional practices, as a component of their language courses. this input was absent from the researcher’s undergraduate training programme. the training of reading strategies should be offered to all phases; not only foundation phase teachers who traditionally set the groundwork for reading and reading comprehension. conclusion the purpose of this interpretative case study was to ascertain what instructional reading strategies can improve comprehension skills. two main conclusions can be drawn. firstly, learners are generally well equipped to deal with questions which require retrieval of explicitly stated information but struggle with higher-order level questions such as drawing inferences or evaluating content. learners need to be equipped to work with higher order questions from an early grade. exposure alone is not adequate. secondly, it was established that certain instructional practices are more favourable than others when teaching reading strategies. guided reading, in a small group context, was used as part of the strategy to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies. this interpretative case study focussed on the development of reading comprehension skills of one learner with a focus on making straightforward inferences and examining and evaluating content, language and textual elements. it cannot be assumed that the outcome will be the same for other learners. further improvements may have been possible had the duration of the intervention programme been longer. implications for further research using the same framework include interviewing specialists, such as learning support teachers, occupational therapists or educational psychologists to gain a more in-depth view on reading comprehension. the current approach to reading comprehension instruction is not producing the desired outcomes. reading comprehension and the instruction thereof must be prioritised to include explicitly taught reading strategies from an early grade. further research based on the role of reading strategies in the south africa classroom, as well as pilot projects involving the use of a variety of instructional practices such as explicit reading strategy instruction, guided reading and small group instruction, may be beneficial to the development and improvement of the comprehension ability of south african learners. in order for this to happen, role-players in the education sector need a shift in perspective. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. 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https://doi.org/10.1080/00131720802539648 santrock, j.w., 2011, educational psychology, 5th edn., mcgraw-hill, new york. spaull, n., 2015, schooling in south africa: how low-quality education becomes a poverty trap, viewed 01 may 2017, from http://ci.org.za/depts/ci/pus/pdf/general/gauge2015/child_gauge_2015-schooling.pdf spaull, n., van der berg, s., wills, g., gustafsson, m. & kotzé, j., 2016, foundations getting reading right, final report to the zenex foundation on poor student performance literacy and numeracy, university of stellenbosch, stellenbosch. taylor, b.m., pearson, d., clark, k. & walpole, s., 2000, ‘effective schools and accomplished teachers: lessons about primary-grade reading instruction’, the elementary school journal 101(2), 121–165. https://doi.org/10.1086/499662 van staden, s., 2012, pirls overall results [power point presentation], centre for evaluation and assessment, university of pretoria, pretoria. wertsch, j.v., 1990, ‘the voice of rationality in a socio-cultural approach to mind’, in l.c. moll, (ed.). vygotsky and education: instructional implications and applications of socio-historical psychology, cambridge university press, new york. western cape education department, 2015, wced systemic tests for grades 3, 6 and 9: 2015 results, [power point presentation] research department, cape town. wittmer, d.s., petersen, s.h. & puckett, m.b., 2013, the young child: development from pre-birth through age eight, pearson, new york. abstract introduction ethical digital storytelling practices from storycenter to higher education dst in the south african higher education context: introducing a case study four ethical dilemmas in the practice of dst research towards an ethics of care approach to dst conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) daniela gachago centre for innovative educational technology, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa candice livingston faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa citation gachago, d. & livingston, c., 2020, ‘the elephant in the room: tensions between normative research and an ethics of care for digital storytelling in higher education’, reading & writing 11(1), a242. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v11i1.242 original research the elephant in the room: tensions between normative research and an ethics of care for digital storytelling in higher education daniela gachago, candice livingston received: 27 apr. 2019; accepted: 20 feb. 2020; published: 14 may 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: digital storytelling (dst) has been embraced in classrooms around the world as a way to unpack issues of identity and positionality which are critical for any pedagogy concerned with social justice. however, adopting this process-orientated practice into higher education raises ethical concerns especially in relation to the normative approach to traditional research. objectives: the objective of this article was to explore the ethical concerns surrounding dst when used as a pedagogy and to determine if an ‘ethics of care’ approach could help to mitigate the ethical dilemmas experienced by teachers and researchers alike. method: a single case study, narratives, illustrations and reflections from a final-year arts education project were used to explore some of the ethical issues we encountered when employing dst as a pedagogy and in educational research. results: the results of this reflection show that special attention needs to be paid to the following issues: the collection and interpretation of data, how anonymity and confidentiality are ensured in dst, who owns the stories, how sampling is conducted and how consent is sought and, finally, how the tenant of ‘do no harm’ is adhered to in dst. conclusion: we argue that traditional deontological approaches to ethics are not able to fully respond to the complex, nuanced and ongoing concerns posed by dst projects. we adopt joan tronto’s ethic of care to argue that ethical practice cannot be contained in codes of conduct alone and cannot simply be signed off on by institutional review boards, but is rather a matter of a daily personal, professional and political caring practice. keywords: digital storytelling; ethics; ethics of care; teacher education; teaching with technology. introduction digital storytelling (dst) has found its way ‘into every corner of higher education’ (lambert 2017:vi) because of its potential to empower students through personal reflection, growth, and the development of new multimodal literacies. dst has also found a niche as a qualitative research methodology, notably in health sciences and health education (gubrium, hill & flicker 2014; haigh 2017; hardy 2017; hill 2014), but also in our own discipline of teacher education (condy et al. 2012; gachago 2015; gachago et al. 2013; livingston 2014; stewart & ivala 2017; thomson long & hall 2017). there are many definitions of dst, reflecting its diverse applications, but for the purposes of this study we follow that of storycenter,1 founders of the specific flavour of personal dst that is widely adopted in higher education contexts (hessler & lambert 2017). dst here is defined as the process of creating a personal narrative that documents culturally and historically embedded lived experience, by combining voice, sound and images into a short video, developed by non-professionals with non-professional tools, during a structured workshop (lambert 2010; reed & hill 2012). we have found this approach particularly useful as a pedagogical tool to unpack issues around students’ identity and positionality and to start difficult conversations in the classroom around race, gender and class (benmayor 2008). sharing personal narratives on these issues often elicits strong emotional responses; many of our students, given south africa’s troubled history and present, have suffered traumatic experiences and these can surface when students bring their personal stories into the classroom. not every dst project is equally charged, especially when the process is adapted to support content-based storytelling, but we have encountered these responses often enough to warrant an engagement with the ethical implications. our position is further complicated by the fact that in addition to being educators, we are also researchers, and so our dst work has combined pedagogical and research agendas: we have wanted not only to use this tool, but also to study (and hopefully improve) its application. those in our position have written about ethical dilemmas when using dst as a pedagogical practice before (see for example gachago & sykes 2017; sykes & gachago 2018). however, in this article we will focus on the ethics of using dst as a research methodology. research involving humans is highly regulated, to protect participants from varieties of harm, and also to protect universities and other communities of science from the potential expense and damage of litigation (posel & ross 2014). traditionally, the approach to ethics in an educational setting is normative and deontological: decisions are guided by a set of rules or code of ethics (archer & prinsloo 2017; sevenhuijsen 2003). as researchers we have followed all the established bureaucratic routines for obtaining ethical clearance, but we are increasingly aware of the limitations of this approach. as posel and ross (2014) argue: the trend towards more intense regulation does not guarantee a correspondingly full or thoughtful debate about questions of research ethics. often, the regulatory concerns are more technical than ethically substantive … the format of review can readily induce a ‘tick-box’ mentality: a preoccupation with filling the forms correctly, rather than attending to the challenging ethical issues – often unruly and abidingly ambiguous, their complexities resistant to simple and neat formal assurances. (p. 3) although storycenter offers guidelines for an ethical practice of dst, this is an area that is currently under-researched, specifically in higher education and when using these stories as research data (de jager et al. 2017; rieger et al. 2018). a recently published anthology on dst in higher education features only one chapter on ethics (gachago & sykes 2017), although some chapters do refer to ethical challenges when introducing dst into teaching, research or community engagement (jamissen et al. 2017). in this article, we will first introduce dst as a research practice before discussing the storycenter guidelines and how higher education institutions around the world have adopted and adapted these. after describing our own context, including the case study methodology of this study, we will unpack some of the issues we encountered in our practice (with a particular focus on the collection of data, the anonymising of that data, the manner in which the participants are sampled, confidentiality and their right to give and withdraw consent). finally, we will suggest a different approach to ethics framed by joan tronto’s ethic of care framework (1993, 2001, 2013), which allows for a more practice-based, contextual, relational approach to negotiating ethical dilemmas. ethical digital storytelling practices from storycenter to higher education storycenter has attempted to move beyond generalised ethics to create situated guidelines for the ethical practice of dst. their guidelines stress the well-being of storytellers and the importance of ongoing consent, as well as ethical knowledge production and ownership, cultural sensitivity and contextual awareness, and ethical dissemination of digital stories (storycenter 2018). the guidelines have been adopted and adapted widely to suit different contexts, such as research into gender-based violence and human rights (silence speaks2), health (patientvoices3) or aging (silver stories4). however, there has been little adoption of these guidelines into higher education. ethical guidelines for storytelling research, in both oral and digital forms, have mostly grown from the lessons learnt in university history departments. oral historians have long known about the ethical dilemmas and dangers inherent in collecting personal stories and were the first to put ethical practices in place. at the heart of ethical behaviour in collecting oral histories is informed consent, mitigation of harm and the right to withdrawal (concordia university 2018). specific interviewer behaviours have also received ethical discussion, such as dealing with cultural sensitivities and responding to emotional reactions by storytellers. the use of images in dst complicates the issue: images may reveal identities of storytellers and others, there may be issues of copyright and ownership, and some images may be particularly disturbing to view, raising the possibility of harm to an audience. in conventional filmmaking the rights to use a person’s image will often be granted using a standard release form which assigns extremely broad or even unlimited rights without time limitation (rabiger 2004:253–254); this is legally safe but may not meet the higher ethical expectations of dst projects. internationally, institutions have started developing specific ethical practice guidelines for dst: the university of wollongong5 (australia), the university of toronto6 (canada) and the university of brighton7 (united kingdom), for example, have placed caveats or offer training on their websites regarding ethical behaviour in dst. however, our literature review suggests that these guidelines often draw only from two specific disciplines, oral history and photography and filmmaking (concordia university 2018; jessee 2011; prager 2017), tend to engage only certain ethical aspects of dst and are not as holistically concerned with the well-being of the storyteller as those of storycenter. dst in the south african higher education context: introducing a case study this is a conceptual article, born from an attempt to narrate and theorise our own practice and its ethics. we use a single case study and attempt to narrate our experiences to allow for a systematic and thoughtful reflection (mcdonough & mcdonough 1997; stenhouse 1988:50). we aim to bring to life the ethical conundrums we have encountered when doing research on dst, long after ethical clearance was given. in 2013, we ran a voluntary, non-assessed project in pre-service teacher education, aimed at exploring how autobiographical learning, using dst, could be applied as a tool for improving students’ ability to engage in art appreciation. the project, which students could include in their fourth-year student portfolios, invited students to make digital stories that linked personal narratives to contemporary artwork. we facilitated the process of creating the digital stories and conducted the subsequent narrative analysis (clandinin & connelly 1994; clandinin & rosiek 2007) of students’ stories and reflective writings. we followed the ethical procedures prescribed by the faculty ethics committee: completing a form that included an abstract of the project, describing sampling procedures and describing how the data would be collected. we attached copies of the data collection instruments, explained how data was to be kept confidential and participants’ anonymity ensured, and addressed questions about risk and harm that needed to be addressed. after ethical clearance was granted, the project was introduced to a group of students. one of these students was nadine, a young artist who volunteered to participate as part of her fourth-year final exhibition. nadine was a gifted artist and pre-service teacher who fully embraced the dst process. in her digital story, she revealed that she had been sexually abused as a child. nadine’s illustrations, reflections on the process of developing her digital story and candice’s and daniela’s contemplations on using this and other stories for their research provide rich insight into the ethical complexities of using dst as research data: first … i decided on the personal story i wanted to share through the digital story. then i decided to use the south african artwork, heathen wet lip by alan alborough [see figure 1] to help to tell my story through connecting it to the artwork. the artwork consists of elephant ears hanging from pillars and elephant feet on a metal table. this led me to the main theme under which i was going to write my digital story – elephants. i decided to write my story around idioms consistent of the word ‘elephant’, but also idioms i could make applicable to my story about abuse. (extract from nadine’s reflective essay) figure 1: heathen wet lip installation by alan alborough. the researcher was particularly touched by nadine’s beautifully drawn artwork (see figures 2–4), poetically inspired prose and the sensitive manner in which she spoke about a deeply traumatic event from her childhood. yet nadine’s story and the ethical dilemmas it raised have haunted us ever since. it is for this reason that we chose nadine’s story, exemplary of many other cases that we have encountered (yin 1994, 2009). figure 2: illustration from nadine’s digital story. figure 3: portrait of a young student nadine used for her digital story. figure 4: illustration from nadine’s digital story. four ethical dilemmas in the practice of dst research in this section we use vignettes and reflections by nadine and other authors to discuss ethical dilemmas, that became apparent long after ethical clearance for the study had been granted, particularly in four identified areas of our research practice: the collection and interpretation of data, anonymity and confidentiality, sampling and consent, and the adage of ‘do no harm’. collection and interpretation of data i open the folder on my computer entitled ‘art appreciation dst data’ and scroll through the video clips until i come to nadine’s story. i am still uncomfortable, four years later, listening to the voice emanating from the screen: ‘some nights my memories are a white elephant, the memories of abuse a nuisance, an expensive burden i have to carry with me … my loneliness is an echo that floats to the moon gazing from above … memories controlling my thoughts like a puppet master … what happened to me is an elephant in the room of society and watery tears paint my face as memories burn my thoughts’. i realise that i used nadine’s pain as data. (extract from research study) an assumption in research is that data should be collected using validated or reliable instruments. most ethics applications require that one provides an example of the instruments that one will be using (cput 2011, 2016). but is it possible to validate or ensure that digital story data – particularly when a story is subjective, deeply personal and emotional – is reliable? can intensely personal stories be ethically viewed as data? how can data be collected ethically without the storyteller becoming a mere participant and the story an artefact? when and how does this data move from a personal sharing of stories space into a research space? and in what ways is it ethical to represent and write about this data? narrative inquiry has engaged with alternative ways of ensuring validity, such as exemplarity, transparency, authenticity and trustworthiness (campbell & amin 2013; kohler riessman 2008), which can be transferred into the practice of dst. as we will argue later, inviting storytellers to co-present or co-write a paper could help in facilitating this dialogue between storyteller, researcher and the audience and allowing the storyteller to be an active part of the research process. often dst research involves watching a digital story with the storyteller, and asking them to explain the process of decision-making in relation to story, images or sound (jocson 2015). nelson, hull and roche-smith (2008:437) stress the need to make apparent the necessity and potentials of combining detailed analysis of new media texts themselves with careful ethnographic investigations of the intentions, interactions, and environments that foster these texts and promote their circulation in particular ways. in similar fashion, brushwood rose and low (2014:38) show that unpacking the choices participants make in creating multimedia narratives can reveal a great deal about the personal, as well as sociopolitical dynamics of representation. however, there is an added element of complexity when dealing with dst: how can written text ever do justice to the magic created by a well-crafted multimodal artefact, with its unique pacing of narration, sound and movement? innovative publications such as the multimodal online publications hybrid pedagogies8 or the journal of embodied research9, which solicits video articles of between 10 min and 20 min that document and share the results of research projects in which embodied practice is an essential part of the methodology, allow different ways of representing data and are a first step towards a more embodied and affective ethical engagement and representation of dst research. dst raises another data collection issue: what is done with that data and the artefacts, in this case the digital stories, once the research project has been completed? digital afterlife (soep 2011:93) refers to maintaining or transforming digital content after the death of the person or the completion of a project, and can also be linked with the digital footprint of the person involved with creating the data (bassett 2015:1129). what are the ethical implications of the afterlife of research data that has been posted publicly online or kept on a researcher’s computer? one way to give students control over their digital products is to encourage them to create their own distribution channels (i.e. private youtube channels); however, researchers should also regularly check in with students as to whether they are still comfortable with sharing their stories online. anonymity, confidentiality and ownership as the story progressed and the imagery of the ‘elephant in the room’ became explicitly linked with the hidden nature of sexual abuse in society, i noticed that many of the other participants started looking around and their eyes fell on nadine, her voice had been recognised. one of the participants slowly raised her hand to her mouth and another one actually gasped. (extract from research study) there is an assumption in educational research that research participants will be granted confidentiality and that the data produced will remain anonymous. when digital stories are publicly disseminated, this is next to impossible. this is probably the greatest concern when using student stories for research: students might feel safe when sharing their stories in a story circle, and may also give consent to share their story during a class screening (stewart 2017). however, if their stories are shown at a conference or finally published, this feeling of safety might be compromised. on the other hand, anonymity can deprive students of the recognition of their authorship, and some argue that it is actually good ethical practice in dst to invite storytellers into the conference space to introduce their stories (low, brushwood rose & salvio 2017). digital stories are very short (typically 2–3 min) and highly compressed, providing little background information. inviting storytellers to co-present or to co-write (see for example low et al. 2017) would make contextualisation of the story more authentic and affect how the audience ‘reads’ it. hill (2010) asks us to: [resist] simplistic and passive readings in favour of readings that encourage viewers to reveal their own stories and open themselves to raw vulnerability (comparable to that exercised by the storytellers in sharing their lives in the first place) and a form of emotional distress or confusion which makes simplistic explanations or solutions impossible. (p. 138) how this might be realised in a traditional conference setting, where time for presentations and questions and answers is often limited to 20–30 min, is another challenge. alternative conference formats such as longer panel discussions, workshops, or screenings followed by audience discussion are important avenues to explore. again, ongoing honest conversations between digital storytellers and facilitators or researchers about the risks of exposure are necessary to allow students to understand the true impact of sharing their stories with a broader audience. stories to be screened should be carefully selected, based on a mandate to keep students safe. this might mean not showing certain stories to a larger audience, even if students give consent. the sharing of digital stories online introduces additional complications, not only around the digital afterlife of stories and the attendant risk, but also around issues of copyright. who owns the stories created in dst workshops? the institution? the storyteller? the researcher? the storycenter argues that the story should always remain with the storyteller. some organisations negotiate ‘right of use agreements’ rather than copyright agreements (concordia university 2018) to allow researchers the use and sharing of participants’ stories for their research. sampling and consent although nadine gladly signed the consent and release forms, and was quite happy to share her story with the class and the greater research community, i, as both facilitator and researcher, couldn’t help but wonder what psychological fallout could have arisen from her disclosure. the fact that i still watch her story, four years later, leaves me wondering if nadine is ok, as i have never followed up on her wellbeing, not at the time of the writing of the story, or now, many years later. as she has left the institution, i wouldn’t even know how to contact her. (extract from research study) an important principle of qualitative research is that sampling is purposive but also voluntary. this was the case for nadine, but in many projects digital stories are part of formal assessment and participation is thus not voluntary. is it ethical to include a research component in an academic dst project when students are obliged to take part for assessment? students may opt out of making their stories available as research data – but might the blurring of boundaries between classroom project and research, especially when the researcher is also the lecturer, reduce students’ confidence in their ability to say no without repercussions? what does this mean for the idea of informed consent? in addition, stewart (2017:96) argues that students may produce stories that they think the lecturer may want to hear. it is important that students are made aware of the fact that they do not need to barter emotional content for grades. this requires an extra level of attentiveness on the part of the lecturer, who should negotiate this awareness throughout the digital story process (stewart 2017:97). walker (2015) suggests that researchers consider levels of consent, allowing participants to choose a pseudonym if they wish, and to state whether or not their stories may be shared in public viewings or online. these are issues that need be discussed with students in advance, before project start, shaping the stories that would be told and the images that would be used depending on the level of sharing that is envisaged. it is important to note, that this may impact on the direction of the research. storycenter stresses ethical engagement as an ongoing process rather than a ‘once-off’ gaining of consent. in nadine’s case, consent was a once-off action, and was never revisited. we now believe that with a story of this nature consent should be sought every time it is shown, even if it is years later. this suggests it would be ethically responsible to withdraw a conference presentation or an article from publication if the student changes the conditions of their consent at a later stage, drastically challenging established research practices. do no harm during a public screening of digital stories, a particularly harrowing story was shown involving sexual abuse and halfway through the viewing of this story, a mother and her young son got up and left the screening space. (extract from research study) the final principle of research is to do no harm: that a participant will not knowingly be put in a situation that could harm them or expose them to unnecessary risk, and that the reputation and legal position of the institution must be protected (cput 2016). but is it possible for a facilitator (who is often both the lecturer and researcher) to mitigate the emotional harm that may arise from disclosure of personal information, especially if the only ethical training that the facilitator has received was perfunctory? are we properly equipped to, firstly, identify the risk and, secondly, deal with the consequences of emotional fallout? what about the audience, be it students in a classroom or a conference audience? as researchers we have a responsibility to treat an audience with the same ethical sensitivity as storytellers. we have come to believe that it would be wise to supply trigger warnings at the beginning of a digital story screening that will include sensitive issues. finally, what of the consequences for researchers themselves? we have both experienced ‘compassion fatigue’, after having read through and listened to hundreds of stories of the ‘everyday trauma’ (frankish 2009) our students experience. self-awareness and reflection is essential if we are to remain compassionate and listen with open hearts; if we do not, we risk falling into the trap of ‘fetishising’ stories or reducing individual experiences to their role in larger collective narratives (hampton & demartini 2017:252). establishing communities of practice among those involved in dst facilitation and research, to share and unpack some of the dilemmas faced in our practice, has proven highly valuable. towards an ethics of care approach to dst for a long time i loved discussing various art pieces. i never thought i would be able to combine my love for art with my love for writing and use it to heal emotional pain. at first it was a very difficult piece of art to discuss but after thorough research the artwork became clear and it was easy to attach my personal reflection and interpretation to the knowledge i gained. (extract from nadine’s essay) in this article we have tried to unpack some (by no means all) of the ethical dilemmas we have encountered in our use of dst as a research methodology, to open up a discussion about the challenges of only adhering to traditional research guidelines and processes (we recognise the importance of ethics processes, but an ethical practice must go beyond ethics approval). we believe dst can create a valuable space for sharing and learning about self and other, which is rare in the higher education context in which we operate. however, to continue promoting this practice we have seen the need to alert colleagues to the ethical perils they may encounter when working with the most powerful and personal forms of dst, especially when using these stories as research data. following political philosopher joan tronto’s ethic of care approach, we believe that ethical practices come down to everyday decisions of care in caring relationships (tronto 1993, 2001), rather than adherence to guidelines. it is in our everyday practices of caring for ourselves and others that we most need to consider and practice ethical behaviour (tronto 2001). tronto defines care as a complex ethical relationship, in which all participants or actors need to be involved: a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. that world includes our bodies, ourselves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web. (fisher & tronto 1990:40 in tronto 1993) there can be no one person solely responsible for decision-making in a caring relationship or web of relationships such as the dst research practices discussed in this article: all parties involved should contribute to the discussion on caring, needs and how they should be met. tronto’s five-phase model (1993, 2013) and maio’s core elements of ethic of care (2018) could be used as a template for engagement in the dst research process and we propose that the following moral elements and phases of this approach be considered as guidelines for how to ethically engage with dst as a research method. the collection of dst research data, from an ethic of care perspective, is situation orientated (maio 2018:57) and relies on practical and situated wisdom. researchers are required to adhere to what tronto (2013) calls ‘attentiveness’, where the researcher suspends own judgements, where the unmet needs of the participants and is able to see the world from the perspective of the ones in need. tronto calls this the ‘caring about’ phase, and it is essential that any researcher involved in the collection of dst data be attentive. being attentive in the research process, also requires that one is responsive (maio 2018:58). tronto (2013) states that responsiveness is a phase of ‘care receiving’, where you listen to the responses of the participants being cared for or, in the case of dst, who are sharing their stories. being attentive to the needs of the participants in your study and responding to their needs, places a burden of responsibility (tronto 2013) on the researcher, in which one enters into the phase of ‘caring for’, and the researcher takes on the burden of responding to the needs of their participants. the next phase that the researcher then enters into with their participants should be that of ‘caregiving’ (tronto 2013) and it highlights the competence of the researcher to care. as a researcher in dst, one should be competent to care, but what this entails on a technical, moral and political level, is open for discussion. this is one of the limits of an ethic of care though (maio 2018:61), as this approach still places excessive demands, both technical and emotional, on the researcher (although care is shared among all participants) and also points to the often competing needs that emerge in a care relationship. the final phase in tronto’s model (2013) is that of ‘caring with’ or engaging in solidarity. this implies that the research process is one of collective responsibility, where both the researchers and the participants act as receivers and givers of care. when storytelling enters higher education, the educator and researcher becomes an active participant in this process, learning from and with students and participants, through dialogue and mutual respect. it is essential that we as academics and researchers learn to navigate this terrain, not by consulting a checklist of ethical rules relating to gaining consent and ‘doing no harm’, and making the requisite ticks. rather we argue that we need to see dst from a situated practice perspective as explained above, where consent is a contextual, scaffolded, ongoing and layered process and the principles of mitigating risk and harm become embedded in the project, before, during and long after the process has been completed. this would allow us to seek guidance for the ‘sometimes impossible choices between doing what is professionally required and what seems personally necessary to do as an ethical human being’ (posel & ross 2014:5). there is a need for improvisation and flexibility, rather than rigid rules and regulations, in teaching, learning and research practices of this nature (bliss 2017:326). we as facilitators are challenged to think on our feet – together with students and participants. if the ethics of care is to be embedded in a dst project, we will have to begin with an ethical appraisal of ourselves and our motives, as photographer paul weinberg (posel & ross 2014, emphasis added) states: but it’s not only about professional guidelines … you actually need to take a set of values. and you need to be quite sure of where you are, and who you are in this world … we have a responsibility, and that responsibility is to be human, really, finally … it’s a whole set of values that is going to have consequences and you need to be wired to them and take responsibility. (p. 252) conclusion in essence, the rules of engagement have to be continually negotiated and agreed upon, not only with regard to issues of scaffolded consent and choice, but also to those of power sharing, ownership and digital afterlife of the stories as more than data. we also need to accept that ethical quandaries sometimes ‘don’t resolve clearly or fully, even with the advantage of hindsight’, as posel and ross state (2014:6). this means that all of us, lecturers, students, and researchers, need to take responsibility for our dst projects – and to care for both ourselves and others involved in these, by actively engaging in the phases of care ethics. communication, negotiation, active listening and response, and witnessing are important elements in this process. telling stories about stories, the research on dst, then becomes a caring, consensual mutual practice (bliss 2017:329) of ethically sharing and listening, responding and acting in and beyond the higher education classroom. acknowledgements this article is part of a larger institutional project aimed at developing guidelines for an ethical practice of digital storytelling in higher education. approval for conducting this was sought through institutional channels. competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interests exist. authors’ contributions both authors contributed equally to the conceptualisation, analysis and writing of this article. ethical consideration this article followed all ethical standards for carrying out research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement access to data can be sought through the authors. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the 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http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/196448/ss-guide-2015.pdf. 8. http://hybridpedagogy.org/ 9. https://jer.openlibhums.org/about/submissions/. article information author: hilary janks1 affiliation: 1wits school of education, university of the witwatersrand, south africa correspondence to: hilary janks postal address: wits university, private bag x3, witwatersrand, south africa dates: received: 15 june 2012 accepted: 04 sept. 2012 published: 30 nov. 2012 how to cite this article: janks, h., 2012, ‘the discipline and craft of academic writing: building writing capacity in institutions of higher education’, reading & writing 3(1), art. #25, 9 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v3i1.25 copyright notice: © 2012. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. the discipline and craft of academic writing: building writing capacity in institutions of higher education in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • the genesis of a writing teacher • the structure of badenhorst’s research writing course • the genesis of a writer • badenhorst’s research writing course: week 1 prewriting • badenhorst’s research writing course: week 2 – revising • conclusion • acknowledgements    • competing interests • references • footnotes abstract top ↑ this article offers a first-person account of an academic writing workshop from the perspective of a participant. what is significant is that the workshop combines traditional and creative writing approaches to the teaching of academic writing. this provides new insights into a process of academic writing that can have a significant effect on the quality of the writing and a reader’s engagement with it. introduction top ↑ books and articles published in the academy are often formulaic, impenetrable and stodgy. little attention is given to how ideas are presented so as to engage the reader. only the ideas themselves together with the evidence and the arguments that support them appear to matter. courses in academic writing tend to focus on the genres and the discourse norms of different disciplines; they concentrate on structure and sequence and language. imagine a course where academics are expected to use coloured pens and blank paper, to draw their ideas, to free write and to generate metaphors. these strategies from creative writing pedagogies are often seen as ‘flaky’ within the academy and so a false binary is established between creative and academic thinking. as productivity in the academy is increasingly measured by research outputs1, institutions of higher education have introduced measures to increase research production. in south africa, these include peer writing groups2, postgraduate student writing circles3, writing retreats during which staff spend time away with a senior academic who can provide writing feedback at the point of need4, and extended publication workshops5. in addition, short focused workshops on aspects of academic writing such as style, the literature review, the use of grammatical metaphor and the writing of abstracts have been used to support staff in writing for publication. south africa is not unusual in this respect and there is an extensive literature on the development of research writing in the academy (mouton 2001; hyland 2004; hyland & bondi 2006; kamler & thomson 2006; partridge & starfield 2007; grant 2008; eds. boud & lee 2009). what this article has to contribute to this growing literature is my experience as a participant on a different kind of academic writing course, offered at wits university by cecile badehorst, that combines both creative and academic writing strategies for the development of research writing. i attended badenhorst’s course because colleagues had been enthusing about them for years and i had seen how her course had improved the writing and confidence of my graduate students. as an applied linguist who is both knowledgeable about the teaching of writing and an experienced writer who has published classroom materials, several journal articles and an academic monograph, i did not think that i needed to learn about writing but i was interested in her pedagogy. what i will show is how her course provided insights that contributed in unexpected ways to my own writing. the genesis of a writing teacher top ↑ with a doctorate in geography, cecile badenhorst had been appointed as the research coordinator in the school of public and development management with responsibility for supporting masters’ students to complete their research reports. her non-traditional students, admitted to the programme on the basis of their received prior learning (rpl) and extensive work experience in public administration, had no background in either academic or research writing. searching for answers to address their needs, she registered as a student with applied english language studies, the department in which i worked6. this provided the foundation for the extensive research she later undertook on the teaching of writing. badenhorst had taught creative writing outside of the academy and the scribe’s journey. the secret of writing freely (badenhorst 2006) explains her ideas on how to use free writing for the generation of ideas. the activities provide opportunities to practise stream-of-consciousness writing in which thinking is suspended and you learn to write whatever comes to mind without stopping. ‘the principle behind it is if you give your creative mind space and time to write, it makes unique and ingenious associations’ (badenhorst 2006:17). however, we have been led to believe that research writing is different: it requires one to gather and assess information, to produce logical arguments in relation to evidence, and to use disciplinary norms for structuring ideas. therefore, when badenhorst began to teach research writing, she focused on topics such as academic discourse, research and truth, the nature of the academy, conceptualising research, the problem statement, the purpose statement, research questions, genre, referencing and so forth (badenhorst 2007: table of contents), all fairly standard moves in the teaching of research writing. her breakthrough came when she realised that ‘all writing is creative, even research writing’ (2007:50). this epiphany enabled her to combine creative and research writing practices in ways that were productive. what follows is a description and analysis of her writing pedagogy and its impact on my own writing. the activities she uses have been published in two books research writing (badenhorst 2007) and dissertation writing (badenhorst 2008). the data for this account are badenhorst’s 2008 course notes, her books, the notes i took during the course and the set of writings i produced in response to the activities that make up the course as well as the published chapter that resulted from it (janks 2010a). the structure of badenhorst’s research writing course top ↑ the course runs from a monday to a thursday for three and a half hours in the mornings, for two weeks that are separated by an interval of a month. staff come to the course having done the preparation for a research article that they want to write. in the first week of the course, badenhorst uses a range of strategies for conceptualising research and for generating ideas. in the intervening month, participants produce a draft of their research article. the second week of the course is spent revising and crafting the written draft. she enables the course participants to interrogate the structure of their articles, to undertake revision, to deal with criticism and to edit in ways that improve both meaning and style. she never reads the work or provides individual feedback. instead, she teaches strategies that enable writers to reflect on what they have written in order to develop an internal locus of control over their writing.brain research in the 1960s claimed that the left and right sides of the brain functioned differently, with the left brain responsible for reasoning and the right brain for creativity and the imagination. although we now know from mri scans that these functions are not localised to the different hemispheres of the brain, badenhorst (2007:60−61) uses left-brain and right-brain thinking as metaphors for these two different modes of thought. metaphorically speaking, ‘left-brain’ thinking is linear, logical and analytical. it uses language and number and is oriented to detail, facts, structure and sequence. ‘right-brain’ thinking, metaphorically, is spatial, intuitive and imaginative. it is oriented to dimension, symbol and image, colour and rhythm, and it works with pattern and the whole picture, rather than with linear sequences. what is crucial to badenhorst’s pedagogy is that she shows writers how to use both kinds of thinking in the production of a polished piece of research writing. right-brain thinking is crucial for generating ideas and unique insights, left-brain thinking is central to organising, structuring and crafting writing. i will show what i learnt from working with both her right-brain and her left-brain activities. the genesis of a writer top ↑ my own genesis as a writer is important for understanding what i as a participant brought to badenhorst’s course. i was an undergraduate in the age of pen and paper. now, however, it is hard now to remember how difficult it was to produce a polished text without the ability to delete and insert, to overwrite mistakes, and to re-order ideas using cut and paste. because i am a slow reader, i never had the time to be a slow writer, so i trained myself to produce an essay that did not need revision, editing or rewriting. i did this by meticulous planning before i began to write. i produced detailed linear outlines of the essay, sequenced according to the logic of the argument. the details pertinent to each step were listed. these included points relating to the argument, facts, citations, evidence. planning the essay was the fun part, writing it was less interesting largely because the thinking had already been done. rewriting or copying to produce a clean version would have been a boring chore. badenhorst would call this left-brain writing. the writing itself was not a process of discovery. i remember writing my honours long essay in pencil in a book using only the right-hand side of the page. the left-hand side was kept blank so that i had space to write additional pieces of text and use arrows to point to the spot where they should be inserted. i used an eraser to delete. this explains my choice of a pencil. when i had finished, the essay was typed by a professional. by then the typist was using a golfball typewriter that could lift incorrect type off the page. tippex also helped. i nevertheless had to provide a clear final draft that the typist could read. liberation came with the introduction of computers and word processing software that made it easy to change text and to draft and redraft. by then, however, logical, linear planning was ingrained. my doctoral thesis used legal numbering and i worked out the numbered outline before writing a chapter. this established the sequence of ideas and the road i would follow in writing the chapter. i did a great deal of preparation before sitting down to write. i had already done the relevant reading or analysed the data that i would be discussing. i had worked out the argument. this enabled me to sit at the screen, with nothing on my desk and to begin writing out of my head but according to plan. as i worked, i would think of something from a book that i wanted to include and i would pull it off the shelf. by the end of the day, i would find myself surrounded by all the resources i had used. this method of writing allowed me to write from my own ideas and to pull in sources in relation to what i wanted to say. when i came to write my book (janks 2010b) i followed the advice of a short story writer, who suggested that all i needed was a ‘great first sentence’. once i had found my sentence, the rest of the chapter unfolded from it as if i had opened a tap. forty-six pages of ideas just poured out of me. badenhorst explains this experience of writing as follows: a creative state of mind is one of not thinking, it’s the state where the writer is the well and the words float to the top without effort. it’s the state of mind where sometimes ... the most inspiring ideas shoot into being. ... this is the state that as writers we need to nurture, cultivate and call on when we want to create. this is the source of our magic. ... this is where the writer in all of us resides (2006:12). it was an intensely pleasurable experience. within a week, i had produced the first chapter – enough text for what ultimately became the first two chapters of my book. because the book was based on the work i had done in the last fifteen years, i had in a sense been preparing for it for a long time. i was the tap from which the words could flow, the well full of ideas, the repository of data. badenhorst says, ‘think long, write quickly’ (course notes). the more specific thinking for my book was an article i wrote in 2000 titled ‘domination, access, diversity and design: a synthesis model for critical literacy education’. the purpose of the book was to develop this model further by showing how it works in relation to theories of literacy, to research, to texts, to policy, as well as to curriculum and pedagogy and to discuss its potential and its limitations. the model provided the underlying theoretical framework and an overall structure for the book. it established the necessary starting point for the writing. but ‘there’s the rub’ (hamlet, act 3, scene i) – the model argues for the interdependence of the four dimensions that constitute it: power, diversity, access and design and because they are so intertwined it is hard to write about them without a plan. writing about any one of the dimensions necessitates writing about the other three. if, for example, each of the discussions on power, on diversity and on access, includes discussion about design, then how when one writes about design does one avoid repetition if one has not planned what will go where? without a plan, how does one even know what one has already said? for someone not used to writing without a map, these were frightening questions. my control over the organisation and overall coherence of the book was at stake. i had to solve this writing problem in order to produce the first draft of the book. i needed strategies that would maintain my ability to produce logical and coherent ‘right-brained’ work. two strategies sufficed. the first was to provide the outline of my chapter after i had written it. instead of its being a plan for writing, it became a record of what i had written and how i had structured the ideas. this backward outlining gave me an overview of the chapter but not the detail of exactly what i had already said pertaining to each of the other dimensions. the second strategy provided the necessary detail. using the affordances of word-processing software, before starting to work on say the design chapter, i used the find function to locate every previous use of the word ‘design’. i copied the relevant sections into a new document. accumulating what i had said before, became part of my prewriting preparation that enabled me to work out what i still needed to say and provided the starting point for writing the design chapter. this method worked for each of the chapters. i had to go to cecile badenhorst’s course to understand my own genesis as a writer, how in changing from a being a ‘mapper’ to a ‘bungee jumper’ (badenhorst 2007:60), i had needed to find a way of bringing the two approaches together. having a way of understanding my different writing processes and a language to describe them was powerfully affirming. it also enabled me to understand the advantages and the disadvantages entailed in mapping and in jumping off a cliff into the unknown. i now turn to badenhorst’s course and the impact it had on the article i was working on. i will give an account of each of the two weeks and locate the moments where an activity became a key that unlocked a door. badenhorst’s research writing course: week 1 prewriting top ↑ this section provides a brief overview of the first week of the course. it aims to illustrate and discuss badenhorst’s pedagogy and to show the effect of the course activities on my own writing. in days 1−4 of the course, each day is divided into four sessions. the first hour deals with writing research articles and across the week these sessions focus on ‘conceptualisation’, ‘deconstructing research’, ‘audience and/or genre’ and ‘argument’ (course notes). the second session works with creativity, the third with writing activities that push the boundaries, and the morning closes with a discussion of work that one is expected to do overnight. the week begins with activities that enable one to conceptualise and articulate the research-writing project and participants are taught how to write problem and purpose statements and research questions (badenhorst 2007:17–26). figure 1: the free writing i produced in response to the stimulus, which was the word before. these statements explain the problem the research is addressing, the knowledge gap that the research will contribute to closing as well as the context and purpose/s of the study. the research questions unpack the problem and determine the kind of data that will be needed to answer them. as a participant, you learn how to write problem and/or purpose statements by reading example statements critically. then you write your own; you critique the statements of your peers; you benefit from peer critique of your statement; you try again. a problem purpose statement can be written for a whole thesis, a chapter, a section of a chapter, a research article. they are important for clarifying the research that is the subject of the writing. my problem purpose statement (see box 1) gives a sense of the chapter i was working on. box 1: the problem-purpose statement produced for the workshop to explains the problem the research aims to address. during the week, badenhorst used many short activities that enabled right-brain thinking. they included free writing, drawing and mapping:• free write on i am the colour of ... • draw your relation to your research • free write on your relation to your research • underline words in your free-writing; free write on each of them • free write on: my quest • draw a mind-map of your research • free write on what stops you from writing • free associate starting with the word before. i found myself having to suspend judgement. how would this help me to produce an article? the more we did the easier it became. i found that i could write more and that i could let go of my left-brain need to order and organise. i experienced what the course notes claimed, that: the right brain is associative, almost like an entity with tiny hooks. one idea hooks on to another. the right brain revels in the chaos of ideas and sooner or later it will latch on to a pattern, a thread, a unifying thought ... your brain will make the associations and find new and fresh patterns. (badenhorst, course notes based on the work of rico, 2000). figure 2 shows what happened during my free association on the word before. notice how the free writing starts with the personal (pippa died), with what is uppermost on my mind, then it moves in a clockwise direction to my writing, and later it begins to associate in unpredictable ways. the early movement between the death of a friend and the birth of a child which coincided, brought past, present and future together and resulted in the idea that the past is present in the now and that now is based on what comes before. as soon as i had completed this activity, i knew that the chapter i wanted to write was about the history of ideas in the field of critical literacy and to show that the practices produced by different moments of this history continue into the present. unlike in the sciences where new knowledge builds on and refines what has come before, in horizontal knowledge structures (bernstein 2000) new knowledge provides additional perspectives so that the practices that they generate can continue in classrooms into the present, alongside older practices. although by then the workshop had moved on, i stopped and wrote the piece that appears in figure 2. the revelation produced by this activity was both general and specific: it was specific in relation to the chapter and general in relation to the power of a pedagogy that could produce right-brain thinking. other activities during the week involved pushing the boundaries by looking at the affordances of different linguistic modes: sentences, questions and exclamations, and generating examples; we rewrote the ‘bare bones’ of our research in ten lines focusing on the key message. figure 3 shows the original version of these bare bones in typed script with notes pertaining to the key message added. following on from the free association triggered by the word before, the key message states: history continues into the now, the now makes history and these produce a tradition. the notes also include a metaphor: ‘history is reborn in the now’. the key message was then distilled and rewritten on the reverse side of the page (figure 4): ‘history provides a rich tradition that creates possibilities for practice and change.’ in the first week we also learnt about the value of writing groups and how to set them up, how to use research notebooks, how to recognise and use the genre of a research article in one’s discipline. badenhorst’s pedagogy worked to develop skill in writing: there were many opportunities to practise and to improve what one had written. she also worked with research as a discipline-specific practice and the genres of the research articles associated with that practice as well as the ways in which linguistic resources are deployed in specialised ways. in ‘the order of discourse’, foucault (1970) sets out the internal and external conditions according to which knowledge in different disciplines in western thought can be said to be ‘in the true’. these are the conditions which underlie practices of knowledge production and research writing in discipline-specific discourse communities. however, most of the time was spent introducing academics schooled in left-brain thinking to the practices that generate right-brain writing. the theories of creativity, genre, cognition, language and writing that inform badenhorst’s practice were discussed and she modelled the use of evidence in relation to the claims she was making. most importantly, she embodied the practices she taught. there could be no doubt that her teaching was based on her own lived experience as a writer. figure 2: writing that flowed from the free-writing activity on the word before. figure 3: history is born in the now: the bare bones of the paper revisited. figure 4: the key message has been distilled. included in box 2 were the activities that we had worked on during week one. we had a month in which to complete this ‘homework’ and were asked to bring the first draft to the first day of the second week. box 2: work to be completed a the month between week 1 and week 2. badenhorst’s research writing course: week 2 – revising top ↑ in the second week, as with week 1, each of the four days was divided into four sessions. the sessions focused on structure, revision, feedback and editing. the sessions on creative revision moved from crude to refined revision, to crafting and finally to polishing. feedback was considered in relation to readers, journal criteria and processes of review. in these four weeks, the focus shifted to left-brain work. beginning with ‘big picture’ revision, we were given questions to ask of our drafts, drawing activities to help us picture what we were saying, elements to look for (such as the key message, the research question, the argument). after discussing badenhorst’s diagrams which depict different logics for organising information and structuring academic articles (badenhorst 2007:124−129), we were helped to discover the complexities of structure in our own work (2007:132) by examining our drafts to: • see if the story of the article matches the logic of the argument • consider whether the sequencing produces understanding; • decide if there are enough examples • make sure that the conclusions match the evidence • find the threads that tie the ideas together to produce overall coherence • check that there is adequate signposting for the reader. badenhorst’s diagrams provide different models for representing structure and they prepared us for the following task: ‘look at your own paper. then draw a visual representation of the structure as it exists currently. then visually represent the structure you would like to have’ (badenhorst course notes, day six, p. 5). this activity provided my breakthrough moment in week 2. i had been wrestling with a particular structural problem: the article had been commissioned for a book that required a specific structure that did not match the story that was unfolding from my right-brain work. figure 5 shows the requirements for the article. figure 6 shows the then current structure of the story in the draft of my paper. placing the two side by side helped me to see the compromise solution that would enable me to fit what i wanted to do into the editors’ requirements. this solution is shown in figure 7. figures 8 and 9 are included to show this work as produced during the writing course. this evidence gives a better sense of the messiness of the process and of a writer’s mind finding its way. they show the work as it happened, including the false start reflected in the crossings out that appears in figures 8 and 9. during the final stages of editing and crafting the writing, badenhorst developed our ability to work with the resources of language to make selections that carry our ideas in such a way that they hold the reader’s attention. one such exercise was to produce a captivating non-formulaic beginning to hook the reader. i chose to begin my article with examples of enacted practice: in one classroom concerned with language and power, you might see students redesigning a sexist advertisement, in another, constructing a linguistic profile of the class or figuring out how the word ‘perhaps’ changes the meaning of a statement. students might be calculating their own ecological footprints after watching gore’s an inconvenient truth or discussing how to address the problem of bullying in their grade. underpinning the work in these different classrooms are different approaches towards teaching students the relationship between language and power; language, identity and difference; language and the differential access to social goods (janks 2010b). one of the editors asked for a more conventional opening, stating that my opening paragraph was more appropriate for an oral conference presentation than an academic article. what i had learnt during badenhorst’s course enabled me to argue for the importance of designing an introduction to draw the reader into the work. i had chosen examples and concrete detail as the hook and was able to defend my choice. the other editor agreed and the paragraph survived. the course shaped our ability to make the kind of linguistic choices that would make our writing more authoritative, metaphorical, detailed, clear and powerful and it provided us with enough understanding to defend our choices in the face of more conservative views about quality writing in the academy. figure 5: the editor’ structural requirements for the article. figure 6: the structure of the article that was unfolding my preferred structure. figure 7: the final structure that solved the mismatch between the structural requirements and the way the paper was unfolding. conclusion top ↑ because badenhorst creates the conditions of possibility for writers to experiment and play with new practices, because she understands the exigencies of academic writing. because she knows that both logic and creativity have a role to play in research writing, she is able to give writers at different levels and with different amounts of experience the tools they need for writing as well as an understanding of the social practices that shape academic work. she recognises the exigencies of different disciplines and the specificity of the regulatory forces that underpin the social practice of discipline-specific writing (bernstein 2000; hyland 2004; hyland & bondi 2006). she also understands the importance of practising. gladwell’s (2008) analysis of successful ‘outliers’ shows that opportunity to practice is what sets those who succeed apart. he provides examples which demonstrate that, ‘excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice’ (p. 39) arguing that ‘10 000 hours is the rule’ for mastery (35−68). badenhorst believes that ‘writing produces writing’ and she stresses the importance of developing the habit of writing. she teaches craft through play, through attention to detail, through appreciation for language and poetry and out of respect for the reader. she wants research writing to be both academically rigorous and enjoyable to read. she achieves this by refusing the binary between creativity and logical thought. different participants respond to her course in different ways, taking from it what they need at the time. one of my students took up the habit of free writing every day, and gradually conquered the writer’s block that had paralysed her. most of the people who attended her courses were struggling in some way with their writing: some had language difficulties; some struggled with coherence, others with constructing an argument; some needed help to confront the blank page; others with the reverse problem of containing the volume of words produced. some people attended the course more than once, using it to think their way through different kinds of writing tasks. because the course helps participants to reflect critically on their own writing, everyone benefits in some way. figure 8: rough work 1. figure 9: rough work 2. by teaching me how to combine the creative and the logical, badenhorst extended my skill and my confidence as a writer and i, in turn, have tried to pass what i have learnt on to my graduate students. perhaps the most productive way to build writing capacity in institutions of higher education is to help staff recognise that academic writing is a creative act capable of bringing pleasure to both the writer and his or her readers. acknowledgements top ↑ i wish to thank cecile badenhorst for permission to write about her course. competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references top ↑ badenhorst, c., 2006, the scribe’s journey: the secret of writing freely, new voices publishing, cape town. badenhorst, c., 2007, research writing: breaking the barrier, van schaik, pretoria. badenhorst, c., 2008, dissertation writing: a research journey, van schaik, pretoria. bernstein, b., 2000, pedagogy, symbolic control and identity, rowman & littlefield, lanham. boud, d. & lee, a. (eds.), 2009, changing practices of doctoral education, taylor & francis, new york. foucault, m., 1970, ‘the order of discourse. inaugural lecture at the college de france’, in m. shapiro (ed.), language and politics, basil blackwell, oxford. gladwell, m., 2008, outliers: the story of success, penguin, london. grant, b., 2008, academic writing retreats: a facilitator’s guide. herdsa guide, higher education research and development society of australasia, sydney. hyland, k. & bondi, m., 2006, ‘academic discourse across disciplines’, vol. 42 of linguistic insights: studies in language and communication, peter lang, new york. hyland, k., 2004, disciplinary discourses: social interactions in academic writing, university of michigan press, ann arbor. janks, h., 2000, ‘domination, access, diversity and design: a synthesis model for critical literacy education’, educational review 52(2), 175−186. janks, h., 2010a, ‘language, power and pedagogy’, in n. hornberger & s. mckay (eds.), sociolinguistics and language education, pp. 40–61, multilingual matters, clevedon. janks, h., 2010b, literacy and power, routledge, london & new york. kamler, b. & thomson, p., 2006, helping doctoral students write: pedagogies for supervision, routledge, london & new york. mouton, j., 2001, how to succeed in your master’s and doctoral studies, van schaik, pretoria. partridge, b. & starfield, s., 2007, thesis and dissertation writing in a second language: a handbook for supervisors, routledge, london & new york. rico, g., 2000, writing the natural way, jeremy p. tarcher/putnam, new york. footnotes top ↑ 1.outputs is a good example of the poor choice of metaphor for academic work, coming as it does from market and management discourses. 2.janks’ students at the university of the witwatersrand have established their own writing groups with their peers. 3.private communication with lucia thesen, university of cape town. 4.this practice has been successfully developed by susan van zyl at the university of the witwatersrand. 5.publication workshops have been conducted by michael cross, university of the witwatersrand and chris kapp, stellenbosch university. 6.applied english language studies has become part of the division of languages, literatures and literacies in the wits school of education. abstract introduction literature review theoretical framework methodology results discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) sisanda b. nkoala media department: journalism programme, faculty of informatics and design, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa citation nkoala, s.b., 2020, ‘student perceptions of multilingualism and the culture of communication in journalism studies in higher education’, reading & writing 11(1), a258. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v11i1.258 original research student perceptions of multilingualism and the culture of communication in journalism studies in higher education sisanda b. nkoala received: 31 july 2019; accepted: 26 mar. 2020; published: 28 may 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the year 2020 will mark five years since the watershed #feesmustfall protests in south africa. this was a student-led series of protests, at campuses across the country, calling for higher education to be made accessible through free decolonised education for black people. in light of this, the time has come to ascertain how students perceive the developments in the sector following this demand, which, among other things, included a call for tertiary education to reflect the country’s multilingual context. objective: this study explored how journalism students, at a university of technology in south africa, perceive the multilingual teaching and learning strategies, and their influence on the culture of communication in this discipline. method: the study employed a mixed methods sequential design, beginning with an online survey, followed by focus group discussions. a semantic thematic analysis was undertaken using a ‘top-down’ approach based on themes identified through james carey’s theoretical framework of communication as culture. results: the findings are that even though students have been exposed to various multilingual teaching and learning strategies, they perceive the way language is used in this discipline as perpetuating a culture of communication that is still predominantly monolingual. they see the multilingual interventions as being inadequate in addressing the challenges created by this particular culture of communication. they expressed mixed views on the influence of multilingualism on their academic performance. conclusion: the culture of communication used in this discipline continues to make students feel out of place in lectures and higher education as a whole and perpetuates certain student-lecturer power dynamics. for journalism students in particular, this has further implications in how they perceive their professional prospects as aspiring communications practitioners. keywords: multilingualism; journalism education; higher education; culture of communication theory; #feesmustfall. introduction the year 2020 will mark five years since the #feesmustfall movement, which shook the higher education sector in south africa and caused wholesale acknowledgement that the status quo at the time was not working, particularly for students whom the sector supposedly exists to serve. this was a student-led series of protests, at campuses across the country, calling for higher education to be made accessible through ‘free decolonized education for black people’ (sabc digital news 2016). one of the demands made by students was for a change in the culture of higher education from one that esteems ideas from the global north while invalidating perspectives from the global south (cherry & knaus 2016). linked to this was a demand for the languages used in higher education in south africa to reflect the multilingual context of the country. this study aims to explore how journalism students, at a university of technology in south africa, perceive the multilingual teaching and learning strategies, and their influence on the culture of communication used in this discipline. the notion of the culture of communication refers to the ways in which language is used in communication to espouse certain attitudes, values and beliefs (giri 2006). the argument being made is that students perceive the ways in which lecturers employ multilingual strategies as enacting a certain culture of communication. this culture of communication, as evidenced in how language is used, has implications for how students perceive their ability to perform academically, to have a sense of place and belonging as scholars in the discipline of journalism, and to have a certain outlook on their prospects as future practitioners in this communications-based field. the focus on journalism is because of the role of language in this particular discipline and profession. pedagogically, language in journalism education does not serve simply to communicate knowledge about the field; it also functions epistemologically by signifying how journalists generate knowledge by using language as a tool, and which languages are esteemed when it comes to generating this journalistic knowledge. the decision to focus on a university of technology is driven by the way in how they teach journalism: these institutions ‘incorporate aspects of other disciplines to ensure that students acquire a broad understanding of the socio-political environment within which journalism and media studies is situated’ (de beer, pitcher & jones 2017:183). literature review multilingualism can be defined as ‘the fact of the existence of, or the ability to use, more than one language’ (eds. kaschula, maseko & wolff 2017:xiv). in articulating a demand for a multilingual tertiary education, the view taken by the #feesmustfall protesters suggests that these students view multilingualism as a positive feature of a higher education system. in literature, however, the effects of multilingualism on language development, educational attainment, cognitive growth and intelligence is a highly contested notion (reynold 1928; saer 1963, both in grosjean 1982). scholars have discussed the notion based on empirical and theoretical research undertaken in a range of disciplines including law, health and the social sciences (kaschula & ralarala 2004; maseko & kaschula 2009; madiba 2010). the issue has also been thoroughly debated from a broader language policy planning perspective, with the recognition that the intellectualisation that occurs when indigenous languages that have previously been sidelined are mainstreamed in teaching and learning in higher education has implications for the status and esteem of these languages and the cultures that produced them in society broadly (heugh 2000; madiba 2013; turner & wildsmith-cromarty 2014). the call for a multilingual tertiary education experience is not new. the issue of a multilingual approach to higher education has been central to the sector since south africa became a democracy. the constitution of the republic of south africa, 1996, not only recognises all 11 official languages, but goes as far as to state that when it comes to indigenous languages that were deliberately diminished in terms of status and use, measures must be taken to raise the esteem and promote the use of these languages in society (see discussion). the language plan task group of 1996 (langtag), whose principle mission was to advise government on ‘the processes to be followed and the issues to be addressed in order to arrive at an acceptable language plan for the country’ (alexander 1997:82), and the pan south african language board (pansalb), which exists to ‘initiate studies and research aimed at promoting and creating conditions for the development of all 11 official languages’ (department of arts and culture 2019) were also established in that same year. in terms of higher education specifically, langtag called for indigenous languages to ‘be used in high-status functions such as parliamentary debates, languages of learning and teaching in all phases of education, from pre-school up to the universities and the technikons’ (langtag 1996:15). in doing this, it articulated the need to elevate the status of these indigenous languages. this then paved the way for the development of policies in the higher education sector that specifically address the apartheid regime’s systematic marginalisation of the languages spoken by the majority of the people. despite the numerous legislative policy documents and frameworks, a 2015 report commissioned by the department of higher education and training (2015) found: implementation plans around the teaching, learning and research in indigenous african languages does not seem to consider any indigenous languages as the language of teaching and learning. consequently, english and afrikaans and so, their speakers, continue to be privileged in [higher education] even in the current political dispensation. (p. 10) this then means that speakers of indigenous languages, whose access to higher education is already compromised by factors such as poor primary and secondary schooling, socio-economic issues, and culturally alienating practices in higher education, are disadvantaged further because their mother tongue does not feature as part of their formal education experience at this level. it was no wonder then that, as part of the #feesmustfall student protests between 2015 and 2017, the issue of language policy at tertiary institutions was central to students’ demands to de-westernise the curriculum (cherry & knaus 2016). the issues raised by students, around the exclusionary ways in which language is used in higher education, were not new. they have been raised as part of debates dating back to the 1980s. among the seminal african thinkers on this issue was ngugi wa thiong’o (1992) whose work on the use of language in african literature noted: in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries europe stole art treasures from africa to decorate their houses and museums; in the twentieth century europe is stealing the treasures of the mind to enrich their languages and cultures. africa needs back its economy, its politics, its culture, its language and all its patriotic writers. (p. xii) with specific reference to journalism, in a study based on a course called ‘isixhosa for journalism’ introduced as part of the journalism curriculum in 2009 at rhodes university in grahamstown, south africa, du toit and maseko (2017) note the limited research that has looked at language in general, and multilingualism in particular in journalism education in africa. du toit and maseko note the work of abiodun salawu as among the few studies that exist and make a compelling case for the expansion of research on language use in journalism education, as well as the importance of multilingualism in journalism practice in the african context (salawu 2007). research into multilingual education in this discipline notes that the predominant strategies used to teach multilingually have relied mainly on the introduction of courses on indigenous languages, such as isixhosa and isizulu (du toit & maseko 2017; maseko & kaschula 2009). these courses are usually taught as stand-alone subjects to help students communicate better in them. they do not feed into other courses, and often students do not use the communication skills garnered from them when working on assignments in other subjects. this strategy has gone a long way towards demonstrating that indigenous languages can be used in the academy. however, indigenous languages are still not used in the core courses of the discipline. this thus has the potential to undermine the impact of having these language courses, because instead of mainstreaming indigenous languages, they could lead to them being marginalised. theoretical framework this study hopes to add to the existing body of research on multilingualism in journalism tertiary education, by drawing on a theory that views the use of language in communication as more than just a process of transmitting ideas, but rather as an activity that constructs reality. james carey’s (2008) theory of communication as culture views communication as ‘a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired and transformed’ (p. 19). this theory is typically used in communications-based disciplines, like journalism, because it is aimed at theorising around how the use of language shapes views of reality. it is also used in the field of sociolinguistics. the concept of culture is used to understand and explain how human beings relate to each other in societies. it is a highly contested concept that has proven to be difficult to define (atkinson 2004). in terms of literature, the earliest and most widely recognised definition came from english anthropologist edward taylor who defined it as ‘that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’ (tylor 1871, quoted in kroeber & kluckhohn 1952:43). carey’s (2008) theory does not purport to say that communication is culture as per taylor’s definition where culture is ‘that complex whole’ that brings together many aspects of a society’s way of life; rather it views communication as culture, something that points to the ways in which a particular society produces, maintains, repairs and transforms reality through the way it communicates. this theory hypothesises that in observing how words are used, we can get a sense of the attitudes, values and beliefs that are espoused in a certain context, and further we can use words to produce, maintain, repair and shape those attitudes values and beliefs. in how language is used in higher education in south africa, where proficiency in english is more esteemed that proficiency in indigenous languages, this theory can help us explain ‘the symbolic process’ that has gone into producing and maintaining this as reality. it gives a view that the reality of english being the most dominant language used in south africa universities has been produced and maintained by the way in which it has been used in higher education spaces, not because the language is inherently more ‘academic’ than others. it can then be argued that the way of repairing this reality and transforming it also lies in how we use language to communicate, in this case through indigenous languages. communication as culture recognises that using certain languages to communicate is not only about what languages are used to transmit information and share ideas, but also how the languages are used. in this study, carey’s (2008) theory of communication as culture has been applied in as far as it will assist in understanding how pedagogical practices around language use in communications-based disciplines shape student perceptions of those academic disciplines and the professional fields they are likely to work in. since communication is ‘any act by which one person gives to or receives from another person information’ (mehrabian in velentzas & broni 2014), it includes spoken and unspoken forms. of particular interest to this study is language as an aspect of communication. language is an important part of journalism and journalism studies because of the importance of words and their use within this discipline. as such, a view of communication that allows us to unpack the multiple levels at which language use influences the ways in which communication is perceived to shape reality will allow us to view communication as more than just ‘the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs’ (carey 2008:15). in this view, then, the words used when communicating in any language are ‘not the names of things but … things are the sign of words’ (carey 2008:20). carey further argues that the use of words is central to the view of reality because ‘reality is not given, not humanly existent, independent of language and towards which language stands as a pale refraction. rather reality is brought into existence, is produced by communication’. (carey 2008:20) in journalism studies the use of words has implications on several levels. firstly, there are implications for how students perceive their cognitive abilities based on the view that if they are not competent in english, they are not clever enough, even if they excel in other aspects of the course, such as in interviewing, editing and storytelling. for some, the language used in lectures makes it difficult to follow the content being taught, and this can lead to the view that just because they do not understand the language fully, they cannot understand the content presented (taylor & von fintel 2016). on a second, deeper level, language use has implications for student perceptions on whether the ways in which communication occurs and is used in journalism studies includes or excludes them (meier & hartell 2009). on a third, even deeper level, being taught a communications-based discipline monolingually privileges a particular language, and this creates an impression that to excel as a journalist in south africa, one needs to communicate with proficiency in english (fosu 2011). carey’s (2008) theory of communication as culture provides a useful lens through which to analyse these perceptions because it posits that the act of language use in teaching is not primarily about the transmission of ‘intelligent information’, but about the construction and maintenance of an ‘ordered, meaningful cultural world that can act as a control and container for human action’ (pp. 18–19), based on how language is used. methodology research design this is an explorative study rooted in an interpretivist research orientation in so far as it seeks to understand how a particular group of journalism students have constructed their realities based on their situations and experiences (hammersley 2013). the study employs a mixed methods sequential design, which begins with an online survey to quantify the extent to which the students sampled were exposed to multilingual teaching and learning strategies, followed by focus groups to explore their perceptions on these strategies and probe deeper into the findings that emanated from the survey. data collection the online survey was distributed to all of the undergraduate journalism students enrolled at the university of technology concerned via the learner management system blackboard in june 2019. this was deemed to be the most efficient way of reaching the students because they use the system on a daily basis and it allows for ease of data capturing and analysis (evans & mathur 2005). in 2019, 70 students were registered for the programme. of those, 30 responded to the survey. this means that the response rate was 43% of the population, which is higher than the average cited by nulty’s (2008) work on the general response rate when it comes to online surveys. those who took part were students who commenced their journalism studies at the institution between 2011 and 2019. in this cohort were students who commenced their higher education prior to the #feesmustfall period, those who commenced their studies at the height of the protests between 2015 and 2017, and those who started their studies a year or two after that watershed period. the survey sought to ascertain the types of multilingual teaching and learning strategies the students had been exposed to, and the ways in which they perceived the efficacy of these strategies. the multilingual teaching and learning strategies that these students are exposed to include, but are not limited to: lectures that are delivered using multiple languages teaching and learning resources such as videos and readings that are in multiple languages the option to submit assignments such as essays, and projects using multiple languages assignment briefs and feedback given in multiple languages language courses such as english, afrikaans and isixhosa one-on-one consultations with lecturers that are conducted using multiple languages. the students were required to indicate their year of study and the languages they spoke outside of the lecture room context. the survey also employed a multiple choice question to ascertain whether students had been exposed to specific multilingual strategies, and to what extent this exposure had happened. it also had multiple choice questions that were used to gauge their views on whether the multilingual strategies they had been exposed to had been adequate and effective. there were also long-form questions where students had to explain what they understood by the term multilingualism and how they perceived the advantages and disadvantages of a multilingual pedagogical approach in their education. based on the responses that emerged from the survey, questions were drawn up to conduct semi-structured focus group discussions. the focus group format of data collection was used because of the way that it can provide data on ‘perceptions, thoughts, feelings and impressions of people in their own words’ (stewart & shamdasani 1990:140). two focus groups were held. the focus groups were audio recorded and the recordings were transcribed. the transcriptions were then analysed using a thematic textual analysis to ascertain the dominant themes that emerged from the views articulated by the students. data analysis the analysis of the focus group discussion is a semantic thematic analysis, undertaken using a ‘top-down’ approach based on the research questions the study sought to answer (braun & clarke 2006). it employed braun and clarke’s (2006) six-step framework. results the online survey was used to get an overall sense of the students’ experiences of multilingualism. it emerged that all of those who participated in the survey spoke at least two languages, with most of those surveyed indicating that the languages spoken in their homes were isixhosa, english and afrikaans (see figure 1). figure 1: languages spoken at home (%). most of the surveyed students indicated that they had heard about the notion of multilingualism in the course of their studies (see figure 2). the responses they gave when requested to explain what the term meant included ‘being able to converse or communicate in more than one language’, ‘the use of multiple languages as a form of communication or instruction’, and ‘communicating in various languages so that everyone is able to understand’. figure 2: exposure to the notion of multilingualism in the course of studies: in the course of your studies in the journalism programme, do you recall being exposed to the term ‘multilingualism’ (%)? over half (60%) of those surveyed felt that multilingualism was not promoted in the courses they took (figure 3), and the same percentage (60%) felt that the multilingual strategies they were exposed to were not adequate (figure 4). the term ‘adequate’ was used to ascertain the quantity of multilingual strategies they had been exposed to. these results suggest that most felt that they had not been exposed to enough of these types of strategies. figure 3: students’ views on whether or not multilingualism is promoted in lectures: multilingualism is promoted in the lecture setting of the courses you take (%) figure 4: students’ views on the adequacy of the multilingual strategies and interventions they have been exposed to: the multilingual teaching and learning strategies and interventions you have been exposed to are adequate (%) when asked whether they perceived the multilingual strategies they had been exposed to as effective, there were almost as many students who felt that even though the strategies may not have been adequate, they were effective, and those who felt that the strategies were both inadequate and ineffective (figure 5). the term ‘effective’ was used here to ascertain whether they felt that the strategies they had been exposed to had worked or not. thus it seems that although they felt that they were not exposed to enough multilingual strategies, the ones they had been exposed to had worked. figure 5: students’ views on the efficacy of the multilingual strategies and interventions they have been exposed to: do you think the current approach to multilingual education in the journalism programme is effective? the students were also asked questions about the use of multilingualism in specific teaching and learning aspects (figure 6). using a multiple choice question, they were asked whether or not, during the course of their journalism studies, they had been exposed to multilingual glossaries, multilingual assessment briefs, multilingual lectures, multilingual assessment submissions, multilingual assessment feedback, multilingual courses, multilingual resources, and multilingual interactions with lecturers. the options were ‘not at all’, for students who felt that they were not at all exposed to a particular strategy in the course of their studies, ‘heard it mentioned’, for students who had heard about a particular strategy, but not actually been exposed to it, ‘once or twice’, for students who had been exposed to a particular strategy in the course of their study, but only once or twice, ‘frequently’, for students who felt that they were exposed to a particular strategy many times in the course of their studies, and ‘directly involved’, for students who were directly involved in the creation of a particular strategy. the two aspects where the majority perceived multilingual interactions to have been most frequently used, and where they felt they had a direct input in these, were in their interactions with lecturers outside of the formal lecture venues and in having taken language courses, such as isixhosa and afrikaans, as subjects with credits. figure 6: strategies where exposure to multilingualism has occurred. using braun and clarke’s (2006) six-step framework for thematic analysis, four themes were identified based on the transcripts of the focus group discussions. these themes related to student perceptions on the use of language in the course of their journalism studies. the researcher chose these themes because they explore how language use in teaching and learning is not just about the transmission of information, but, as per carey’s (2008) communication as culture theory, is a way of creating particular realities. the first theme relates to students’ perceptions of how language affects their academic performance. the second relates to their perception of how language shapes their sense of place in the classroom contexts. the third relates to their perceptions of how language influences the student-lecturer power dynamics. the fourth relates to their perceptions of how language may impact their professional prospects as aspiring professional communicators. student perceptions of how language use influences their academic performance the students who took part in the focus group had mixed views on the influence of language use on their academic performance. some saw multilingualism as a practice that could help ensure that students understood the content that was being discussed. this was expressed in views such as: ‘sometimes you get to be put off by the fact that you don’t understand things, the way that they are written or the way that they are taught. so i think for me it would encourage more students to love the career more when they understand.’ (1st year student) another student who thinks multilingualism could positively influence academic performance noted: ‘i think for me each and every student would perform better when they are being taught in a language that they grow up or they were born in than being introduced in a foreign language at a later stage in their lives.’ (1st year student) other students noted that the way multilingualism is spoken about and enacted in their context discriminated against certain languages with an overemphasis on english, afrikaans and isixhosa. one student stated: ‘for me the disadvantage at the moment as i see it is the fact that we only have about english, xhosa and afrikaans, that we have as a language to communicate with as journalist students.’ (1st year student) countering this view, though, was the perspective that if too many languages are used, this could create confusion and extra work for students. a student said: ‘how do you teach those languages – cohesively? … how do you as an educator or even as a student, how do you prioritise which you focus on?’ (1st year student) there was also a sense among students that the lack of multilingualism in their primary and secondary schooling experiences will pose a disadvantage to trying to implement multilingualism at a tertiary level. in this sense, then, while the literature and government policy advocate for the expansion of languages used in teaching and learning, students seemed to be of the view that an intervention at just one level, namely the tertiary education level, may be extremely limited in what it can achieve. a first-year student stated: ‘personally, i don’t think that i would do better. maybe 13 years ago, yes – if it started in grade 1 all the way to where i am. yes, it might have helped. and secondly, i don’t understand english to its fullest or properly, but english is the only language i understand better from all the other languages in south africa.’ (1st year student) another student noted: ‘i’m a third year journalism student but i struggle with speaking xhosa, even in my everyday communication with people and that’s because … i was sent to an english school at a very young age. and so those schools … black kids are encouraged to speak english, just to get them used to the language.’ (3rd year student) student perceptions of how language use influences their sense of place and self within higher education one of the views articulated very strongly by students who were part of this study was that the current monolingual culture of language use makes them feel out of place in lectures and in the higher education system as a whole. a student said: ‘i came from the eastern cape and i was in a xhosa school and all i spoke was xhosa. so when i got here in 2016, i couldn’t speak proper english, so i felt uncomfortable, like to even express myself with other people because i was like, ah they’re going to judge me because i don’t speak properly and they did, like because i failed my second year but in first year i feel like that was my biggest struggle.’ (3rd year student) another student noted that: ‘it will allow us to be able to express ourselves in our different languages. because like what i say in english is not basically what i wanted to say in my language’. there was a view from the students who took part in the study of the link between language and culture. one student noted: ‘with every language there’s cultural meaning behind it. so i think [if] we are being taught in our language it also helps us to retain our culture and our morals and our – the values that come with that language.’ (1st year student) student perceptions of how language use influences power dynamics in lectures several students were of the view that incorporating multilingualism could diffuse some of the power dynamics that are present in lecture contexts, and which currently cause students from previously disadvantaged background to feel excluded. these views seem to suggest that a lecturer’s use of a language that students are familiar with causes three things happen. firstly, the content is communicated more clearly because terms and examples are those with which students are familiar. secondly, their view of the lecturer changes from someone who is removed from their reality in terms of power into someone with whom they can relate, thus making them more open to the knowledge being communicated. this quote illustrates that view: ‘i had a question in class and then i went to go speak to the lecturer afterwards and we spoke together in xhosa, and while she was explaining and talking, it allowed me to see her as an individual, as a person. … so, what happens is, you start to see the lecturer as a person and as a teacher but you also start to get a respect for them as an adult and as an authority figure.’ (1st year student) another student said: ‘you see them clearly and you start to want to learn from them and you start to want to understand.’ (1st year student) thirdly, it gives students a voice because they hear their language being used by someone in a powerful position, and they in turn feel empowered to speak up because hearing the lecturer use the language confers academic legitimacy to it, and they will thus not be seen as being academically inept for using an indigenous language in an academic context. some students perceived the multilingual interventions by lecturers as interventions that are being done reluctantly, rather than out of recognition of a real need for a multilingual approach. a student noted: ‘some lecturers are very accommodating in terms, of you can express yourself – especially when you are writing assessment assignments and so on. they get an interpreter who is going to interpret for them what you were saying here, so that they can understand. but, i think there are some that don’t want to change anything.’ (1st year student) student perception of how language use influences their professional prospects given that journalism is a communications-based profession, students view the largely monolingual approach to teaching and learning as a potential stumbling block in their careers. despite the fact that english and afrikaans dominate the news content produced in south africa in terms of quantity, the newspaper titles and radio and tv stations that have the largest audiences provide coverage in indigenous languages (finlay 2019). most of the communities that are reported on consist of indigenous language speakers. there thus appears to be recognition that being fluent in many languages is advantageous in this discipline. a student said: ‘i also think it’s important because in the field that we are currently in right now which is the media and journalism department. when we’re doing interviews or when we’re out reporting it’s very seldom that you only speak to an english-speaking person. you will speak to someone that’s maybe, in like the townships where they speak their different languages.’ (1st year student) another student noted: ‘i think in the industry of journalists being the educator of the society and community, they are supposed to be, you know, making it conducive for everyone to benefit equally. … as a watchdog of the community it’s important that you get to cover every language and understand every people’s culture.’ (1st year student) there appears to be recognition that changing the way language is used when it comes to teaching journalism has the potential to change the way language is used in the practice of journalism, and that in turn has the potential to change the way language is used in society. one student said: ‘for me, i look at it at the point of the university or we’re in the era of we’re trying to decolonise the curriculum, so by adding other languages, i think, i think it’s an effective thing because who best to start and initiate that, than us journalism students, who are going to be going into the industry and producing content for people to consume? so, i’d say in that area, it’s beneficial.’ (3rd year student) another student said: ‘understanding is key though, because it comes with understanding languages and also understand the cultures and views to what people hold. so if you don’t understand the languages and you don’t understand what’s being taught and what’s being spoken you won’t understand how the message that you’re going to be saying will be perceived.’ (1st year student) discussion from these findings, one can deduce that students have mixed views on whether multilingual interventions and strategies will improve their academic performance, with some feeling that hearing complex concepts explained in the languages they speak at home will allow the information communicated to make more sense. others are of the view that since multilingualism is not applied holistically to their education experience, trying to incorporate it at a tertiary level could end up confusing them, and adding to an already heavy course load. this is important to note for tertiary educators because it suggests that in the quest towards a multilingual higher education sector, educators must bear in mind the fact that while multilingualism is largely appealing, there are certain perceptions from students that could pose as stumbling blocks. thus, no matter how well intentioned the multilingual strategies and interventions by educators, if students perceive them as ‘more work’, they may not have the desired effect, highlighting the point that this needs to be started at a primary school level. another important deduction, both from the survey and the focus groups, is that the journalism students who took part think multilingual education is important, and that the strategies employed in teaching and learning in the journalism programme do not fully meet their needs. it would seem that for some students, these strategies are not being perceived as adequately addressing the barriers that exist due to a higher education experience that is rooted in a culture of monolingualism. these findings suggest that for some students, the view is that the inclusion of multilingualism by academics in higher education is not primarily rooted in shifting the culture of language use in tertiary education, but is rather an endeavour for them to appear to be doing something, as stated by a student quoted above who said ‘there are some that don’t want to change anything’. for afrikaans-speaking students, there was minimal indication in the discussions that they had been disadvantaged in terms of writing and telling their stories, although this finding does not imply that is the case because, comparatively, there were fewer afrikaans-speaking students who took part in the study (see figure 1). for students who speak isixhosa, there was an expressed view that not only had the inadequate multilingual strategies impacted their marks because of a struggle understanding the content, there was also a feeling of not belonging in the classroom context due to not being as articulate in the language used. this lack of a sense of belonging is particularly relevant in a discipline where language creates culture and creates an idea of who has what it takes and who does not. conclusion the #feesmustfall movement created a greater sense of urgency as students called for not only a multilingual higher education system, but a decolonised one, where different ways of knowing and being were recognised and validated in the academy. as part of those calls, students have demanded that the resources of teaching and learning move from being based on western thinkers, and go on to esteem african scholarship. the view of communication as culture posited by james carey (2008) allows us a more sociological view of the use of language in teaching and learning in higher education. this view emphasises the use of language as a means of representing shared beliefs, rather than merely as something with which to impart information (carey 2009:14). this view can help us better understand how the current multilingual strategies and interventions are being perceived by students because it looks at how language, as part of communication, is being used to produce, maintain, repair and transform reality in a given context (carey 2009:8). acknowledgements all of the students who were participants in this study. there are too many to name. dr najwa norodien-fataar from cape peninsula university of technology’s fundani centre for assisting with data collection. competing interests the author has declared that no competing interest exists. author’s contributions only one author contributed to this study and the writing of the article. ethical consideration cape peninsular university of technology’s fundani centre for higher education development, office of chair: fundani ched research ethics committee (frec:ref: 016/19). participation in the online survey was done voluntarily, anonymously and with the students’ consent. further, those who participated in the focus group discussions gave consent for the discussion to be recorded and transcribed. participation was voluntary. funding information this study was funded by the cape peninsula university of technology’s research and innovation fund for teaching and learning. data availability statement data available on request from the author. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references alexander, n., 1997, ‘language policy and 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accepted: 09 mar. 2016; published: 15 july 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract throughout sub-saharan africa, many children are not learning to read competently in the first 3 years of primary school; thus, both ‘reading to learn’ and ‘reading for pleasure’ in these early years, and in higher grades, are constrained. two of the many reasons for reading failure are the absence of suitable materials in languages with which learners are familiar and teachers’ limited knowledge of pedagogic practices that support reading development. in this article, we describe the african storybook (asb) initiative as one imaginative response to the dearth of interesting and accessible stories in local languages and report findings from the first phase of a professional development project in which teacher-researchers in two ugandan schools are using asb materials to ‘language’ in lunyole at the meetings of their action research group. we argue that their investment in extending their literacy in a language which they speak more fluently than they read or write, and the contestations over written forms of this language that have surfaced in some of the discussions, are likely to be productive for their professional development as teachers and for their participation in ongoing community debates about the orthography of a recently codified and standardised language. by languaging together in lunyole, with asb materials as the main object of their conversations and activities, the teacher-researchers have begun to develop capabilities that are likely to benefit the lunyole/english biliteracy of the learners whom they teach. they are imagining new possibilities for themselves and for the learners. introduction in june 2015, usaid and the uganda school health and reading program (ushrp) reported findings from research into the reading achievements of grades 1–3 learners in selected ugandan schools. the recommendations section of this report reads as follows: recommendations for improving reading achievement in ugandan primary schools: given the very low levels of reading achievement in both local languages and english and the situation in schools and classrooms, the following recommendations for moving forward in the area of support for reading reform in primary schools in uganda include: materials: teachers need materials to teach reading (teachers guides and learner primers) but they also need to be trained in using these materials to benefit the learners. classroom observation has found that even though learners have the materials, the teachers focus most on reciting from the board. teacher training: teachers need to be trained on the explicit teaching of reading, how to utilize the teaching materials and how to guide learners in the use of the learner materials. teachers also need to be given guidance on regular lesson planning and assessing learner progress in foundational reading skills. foundational pre-reading skills (such as print awareness) need to be an early focus. teacher support: even if trained, teachers need continued follow-up support for reading instruction in the classroom. current evidence suggests that co-ordinating centre tutors are not visiting schools often enough and head teachers (or other school based staff) are also not providing regular support and supervision of teachers in using the reading methodology. (usaid/uganda school health and reading program 2015:4) while critical of some aspects of these recommendations (e.g. the entirely deficit construction of teachers), we acknowledge the reality of low levels of literacy achievement in many ugandan primary schools, even when teachers and learners have access to sufficient resources (busingye & najjuma 2015). as a response to the observation of busingye and najjuma (2015:124) that there is a need to ‘tell stories behind the statistics’ of wide surveys of the state of ugandan primary school education, in this article we describe and reflect critically on one imaginative response to the concerns raised in the usaid/ushrp report: an action research project in which the ugandan co-ordinator of the african storybook (asb) initiative is working with primary school teachers from two schools in the butaleja district. initially, the project co-ordinator had imagined that a series of after-school workshops would focus on how to make optimal use in the classroom of asb materials that had been translated into lunyole, the local language. while the teachers were interested in extending their pedagogic knowledge, their conversations from the first meeting onwards revealed curiosity about, and in some instances strongly held views, on the ‘correctness’ of the forms of lunyole used in the asb texts. the first lunyole dictionary was published only recently, and this may be why debates about forms and meaning are much more ‘alive’ than for languages with orthographies that were settled long ago. we suggest that literate speakers of lunyole are likely to imagine themselves as authorities in a way that literate speakers of standardised english or luganda, to take two examples relevant to uganda, are unlikely to do. before presenting a series of vignettes from the teachers’ workshops which are the heart of the article, we outline the asb initiative and its materials and the literature on which we have drawn in analysing the vignettes. the african storybook initiative as an imaginative response to the africa-wide shortage of texts in readers’ primary languages while governments throughout africa have made progress during the last decade towards achieving the goal of education for all, it is still the case that after the first 3 years of primary education, many children have not learned to read well enough to enjoy reading and are not well equipped for reading to learn at the next level of schooling (barrett 2015; howie et al. 2008; pretorius 2014; tao 2015; unesco 2014; usaid & ugandan school health and reading program 2015). the shortage of appropriate stories for early reading in languages with which children are familiar is one of the key obstacles to learning to read well (parry, andema & tumusiime 2005). the lack of texts in children’s primary language(s) is of particular concern in bior multilingual education contexts in which learners are expected to be bior multiliterate and in which reading to learn in the higher grades is done in a language that is not their primary language. pretorius (2014) quotes studies in bilingual reading research which have found that decoding skills can transfer across languages with an alphabetic written code and that the ability to identify setting, main characters, problems and resolutions in narratives and to identify main ideas, make inferences and use linguistic or text clues to construct meaning when reading expository texts, can also be transferred. pretorius (2014:54) argues that in bilingual/multilingual classroom contexts, it is ‘important for learners to develop strong literacy skills as a basis for building academic literacy proficiency that can be shared across languages’. as noted by welch (2012), conventional publishing models which rely on economies of scale, are unable to provide texts in sufficient number or variety in the continent’s multitude of languages, some of which are spoken by relatively small populations. the asb initiative is an imaginative response to the need for many stories in many languages at little or no financial cost to readers. under the leadership of the south african institute for distance education (saide), open access digital texts for early reading have been sourced from and translated into a total of 65 languages to date (january 2016) and uploaded onto a comprehensive website. learners do not have to be online to read the texts: they and their teachers or caregivers can download them onto their own devices or print them, though we recognise that access to the resources with which to do this is still problematic in some contexts. since the start of the asb initiative in 2013, saide has stimulated and managed story development, translation and adaptation in numerous ways: through partner-led workshops in a variety of contexts in sub-saharan african countries as well as through integration of story development and translation into teacher education programmes. it is possible for story developers to create or translate or adapt a text offline and then upload it when the internet is available. while some adaptations to texts focus on changes to a storyline or on provision of additional content for an information text, others involve the selection of simpler or more complex lexis and syntax to suit the level of the learners who will read the texts or adjustments to conform to the variety of a language spoken in a particular area (e.g. in south africa, the sepedi dialect called ‘pretoria’ as distinct from the sepedi spoken in the limpopo province). although the project title suggests that all the texts are narratives (stories), this is not the case. many are information texts and though the quality may be uneven (janks & harley 2015), the best of these offer learners opportunities to extend what cummins (2000) terms cognitive academic language proficiency through engaging with registers required for understanding and producing the discourses of various subjects in the school curriculum (e.g. science). researchers have established that the teaching of reading in the early grades has been given little attention in many teacher education programmes (welch et al. 2015) and, that where these programmes do address reading pedagogy, teacher educators often assume that teachers can apply what they have learned about teaching reading in the dominant language of the education system (e.g. english) to teaching reading in the primary language of the learners. this is a problematic assumption, particularly in contexts where teachers are not confident readers and writers of the language which they and the children speak – a consequence of their formal education having been mainly in a language of wider communication, such as english or in an indigenous language chosen by the former colonial power, such as luganda. this is the situation of the lunyole-speaking teachers in the buteleja district of uganda whose participation in an ongoing teacher-researcher project facilitated by the asb co-ordinator for uganda is the focus of this article. the teacher-researcher project in the buteleja district: imagining teachers as agents of change for comber, the assumption that all students are capable of researching how language works, that all cultural groups have significant contributions to make to understandings of literate practices and that all texts should be subject to question is central to ‘curriculum justice’ for all (2016:5). this assumption underpins the small-scale research project described and discussed in this article, though in this instance the students are not the learners in classrooms about whom comber writes, but their teachers. in conceptualising the project and in analysing data gathered during its initial stages, we have drawn on the theoretical constructs of ‘teacher agency’, ‘capability’, ‘identity/ies’, ‘investment’ and ‘languaging’, in each of which, in our view, imagination is implicated. teacher agency in their exploration of the concept of teacher agency, priestley, biesta and robinson (2012) focus on how agency is ‘achieved’ in concrete settings and under particular ‘ecological’ conditions. they argue that agency is not something that people can have but rather it is something that people do: it denotes a ‘quality’ of the engagement of actors with temporal-relational-context-for-action, not a quality of the actors themselves. viewing agency in such terms helps us to understand how humans are able to be reflexive and creative, acting counter to societal constraints, but also how individuals are enabled and constrained by their social and material environments. (priestley et al. 2012:3; italics in the original) for these authors, agency is concerned with intention to bring about a future that is different from the present and the past and situated within social structures and cultures that may, together with the presence or absence of material resources, enable or constrain its achievement (priestley et al. 2012:3–4). while acknowledging the important influences of teachers’ general life histories and of their specific professional histories (i.e. the ‘past’) on teacher agency, priestley et al. argue that agency can only ever be ‘acted out’ in a present in which the actors ‘make practical and normative judgements among alternative possible trajectories of action, in response to the emerging demands, dilemmas and ambiguities of presently evolving situations’ (emibayer & mische 1998, in priestley et al. 2012:4). for theorists and education practitioners who offer ‘capabilities’ as an alternative to economic wealth as a measure of development (e.g. baxen, nsubuga & johanson botha 2014; sen 1999; tikly & barrett 2011; walker et al. 2009), ‘agency and human flourishing are interlinked, since agency allows people to act on behalf of the goals for which they have reason to strive, while limited agency constrains one’s ability to choose preferred functionings’ (baxen et al. 2014:96). capabilities walker et al. define capabilities as ‘the real and actual freedoms (opportunities) that people have to do and be what they value being and doing’ (2009:567) and capability as ‘not just the opportunity for empowerment, or agency, but being able to exercise such agency in advancing the goals one values’ (2009:568). in her work with teachers in tanzania, tao (2015) has argued for understanding what teachers value as a starting point for professional development. with reference to research in education, baxen et al. consider a key question to be ‘what factors influence the ability of education participants to convert educational resources into capabilities?’ (2014:100). identity and/or identities and investment since 1995, bonny norton has been exploring the concepts of identity, investment and imagined communities both individually and also in collaboration with a wide range of scholars. in the revised second edition of identity and language learning, subtitled extending the conversation, norton defines identity as ‘how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is structured across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future’ (2013:45). in the afterword to this second edition, kramsch (2013) writes that norton’s notion of investment, originally conceptualised as a sociological complement to the psychological construct of motivation: accentuates the role of human agency and identity in engaging with the task at hand, in accumulating economic and symbolic capital, in having stakes in the endeavour and in persevering in that endeavour. (p. 195) in explaining one of the differences between motivation and investment, darvin and norton suggest that in addition to asking ‘are students motivated to learn a language?, researchers should ask the question ‘are students and teachers invested in the language and literacy practices of a given classroom and community?’ (2015:37). in our view, this question echoes tao’s recommendation that designers and implementers of teacher professional development programmes begin by understanding what teachers value, as what they value is likely to be what they are prepared to invest in. most contemporary conceptualisations of identity consider it to be ‘fluid, multiple, and a site of struggle’ (darvin & norton 2015:37) and for this reason some prefer the term ‘identities’ (e.g. gee 2001; hall 1996). we suggest that the four constructs briefly outlined thus far are important for the design and evaluation of any professional development programme and that imagination is central to each of them: new ways of teaching and new teacher and learner identities need to be imagined as a starting point for explorations of new ways of being and doing and as the explorations proceed, each of these is likely to be re-imagined. the final construct below is of a different order. it is an umbrella term for the particular activity of making meaning with and through language, an activity that involves using language imaginatively and creatively. languaging in a chapter titled ‘languaging, agency and collaboration in advanced second language proficiency’, swain (2006) describes languaging as: the process of making meaning and shaping knowledge and experience through language. languaging about language is one of the ways we learn language. this means that the languaging (the dialogue or private speech) that learners engage in takes on new significance. in it, we can observe learners operating on linguistic data and coming to an understanding of previously less well understood material. in languaging we see learning taking place. (p. 98) in similar vein, for lankiewicz, languaging is ‘a dynamic social phenomenon with the language system idiosyncratically constructed by its users’ (2014:17). both authors acknowledge vygotsky’s insight that language is one of the most important mediating tools of the mind, with swain emphasising the value of what she and her colleague lapkin have termed ‘talking-it through’, ‘to another, with another or with the self’ (2006:97). through an analysis of conversations of pairs of english second-language learners, in which they discuss aspects of their linguistic, social and cultural knowledge of english, swain (2006:105) demonstrates how these language learners extend their competence and confidence in using the target language as a result of languaging about language. in their conversations, they identify things about the target language that they do not know and set about trying to solve the problem, using language to mediate their thinking. the teacher-researchers participating in the action research project described and discussed in this article are not engaged in learning a new language but in languaging about the written forms of a language in which they are expert speakers but novice readers and writers. before turning to vignettes from the professional development meetings during which they engaged in languaging, we briefly outline our understanding of action research. action research although action research has been described as ‘a very broad church’ (kemmis & mctaggart 1987), two words often used to distinguish it from other approaches to research are ‘involvement’ and ‘improvement’: involvement of the researcher(s) in the social situation they are researching with the aim of bringing about improvements in policy, practices and environments. for example, kemmis and mctaggart (1988) define action research as: … a form of collective self-enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own social or educational practices, as well as the situations in which these practices are carried out. (p. 55) while an ‘enquiry spiral’ (identifying a concern or issue, undertaking reconnaissance, planning, taking action steps, evaluating, amending the plan, taking further action, etc.) is characteristic of action research, researchers may use a wide range of methods for collecting and analysing data. mctaggart (1996) cautions that the spiral should not be considered as a template for practising action research, and mcniff (1988) demonstrates how ‘auxiliary spirals’ may become a productive focus of enquiry in addition to or in place of what had been identified initially as a central concern. while collection and analysis of data should be done with the same rigour as for any other type of empirical research, mctaggart (1996), mcniff (1988) and others (e.g. stringer 2007) stress the importance of responsiveness to the interests of participants in the enquiry, which may result in changes of focus during the life of a research project. as will be described below, what the authors had identified as the central concern to which they and a group of teachers would respond, was not the teachers’ first priority and as a result, the primary focus of the investigation changed at the outset but in ways that, in our view, have been productive for the teachers’ professional development and for literacy teaching and learning in their classrooms. telling a research story in case study research in educational settings, bassey (1999) describes three types of educational case study: theory-seeking and theory testing; story-telling and picture-drawing; evaluative. he defines story-telling and picture-drawing case studies as ‘narrative stories and descriptive accounts of educational events, projects, programmes, institutions or systems which deserve to be told to interested audiences, after careful analysis’ (bassey 1999:58). bassey draws on the work of stenhouse to advocate the use of ‘short descriptive pieces’ or ‘vignettes’ in the reporting and discussion of research findings in order to ‘crystallise important aspects of a case’ (stenhouse 1988:52, in bassey 1999:88). in our attempt to tell a story of the teacher-researchers at work, we present a series of vignettes which we then discuss in the final part of the article. the research context in uganda, teachers are expected to teach grades 1–4 learners to become literate in the dominant local language and to use this language as medium of instruction (ministry of education and sport, uganda; national curriculum development centre, uganda 2007, in heugh & mulimba 2013:17). it is important to note that in the buteleja district in south-eastern uganda, while lunyole is the dominant local language, in the colonial era formal education was first introduced in luganda and this language is still used in churches, the lower courts and health centres (tembe & norton 2008). tembe and norton note that the orthography for lunyole was developed only in 2003 through the lunyole language association in partnership with the summer institute of linguistics. prior to the introduction of the asb texts, few literacy materials in lunyole were available to teachers. the research participants and the research process when the asb co-ordinator invited teachers from two neighbouring primary schools to become teacher-researchers who would investigate with her how to use asb texts in lunyole productively in the classroom, six teachers and the principal of one of the schools responded enthusiastically. however, they requested that the initial focus of the research meetings should be on extending their own knowledge of reading and writing in lunyole. as noted by tembe and norton (2008:37), when literacy is theorised as a social practice, it is necessary to understand it ‘both locally and historically, as well as with reference to the social relationships in which speakers, readers and writers find themselves’. we suggest that a possible reason for the teachers’ request was that for the first time they had access to a range of texts in lunyole and thus could see value in being literate in it – both for themselves and for the learners in their classrooms. while the co-ordinator agreed that the workshops would focus on the teachers’ lunyole language literacy, almost from the start conversations and activities included imagining how to ‘transfer’ what the teachers were learning through their languaging activities to their classroom practices. nevertheless, the main research question changed. the original question, ‘could professional development activities based on asb stories in lunyole be productive for literacy teaching and learning?’ had been formulated in discussions between the asb co-ordinator and the co-author of this article in the role of ‘critical friend’. it was modified to become ‘could group reading and discussion of asb stories in lunyole lead to increased teacher competence and confidence in reading and writing in lunyole and to greater use of lunyole in the classroom?’ the group agreed to meet for two hours after school, either once or twice a week (depending on school commitments) for the duration of a school term, at the end of which they would reflect critically on the research question and make decisions about the future of the research group. each teacher recorded notes at each meeting and at some of the meetings prepared materials for use in their classrooms. the asb co-ordinator recorded field notes during the meetings, wrote reflections in her journal after each meeting and emailed these, together with photographs of the group at work, to her critical friend for discussion in email conversations. at the final meeting of the first phase of their work, the teacher-researchers wrote individual reflections and used these in a critical group reflection and to make plans for the second term. in the next part of the article, we present eight vignettes from the data collected from teachers’ materials, the asb co-ordinator’s field notes and reflective journal, the email conversations and the end-of-term reflections of the whole research group and then reflect on what we think these vignettes ‘tell’ us. languaging about an african storybook story at the second meeting of the group, the teacher-researchers read an asb first-sentence story ono indiise (this is me). in doing so, they took turns to read sentences, at times suggesting corrections to each other’s pronunciation and afterwards discussed the spelling of particular words and the punctuation of the sentences. for example, while the word hifanani is used in the story, the group agreed that the word in common usage is hifananyi and that they would tell learners this when reading the story with them. as a group, they decided that it would be helpful to learners to use the phrase hifananyi hiranyi to generate further words beginning with hi and that they would begin with higalamu (it is wide), himaali (it is black), hihosa (it is white) and hirando (it is red) (sources: teachers’ notes; asb co-ordinator’s field notes; sentence chart prepared by teachers). languaging about the lunyole alphabet in discussing the lunyole alphabet and the spelling of some of the words in the asb stories, the group focused on comparisons and contrasts with the alphabet/spelling in english and in luganda. the co-ordinator recorded the following observations made by the teachers: neither x nor q is used in lunyole. lunyole uses a long-tailed ŋ. words with a v or z as first letter are borrowed (e.g. vumbula from luganda). b is the only consonant that can be doubled (plosive bb). the consonant before any word ending in a vowel must be r (e.g. muliro). in lunyole, repetition of a vowel affects meaning: baasaala (i was born), basaala (they produce) (source: asb co-ordinator’s field notes). languaging about thematic vocabulary the group read the english version of the asb story the letter and discussed how they could translate it into lunyole and then prepare a bilingual vocabulary chart for learners. during the session, they compiled a 15-item poster titled at the hospital and in the process became aware of the challenge for translators, and for early-grade learners, of words with multiple meanings. the following are some examples from the poster: lunyole english egangiro hospital omugangi doctor / nurse (but noted in discussion that this word also means ‘a load’ omulwaye patient amalesi drugs episo syringe (but noted in discussion that this word also means ‘a needle for sewing clothes’) languaging with a lunyole language expert the chairperson of the lunyole language association joined the research group for the reading and discussion of the asb story goat, dog and cow, which had been translated into lunyole. during the discussion, several teachers recommended changes to words they considered inappropriate in the context of the story and in two instances politely disagreed with the lla chairperson’s choice of vocabulary for the story. he agreed with their suggested changes and subsequently the translation was revised, a new translation uploaded and the senior story editor informed of the change (source: asb co-ordinator’s field notes). languaging during a collaborative writing exercise each teacher drafted a version in lunyole of the same story and then shared it with the group. ideas, words and phrases from these individual stories were then selected for one group story, the first version of which was written on flip chart paper by the co-ordinator in response to dictation from the teachers. as a group they then decided on improvements to the storyline, grammar, vocabulary and spelling. the co-ordinator noticed that teachers were more interested in writing information texts than imaginative stories and also more interested in ‘correct’ than playful use of language (sources: teacher’s draft stories; combined and revised story on flip chart paper; asb co-ordinator’s field notes and journal reflections). sharing teaching strategies towards the end of the first term, one of the meetings focused on pedagogy. in discussing the drawings in the asb stories, the teachers agreed that these assisted reading comprehension. one teacher told the group that she planned to bring objects, photographs or drawings to class to help learners with word meanings in both lunyole and english. her idea was taken up by the whole group, with each teacher agreeing to include objects or images or both in their literacy lessons, to make notes on learners’ responses and to bring these notes to a group meeting for discussion. two teachers showed the group a shortened version of an asb story and explained how they used this adapted story in numeracy lessons to teach subtraction. in the final part of the meeting, the group discussed learners’ difficulties with prepositions in lunyole: in a written text they are separate words but many learners appear to hear them as part of the adjacent word. everyone agreed to bring suggestions for tackling this problem to the next meeting (sources: teachers’ notes; asb co-ordinator’s field notes). becoming ambassadors for lunyole-in-education the co-ordinator recorded two examples of what we consider to be shifts in teacher identity after participating in the research project for one term. firstly, at a regional ministry of education workshop, in response to a question about whether to teach in lunyole or english, the teachers participating in the action research project argued in favour of lunyole and were the only ones to do so. secondly, the teacher-researchers have submitted a request to the ushrp, run by rti international, that teachers’ and learners’ books be translated from luganda, one of the ‘cohort languages’ in the programme, into lunyole, a language not currently part of the programme. one of the advantages of having these materials translated into lunyole is that the rti materials are now available for downloading under a creative commons agreement. reflecting on languaging experiences during the first research cycle and making plans for the second cycle the comments below are representative of the positive and negative reflections on the experience of participating in the group’s activities that were recorded by individual teachers, read to the group and recorded on flip chart paper by the co-ordinator. the positive ‘i can read and write mother tongue words’. ‘i can read the mother tongue alphabet’. ‘i’ve learnt a lot about the lunyole alphabet and spelling and the use of lunyole prepositions’. ‘i’m learning how to write the grammar’. ‘workshops have helped me to learn how to teach in the literacy hour’. ‘i can write a story in mother tongue, considering the age level of classes’. ‘children are now participating actively in my lessons’. ‘i used to contest teaching in the mother tongue but now i’m interested’. ‘in our group we gain knowledge by consensus’. ‘at the meetings people trusted me and shared with me wholly and willingly’. the negative ‘the time is not enough for professional development’. ‘the lack of support from the department of education is disappointing’. ‘i need more books in lunyole’. ‘i’m disappointed that i still can’t create rhymes and tongue twisters’. ‘some children are slow learners in mother tongue’. ‘it’s difficult to help all the children because my class is so big’. ‘i have little knowledge about ict (use of lap top)’. plans for the second cycle ‘write stories together on the term’s themes’. ‘have more workshops on teaching reading in early grades’. ‘keep going with lunyole language work’. discussion saide’s vision is that ‘every african child have enough stories in a language familiar to them to practise their reading skills and learn to love reading’ (saide pamphlet on the asb initiative, no date). turning the imagined into reality involves not only designing, producing and supplying texts but also facilitating teachers’ exploration of their attitudes, values and pedagogic practices in relation to language and literacy inside and outside the classroom. in our view, asb stories in lunyole as a vehicle for languaging in and about lunyole have contributed to teacher-researchers ‘ownership’ of the language of their homes and community, one result of which has been challenges to aspects of its recent codification and standardisation (evident in their contestation of word forms in some of the asb texts expressed in vignettes 1, 2 and 4). however, as pointed out by one of the reviewers of this article, the ideological question of whose ‘voice’ is to be authoritative in regard to the written form(s) of a language is a complex one, given that there may be a variety of dialects, even in such a local language as lunyole. with reference to stories on the asb website in the isindebele and siswati languages, jiyana and ndlovu (2015) have proposed that stories in different varieties of the same language be given an identifying tag: siswati (swaziland); siswati (south africa); northern ndebele (south africa); southern ndebele (south africa); ndebele (zimbabwe). however, a question raised by teachers’ concern with ‘correctness’ is whether this may lead to their privileging of texts which in their view exemplify such correct use of language over texts which are likely to engage learners’ interest because of the quality of the story and/or images but which may include what these teachers consider to be linguistic ‘errors’. in their mid-term review of the asb initiative, janks and harley (2015:ii) note what they term ‘the utilitarian orientation to literacy’ of most of the teachers whom they observed using the materials at the pilot implementation sites. for these reviewers, teachers’ preference for non-fiction, information curriculum-related stories or stories with a moral ‘raises questions about the value of narrative fiction and the pleasure principle in relation to literacy in african communities’ (janks and harley 2015:ii). while we agree that such questions are important, we suggest that ‘the pleasure principle’ can be imagined in different ways. the teacher-researchers took pleasure in the achievement of knowledge of the written form(s) of their mother tongue (vignettes 1, 2, 3, 5, 8), in their evolving knowledge of new pedagogic strategies (vignettes 3, 6 and 8) and in their evolving capability to produce teaching materials (vignette 8, term 2 plan: ’write stories together on the term’s themes’). in priestley et al.’s (2012) terms, through languaging together about the lunyole language the teacher-researchers have acted agentively to extend their knowledge of the written forms of their language and in the process there has been identity shift along a continuum from novice to expert, with individual teachers imagining themselves in different positions along this continuum (‘i’ve learnt a lot’; ‘i’m learning how …’). with knowledge comes both agency and capability to participate in conversations with a language expert and even to challenge this expert (vignette 4), to advocate the use of the learners’ mother tongue in the classroom (vignette 7) and to request teaching and learning materials in lunyole from a programme that provides these in the dominant local languages (vignette 7). each of these actions suggests an identity shift in terms of attitude to one’s home language and in terms of confident professional identity. however, it should be noted that there is also evidence in the vignettes of constraints on capability (‘the lack of support from the department of education is disappointing’; ‘i have little knowledge of ict’; it’s difficult to help all the children because my class is so big’) and of a preoccupation with ‘correctness’ which may have a negative influence on text choice. in any pilot project, one of the questions to be addressed is that of long-term sustainability. in the formation of the teacher-researcher group in the buteleja district and in the facilitation of its meetings, the asb co-ordinator has played a key role to date. however, there have already been occasions on which the group has met without her and continued its languaging activities and in the final vignette there are two causes for optimism that the teachers will continue to invest in their professional development. firstly, there is evidence of an incipient professional learning community (‘in our group we gain knowledge by consensus’; at the meetings people trusted me and shared with me wholly and willingly’). janks and harley consider ‘a strong sense of community’ to be a likely indicator of sustained and productive use of the asb materials: ‘the more the teachers support one another the greater the gains. the more there is a sense of community within the school and out to the local community, the more excited the teachers become’ (2015:ii). secondly, the plans for the next term’s meetings (vignette 8), though quite general in their formulation, suggest continued investment in their own learning and in that of the children in their classes whose identities at least some of the teachers now construct as active rather than passive learners and as learners who will benefit from learning to read and write in their mother tongue (vignettes 6 and 8). what requires further exploration is whether languaging around stories could be the starting point for systematic joint lesson planning and materials development to support the learning of both lunyole and english. in this article, our focus has been on imagination exercised by materials developers and providers (the asb initiative) and by teacher-researchers (early-grade teachers in two ugandan primary schools) rather than by child learners. however, we suggest that stimulating materials – in learners’ home languages, in dominant regional languages and in global languages – have the potential to be a catalyst for classroom teaching that opens up imaginative possibilities for learners to enjoy becoming readers and writers of texts in multiple languages and language varieties. equally important is an open licence digital publishing model such as that of the asb initiative because this allows readers and writers to be authorities on languages and language varieties, to imagine new versions of texts and to submit these for inclusion on the site alongside other versions. in response to the challenging question of whose language ideology should ‘count’ in particular sociocultural contexts, we suggest that this publishing model enables a partial answer: not ours or theirs but ours and theirs (collins 1998). acknowledgements we are grateful to tessa welch for her insightful comments on a draft version of this article and to the reviewers to whose incisive critique we have attempted to respond. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions juliet tembe facilitated the teachers’ meetings and the article was equally 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accepted: 14 june 2018; published: 30 aug. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract it has long been the focus of many countries around the world to see their entrepreneurs grow and to introduce interventions to assist them, as they realise the impact these entrepreneurs have on their economies. technology is believed to be one of the biggest tools that entrepreneurs can use to assist them in growing sustainable businesses. there is an increased need for small businesses to employ information and communication technology (ict) to enhance their businesses as part of their countries’ socio-economic development. this, in turn, leads to an increased need for digital literacy interventions for these entrepreneurs. many interventions have tried to assist a country’s residents to adopt ict and enhance their digital literacy levels. however, many of these did not have the desired outcomes. many barriers prevent these initiatives from being successful, for example difficulty in retaining the current workforce, a lack of skills and human capital development, a lack of resources, security concerns, mistrust regarding ict and ict service providers and a lack of trust. data were gathered over three years (2012, 2013 and 2017) to determine whether there has been any change in the uptake of technology over time, whether technology is indeed the answer to many entrepreneurs’ problems and whether some of the barriers could be overcome. an interpretivist paradigm using a qualitative approach was employed and 193 entrepreneurs were interviewed over three years to see if there was any change in their adoption of technology, which should be the case if one recognises the pace at which technology is changing. the identified barriers no longer seem to exist for south african entrepreneurs. it emerged that technology adoption and digital literacy studies should be industry-specific and should not be based on a generic approach. thus, digital literacy cannot be used as a broad term and needs to be focused for each sector. this article proposes that most entrepreneurs have addressed one of the main barriers. these main barriers include a lack of expertise, in-house knowledge or a one-stop shop to assist with ict queries and problems. most of the entrepreneurs now have access to an information technology consultant or expert who can help them to become more digitally literate. although many new technologies are being developed, certain standard software systems, such as the microsoft office package, will always be used. thus, these standard software systems should be the focus of digital literacy training interventions. these interventions should be simple and easily accessible to everyone. introduction it has long been a focus of many countries around the world to see their entrepreneurs grow. these countries have introduced interventions to assist entrepreneurs because they realise the impact these entrepreneurs have on their economies (esselaar et al. 2006; kunene 2008; merkofer & murphy 2009; oke, burke & myers 2007; talukder, quazi & djatikusumo 2013; thomas et al. 2004). this, in turn, leads to an increased need for digital literacy interventions for these entrepreneurs. many countries focus on these interventions because small and medium enterprises (smes) are the driving force behind a country’s economy and are regarded as essential for economic growth (thomas et al. 2004). it is also seen as the answer to job creation and poverty reduction (esselaar et al. 2006). thomas et al. (2004) continue by stating that 99.8% of all firms in the european union are smes. peris et al. (2013) are of the opinion that these firms account for 65% of employment. chatzoglou and vraimaki (2010) substantiate this. they state that 95% of all companies in greece are smes and account for 74% of the employment in the private sector. in south africa, it is estimated that smes account for 90% of business establishments. their contribution to the gross domestic product (gdp) is between 52% and 57%, while their contribution to employment is 61% (adeniran & johnston 2016; cant, wiid & hung 2016; gono, harindranath & berna ozcan 2016; mavimbela & dube, 2016). these numbers reflect a growth from 2005 when antonites and van vuuren (2005) pointed out that small firms in south africa contributed 47% to job creation. cant et al. (2016) state that the sustainability and long-term success of these businesses become a crucial focus point. thus, these small firms are seen as a tool to address world issues such as poverty and hunger. technology is believed to be one of the most important tools that these entrepreneurs can use to assist them in growing sustainable businesses (adeniran & johnston 2016; merkofer & murphy 2009; steyn & leonard 2012; thomas et al. 2004). there is an increased need for small businesses to employ information and communication technology (ict) to enhance their businesses as part of their countries’ socio-economic development. however, they also realise that there is a growing skills shortage (mutula & van brakel 2007; uddin 2005). cant et al. (2016) note that ict is an essential success factor for many successful smes. mutula and van brakel (2007) continue by stating that one of the major challenges faced by developing countries is the elevation of education and literacy, in general, and digital literacy, in particular. the markets are expanding globally for these smes because of innovations and new technologies. beck and demirgüç-kunt (2006), in gono et al. (2016), note that one of the key reasons for poor ict uptake could be resource constraints. in the same vein, it is said that one of the biggest needs and concerns of the adoption of ict is that of the skills of smes; thus, their digital literacy skills are not what they should be (gono et al. 2016:724). gono et al. (2016) say that this skill ‘is the new currency for smes’. duncombe and molla (2009:2) note from past experience that ‘intervention for smes depends upon building enterprises’ competence to process and use externally sourced information and knowledge resources’. gono et al. (2016) note that one of the key issues still facing south africa is the urgency to develop smes, as this would assist in the restructuring of the socio-economic change of the country. however, they also point out that smes do not feel that government is supporting them in these initiatives, as ‘81% of the survey respondents, 105 smes, report not having received any financial support from the government in relation to ict investments’ (gono et al. 2016:727). these concerns need to be addressed to assist these small businesses to grow and become sustainable. numerous research studies have been conducted on smes, and numerous interventions have been launched, specifically in south africa, to assist these entrepreneurs to grow sustainable businesses and become more digitally literate. a number of research studies have also focused on barriers and have attempted to explain why entrepreneurs will or will not adopt technology. however, little research has been performed over a longer period to see if there is a change in ict uptake by smes, and entrepreneurs specifically. there is also limited research on what the focus should be for digital literacy interventions. many interventions have been initiated to train these smes. however, many attempts have been made where these initiatives did not have the desired outcomes (twinomurinzi, phahlamohlaka & byrne 2012). the dynamic capabilities theory (teece 2007; teece, pisano & shuen 1997) is used to look at the changing entrepreneurs in south africa. adeniran and johnston (2016) note that entrepreneurs cannot only have ict or dynamic capabilities. they must rather have a combination of the two to become successful entrepreneurs. thus, how the entrepreneurs sensed, seized and managed threats or transformation are seen as dynamic capabilities (teece 2007). data gathered were investigated over three years (2012, 2013 and 2017) to see if there was any change in the uptake of technology over time. the barriers identified by various authors may no longer be considered when planning entrepreneurial ict interventions. this article contributes to the field of digital literacy because it indicates a change in the number of barriers that exist. for example, a barrier such as a lack of expertise, in-house knowledge or lack of a one-stop shop to assist with ict queries and problems no longer exists. most entrepreneurs now have access to an information technology (it) consultant or expert who can assist them in increasing their digital literacy knowledge. another more practical contribution of this article is that it provides new knowledge on industry-specific interventions (such as those used by smaller retailers, smaller restaurants and dentists). thus, digital literacy should not be used as a broad term, but the focus should rather be on industry-specific needs. entrepreneurs entrepreneurs are classified differently in various countries. according to section 4 of the national small business act of 1996 (republic of south africa 1996), a small business is defined as a small organisation, corporate and non-governmental structure that is mostly managed by the owner. small businesses are categorised according to their sector and size, as well as their income and asset value. they are further categorised as micro, very small, small or medium enterprises. this article focuses on micro-enterprises1 or entrepreneurs that are categorised as having no more than five employees (cant et al. 2016; gono et al. 2016; republic of south africa 1996). the national small business act also classifies entrepreneurs based on a total annual turnover of zar150 000 per annum and a total asset value of zar100 000. for this study; however, turnover and total asset value were never determined. thus, only entrepreneurs or micro-enterprises with five employees and less were considered. theoretical background the dynamic capabilities theory served as a theoretical lens, and principles are briefly discussed. cant et al. (2016) note that more hands-on interventions are required from government to ensure that the infrastructure in the rural areas can facilitate ict uptake by entrepreneurs and assist in increasing general digital literacy level. this article will talk about ict uptake or adoption, as this indicates whether or not there is an increase in digital literacy levels. according to alam and noor (2009), the following five variables affect the adoption of ict: perceived benefits perceived costs of adoption information and communication technology knowledge and skills of employees (digital literacy) external pressure government support. individual, organisational, environmental, technological and economic factors are also linked to technology adoption (cant et al. 2016). many authors have also looked at the adoption of technology through various technology adoption models that have been developed in an attempt to understand ict adoption, in general, and smes, in particular (al mursalin 2012; anderson & schwager 2004; bagozzi 2007; baker & white 2010; bhattacherjee & sanford 2006; burnkrant & page 1988; cáceres et al. 2012; chatzoglou & vraimaki 2010; cohen, bancilhon & jones 2013; escobar-rodríguez & carvajal-trujillo 2014; fadel, durcikova & cha 2008; godin & goette 2013; hameed, counsell & swift 2012; handy, whiddett & hunter 2001; hansen, jensen & solgaard 2004; im, hong & kang 2011; jackson & sloane 2009; kumar 2013; lu et al. 2003; malebana 2014; marchewka, liu & kostiwa 2007; mehrtens, cragg & mills 2001; nguyen 2009; oye, ihhad & ab rahim 2012; peris et al. 2013; ramalho, moura & cunha 2015; ramdani & kawalek 2009; reimenschneider, harrison & mykytyn 2003; spencer, buhalis & moital 2012; suri 2011; talukder et al. 2013; uddin 2005; venkatesh et al. 2003; wamuyu & maharaj 2011; wonglimpiyarat & yuberk 2005; yu 2012). venkatesh et al. (2003) state that one of the most mature research discussions in information systems is that of explaining how users accept certain technologies. one of the adoption theories that currently exist is the dynamic capabilities theory. the dynamic capabilities theory (teece et al. 1997:516), which can be defined as ‘the firm’s ability to integrate, build and reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments’, was used in this article. teece et al. (1997) continue to state that the dynamic capabilities approach focuses specifically on the rapidly changing technology market and how firms can adapt to these markets to ensure a competitive advantage. in their viewpoint, ‘dynamic’ refers to a firm’s capabilities to quickly adapt to fast-changing environments, and being innovative and able to ensure timely market penetration (teece et al. 1997). dynamic capabilities are the firms’ abilities to change their resources by designing certain processes in the organisation (adeniran & johnston 2016). adeniran and johnston (2016) continue by saying that these capabilities enable quick responses to changing environments and opportunities. when viewing entrepreneurs, they are willing to take risks and be innovative when penetrating the market. entrepreneurs can adapt to change more rapidly than larger organisations (adeniran & johnston 2016; oke et al. 2007). thus, they are more dynamic. because of this ever-changing and rapid adoption that entrepreneurs should be able to adapt to, it is not surprising that most entrepreneurial training interventions focus on risk management (botha, nieman & van vuuren 2007; hisrich & peters 1998; hynes 1996; kourilsky 1995; noll 1993; onstenk 2003). capabilities refer to the adaptability of the organisations, in this case, the entrepreneurs (teece et al. 1997), to rapidly adapt to changes in the environment and opportunities (adeniran & johnston 2016). entrepreneurs are adaptable and re-organise certain skills, resources and even their functional resources in this ever-changing environment. according to adeniran and johnston (2016), there are six major attributes of dynamic capabilities, and each attribute follows on the preceding attribute’s outputs: sensing capability: entrepreneurs should be aware of market changes and should be able to accurately predict how customers will react. absorptive capability: after the sensing capability is acquired, an organisation acquires the absorptive capability. once new internal and external knowledge is gained from sensing, this is transformed into useful information to be used during decision-making. adaptive capability: this is the capability to quickly reconfigure resources to respond to the knowledge gained. innovative capability: this refers to the ability to do things in new ways based on the knowledge gained. this allows an entrepreneur to continuously redevelop and perhaps redesign certain resources or assets. networking capability: this refers to how the organisation establishes relationships to acquire various resources. integrative capability: this is the capability to use all the resources and competencies gained from the previous five attributes in order to function together to gain a competitive advantage. entrepreneurial firms that enter new markets cannot necessarily replicate specific organisational skills. one has to understand the business and the underlying structures that support the business operations. sensing, seizing and managing threats or transformation are seen as dynamic capabilities (teece 2007). coordination or integration, learning and reconfiguring are subsets of the processes of sensing, seizing and managing threats or transformation. teece et al. (1997) continue by saying that minor technological changes can have devastating effects on a firm’s competiveness in a market. thus, it is necessary to determine if there is a change in the mindsets of these entrepreneurs and their adoption of technology over the last few years. the concepts of sensing, seizing and transformation (teece 2007) will be used, first of all, to see if the entrepreneurs have sensed and seized the need to increase their digital literacy and adoption of technology over the years. they will also be used to determine if the barriers identified in the literature are still relevant to today’s entrepreneurs. the reason for looking at the entrepreneurs’ ict adoption, as well as their digital literacy, through the dynamic capabilities lens, was because of the fact that dynamic capabilities were found to have a positive effect on ict utilisation and adoption (adeniran & johnston 2016). there are various reasons why people will still not accept technology, even when one has followed the approach of a technology adoption model when introducing it, and one has ensured that, according to the theory, it is 100% correct. thompson et al. (2010) acknowledge that, even though ict can be seen as a huge benefit to smes, it also brings about a threat for these smes and entrepreneurs, as they have mostly limited resources available to use and benefit from these technologies. one of these threats is a lack of skills. this ties in with teece (2007), who sees transformation in the same way as managing threats. this threat can be regarded as a barrier that entrepreneurs will have to overcome to introduce ict or even ensure a sustainable business that incorporates ict. various studies focus on the reason why certain technologies are accepted or rejected. although cant et al. (2016) said that each country’s barriers are unique, which they are, table 1 shows various authors’ views on why technology is not being adopted by smes across the world. table 1: barriers to adoption the list of barriers is almost endless, and it is important to realise that one cannot take any adoption model and decide that it will be the reason for adoption. one has to consider various aspects. many of these barriers are also linked or might stem from the entrepreneur’s digital illiteracy. although the list of barriers is rather long, this article sets out to determine if these barriers still exist. however, it does not focus on all the barriers, and the author only examined certain barriers. this article focuses on the preferred communication methods used for clients, the importance of mobile technologies for entrepreneurs, how they managed to continuously adapt in this ever-changing competitive environment to remain competitive and/or become digitally literate, and lastly, who the decision-makers are. this article does not consider barriers such as a lack of resources, high cost, legal aspects, cultural barriers and performance risk. decision-makers for a long time, it was said that the decision-makers in these small businesses are the owners themselves (yu 2001). however, recent studies have proven that other factors, such as suppliers and it consultants, can play a role in the adoption of ict (gono et al. 2016). mavimbela and dube (2016) find that the low skills levels (low digital literacy capabilities) of owners could result in a low adoption rate. this is also listed as a barrier above, which is why it will be interesting to see who makes the decisions. methodology the interpretivist philosophy was selected because this study conducted interviews. this allowed the researcher to transcribe, compare and interpret the data. five interview questions were used to assist in profiling the entrepreneurs to determine their current ict adoption status. during this stage, students helped the researcher to interview approximately 684 companies. the interviews formed part of an undergraduate course for students who had to understand the importance of information systems in today’s economy. the students were given a set of interview questions that were set up to allow semi-structured interviews to be conducted. these students were given instructions on how to conduct an interview and how to approach a business, as it was the first time they had performed this type of assignment. this is also why they received a set of specific questions that allowed for formal, structured interviews. the students could approach any business of their choice and had to conduct an interview with this business. before these students could conduct the interviews, they were informed of the process to follow to allow for maximum information retrieval. a total of 481 final interviews were conducted and transcribed over a 2-year period from 2012 to 2013. in 2017, 203 interviews were conducted. all the data were initially captured on a microsoft excel spreadsheet, after which the data were analysed. all the data were added up to compare the various responses. the data were analysed according to specific themes by interpreting all the responses from the various participants across the different years. in order for this study to be specifically focused on entrepreneurs, only 155 of the interviews were used. some 84 of the interviews conducted with entrepreneurs in 2012, and 71 of the interviews conducted with entrepreneurs in 2013 were used. in addition, 38 of the interviews conducted in 2017 were used. the students could select participants anywhere in south africa. the researcher had no control over who was interviewed. this ensured that a random sample of entrepreneurs was interviewed. each business that was interviewed had to provide a business card or stamp to prove that it was a legitimate business. this ensured that a wide variety of industries was covered. although the researcher used the number of employees as a benchmark to determine whether it was indeed an entrepreneur that was being interviewed, some franchises were also interviewed. because franchises obtain their technology and systems from the franchisor, these entrepreneurs were excluded from the analysis. thus, none of the entrepreneurs interviewed were part of a franchise. findings table 2 shows the number of employees in each of the interviewed businesses. the number of employees determined whether the entrepreneurs could be included based on the definition of an entrepreneur. table 2: number of employees. the interviewees were asked which province their primary business operated from. it is important to note that this question was never part of the 2012 interview questions; thus, only the provinces of the interviewees from 2013 and 2017 could be listed. the majority of the entrepreneurs were from gauteng. however, there were a few from other provinces, which would not be excluded from this study because of the richness of the data, see table 3. table 3: province of primary business. all the findings were compared across the 3 years and calculated as the percentage of that year’s participants to ensure that a proper comparison could be performed. the interviewees were asked how they primarily communicate with their clients. the results illustrated in table 4 are interesting, as there does not seem to be any change in the uptake of technology to communicate with their customers. face-to-face appointments declined by almost 10% in 2017. there was a slight increase in the use of twitter (12%) and facebook (15%), with a decline in cell phone use in 2017. overall, mavimbela and dube (2016) found social media to be a useful tool for attracting more customers. however, it seems that the entrepreneurs in this study were still lagging behind on fully realising what social media can do for their businesses or they do not understand the platforms. the biggest change was the use of fax lines; which almost no one uses anymore. only 18% of the interviewees reported using this technology in 2017, compared to 51% who were using this technology in 2013. interestingly, cant et al. (2016) noted in 2016 that 92% of the smes in their study said that they used email, and 61% said that they used a company website. although their study was based on smes, the results for the entrepreneurs specifically were lower, which proves that one has to be careful not to generalise the findings from smes and apply them to all entrepreneurs. however, this correlates with steyn and leonard (2012), who said that micro-businesses will only use email, and only when businesses are classified as ‘small’ will they start using a company website. thus, it is recommended that any intervention that increases the entrepreneurs’ literacy levels and assists with ict should focus on effective email use, as this is clearly the biggest uptake for entrepreneurs. table 4: preferred communication with clients. the interviewees were asked how they stay abreast of the ever-changing and competitive it environment. in 2012, the most common themes that emerged were internet updates and software upgrades. most of them also said that they keep an eye on the internet. one participant said: ‘… own internet searches, looking at the it web, wired and cio websites, which are rich in information.’ (producer, 2012 group) another comment from a 2012 participant was: ‘i try to keep up with the latest advancements of the it world, since it is a faster, cheaper and easier way to advertise and communicate with possible clients. the it environment is part of my business, thus it is very important for me to keep up with such an ever-changing world.’ (electrician, 2012 group) there were; however, four participants who said that they do nothing to keep up, they just perform their daily operations: ‘currently, i do not keep up with trends in the it environment.’ (dentist, 2012 group) one participant said that their children help them with their technology. some of the participants mentioned that they have an it consultancy firm that they can contact from time to time. all in all, in 2012 it seemed as if entrepreneurs already realised the importance of keeping up to date with technology and the ever-changing environment. in 2017, this trend looked almost the same. internet updates and software upgrades were the common themes (identified by 12 interviewees). what was interesting though, was that 10 respondents (26%) reported using it consultants or having it departments. this seems strange, as typically entrepreneurs will not have an it department or make use of a consultant because of the cost involved (steyn & leonard 2012). however, there does seem to be an increase in the need for an it consultant or it department. the interviewees had similar responses when they were asked who the decision-makers were in their businesses, see table 5. table 5: decision-makers. a company only sees the need to employ an in-house it resource once they have developed into a medium-sized business (steyn & leonard 2012). however, these results show that although they might not directly appoint an it consultant, as most of them are on a retainer or part-time contract, entrepreneurs are starting to see the need to consult someone with it knowledge to assist them. this could also be attributed to the fact that they do not have the skills. this corresponds to the findings of cant et al. (2016) that a lack of ict knowledge and understanding, as well as the lack of skilled workers who can maintain systems, is seen as a barrier towards technology adoption for the south african entrepreneur. this indicates a shift in their mindset. the sensing that the it expert might help them and seizing this help correlates with the dynamic capabilities theory. the typical systems implemented remained similar across all 3 data sets. these are the standard microsoft office packages and pastel accounting. other typical systems are industry-specific systems, such as point-of-sale systems for coffee shops, galileo for travel agencies, computer-aided design (cad) drawing systems for architects and construction companies, medimass for medical practices and corel draw for design companies. these systems were mentioned in all three data sets. it is interesting to note that two different tattoo companies said that they did not use any systems at all in 2012 and 2013. these companies were not interviewed in 2017. however, a gym that did not use any system at all was interviewed in 2017. when asked whether they think they could run their business without having any it in place (a question only asked of the 2017 group), 26 interviewees (68%) said that they could not, three said that they were not sure and eight said that they could. one of the barriers listed above, as mentioned by esselaar et al. (2006) and cant et al. (2016), was that entrepreneurs do not see the need for ict in their businesses. some 21% of the 2017 group still feels this way. when interviewees were asked whether they think there is a place for mobile devices in their business in the future, an interesting trend emerged. although the results illustrated in table 6 clearly show that most entrepreneurs realised the importance of or the place of mobile devices in their future, the industries did not think that there is a place for mobile devices in their businesses. these results were almost the same across all three years. in 2012 these companies included two retail businesses, one dentist, one small sushi restaurant, one attorney practice and one internet café. in 2013 three retailers, one dentist, one internet café and one dance studio thought that there was no place for mobile devices in their businesses. in 2017 a dental practice and a beauty salon did not think that there was a place for mobile devices in their business in the future. none of the companies providing similar responses across the three years were the exact same businesses. this proves the viewpoint of teece et al. (1997) that one cannot replicate certain organisational structures for all businesses. one has to understand the specific markets. for certain businesses, best practice may be illusive. thus, the business might not understand the relevance of the technology in question. table 6: future mobile use. it seems as if certain industry sectors feel that mobile technology has a limited influence on their future business. some of the following quotes were received from the interviewees: ‘mobile devices are very limited in this line of business, as it is an office-run business and all operations are performed in the office. laptops could help mobility, but it is not needed by any of the employees.’ (attorney, 2012 group) ‘no, mobile devices such as cell phones or laptops would not have any positive influence on my business. but mobile systems for ordering and paying customers would be very helpful in terms of time and efficiency in the future. mobile stock control.’ (restaurant manager, 2012 group) ‘no, we don’t deal with mobile devices and our store has personal computers and landlines, making mobile devices unnecessary.’ (retailer owner, 2012 group) ‘currently we do not see any possibility for mobile technology, but given the ever-changing world of it and customer demand, we can never be sure what will happen in the future.’ (internet cafe owner, 2012 group) the following participants agreed that there is a place for mobile devices in their business in the future and mentioned that they can monitor their business off-site: ‘patients will be able to set up appointments without speaking to the administration.’ (medical doctor, 2017 group) ‘with the current move to the cloud, it is easier to service the client anywhere, anytime.’ (accountant, 2017 group) it is evident that the specific industry sector in which these businesses fall will determine their need for mobile technology. although the literature mentioned that mobile devices should be seen as a powerful tool in entrepreneurs’ daily operations (cáceres et al. 2012; esselaar et al. 2006; kabanda 2011; twinomurinzi et al. 2012:210; wamuyu & maharaj 2011), it seems as if this could be industry-specific. interventions should target specific industry sectors and one should be careful to make statements such as those made by mavimbela and dube (2016) when they say that a framework that works in one province can be implemented and will be able to serve a larger sme focus. however, they also agree that certain industries, specifically labour-intensive industries, have not explored the benefits of ict for their businesses, which correlates with the findings of mavimbela and dube (2016). discussion it seems that even the researcher’s own focus should shift, even though she is an avid entrepreneurial researcher. many countries noted the need to invest in smes because they form a large part of the country’s economy (esselaar et al. 2006; kunene 2008; merkofer & murphy 2009:1198; oke et al. 2007; talukder et al. 2013; thomas et al. 2004). however, we all make mistakes when it comes to entrepreneurial interventions and entrepreneurs’ digital literacy skills, and we all assume that certain barriers still exist. this article makes a practical contribution because it identifies various needs for specific interventions. there seems to be a need to focus on industry-specific interventions (such as those for smaller retailers, restaurants and dentists) to assist these entrepreneurs with their ict uptake and increase their digital literacy. thus, specific interventions should target these specific industries to ensure that they are made aware of available technology. this could also tie in with the barrier of limited availability of ict (donner & escobari 2010; oye et al. 2012) for these industries or perhaps a lack of knowledge. unfamiliarity, thus leading to the perception that ict is too complicated, and a lack in confidence (alawadhi & morris 2008; esselaar et al. 2006; kabanda 2011; mavimbela & dube 2016; ndubisi & kahraman 2005; ramani, sadreghazi & duysters 2012) could also be seen as reasons why these industries did not adopt ict. they should be made aware of specific technologies that are available in their industries. two of the barriers highlighted above were the lack of a one-stop facility and access to reliable experts, as well as the difficulty of keeping systems serviced and upgraded (kapurubandara & lawson 2007; ladzani & van vuuren 2002; ndubisi & kahraman 2005; thomas et al. 2004). however, from the findings above, it seems that this is no longer the case. most entrepreneurs said that they keep up to date by performing system updates. the majority of them said that they have access to an it consultant, and thus there seems to be a shift in the mindset of these entrepreneurs. this ties in with the networking capability as mentioned earlier (adeniran & johnston 2016), whereby organisations use their networks to establish relationships and thus have access to external resources if and when needed. linked to this, the barriers of security concerns, mistrust regarding ict and ict service providers, and lack of trust (alawadhi & morris 2008; cohen et al. 2013; gatautis & vitkauskaite 2009; kapurubandara & lawson 2007; wamuyu & maharaj 2011) also seem to be falling away. it seems that entrepreneurs have sensed the need to contract someone who can assist them on certain aspects when one looks at the dynamic capabilities and the focus on sensing, seizing and managing threats or transformation. thompson et al. (2010) acknowledged that smes mostly have limited resources available for use. however, it seems that the entrepreneurs are making a mindshift. they are realising the need to update and upgrade their systems. the need to have access to someone who has knowledge of ict also emerged. this, however, seems to be true for certain industries, but not for others. this article makes a main practical contribution with regard to the real need of the entrepreneurs. if interventions are to be designed to assist these entrepreneurs to successfully embrace ict, digital literacy should be the main focus. future research this article focused on entrepreneurs over a period of three years. however, in this ever-changing ict environment, the study will never be complete. each year similar studies will be conducted to ensure that the recommendations made for future entrepreneurial interventions are relevant for the current entrepreneurs in the most recent ict environment. thus, the ever-changing ict environment is seen as a limitation of this study, as one will never be quite complete with this study or with similar studies. conclusion information and communication technology is seen as an extension to the term ‘information technology’, which is technology on an integrated telecommunications platform used by many to access information and use this information in various ways (cant et al. 2016). many researchers have noted that ict is crucial for many smes to survive. it emerged from this study that, even though there are many benefits of ict adoption and interventions on the market to improve the success of entrepreneurs, there does not seem to be such a great shift in technology uptake over a 44-year period. more so, the specific industry type seems to be a determining factor of technology uptake. this correlates with the findings of mavimbela and dube (2016) when they say that smes prefer to stick to general technology because of the cost and perceived complicated nature of ict. 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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2005.05.005 yu, c., 2012, ‘factors affecting individuals to adopt mobile banking: empirical evidence from the utaut model’, journal of electronic commerce research 13(2), 104–121. yu, t.f., 2001, ‘towards a capabilities perspective of the small firm’, international journal of management reviews 3(3), 185–197. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2370.00063 footnote 1. for the sake of simplicity, this article will use the term ‘entrepreneurs’ throughout. abstract introduction theoretical framework research methods and design results discussion and conclusion implications for policy and further research acknowledgements references appendix 1 footnotes about the author(s) lieke stoffelsma department of linguistics and modern languages, university of south africa, south africa centre for language studies, faculty of arts, radboud university nijmegen, the netherlands citation stoffelsma, l., 2019, ‘english vocabulary exposure in south african township schools: pitfalls and opportunities’, reading & writing 10(1), a209. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.209 original research english vocabulary exposure in south african township schools: pitfalls and opportunities lieke stoffelsma received: 25 july 2018; accepted: 19 nov. 2018; published: 21 feb. 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: this small-scale study investigated english vocabulary exposure from graded readers and teacher talk in grade 3 classrooms in poorly resourced township schools in south africa. vocabulary is one of the key building blocks for becoming a fluent reader. most words are learnt through incidental exposure to oral or written language. objectives: this study is a first attempt to investigate opportunities for incidental vocabulary exposure in poorly resourced classrooms in south africa. method: a corpus linguistics approach was used to analyse a written corpus of 57 143 tokens and a spoken corpus of 12 242 tokens. results: the study showed that there are vast differences between levels of written and spoken vocabulary in the classrooms and that the role for oral vocabulary exposure in classrooms is restricted. spoken vocabulary registered above the k-3 word frequency level largely came from teachers’ read alouds of print materials. conclusion: the study findings show that even in contexts where print exposure is limited, oral language cannot compensate for the richness of written vocabulary. situational constraints, such as lack of books, negatively influenced the effective use of graded readers. opportunities for incidental vocabulary learning, as well as implications for policy and further research, are discussed. introduction despite south africa’s economic growth, literacy levels in the country remain problematic. south africa’s participation in three cycles of progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) (2006, 2011 and 2016) shows consistently low reading comprehension levels at the fourth grade. the most recent data indicate that 78% of south african grade 4 children cannot read for meaning or retrieve basic information from the text to answer simplistic questions, compared to 4% of students internationally (mullis et al. 2017:55). although south africa’s reading performance in the african languages has been consistently low over the past three pirls cycles, english reading results have also not improved over the past 10 years. english is one of the 11 official languages in south africa and is used as the most common language of learning from grade 4 onwards. the inability to read is problematic because it restricts children from participating in formal education. it prevents them from successfully learning textbook content, participating in classroom discourse or responding reliably to tests (abadzi 2006). children who do not master reading skills from an early age will find it difficult to catch up to their required grade level and run the risk of falling further behind when they move on to higher grades (spaull 2017). what are the causes of these low reading levels in south africa? spaull (2017) argues that the most prominent reason for low reading levels in south african primary schools is that school teachers have not acquired the knowledge and skills in their professional development to teach reading. lack of resources in the system is another major prominent cause. the indicator on access to libraries and multimedia centres shows that only 37% of learners in primary schools in south africa have access to a library in their school (department of basic education 2014). scarcity of educational resources is particularly prevalent in historically african township schools and rural schools because of inequalities that originated in the apartheid era, and which are often complicated by poor home environments (amin & ramrathan 2009; department of basic education 2014). the percentage of learners that have their own reading textbook in schools serving poor communities is low: from 35.6% in quintile 1 schools1 to 43.4% in quintile 3 schools (spaull 2011). evidence shows that under-resourced schools produce lower results in the grade 4 pirls reading test (mullis et al. 2017). based on the analysis of the southern africa consortium for monitoring educational quality (sacmeq) results for south africa, van der berg (2008) argues that school resources in the country matter only conditionally and there are vast differences between schools in their ability to convert these resources into outcomes. in summary, simply adding more resources does not necessarily improve school performance. a better understanding of literacy practices in poorly resourced classrooms in south africa is important for two reasons. firstly, the social, political and economic benefits that literacy brings to nations and individuals have been acknowledged by the international community at large (mullis et al. 2007; unesco 2005). improving literacy levels of future generations is needed to improve the development of countries that struggle with their literacy levels. secondly, most of the knowledge that we have about written and spoken literacy development comes from the so-called western contexts, where language exposure in classrooms tends to be rich and abundant. it is important to derive theories from local empirical research, rather than only infer from research contexts that do not share the typical characteristics of poorly resourced classrooms. in an attempt to contribute to a better understanding of literacy practices in poorly resourced classrooms, this study investigates the english exposure in grade 3 township school classrooms that serve poor communities in south africa. by taking a linguistics perspective on school resources, the study aims to gain a better understanding of the potential contribution of graded readers and teacher talk to incidental vocabulary development. the emphasis on english exposure in grade 3 is relevant because more than 70% of learners in south africa shift from an african home language (hl) in grade 3 to english as the medium of instruction in grade 4 (fleisch 2008) and many of these learners are not adequately prepared to meet the english requirements in the intermediate phase (grades 4–6) (pretorius & stoffelsma 2017; macdonald & burroughs 1991). before we proceed further, a brief overview of oral and written language exposure in relation to vocabulary development in the early school years is presented. theoretical framework vocabulary development the amount of reading that students do for school and for personal enjoyment has a positive effect on their reading achievement and comprehension skills and contributes to their academic knowledge development (mol & bus 2011; mullis et al. 2007). one of the key building blocks for becoming a fluent reader is vocabulary knowledge. research in both first-language (l1) and second-language (l2) contexts shows that vocabulary knowledge correlates strongly with reading proficiency and is an important prerequisite for the development of reading skills (helman & burns 2008; read 2004) and academic performance (nagy & townsend 2012). research further shows that vocabulary is a strong predictor of reading achievement in grade 4 (scarborough 2001). moreover, vocabulary size at the end of grade 1 is a significant predictor of reading comprehension 10 years later (cunningham & stanovich 2001). print exposure is essential in the development of vocabulary (stanovich 2000). people who are highly exposed to print are more likely to encounter rare words, which enhances their vocabulary growth; they will encounter more complex syntactic structures and will acquire more knowledge about the world (long, johns & morris 2006). there are large differences in vocabulary development of children, depending on their home background and school context. in general, children from low socio-economic backgrounds have a poorer understanding of words. research has identified that a socio-economic gap in vocabulary can be established by the age of 3 years (hart & risley 1995) and even as early as the age of 18 months (fernald, marchman & weisleder 2013). this gap is difficult to bridge in the years that follow. lexical acquisition from reading and listening the majority of vocabulary growth occurs through incidental exposure to oral or written language (cunningham 2005). research is somewhat divided on how many reading exposures are necessary to obtain an initial receptive knowledge of words through reading and listening. webb (2007) discovered that if l2 learners of english encounter unknown words 10 times while reading, this led to sizeable vocabulary learning gains. however, he argues that more than 10 repetitions may be needed to develop a full knowledge of a word. waring and tataki (2003) found that l2 learners of english, who engage in reading graded readers, need to meet a word at least eight times in order to have about a 50% chance of recognising a word’s form 3 months later. however, for word learning to occur, their data suggest that it would take at least 20 or even 30 reading encounters with a word for it to be learnt. there is less knowledge in the research field about incidental vocabulary development through listening. how vocabulary is learnt from spoken discourse and how many repetitions are needed for a word to be learnt are questions that still require further investigation (schmitt 2010). there are, however, a few studies that have investigated the effect of oral language exposure in educational contexts. horst (2010) shows that acquiring vocabulary knowledge through teacher talk is not an efficient method for adult esl learners, mainly because many words that are frequently used in texts are unlikely to be encountered in speech. on the other hand, studies that have investigated the effects of storybook reading to children have found that extensive listening to easy texts for enjoyment is beneficial for incidental vocabulary learning of children in l1 and l2 contexts (elley 1991; nation 2001). research into the effect of storybook reading on vocabulary development shows that many word repetitions are needed before a word can be learnt. in their study amongst 18–21-year-olds, brown, waring and donkaewbua (2008) showed that storybook reading only resulted in word learning if the word was encountered more than 20 times. however, they suggested that probably as much as 50 or even 100 word meetings may be needed to acquire a word’s meaning from listening-only. clearly, factors such as quality of the reading and/or listening engagement (intensive or extensive) and the proficiency level of the learners will influence the learning of a new word. it is generally accepted that written language offers a more diverse and abundant vocabulary than oral language. mol and bus (2011) argue that reading for enjoyment exposes students to a rich vocabulary and words that they are unlikely to encounter in speech. cunningham (2005) argues that the lexical density of oral language, compared to written language, is ‘substantially degraded or impoverished’ (p. 50). she argues that people who are engaged in conversation rely greatly on the use of common words because of time pressure. however, when people produce written language, they are usually allowed more time to compose a more refined communication. consequently, written language is a more effective way of building a child’s vocabulary than oral language (cunningham 2005). this does not mean that oral exposure is not important. on the contrary, verbal input is also considered to be a precondition for good vocabulary growth. teacher talk as a resource for vocabulary learning can be particularly important when the l1 in the learner’s home environment is different from the language of teaching and learning (lotl). research shows that schools in high-poverty contexts play an important role in compensating for the limited literacy opportunities in children’s homes (howie & van staden 2012). the difference between oral and written exposure is a given and does not need further corroboration. however, how this difference plays out in low-resourced l2 classrooms has not been investigated. information from the field, albeit at a small scale, presented in this article, will provide a better understanding of these differences in practice. vocabulary in grade 3 the transition from grade 3 to grade 4 implies a change in the reading demands of learners. rather than learning to read, learners will focus more on reading to learn. this transition often implies a sudden decrease in reading scores (hirsch 2003). one way to prepare learners for this linguistic challenge is to ensure that they have a sufficient level of english vocabulary by the end of grade 3. a recent study found that english hl learners in western cape township schools had a receptive vocabulary knowledge of only 61% of the most frequent words by the end of grade 3, whereas their english foreign additional language (fal) counterparts only knew 27% of these words (pretorius & stoffelsma 2017). this not only shows that there are vast differences between english hl and fal learners, but it also shows that they are not adequately prepared for the vocabulary level of grade 4. research has produced clear indications as to how many words are needed for adequate reading comprehension. hu and nation (2000) calculated that most non-native speakers of english would need to know 98% of the words in a text to gain adequate reading comprehension. based on a word coverage of 98%, nation (2006) calculated that for l2 learners of english to be able to read and understand graded readers, they would need knowledge of the 3000 most frequent words of the british national corpus (bnc). this idea is in line with nation and waring’s (1997) recommendation for second-language learners to learn at least 3000 high-frequency (hf) words. schmitt (2010) argues that the frequency at which a word occurs is ‘arguably the single most important characteristic of lexis that researchers must address’ (p. 63). high-frequency words give an impression of important vocabulary in a language and hf word lists provide a valuable indication of which words should be prioritised in vocabulary development. there is a wealth of hf word lists for various contexts. for grade 3 learners in south africa, the following word lists are some of the useful lists based on which a learner’s word levels can be measured: the dolch list (dolch 1948), the sibanda list (sibanda 2014) and the academic word list (awl) (coxhead 2000). the dolch list contains 220 hf english sight words based on children’s books from pre-primary to third grade, which children should master by the end of grade 3. although it was developed long ago, it is still a commonly used hf word list in primary schools (cf. miles, rubin & gonzalez-frey 2017). the sibanda list was developed for all south african grade 3 learners and it contains english hf words that learners should master before their transition to grade 4. the awl contains 570 word families and is especially suitable for university students. however, 83.5% of the awl contains words from 1000–3000 levels (words such as area, evaluate, normal, respond and team) that students are likely to encounter in grade 4 expository texts. graded readers assisting learners in building their vocabulary repertoire while controlling for hf words can be done by offering graded reader schemes. these readers are written for learners of english, controlling for lexis and syntax, with increasing difficulty in terms of language, length and format, as the reader moves on to a higher level (hill 2008). graded readers are a very important resource for developing reading skills, language consolidation and vocabulary building, as they provide ample opportunity for extensive reading at the appropriate vocabulary level (waring & nation 2004). in general, reading through all the levels of a graded reader scheme can provide favourable conditions for incidental vocabulary learning. corpus research by nation and wang (1999) shows that the conditions for incidental vocabulary learning are good at higher levels of graded readers. their study shows that graded readers can be an effective way of ensuring that learners are exposed to hf words with sufficient repetition. in order for this to be effective, they argue that learners need to work their way through the levels, read at least five books per level and at an intensive rate of about one book per week. the south african curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps 2011) stipulates that grade r–grade 3 learners use graded readers as part of group-guided reading. this is a group reading session where the teacher scaffolds learning (department of basic education 2011). purpose of the study there is a lack of published evidence on print exposure in high-poverty schools in south africa. the aim of this article was to localise international research on the nature of oral and written language exposure in order to get a better understanding of what is happening inside south african classrooms. the aim of this small-scale corpus linguistics study was to investigate vocabulary exposure from graded readers and teacher talk in grade 3 classrooms to determine what kind of incidental vocabulary learning opportunities this exposure provides. the focus on grade 3 is intentionally chosen because reading levels by the end of grade 3 are a significant predictor for later achievement in secondary school (lesnick et al. 2010). the following research questions guided this article: to what written english vocabulary from graded readers are grade 3 learners in south african township schools exposed and what opportunities do these exposures offer for incidental word learning? how are english-graded readers being used in poorly resourced south african classrooms? to what english oral vocabulary from teacher talk are grade 3 learners in south african township schools exposed and what opportunities do these exposures offer for incidental word learning? research methods and design schooling context four grade 3 classes from two different urban township schools in the western cape province participated in the study. both schools participated in a 3-year literacy project, the zenex literacy project (2015–2017). the aim of the project was to improve literacy levels of foundation phase learners through improved classroom literacy practices at quintiles 1–3 schools across three provinces. the two schools were english hl quintile 3 primary schools, with afrikaans as their fal. the schools served mainly low-income communities and were situated in the township areas of cape town. the learners consisted of both afrikaans and english mother tongue speakers. sample convenience sampling was applied for the selection of the schools. the teachers were asked to provide a list of all the available graded readers used in their classrooms. the 24 graded readers that they listed included 19 readers from the oxford reading tree scheme (stages 10–12), published between 1995 and 2011. these readers accounted for 60% of the corpus. the remaining 40% of the corpus consisted of kathy and mark basic readers, which were published between 1966 and 1971. all readers were fiction-graded readers, with reading levels clearly indicated for each book, indicating increasing difficulty in terms of language, length and format. the target audience of the readers are children aged 7–11 years. permission was granted by the same four teachers to video-record a randomly selected lesson (for details, see table 1). table 1: overview of recorded lessons. data analysis data analysis followed the argument by mccarthy and carter (1997) that spoken and written discourses are essentially different and, therefore, written and spoken corpora should be separately constructed when examined on word distribution. readers were transcribed into digital formats and recorded lessons were transcribed verbatim, leading to a separate written and spoken corpus. learners’ responses were not included in the transcriptions. some teachers administered tests or assignments during class time, during which there was no oral exposure. these ‘silent’ parts were not included in the analysis. consequently, the length of the recordings varied per class. both files were converted into plain output texts, in which all punctuation was eliminated and all numerals (1, 20, etc.) were replaced by words (one, twenty, etc.). contractions were replaced by constituent words (won’t => will not), and all proper nouns were excluded from the files (adding up to a total of 3052 nouns for the written corpus and 320 nouns for the spoken corpus). single letters were eliminated as words except for ‘a’ and ‘i’. vocabprofile (http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/comp/) was used to compare the written and spoken corpora with the bnc-coca 1–25 framework2 and determine word frequency levels. generated output included the total number of words (word tokens), the number of distinct words (word types) and the total number of word families. emphasis in the results section will be on analysis of the word families. using the family as a unit of comparison means that if the root form stimulate is in corpus 1 and the regular derivation stimulation in corpus 2, then this is considered a repetition of the same family, that is, these are equivalent tokens. because of a lack of agreement on the number of written and spoken exposures necessary for incidental word learning to occur, it was difficult to determine a cut-off point for the generation of hf words. it was decided to follow the local study by sibanda (2014) who used 30 word occurrences as a cut-off point. two hf word lists were composed: one for the written and one for the spoken corpus. high-frequency words for both corpora were calculated with wordsmith. these lists were compared with the dolch list (1948), the sibanda list (2014) and the awl (coxhead 2000) using tex lex compare (http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/comp/). lexical diversity of the corpora was measured by using a standardised type-token ratio (sttr) in wordsmith, with a basis of 100. using an sttr compensates for the problem that differences in text length cannot influence the outcome (cf. schmitt 2010). teacher surveys were used to investigate how many readers were available in each class and how they were being used in practice (see appendix 1). results general characteristics of the corpora the written corpus contained far more words (tokens) than the spoken corpus (see table 2). this is because of the difference in sample sizes (written words vs. teacher talk) and is in line with corpus linguistics studies where spoken corpora are generally much smaller than written corpora (nation 2006). in spite of the difference in size, it was possible to measure the lexical diversity for each corpus by using the sttr. table 2 shows that the sttr is higher for the written corpus than for the spoken corpus, indicating a greater lexical variety for the written corpus than the spoken corpus. table 2: characteristics of the written and spoken corpora. frequency levels the outcomes of the word frequency analyses show different distributions of word frequency levels for each corpus (table 3). a total of 72.9% of the written corpus comprised words from the k-1 to k-3 levels, which are the most important vocabulary levels for our target group (cf. nation 2006; nation & waring 1997). the spoken corpus consisted for 88.5% of words from the k-1 to k-3 levels. table 3: number of words per word frequency level in written and spoken corpora. from the 3000 word frequency level and up, words occurred more often in the written than in the spoken corpus: 11.5% of the spoken corpus consisted of words from the 4000 frequency and higher, whereas for the written corpus, this was 27.1%. the spoken corpus shows a vast drop of word families after the k-2 level (table 3). further analysis of these higher word levels in the spoken corpus3 revealed that many words originated from read alouds by the teachers (see figure 1). at the k-5 level, almost 50% of the spoken language was not simply ‘teacher talk’ but vocabulary from textbooks or stories that were read aloud by the teachers in the classroom (for practical purposes this is referred to as ‘textbook talk’). these read aloud excerpts came from story books, poems, short stories or textbook assignments, as the following examples illustrate (underlined words are at the 3000 word level and higher): figure 1: distribution of teacher talk and textbook talk in percentage per word frequency level. ‘okay, everybody read. she then puts on his leg, it is bruised but it will soon heal. maybe it was not such a good idea to race along the gravel road.’ (teacher c, female, grade 3 teacher) ‘will you walk into my parlour said the spider to the fly? it’s the prettiest little parlour that ever you did? spy. the way into my parlour is up the winding? stair.’ (teacher d, female, grade 3 teacher) high-frequency word lists besides knowing the word frequency levels within the corpora, it is important to know how often learners encounter these words. the 30-word frequency cut-off point applied to the corpora yielded a total of 281 words from 228 word families in the written corpus, and 84 words from 69 word families in the spoken corpus. this indicates that if learners were to read through all the readers, they would encounter 281 words at least 30 times, which means there is a fair chance that these words would be added to their vocabulary. if they were to listen to all the words from the spoken corpus, they would hear 84 words at least 30 times, which means there is a fair chance that these words would be added to their vocabulary. the follow-up question is whether these are relevant words for south african grade 3 learners to know. a comparison with three relevant word lists shows that the written corpus hf words covered 73.7% of the dolch list, 34.3% of the sibanda list and 0.9% of the awl. the spoken corpus hf words covered 33.5% of the dolch list, 12.1% of the sibanda list and 0.6% of the awl (table 4). table 4: corpora coverage of sibanda list, dolch list and academic word list. individual teacher talk to find out whether there were any differences between the teachers’ talk, a comparison at the individual level was made. table 5 shows that the number of spoken words differed per teacher, and the sttr ranged from 54.9 (teacher d) to 59.8 (teacher c). the data also show that a higher number of word families used by a teacher did not automatically result in a higher lexical diversity of speech. although the topics that were discussed differed per class, and the number of word families used per teacher varied, the majority of teacher talk was based on vocabulary from the k-1 to k-3 word levels, which varied from 91.2% (teacher d) to 95.3% (teacher c) (see figure 2). figure 2: word frequency distribution per teacher (total word families). table 5: overview of word frequencies in teacher talk. use of readers in practice in addition to knowing the language exposure that learners could get from reading graded readers, it is important to determine how often they actually read these texts. results from the teacher survey showed that the use of the readers in practice varied per classroom, ranging from twice a week to daily use. the readers were reported to be used for different reading tasks, including group-guided reading, individual reading, paired reading (aloud) and reading with the teacher (one on one). only one teacher was of the opinion that the readers are a valuable source for vocabulary learning. some teachers noted that the readers were based on american english and not on south african english. it was also argued that the kathy and mark series was more appropriate for reading practice (repetition of words) than for vocabulary building. although it could be argued that repetition of words leads to increased exposure of the same word(s), and therefore an increase in vocabulary, the teachers did not make this connection. it was observed that although the kathy and mark readers were published between 1966 and 1971, none of the teachers mentioned that these were outdated. the availability of the readers varied greatly per classroom, ranging from 1 to 11 books per title, and between one and nine titles per stage. not all teachers reported the number of books that were available per title (for details, see table 6). table 6: availability of graded readers (titles and books) per classroom. none of the teachers reported strictly adhering to the sequential order of the levels or stages for individual learners. arguments for switching between levels included that good or exceptional readers should be allowed to skip a level, and sometimes teachers reported looking for specific vocabulary which necessitated the switch to another reader. lack of readers was not reported as a reason to skip levels. all teachers reported that their learners were allowed to take the readers or copies of the readers home. classes b, c and d did not possess the minimum number of five titles per level, which is the recommended minimum for the reading scheme to be effective (nation & wang 1999). discussion and conclusion this article set off to investigate the potential of written (rq1 + rq2) and oral (rq3) vocabulary exposure in poorly resourced south african township schools. the study was based on the knowledge that graded readers are an important resource for vocabulary building (cf. waring & nation 2004) and the assumption that teacher talk can be an important source of incidental vocabulary learning in low socio-economic environments, especially when the lotl is different from the language used at home. while interpreting the data, a few limitations should be taken into account. this was a small-scale study and the yielded corpora were limited by the number of readers available and the volume of teacher talk that was recorded. only four teachers participated in the study; however, their word frequency levels were similar and mainly included words from the k-1 to k-3 word level, indicating a similar level of vocabulary. the yielded hf word lists were not equal in their design; the written corpus produced a more elaborate hf word list than the spoken corpus. this was not only because of difference in input, but corpus linguistics studies, in general, show that spoken corpora are much smaller than written corpora (nation 2006). a final limitation of this study is that, as in all educational research data collection, the collected data were snapshots of real-life classroom interactions transferred into a laboratory setting and should be interpreted as such. in spite of the limitations, the study provides an insight into what kind of language exposure takes place in poorly resourced classrooms, and should be considered a modest attempt to better understand vocabulary exposure in these particular settings. the study localised research findings from more affluent western contexts by showing that there are vast differences between levels of written and spoken vocabulary in poorly resourced classrooms. although this seems evident, it is important to understand how these differences play out in practice. if we accept that schools in south africa play a compensatory role for the limited literacy opportunities in homes of children from low socio-economic backgrounds (howie & van staden 2012; snow et al. 1991), it is important to understand the different literacy components that contribute to that role. in spite of the schools being quintile 3 and poorly resourced, the written texts from classroom readers that were available showed a language that was more lexical diverse and with a higher number of words from lower word frequency levels (k-4–k-22) than the teacher talk. the vast drop of word families after the k-2 level in the spoken corpus confirms findings that spoken language makes greater use of hf words than written language (nation 2006). it also shows that the role of oral exposure in classrooms is restricted, which is in line with the study by horst (2010) amongst adult esl learners in canada. the fact that it is difficult to compensate for the richness of written vocabulary through teacher talk was further demonstrated by the finding that the richer spoken vocabulary largely came from teachers’ read alouds of print materials. this supports the observation by abadzi (2006) that access to print material is important for the academic achievement of poor students. moreover, it confirms that reading aloud to children is important for their literacy development, as has been shown in numerous studies (cf. wan 2000). the compilation of hf word lists based on both corpora gives an indication of the type of vocabulary that grade 3 learners could acquire incidentally through written or spoken language exposure. naturally, learners will listen to many more hours of teacher talk throughout the academic year, and will also be exposed to other reading materials (e.g. textbooks) than the graded readers that were included in this study. based on the collected data, we can carefully state that the learners are likely to frequently listen to at least 33.5% of the words from the dolch list, 12.1% of the sibanda list and 0.6% of the awl. moreover, it can be expected that they are likely to frequently read at least 73.72% of the dolch list, 34.3% of the sibanda list and least 0.9% of the awl. these figures show that children are likely to encounter more hf words from reading books than from listening to teacher talk. whether or not children will actually learn these words depends on contextual quality of the encounters, but based on the studies reported earlier (cf. brown et al. 2008; waring & takaki 2003; webb 2007), it can be argued that they have sufficient opportunities to learn these words and expand on their vocabulary. it is not surprising that the easier dolch list reaches the highest coverage of the corpora, whereas the more difficult awl has the lowest coverage. it is important to keep in mind that incidental vocabulary learning from reading should not be considered the primary source of learning new words (schmitt 2010) and that it is essential that learners receive direct vocabulary instruction as well. future research should investigate to what extent direct vocabulary instruction can be useful to build the vocabulary levels of these learners. implications for policy and further research one of the major pitfalls discovered in the study was that the teachers did not adhere to nation’s (1999) argument that learners must work their way sequentially through the graded reader levels and that they should read at least five books per level. this was because of the following situational constraints: a lack of titles per level and teachers’ apparent lack of knowledge about the importance of following the sequence of the reading schemes. skipping levels limits the amount of practice to decode hf words and learn sight words and clearly impacts learners’ exposure to written vocabulary. the caps 2011 document does not prescribe that learners must pass through a graded reading scheme entirely before moving on to the next. it also does not mention the number of readers that students should read on a weekly basis. given the caps instruction that graded readers are used for group sessions, there is little opportunity for learners to do individual reading and follow their own pace. it is recommended that future caps documents incorporate more accurate and research-based instructions about graded readers’ routines to reach the maximum effect of their use. although none of the teachers mentioned that the readers were outdated, it is important to stress that especially the kathy and mark reading schemes were published more than 50 years ago and use stereotypes and bias that is no longer appropriate or politically correct in the 21st century. reading egalitarian books to children over a sustained period of time shapes their attitudes and beliefs towards racial diversity and gender equality. furthermore, children’s motivation for reading, which is currently believed to be as important as their skills development (guthrie 2013), is more likely to develop if they have access to interesting modern stories to which they can relate. it is therefore highly recommended that schools use more contemporary reading schemes that reflect life as we know it in the 21st century. in order for educational resources to have an impact, schools need to understand under which conditions the resources can be translated into effective outcomes (van der berg 2008). the current study showed that learners can have access to important hf words through graded readers, but that additional materials, such as textbooks or storybooks, need to be used to expand their exposure to hf words. in this study, the following important conditions for incidental vocabulary learning to occur were identified: emphasis on written english exposure in grade 3 classrooms, rather than on oral exposure, and compliance with the sequential order of graded reading schemes. we know that learners in south african township schools are capable of increasing their active word knowledge by about 9% per year (pretorius & stoffelsma 2017). through the current study, we are now beginning to understand what the opportunities are for incidental vocabulary exposure from graded readers and teacher talk. further research should investigate vocabulary exposure at a larger scale and include a broader range of written resources used in classrooms to determine the exact impact. acknowledgements the author would like to extend sincere thanks to the schools, grade 3 teachers and learners for their participation in the study. the author would also like to express sincere thanks to the zenex foundation for accommodating this small study within the larger reading project, the zenex literacy project (2015–2017), which was aimed at foundation phase teachers. this project was funded by the van coeverden adriani stichting (cas), vu university amsterdam, the netherlands, and supported by the zenex foundation, south africa. competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references abadzi, h., 2006, efficient learning for the poor. insights from the frontier of cognitive neuroscience directions in development (36619), world bank, washington, dc. amin, n. 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(eds.), 1997, vocabulary size, text coverage and word lists, cambridge university press, cambridge. pretorius, e.j. & stoffelsma, l., 2017, ‘how is their word knowledge growing? exploring grade 3 vocabulary in south african township schools’, south african journal of early childhood development 7(1), 1–13, https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v7i1.553 read, j., 2004, ‘research in teaching vocabulary’, annual review of applied linguistics 24, 146–161. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0267190504000078 scarborough, h.s., (ed.), 2001, connecting early language and literacy to reading (dis)abilities: evidence, theory and practice, guilford press, new york. schmitt, n., 2010, researching vocabulary, palgrave macmillan, new york. sibanda, j., 2014, ‘investigating the english vocabulary needs, exposure, and knowledge of isixhosa speaking learners for transition from learning to read in the foundation phase to reading to learn in the intermediate phase: a case study’, phd, rhodes university, grahamstown. snow, c.e., barnes, w.s., chandler, j., goodman, i.f. & hempill, l., 1991, unfulfilled expectations: home and school influences on literacy, harvard university press, cambridge, ma. spaull, n., 2011, a preliminary analysis of sacmeq iii south africa, stellenbosch economic working papers: 11/11, university of stellenbosch, stellenbosch. spaull, n., 2017, teaching reading for meaning: the funda wande project, viewed 08 february 2018, from http://www.allangrayorbis.org/entrepreneurship-blog/cultivation/teaching-reading-meaning-funda-wande-project-dr-nic-spaull/ stanovich, k., 2000, progress in understanding reading: scientific foundations and new frontiers, guilford press, new york. unesco, 2005, efa global monitoring report 2006: literacy for life, unesco, paris. van der berg, s., 2008, ‘how effective are poor schools? poverty and educational outcomes in south africa’, studies in educational evaluation 34(3), 145–154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2008.07.005 wan, g., 2000, ‘reading aloud to children: the past, the present, and the future’, reading improvement 37, 148–160. waring, r. & nation, i.s.p., 2004, ‘second language reading and incidental vocabulary learning’, angles on the english-speaking world 4, 11–23. waring, r. & takaki, m., 2003, ‘at what rate do learners learn and retain new vocabulary from reading a graded reader?’, reading in a foreign language 15(2), 130–163. webb, s., 2007, ‘the effects of repetition on vocabulary knowledge’, applied linguistics 28(1), 46–65. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/aml048 appendix 1 teacher survey how many different titles of graded readers are available in your classroom? please indicate if there is more than one copy per title available. how often do the learners in your classroom read these readers? for example, every day, once a week, once a month? please be as specific as possible and also estimate the amount of time they spend on reading these books (in minutes/hours per week). how are the readers used in your classroom? do students read them individually (silent reading, read alouds)? or do you use them for group-guided reading? other? do you think the readers are a valuable resource for vocabulary learning? if yes, why? if no, why? the oxford treetops and mark and cathy series use different levels. do you keep records of the levels or stages that learners have read? if yes, how? do you follow the sequential order of the levels or stages for individual learners? for example, can a learner only continue with stage 11 readers if he or she has finished all the stage 10 readers in the oxford treetops scheme? are children allowed to take the books home? is your school considered a low-resourced school? do you agree or disagree with your school status? please explain. do you have any comments or suggestions about the use of graded readers or use of other reading resources in your classroom? footnotes 1. state aid to public schools in south africa is determined by socio-economic (se) factors. schools serving poor communities receive the most funding. schools are categorised from quintiles 1 to 5, with quintiles 1–3 being the poorer schools. 2. the bnc-coca is an integration of the british national corpus (bnc) containing 100 million english words and the corpus of contemporary american english (coca) containing 450 million american-english words. 3. analysis performed from level k-3 and up. the number of words at the k-1 and k-2 levels at both teacher talk and textbook talk made it impossible to make a distinction between the two. the k-6–k-20 were combined because of the low number of words in each category. abstract introduction literature review research methodology research results discussion and conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) willie t. chinyamurindi department of business management, university of fort hare, south africa zikhona dlaza department of business management, university of fort hare, south africa citation chinyamurindi, w.t. & dlaza, z., 2018, ‘can you teach an old dog new tricks? an exploratory study into how a sample of lecturers develop digital literacies as part of their career development’, reading & writing 9(1), a191. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v9i1.191 original research can you teach an old dog new tricks? an exploratory study into how a sample of lecturers develop digital literacies as part of their career development willie t. chinyamurindi, zikhona dlaza received: 11 dec. 2017; accepted: 30 may 2018; published: 21 nov. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract the concept of digital and information communication technology (ict) literacy is receiving renewed empirical attention. this focus is attributed to the changing nature of society and the move towards the ideals of the knowledge-based economy. further, universities in south africa and internationally are encouraging the fusion of technology in how students read and write. this research gives focus to the lecturer, particularly those lecturers who were once resistant to the use of technology as part of teaching instruction. the aim here was to track how these lecturers over a one-year period develop digital and ict literacies to assist their career development. the study adopted an interpretivist philosophy, relying on the qualitative research approach and a series of three interviews over a year period with 20 lecturers at a selected south african university. data were analysed using thematic analysis to generate three central themes. firstly, the source of resistance in using technology as part of teaching and learning emanated from two main subthemes as perceptions: (1) technology viewed as a fad with little or no impact on actual learning and (2) challenges concerning institutional technology support as a limitation in integrating technology into teaching and learning. secondly, the change of attitude (rather reluctantly) in using technology as part of teaching and learning was because of factors such as peers, the technology ‘tech-savvy’ student community and also a consideration for future career prospects as digital and ict literacies are becoming a critical skills acumen for career progression. finally, in developing digital and ict literacies, the lecturers relied on: (1) participation in training programmes that encourage digital scholarship, (2) personal investment of time and effort to learn about how to develop digital and ict literacies and lastly, (3) developing a career and identity management strategy that incorporates digital and ict literacies. implications for teaching and learning practice are made based on these findings. further, the impact on individual career development (as far as lecturers are concerned) is also suggested. introduction information communication technology (ict) is becoming popular, especially within a university campus scenario both, as a learning tool (chinyamurindi & shava 2015) and as a form of communication (shava, chinyamurindi & somdyala 2016). according to nyambane and mzuki (2014), the rapid growth of ict has brought about remarkable changes in the 21st century. a notable change, especially within the university campus, is the role of ict in educational delivery. notably, empirical studies (mostly in a south african setting) to this end have commonly been focussed on students as end-users (e.g. chinyamurindi & shava 2015; shava et al. 2016). the processes that end-users, such as teachers and faculty members, engage in their adoption and use of technology are argued as key in effective delivery using ict (tiba, condy & junjera 2016). this warrants further investigation, also given contextual and socio-historical issues surrounding south africa (khunou 2015). further, there appears to be a lot of government support in the use of ict, as a way of widening access to education albeit, the landscape of discrimination the country is coming from (south african department of education 2006). to this end, the need to develop ict policy and skills is argued for (blignaut & els 2010) by creating life-long learners (south african department of education 2004). priority in all this is also on developing skills that allow teachers and those in management and administration to help students in using icts. despite the implementation of e-education in south africa, there seems to be a slow rate of adoption and use of technology in the classroom (tiba et al. 2016). notably, empirical studies pay less attention to how this happens in two scenarios. firstly, within a context of rapid ict usage, especially amongst students as end-users. secondly, within a context of individual career development. this research pays cadence to these two contexts and seeks to explore how a sample of university lecturers develop digital literacies as part of their career development. literature review this research is based on a theoretical lens that seeks to understand the adoption of technology amongst lecturers. in achieving this, theoretical consideration is given to the technology acceptance model (tam) (venkatesh & davis 2000). this model consists of two beliefs, namely perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of the application. these two views determine attitudes towards the adoption of a new technology. the attitude towards adoption depicts the prospective adopter’s positive or negative orientation or behaviour towards incorporating a new technology (venkatesh & davis 2000). usage could also be influenced by an individual’s perception of the ability to use the technology (compeau & higgins 1995). subsequently, all these elements of tam can serve as predictors of human behaviour (fishbein & ajzen 1975; lee & lehto 2013) or behavioural intention to use, thus resulting in tam being seen as a useful predictor in explaining human behaviour concerning technology acceptance (chinyamurindi & louw 2010; chinyamurindi & shava 2015; saadé, nebebe & tan 2007). the tam is built around the theory of reasoned action (tra) (fishbein & ajzen 1975), which suggests that individual behaviour is initiated by the intention to perform a particular task. the result of this is that individual behavioural intention determines one’s attitude and subjective norms regarding the behaviour in question (fishbein & ajzen 1975). the tra also posits that intention to act determines behaviour, and a causal link is believed to exist between the two (venkatesh & davis 2000). the attitude–behavioural intention relationship, as espoused in the tam constructs, assumes that all intentions to use technology are equal and can be formed on the basis of the positive use of the technology. the rapid advancement in ict has unceasingly changed the nature of teaching and learning in higher education (voogt 2010). the traditional teacher-centred approaches are now being replaced by dynamic and interactive student-centred learning environments because of the new emerging technology (davis 2002). the new generations of teachers are now expected to be not only an excellent source of information about curriculum design and delivery but also an agent who is supposed to minimise the gap between how technology is applied in classroom teaching and the opportunities offered by technology to enhance student learning (northcote & lim 2009). according to khan, bibi and hason (2016) for teachers to keep up with global pace, they need to be sufficiently competent in using ict in educational settings. a study conducted by buabeng-andoh (2012) found a positive correlation between ict use and competences. this finding is consistent with sorgo, verckovnik and kocijancic (2010) who found a high correlation between frequency of use of ict, perceived value and teachers’ competence in the use of ict amongst science teachers. they further concluded that teachers’ competence and confidence were predictors of the role of ict in teaching. similarly, the findings by petrogiannis (2010) concluded that computer-experienced teachers were more ready to use ict in their classes than non-experienced teachers. thus, the lack of familiarity with advanced functionalities may be the main reason for teachers not attempting to use ict (blin & munro 2008). teachers are expected to use technology in innovative ways that provide students with an engaging and empowering learning experience to prepare them to interact with a globally networked society (kopcha, rieber & walker 2016). research indicates that the effective use of technology in higher education teaching and learning is one of the factors contributing towards the improvement in the quality of instruction (khan et al. 2016). a study conducted by collins (2013) provided evidence about the positive effects of using ict in teaching and learning situations. information communication technologies have great potential for knowledge dissemination, effective learning and the development of more efficient educational services (buabeng-andoh 2012). this was also found by koehler and mishra (2005) that ict alone cannot lead students to learn; however, teachers who incorporate ict into their teaching can also facilitate student’s learning (khan 2015). an essential aspect of the shift in technological processes has been to the acceptance and use of ict for teaching and learning (oye, iahad & ab.rahim 2011). according to buabeng-andoh (2012), the adoption of ict by education has been seen as a powerful way to contribute to educational change, better prepare students for the information age, improve learning outcomes and competencies of learners, and equip students with survival skills for the information society. therefore, teachers are expected to integrate ict into their teaching and learning processes. for instance, an analysis by hue and ab jalil (2013) of the relationship between lecturers’ attitudes towards ict integration into the curriculum and their use of ict in the classroom suggests that when lecturers’ attitudes towards ict integration into curriculum increase, there is a possibility that their ict use will also increase. furthermore, to successfully initiate and implement educational technology in the school programme depends strongly on the teachers’ support and attitudes. it is believed that if teachers perceived technology programmes as neither fulfilling their own needs nor their students’ needs, it is likely that they will not integrate the technology into teaching and learning (buabeng-andoh 2012). evidence suggests that teachers’ attitudes and beliefs influence successful integration of ict into teaching (hew & brush 2007; keengwe & onchwari 2008). if teachers’ attitudes are positive towards the use of educational technology, then they can easily provide useful insight about the adoption and integration of ict into teaching and learning processes. consequently, students learning process and outcomes are connected to their teachers’ teaching beliefs, understanding and practices (khan 2015). for instance, previous studies assert that traditional beliefs that teachers and students hold, have a negative influence on the use of ict in the classroom (e.g. hermans et al. 2008; mäkitalo-siegl, kohnle & fischer 2011). a study conducted by drent and meelissen (2008) on factors that influence the innovative use of ict by teacher educators in the netherlands revealed that student-oriented pedagogical approach, positive attitude towards computers, computer experience and personal entrepreneurship of the teacher educator have a direct positive influence on the innovative use of ict by the teacher. on the contrary, previous studies suggest that a small number of teachers believe that the benefits of ict are not seen (buabeng-andoh 2012). the empirical survey revealed that one-fifth of european teachers thought that the use of ict in teaching did not benefit their students’ learning (korte & husing 2007). a survey of the united kingdom (uk) teachers also revealed that teachers’ positivity about the possible contributions of ict was moderated as they became ‘rather more ambivalent and sometimes doubtful’ about ‘specific, current advantages’ (becta 2008: 45). furthermore, it has been found that lack of access to equipment in the classroom and lack of teachers’ training skills in the use of the equipment contribute to the low use of ict by teachers (buabeng-andoh 2012). similarly, the study conducted by howie, muller and paterson (2005) found that lack of computer literacy amongst teachers, lack of training with regard to integration of ict into teaching and the absence of a properly developed computer skills curriculum were barriers to teachers’ application of the technology. therefore, the inconsistency between teachers’ actual use of ict and perception can be attributed to an inadequate supply of ict resources, lack of access to the right kinds of technology, inadequate ict pedagogical training and insufficient administrative support (buabeng-andoh 2012). research methodology this research adopted a qualitative methodology hinging on the interpretivist philosophy and using an exploratory research design (creswell 2009; silverman 2013). the qualitative approach is praised for the way it allows for gaining a deeper understanding of the lived experience (sheard 2011) and effective in arriving at making some sense around this experience (chinyamurindi 2012, 2016a, 2016b). research context the research project was conducted at a south african university in the eastern cape province of south africa where the authors of this article are based. this research was part of a research component of a qualification of the postgraduate diploma in higher education that one of the authors of this article was part of. this research followed the institutional ethical requirements of the participating institution. participant sampling and data collection a total of 20 participants took part in the study. the breakdown of these participants was as follows: 10 were males (50%); 10 were females (50%); age range was 23–52 years; average age was 25 years; 15 black people (75%) and 5 white people (25%). table 1 shows some description of the participants who took part in this study. table 1: participant profiles. a convenience sampling approach was used relying on those participants who were ‘accessible and available’ (cohen, manion & morrison 2013:114). participants had to be full-time members of staff with the participating university. contact and recruitment of the 20 participants were made through an email sent by the researchers explaining the nature of the project and the expectations. upon agreeing to be part of the study, an interview was arranged at a venue deemed suitable by the prospective respondent. following all this, a semi-structured interview approach was used following a predetermined structure of questions (silverman 2013). the study (including interviews) was conducted from may 2015 to may 2016, and each interview lasted between 55 min and 1.5 h. strategies to ensure data quality to ensure data quality, four steps were taken. firstly, initial interview questions were pretested with a sample of 10 postgraduate students on similar characteristics as those participants who took part in the study. these students were also teaching, employing a blended learning approach that employs technology and traditional classroom delivery. secondly, to ensure credible data, all interview data were recorded and transcribed verbatim within 24 h has done in previous research (chinyamurindi 2016a, 2016b). thirdly, after data transcription, participants were emailed a copy of the transcript to verify its accuracy. any changes were made to the transcript as per the wish of the participant. lastly, comprehensive notes were taken during the data collection process, and that assisted in the collection and analysis of data. in essence, this was a point of reflexivity (taylor, gibbs & lewins 2005) and achieving some sensitivity (mays & pope 2000) in the collection and analysis of data. data analysis the interviews were exported into qsr international’s nvivo 9, a data analysis and management software package useful when dealing with masses of text, graphic, audio and video data (reuben & bobat 2014). thematic analysis was used as a means of data analysis (braun & clarke 2006). thematic analysis is viewed as a flexible and useful research tool because of its ability to potentially provide a rich and detailed yet complex account of data (clarke & braun 2013). the process of generating themes is believed to happen at two levels: (1) semantic level and (2) latent level (braun & clarke 2006). at the semantic level, themes are identified within the explicit of the surface of meanings of the data and the analyst is not looking for anything beyond what a respondent has said or written; on the contrary, thematic analysis at the latent level seeks to identify or examine underlying ideas that are theorised as shaping or influencing the semantic content of the data (braun & clarke 2006). a semantic level approach was used for this research and this entailed an analytic process which involves a progression from description where the data have been organised to show patterns in semantic content and summarised, to interpretation, where there is an attempt to theorise the significance of the patterns and their broader meanings and implications in relation to previous literature (braun & clarke 2006). research results drawing from the data analysis, three main findings emerged. firstly, the source of resistance in using technology as part of teaching and learning emanated from two main subthemes as perceptions: (1) technology viewed as a fad with little or no impact on actual learning and (2) challenges concerning institutional technology support as a limitation in integrating technology into teaching and learning. secondly, the change of attitude (rather reluctantly) in using technology as part of teaching and learning was because of factors such as peers, the ‘tech-savvy’ student community and also a consideration for future career prospects as digital and ict literacies are becoming a critical skills acumen for career progression. finally, in developing digital and ict literacies, the lecturers relied on: (1) participation in training programmes that encourage digital scholarship, (2) personal investment of time and effort to learn how to develop digital and ict literacies and lastly, (3) developing a career and identity management strategy that incorporates digital and ict literacies. table 2 highlights the development of these themes stemming from the initial codes that are generated. table 2: development of themes: initial codes to resultant themes. source of resistance based on the data analysis, two main sources of resistance towards technology usage in teaching and learning were identified. table 3 presents these sources of resistance. table 3: sources of resistance to technology usage. from table 3 some accounts can be used as examples. for instance, marjorie was resistant towards using technology drawing on the years of work experience that she has. ‘i have been in academia for over ten years now. i would say when the technology movement started i was sceptical. it appears there is always a fascination with tools and yet the core issue of teaching and learning is not changing.’ (marjorie, female, associate professor) this view by marjorie was confirmed by another participant: ‘it seems we are in a state of flux in higher education today. an endless excitement with tools and pedagogical resources hinging on technology. i understand why we lecturers can be resistant. to keep up with all these tools and resources is a mission. what does not change are the basics, these are the basics from which our teaching and learning are grounded in.’ (brian, male, lecturer) linked to this subtheme and derived from table 3 are experiences that also reveal a failure of institutional authorities in helping address fears and concerns lecturers have regarding technology usage. for instance, shivon cited an experience: ‘last year, i had a class of 200 from a course that usually hosted 80 students. so i approached the relevant authorities to see how technology can help as i had taught without technology. the whole process took at least three weeks to set-up, and for me, it was just not worth the delay. mainly due to an internal issue that can easily be solved.’ (shivon, male, lecturer) other participants like vanessa cited an institutional disparity to exist concerning the use of technology: ‘for instance, a student can take eight courses a semester. meaning they have eight different lecturers. each of these has their way of teaching. some use technology and others don’t. do you see the confusion it creates? in my view, there is more support for traditional classroom learning than the electronic aspect.’ (vanessa, female, senior lecturer) sources causing the change of attitude after five months, the second stream of interviews was conducted with the same 20 participants and the aim here was to understand the experiences in using technology albeit the initial views of resistance. our concern was the sources that may change an attitude to favour technology usage. table 4 presents a list of these sources of change and some quotes to support these. table 4: sources causing the change of attitude. how lecturers develop digital literacies? finally, in developing digital and ict literacies, the lecturers relied on: (1) participation in training programmes that encourage digital scholarship, (2) personal investment of time and effort to learn how to develop digital and ict literacies; and lastly, (3) developing a career and identity management strategy that incorporates digital and ict literacies. table 5 presents the illustrating quote for this finding. table 5: how digital and information communication technology literacies develop? discussion and conclusion this study sought to explore how a sample of university lecturers develop digital literacies as part of their career development. the backdrop of this being a context where south africa is viewed as becoming a country that places priority on the adoption and use of technology in the classroom (tiba et al. 2016). in support of the observation of the rapid change brought about by ict (nyambane & mzuki 2014), this research illustrates factors that affect lecturers as part of the knowledge generation process albeit the uncomfortable in some cases. so in a bid to create life-long learners, blignaut and els (2010) suggested that the focus should also be on understanding how to empower those mandated with the responsibility to develop such learners, and this heightens the focus on university lecturers. although a possible tension exists, as illustrated by this study, between a traditional approach to learning (voogt 2010) and a contemporary perspective (khan et al. 2016), some form of compromise can be arrived at. for instance, the participants of the study narrated their concerns about technology usage and a possible reason for their negative attitude. however, these concerns should not be dismissed as these can have utility functions. firstly, they can be a basis for interventions to improve teaching delivery, using technology, may be suggested (sorgo et al. 2010). secondly, as illustrated by the findings, these concerns help improve understanding the lived experience, concerning technology usage in teaching delivery and ultimately do affect the career prospects of the lecturers. finally, following these concerns creates a platform to identify best practices concerning ict use and the competencies needed (petrogiannis 2010). this can affect full-system utilisation (davis 2002). this research supports previous south african research that shows the popularity of the use of technology in teaching and learning (chinyamurindi & shava 2015). previous research attested to this popularity by paying attention to end-user perspective as a focus on students (chinyamurindi & shava 2015; shava et al. 2016). this research magnifies the attention of the lecturer as an important stakeholder, not only in the generation of knowledge but also how it is presented. such a focus on the lecturer as a user of ict for teaching practice gives cadence to the importance of empowering this constituent group as part of the deliverables of their jobs (tiba et al. 2016). through the findings of this research, contextual issues, as probed in previous south african studies were key in influencing the adoption of technology amongst teaching staff (khunou 2015). thus, the lecturing and teaching staff may be considered to be life-long learners as well (blignaut & els 2010). the source of resistance by the lecturers to technology could be attributed to the pressures from the context they are operating within (tiba et al. 2016). emphasis within this context is on the need to meet deliverables to an ever-changing student constituency that is technologically savvy. thus, students indirectly drive this pressure that requires lecturers to not only catch up with the latest technology but also be users themselves. thus, the change brought about by the use of icts has created this different atmosphere (nyambane & mzuki 2014). the resistance towards technology as found in this study could be indicative of generational challenges that exist within the academy. two contesting views seem to exist, firstly, a traditional teacher-centred approach and the latter, a more contemporary perspective with emphasis on technology usage (davis 2002). this generational gap manifests in different approaches to learning and plays a key role in the resistance to icts. this study illustrates how this links to the individual career development against the teachers. guided by the literature, lecturers may need to make the transition between the identified gaps to allow them to efficiently and effectively meet the needs of the 21st century learner (khan et al. 2016). institutions of higher learning may need to come in and assist this process through empowerment initiatives. the study has some contributions. firstly, it advances the literature within a south african setting that concerns aspects of ict literacies (chinyamurindi & shava 2015; shava et al. 2016). whereas previous studies have focussed on student samples, this research locates its argument by giving voice to university lecturers. this sample is as important as the student sample (yet under-researched) as argued by other researchers (tiba et al. 2016). further, the research heightens the focus on the role of context in shaping aspects of technology usage (khunou 2015). the findings of this study do much to highlight those issues from a lecturer’s perspective that can help to create a better working context as far technology is concerned. the current work has some limitations. firstly, because of the qualitative nature of the research, generalisability is not possible as the findings are subjective based on a lived experience. thus, the results of this research are not generalisable to the entire population of university lecturers in south africa. we thus urge caution when interpreting and making implications based on this. secondly, this research does not reveal an accurate demographic profile of the lecturers in the selected university as participants were conveniently selected. despite these limitations within this research, future research can be enacted to improve on these limitations. further, a quantitative research approach can be used to improve the subjective limitation of this research. this allows for a more representative sample. inferences can also be made to establish linkages and association between the variables being studied. in conclusion, one participant of this study spoke of the challenge they face and a possible solution: ‘can you teach an old dog new tricks? this is an insult to an old dog. you can teach a dog anything, just as long as it wants to learn.’ (progress, male, full professor) acknowledgements the authors thank all the participants for taking part in this research. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions w.t.c. collected and analysed the data. z.d. wrote the initial draft of the article and also assisted in data collection. references becta, 2008, harnessing technology: schools survey 2008, viewed 20 january 2017, from http://emergingtechnologies.becta.org.uk/uploaddir/downloads/page_documents/research/ht_schools_survey08_analysis.pdf 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teachers’, journal of computer assisted learning 26, 453–464. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00373.x abstract introduction extensive reading methodology findings discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) naomi a. boakye unit for academic literacy, university of pretoria, south africa citation boakye, n.a., 2017, ‘extensive reading in a tertiary reading programme: students’ accounts of affective and cognitive benefits’, reading & writing 8(1), a153. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v8i1.153 original research extensive reading in a tertiary reading programme: students’ accounts of affective and cognitive benefits naomi a. boakye received: 17 dec. 2016; accepted: 12 sept. 2017; published: 17 nov. 2017 copyright: © 2017. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract this article reports on the extensive reading (er) component of a reading intervention programme to improve first-year students’ reading proficiency. to make the intervention more practical and to accelerate improvement, an er component was included in the programme. two groups of first-year students (high-risk and low-risk) were required to read short stories and novels of their choice and to record their affective and cognitive experiences during the reading to submit as a portfolio. in addition, students answered preand post-intervention questionnaires on their reading habits. students were selected based on their performance in a reading test and interviewed to gain more insight into their reading experiences. the questionnaires were analysed using the t-test, and the interview responses were analysed by content analysis. the findings show that students had benefited from er. questionnaire results show that students’ reading habits had improved significantly. the reports from the interviews and inventories show that students’ affective and cognitive reading levels, including reading speed, had also improved. students also reported on the transfer of reading strategies from their er to their academic reading. based on the findings, recommendations are made for reading programmes at the tertiary level, specifically at this institution, to include er in order to complement explicit teaching, instil motivation and accelerate the improvement of students’ reading proficiency. introduction reading is fundamental to learning. reading researchers concur that reading underlies all forms of academic study and is crucial to academic success (alderson 2000; grabe & stoller 2011; guthrie 2008; pretorius 2000). scott and saaiman (2016) state that reading is an indispensable skill and is fundamentally interrelated with educational success. the various types of reading, such as reading for pleasure, skimming or reading to learn, all contribute to learning (grabe & stoller 2011). reading for pleasure or extensive reading (er), among other types of reading, such as reading to learn, helps to improve students’ reading proficiency and increases their metacognitive skills (grabe 2009; horst 2005). reading for pleasure also complements formal reading instruction in the classroom and increases reading comprehension skills. however, given the 21st-century over-dependence on electronic devices, a number of university students in south africa have not, and still do not, read for pleasure, as evidenced in a study by boakye and southey (2008). the situation becomes complex for a number of students from low socio-economic status homes because of a lack of resources and reading materials (currin & pretorius 2010; pretorius & mampuru 2007). these students do not experience joy and pleasure or personal satisfaction when reading and, consequently, have not developed positive reading habits. as a result, when students are faced with the quantity and level of reading required at tertiary level, they are overwhelmed (boakye 2012; niven 2005). given the poor reading instruction in a number of schools, print-poor environment at home and lack of emphasis on reading at school level (currin & pretorius 2010; pretorius & lephalala 2011; van staden & howie 2010; zimmerman & long 2008), a number of students in south africa’s tertiary institutions do not only lack appropriate reading strategies but also have low motivation and little or no love of reading (boakye & southey 2008). thus, without adequate levels of reading proficiency, students are not adequately equipped for academic literacy requirements at tertiary level. a body of research (e.g. horst 2005; savas 2009) has shown the enormous benefits of er in improving reading proficiency. according to savas (2009:66), english for academic purposes (eap) courses for tertiary education may not meet the needs of students fully, or maximise the improvement of language and reading proficiency, and would have to be complemented with er. however, er is lacking in many reading programmes (grabe 2009) and more so at tertiary level. studies on er at university level are minimal, especially studies pertaining to l2 speakers (brunfaut 2008; grabe 2009; grabe & stoller 2011) in african countries. the article reports on a study that focused on er among first-year students at a tertiary institution in south africa. er was integrated into a reading intervention programme, thus combining intensive reading and er in the programme. the intervention programme consisted of various cognitive and affective strategies and an er component to further support the reading instruction of the cohort of students. the er component was evaluated mainly through interviews with selected students and is reported on in this article. the article first discusses the benefits and characteristics of er and various studies conducted on er. thereafter, the article reports on the study by providing various excerpts of students’ accounts and responses during interviews as well as quantitative results of a questionnaire on reading habits. the article concludes with recommendations that advocate for the inclusion of er in reading intervention programmes. extensive reading extensive reading is sometimes referred to as pleasure reading (day & bamford 2009), sustained silent reading (garan & devooged 2008) or free reading (krashen 2004). this form of reading is receiving attention as an effective reading instruction for l2 learners (grabe 2009; grabe & stoller 2011; nation 2009; yamashita 2004). er instruction requires students to read large quantities of texts for general understanding and for pleasure (grabe 2009). reading is individualised and independent, but students can discuss common texts in a group or as a community. savas (2009) and haider and akhter (2012) argue that er enables students to take responsibility for reading outside the classroom and develop reading autonomy. students are given the option to select texts based on their own interest and proficiency level (bamford & day 2004; kirin, poolsap & plongthong 2012; yamashita 2008). the goal of er is to get students to enjoy reading in the target language (savas 2009). whereas intensive reading (ir) aims to develop students’ reading skills explicitly by teaching strategies, such as identifying main ideas, recognising text signals and finding meaning of words (haider & akhter 2012; savas 2009), er encourages reading of comprehensible texts for pleasure. characteristics of extensive reading extensive reading has been described by various researchers on the basis of its distinctive features. the characteristics of er listed by day and bamford (1998) include the following: students read large amounts of printed material. the material they read falls in their level of comprehension. they choose their own reading material. teachers are to read with students to serve as role models and provide enthusiasm. reading is its own reward – reading is for pleasure, information and general understanding. reading is done at a faster rate. reading is individual (students read on their own); teachers guide and monitor students. follow-up post-reading activities can be given to students. teachers and students keep track of students’ progress. issues such as choice, role models, comprehensible texts and no formal assessments are important features of er. in other words, it is important for students to be given the opportunity to choose what they want to read; for teachers, parents and other significant adults to serve as role models; for texts to be within students’ level of competence; and to have no formal assessments. follow-up activities could be given to replace formal assessments. however, the best practice is for the activity not to be assessed at all. er among l2 speakers can be underpinned by three theoretical frameworks, viz. the linguistic interdependence hypothesis (lih), the linguistic threshold hypothesis (lth) and the transfer hypothesis. theoretical framework the lih by cummins (1979) and the lth by clarke (1980) posit that students can transfer l1 reading skills to l2 reading, provided that they have reached a language threshold in the l2. the threshold according to grabe and stoller (2011) depends on context (i.e. the level of difficulty, the text itself and the nature of the task). however, a number of students may have done little or no reading in their l1 to transfer to the l2 (august 2006), and a greater number may not have reached the l2 threshold for tertiary level reading, or for the type of reading tasks required at this level. yeld (2009) convincingly shows that many students lack the required academic literacy skills for tertiary education and are at the basic or intermediate level, instead of the proficient level. in addition to the lih and lth, the transfer hypothesis of hacquebord (1989) states that students would benefit from er if they continue reading in the l1 while reading in the l2. however, a number of students have not and do not read in their l1. these three hypotheses may not be applicable to a number of tertiary level students in the country, as the majority have done minimal reading in l1 (boakye & southey 2008) and a number have not reached the tertiary threshold (yeld 2009). in addition, given the fact that students’ motivation to read decreases as they move up the education ladder (guthrie & wigfield 2000), it can be assumed that very little l1 reading would have taken place before and during tertiary study. it would therefore seem that there is a lack of reading culture among many tertiary students. er therefore becomes one of the important avenues of developing reading proficiency among tertiary students. according to de castell (1981): [a] person is literate when he has acquired the essential knowledge and skills which enables him/her to engage in all those activities in which literacy is required for effective functioning in his/her group of community. (p. 8) in other words, university students need to be proficient readers to acquire new knowledge and function in the academic community. a reading programme that aims to develop such literacy is the most beneficial for reading development and contributes to more successful learning (savas 2009). thus, a programme that incorporates er and leads to independent reading would seem to be more adequate than one that is mainly ir driven without er. benefits of extensive reading extensive reading has many benefits, including the improvement of fluency, reading ability, vocabulary, writing and grammar (grabe 2009; huang & liou 2007; yamashita 2008). it has been shown to improve reading comprehension, increase vocabulary development and improve reading and writing skills and abilities (day & bamford 2009; de jong & bus 2002; huang & liou 2007). through reading books, a number of important changes occur in learners’ academic literacy. savas (2009) states that an eap programme that includes er is a ‘new type of reading instruction’ and is more effective than an eap teaching that is based on ir alone. mckool and gespass (2009) actually perceive reading instruction without er as counter-productive to developing students’ reading ability. according to the input hypothesis of krashen (1988:278), successive reading enables the learner to be repeatedly exposed to new words and expressions, as well as other aspects of discourse, while extending and deepening their understanding of more familiar ones. warring and takaki (2003) intimate that er helps to consolidate strategies that learners know of or have been taught. for example, through constant, continuous and substantial exposure to texts, students acquire the sense of how the language is structured, including organisation of discourse and the use of prepositions. er is therefore regarded as one of the most effective ways to enhance reading speed, comprehension and vocabulary because of the amount of repeated exposure to interesting and meaningful l2 reading material (asraf & ahmad 2003; hitosugi & day 2004; kirin et al. 2012; yamashita 2008). extensive reading holds many benefits for students’ reading proficiency. reading for pleasure contributes to the development of students’ reading ability by unconsciously increasing their reading speed and improving their use of strategies. in addition, it helps to instil a love for reading and promotes independent reading. furthermore, as a number of students are first-generation or non-traditional (august 2006) students, who may not have done much reading in the home language or in the target language (english), er will help develop these students’ love of reading, motivation to read and joy in reading. explicit strategy instruction and comprehension strategies alone may not be adequate to improve students’ overall reading ability in the limited time that they receive instruction in support programmes. krashen (2004) points out that er is a major source of acquiring reading competence, vocabulary and the ability to handle (productively and receptively) complex grammatical constructions. a number of studies have shown the benefits of er. hayashi (1999) investigated the relationship between reading ability and the amount of reading undertaken in er by first-year students and found that er effectively helped improve the ability to comprehend what is read, as well as their vocabulary. yamashita (2008) explored the effect of er on language proficiency, including general reading ability, using 31 japanese university freshmen. they found a great improvement in the reading ability of this cohort of english second language speakers. er contributes to improvement in both affective and cognitive reading. affective benefits affective aspects of reading, such as motivation, interest, attitude and self-efficacy, are increased through er. powell (2005) found that reading for pleasure not only develops reading ability but also benefits a range of affective aspects, such as boosting confidence and self-efficacy, increasing motivation and improving students’ overall attitude towards reading. chen et al. (2013) point out that er can enhance the reading attitude of l2 students immensely. safaeia and bulca (2013) found that students’ in er programmes developed stronger self-confidence to internalise what they had read. deci and ryan (2000) intimate that er encourages autonomy, which leads to enhanced motivation and improved learning. mason and krashen (1997) found that the majority of students who were reluctant readers became eager readers as a result of er. using a questionnaire, sun (2003) investigated 59 university students’ attitude towards er. students reported positive attitudes towards the er programme and improvement of language skills. in addition, independence and autonomy were established in l2 reading. arnold (2009) also reported on students’ gains as a result of er. using first-year students in a german class he found that students reported an increase in reading motivation, attitude, confidence, reading ability and reading for pleasure outside class. cognitive benefits cognitive benefits of er, such as comprehension, vocabulary development, discourse organisation and sentence structure, have been shown in various studies. savas (2009) found that compared to the control group the er group’s reading comprehension and vocabulary increased. the exception was grammatical knowledge in which the control group received explicit instruction. he concludes that er in eap programmes makes the programme more beneficial than ir that focuses only on strategy instruction by means of academic texts. er, which encourages autonomous learning, therefore seems to be the best means of accelerating vocabulary development. huang and liou (2007) used 16 articles to construct an english er programme. the programme was conducted with 38 college students over 12 weeks. the preand post-test results showed that participation in the reading programme improved learners’ vocabulary scores. carrel and carson (1997:49) point out that ir and er should not be seen as opposing teaching approaches, but that each serves different but complementary purposes and that both should be used in reading programmes. transfer benefits as explained by the lih and the transfer theory of hacquebord (1989), reading skills can be transferred from l1 to l2. transfer of skills can also take place from er to ir. a number of studies show that students can transfer skills acquired in er to academic reading in their subject areas. savas (2009) explains that er results in a spread effect of reading competence to other language skills such as writing and control over syntax. day and bamford (2009) show the transfer of vocabulary development and writing skills. using the reading attitude questionnaire and toefl’s reading comprehension and vocabulary test, chen et al. (2013) found that the experimental group showed a significantly better reading attitude, reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge than the control group. they concluded that er attributes transfer to academic reading and should be incorporated into tertiary reading programmes to help improve tertiary level l2 students’ reading attitude, reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge (chen et al. 2013). other studies, such as those by horst (2005), hitosugi and day (2004), powell (2005) and rodrigo et al. (2007), have shown students’ transfer of cognitive and affective reading improvement to academic reading. in south africa, the study by scott and saaiman (2016) is one of a small number of er studies at tertiary level. despite research proving the benefits of er in students’ affective and cognitive reading elsewhere, studies in south african tertiary institutions and in africa generally are limited. the reading and writing needs of students in africa and, in particular, south africa may differ from those of students in asia, europe and america. in addition, most studies have either used solely questionnaires or preand post-tests to assess the benefits of er quantitatively. while these methods of data collection can be quantified and are necessary, qualitative accounts provide an in-depth assessment and evaluation of er and provide deeper insight into how students benefit from this activity. the study used questionnaires to a limited extent, but mainly interviews and inventories to ascertain students’ views on the benefits or lack thereof of er on students’ affective and cognitive reading abilities. the aim of the study was therefore to explore students’ opinions of the er component of the intervention. in addition, the researcher aimed to find out if students at tertiary level, specifically those at this institution, benefit from er. the questions that informed the study were the following: rq1. what are the opinions and perceptions of students regarding the er component of the reading intervention programme? rq2. did this cohort of students benefit from er? if so, how? methodology the intervention conducted for the study comprise affective and cognitive teaching techniques (i.e. learning goal, collaboration, interesting texts, praise and rewards, autonomy support, strategy instruction, teacher support and er), to teach and improve students’ reading proficiency (see boakye 2017 for details of the intervention programme). er was included in the programme to complement instruction and to promote engaged reading where students are involved in the texts to achieve affective and cognitive improvement in reading. students were to read for pleasure on a weekly basis and to record their affective and cognitive experiences (improvements and challenges) in an inventory. they chose their own reading texts, for example, short stories or novels. in a scaffolded manner they were to read shorter texts that were at their level of competence of a minimum of 50 pages each week for 2 weeks and progress to longer, more challenging texts of a minimum of 100 pages each week for the rest of the semester. thus, for most of the semester the readings were to be longer and mainly novels. furthermore, students were to time and monitor their reading and record any affective and cognitive improvements and challenges. the intervention was conducted in the first semester and lasted 14 weeks for high-risk students and 7 weeks for low-risk students. the comments were intended to indicate challenges encountered by students while reading (e.g. difficulties in comprehension and associated boredom and the positive experiences (e.g. improvement in comprehension, increase in speed, pleasure and involvement in the readings). in essence, students were to provide cognitive, metacognitive and affective reflections on their readings. participants the study comprised two groups of first-year university students who were categorised as high-risk or low-risk based on their performance in a literacy test. each group had a control equivalent. although the entire cohort of students were required to complete the questionnaire, participants for the interviews were selected by purposive sampling. all the students in the two groups wrote a reading test and those who obtained the highest, average or lowest scores in the reading test were identified and selected for interviews. thirty-six students were interviewed. instrument preand post-intervention questionnaires on students’ reading habits before and after the intervention were administered to determine if students’ er habits had improved after the intervention. semi-structured interviews were used to gain a better understanding of the effectiveness of the intervention as perceived by the students. interview questions probed students’ opinions of the affective and cognitive benefits of the er component of the intervention. inventories written by students on their affective and cognitive experiences during the reading activity shed more light on their reading challenges and improvements. the data from the interviews and the inventories are presented qualitatively. the semi-structured interview questions were based on the reading activity of students. questions used for the interview on er included the following: did er influence your reading ability, and if so, in what way? do you feel that you have been motivated to read more often? did the er that you had to do influence your reading behaviour or habits in any way? when you read novels, do you identify with characters (e.g. share their pain, joy, and so on)? were you involved in the reading of the novel or text? did you become curious about the unfolding of events in the novels? did er benefit you in any way? explain how. besides the specific questions, students were also asked to provide general comments on the activity: comment briefly on any challenges, improvements and developments, and provide suggestions if necessary. questionnaire the questionnaire comprised five questions on how frequently students read and what kind of texts they read (see table 1). table 1: questions on students’ reading habits. procedure the selected students were interviewed for approximately 15 min each at the end of the intervention. students completed the questionnaires on reading habits before and after the intervention. students submitted their inventories at the end of the intervention. data analysis firstly, the preand post-intervention questionnaires on reading habits were compared using means and t-test analyses to determine any improvement in their reported reading habits. the cronbach’s alpha for the questions on reading habits was 0.68, which was considered adequate for a group analysis to be made. secondly, the interviews were recorded and transcribed. notes were also taken manually, and the two were tallied. thereafter, the responses were coded and grouped under affective and cognitive themes and other significant salient themes that emerged (ivankova & cresswell 2009). the number of students who referred to a specific issue was converted to a percentage by dividing the overall number of students interviewed and multiplying by 100. pseudonyms are used for the presentation by substituting english, afrikaans and african names with similar ones. thirdly, examples were taken from the inventories. these are included to provide more insight into students’ affective and cognitive reflections on their er. findings whereas the data for the questionnaires are presented to show statistical improvement, the interview reports and the examples from the inventories are given to indicate improvements verbally and to provide further insight into how er helped to improve students’ reading proficiency, as reported by them. the three data sets are provided for corroboration. questionnaires the means and the t-test analysis of the questionnaire results showed that students’ reading habits had improved significantly after the er intervention. the means for the pre-intervention were 2.43 for the high-risk and 2.67 for the low-risk group. after the intervention, these had improved to 1.82 and 2.22, respectively. lower mean figures indicate more positive responses. the improvements were statistically significant at (t(74) = −5.11, p = 0.000) for the high-risk group and significant at (t(117) = 5.36, p = 0.000) for the low-risk group. the results are shown in figure 1. figure 1: preand post-intervention results regarding students’ extensive reading habits. the control groups, which had had no intervention, slumped to mean figures of 2.71 and 2.73 in the high-risk and low-risk groups, respectively. interviews students reported great improvement in cognitive and affective reading levels. they also reported transfer of reading strategies and improvements in reading speed. firstly, the findings for the high-risk group are given, after which the low-risk group is reported on. high-risk group because of the voluntary nature of the er component, 56% of the students in the high-risk group did not participate. the main reasons cited for non-participation were poor time management and inability to cope with academic work. three of the four students who obtained the lowest marks in this group did not participate. however, the fourth student, who participated, improved his pre-test mark to an average mark in the post-test. those who participated in the er reported as follows: 43% reported improvement in reading habits and general reading proficiency. 86% reported improvement in comprehension. 56% reported on the affective aspect of being deeply involved in the story and in the reading of the novel, in a sense engagement in reading. 100% reported an increase in reading speed and vocabulary. on a more specific level, one student reported that she started reading simply as a stress reliever at the end of her daily lectures, intended merely to meet the requirements set by the lecturer. however, she realised at the end of the activities that she had benefited immensely. first of all she could focus for longer while reading, whereas initially her mind used to wander when she studied. she reported that she previously lacked concentration and focus in reading, but obtained these while reading for pleasure. on transfer of skills, she stated that she was surprised to find that this ability had transferred to her other modules as well, and her mind no longer wandered when studying. secondly, her reading speed increased, which motivated her and increased her willingness to read more, as indicated in the following self-report: ‘i used the reading to relieve stress from attending lectures all day. i did not like reading but undertook the reading project because we were asked to do so. my mind used to wander when i am studying, but when i started reading the book it did not happen and now i can study without my mind wandering. i realised that i was reading faster than before and this encouraged me to read more. i felt like i could read more and more. i became so involved in a motivational book i was reading that i started practising the suggestions.’ [ndlovu, student] from ndlovu’s self-report, cognitive and affective benefits are integrated and influence each other. phalane, who had not been reading before the project, remarked: ‘i could not wait to finish and find out the end of the story.’ [phalane, student] one student confessed that she found the reading difficult initially, but as she continued, she began to enjoy it and became very interested in the novels. she reported that her understanding improved and her imagination was very active as she became involved in the story. she added that she felt good because she was aware of her progress. her newly developed activity of reading for pleasure influenced her reading of academic texts. she admitted during the interview session that she used to dislike her marketing module because it required too much reading, but now enjoyed reading and also had better understanding of what she read: ‘i felt good because i could see my progress. at the beginning i found reading difficult but i continued and i started enjoying it. i borrowed more books from the lecturer so that i could continue reading even after the project. i realised that i could understand better. my imagination was involved in the reading. it influenced my reading in other subjects. for example, i used to hate marketing because of the reading, but now i enjoy reading my textbooks and i also understand it better than before.’ [aphane, student] similar to that of ndlovu, aphane’s report pointed to cognitive and affective benefits, which shows that the two are interdependent in er. er provided joy and love for reading, leading students to read more. as they continued to read daily for pleasure, frequent reading improved their comprehension and other reading skills. the awareness of this improvement increased their confidence and self-efficacy and instilled higher motivation. consequently, they read even more, which contributed to higher reading proficiency. low-risk group in the low-risk group, 50% of the students did not participate in er. reasons given were similar to those of the high-risk students, namely being overburdened by academic work. however, one student, webb, explained that he was just not interested in reading. this was shown in his performance, as he was one of those who obtained the lowest mark in the pre-test. another student, maluleka, who was one of those who obtained the highest pre-test mark, explained that he did not participate because he did not think he needed it. similar sentiments were expressed by some students in the study by scott and saaiman (2016). it seems some students do not perceive er favourably. for the other 50% who participated, the benefits were considerable. they reported improvement in areas such as comprehension, reading speed, motivation, self-efficacy, interest and involvement, as follows: 75% increase in reading speed and understanding 50% transfer of reading improvements to reading of textbooks in other subjects 25% increase in vocabulary and improvement in the use of reading strategies motivated them to read more 38% involvement in the stories and enjoyment of reading 25% confidence in reading 50% development of interest and motivation, which instilled willingness to read 50% desire to read frequently, especially during the holidays a number of students (38%) reported being involved in what they read. they explained that they had to make the time to read, but once they did, they enjoyed it and became involved. a student stated succinctly: ‘i had to force myself to start reading but once i started i found i became involved and enjoyed it. then i had to force myself to stop so that i can study. it’s like i am in the story.’ [botha, student] botha added that her reading speed and comprehension improved. she also admitted that as an afrikaans l1 speaker she had read only afrikaans non-academic texts, and therefore found the vocabulary in the novels challenging. however, as she searched on google and consulted a dictionary to find the meaning of words, she realised that her vocabulary was improving and the unfamiliar words were becoming fewer and fewer as she read. she reported that her motivation to read increased as she became involved in the story and enjoyed reading and added that she would be reading more english books during the june holidays. when asked for her general comment on the er project, she reported that her vocabulary and her ability to read english texts had improved, which had resulted in boosting her confidence in reading english novels and that for the llb programme she was registered for, she intended to switch from afrikaans instruction to english instruction the following year. another student reported that she ‘was not much of a reader’, but after the intervention, she had been reading a lot since she got into the habit as a result of the reading project. she added that the reading project had helped to improve her reading speed and comprehension: ‘i saw improvement in my reading speed from the weekly recordings. i was not much of a reader, but now i read a lot. because i am reading frequently now, and using the correct strategies, i can see that it has improved my understanding. i understand what i read better.’ [mogomotsi, student] inventories the inventories consisted of affective comments such as involvement, motivation and interest, and cognitive comments on vocabulary, comprehension and improvement in general reading ability. some examples are given below: ‘the novel was initially difficult to read but became easier as i progressed.’ [naidoo, student] ‘i have learned few terminologies from the book and my vocabulary has expanded as a result.’ [mashimbye, student] on affective comments some students wrote: ‘i felt immediately related to one of the characters in the book; that even stimulated me to read more and i enjoyed reading the book. i wanted to read more of the book every day.’ [ditshego, student] ‘no text is this funny or exciting. throughout my reading, boredom was absent, pleasure and excitement were present.’ [mashimbye, student] ‘i felt excited and sometimes scared as though i was in the story.’ [rudman, student] ‘my emotions were greatly stimulated, i felt like i was in the book, the author had my pulse racing.’ [saunders, student] ‘i had negative feelings. was worried, sad, depressed but i enjoyed the book and didn’t want to stop reading.’ [kahts, student] ‘it involves imagination to a large extent. interaction with the novel and the author’s thoughts made reading the book enjoyable. cognitive skills are required for understanding the development of the story in to kill a mockingbird.’ [mashigo, student] the main challenge documented was difficulty with vocabulary: ‘difficulty with vocabulary (big words made it difficult to commit and be involved).’ [mamadi, student] ‘difficult to understand because of some of the vocabulary but easy as soon as the meaning of some of the difficult words became clear.’ [coetzee, student] these reports from the inventories corroborated the interview responses and pointed to affective and cognitive benefits of er. discussion the majority of the students (86% at risk; 75% low-risk) reported that they observed great improvement in speed and comprehension as they progressed with the reading. they also reported that the er project had helped to improve their use of reading strategies and had increased their understanding of texts, which they had transferred to the reading of their textbooks. another perception was that students found reading to be addictive. once they begun the activity and immersed themselves in it, they could not stop. they reported that the freedom to select their own texts was motivating. an increase in reading speed was also motivating and encouraged them to read more. as their reading speed increased, they reported an increase in comprehension, which compounded their motivation. in turn, students’ motivation and willingness to read increased. they read frequently, and as they read, they became involved and engaged. by reading frequently and being involved, they improved their reading ability. as stated by grabe and stoller (2011), reading ability improves with frequent reading. these responses confirm the claim by guthrie and wigfield (2000:404): ‘[a]s students become engaged readers, they provide themselves with self-generated learning opportunities that are equivalent to several years of education.’ when students were given the opportunity to comment on the intervention as a whole, a number of them (40% hr and 29% lr) specifically mentioned improvement in their reading habits as a direct result of er. the results of the t-tests show that students’ reading habits had improved significantly. the interview responses show that students in both the high-risk and low-risk groups gave similar responses to questions on er. in general, students from both groups responded positively to er questions, which imply cognitive, affective and transfer gains. from their comments it can be inferred that the er component had helped to improve their reading ability, which had influenced their self-efficacy and further increased their motivation. thus, results from both quantitative and qualitative data showed that students had developed positive affect for reading and had improved their reading ability. in answer to question 1: ‘what are the opinions and perceptions of students regarding the er component of the reading intervention programme?’, students’ responses show that for those who participated, er had helped to improve their cognitive and affective reading levels. students had become involved in their reading and had become engaged readers. the awareness of progress also increased their self-confidence and self-efficacy. this relationship between self-efficacy and metacognitive knowledge is confirmed by several researchers (grabe & stoller 2011; guthrie & wigfield 2000; pajares 2006). coutinho (2008) concluded from her study that students with effective metacognition also showed strong beliefs in their capability to successfully perform reading tasks. in answer to question 2: ‘did this cohort of students benefit from er? if so, how?’, the qualitative data from the interviews and from the inventories indicate that students had gained from the er project. the data also shed light on how students had benefited from the er component of the intervention. students’ responses can be grouped into three main categories: academic or cognitive improvements, transfer benefits and affective improvement. these academic or cognitive and affective gains increased students’ motivation, which encouraged them to read, thus developing their reading proficiency and consequently also their academic performance. when students’ motivational levels increased as a result of er, they became engaged readers and their reading ability improved, which led to even higher motivational levels, which further influenced their reading ability. thus, er could be said to have had a positive influence on students’ motivation, self-efficacy, attitudes and enjoyment and had improved their reading comprehension and reading speed, as well as facilitated their transfer of skills from er to academic reading. the aim of the inclusion of er in the intervention programme was to cultivate independent, engaged readers who would have a love for reading and would develop positive reading habits and reap cognitive and affective gains to improve their reading proficiency. to achieve this, students selected their own texts and read in their own time in a scaffolded manner. the results confirm that er leads to cognitive and affective gains in reading. this type of reading should therefore be included in reading programmes in order to maximise the development of students’ reading proficiency and consolidate explicit reading instruction. the article argues that cognitive-oriented reading instruction should be extended to include er in order to provide more students with the opportunity to read for pleasure. the inclusion of er will provide students with the opportunity to improve their reading proficiency in a more pleasurable, less demanding way and enable them to acquire a lifelong love of reading. it would also help to improve students’ reading ability and complement reading instruction. in addition, er will help to develop engaged readers. according to guthrie and wigfield (2000), engaged readers are strategic readers who employ well-orchestrated strategies to achieve comprehension. engaged readers are successful readers. they improve their reading ability by being deeply involved in what they read. even at tertiary level where students are supposed to engage with academic texts on a higher level and may also not have time to read for pleasure, er can be introduced depending on the type of books and how the er component is integrated into the programme. this approach will further help to improve students reading proficiency and inculcate lifelong readers. the argument often put forward is that students at tertiary level do not have time to engage in er and that because of lack of time, attention should be focused on teaching strategies and using academic texts. this study has shown that er complemented academic reading instruction and facilitated reading development in this cohort of tertiary students in africa. conclusion this article has provided insight into how er helped improve students reading proficiency and develop their love for reading. it provided an in-depth understanding of how students experienced the er incorporated into a reading intervention programme. the data from the interviews showed that students felt that they were highly motivated to read and were willing to read, which improved their reading proficiency. the data also show that the students believed that they had developed a positive attitude and increased interest in reading as a result of er. in addition, students reported being involved (engaged) in their er and transferring these skills to academic reading. furthermore, they linked the affective developments to the positive developments in their reading ability, such as increased reading speed and comprehension. it can therefore be concluded from the findings that er increased students’ 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(eds.), pirls 2006 summary report: south african children’s reading literacy achievement, pp. 45–49, university of pretoria, pretoria. abstract introduction purpose of the study reading challenges reading habits and reading attitudes the importance of reading attitudes the impact of reading habits and attitudes on academic performance motivation to read theoretical framework methodology results theme 1: reading habits theme 2: reading attitude theme 3: motivation to read discussion recommendations conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) tilla olifant department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa madoda cekiso department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa eunice rautenbach department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa citation olifant, t., cekiso, m. & rautenbach, e., 2019, ‘teachers’ perceptions of grades 8–10 english first additional language learners’ reading habits, attitudes and motivation’, reading & writing 10(1), a254. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.254 original research teachers’ perceptions of grades 8–10 english first additional language learners’ reading habits, attitudes and motivation tilla olifant, madoda cekiso, eunice rautenbach received: 28 june 2019; accepted: 07 aug. 2019; published: 04 nov. 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: owing to the dearth of reading practices within the south african literacy landscape, many learners neither engage in productive reading habits, nor exhibit a positive attitude towards english first additional language (efal) reading. consequently, many learners experience reading challenges, which negatively impact on their academic performance. objective: this study investigated the reading habits, attitudes and motivation of grades 8–10 efal learners through the perceptive lens of efal teachers. method: this qualitative study employed a case study design and a thematic data analysis process. the purposively selected sample for the semi-structured interviews consisted of six grade 8–10 efal teachers from two high schools in the tshwane south district. results: teachers believe that learners experience academic challenges because they do not habitually engage with texts, have a negative attitude towards printed text and read only to progress academically. the results further indicated that all these teachers concurred that there is a corresponding relationship between productive reading habits, a positive attitude towards reading and the academic performance of learners. regrettably, the data analysis reported that the teachers have a pessimistic perception of the efal learners’ reading habits, attitudes and motivation to read. more disturbingly, most of the teachers lacked the responsibility for their contribution towards the ongoing demise of productive reading practices among learners in their classrooms. conclusion: the findings revealed grave implications about learners’ reading habits, attitudes and motivation to read. alarmingly, one of the most remarkable findings produced by this study is that the teachers themselves harbour negative perceptions about the reading practices of the learners in their classrooms. keywords: teachers’ perceptions; reading; reading habits; reading attitudes; motivation to read; english first additional language; efal; learners. introduction reading forms the basis for the literacy acquirement process of every learner. in south africa, many learners use english as a second, third or fourth language, yet it remains the medium through which the learners access literacy in school. this sentiment is supported by lemmer and van wyk (2010:226), who report that although only 9.6% of the south african population use english as their first language, it remains the primary language of access to education. for this reason, lemmer and van wyk (2010:227) state that english first additional language (efal) learners are the dominant population in south african schools. baatjies (2003:1) points out that reading is the most critical element of literacy education. consequently, in both l1 and l2 or subsequently, in any language of learning, poor reading skills produce low academic achievement (chall 2000). it thus appears as if reading ability in any language of learning can either advance or impede scholastic performance. concurringly, cekiso (2017:1) asserts that reading literacy is the essence of schooling, which enables the academic advancement of learners. seeing that reading literacy affects learners’ performance in school, it thus appears that the cultivation of productive reading habits and positive attitudes is likely to assist learners to progress intellectually and academically. in fact, reading habits and attitudes seem to be based on people’s ‘perceptions’ derived from past reading experiences (guthrie & greaney 1991:87), regarding the pleasure and the value that reading provides. against this background, this study investigated 10 grades 8–10 efal learners’ reading habits, attitudes and motivation to read through the perceptive lens of the grades 8–10 efal teachers, to obtain insight about the reading practices of the learners. the focus on teachers’ perceptions is motivated by the fact that teachers play an important role in the reading performance of their learners. teachers are the ones who create classroom environments that promote engaged reading. moreover, not only do teachers have a significant influence upon a child’s acquisition of the habit of engaged reading (ruddell 1995), but teachers also appear to be very much aware of the need for motivating their students to read (o’flahavan et al. 1992). purpose of the study there is a pursuit for a better understanding of the efal learners’ reading habits, attitudes and motivation to read, which has been a continuous, active area of research (braguglia 2005; majid & tan 2007; owusu-acheaw & larson 2014; van staden 2011). moreover, bruguglia (2005), argues that reading is essential to academic progress and intellectual prosperity. this sentiment is rearticulated by majid and tan (2007), who reported that learners are inspired to read for academically related reasons, with the purpose of advancing to the next higher grade. this view is echoed in the findings of a study conducted by owusu-acheaw and larson (2014), who confirmed that the reading habits of learners, specifically grades 8–10 efal learners in the context of this study, do indeed influence their academic performance. for this reason, van staden (2011) suggests that knowledgeable teachers, in other words well-trained and well-informed teachers, are instrumental in addressing and assisting with the reading challenges that learners experience in school. as previously stated, teachers are regarded as primary contributors towards the learners’ ability and attitude to read. for this reason, richards in rido, ibrahim and nambiar (2014) asserts that teachers operate as mediators, facilitators and monitors in classrooms, guiding learners through the reading process. this assertion is echoed by mckenna (2001), who indicates that teachers, among others, contribute significantly in the mentoring as well as modelling of reading, which includes reading habits, attitudes and reading motivation towards efal reading. concurrently, kuzborska (2011) argues that the process of how a teacher understands and interprets the act of reading (through their pedagogy, paradigms and interaction strategies) impacts on classroom practices, and ultimately impacts the learner’s academic achievement, which includes the practice of reading. therefore, insight into the learners’ reading habits and attitude towards efal reading from the efal teachers’ perspective is fundamental to address and assist with the reading challenges that these learners experience in school. consequently, this study sought to investigate and describe the grades 8–10 efal teachers’ perceptions of reading habits and attitudes of learners in two high schools in tshwane south district, gauteng, with a view to making recommendations that can possibly promote the reading habits and attitudes among learners. to achieve the purpose of this study, the following research questions were addressed: what are the efal teachers’ perceptions of the reading habits of the grades 8–10 learners? what are the efal teachers’ perceptions of the attitudes of grades 8–10 learners towards reading? what are the efal teachers’ perceptions of the grades 8–10 learners’ motivation towards reading? reading challenges schmidt, rozendal and greenman (2002:131) recapitulate that the ability to read is a fundamental building block in the schooling programme. reading proficiency ensures not only academic success, but also success throughout life (oberholzer 2005:2). in contrast, a learner’s failure in reading, as noted by bohlmann and pretorius (2002:205), impairs academic success and may also prevent the learners from reaching their full potential in life. although research (matjila & pretorius 2004; pretorius 2002) affirms the importance of reading and accentuates the corresponding relationship between reading and academic performance, it is regrettable to note that ‘the south african learners are reading far below the age appropriate expected level’ (department of education [doe] 2008:2). a study by the progress in international reading literacy study (prls) (2011) reviewed the reading literacy levels of 40 countries, which included countries such as australia, austria, botswana, denmark, england, germany, indonesia, morocco, new zealand, spain, sweden and the united states. south africa recorded the lowest reading comprehension ability among the investigated countries. pirls (2016) reported that 78% of the grade 4 and grade 5 learners are unable to read with interpretation. congruously, the dearth in reading as experienced by the south african learners is also highlighted by pretorius and machet (2004:47), who affirm that primary, secondary and even tertiary learners exhibit inadequately developed reading skills. furthermore, benevides and peterson (2010:298) propose that in an education system that shows signs of reading fragility, it is essential that teachers routinely evaluate their teaching approaches, methods and resources, to augment the perception that reading is a vital resource within the educational environment. the poor reading ability displayed by learners is cause for concern not only in south africa, but also for the global community. in the united states, 40% of children experience challenges to become competent readers (hugo et al. 2005:210). a study conducted by abadzi (2008:4) states that most learners in francophone guinea do not know the entire alphabet by the time they complete grade 2, which resulted in the average learner being able to read only 4 of the 20 words presented to them in the study. the importance of productive reading habits and positive attitudes is also highlighted in the united kingdom, based on a study by twist et al. (2004:393–394), who established that as learners increase in age, their attitude towards reading declines and become more negative. hence, research on reading habits and attitudes indicates that most learners have lost interest in reading (bragulia 2005; owusu-acheaw & larson 2014), and consequently display poor reading habits and a negative reading attitude. despite the many initiatives by the various south african governmental departments, non-governmental institutions and a number of enterprises (ithuteng [ready to learn]; the south african national literacy initiative [sanli]; project by read 2010; read2lead 2015; room to read 2012; the national reading strategy [nrs] 2008; a national book week; reading association of south africa; read educational trust 2010 and the drop all and read programme [better known as read me a book]), it appears as if the south african population exhibits a perennial and reluctant culture, interest and attitude towards reading. to add insult to injury, cekiso (2017:1) postulates that teachers worldwide exhibit an inability to ‘teach reading to learners whose mother tongue is not english’. yet there remains a clear preference for english as medium to access education among most scholars (lemmer & van wyk 2010:226). an absence of literature seems to suggest that very little is known about the reading habits and attitudes of grades 8–10 efal learners in south africa, especially in gauteng. additionally, there also appears to be a deficit knowledge pertaining to teachers’ perceptions regarding the issue. reading habits and reading attitudes no child is born without the ability to learn how to read; however, reading is taught (and modelled) to the child through perennial reading and practice (van wyk 2002:30). the routine performance of this activity can possibly result in the establishment of constructive reading habits and positive attitudes. reading habits have been examined by several researchers (akanda, hoq & hasan 2013; chauhan & lal 2012; karim & hasan 2006; majid & tan 2007; scales & rhee 2001; shen in annamalai & muniandy 2013; wagner in chettri & rout 2013). reading habits, as alluded to by wagner (2002) in chettri and rout (2013:13) are ‘often considered in terms of the amount of materials being read, the frequency of reading as well as the average time spent on reading’. on the other hand, shen (2006) in annamalai and muniandy (2013) defines reading habits as how often, how much, and what the readers read. reading attitude is explained as the feeling that an individual harbours about reading, which can be positive or negative, resulting in the learner either persisting with or desisting from a reading situation (ajzen & fishbein in annamalai & muniandy 2013; karim & hasan 2006). alternatively, attitude (which includes reading attitude), is delineated by guthrie and knowles (2001:161) as ‘affective responses that accompany behaviour of reading initiated by a motivational state’. to this end, walberg and tshai (1995) in karim and hasan (2006:289) point out that factors such as: (1) having a high self-concept as a reader, (2) believing that reading is important, (3) reading enjoyment and (4) growing up in a verbally stimulated and verbally interactive social context contribute to a constructive attitude among adolescents. it thus appears that a positive attitude fosters a positive reading attitude, whereas a negative attitude fosters a negative reading attitude among learners. the importance of reading attitudes why is reading important? sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally, the act of reading is part of our daily lives. it thus appears that reading is an act of engagement, an act of interaction with text in its various forms, from which we can construe that ‘reading is alive’. this sentiment is supported by van der walt, evans and kilfoil (2002:149) who advocate that ‘reading is a search for meaning that requires the active participation of the reader’. stahl and hayes (1997:137) mention that the different interpretations readers arrive at when reading provide fresh and alternative perspectives to texts. sometimes voluntarily and sometimes involuntarily, consciously or unconsciously, the act of reading forms part of our socio-cultural practices. regardless of the purpose, be it for education, be it for leisure purposes, be it to administer medicine, or simply just to be able to voice your opinion on a topic of discussion, reading is embedded and a vital element of our daily lives. consequently, our reading habits and attitudes are important as they influence our reading ability or inability. it is this reading ability or inability that enables the learner to advance academically or not. the impact of reading habits and attitudes on academic performance numerous research projects (bharuthram 2012; gunning 2007; majid & tan 2007; matjila & pretorius 2004; nel, dreyer & klopper 2004; pretorius 2002) about the connection between reading habits and attitudes on academic progress have been conducted. research conducted by pretorius (2002) as well as matjila and pretorius (2004) indicate a parallel relationship between literacy (which includes reading ability) and academic achievement. gunning (2007:3) asserts that when learners enter high school (grades 8–12), it is expected that they have already accomplished a certain level of reading proficiency, since the development of reading occurs in primary school (grade r to grade 7), where the learners are taught to read. at high school level, learners read to learn. consequently, reading is viewed as a process of cognitive development and the learner needs to exhibit a certain level of text comprehension by means of understanding, interpreting and relating the meaning of the text. a study by nel et al. (2004) reports that teaching learners how to apply different reading strategies can impact and improve reading ability. on the other hand, bharuthram (2012) hypothesises that the teaching of reading across the curriculum both in school and in higher education can possibly advance the reading ability of the learners. it is for this reason that majid and tan (2007) conducted research on the impact of learners’ reading habits and preferences, focusing on the learners’ reading attitudes. these researchers found that learners who were motivated, that is, learners who had a positive attitude towards reading, showed improved language skills and performed better academically. considering these studies, lukhele (2013:2) suggests that both primary and high school teachers need to function more proactively in influencing learners to read. in other words, through teaching and modelling constructive reading habits and a positive attitude towards reading, teachers can motivate readers towards constructive reading practices. shanker and cockrum (2009:2) are of the view that every learner needs to be taught how to read (and practise the habit of reading) at an age and grade appropriate level of difficulty. this will not only improve the learner’s academic performance, but also stimulate personal growth and ensure the leaners’ literacy empowerment within their socio-cultural context. therefore, it is important that the efal teachers’ perceptions about the efal learners’ reading habits, attitudes and motivation to read also need to be analysed and understood so that their views can also be reflected on when designing literacy enhancement or remedial programmes to assist learners. furthermore, it is important to consider the perceptions of the teachers, so that their views and suggestions can be evaluated when they are workshopped, facilitated and equipped to instruct reading literacy skills that will assist learners to improve their reading abilities, and subsequently their generic academic performance motivation to read motivation, specifically within the socio-cultural context, refers to the processes of interaction and learning (moore, viljoen & meyer 2017:297). in addition, alatis, altman and alatis (1981:114) point out that motivation refers to the willingness or desire that moves a person to perform a specific act. congruently, ormrod (2008:384) points out that motivation propels a learner in a specific direction. for this reason, the researcher would like to add that not only does motivation influence the willingness to read, but it also cultivates an innate desire to read as well as sustains the will to read, which can most probably culminate in constructive reading habits and positive attitudes towards reading. on the other hand, guthrie and knowles (2001:3) argues that as learners progress through school they compare themselves with their classmates, which can possibly result in an inferiority complex and consequently decrease their motivation to read. in contrast, cullum (1998:11) narrates that the interaction of learners within a class and among various grades may improve ‘reading comprehension’, which may bring about a positive attitude and enjoyment in reading, and subsequently stimulate the motivation to engage in more reading practices. it thus appears to the researcher that when a learner demonstrates motivation to read, in other words, a willingness to read, it can cause the learner to move from a practice of not reading to a practice of productive reading habits and positive reading attitudes. for this reason, this study investigates, analyses and describes the reading habits, attitudes and motivation to read of grades 8–10 efal learners through a socio-cultural lens. theoretical framework the study was informed by the socio-cultural theory of literacy and the attitude-influence model of reading by mathewson (2004). literacy as social practice hinges on the diverse forms in which humanity employ literacy in their daily practices of society (perry 2012:53). to put it differently, literacy as social practice refers to the multiple ways in which people use numerous forms of text to perform various functions in their diverse lifestyles. street (2001:430) maintains that ‘an understanding of literacy (which includes reading, and subsequently reading habits and attitudes) requires a detailed, in-depth account of actual practices in different cultural settings’, because literacy is a social practice that exists between people, within groups and communities, as well as the daily practices of society (olifant, rautenbach & cekiso 2017:5). this suggests that the reading practices of learners and how they are modelled by teachers in the classroom (a socio-cultural context) can be influenced by and influence our perceptions and be interpreted in terms of motivation, beliefs, interest, habits and attitudes that the learners demonstrate when they read. mathewson’s attitude-influence model of reading (ruddel & unrau 2004:1431–1448) relates that variables such as attitude, motivation, involvement, prior knowledge, purpose and comprehension influence the learners’ intention to read and, in turn, influence reading behaviour. this model increases one’s insight into the understanding of the reading habits and attitudes of grades 8–10 learners towards efal. moreover, this model also expands our understanding about teachers’ perceptions of reading habits and attitudes of grades 8–10 learners towards efal in high schools in tshwane. methodology the study followed a qualitative approach in the exploration of the research questions. hammarberg, kirkman and de lacey (2016) state that qualitative research seeks to understand a given research problem or topic from the perspectives of the local population it involves. the authors further point out that qualitative research is effective in obtaining culturally specific information about values, opinions, behaviours, and social contexts of specific populations. the qualitative research approach was deemed relevant for this study, since its aim is to get teachers’ insight to the efal learner’s reading habits, attitude and motivation to read. the study also followed a case study design. yin (1984) defines the case study research method as: … an empirical enquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-context; when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident; and in which multiple sources of evidence are used. (p. 23) six grades 8–10 efal teachers (one teacher per grade in two schools) served as sample for this study, which was substantiated by batchelder (in maree 2007:84), who states that ‘small samples can be quite sufficient in complete and accurate information within a particular cultural context’. furthermore, since the teachers were selected to serve the ‘purpose’ of the study and directly address the research questions, purposive sampling was implemented. maree (2007:85) provided guidance by advocating that, in most cases, qualitative study uses purposive sampling. the use of an audio-recorder to conduct individual semi-structured interviews with the permission of the teachers allowed them the opportunity to narrate their perceptions about the reading habits and attitudes of grades 8–10 efal learners. handwritten notes were also made and corroborated the audio recordings, which considered the non-verbal responses of the interviewees. the interviews were conducted at a prescheduled time most suitable to the individual teachers, in their respective classrooms. the interviews with the six teachers covered the perceptions that the teachers had about the reading habits and reading attitudes of the learners towards english as a second language. the data collected were analysed thematically. results individual interviews were conducted with six efal teachers to obtain their perceptions about the reading habits, attitudes and motivation to read of grades 8–10 efal learners. the focus of the data analysis was to investigate, understand and describe how the learners’ reading habits, attitude and motivation to read impact on their academic performance, through the perceptive lens of the teachers. the labelling procedure (figure 1) produced three categories: ‘reading habits of learners’, ‘reading attitudes of learners’ and ‘motivation to read among learners’. the six teachers interviewed were labelled i1, i2, i3, i4, i5 and i6. what follows is detail extracted from the conducted interviews that generated the establishment of the categorised themes based on the perceptions of the interviewed teachers. figure 1: themes emerging from findings based on interview questions. theme 1: reading habits this theme related the perceptions of teachers about how they viewed the behavioural relationship that learners displayed towards reading according to their observations. teachers’ perceptions of grades 8–10 english first additional language learners’ reading habits the teachers noted that there were those learners who read for the enjoyment thereof, as well as relaxation, but that those learners were in the minority. during all the interviews with efal teachers, a strong notion of agreement came through that most learners did not participate in after-school reading practices. teachers believed most learners read only per instruction in the class and for assessment purposes. outside of school learners did not read. the following interview extracts support the above: ‘many of our learners only read in class because they are forced to read. … they read when it is necessary to read. very few of them have developed a habit of taking a book for enjoyment, and for relaxation. there are very few that are into those habits … that they read for just enhancing their knowledge, their skills and for the betterment and just for enjoyment.’ (teacher i3, male, grade 10) ‘they only read when they are supposed to read in class, and they never read after that. they only do it when they’re in class … [referring to when do learners read] yes, exactly, it’s on request only. they also do it only for marks. if it’s not for marks, they won’t do it.’ (teacher i4, male, grade 10) ‘really not good. reading, i’m struggling to force my learners to read. to read … on their own at home and then start to read, start to force the habit of reading and trying to help them. i even asked them to read when they go to the toilet. i advised them to sit and just read something for that half an hour or 15 minutes they spend there. and that’s where you develop reading interest and they don’t even do that. they don’t even do that.’ (teacher i5, female, grade 8) the influence of reading habits and attitudes the learning process the teachers agreed that the reading habits and the attitudes of learners influenced their learning experiences, with one of the teachers emphasising that it was important for learners to be able to read to understand and appropriately answer the questions put to them. teacher i2 conceptualised the influence of reading habits and attitude of learners on their learning experience by pointing out that ‘the more you read, the better you do in your test’. the following interview extracts support the above: ‘definitely. if they are not able to read, they will not be able to study. so, studying is out. they do not study, and they take shortcuts, every mind map or everything they can try out without reading. and that is where our problem lies and our learners do not have enough content to show in answering their questions.’ (teacher i5, female, grade 8) ‘of course, it does. the more you read, the more, the better you do in your tests, in your, in your, anything else. but … if you don’t read, if you don’t have a good reading habit, that’s the reason for the marks being so low.’ (teacher i2, female, grade 9) ‘it does. it does. even though we are aware of the technology and everything, their question papers are still … their question papers are still written in a formal language, they have to read so that they are able to answer questions. if they are unable to read, then they won’t be able to answer questions, which will lead to them failing. not failing because they do not know but failing because they do not understand what is expected of them when the exam comes.’ (teacher i4, male, grade 10) teacher i4 mentioned that learners sometimes failed because they did not understand what was expected of them (due to their reading ability) and teacher i5 articulated that if learners were not able to read, they could not study. this opinion interlinked indirectly with meeks’s (1984:25) assertion that learning to read occurs in the early stages, such as primary grades. thus, in the secondary school grades, the learners need to read to study to achieve academic success. theme 2: reading attitude this theme is related to the efal reading attitude of learners. it examined the teachers’ viewpoint of the learners’ reading attitude. teachers’ perceptions of grades 8–10 english first additional language learners’ reading attitudes the teachers disclosed that it was difficult to instil a positive reading attitude in learners. teacher i4 reported that as teachers they were trying to cultivate a positive attitude towards reading among learners, but they were challenged by the careless attitude that learners displayed towards reading. all the teachers communicated that learners had a negative attitude towards reading, accompanied by what teacher i1 referred to as learners’ ‘reluctance to read’. the following interview extracts support the above: ‘children are generally reluctant to read. but i think the problem is they don’t get a chance to read what they like.’ (teacher i1, male, grade 9) ‘it’s a difficult one to answer, because at our school the children are not very, very exposed to the outside world. it depends how things go … at home, if the parents are buying newspapers and magazines, and fashion magazines, the children will read, but i think there’s, there’s a problem at home, i don’t think that there’s enough reading material there to motivate them to read.’ (teacher i6, female, grade 10) ‘sjoe, the minute they hear reading, … they feel bored already. and they moan, and they complain. so [laughs] … with the attitude i think, they feel negative about it.’ (teacher i2, female, grade 9) ‘their attitude is mostly, why do i have to read? … it’s negative.’ (teacher i3, male, grade 10) ‘lower grades, attitude, positive … like to read, like to read in class, but when we are doing the reading period. … the problem lies with the grade 10s who are not willing to show.’ (teacher i5, female, grade 8) ‘we’re trying, we’re trying, but we have a huge obstacle of cell phone and the lax attitude of the learners.’ (teacher i5, female, grade 8) ‘then, our school doesn’t have a library. so, it’s, the access to … to material … to reading material is, a little bit restricted to them. and, then you have the influence of, your social influence out there, where people see reading as a waste of time and reading properly as a waste of time. and it is mainly displayed by their peers, friends outside, and sometimes it’s been influenced in the habits of their elders, their parents at home.’ (teacher i6, female, grade 10) from the teachers’ responses, it was evident that they perceived that learners had a negative attitude towards efal. they were of the view that learners were reluctant to read because of a lack of reading material that is of interest to them, the absence of libraries on the school premises, the perpetual access to cell phones and lack of exposure to various types of reading materials. based on this information, mckenna (2001:139) proposes that to understand the reason why learners display either a positive or a negative attitude towards reading, causative factors should be considered. theme 3: motivation to read this theme examined teachers’ perceptions on the learners’ motivation to read. teachers share their views on whether they perceive learners to be motivated to read, which subsequently constitutes the practice not to read, or the practice of constructive reading habits and positive attitudes towards efal reading. teachers’ perceptions of grades 8–10 english first additional language learners’ motivation to read in relation to the learners’ motivation to read, all the teachers included and referred to extrinsic factors of motivation in their responses. teacher i2 insinuated that the learners’ reading ability may also be influenced by the fact that the skill of reading was not reinforced in learners during the primary grades, by saying that high school learners could not go back to teaching learners to read. teacher i2 also articulated that it was not every learner that ‘is not interested’ in reading, and teacher i5 said that the learners in themselves were not motivated to read. the following interview extracts support the above: ‘it’s a difficult one to answer, because … i don’t think that there’s enough reading material there [referring to the home environment] to motivate them to read. because reading starts basically at home.’ (teacher i1, male, grade 10) ‘[whistle] that’s a tough one. [laughs and pauses] look it’s not everyone, not everyone is, not motivated. not everyone is not interested. [pause] i think this is a [pause] this is a problem that comes from home. and since we’re a high school here, we can’t be going back to grade 1 or grade 2 standards where you have to teach someone to read.’ (teacher i2, female, grade 9) ‘we’re trying to motivate them, and they in themselves are not really good, well-motivated.’ (teacher i5, female, grade 8) practices that teachers perform to motivate the grades 8–10 english first additional language learners to read all the teachers concurred in their responses that they try to do what they can to motivate learners to engage in constructive reading practices. teacher i6 suggested that schools should invest in on-site libraries which host a variety of print material, to motivate learners. teacher i2 pointed out that learners should be ‘trapped’ into reading by allowing them to read about topics that are of interest to them. teacher i1 directed the responsibility for motivating learners to read to their parents, as opposed to teacher i3, who suggested that motivating learners to read is a collective effort among teachers. the following interview extracts support the above: ‘it starts at home. if there’s … if there’s poverty at home the chances [that] the parents will have money to buy books and things are very, very slim, because they have to make a decision between what they are going… what is priority for them to spend the money on. but i think schools should do more in terms of libraries, reading material and … newspapers, i think the news … the [news houses] can also help in this regard to help to sponsor schools to get reading material into the schools that the parents can’t provide to their kids.’ (teacher i6, female, grade 10) ‘i encourage children to read what they like. i tell them to bring the current topics into the class, in, in, in, reading form. and then before a child knows he’s actually has been trapped into something that he didn’t really want to do … we must just give them a chance to read what they like.’ (teacher i2, female, grade 9) ‘in my opinion, if you can get the mind-set of parents starting with parents, to develop and to show interest in the learners, in their children, we might have a better outcome. so, attention, basically, learners need the attention. i, i, i can’t see any one of them getting that from home. do you understand? so as a teacher, that is where i can, … i try to pay attention.’ (teacher i1, male, grade 10) ‘from any teacher’s side, preaching and preaching and preaching. it’s basically preaching the gospel of it pays to enrich your work power. i got that from school level, from the reader’s digest, and, i don’t know whether it was my brother or something that subscribed to it. reader’s digest, and motivate children to [pause] … read in groups. exchange books in groups. attend libraries. the library’s open even on a saturday, every second saturday up here … the public library. … the internet has got a lot of information. read about the topics that interest you. not necessary you read a novel because it’s a story that you must know. but now and then, read about things that interest you. cooking, habits, things that you do at home. hobbies. read about it. but the skill in it is reading. that goes a long way. in your subjects. everywhere. but from our side, i think, a teacher needs to preach about it. because you must practise it. i read a lot, and many a time the children see i sit with a novel, i encourage them now and then, come read this passage for me, at random. and they may ask me questions around it. i’ll, i supply them with newspapers whenever i can, and, my reading books are always there for them, and the more access they have to reading, the better.’ (teacher i3, male, grade 10) in relation to teachers’ perceptions on learners’ motivation to read, teachers referred to various role players, processes and facilities that can assist learners to culitvate constructive reading practices. however, none of the teachers indicated that they make it a personal goal to do more to motivate the learners to engage in constructive reading habits and attitudes. yet, woolfolk (2013:364) stipulates that a person may not perform a specific behaviour until there is some motivation to do so. to put it differently, learners will refrain from engaging in constructive reading practices until they become motivated to do so. the interview extracts show that the teachers’ perceptions provided insightful knowledge in relation to the phenomenon of the reading habits, attitudes and reading motivation of learners, based on their observations and interaction with the learners. discussion the gist of this study was that it provided evidence that substantiated that south african learners are not only experiencing a dearth of reading, but they do not engage in productive reading habits, nor are they motivated to read. although the ability to read does not automatically ensure the learner of academic achievement, reading inability usually equates to academic decay. more alarming about the findings based on the perceptions of the teachers is that it appears that the teachers themselves exhibit a negative attitude about the reading habits and attitudes of the readers. furthermore, teachers concurred that although access to computer-based media presents learners with a wide variety of reading options at any time and anywhere with little effort, it undermines constructive reading habits, which require effort. to achieve the purpose of this study and answer the research questions, the following points of discussion emerged from the interpretation of the findings according to the themes: teachers perceived that learners did not practise reading as a habit. teachers perceived that learners did not read enough to develop productive reading habits. teachers perceived that learners had a negative attitude towards reading. teachers have a pessimistic perception about the reading practices and attitudes of the learners in their classroom. teachers do not take responsibility for contributing towards the dearth of productive reading practices among the learners in their classroom. this study revealed that teachers were of the view that learners were not in the habit of reading frequently. the interviews with teachers gave a clear indication that they believed the learners did not read at home or in their spare time. teacher i2 related: ‘the minute they hear reading, they feel bored already’. it was evident from the data collected based on the perceptions of the teachers that learners displayed behaviour reflecting a lack of interest when it came to the reading of print resources. this behaviour indicated that learners had a negative attitude towards reading. the attitude-influence reading model of g.c. mathewson in ruddell and unrau (2004:1431–1448) explains that a reader’s attitude towards reading, such as prevailing feelings, and evaluative beliefs about reading as well as action readiness for reading, will influence the intention to read, and, in turn, influence reading behaviour. concurringly, woolfolk (2013:213) also postulates that when a specific action or type of behaviour is being avoided, it relates to negative reinforcement. hence, if teachers can make learners aware of the benefits and advantages of reading, learners will start to appreciate (develop a positive attitude to) the skill of reading and, consequently, it will generate an inner driving force (motivation) to increase the habit of reading, and this development will give life to the words of winston churchill: ‘attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference!’ perceptions articulated by the teachers indicated that learners should read more because should their reading habits improve, it would have a positive effect on their overall academic performance. however, reading habits, attitudes and the motivation to read are not about academic ability per se and the achievements of the learner; instead, reading habits, attitudes and reading motivation influence the reading abilities (cognitive abilities) of learners, and as a result, they have an impact on the academic performance of learners. furthermore, reading habits refer to the reading behaviour in which learners engage. therefore, sound reading habits, attitude and reading motivation can influence academic performance and constructively benefit the academic performance of the learner. for this reason, we can thus conclude that if a learner engages in good reading habits, it can lead to good reading capabilities and, consequently, it can result in academic success. since teachers play a pivotal role within the academic context, their observations can contribute to an insightful understanding of the reading habits, attitudes and the motivation to read of learners. recommendations learners, parents, teachers, caregivers, librarians, publishers, government officials from the department of education, community members and civil society, that is, every stakeholder within the socio-cultural environment, should all collaborate to assist learners to cultivate constructive reading habits and acquire positive attitudes and motivation to read. based on the findings of this study, which focused on the teachers’ perceptions of grades 8–10 efal learners, the following recommendations should be considered. early childhood reading development early childhood reading practices should be promoted by parents as well as early childhood teachers. literature reveals that many factors influence the reading practices of a child; consequently it is imperative that the formation of positive attitudes and motivation towards reading be scaffolded in learners from an early age. children develop habits, including the habit of reading, from an early age in life. should a learner cultivate the habit of constructive reading practices at an early age, the motivation to read will augment a positive reading attitude. also, parents and caregivers who set the example of positive reading practices contribute significantly to children developing a positive reading attitude, because as the child matures, constructive early reading habits can result in the incorporation of voluntary reading as a part of their lives. parental involvement should be increased parents should be encouraged to model reading to their children from an early age. most of the time, children emulate their parents’ behaviour; thus, it is crucial that parents expose their children to reading materials and practices from an early development stage, so that they can cultivate a constructive reading habit and positive attitude and motivation to read early in their lives. for example, the reading of bedtime stories by the parent or caregiver can contribute to enhance the child’s interest in reading. parents and caregivers who buy books for children to read from a young age demonstrate to learners that the purchasing of books is a ‘literacy investment’ for their learning career. furthermore, when parents and caregivers buy books for their children, it can possibly reverse the current lack of constructive reading habits and positive attitudes among learners, and substitute it with a reading practice that will increase learners’ motivation to read. teacher-parent reading partnerships should be established the establishment of effective teacher-parent partnerships may possibly amplify parental involvement and awareness of the reading practices of learners and, as a result, increase the chances of the learners of engaging in constructive reading habits and positive attitudes towards reading. through effective teacher-parent reading partnerships, learners’ perceptions of reading practices can be positively galvanised. if a learner thinks positively about reading, they will most probably be motivated to read more. to put it another way, when learners think positively about reading, it will motivate them to read more, and the more they read, the more they will grow into the habit of reading. teacher reading workshops and related dialogue should be implemented for teachers to be better equipped to act as a model of constructive reading habits and positive reading attitudes in their classrooms, they themselves need to be skilled readers. for this reason, teachers should attend reading workshops regularly, to equip them on how to develop effective literacy skills and habits in their learners. these reading training sessions should also serve as an opportunity for language teachers to workshop different reading instruction approaches and strategies. such teacher training sessions may establish and introduce dialogue channels in which teachers can have constructive conversations about classroom reading practices among themselves, as well as with their learners. these teacher reading workshops will also present teachers with the platform to reflect, internalise and share their reading experiences, which can be used to address reading behaviour. to put it differently, teacher reading workshops can be used to implement acute reading redress among learners. teacher empowerment using various literature genres and reading materials when teachers are exposed to and equipped with the knowledge of a variety of literature genres, they will be empowered to introduce a wide range of literature genres in their reading lessons, which may possibly encourage learners to read for pleasure, rather than to focus on reading only for academic purposes, such as to pass exams. incorporation of cooperative learning and teaching strategies teachers should incorporate more cooperative learning and teaching strategies within their reading lessons. strategies such as peer reading or group reading should be used as a reading support, a social activity that creates space for learners to enjoy reading together, as well as to discuss what they have read with their peers. since group structures present multi-level reading habits, attitudes and reading motivations, it can serve as a constructive reading platform to contribute to the development of positive reading attitudes for the group, as well as for the individual learner. silent reading opportunities for learners should be promoted because this improves learners’ understanding. it helps them concentrate on what they are reading, rather than the pronunciation of individual words which takes place in oral reading. independent reading strategies for learners teachers should assign different reading tasks to learners, so that they should learn how to create their own opportunities and select their own material to read and practise the reading strategies that they have learned in class. to ensure the effectiveness of the independent reading strategy, teachers need to liaise with librarians to present learners with a range of reading options, such as non-fiction, fiction, contemporary writings, graphic text and digital texts such as audio books. to present learners with a reading choice that excites them will cultivate a positive reading attitude. introduction of reading support strategies teachers can also use storytelling, role play, folklore and poetry recitals as reading support strategies. however, teachers should select stories that are contemporary and within the knowledge and visualisation framework of the learners so that their interest to read can be stimulated and possibly promote and result in constructive reading habits. school library facilities should be established and promoted at all schools to assist learners to be exposed to and have access to a variety of types of print text, as well as develop good reading habits, it is essential that every school, regardless of the area in which it is located, should offer learners a library facility. the south african schools act of 1996 states that each school receives a financial allowance, from which they must provide for the operation and maintenance of their teaching and learning programmes. accordingly, each school should invest in presenting learners with a contemporary library support facility and learners should be encouraged to use this facility. conclusion the study sought to investigate the reading habits, attitudes and motivation of grades 8–10 efal learners through the perceptive lens of efal teachers. the findings of this study highlighted the importance of acknowledging the teachers’ perceptions about the reading habits and attitudes of learners and their motivation to read, which can contribute to ensuring that the literacy expectations of learners are proactive, realistic and in context with an ever-developing socio-cultural environment. consequently, teachers’ perceptions should be considered and recognised, since they can be used to contribute to the acute reading redress within the literacy landscape of south africa. acute reading awareness is crucially needed in south africa. some of the findings based on the perspectives of teachers indirectly acknowledged that reading instruction elements within the efal classroom failed to support or motivate the learners in their reading practices. this perception is significant since teachers have to determine whether the learners’ motivation is intrinsic or extrinsic. the results of the current study revealed that the learners had lower levels of motivation. the results further reveal a relationship between motivation to read and reading attitudes and habits. thus, based on the teachers’ perceptions, the lower reading motivation of the learners affected their choices of reading or not reading. it also affected the type of material they chose to read. the findings of this study add to the body of knowledge on the phenomenon of reading by means of the personal narratives of the research participants. the teachers’ observations, perceptions and recommendations made through this study should be considered to influence and model acute reading redress within our classrooms. the inclusion of teachers as research participants to examine their perceptions continuously, may provide a different approach on how we as a country can redress the reading deficit in our country. it is also likely to inspire teachers in other contexts to diagnose the reading habits, attitudes and motivation of their learners in order to provide a well-informed intervention. acknowledgements the authors would like to express their great appreciation to all the teachers who took part in the study. competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interests exist. authors’ contributions all authors contributed equally to this work. ethical consideration this article followed all ethical standards for carrying out research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement data used for this article is based on the corresponding author’s mtech 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education, university of eswatini, manzini, eswatini ayub sheik department of language education, faculty of education, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa citation dlamini, p. & sheik, a., 2019, ‘exploring teachers’ instructional practices for literacy in english in grade 1: a case study of two urban primary schools in the shiselweni region of eswatini (swaziland)’, reading & writing 10(1), a229. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.229 note: as from april 2019, the country formerly known as swaziland is officially known as (the kingdom of) eswatini. the university of eswatini was formerly known as the university of swaziland (uniswa). original research exploring teachers’ instructional practices for literacy in english in grade 1: a case study of two urban primary schools in the shiselweni region of eswatini (swaziland) patience dlamini, ayub sheik received: 31 jan. 2019; accepted: 05 june 2019; published: 17 oct. 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: literacy education in the foundation phase is a global concern. studies have shown that mastering literacy in the first three years of school ensured academic success and lack of it had negative effects academically, socially and economically. this research study sought to explore teachers’ instructional practices for literacy in english in grade 1 in the shiselweni region of eswatini. objectives: the objectives of the study were to establish what instructional practices teachers used in their literacy classrooms, why they used those instructional practices, and how they experienced the teaching of literacy in english in grade 1. method: a qualitative case study design was followed where three teachers from two urban schools were purposively sampled and participated in semi-structured interviews and classroom observations. focus group discussions with teachers who had experience teaching literacy in english in grade 1 in each school were conducted, and document analysis was done. vygotsky’s sociocultural theory was used as a lens to understand teachers’ instructional practices in literacy. results: data were analysed using thematic content analysis. the findings of the study showed that teachers’ instructional practices reflected their lack of pedagogical knowledge for teaching literacy in english in the foundation phase. the study also found that the teachers’ experiences were their rationale for their instructional practices. conclusion: the study showed that teacher resilience was important for teachers to thrive under trying school conditions; developing a positive attitude towards literacy teaching enabled teachers to develop strategies to improve literacy teaching and learning. keywords: english education; literacy; knowledge; primary schools; swaziland; eswatini. introduction studies have shown that in most african countries, learners’ performance in literacy in english in the foundation phase remains poor regardless of efforts to mitigate the situation. a critical view is that developing strong literacy in the foundation phase equips the individual child for continuous learning (lesaux 2013:3). in the long term, early development of literacy also plays its part in revitalising the economy and containing the scourge of unemployment; it further combats poverty, improves health and promotes social development (chowdhury 1995). researchers affirm the view that exposure to an early childhood programme boosts the cognitive and social development of a learner, attributes that are needed for successful schooling (barnett 2011; castro et al. 2011). however, in swaziland – henceforth eswatini, this is not happening on the ground, as a large number of preschool-age children continue to begin the first grade at school without this essential early childhood education experience. the effect of lack of early childhood education in eswatini is evident through the high number of learners who continue to perform poorly in english literacy in the foundation phase, repeating foundation phase classes, especially grade 1. the high repetition rate results in some learners dropping out of school without having mastered basic literacy in the english language, thereby exacerbating the gap between literate and illiterate youth in the region (ndaruhutse 2008). similarly, eswatini is plagued with persistent high failure rates in grade 1. as a consequence, learners drop out of school without basic literacy. national reports show that the government of eswatini has made education its priority since the inception of independence in 1968. however, little improvement has been seen in early childhood education which in an ideal education system should be a feeder to grade 1. this is ascertained from the education reports in the country. for instance, the eswatini (2015) ‘education for all’ review report shows that less than 1% from the budget of the ministry of education and training goes to early childhood education. this shows that government has little commitment to improving the situation in the foundation phase as the report also states that preschool education was not a prerequisite for children to enrol into grade 1 (government of swaziland, 2015). the report further states that government was not responsible for training, engaging and remunerating early childhood education teachers, the very people who are responsible for laying a solid literacy foundation for learners. in the researcher’s practitioner experience as a subject advisor, the problems of literacy in english in the foundation phase in eswatini could possibly emanate from poor instructional practices in the classroom. the problem is that, in eswatini, there is a high failure rate in grade 1. as a result, some learners spend more years at primary school than they should. the national education profile (2014) update shows that the repetition rate in grade 1 in 2014 was at 17.9%, with a 29% dropout rate which could be a result of failure. a number of reasons account for the learners’ failure. for example, the southern and eastern african consortium for monitoring educational quality (sacmeq 2013) showed that schools in the northern part still faced challenges as the level of achievement was lower than the expected standard due to lack of resources and poor socio-economic conditions. eswatini fared better in the sacmeq study, although the failure rate in grade 1 remains high. the problem is further aggravated by the fact that some learners reach grade 3, not having mastered the basic skills of reading and writing, end up dropping out of school at this level. the 20.7% failure rate in grade 3 is evidence of the problems the learners experience in literacy learning and is something that compromises their future academic achievement. this is counterproductive to the view that a strong literacy foundation is the cornerstone for education and economic development for all nations. researchers agree that children who acquire strong foundational literacy in their early years are more likely to progress well academically than children who fail to develop literacy in the early years (barnett 2011; castro et al. 2011). it is in view of the value of the foundation phase in the education cycle that the researcher developed an interest in studying the teaching and learning of literacy in english in grade 1. the reason for the focus on the grade 1 class is that this is the level where most learners in eswatini begin their education in public schools. the researcher wanted to understand what teachers do in their teaching of literacy in english classrooms, why they do what they do and how they experienced the teaching of literacy in english to the diverse grade 1 learners. scientific value numerous studies have shown that grade 1 teachers play an important role in shaping the foundation for early literacy skills for primary school learners (clay 2005; lenyai 2011; pressley et al. 2001; roskos, tabors & lenhart 2009). the teachers are the implementers of the curriculum and their expertise is central in the teaching-learning process as they are the ones to select the appropriate approaches, methods and techniques for fostering literacy in english (lenyai 2011). in earlier research, clay (2005) asserted that the first years of school are very important because this is when a solid foundation for literacy learning is laid. verbal learning, central to an individual’s academic life, is also developed at this level. roskos, christie and richgels (2003), in their study of the essentials of early literacy instruction, concluded that play has a significant role in children’s education in the early years. therefore, linking literacy and play is one of the most effective means to make literacy activities meaningful and enjoyable for children. they suggested eight strategies teachers could use with learners in the foundation phase and even at the intermediate and upper primary school levels. these include: rich teacher talk, storybook reading, phonological awareness activities, alphabet activities, support for emergent reading, shared book experience, and integrated, focused activities. it would be a good idea for grade 1 teachers to initiate learning with play-based literacy activities that make learning enjoyable in the classroom. a study done in botswana (republic of botswana/united nations 2004) shows that there was a high failure rate and level of school dropouts, especially in the remote parts of the country. this was partly attributed to poor supply of teaching and learning equipment by government, teachers’ unreceptive attitudes to children from these isolated areas and the socio-economic conditions of the families of these children, as most were reported to travel long distances to and from school. these conditions altogether were not conducive for learning. consequently, learners performed poorly and ended up dropping out of school in lower grades not having attained even basic literacy (government of swaziland, 2015). lekoko and maruatona (2005) observed that half of the student population who enrolled in grade 1 dropped out before completing primary school thereby creating a large number of students who ended up enrolling for adult basic education in later years. no systematic research has been undertaken to explore how grade 1 teachers carry out their activities in teaching literacy in english in eswatini. this study therefore explores teachers’ instructional practices in literacy in english in grade 1 focusing on two urban primary schools in the shiselweni region of eswatini. theoretical framework this study was underpinned by vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory. in linking the sociocultural theory to teaching and learning, lantolf (2000) holds that the human mind develops by mediation. as a result, in the early years of school, learners largely depend on the teacher and other adults to support them with different tools in order to transform what they learn into personal knowledge they can internalise for future use. in essence, the teacher and other knowledgeable adults become mediators for learning. it is the responsibility of the teacher, therefore, to utilise the learners’ sociocultural experiences as a frame of reference in learning literacy in the second language. vygotsky was of the view that it is not practical to understand the cognitive development of an individual outside his or her social and cultural context; one’s mental skills are considered to develop as a result of communication with other people in the social context. daniels, cole and wertsch (2007) state that vygotsky views the development of schoolgoing children to be a result of systematic school instruction. that being the case, the instructional practices of teachers are key in making sure that the learner develops systematic thinking and makes sense of their world, which they have already partially experienced. this perspective resonates with sociocultural scholars such as freire and macedo (2005) and dyson (2013) who concur that children first read the world before they read the word. these scholars hold that learning literacy has to do with the relationship between the learners and the world. the adults are responsible for shaping the children’s learning through different social activities. vygotsky argues that the scientific concepts within the academic subjects are important for the schoolgoing child as they give the child an opportunity to use them consciously and intentionally. the teacher, therefore, is essential in unpacking these concepts in the academic subject for the students to develop as learners. research design and methods this study followed a qualitative case study design. the researcher used the case study design to get rich, thick data of teachers’ instructional practices in literacy in english in two urban schools in nhlangano town, eswatini. another compelling reason for the choice of this design is that the researcher is able to study the subject in its natural setting, thereby getting a holistic picture of the case being studied from the point of view of the participants (creswell 2009; small & uttal 2005; yin 2003). the qualitative case study design therefore enabled the researcher to explore teachers’ instructional practices from their settings in the schools and in their grade 1 literacy english classrooms. the two schools from which data were collected were located in nhlangano, the administrative town of the shiselweni region of eswatini. it is important to mention that these two primary schools are government-owned mixed schools where both girls and boys are enrolled. the teachers are government employees, the curriculum followed is developed by the government, through the national curriculum centre, education of learners is paid for by government under the free primary education plan and the general infrastructure in the schools is owned by government. though these schools are both in the urban area, the learners that were enrolled were mainly from the rural and peri-urban areas of the region. most of these learners travelled to school by public transport as they stayed far from the schools. a very small number of learners stayed in town and walked to school. the nhlangano town where this study is focused has only three urban schools; one was used to pilot the data collection instruments and the other two were used for the actual study. khoza (1999) noted a clear linkage between rural and urban poverty in eswatini. he observed that the rural-urban migration of people in search of jobs and other income-enhancing opportunities transferred rural poverty into the urban areas, resulting in an increase of low-income peri-urban settlements which exacerbated urban poverty in eswatini. currently, the situation has not changed as motsa and morojele (2017) confirm in their recent study. their study shows that in eswatini, schoolgoing children undergo severe conditions due to the hiv pandemic and poverty as 24% of schoolgoing children were living with hiv and aids (unaids ‘aidsinfor’ 2017). this situation impacted negatively on various social services such as health facilities and schools. the available schools in the urban centre experienced high enrolment of children who lived in abject poverty in the peri-urban areas. nhlangano town where this study is based is also affected by urban poverty. the children enrolled in the urban schools are victims of this socio-economic condition. three teachers were the main participants in this study. these teachers were interviewed and observed teaching grade 1 literacy in english classrooms. the teachers were purposively sampled because they were currently teaching grade 1 in the two sampled schools. they prepared schemes of work and lesson plans for the grade 1 literacy in english lessons. all three teachers were swazi females; one teacher from school a was responsible for teaching literacy in english in both grade 1 classes in the school and two teachers from school b taught the two grade 1 classes separately; each class had an average of 53 learners. additional data were collected from two groups of teachers who had experience teaching literacy in english grade 1. these teachers participated in focus group discussions: four teachers from school a and six teachers from school b. analysis of relevant documents used by teachers to plan for instruction was also done to understand teachers’ instructional practices. the documents analysed were the english literacy syllabus, textbooks, teachers’ guide and learners’ books, schemes of work, lesson plans and tests given to learners. teachers who currently taught literacy in english in grade 1 at the two schools were interviewed and observed. those who participated in the focus group discussions all had experience teaching literacy in english in grade 1; they had lived experiences of the phenomenon (cohen, manion & morrison 2011). table 1 provides a summary of data collection instruments and participants. table 1: summary of data collection instruments and participants. pseudonyms were used to ensure confidentiality and protection of the participants’ identity. this was in line with the ethical standards in research as suggested by johnson and christensern (2000) who assert that the researcher should guard against any possible physical, emotional and psychological harm that may occur to the participant during the course of the study. for the purpose of data presentation, teachers who were interviewed and observed were referred to as teacher 1, teacher 2 and teacher 3. teacher 1 was from school a and teacher 2 and teacher 3 were from school b. data collection and analysis this study was a qualitative case study, situated in the interpretive paradigm. various data collection methods were used to gain a holistic understanding of the case. semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, document analysis and focus group interviews were the main data collection instruments for this study. interviews and focus group discussions were audio recorded and then transcribed at the end. field notes were recorded and pictures taken for classroom observation. the transcripts were later sent to the interviewed teachers to check if they correctly captured and presented their views. analysis as this study was purely qualitative, the most appropriate data analysis method that the researcher followed was thematic content analysis. according to krippendorff (2004:18), content analysis is a ‘research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from text (or other meaningful matter) to the context of their use’. data analysis began as soon as the data-gathering process commenced. this was done to create a coherent interpretation of the data (maree 2007:111). this process began with the verbatim transcription of data gathered from the three grade 1 teachers who were interviewed. the transcription was backed up by notes taken during the interviews. the transcripts were read thoroughly to identify key themes that emerged from the data, codes were given to the themes, and similar ideas were categorised under one theme for further analysis (ary, jacobs & razavieh 2002; cohen et al. 2011; maree 2007). the aim was to make sense of what the data suggested about the phenomenon under study and teachers’ instructional practices in literacy in english in grade 1. ethical consideration ethical clearance was issued by the university of kwazulu-natal after all consent letters were submitted to the relevant gatekeepers and participants. ethical clearance number: hss/0442/015d. results the data that yielded the four major themes came from the interviews and observations of the three teachers who taught literacy in english in grade 1. data from focus group discussions and document analysis corroborated that data. the four major themes were: teacher navigation between half transmitter and half facilitator, rationale for teachers’ instructional practices, teachers’ experiences of teaching literacy in english, and teachers’ ideas for improving literacy teaching and learning. theme 1 the first theme showed that teachers had a theoretical knowledge that instructional practices in literacy in english involved multiple activities that teachers did together with the learners to ensure that learning occurred. those interviewed stated that the transmission role required teachers to tell learners what to do and how. on the other hand, the facilitator role required teachers to create opportunities for learners to discover things on their own and in the process acquire new knowledge. ‘we do everything with grade 1 leaners, there is a time when we tell learners everything to do and a time when we help them discover things for themselves, facilitating their learning.’ (t1, grade 1 teacher, female) ‘some of these learners are very clear, they know a lot which you as a teacher do not think they would know.’ (t2, grade 1 teacher, female) ‘when i ask a question, i first allow them to say what they know even if it is out of point, when they fail, it is then that i tell them the correct thing.’ (t3, a grade 1 teacher, female). however, classroom observations showed that the teachers did not always use the learner-centred approach in their classrooms; they still dominated classroom activities and hardly created opportunities for learners to work together to discover information. this was contrary to the sociocultural theory that saw teachers as facilitators for learning through the use of the learners’ sociocultural experiences (vygotsky 1978). theme 2 the second theme revealed that the rationale for teachers instructional practices in the literacy classrooms was based on a number of factors, such as their pedagogic content knowledge in literacy, beliefs about the teaching and learning of literacy, in-service training, learner academic needs, curriculum standards, learner background (preschool and home background) and parental involvement. interviews with the three teachers showed that they lacked clear understanding of what literacy in english entails; their definitions of literacy were general and not specific to what literacy is. ‘literacy is the learning and reading of english, the way they learn and understand the english and teachers should try by all means to help learners speak english.’ (t1, grade 1 teacher, female) ‘literacy is more than understanding english and understanding writing, literacy is the correctness of the language and the rate at which the learner picks up the information the teacher gives.’ (t2, grade 1 teacher, female) ‘literacy is when you encourage learners to communicate in english to make them have a strong command of the language; they have to learn how to express themselves.’ (t3, grade 1 teacher, female) the teachers also said that they lacked pedagogic content knowledge of foundation phase literacy education as pre-service training did not adequately equip them for teaching literacy to grade 1 learners; as a result, they were not confident in their practices. there was no balance between their pedagogic content knowledge and classroom practices. the classroom practices were contrary to shulman and shulman’s (2004) and hashwesh’s (2005) view that pedagogic content knowledge balances what teachers should know about the subject they teach (subject matter knowledge) and preparation of how the content should be taught (pedagogy). the teachers stated that what they did is what they had learned on the job: i think the teaching of literacy must be something for the teacher who has the knowledge and the skills of teaching literacy with young learners. (t1, grade 1 teacher, female) teacher 4 from the focus group corroborated this view: ‘we find it very challenging to teach english literacy in grade 1 because we don’t have all the skills, sometimes we are not sure of what to do with these young learners because we were not trained to teach in the foundation phase.’ (t4, grade 3 teacher, male) the interviews with the teachers also revealed that teacher belief has played an important role in the way they carried out their practices in literacy in the english classroom. squires and bliss (2004:756) state that all teachers bring to the classroom some level of belief that influences their decisions. the interviewed teachers and those who participated in the focus group interviews believed that teachers were role models in the classroom and learners unconsciously copied what they did. consequently, there should be careful planning to eliminate errors: ‘they copy what i do, young children do what you as a teacher do, even the way you speak; they would speak like you, even writing. if i have made a mistake, they copy the mistake as it is.’ (t1, grade 1 teacher, female) teacher 2 shared a similar view: ‘in grade 1 what you must know is that the children depend very much on the teacher. how you pronounce words, they will do exactly, if there is a mistake, they take it from the teacher.’ (t2, grade 1 teacher, female) ‘if you make a mistake in a word, you have to correct it very fast because they just hold on to that.’ (t3, grade 1 teacher, female) the finding also showed that to a large extent, what teachers did in class reflected their understanding of what literacy is and how it should be taught. they viewed themselves as the most important people to help learners learn english literacy. theme 3 the third theme that emerged was that of the different challenges experienced by the schools, learners and teachers. lack of mentoring and lack of teaching and learning resources made the teachers’ experiences difficult: ‘the first time i taught grade 1, it was very difficult because i had no experience in teaching the lower grades, but i learnt a lot about the child. i did not know how they behaved and i had no one to help me on how to handle these young learners. the first year i was just confused, in the second year i started correcting myself, where i felt i wasn’t sure of what i was doing.’ (t1, grade 1 teacher, female) ‘at first it was very challenging because i was fresh from college and no one helped me. the next year, it became better.’ (t2, grade 1 teacher, female) ‘since it is my first time, there are challenges, and no one is there to hold me by the hand but then, as i continue teaching, i find it easier by the day.’ (t3, grade 1 teacher, female) the absence of mentoring for teachers in the teaching of literacy in english, especially in the foundation phase, corroborates the views of hanushek (2009) who affirms that the quality of teachers is the key element in improving student performance. mentoring of the teachers ensures the desired quality and capacity. a school-related challenge was the lack of teaching and learning resources, and lack of time by teachers to prepare teaching resources due to heavy workloads resulting from high enrolment in the schools. moreover, the schools have no proper library facilities: ‘we know that we have to use relevant materials such as pictures because children understand better when they see pictures and other reference materials … but the problem is that we don’t always find them.’ (t1, grade 1 teacher, female) ‘sometimes you know that if i can have this resource or maybe share with other people the lesson could be effective, only to find that you don’t have the time to visit some places where you can maybe get the material because we [are] always busy.’ (t2, grade 1 teacher, female) ‘even if you think of preparing something to support the learners, you cannot because of the work load; you have to do a lot of paper work in the classroom. also, the enrolment is high and these children need a lot of patience.’ (t3, grade 1 teacher, female) teacher 4 from focus group b shared a similar view: ‘we teachers need more time for our planning, and to be able to research on our work but we don’t have enough time, sometimes you have to do your own research only to find that there is no time.’ (t4, grade 3 teacher, female) ‘we do have library material but we don’t have time because even if they go to the library, it must be the teacher who’s teaching the languages to help these children because there is no one employed for that, and with so much work to do, we don’t have that time.’ (t6, grade 2 teacher, female) learner-related challenges included lack of a common starting point due to poor management of early childhood education programmes in the schools, lack of environmental support for learning (parental support and community support), learners’ lack of interest in reading, as well as linguistic and cultural diversity. data from the focus group discussions and interviews with the three teachers showed that a major challenge teachers faced with grade 1 learners in the participating schools was a lack of a common starting point for school. as a result, learners began school with different entry competences. the data showed that in eswatini, preschools were still privately owned and not government sponsored and followed their own curriculum. parents were not compelled to take their children to preschool; as a result, learners began school with varying degrees of competence with respect to language and literacy skills. this disparity in the learners’ experiences when they begin school was a challenge for the teachers who had to complete a syllabus and ensured that learners mastered the different literacy skills. one teacher from focus group a said: ‘the main challenge i have encountered is that most of the pupils were learning english for the first time since some of them did not even go to preschool, you find that while you are teaching english, there are some things that you have to explain to them in siswati because some are just not following.’ (t5, grade 2 teacher, female) the lack of early childhood education does not augur well for learners’ education and scholars agree that early childhood education is critical in developing the child holistically, physically, socially, emotionally, cognitively and culturally for successful schooling to take place (barnett 2011; castro et al. 2011). the findings of the research from focus group a showed that although the learners were in urban schools, they were mainly from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds and lacked necessary support from home and from the community. the teachers in the focus groups stated that most learners stayed in the townships with single parents who worked in the textile industries and never had the time to support learners in their school work. they left home very early in the morning and returned tired in the evening. data from focus group a confirmed what teacher 1 from school a had said and teachers agreed that, in cases like these, there was little support parents could offer to the learners, which hindered the pace at which learners mastered literacy skills. the teachers stated that parents rarely made voluntary visits to the schools to find out how their children were progressing and how they could assist them. parents only visited the school when they were requested to do so and, when they came, they did not give themselves time to talk to the teacher to understand their children’s challenges. one teacher from the focus group said: ‘the parents only come to the school during the open day, they only need the report, they are only interested in their children’s result, and they don’t care about other things. when you talk to them, “please help us with your child” on this aspect, you could see that you are delaying them, they are rushing, that’s the problem!’ (t2, grade 1 teacher, female) theme 4 another theme that emerged was teacher initiatives to improve literacy learning. this theme was based on strategies the teachers used to counter challenges. teachers in the case study schools had devised some strategies to counter some of the challenges they experienced in their teaching of literacy in english in grade 1. these strategies include developing a positive attitude for the work, providing reading materials for their classes, organising internal workshops with other teachers and remediation. the findings showed that since teachers were the implementers of the curriculum, they had to devise strategies to counter the challenges, without which the teaching and learning of literacy in english could be a futile exercise. the teachers stated that developing love and appreciation for the different learners helped them to be patient with their inadequacies and to try by all means to help them learn. they had this to say: ‘i love the subject; i get involved and use whatever i come across if i think that it will help my children understand because i love the subject.’ (t1, grade 1 teacher, female) ‘i make sure that i motivate learners to love the subject and make them practise whatever i teach them; for example, practise speaking english when they are playing outside. i make sure that they use the language and encourage them to love it.’ (t2, grade 1, teacher, female) ‘i try my best to be supportive, i bring all magazines i have just for them to page and look at the pictures. i also ask those who can to bring some old magazines from home.’ (t3, grade 1 teacher, female) classroom observation showed a box of old magazines and newspapers that teacher 3 brought to her class for learners to page through and look at the pictures. they were even allowed to cut out pictures they liked and paste them in their exercise books. teacher 5 from focus group b said: ‘as a teacher you need to be a role model to the learners. give them the reason why they should speak in english rather than forcing them. i just use english every time so that they take it from me, and that has helped me over the years.’ (t5, grade 2 teacher, female) figure 1: summary of themes. another important theme that emerged from the focus group discussions was possible ideas to improve literacy teaching and learning of literacy in grade 1. the data showed that although there were a number of challenges teachers experienced in their teaching of literacy in english in grade 1, teachers also had ideas they believed could improve the teaching and learning of literacy at this level. the ideas included the integration of information technology in the teaching and learning, use of mother tongue, teacher specialisation in the foundation phase and teacher-parent associations. a view from the focus group discussion: ‘the use of information technology tools can help, most of our children are advanced in the knowledge of these gadgets, and maybe even more than us because, at some homes they do have these resources but when they come to school, they find that we still don’t have them.’ (t4, grade 3 teacher, male) the teachers’ idea of the use of information technology in literacy teaching and learning is supported by furlog (2011) who argues that the use of information technology motivates learners, supports knowledge construction and creates a context for supporting learning by doing and conversing. based on the teachers’ view, supported by empirical research, the researcher concludes that an integration of it in literacy learning, therefore, could benefit both learners and teachers to create a better classroom environment. discussion teacher navigation between half facilitator and half transmitter the first theme revealed that teaching literacy in english at grade 1 was a highly specialised activity that required teachers to play a role of being half transmitters of knowledge and also half facilitators of learning. the transmission role required teachers to tell learners what to do and how. on the other hand, the facilitator role required teachers to create opportunities for discovery learning. from this study, the transmission of knowledge was more dominant than the facilitation of learning. the teachers’ practices were not clearly aligned to the sociocultural perspective that advocates for the social and cultural experiences of the learners to be at the centre of their learning, especially in the foundation phase. moreover, they were not in line with the views of sarigoz (2012:253) who holds that play-based techniques to teaching literacy to grade 1 learners, such as games, songs, puzzles, crafts, stories and drama, were suitable to create a child-friendly language learning environment. instead, teacher instructional practices showed that teachers did what worked for them in their classrooms without basing it on sociocultural theory. this also revealed their lack of the required expertise for teaching literacy in english in grade 1. in their instructional practices, teachers made an effort to motivate learners in their classrooms and displayed their works on the wall and constantly praised and clapped hands for learners who made an effort to respond to oral questions. from the researcher’s observation, teachers were keen to support learners in their efforts to acquire literacy in english. the challenge was that their teaching approaches were not balanced and they placed more emphasis on explicit teaching and writing activities at the expense of creating a more enabling environment for literacy learning. the teachers’ practices were not clearly aligned to the sociocultural perspective that advocates for the social and cultural experiences of the learners to be at the centre of their learning, especially at the foundation phase. the teachers’ instructional practices were also contrary to the view of uzuner et al. (2011) who argue that it is important at an elementary level to include a concise and balanced literacy system that has the advantage of increasing students’ comprehension of literacy. rationale for teachers’ instructional practices in grade 1 teachers had a wide-ranging rationale for their instructional practices in grade 1 literacy. these included teacher pedagogic content knowledge in literacy, teacher beliefs about the teaching and learning of literacy, in-service training, learner academic needs, curriculum standards, and learner needs which include preschool and home background, learner developmental age and learner interest. the teachers were of the view that their knowledge about the subject of literacy in english was important in determining what they taught and how they taught, a view supported by shulman and shulman (2004) and leong et al. (2015) who hold that pedagogic content knowledge balances what teachers should know about the subject they teach (subject matter knowledge) and preparation on how the content should be taught (pedagogy). teachers raised a concern that learners who enrolled in grade 1 had no common introductory ground as some were from preschool and others were not. the study showed that the disparity of the learners who enrolled in these two urban schools was mainly caused by urban poverty in the region. the background showed that there was a high rate of rural-urban migration in eswatini and this exacerbated poverty. some learners who lived in the town and attended the two urban schools were actually from impoverished families and had no support from home. if it were not for the free primary education some of these learners would not be at school. the high cost of preschool education prevented most parents from enrolling their children for preschool education which caused the disparity in the learners who enrolled in grade 1. the study showed that the teachers’ knowledge of the learners’ needs was important in guiding the teachers’ planning of lessons. this view is clearly articulated by lyons and pinnell (2001) who state that the most important concern teachers have is for their individual learners’ strengths, habits, attitudes and needs. they are of the view that when teachers know their learners individually, it is easier for them to guide and support them in their literacy needs. lyons and pinnell write: knowing our students is critical to teaching literacy successfully, because they bring knowledge and experience to the literacy process. recognizing what the students bring to reading and writing powers our instruction. the meaning and the pleasure of literacy resides within the individual. (p. 35) teachers’ experiences of teaching literacy in grade 1 the study showed that there are a number of issues that make up teachers’ experiences of teaching literacy in english in grade 1. a major conclusion that emanated from this study was that teachers faced a lot of challenges in the teaching of literacy in english at grade 1 level and these challenges made their experiences unpleasant especially for new teachers. the lack of mentoring for teachers who taught grade 1 literacy for the first time was frustrating. also, having to deal with learners who came to grade 1 with different entry competencies because there was no common starting point for all learners increased the teachers’ challenges. however, the resilience that the teachers developed with time helped them to devise effective strategies that improved learners’ achievement in literacy. these include development of a positive attitude, engaging learners in remedial work and organising internal workshops with other teachers. these mitigating measures helped improve the situation and made the teachers’ experiences bearable. the study showed that a positive attitude was important for teachers to develop resilience in their work. strategies teachers used to counter the challenges teachers in the case study schools had devised some strategies to counter some of the challenges they experienced in their teaching of literacy in english in grade 1. these strategies include developing a positive attitude for the work, providing reading materials for their classes, organising internal workshops with other teachers and remediation. the findings showed that since teachers were the implementers of the curriculum, they had to devise strategies to counter the challenges, without which the teaching and learning of literacy in english could be a futile exercise. the most critical aspect was to work on their attitudes; they stated that developing a positive attitude towards their work helped them to cope. the positive attitude enabled the teachers to make an effort to provide reading materials for the learners, provide remedial lessons for struggling learners, and also organise internal workshops among themselves. the idea of teachers’ collaboration in the schools is supported by wium and louw (2011:86) in their work on the ‘exploration of how foundation phase teachers facilitate language skills’. they assert that the development of a child involves an interdisciplinary field of knowledge that teachers bring to the profession. ideas to improve the teaching and learning of literacy in english in grade 1 the study showed that regardless of the challenges teachers experienced in their teaching of literacy in english at grade 1 level, they had ideas that they believed could improve the teaching and learning of literacy in grade 1. these ideas included the integration of information technology in the teaching, use of mother tongue, teacher specialisation in the foundation phase and teacher-parent associations. the teachers were of the view that employing teachers who had specialised in foundation phase education could improve literacy teaching because these teachers would know which effective instructional practices to implement in order to meet varied learners’ needs. moreover, the teachers believed that the integration of information technology in the curriculum would benefit learners because children were fascinated by technology. the teachers’ idea corroborated the views of aubrey and dahl (2008) who argue that the use of information technology motivates learners, supports knowledge construction and creates a context for supporting learning by doing and by conversing. van scoter (2008) also holds that the use of information technology with young children can help to support meaningful learning as it increases one’s understanding of the world through communication, language, literacy and problem solving. conclusion the results of this study showed that teachers understand that grade 1 is an important foundation phase level and teaching at this level requires specialised training. they acknowledged that they lacked the necessary expertise for effectively teaching literacy in english at this level. consequently, there is a strong recommendation that government considers hiring teachers who are qualified to teach at the foundation phase for effective literacy in english instruction. it is believed that teachers who are qualified in foundation phase education would be able to meet the diverse needs of the learners. the study also showed that there are various factors that explain teachers’ instructional practices: teacher-related, learner-related and school-related factors. altogether, these factors make up experiences of the teachers. as implementers of the curriculum, teachers had to deal with these challenges, most of which they had no control over. the most glaring challenge was that learners who enrolled in grade 1 did not have a common starting ground as there was still no grade 0 in the public schools. recommendations there is a strong recommendation that government introduces grade 0 in the schools to bridge the gap for learners who enrol for grade 1. it might also be essential for the curriculum designers to integrate technology-based literacy in english programmes in the foundation phase to improve literacy learning. acknowledgements the teachers of the two primary schools that participated in this study. they provided useful data; without them, this study would not have been possible. competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions p.d. is the one behind this idea and a.s. guided her as she did this work. funding this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial and not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this 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‘an examination of balanced literacy instructional model implemented to youths with hearing loss’, educational sciences: theory and practice 11(4), 2126–2133. van scoter, j., 2008, ‘the potential of it to foster literacy development in kindergarten’, in international handbook of information technology in primary and secondary education, pp. 149–161, springer, boston, ma. vygotsky, l.s., 1978, mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes, harvard university press, london. wium, a.m. & louw, b., 2011, ‘teacher support–an exploration of how foundation-phase teachers facilitate language skills’, south african journal of communication disorders 58(2), 86. yin, r.k., 2003, case study research: design and methods, 3rd edn., sage, london. abstract introduction theoretical framework a bourdieusian framework of habitus, capital, field and doxa imagination and a shift in habitus the role of reflection the participants and a rupture in field context and its impact on literate habitus a note on methodology elela’s encounter with poetry kganya’s encounter with a drama text: ‘love, crime and johannesburg’ conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) toni gennrich school of education, university of the witwatersrand, south africa citation gennrich, t., 2016, ‘“i got content with who i was”: rural teachers’ encounters with new ways of practising literacy’, reading and writing 7(2), a109. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i2.109 original research ‘i got content with who i was’: rural teachers’ encounters with new ways of practising literacy toni gennrich received: 15 sep. 2015; accepted: 09 mar. 2016; published: 15 july 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract in a context where foundation phase literacy teachers’ personal literacy often involves operational and technicist practices rather than creative, this paper argues that it is by exposing teachers to experiences of working with different genres of text for an extended time, in different fields, that teachers are able to imagine the possibilities these genres afford. using a bourdieusian framework of habitus, field, capital and doxa and applying imagination to the theorisation of these concepts, i examine the effect on a group of rural teachers from limpopo province of being removed from their classrooms, and being given the opportunity to complete a 4-year bachelor of education degree at the university of the witwatersrand. this case study used reflective journals and focus groups to trace shifts in the ways these teacher-students enacted literacy and thought about teaching literacy. findings from this study suggest that teachers of literacy can change deeply entrenched ways of thinking about and valuing literacy by reflecting on the discontinuities between old and new ways of practice and, through anticipatory reflection, to imagine possibilities of teaching and enacting literacy differently. this requires critical imagination, awareness and agency. this paper discusses, in particular, elela’s experience with poetry and kganya’s experience with a drama script, assessing the effect this had on their personal literacy practices and how they imagine teaching literacy in the future. introduction imagination is seldom considered in relation to in-service teacher development initiatives for literacy teachers. many workshops and interventions for in-service teachers have been introduced in response to south african learners’ poor performance on systemic, standardised tests. teachers are important in making a difference in helping young south africans become literate in ways that will empower them sufficiently for fields (bourdieu 1977, 1990) they will encounter in their futures. however, the focus tends to be on ‘fixing’ problematic teachers (green et al. 2011). this paper aims for a more nuanced understanding of how and why some teachers seem to be struggling to teach literacy effectively. it examines the importance of an awakening of the imagination in literacy teachers and the role this plays in helping them to become aware of new possibilities (greene 1995) in reading and writing genres of text they do not usually work with. this paper focuses on two experienced, rural foundation phase teachers’ reactions to being taught poetry and drama in the first year of a bachelor of education (b.ed) degree. as teachers growing up in and working in rural limpopo, south africa, elela and kganya both had limited access to a variety of genres of written texts. the study described in this paper followed both participants across 4 years (2009–2012), during the time they spent at the university of the witwatersrand (wits) where they completed a b.ed degree. specifically, i ask what changes manifested themselves in elela’s and kganya’s literate habitus (albright & luke 2008) during this period. i illustrate how being exposed to the reading and analysis of different genres of text ignited their imaginations. in doing so, i draw on vygotsky’s (2004) claim that it is the environment which contributes to imaginative capacity as ‘imagination always builds using materials provided by reality’ (p. 30). in doing so, i emphasise the importance of imagination on the development of teachers’ own literacy practices, arguing that being in different fields for an extended time helped provide materials and opportunities for using these that elela and kganya may not been aware of previously. imagination provides the key to dismantling established, deeply entrenched ways of teaching literacy and enacting literacy; imagination provides the ‘push’ necessary to shift habitus. theoretical framework a sociocultural perspective of literacy is presented in this paper, recognising that literacy is not only more than a set of discrete skills but is also a set of social practices influenced by the context in which it is used (street 1984). there is more than one way of being literate (gee 1996; prinsloo & breier 1996). with this in mind, i do not discount the literacy practices the participants experienced in fields in limpopo; i do argue, however, that exposure to different literacy practices opens up possibilities not imagined before and provides additional cultural capital. literacy includes the values, attitudes and social relationships underpinning particular literacy events, defined by heath (1983:50) as ‘any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of the participants’ interactions and their interpretive processes’. the notion of literacy events is important as i discuss observable reading and writing events in elela’s and kganya’s considerations of literacy. i also consider how being taught relatively unfamiliar genres of text, and reflecting on these in ways that welcomed imaginative interactions and interpretations seems to have contributed to a shift in their literate habitus. teaching literacy should consist of more than imparting discrete skills. it should focus on the development of critical and analytic skills as well as an understanding of the purposes of different texts and how they function, particularly, in relation to social contexts. it requires that learners are helped to bring their own meanings to texts and to link written texts to speaking and listening. this is what freebody and luke (1990, 2003) refer to as the ‘four resources model’. this model illustrates how the four roles of the reader, that is, code-breaker, text-participant, text-user and text-analyst, need to operate simultaneously and collectively in the literacy practices of ‘literate persons’. this model does not explicitly include imagination but, using bland’s (2012, 2016) model of the four kinds of imagination and applying two of these to the ‘four resources model’, i argue, that these four roles do contribute important imaginative elements to interactions with texts. bland (2016) explores four imaginations: fantasy, empathic, critical and imaginative. i now discuss the ‘four resources model’ in more detail and show connections between empathic and critical imaginations and freebody and luke’s model. furthermore, i discuss greene’s claims about imagination, linking these to the model. the code-breaker role, encoding and decoding, is most focused on in many township and rural contexts in south africa (gennrich & janks 2013; prinsloo 2002; reeves et al. 2008). the text-participant role opens up possibilities for bringing one’s own meanings to texts and encourages reflection and connection of texts to real-life concerns. this connection requires imaginative interpretation and identification with others (greene 1997). by including ‘empathic imagination’ (bland 2016:8) in relation to this role, it can be expanded to include allowing students to explore ‘the tensions between their personal beliefs and real-life behaviours’ (2016:8). the text-user role helps learners understand and recognise the purposes of different genres inside and outside of classrooms. the participants described in this paper had not worked extensively with poetry and drama texts in ways that helped them to understand the characteristics and functions of these genres. freebody and luke maintain that students need to focus on the cultural and social functions and the ‘social actions’ (2003:57) that texts perform in and outside of school. the text-analyst role requires imaginative attentiveness to alternative perspectives and a critical consciousness. greene (1997) argues that this is the beginning of real learning and that it requires agency to ask significant questions. bland (2012, 2016) views critical imagination as reflective, disruptive and conscious of the social and political. he likens this to freire’s (1998) ‘conscientisation’, reasoning that students need opportunities that force them to think in different ways. a rupture in the fields an individual inhabits, or a removal from those fields, is necessary for this awareness, otherwise an individual is like a ‘fish in water’ and does not ‘feel the weight of the water and takes the world about itself for granted’ (bourdieu & wacquant 1992:127). it is with this in mind that the social construction of elela and kganya as ‘literate persons’ is focused on in this paper. specifically, it examines how they experienced changing fields (bourdieu 1977, 1990, 2007) and encountered new ways of being literate and practising literacy. in order to fully understand this, bourdieu’s notions of habitus, symbolic capital, field and doxa are key. i now introduce these concepts, discussing how they have been used in this paper. a bourdieusian framework of habitus, capital, field and doxa bourdieu’s theoretical concepts of habitus, capital and field (1977, 1986, 1990) frame the discussion. firstly, i invoke bourdieu’s construct of habitus, which he defines as being structured by layers of dispositions which result in ‘an infinite capacity for generating products – thoughts, perceptions, expressions and actions’ (1990:55). i consider these products to be observable literacy events, such as writing poetry, reflective journal entries and the practices surrounding these events, which involve ‘values, attitudes, beliefs, feelings and social relationships’ (purcell-gates, jacobson & degener 2004:32). these products are structured by ‘capacities and dispositions shaped by conditions of existence’ (bourdieu 2000:150). an individual’s collection of capacities and dispositions creates a bias towards behaving in certain ways which become ‘internalized as a second nature’ (bourdieu 1990:56). these also affect how an individual ‘perceives and appreciates’ (bourdieu 1990:54) all experiences. a disposition to literacy forms a layer of the structure of habitus and this disposition results in a ‘tendency’ or ‘inclination’ (bourdieu 1977:214) to value and construct literacy texts in particular ways. these layers can also build resistance to new ways of thinking and valuing. a literate disposition and imaginative capacity are structured by the fields or social worlds individuals inhabit and participate in. the practices of each field are produced and reproduced by participants in the field. each field has unwritten ‘rules of the game’ which bourdieu refers to as ‘doxa’ (1977, 1990). these ‘unquestioned opinions and perceptions’ (deer 2008:120) are learnt over time and through experience underpin what participants in the field consider to count as literacy. how individuals act, respond, feel and imagine is deeply formed by the regulated practices of the fields they participate in, which produce a ‘logic of practice’. these practices, literacy practices more specifically, become so deeply entrenched that they are embodied and internalised as dispositions over time. part of what drives individuals to pursue these practices, is the view of what counts as symbolic capital in the fields in which they operate. bourdieu contends that agents constantly strive for what is valued in a field and what they consider will provide social status and power in that field. because different fields influence people differently, individuals sometimes find that the ways that they enact or value literacy may be accepted or rejected as capital in other fields. how individuals are placed within a field determines how much symbolic capital they have. it is the perception that individuals have of what counts as capital ‘which cause[s] them to know it and to recognise it, to give it value’ (bourdieu 1998:47). individuals strategise to ensure maximum capital gain and so their practices tend to conform to those of others in the field (bourdieu 1977, 1990). bourdieu does not write specifically about the role of imagination in the structuring of habitus. he does, however, discuss taste and an aesthetic disposition (1984), arguing that what is regarded as ‘legitimate taste’ or ‘high aesthetics’ (1984:24) is related to class. reading and enjoying a variety of literary genres, it could be argued, are the luxury of the leisured classes and may not be viewed as capital by some who come from backgrounds where buying books is an indulgence few can afford. it is with this awareness that i argue for opportunities to be provided for teacher to read, write and make meaning critically and imaginatively using a variety of genres of texts. i believe that this paper contributes to thinking about how literate habitus shifts, by examining the role imagination plays in this process. imagination and a shift in habitus although habitus is durable and lasts over time, bourdieu does not rule out the possibility of change, stating that it is ‘not a destiny’ (2004:44) nor is it ‘eternal’ (bourdieu & wacquant 1992:133). disrupting literate habitus is difficult but not impossible (gennrich 2015; gennrich & janks 2013). this paper focuses on the importance of imagination in facilitating a shift in deeply entrenched ways of valuing and enacting literacy. an imaginative capacity contributes to the structure of the dispositions layering an individual’s habitus. greene (1995), arguing that one’s identity is in constant creation, identifies four elements necessary for the release of the imagination which are important to consider here. they are: critical awareness, agency, awareness of discontinuities between old and new ways of thinking and practising, and reflective anticipation. she emphasises the role that the arts, including literature texts, play in providing alternate ways of perceiving the world. viewing the world critically and using the critical imagination (bland 2012, 2016) is important for releasing the imagination and individuals need to be awakened to perspectives that are different from their own (greene 1995). greene calls this becoming ‘wide awake to the world’ (1995:4). engaging with different genres of texts opens up possibilities for making creative connections and helps one to shift from accepted, unquestioned opinions to insights about the ‘infinity or inexhaustibleness of things’ (1995:15). greene (1995) calls for teachers to provide spaces where learners can find agency and are empowered to ‘pose significant questions’ (p. 23) and can realise that there are many ways to interpret and construct meaning. moving away from conformity and ‘unexamined common sense’ (p. 23) or doxa (bourdieu 1990, 2000) enables agency. this agency also comes from an awareness of the discontinuities between what is accepted as unquestioned to new perspectives and practices. it is this ‘awareness of leaving something behind while reaching towards something new’ (greene 1995:20) that greene says should be linked to imagination. she cites dewey (1934:272) who describes imagination as ‘a “gateway” through which meanings derived from past experiences find their way into the present; it is the conscious adjustment of the new and the old’ (1995:20). in relating greene’s ideas to bourdieu’s concepts i recognise that imagination is essential in [re]structuring the habitus in that it builds new layers of dispositions on the structures already in place. however, one can argue that this is why habitus is difficult to shift, because the foundational layers and structures are still there and are more deeply entrenched than the new. the role of reflection next, what i consider important for this paper is greene’s contention that imagination provides the ‘capacity to invent visions of what should be and what might be in our deficient society’ (1995:5). she contends that teachers should be provided with opportunities to reflect on their practice in complex contexts and to see their work in relation to a broader whole. conway (2001) calls this ‘anticipatory reflection’ or ‘future-oriented reflection’ (p. 90) and identifies this as ‘generative imagination’ as opposed to ‘analytic remembering’: what i mean by analytical remembering is the focus in teacher education on analysing both the distant past (the apprenticeship of observation) and the more immediate past (lesson, unit, or daily reflective evaluation). this necessary focus on analytical remembering, however, is enacted to such an extent that what gets neglected is an important dimension of prospective teachers’ experience and cognition as they learn to teach: i.e. imagination. (p. 102) based on his research with prospective teachers, he argues for the importance of hope and imagination, asserting that teacher education needs to focus on ‘conversations and activities designed to promote imaginative/prospective reflection’ (2001:102). ward and mccotter’s (2004:251) four levels of reflection were used to analyse the data discussed here, in an attempt to understand the role increasing reflective levels play in imaginative and critical understanding of teaching literacy differently. routine reflections are limited to focusing on problems and blaming circumstances or others for things going wrong in lessons. there is no questioning of practice and no taking responsibility for change. reflections operating in the technical category reveal a desire to learn and centre on solving problems. this level of reflection focuses on narrow teaching tasks and does not lead to new insights. reflections that reveal an ongoing process of thinking and taking into consideration the views of others are characteristic of the dialogic level. questioning leading to new insights opens up the possibility of change. although for ward and mccotter (2004:253), transformative reflection ‘questions fundamental assumptions and purpose more deeply’, they point out that it is rare for pre-service teachers to reach this level. the participants in this study were experienced teachers so one might expect that they reflected at the transformative level. however, transformative reflection takes place over a long period of time and is characterised by ‘whole-hearted inquiry’ (ward & mccotter 2004:253). conway’s and ward and mccotter’s claims for the importance of different kinds of reflection were useful in examining the quality of reflection of elela and kganya. the participants and a rupture in field a rupture in field is important to enable a shift in habitus. it creates instability which results in adaptations, adjustments or ‘regulated improvisations’ (bourdieu 1990:57). a sudden change in the social environment results in individuals strategising in order to maximise their capital in the new or changing field (bourdieu 2007). new environments, circumstances and conditions lead to forced improvisations which bring about the possibility of a change in the structure of habitus (wacquant 2006). similarly, greene (1995:24) recognises the importance of change in igniting the imagination and enabling new perspectives. she cites camus (1955) writing about situations when ‘the stage set collapses’ and how this brings about necessary interrogations and questioning to enable ‘the capacity to imagine what is not yet’ (1995:24). kganya and elela were part of a group of 200 experienced and practising foundation phase teachers from limpopo province, south africa’s northernmost province, who received bursaries from the limpopo department of education to study b.ed degree at wits, johannesburg from 2009 to 2012. i was employed at the university to teach a module namely, ‘english in education’, to these teacher-students1 in their first year. it is the interaction that elela and kganya had with new genres of literary text on this course, namely poetry and a drama script, which i present here. elela is a 40-year-old shangaan speaker who grew up in a township in a former homeland which had been incorporated into limpopo province after the demise of apartheid. her mother loved reading and passed on the same love to elela: ‘my mother used to love to read … she used to buy me books’ (fg, 2010). books were highly valued, so that even in a home where there was not much money, it was considered worthwhile spending money on books. elela recognises that this early exposure to books has resulted in the ease with which she reads: ‘even from my earliest grades i was a good reader and it was not difficult for me’ (fg, 2010). she associates reading with positive emotions using words like ‘good’; and ‘not difficult’ when writing about reading. this has had a lasting effect on her literate habitus and in adulthood, she continues to buy novels. she is a strong christian and this influences her personal reading practices, as she buys and reads christian books and is ‘moved by them’. she values them for the effect they have on how she: ‘lives and understands things’ (ej, 2009). kganya is a 39-year-old sepedi woman. her mother was illiterate, in fact the only book she recalls seeing in her childhood home was a bible. she admits that she never entered a library until she went to university. she indicates that she does not read for relaxation or fun: ‘i do not have memories that are vivid and interesting about reading. maybe that is the reason i see reading as a “duty.” i read when i “have to” and mainly for academic reasons’ (lj, 2011). her strong christian faith motivates her to read christian and self-help books and she subscribes to a daily bible verse on her cell phone. she also reads magazines, mainly celebrity gossip articles. these two participants both graduated from wits in 2012 on time and enacted literacy in different ways early on. both of these teacher-students reveal how reading, analysing and writing about different genres of texts helped them to ‘do’ literacy differently. context and its impact on literate habitus two contextual factors from the fields these teacher-students grew up in and worked in are discussed in this section as contributing to the development of their literate habitus, namely their education during apartheid and a limited access to printed texts. elela and kganya were both schooled during the apartheid era and are products of bantu education. the conditions in schools in rural areas were inadequate and had sub-standard buildings, high pupil-teacher ratios and underqualified, demoralised and disillusioned teachers (bloch 2009). learning was fact-based, non-interpretive and aimed to indoctrinate learners (gardiner 2008). individual perspectives were not encouraged, and drilling, rote-learning and reliance on discrete, isolated literacy skills were focused on (hoadley 2012; muller 1989). elela and kganya both trained as teachers in teacher training colleges in the former homelands. these colleges were racially and ethnically divided and were ‘little more than glorified high schools’ (gardiner 2008:21). fundamental pedagogics was the educational philosophy underpinning the instruction in these colleges and they ‘discouraged questioning or critical analysis’ (gardiner 2008:21). in both schools and teacher training colleges, imagination was stifled as the aim was to produce a docile, unquestioning black community while promoting the dominance of white rule (von holdt 2012). since the demise of apartheid, contextual influences in many schools in limpopo have resulted in limited material resources and this has affected pedagogy. learners in many rural areas of limpopo are taught without textbooks because the delivery of these textbooks to schools in the province is problematic. because of the lack of books, literacy roles are limited (freebody & luke 2003) and there is little engagement with different genres of text and extended writing (reeves et al. 2008). reading is taught using choral reading aloud from the chalk board or from photocopied worksheets (taylor & moyane 2004) or the teacher reads and the learners copy the teacher (fleisch 2012; reeves et al. 2008). teachers tend to focus on names of letters, decoding isolated words and sounds, and they pay little attention to meaning-making or imaginative, creative writing (macdonald 1990; pretorius 2002; reeves et al. 2008). i argue that these educational contexts have contributed to deep, dispositional literacy layers in elela’s and kganya’s habitus. teachers cannot be expected to teach literacy imaginatively if their personal literate habitus is such that they have not had first-hand experience of a variety of genres of text. in this paper i demonstrate how elela and kganya, being offered opportunities to read poetry and drama, both texts that they did not read or write regularly, began to recognise and imagine possibilities in using these texts, that they had not been aware of before. a note on methodology there have been many short-term teacher training interventions in south africa and these have had limited impact on the teaching of literacy in particular (gardiner 2008; taylor 2007). there have been few opportunities to study the longitudinal development of the identities of practising teachers in south africa. specifically, we know little about the impact of long-term interventions on the teaching of literacy. elela and kganya were part of a larger study and i researched their literacy for 4 years. i invited the teacher-students to participate in research i was conducting at the time into teachers’ literate habitus (gennrich 2015) and they both volunteered. the data i draw on were: reflective journals kept in their first year in the english in education (ej) course,2 focus groups (fg) held early in 2010, reflective journals kept across the 4 years of the degree while on teaching experience (te),3 journals from a library science (lj) course and exit interviews (ei) in 2012. i analysed the data by identifying patterns and themes as revealed in elela’s and kganya’s writing and speaking about their encounters with drama and poetry; creating literacy tables using the freebody and luke’s ‘four roles of the reader’ (1990, 2003) and analysing reflections using ward & mccotter’s (2004) levels of reflection. i examined instances of new ways of ‘doing, feeling, thinking and being’ (maton 2008:52) imaginatively and creatively in relation to literacy. elela’s encounter with poetry a 3-week module of the course i taught dealt with selected poems drawn from the anthology, seasons come to pass. the poems taught were well-established, well-known poems from the ‘canon’ including some written by south african and african poets. this selection had limitations of access which i have discussed elsewhere (gennrich & wilson 2009). in class, i explained the historical period as well as the contextual issues that were relevant for understanding the poem. i aimed to help the teacher-students use the text-participant role (freebody & luke 1990, 2003) and to use empathic imaginations (bland 2012, 2016) by finding personal meaning in the poems, assisting them to find connections to their own lives and contexts. in the lecture room a variety of personal responses was welcomed and i helped teacher-students understand that multiple perspectives were possible if supported with evidence from the text. together we interrogated the poems, critically examining the perspectives presented and questioning these. in this way i helped them to use a text-analyst role (freebody & luke 1990, 2003) and engaged their critical imaginations (bland 2012, 2016) by interrogating their own beliefs and attitudes and becoming politically and socially aware. i encouraged the development of freebody and luke’s text-user role (freebody & luke 1990, 2003) by assisted them to examine how the poets’ use of language and poetic devices contribute to the meaning, tone and point of view. this series of lectures resulted in elela’s excitement at the possibilities opened up by an approach that did not rely entirely on the text-decoder role of a reader (freebody & luke 1990, 2003). an entry in her english reflective journal of 20/08/09 began with a poem that she had written herself and reveals active engagement and an application of the creative imagination (bland 2012, 2016) with the genre: poems, poems, poems! so challenging yet so interesting. like funny strange creatures with silly scary features they slither towards you; and cover you up. this poem is revealing in many ways. it is short and written with control. there are a number of figures of speech used effectively demonstrating that elela has understood their use beyond merely identifying them as she described being taught poetry at school, ‘in our mother tongue approach of poems we only looked for figures of speech in the poems and identify them’ (ej 2009). the whole poem is an extended metaphor in which she compares poems to ‘funny strange creatures’ indicating how the genre is unusual for her. the choice of the words ‘funny’ and ‘strange’ emphasise this, however, these words are neither sinister nor frightening. lines 4 and 5 contain alliteration on the ‘s’ sound which suggests a snake-like quality especially because of the word ‘slither’, perhaps hinting at some trepidation which the enjambed lines effectively add. there is a possible double meaning in, ‘cover you up’ as covering can be protective or overwhelming. this phrase encapsulates the duality of her emotions in relation to poetry. in the body of her journal entry, elela reflects on the discontinuities she has become aware of, between how she had been taught poetry at school and the way she is being taught poetry at wits. this awareness results in a shift in her feelings about poetry and her comprehension of the possibilities the genre affords. she contrasts the two ways of learning poetry: ‘when we learnt poems at the school level it was to memorise them and then recite them in order to obtain some oral marks. the only poems we attempted analysing were mother tongue poems with a totally different approach to the one we learnt here at wits university.’ (ej, 20 aug. 2009). her description of the typical literacy practice relating to poetry was that it focused on memorisation and performance. enjoyment appears to have been constrained by having ‘oral marks’ assigned to these activities. evaluation rather than enjoyment seems to be the focus of the literacy event. she uses a series of negative phrases such as ‘not given much attention’, ‘usually avoided’, ‘did not fully understand why’, ‘poor quality’ and ‘never really studied them in depth’ which highlight the dominant attitudes to poetry as she had experienced it at school. elela uses the word ‘only’ twice implying that, with hindsight, the way she had studied poems previously was limited, in her view. at wits she describes experiencing poetry as ‘a challenging yet interesting adventure’. this metaphor emphasises her excitement at the unlimited possibilities she begins to see in poetry. although the experience is new, she embraces it. she expresses regret at the brevity of the 3 week module, ‘i just feel the session was too short because just when i felt i was beginning to get what poems were all about, the session came to an end’. elela realises how she is becoming attentive to opportunities to think broadly and creatively, offered by poetry: ‘i was beginning to love poetry because i realised one can gain great insights and wisdom from them. i also realised that because of their open endedness they encouraged critical thinking and creativity.’ (ej, 20 aug. 2009). not only does she express her bourgeoning love for reading and analysing poetry, but she also indicates her desire to develop as a text-user (freebody & luke 1990, 2003), and to write more of her own poetry: i was beginning to appreciate the art of the poets … and even wondered if i myself can be able to express myself through poetry, unfortunately before i was sure of it, it was over. despite the tentativeness she feels, it is evident that she did try writing poetry. she expresses a longing for more time to write poetry and suggests not only a sense of the boundlessness offered by the genre, but also that extended time is needed for her to participate in poetry with confidence. elela ends off this journal entry by revealing her growing self-assurance and agency in her responsiveness to new possibilities offered by writing poetry: ‘the introductory paragraph is my playful attempt to see if maybe i can develop the skill of expressing myself through poetry which i believe i can learn if i put myself to it. i think i have fallen in love with poetry, and to think how stupid and funny i viewed those who wrote and recite them in our traditional events before learning about them here at wits makes me see how ignorance can make one miss out on great things.’ (ej, 20 aug. 2009). the phrase ‘i believe i can learn if i put my mind to it’ emphasises her determination to try out new ways of writing. she makes connections between the poetry she has done in class with poetry as it is used in her cultural context. this new field and her reading and writing of poetry in it, help her to reflect back on her attitudes towards poets in her community and to anticipate appreciating these differently in the future. she is becoming open to different points of view and realises ‘how ignorance can make one miss out on great things’. elela is increasingly aware of the discontinuities between the old poetic field and the new and this enables critical reflection on her own attitudes to poets and poetry in limpopo. her writing reflects a growing awareness and critical understanding which appear to contribute imaginatively to a shift in her disposition to poetry. at the end of her 4 years at wits, elela reflects deeply on how far she has come on her long journey to becoming a different kind of teacher to the one she had been prior to this intervention: ‘when my students become successful because of something that i taught i really feel some sense of achievement and satisfaction. where i would have lately blamed on other people, e.g. that children were not serious, parents are irresponsible and do not help or blamed the department for changing curriculums without training us, i realise now that i feel like i am directly responsible too for their learning and want my children to be successful.’ (te, 20 sept. 2012). here elela demonstrates agency as she shifts from blaming others, a technical level of reflection (ward & mccotter 2004) to taking responsibility for her teaching. she recognises how she is gradually changing in how she taught reading and writing as discrete, isolated skills to an ability to make connections and to help her learners to do so as well: ‘before i came to wits i realised that my children learnt very little. i just let them read, dictated some words to them, and let them transcribe sentences. i knew i had to integrate other subjects, but i did not know how to do it. i did try to do the best i could, but could not teach the way i do now.’ (te, 27 sept. 2012). kganya’s encounter with a drama text: ‘love, crime and johannesburg’ another module of the ‘english in education’ course introduced teacher-students to the drama genre and the script selected for study was purkey’s (2000) love, crime and johannesburg. kganya’s literate habitus is strongly influenced by her christian faith and this could be why she is initially put off by the: ‘swearing words and vulgar words’ (ej, 25 july 2009). this objection reflects her habitus which is infused by principled values. she also finds the behaviour of the characters alienating because it is discordant with the moral dispositions which layer her habitus. however, she demonstrates willingness to move beyond this dislike and to recognise perspectives so different to her own views, in order to engage meaningfully with the script as a text-analyst (freebody & luke 1990). this also demonstrates her use of critical imagination (bland 2012, 2016) as she is forced to think in new ways about the relationship between her perspective and the behaviour and values of others. kganya consciously questions the meanings in the text and clearly articulates the views portrayed by the playwright: ‘i have a feeling that the authors want to portray queenie as uncapable [sic] of managing the police. the issue of affirmative action is questioned here. queenie got the job not on merit, but because she is a woman…’ (ej, 25 july 2009). the song that says: ‘when will the woman police govern?’ suggests the gender issue and males are not satisfied to be the subordinate of females.’ (ej, 25 july 2009). this extract reveals how she has insight into the way the play conveys views on important societal issues in south africa, in this case affirmative action and she recognises also how it challenges gender stereotypes. she is asking important questions and constructing meanings that help her to consider views which are different to her own, which is an important aspect of the critical imagination. like elela, she is conscious of discontinuities in her personal reading between what she read before coming to wits and her current literacy practices. as she is exposed to different ways of reading and writing, her literacy practices gradually begin changing, indicating shifts in her literate habitus. the experience appears to generate steps towards new ways of thinking, perceiving and acting in relation to literacy: ‘in my opinion i am reading and writing differently now compared to when i was in limpopo … i mostly read the bible and magazines … gossip columns, recipes, games … i got content with who i was … when i read more, i have realised that i gain more knowledge. as i gain more knowledge i also engage with different academic articles, theories or viewpoints. i can now critically analyse other people’s viewpoints and come up with my standpoint. i never had this skill (critical thinking) but wits had developed this skill (though not yet fully developed, is a step in the right direction).’ (ei, 2012). this quote, from the interview held at the end of her fourth year at wits, indicates that her view of what it means to be literate has begun to change. kganya places particular value on thinking critically and recognises that this is a new and developing aspect of her literacy repertoire. as she reflects on the changes, she is aware of the impact these have on who she is, her identity as a literate person. the repetition of phrases, such as ‘i am’, ‘i read’, ‘i gain’ and ‘i can now’, shows agency that seems to have arisen from being in new fields, in a different environment and, perhaps, from practising literacy in different ways. there is also a sense of the ‘inexhaustibleness’ and ‘infinity’ (greene 1995:15) inherent in how she is reading differently in her recognition that she is still developing as a critical thinker. in claiming that she recognises how ‘i got content with who i was’ she is breaking with what is ‘habitually taken for granted’ (greene 1995:4) and moving beyond the familiar to imagining and perceiving fresh perspectives while asserting a position, arrived at thoughtfully. kganya displayed a growing attentiveness to the differences between how she taught reading in her foundation phase classroom in limpopo and how she learnt to teach reading at wits. during her first year in johannesburg, as she spent time in classrooms on te, she recognised that: ‘reading activities is a serious business in gauteng.’ (te sept. 2009). she also recognises that she used to teach reading focusing on discrete decoding skills, the code-breaker role (freebody & luke 1990, 2003): ‘i used to teach reading separately, focusing on phonics and fluency but ignoring the main aspect of reading – meaning.’ (ei, 2012). she also displays anticipatory reflection revealing ‘generative imagination’ (conway 2001:102) as she anticipates teaching reading and writing differently on her return to limpopo: ‘i have been taught [at wits] that reading and writing can be done using different genres. this is a positive move from where i was before i came to wits. i mainly relied on readers or textbooks provided by the government. i have been taught here to develop different scripts like readers’ theatre; poems, advertisements, journals. i will use these genres to teach reading and writing and instil in children that reading and writing are purposeful. we write for a specific audience, and we read for a specific reason.’ (ei, 2012). kganya appears to recognise the importance of genre which reveals her development in the text-user role (freebody & luke 1990, 2003). she identifies key ways to make the use of genre explicit to the learners, namely identifying the audience and purpose. she imagines possibilities for engaging creatively in developing her own texts using different genres and through this helping learners read and write in meaningful, purposeful ways. there is an indication of self-reliance, agency and creativity as she envisages moving beyond texts provided by the department of education and creating her own examples of different genres for her learners to use. despite the constraining conditions of classrooms in limpopo, which, as an experienced teacher, she is well aware of, she anticipates overcoming these: ‘i intend to put all the efforts in developing the children’s literacy skills. there will be challenges, of course, of lack of print-rich environment because of poor family backgrounds … but this will not hamper the passion i have developed in making the classroom a print-rich environment to supplement what the children lack’ (ei, 2012). instead of being overwhelmed in anticipation of going back to teach with constraints of resources and poverty, she imagines having agency, based on her new-found desire, to overcome these constraints. conclusion i have drawn on the work of bourdieu, in particular his concepts of habitus, field, capital and doxa and applied them to an examination of the development of literate habitus of two teacher-students. as others have done (compton-lilly 2014; kerfoot 2008; lee & kramer 2013; lehmann 2013; loh 2013), i have raised questions as to whether it is possible to shift a deeply entrenched habitus. this has been applied in particular to asking whether it is possible to change the literate habitus of experienced teachers and if so, what it takes to do so. in attempting to answer this question, i have extended bourdieu’s concepts by applying imagination and theories of imagination to the theorisation of habitus and making links between habitus and imagining and [re]imagining the teaching of literacy. using greene’s work on the importance of releasing the imagination in classrooms and bland’s four types of imagination, i have interrogated the kinds of literacy experience teachers themselves need to have in their teacher education and professional development to be equipped to create imaginative and imagining classrooms which allow for openness to different points of view, the kindling of learners’ abilities to construct meaningful worlds for themselves and to critically engage with the curriculum. this paper has argued for the link between experiences offered by different environments and the development of imaginative capacity that contributes to shifts in habitus. i indicate that it is necessary for teachers to move ‘away from the experience of the familiar world’ (bourdieu 2000:147), so that they can have access to different literate experiences which can generate possibilities for new ways of teaching literacy and being literate. the implications for teacher education of this are that, although it is not possible for all teachers to leave their families and classrooms for 4 years to study in new environments, it is possible to disrupt fields such as the teaching of literacy. however, it is important that these opportunities take place over extended time as this paper has shown a development over 4 years that has resulted in some incremental shifts. i have argued that literacy teachers need experiential, hands-on opportunities to read, write and analyse genres of texts different to those they usually work with and in ways that are unlike the familiar, established and entrenched pedagogies they use and know for an awareness of the possibilities these hold to be imagined. i have also claimed the importance of reflection in creating awareness of possibilities. reflection helps teachers to look back and recognise the differences between their well-established practices and perceptions, and newly developing enactments and insights. conway’s (2001) argument for the importance of anticipatory reflection and ward and mccotter’s (2004) levels of reflection have been drawn on to illustrate the usefulness of the provision of regular opportunities for teachers to reflect retrospectively as well as prospectively as they are encouraged to make connections between past practices and their imagined futures. this is particularly important where habitus is well-established, as with the experienced teachers, who were participants in this study. both participants focused on in this paper had an opportunity to experience literacy in new ways and, on reflection, seem to consider the impact of this on their work as teachers of grades 1–3 literacy learners. i have discussed in the doctoral thesis from which this data has been drawn the importance of other influences that might have contributed to shifts in literate habitus (gennrich 2015). some might argue that the genres of texts used in the ‘english in education’ course were ‘colonial’ and irrelevant to the cultures of these teacher-students. however, both participants appear to have found ways of building on these texts imaginatively and to begin applying them to their contexts and their learners in ways that demonstrate agency. it is this imaginative application which holds the possibility of empowerment for both of them and their learners. acknowledgements thank you to belinda mendelowitz for her valuable comments on earlier versions of this article. competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references albright, j. & luke, a. 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dordrecht. taylor, n. & moyane, j., 2004, khanyisa education support programme: baseline study part 1: communities, schools and classrooms, jet education services, johannesburg. memorandum (april 2005), pp. 38–41. street, b.v., 1984, literacy in theory and practice, cambridge university press, cambridge. von holdt, k., 2012, ‘bourdieu in south africa’, in m. burawoy & k. von holdt, conversations with bourdieu: the johannesburg moment, pp. 25–30, wits university press, johannesburg. vygotsky, l., 2004, ‘imagination and creativity in childhood’, journal of russian and east european psychology 42, 7–97. wacquant, l., 2006, ‘pierre bourdieu’, in r. stones (ed.), key contemporary thinkers, pp. 261–276, macmillan, london. ward, j. & mccotter, s., 2004, ‘reflection as a visible outcome for preservice teachers’, teaching and teacher education 20, 243–257. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2004.02.004 footnotes 1. i refer to the participants as teacher-students because they were already qualified, had taught for a number of years and now found themselves in the position of being students again. they were neither pre-service nor in-service teachers. 2. the abbreviations in brackets indicate how the data are referred to in discussion in this paper. 3. all education students at wits university currently complete te for six weeks in a year, during which they work in schools under the supervision of a teacher in the school and a tutor who is employed by the university. rw 12-1_2020_contents.indd http://www.rw.org.za open access table of contents original research using flashcards for english second language creative writing in grade 1 shivona mathura, free-queen b. zulu reading & writing | vol 12, no 1 | a298 | 31 august 2021 original research improving higher-order comprehension skills of grade 3 learners in a second language at a quintile 2 school, in cape town, south africa vuyokazi fatyela, janet condy, lawrence meda, heather phillips reading & writing | vol 12, no 1 | a312 | 14 september 2021 original research tracing the usage of the term ‘culture of reading’ in south africa: a review of national government discourse (2000–2019) claire biesman-simons reading & writing | vol 12, no 1 | a314 | 29 september 2021 original research using role play and explicit strategy instruction to improve first-year students’ academic reading proficiency naomi a.y. boakye reading & writing | vol 12, no 1 | a285 | 27 october 2021 reviewer acknowledgement reading & writing | vol 12, no 1 | a349 | 21 december 2021 55 63 73 82 94 page i of i table of contents original research information and communication technology reading interventions: a scoping review jessica dean, michelle pascoe, jane le roux reading & writing | vol 12, no 1 | a294 | 23 march 2021 original research the benefits of an extensive reading programme implemented in two foundation phase classrooms in the eastern cape, south africa sibhekinkosi a. nkomo reading & writing | vol 12, no 1 | a290 | 06 april 2021 original research advancing text prediction skills through translanguaging vukile d. mgijima reading & writing | vol 12, no 1 | a284 | 23 june 2021 original research content analysis of levels and aspects of comprehension in west african senior secondary school examination funmilayo m. oguntade reading & writing | vol 12, no 1 | a293 | 30 july 2021 original research multiple voices: learners reflect on literature jessamy kromhout, eileen m. scheckle reading & writing | vol 12, no 1 | a304 | 26 august 2021 1 17 27 37 47 vol 12, no 1 (2021) issn: 2079-8245 (print) | issn: 2308-1422 (online)reading & writing abstract introduction locating digital literacy within a changing landscape of literacy research design ethical consideration conclusion acknowledgements references footnote about the author(s) lutho mnyanda institute for the study of english in africa, rhodes university, south africa madeyandile mbelani institute for the study of english in africa, rhodes university, south africa citation mnyanda, l. & mbelani, m., 2018, ‘are we teaching critical digital literacy? grade 9 learners’ practices of digital communication’, reading & writing 9(1), a188. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v9i1.188 original research are we teaching critical digital literacy? grade 9 learners’ practices of digital communication lutho mnyanda, madeyandile mbelani received: 11 dec. 2017; accepted: 31 may 2018; published: 13 sept. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract south africa’s communication landscape has changed and is still changing because many previously disadvantaged areas have benefitted from the construction of roads, provision of electricity and installation of satellites. as a result, many previously disadvantaged learners have access to digital media in their homes. in this article, we argue that the immersion of many learners in digital media at home advances literacy achievement. drawing on insights from cultural historical activity theory and multimodal social semiotics, we discuss the nature of learners’ digital resources at home and how these resources could be meaningfully and critically used to advance literacy. data were collected from grade 9 learners in two king williams town schools in the form of questionnaires, focus group discussions, informal facebook-messenger conversations, one-on-one interviews with teachers and lesson observations. the analysis of data shows that many learners in this study are becoming digitally literate, irrespective of their socio-economic status or rural–urban location. however, digital literacy does not seem to be used as a base to advance literacy as advocated in the new curriculum and assessment policy statements. introduction the majority of post-apartheid south african learners struggle to achieve higher order cognitive levels in literacy as reported by the progress international reading literacy skills (howie, van staden, tshele, dowse & zimmerman 2012). it is particularly troubling that there has been no improvement between the 2006 and 2011 pirls results (howie et al. 2012). towards the end of 2015, pirls tested learners with an innovation called epirls, which involves an assessment of online reading, looking at how learners read, comprehend and interpret digital information. the 2012, 2013 and 2014 annual national assessment (ana) diagnostic reports in grade 9 english fal examinations indicate that learners lack the basic skills to engage with advertisements and cartoons, namely identifying a target audience, interpreting a cartoon, as well as inferring meaning. moreover, some south african researchers such as leask-smith (2009), moodley (2013), mbelani and murray (2009), and mbelani (2007, 2008, 2012a, 2012b, 2014) seem to agree that the socio-economic backgrounds of learners, lack of resources and poor pedagogical content knowledge of teachers all contribute to low literacy in south africa. a close examination of pirls and ana results and south african research on literacy (leask-smith 2009; mbelani 2007; moodley 2013) suggests a continuity of low literacy in south africa. however, none of the aforementioned reports and studies considered learners’ out-of-school literacy, especially digital literacy. lemphane and prinsloo (2014) researched digital literacy practices of two groups of children in the western cape province of south africa, one group from an affluent suburb family and the other group from an ordinary township family. the results of their study illuminated that both children were engaged with digital literacy, but their engagement varied significantly and pointed to substantial social inequality. oyedemi and mogan (2018) documented negative effects of digital inequality of many first-year university students from rural areas. there is little research that has been conducted in south africa to investigate learners’ out-of-school literacy and how english first additional language (efal) teachers could build on that out-of-school literacy to advance school literacy (mnyanda 2017). it is for this reason that we argue that the majority of current south african learners are becoming highly proficient in out-of-school digital literacy irrespective of their socio-economic home background or rural–urban location. this article draws on insights from the cultural historical activity theory (chat), digital/visual/media literacy and empirical evidence gathered from a grade 9 learners’ questionnaire, focus group discussion, informal facebook conversations, one-on-one teachers’ interviews and lesson observations to support this argument. specifically, we highlight the nature of digital resources that learners use out-of-school and how those resources are meaningfully and critically used. locating digital literacy within a changing landscape of literacy according to kress (2010:5), ‘… the world of communication has changed and is still changing; the reason for that lies in a vast web of intertwined social, economic, cultural and technological changes’. these changes brought ‘a new constellation of communication resources’ such as the camera, television, computer and cell phones, which later became tools to create texts (kress 2003:11). one of the visible achievements of equal access and opportunities to resources in post-apartheid south africa is in the communication landscape. with government’s focus on developing previously disadvantaged spaces, such as township and rural communities, there is construction of access roads, provision of electricity and installation of mobile phone satellites. as a result, mobile phone and internet connectivity is fast becoming easy to access for everybody irrespective of socio-economic status, and/or rural–urban location. the majority of grade 9 learners in this study have access to cell phones with internet connectivity, and they use these phones for purposes of social media. grade 9 learners are still in their early teenage years and are heavily influenced by what kress (2010) terms the new ‘communication landscape’ with the internet and the proliferation of digital media via cell phones and even smart phones. this changing communication landscape has led to circumstances which make it possible for features of one place to be existing and active in another place as a result of globalisation (kress 2010). both taylor (2012) and perle (2010) have observed that united states (us) learners spend more than eight hours a day immersed in visual images. mbelani (2012a) notes that this is currently the case in south africa too, though this exposure may vary according to the urban–rural divide, and ‘the density of visual communication may be lower in rural areas [and townships]’ (p. 86). the effect of globalisation has led in very many places to the ‘corrosion, fraying, dissolution, destruction and abandonment of older social relations, forms, structures and givens’ (kress 2010:5). as a result, social life and the nature of literacy have been redefined to accommodate this new communication landscape. it is for this reason that the new london group coined the term ‘multiliteracy’ in 1996 to combine broad modes of communication and meaning making. o’rourke (2005:1–2) stated that multiliteracy: … broadens literacy from an emphasis on ‘reading the word’ to reading multi-modal texts; includes the assumption that in the process of becoming literate, students are making sense of the world and themselves in the world, assumes that literacy is also about communicating with, and understanding the communication of others; and finally assumes that part of being literate involves developing the capacity to understand the influences of cultural, social, historical and political contexts. in order for an individual to be multiliterate, there is a need to develop different forms of literacies such as digital literacy, visual literacy, media literacy, computer literacy, information literacy, cine literacy and critical literacy. buckingham (2016) warned that it is very difficult to distinguish between these forms of literacy because there is much overlap amongst them. this article leans on the principles of new literacy and specifically focuses on digital literacy which eshet-alkalai (2004) conceptualises as involving: more than the mere ability to use software or operate a digital device; it includes a large variety of complex cognitive, motor, sociological, and emotional skills, which users need in order to function effectively in digital environments. the tasks required in this context include, for example, ‘reading’ instructions from graphical displays in user interfaces; using digital reproduction to create new, meaningful materials from existing ones; constructing knowledge from a nonlinear, hypertextual navigation; evaluating the quality and validity of information; and have a mature and realistic understanding of the ‘rules’ that prevail in the cyberspace. (p. 93) this new digital literacy and other contemporary technology offer new ways of mediating and representing the world. furthermore, we echo buckingham’s (2006) argument that new media technology can no longer be regarded simply as a matter of information or technology, especially as we seek to develop connections between children’s out-of-school experiences of technology and their experiences in the classroom. this is because digital literacies are more participatory than conventional reading and writing activities. users do not just read content but also interact with it and actively create their own content as users become active producers of content rather than passive consumers (anderson & sofkova-hashemi 2016). research design this article arises from an med in english language teaching case study that was conducted and completed in 2016. through an interpretive case design, the research aimed to understand meaning making of visual images as it was perceived from subjective experiences of both teachers and learners (thomas 2010). the study presented a detailed and ‘rich’ account of experiences in a natural context from which interpretations can be put forward (bassey 2000:28). this study’s goals were to answer two main questions: what home visual literacy knowledge do grade 9 learners bring to make sense of visual images in classrooms? how do teachers draw on grade 9 learners’ home visual literacy to develop school visual literacy in english first additional language (efal) classrooms? to get different perspectives and understandings of this interplay, chat was employed as it provides a base for both description and explanation of the current situation in grade 9 classrooms. chat achieves this as a result of its three core ideas. firstly, the theory maintains that: ‘… humans act collectively, learn by doing and communicate in and via their actions. secondly, humans make, employ, and adapt tools of all kinds to learn and communicate. thirdly, community is central to the process of making and interpreting meaning – and thus to all forms of learning, communicating, and acting …’ (foot 2014:3). these three ideas are important in this study because they provide ways to explain the process of meaning making of visual images in grade 9 classrooms. they highlight that digital media should not be studied in isolation, but should be considered alongside the roles of human beings and the tools they use, as well as the community in which certain actions occur. in addition, chat provides tools to analyse and observe how learners construct knowledge (gedera & williams 2013). this study draws on the second and third generations of the activity theory because it views ‘learning as the complex result of tool mediated interactions, rather than as something opaque which happens in a student’s mind’ (hardman 2005:380). there are six key elements of the activity system to describe and explain the current perceptions and practices of meaning making of digital media: subject(s), tools, object(s), rules, community and division of labour. firstly, the subject(s) of an activity system is(are) the person or people who are directly participating in an activity and whose motives drive the activities (kain & wardle 2004). the subjects in this study were grade 9 learners and the researcher. secondly, tools were used by the subjects in the transformation process and meaning making of digital media to achieve intended outcomes. these tools could be physical cell phones, as well as non-physical tools such as language (written and oral) skills (kain & wardle 2004). their use could enable or constrain the making of critical meaning of visual images. in essence, this study intended to explore ‘by what means […] the subjects [were] carrying out this activity’ (mwanza 2002:85). thirdly, for foot (2014), an object acts as both a focal entity and a desired outcome. similarly, hardman (2007) has described an object as the physical or mental product that is transformed in the activity. the critical point here was finding out what tools were involved and understanding ‘why that activity was taking place’ (mwanza 2002:85). fourthly, according to kain and wardle (2004), the community is the larger group that the subject is a part of and from which participants ‘take their cues’ (p. 12). in this study, the community members consisted of grade 9 learners, two teachers and the researcher who all shared a common interest (foot 2014). in order to critically understand the community, this study asks ‘what was the environment in which the activity is carried out?’ (mwanza 2002:85) and aimed to explain the effect of critical meaning making of visual texts. fifthly, the division of labour described the distribution of tasks within the activity system (kain & wardle 2004). it describes both a horizontal division amongst community members and a vertical division between powerand status-holders (hardman 2005). it was in the interest of this study to investigate ‘who was responsible for what when carrying out this activity and how the roles were organised’ (mwanza 2002:85). finally, rules provided a means to manage or minimise conflicts within the activity system. rules are defined not only as formal and explicit dos and do nots, but also as norms, conventions and values (kain & wardle 2004). in an activity system, rules drove relationships, and they both generate and constrain behaviour (hardman 2005). mwanza (2002) notes the need to ask whether there are ‘any cultural norms, rules and regulations governing the performance of this activity’ (p. 85) in order to understand the impact of such norms on the whole system. the context for the study was two different research sites: a rural school (rs) and a township school (ts), both in the king williams town district in the eastern cape. convenience sampling (latham 2007) was used in the selection of both sites because the king williams town district is where the first author matriculated. the participants in the study were grade 9 learners in both schools. the sample consisted of 41 learners at the rs and 43 learners at the ts. data were collected from questionnaires, informal facebook-messenger screenshots, focus group discussions with the learners, one-on-one interviews with teachers and lesson observations. the initial plan was to observe learners at their homes, but because of the distance of the learners’ homes from the school and between each other, it became impractical to cover all the students’ homes. the decision to use facebook-messenger as a research tool was taken once the growing use of this media source was observed. facebook is a relatively recent phenomenon and facilitates data collection by storing detailed records of its users’ demographic profiles, social interactions and behaviours (kosinski et al. 2015). however, uncertainty still exists about the most effective ways to use facebook as a means of data collection (wilson, gosling & graham 2012). the participants were those who used and interacted with one of the authors on facebook. consent was requested to use screenshots of these interactions for the purposes of this study. anonymity of the participants was ensured by obscuring original names and adding pseudonyms for learners (see screenshots). importantly, the stimuli that these learners engaged in were not premeditated but presented as learners’ online digital literacy. learners’ out-of-school digital literacy the availability of resources at home draws a picture of what learners were exposed to and had knowledge of. the resources in question in this study were technological devices that learners had at home. this information is presented in table 1. table 1: availability of resources at home. there were no major differences between the rural and urban learners as all had access to new technologies. there was also evidence that both rural and urban learners knew how to use the new technology. this was illustrated by their use of social media (whatsapp, facebook and twitter) for communication, as well as their use of the internet. in figure 1, a ts learner described using social media for connecting with friends. figure 1: the use of social media. it is our contention that learners’ reliance on technology for different purposes quickens their mastery of necessary skills to operate these devices. these include secondary skills (anwaruddin 2016) that have not been formally taught but are acquired through social practice and interaction with technology. moreover, the learners self-teach a range of digital literacy skills while using technology, and this illustrates the multiliterate ways in which learners develop. this self-teaching also demonstrates that these learners have acquired basic interpersonal communication skills in english. the learners’ utterances and language use show that both rs and ts learners have a strong formal language base. their sentence structure is easy for the reader to understand. the development of the learners’ cognitive and affective cultural engagements means that they are now being shaped and influenced by a new technological culture. the cognitive and affective development of the learners’ digital knowledge is socially constructed through interaction within cyberspace (hicks & turner 2013). this acquired knowledge results in new ways of understanding the world that is driven by more digital content. this is a world beyond the word. learners are not just reading words; they are critically involved in reading the world and making connections between critical literacy and politics (macedo & freire 1987). in figure 2, an rs learner realises the influence of visual images in everyday life and the need for critical analysis. figure 2: importance of critical analysis. it is not possible to talk about critical literacy today without referencing the use of technology (hicks & turner 2013). it is through the use of technological devices that the minds of the learners are being developed as they engage with different people within cyberspace. this means that on the formal operational stage, these learners are highly technological, and their knowledge is invariably influenced by new forms of communication. demonstration of digital literacy in social media via facebook we argue that learners develop communication skills through digital technology. in reality, both the township and rural learners engage in social media communication and are exposed to global information. the learners are not at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding visual images used in social media. indeed, they appear to have developed cognitively at an interesting rate as they are able to engage in current affairs discussions. for example, a conversation that one of the authors had on facebook-messenger with one of the rs learners about the recent us elections and donald trump’s victory (see figure 3): by way of providing background, the first author displays a meme1 showing donald moatshe, a popular south african singer with the caption, ‘congratulations donald’, on his facebook public platform. this was after donald trump won the us elections in 2016. although this was purely humorous in nature, it required the viewer of the image to know that this did not refer to donald the south african singer but to donald trump. moreover, many south africans were rejoicing that america had a president that people had mixed feelings about, and this was tacitly juxtaposed with the south african singer, which captured this mirth. figure 3: screenshot conversation: (a) online first discussion, and (b) online second discussion. the rs learner clearly understood the meaning and humour behind the use of this image as she was able to refer to it in her discussion. she also highlighted that other people who came across the image, did not grasp the meaning behind it. there was certainly no formal training on the use of facebook, but there were formal language skills that learners drew on to write or communicate via facebook. that gave learners access to the global village and enabled them to participate in discussions that affected all people globally through the use of social media. this is supported by habib and soliman (2015), who argued that images provide means for students to interact with phenomena across the world. learners, therefore, have a reasoning ability that is not merely socio-economically and geographically defined. their understanding of the visual images that are posted on social media is based on their exposure to many such images on these forums. this means that the more they use social media, the more they are able to enhance their understanding and develop their cognitive skills in interacting with different social realities. while understanding the context is important to grasping the meaning of visuals, and while engaging in discussions on social media is important, the language that these learners use in these spaces is also very important. both figures 3 and 4 show language that deviates from the norm. this is a text speech (janks 2013) that combines both isixhosa and english. such expression is informal and employs a basic level of communication that all users can understand. formal english and isixhosa conventions on social media are seldom used, and hence, there is autonomy to move in between languages. although it can have positive effects on the development of english for basic communication, it can prove to be a disadvantage for formal language development in the classroom. figure 4: screenshot example: (a) online third discussion, and (b) online fourth discussion. in figure 4, learners discuss the visual image while a participant asks for clarity because they do not understand the visual image and the message. the relaxed environment of this interaction creates a space for the learner to ask a question from peers which they might not ask of a teacher. this proved to be a worthy exercise as asking questions allows the learner to gain an understanding of the image and to engage in the discussion as well. learners can also strengthen their ability to ask questions in the classroom for clarity on any issue that they did not understand. this illustrated that learning is a social process and the society and culture influence the learning process (vygotsky 1978). in keeping with sociocultural theory, learners are able to construct knowledge through interaction with more knowledgeable others (steiner & mahn 1996). social media, which makes up a large part of communication in the learners’ homes, is full of visual images. digital literacy is further developed through engagement with social media, and the new communication landscape increases the learners’ exposure to social media. social media create a space for practising a variation of linguistic repertoires in a second language, especially a language used by young people (anderson & sofkova-hashemi 2016). communication is one of the three social processes of social media, which also include cognition and cooperation (trottier & fuchs 2014). social media triggers cognitive processes by inviting users to interact with each other so that shared spaces of interaction are created for users to respond (trottier & fuchs 2014). this means that the learners are developing cognitively through social discussions. learners may not realise the profound impact of social media on their knowledge. furthermore, social media uses mixed semiotics, which means that meaning exists in a plane of techno-cultural elements, and an understanding of mixed semiotics offers insight into how these elements are formalised (langlois 2014). essentially, mixed semiotics offers a way to comprehend how meaning in social media is formed. mixed semiotics is significant because they present visual images depicting the structuring effect of technology and software, apparent in the visual regimes of interface design and character limits (langlois 2014). such mixed semiotics is clearly visible in the conversation in figure 4. the use of emoticons and shortened speech in social media are normal, and emoticons play a significant role in displaying the feelings that the person writing wants to convey. essentially, these social media spaces give way to new forms of learning. this is what janks (2013) found in the mobile literacy project: that learners both design and consume their texts. their technological and cultural skills come into play in interaction with other people on social media. social media takes up so much of the learners’ spare time. the skills in understanding these mixed semiotics are often not learned formally and they gradually develop over time through interaction with other friends and/or peers within cyberspace. interplay between learners’ home digital literacy and school literacy in the visual literacy lessons, it was observed that meaning was negotiated on a similar platform in the ts and the rs as both subjects (teachers and learners) preferred, enjoyed and viewed cartoons every day. as an illustration, miss dali (rs teacher) first instructed the learners to work in pairs and report back to the class, and familiarised her learners with visual literacy basic knowledge (design and character identification) before requiring them to answer the questions on the examination paper. what was praiseworthy in miss dali’s lesson was that she gave learners time to discuss the cartoon strip before they reported to the whole class. this was a perfect illustration of a constructivist classroom design. the class was organised into groups for both class presentation and discussion (abuzahra, farrah & zalloum 2016). learners learned from each other and in this way they were able to teach others what they knew. further understanding of these visual images is enabled through interaction with peers and discussing what meanings are inferred. in figure 5 (extract 3), a ts learner explains sharing information in a focus group discussion. extract 4.7: discussing images with familythe learners remarked that they discussed movies and cartoons with their peers. they explained to their peers, who might not have seen the visual images to which they referred, and that was reciprocated when peers explained other visual images. the concepts of more knowledgeable peers and more knowledgeable others come into effect because the learners interacted with friends and family members and discussed and generated an understanding of visual images at home. this information is then brought to visual literacy lessons. as isixhosa is the language used at home by all these learners, they discussed the visuals in their home language at home. they are therefore able to transfer information that may have been presented in english in their home language. figure 5: learners explaining to peers. at another level, there was no interplay between what the teachers presented and what the learners understood of the cartoon. learners struggled to assimilate the information that the teacher gave with what they had brought from home. one of the reasons for the poor understanding of visual literacy in the school context is that the new information is not easily assimilated or accommodated in the lessons, and this causes unresolved disequilibrium in the learners’ minds (piaget 1954). this is because the learners are unable to fit the new visual content that the teacher presents together with the existing schema brought from home. miss dali introduced learners to formal visual literacy in the classroom, which disrupted their equilibrium, and it was observed that both teachers have a problem with scaffolding the learners in order to enable them to be critical observers of visual texts. in figure 6, miss dali spends time describing the cartoon rather than focus on a critical analysis of the elements used. according to the first and second stages of the social constructivist model (abuzahra et al. 2016), teachers need to allow questioning in order to bridge the gap between the home and school context. miss dali’s preoccupation with description and knowledge means that she fails to relate the content that she may have taught in a familiar context, so that learners can relate to it and forge cognitive connections. figure 6: miss dali garfield’s lesson. contrary to what bahrani and soltani (2011) advocate, which is the development of critical and higher-order cognitive skills, miss dali spends time asking learners ‘knowledge’ and ‘comprehension’ questions related to the cartoon (bloom 1956). these do not refine critical learning and understanding of the cartoon. asking learners to evaluate, synthesise and analyse (higher-order questions) would require that the learners explain their responses and apply critical skills in their answers. this also means that these learners continue to be code breakers and text participants only according to freebody and luke (1990). unfortunately, this lesson contains no critical interpretation and understanding and no application of bloom’s (1956) taxonomy levels (such as evaluating, synthesising and analysing). to employ, these levels would be to develop extended responses and higher-order thinking skills using questions with ‘why’ and ‘what if’ (habib & soliman 2015). this lesson provided a perfect chance for strategic scaffolding (anghileri 2006); the teacher could provide questions and strategies for the learners to tackle the meanings of the cartoon themselves. miss dali (see figure 7) practises a scaffolding strategy when she explains the learners’ responses and answers her own questions without realising she is doing so. unfortunately, this means that little critical thought is required from the learners. interestingly, she asked an important question on the identification of one of the characters, but is later distracted and does not return to it. one of the learners said they watched this cartoon on television; however, some learners who do not watch the same cartoon may not have the same understanding of the characters. an important higher-order question is identified when she asks the learners to think about the cartoon that they watch from home alongside the one that is on paper. this allows for interplay between home and school literacy and taps into prior knowledge that the learners bring from home to the classroom. however, this is not fully realised as her focus shifts from her question and she does not return to it later. this means that the teacher had the opportunity to allow the interplay with prior knowledge in her lesson, but does not capitalise on it. it is worth noting that she moves the response of one learner (bonga) from basic interpersonal communication skills (bics) to cognitive academic language proficiency (calp) (cummins 1991), that is, from everyday language to academic formal language. this is important as it develops formal skills in the classroom. figure 7: miss dali garfield’s lesson. on the contrary, miss may (a ts teacher) projected her feelings towards the meaning of the cartoon rather than allowing the learners to come up with their own meanings. learners were unable to share their feelings as to whether they liked or disliked a particular character because the teacher asked a loaded questions (see figure 8). unconsciously, miss may informs the learners what conclusions to draw from the cartoon, thereby imposing her own thoughts on the hagar character. in this case, learner-centred pedagogy would be desirable in order to engage learners’ thinking as well as their beliefs. miss may needed to divide labour in such a way that learners voiced their opinions. figure 8: miss may’s comment on hagar lesson. learners’ home digital literacy certainly did not transfer effectively in both classrooms. the teachers found it challenging to teach visual literacy. teachers went through the redesign cycle (janks 2010) using their existing schemata in presenting their own lessons on visual literacy. teachers received a design (a cartoon image designed from the perspective of the cartoonist), deconstructed the cartoon (unpacked meaning) and redesigned the cartoon (specifically to suit the needs of the classroom or the object of the lesson according to chat). the processes of design and redesign directly impacted the difference in interpretation. a person can understand from his or her own point of view and through their existing schema and past experiences unique to them (baker 2015). ethical consideration this study demonstrated an awareness of ethical responsibilities and a commitment to ethical research processes, with ethical clearance approved by the committee of rhodes university (g11m3009). conclusion the study yielded a number of findings. learners’ digital visual literacy skills are far ahead of those of the teachers, and teachers were sometimes not able to capitalise on these visual skills. learners develop critical literacy through interaction on the internet (hicks & turner 2013). the use of technology also includes reading and writing, albeit digital; the research seems to indicate that there is not a low reading culture, but the medium for reading had shifted considerably to be digital. learners developed communication skills through digital technology. the availability of technological resources to both rural and urban learners is contrary to the belief that learners in the rural eastern cape struggle because they lack access to new developments (wright 2012). learners bring knowledge from the internet to the classroom because they interact and communicate through text speech and messages online. one of the main findings of the study is that learners have the potential to self-teach meaning production and meaning consumption. the second main finding of the study is that teachers experience difficulty in encouraging the interplay between the learners’ out-of-school digital literacy and formal school literacy, which calls for intensive development of both in-service and pre-service teachers in digital literacy. teachers could then be at an advantage because they would no longer have to explain the context which certain visual images draw on in their teaching, but to advance literacy in general. the objective of the teacher is to critically develop learners from what they know to the unknown through the zone of proximal development. however, the main limitation of this study is that these findings cannot be generalised to all learners because there are learners who do not have smart phones. in addition, some learners live in south african communities that still do not have electricity and internet connectivity. moving forward to more critical understanding and learning of digital literacy, the following questions are suggested for further research: how can social media be incorporated in digital literacy lessons to develop language and literacy? how best can in-service teachers be provided with digital literacy professional development so they can improve practice, understanding and implementing new ways of thinking? acknowledgements the authors would like to acknowledge the national research foundation (nrf) (unique grant number: 94137) for financially supporting part of this project. they would also like to acknowledge the insights from prof. monica hendricks, prof. rajendra chetty and dr peter pluddemann. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions l.m. conceptualised the study, collected and analysed data, and wrote the manuscript. m.m. conceptualised the study, analysed data and wrote the manuscript. references abuzahra, n., farrah, m.a. & zalloum, s., 2016, ‘using cartoons in language classrooms from a constructivist point of view’, arab world english journal (awej) 10(1), 229–245. 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(eds.), 2014, social media, politics and the state. protests, revolutions, riots, crime and policing in the age of facebook, twitter and youtube, routledge, new york. isbn 978-0-415-74909-1 vygotsky, l.s., 1978, mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes, harvard university press, cambridge, ma. wilson, r.e., gosling, s.d. & graham, l.t., 2012, ‘a review of facebook research in the social sciences’, perspectives on psychological science 7(3), 203–220. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612442904 wright, l., 2012, south africa’s education crisis: views from the eastern cape, nisc, grahamstown. footnote 1. meme, mi:m/ d. an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations. ‘english oxford dictionaries’ abstract introduction literature review justification for this study developing a model of analysis the study method results and discussion summary of results and pedagogical implications conclusion acknowledgements references appendix 1 about the author(s) boitumelo t. ramoroka department of communication and study skills, university of botswana, botswana citation ramoroka, b.t., 2017, ‘the use of interactional metadiscourse features to present a textual voice: a case study of undergraduate writing in two departments at the university of botswana’, reading & writing 8(1), a128. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v8i1.128 original research the use of interactional metadiscourse features to present a textual voice: a case study of undergraduate writing in two departments at the university of botswana boitumelo t. ramoroka received: 28 jan. 2017; accepted: 07 mar. 2017; published: 17 may 2017 copyright: © 2017. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract in recent years, there has been an increased emphasis on the interpersonal function of metadiscourse features in academic texts. this means that research on writing in academic contexts began to focus on the rhetorical features, such as interactional metadiscourse, that writers use to present their voice in writing. these developments in academic writing have also considered the context in which specific genres are produced. using a multiple-methods approach to genre analysis, this article compares students’ use of interactional metadiscourse features in two undergraduate courses, media studies and primary education at the university of botswana. a total of 40 student essays were analysed. interviews with students and lecturers in the two departments were also done to understand the context in which the essays were produced. the comparison of interactional metadiscourse features in the two corpora indicated that interactional metadiscourse markers were present, but that there were variations in the use and distribution of these features by the learners. contextual information shows that such variations reflect the different values and beliefs about academic writing of the discourse communities that students belong to. these values and beliefs can be problematic for english for specific purposes (eap) lecturers who have to prepare students for writing in the various disciplines in l2 contexts. introduction over the last two decades, there has been a shift in the way academic writing is perceived based on the view that writing is a social and communicative engagement between the writer and the reader and that writing is not entirely voiceless and impersonal (hyland 2005; ivanic 1998; ivanic & camps 2001; ivanic & simpson 1992; lillis 1997; sheldon 2009). ivanic and camps (2001:5) argue that ‘there is no such thing as “impersonal” writing’ because writers express messages about themselves through different acts and through a range of resources that are culturally available to them. as a result of this view, there has been an increasing interest in the study of metadiscourse as a tool which can be used to explore the interactive nature of texts. hyland (2005a) developed a framework for analysing interactions in written texts. this framework is a metadiscourse model which builds on earlier models of metadiscourse particularly thompson and thetela’s model (1995) and vande kopple’s model (1985). metadiscourse addresses the notion that academic writing is more than communication of propositional content, but it also involves how the writers project their personality and attitudes towards the proposition. hyland (2005a:37) defines metadiscourse as a ‘cover term for the self-reflective expressions used to negotiate interactional meanings in a text, assisting the writer (or speaker) to express a viewpoint and engage with readers as members of a particular community’. hyland’s framework tends to draw insights from the systemic functional description of language which sees language use as performing three macro-functions (hyland 2005a; vande kopple 1985). halliday (1994) calls these the ideational, interpersonal and textual functions. the ideational function is concerned with the ‘propositional content’; the textual function is concerned with how language is used to organise the text and the interpersonal function is concerned with ‘use of language to encode interaction, allowing us to engage with others, to take on roles and to express and understand evaluation and feelings’ (hyland 2005a:26). hyland’s proposed framework consists of two dimensions of interaction; the interactive and the interactional dimensions. the interactive resources help the writer to organise propositional content to make it coherent. these features are transition markers, frame markers, endophoric markers, code glosses and evidential. interactional resources allow the writer to intrude and comment on their message. hyland calls this ‘writer’s expression of a textual “voice”’ (hyland 2005a:49). the resources that allow for this are self-mention, hedges, boosters, attitude markers and engagement markers. the interactional resources involve the reader in the argument and indicate the writer’s perspective towards the propositional content (hyland 2004). hyland develops halliday’s idea of tenor in that he relates it to the notion of writer voice and writer positioning. hyland (2004:168) points out that interactional resources relate to the ‘tenor of the discourse, concerned with controlling the level of personality in a text’. self-mention ‘refers to the degree of explicit author presence in the text’ (hyland 2005a:53). this can be realised by the use of first person pronouns and the possessive adjectives ‘i, me, my, our, mine and us’. other features that can be used to ‘selfmention’ are ‘the author, the writer, the author’s and the writer’s’. hedges are resources that writers use ‘to recognize alternative voices and viewpoints and so withhold commitment to the proposition’ (hyland 2005a:52). according to hyland, hedges allow the writer to present information as an opinion or a plausible reasoning rather than a fact. examples of hedges are ‘in my view, in my opinion, likely and tend’. other resources available are boosters. unlike hedges, boosters help writers to express with certainty what they have to say. examples are ‘indeed, certainly and defiantly’. engagement markers are used by writers to explicitly address the readers and engage them in the dialogue. this can be performed by the use of inclusive ‘we, our and us’, reader pronouns ‘you and your’ and the question mark. hyland (2005a:365) points out that ‘the most obvious indication of a writer’s dialogic awareness occurs when he or she overtly refers to readers, asking questions, making suggestions and addressing them directly’. the last interactional resources are attitude markers. hyland (2005a:53) points out that they ‘indicate the writer’s affective, rather than epistemic, attitude to proposition’. examples are ‘unfortunately, interestingly and fortunately’. literature review metadiscourse has been recognised as one of the important features and strategies that can be used by writers in the production of written texts. hyland (2005a) also posits that metadiscourse is: a key dimension of genre analysis as it can help show how language choices reflect the different purposes of writers, the different assumptions they make about their audiences, and the different kinds of interactions they create with their readers. (p. 88). camiciottoli (2003:29) points out that ‘metadiscourse allows written texts to take on some features of spoken language (e.g. personal pronouns to establish an “i–you” relationship) and thus become more “reader friendly”’. hyland (2005a:178) outlines some possible contributions that metadiscourse can make to a text. some of these are: it provides a context in which to place propositional information. it injects a human presence into a written text and so makes students more attentive and engaged with a text. it increases the persuasiveness of a text. it highlights writer uncertainties and makes readers aware of the subjective interpretation of truth. it helps show the author’s position on the propositional information in a text. it shows readers that the writer recognises their needs and is seeking to engage them in a dialogue. therefore, researchers have taken interest in studying the use of metadiscourse features in both undergraduate writing and post graduate writing and how it varies across disciplines. some comparative studies of students’ writing in different contexts have also been performed. some studies on the use of interpersonal metadiscourse features in academic context examined disciplinary variation in the use of metadiscourse features (abdi 2002; hyland 2004) and these studies focused on the research genre. for example, abdi (2002) examined the way researchers use interpersonal metadiscourse to reveal their identity. abdi analysed 60 academic research articles in the fields of social sciences (ss) and the natural sciences (ns), and the study was confined to discussion sections because it is the part where writers most obviously try to persuade their readers. in this study, there were significant differences in the use of hedges and attitude markers by the two groups, with the natural science writers displaying more certainty about their proposition. his argument is that because natural science writers report empirical research and are objective in their reporting, some of the uncertainties are removed. social science writers, on the contrary, tended to intervene a lot (through the use of interpersonal metadiscourse features) and were subjective in their reporting of the proposition. abdi’s findings suggested that the choice of interpersonal metadiscourse was discipline related. another study that yielded similar findings was conducted by hyland (2004). the study focused on how l2 postgraduate students used both interactive and interactional metadiscourse, and this was based on an analysis of 240 l2 postgraduate dissertations for both master’s and doctoral students. his analysis indicates the significance of metadiscourse in academic writing, particularly this genre. the results show that the writers used slightly more interactive than interactional (interpersonal) metadiscourse features. there was also significant difference in the use of metadiscourse across the disciplines, with the humanities and social sciences employing more metadiscourse and over 60% of the interactional features. the interactive metadiscourse was balanced across the disciplines and formed a higher proportion of use of metadiscourse in the science dissertations. some studies looked at variation in the use of metadiscourse across different languages and cultures. one such study was conducted by crismore, markkanen and steffensen (1993). they conducted a comparative study of use of metadiscourse of texts written by american and finnish university students. the participants were mature writers who were in upper level of undergraduate studies or graduate students. the purpose of the study was to investigate cultural variation in the use of metadiscourse by these two groups. for the purposes of their study, they did not use the standard genre that students would usually write but rather chose a ‘controversial’ topic which would be of interest to the students but also appropriate for university students in the two contexts. multiple raters were used to ensure that coding was consistent. a significant finding of this research was that students in both contexts used all categories and subcategories of metadiscourse the researchers had identified indicating the universality of metadiscourse. the findings indicated that there were some cultural differences in the amounts of metadiscourse used. for instance, the data indicated that the finnish students used more hedges, about five times more than the american students, and more attitude markers than the american students, whereas the american students expressed certainty and attributed ideas to sources more often than the finnish students. the study reports that students in both countries used more interpersonal metadiscourse than textual metadiscourse. abdi (2002) argues that the use of interpersonal metadiscourse is an indicator of the attempt made by the writer to reach their audience. he argues that ‘the more interpersonal the nature of the metadiscourse markers used in a text, the more the writer of the text intends to achieve these goals’ (abdi 2002:142). in addition, there are some studies which investigate the use of metadiscourse by undergraduate students. one such study which seemed to suggest that metadiscourse can be an important feature of good english as a second language (esl) and l1 writing was done by intaraprawat and steffensen (1995). in their study, intaraprawat and steffensen analysed the use of metadiscourse in l2 persuasive essays written by english as second language university students. half of the essays had received good ratings and the other half had received poor ratings. the good essays showed greater variety in the use of metadiscourse and more metadiscourse than poor essays. good essays had a higher percentage of interpersonal metadiscourse, whereas poor essays had a higher percentage of interactive metadiscourse features. they concluded that ‘metadiscourse is a facet of written text that varies with overall quality of the essays. better essays include a wider range of forms and more of them’ (intaraprawat & steffensen 1995:268). in another study, cheng and steffensen (1996) adopted a different methodological approach to the study of metadiscourse. they carried out an experimental study to determine the effects of students’ awareness of metadiscourse on their own writing abilities. they conducted a 16-week experiment in which one part of an l1 university class was exposed to metadiscourse features as part of composition writing while the other part of the class was not. preand post-test papers were analysed to determine whether metadiscourse usage was different in the two groups. the results indicated that the group that was exposed to metadiscourse benefited from instruction about metadiscourse as they scored significantly higher scores compared to the control group and used metadiscourse skilfully. the study seems to suggest that teaching students the use of metadiscourse was crucial in helping them to improve their writing. in fact, hyland (2005) argues that metadiscourse can facilitate communication and increases the readability of a text and builds relationship between the writer and the reader. a more recent study was conducted by letsoela (2013) who examined the use of metadiscourse features by undergraduate students at the university of lesotho. her study looked at how students used both interactive and interactional metadiscourse features in the discussion section of their final year research project. the results of her study revealed heavy use of interactive metadiscourse rather than interactional metadiscourse. students generally avoided the use of self-mentions and engagement markers. her study seemed to suggest that students were more concerned about producing coherent texts than to explicitly intrude into their texts. justification for this study despite the contribution of the studies reviewed above to the area of metadiscourse, more studies are required to gain more in-depth understanding of how students use metadiscourse in different contexts like the university of botswana and within the same discipline. furthermore, most of studies on metadiscourse carried out tend to focus on identifying and quantifying instances of metadiscourse features, and on interpreting the functions of these features. most of these studies also tend to focus on comparing how writers use both interactive metadiscourse, where the writer seeks to guide the reader through the text, and interactional metadiscourse features, where the writer expresses a stance towards the proposition, in their writing. there seems to be little attention paid to understanding the context in which the texts were produced. this study seeks to address this gap in the existing literature by carrying a comparative study of the use of interactional metadiscourse within two courses that are both in the humanities at the university of botswana. furthermore, the study also includes interviews with insiders, which are both students’ and lecturers’ under which the writing was produced in order to understand how they perceive and respond to the use of interactional metadiscourse and what factors influence students’ choices. drawing also from my experience of the teaching of the writing module in the english for specific purposes (eap) course at the university of botswana, a lot of attention and emphasis in the teaching of essay writing skills is usually on the interactive metadiscourse features that help writers to organise propositional information such as transition markers. metadiscourse features, which have an interpersonal function, are rarely taught in the eap course. thompson suggests that the reason for this bias in teaching could be that ‘interactional signals are typically less frequent and less overt in academic text’ (2001:73). accordingly, this article presents a small corpus based study of the use of interactional metadiscourse features by students in two different departments, media studies and primary education, at the university of botswana. a comparison of students’ writing in the two departments will be done in order to see how each group used interactional resources in their writing to present. the overarching objective of the study is to look at how the students use interactional metadiscourse features to present a textual voice. the study attempts to answer the following research questions: (1) are there any differences in the use of interactional metadiscourse features between the writing produced by media studies and primary education undergraduate writers in this study? (2) are there any patterns about where in the text interactional metadiscourse features occur more frequently? for instance, can we find evidence that certain features are more frequent either in the introduction, body or conclusion of the essay and does this vary by corpus; (3) what factors influenced the choice of interactional metadiscourse features by the students in both media studies and primary education in this study? developing a model of analysis the analytical framework for the study of interactional metadiscourse has been shaped by different typologies. this paper uses tang and john’s (1999) taxonomy of first person pronouns which suggest that the degree of author explicitness in the text depends on the role that the writer has adopted. it has also been shaped by a taxonomy proposed by hyland (2005a) for the analysis of interactional metadiscourse features. hyland (2005a:58) makes it clear that ‘no taxonomy or description will ever be able to do more than partially represent a fuzzy reality’. this is because the taxonomies provide explicit surface features which can be identified in a text. what a classification like this can do is to ‘only approximate the complexity of natural language use’ (hyland 2005a:59). this means that in the identification and classification of metadiscourse items, we cannot rely only on overt surface features but equally importantly we can also draw on multiple factors which might help us capture the writer’s intentions. we cannot regard textual features as ends in themselves. metadiscourse is also a functional category and can be realised in a variety of linguistic features (adel 2006). some features are sometimes used to perform different functions and as such there are inevitable overlaps which make the categorisation of metadiscourse challenging. hyland (2005a) also points out that metadiscourse items may play different functions in different texts or can at times be used to perform two functions at the same time. this multi functionality of metadiscourse features means that ‘metadiscourse cannot be regarded as a strictly linguistic phenomenon at all, but must be seen as a rhetorical and pragmatic one’ (adel 2006:27). although hyland’s model provides a useful starting point for the analysis of interactional metadiscourse features by providing a list of items that can potentially function as metadiscourse features, i approached the texts with an open mind to see what other language features i might find that are not listed in hyland’s framework. therefore, for the identification of potential features that perform a metadiscoursal function, sometimes i had to move beyond looking at the explicit textual features to work with the textual context in order to justify that a particular feature performs a particular metadiscoursal function other than the one specified in the taxonomy. the identification and labelling of metadiscourse features was based on the co-textual effects or impression the writer creates as he or she writes. adel (2006:25) emphasises the importance of context in labelling items by pointing out that ‘although some forms are basically inherently metalinguistic, we still cannot classify a linguistic form as metadiscourse without taking the context of each particular instance into consideration’. the study the context the study was undertaken in two departments at the university of botswana, the department of media studies which is in the faculty of humanities, and the department of primary education which is in the faculty of education. the department of media studies offers the bachelor in media studies (bms) degree. the program introduces students to the world of electronic and print journalism. it opens career opportunities in journalism, both print and electronic as well as script writing, advertising and public relations. media education students do a lot of writing right from the first year as they train to become journalists. the department of primary education runs in-service programmes for teachers who have been in the field for some time and who have had training up to the diploma level. the students in this department are mature students who have a lot of work experience as teachers. the department offers a bachelor’s degree in education (bed primary). it also offers a bachelor of educational management programme for improving educational management. within the university of botswana context, all new students do a compulsory academic literacy course in their first year. the course is in two parts, the first part is an introduction to communication, reading, speaking and listening and generic writing skills. the second component of the course introduces students to what are considered discipline specific writing skills demands. lecturers concentrate on text types like exposition, description, narration and argumentation. therefore, students in this study went through this course in their first year and were now in their third year. the choice of these two departments (primary education and media studies) was based on the fact that students in these departments do a lot of writing. the students in both departments are assessed on similar kinds of learning outcomes where they have to organise knowledge learnt and be able to articulate their arguments clearly in writing. i selected texts that were classified under the same genre family of ‘the essay’ where the communicative purpose of the essay was to present arguments for and against an issue in order to convince the reader of a particular point of view. method corpus the study is based on a small corpus consisting of 40 essays written by undergraduate students from the university of botswana. table 1 below shows the size of the corpus. table 1: showing the data used and size of the corpora. the students were selected through convenience sampling and the researcher did not, in any way, consider selecting a sample that was representative of the entire population. only students who were willing to participate in the study submitted their essays and completed a consent form. the essays students wrote were part of the regular assessment requirements and students were given a writing task which required them to write an academic essay of about 1200 words to 1500 words as homework (see appendix 1). students were required to do research and cite sources and make a convincing argument. students who consented to participate provided handwritten copies of their course assignment. these were transcribed and saved in text format. interview data interviews were conducted with six students (three students in each department) and six lecturers (three lecturers in each department) in the two departments. the interviews were transcribed and analysed. the interview guide solicited information on how students interacted with their readers and whether they were aware of their audience. therefore, the questions prompted both students and lecturers to elaborate on the features students use to interact with their readers and whether students were encouraged to use first person pronouns in their writing. analysis of the data both quantitative and qualitative analysis of interactional metadiscourse features were carried out. a manual frequency count of interactional metadiscourse features was done. in a small number of cases where features performed more than one metadiscourse function, both functions were counted, reflecting the analytical procedure used by intaraprawat and steffesen (1995) in metadiscourse analysis. in order to validate the results that i got from the initial analysis of metadiscourse features, an electronic search of these features was done using wordsmith tools 5 (scott 2008) to analyse the essays. using the concord tool, i did a reverse check, where i started with a list of features i identified in the initial analysis, hyland’s (2005a) published list of interactional metadiscourse items investigated in his study, and mur duenas (2010) published list of attitude markers as a starting point for this analysis. once i had identified features that were considered interactional metadiscourse features, the corresponding features were searched for using the wordsmith tools 5 concord tool. the concordance provides a list of all occurrences of the search words in a corpus together with the context in which they occur. both the manual analysis and the computer assisted search complemented each other. the results from the wordsmith programme provide statistical information, such as how many instances a particular feature appears in the whole corpus (raw frequency) and the frequency of use of each feature per 1000 words (mean). to determine whether the differences in use of interactional metadiscourse features by the different groups were statistically significant, t-tests were performed to compare the means of the different features. results and discussion comparison of use of interactional metadiscourse features by media studies and primary education students the first research question sought to find out whether there were any differences in the use of interactional metadiscourse features between the writing produced by media studies and primary education undergraduate writers in this study. the table below gives a summary of the results for the two corpora being compared here. the results reveal observable differences across the two corpora. as the table 2 indicates, students in both departments used all categories of interactional metadiscourse features. table 2: frequency distribution of interactional metadiscourse features for media studies and primary education writing per 1000 words. a comparison of the two corpora shows a higher incidence of occurrences of interactional metadiscourse features in media studies essays compared to primary education essays. for instance, the results indicate that media studies students used slightly more self-mention than primary education students. a similar pattern emerges with the use of hedges, boosters, attitude markers and engagement markers, with media studies students using notably more interactional metadiscourse features than primary education students. however, the t-tests for independent samples results showed no significant differences in the use of these features in the two corpora. the second research question sought to find out whether were any patterns about where in the text interactional metadiscourse features occur more frequently. for instance, can we find evidence that certain features are more frequent either in the introduction, body or conclusion of the essay and does this vary by corpus? to answer this question, i will look at how students used each of the international metadiscourse features. use of self-mention a look at usage of self-mention in both media studies and primary education essays shows that students do use first person pronouns though in small numbers. the first person pronoun ‘i’ was the most common author reference in media studies essays, with 39 instances of the use of this pronoun and only 1 instance where the writer used another form of self-mention. the use of self-mention by media studies students was prevalent in the introductory section of the essays and students used the first person pronoun more frequently in conjunction with the least powerful functions of ‘i as the guide of the essay’ and ‘i as the architect of the essay’, where students showed the structure of the essay or indicated commitment to the proposition. a typical example is seen below. example 1: ‘firstly, i will focus on discussing women as a social group, paying particular attention on how they are or have been represented in media’ (bms 302-3; student in media studies [author’s own emphases]). i found 14 instances where students did not make explicit reference to themselves as agents of their work yet they were still present in their work. this occurred frequently in the introduction to signpost or to provide an overall structure of the essay. the extracts below exemplify this use. example 2: ‘secondly, this essay will discuss whether or not it is possible to receive unbiased news because of ownership of various media. thirdly, this paper will touch on how globalisation of mass media affects the average citizen’ (bms 302-11; student in media studies [author’s own emphases]). example 3: ‘the argument first gives a brief analysis of functions of art in an african society. it will then explore ways in which the artistic value is diminished or enhanced if used for purposes other than the intended function’ (bms 410-11; student in media studies [author’s own emphases]). the table indicates 29 instances of use of self-mention in the primary education corpus. although students explicitly used the first person pronoun ‘i’, they also tended to use other forms of self-mention such as the writer and the researcher. this seemed to be a common feature of this corpus. the extracts below show examples of how the students used these in their essays. example 4: ‘by the above citation the researcher believes that if pupils are aware of the above description of a good citizen’ (eps 200-3; student in primary education [author’s own emphases]). example 5: ‘the writer (of the essay) was convinced that the national principles played an important role in this regard’ (eps 200-1; student in primary education [author’s own emphases]). the other form of self-mention which was used in this corpus was the use of the first person plural ‘we’ which was used to exclude the readers from the text. there were three instances of the use of the exclusive pronoun ‘we’ in this corpus and these came from the same essay. extract 6 below comes from the introductory paragraph. example 6: ‘in this argument, we shall indicate how the environmental challenges caused by these activities’ (epi 442-13; student in primary education [author’s own emphases]). it is interesting that the use of other forms of author reference phrases like ‘the writer’, ‘the author’ or ‘the researcher’ and the exclusive ‘we’ occurred in primary education essays while essays for media studies explicitly used the first person pronoun ‘i’ as author reference. as adel (2006:86) observed, ‘this strategy is probably used to increase the objectivity and “detachment” of the writer of the text’. adel (2006:86) also suggests that ‘one reason for writers to refer to themselves in the third person is that it gives a formal impression’ (p. 86). the use of first person pronouns in the argument stage of the essays were comparatively low in both corpora. students used the first person pronoun to guide the reader through the text where they made a claim and supported it with evidence, or introduce a countermove, or refer to a proposition made earlier. example 7: ‘i believe ‘othering’ is the reason for conflict in the world’ (bms 401-1; student in media studies [author’s own emphases]). the findings about the use of first person pronouns is in congruent with what hyland (2002) and tang and john (1999) observed that many l2 writers not only chose to avoid self-mention, but principally chose to avoid it at points where it involved making a commitment to an interpretation or claim. they generally sought to ‘downplay their authorial identity by restricting their visibility to the more innocuous functions, such as guiding readers through the discourse’ (hyland 2002:1106). martinez (2005:175) also observed that students used the first person pronoun in ‘non-controversial contributions, such as stating discourse goals …’ tang and john (1999) also argue that students can be intimidated by using the first person pronoun to originate ideas and opinions because it would appear that they are: aligning themselves with textbook writers and lecturers in terms of their right to be ‘authors’… students feel insecure about the validity of their claims, seeing themselves to be at the lowest rungs of the academic ladder. (p. s34). this also tends to support a previous study performed by read, francis and robson (2001) that students lack the confidence to present their voice ‘as they feel they are not able to challenge the opinions of “established” academics’ (p. 394). use of engagement markers both media and primary education students used engagement markers less frequently in their essays. the use of the inclusive pronoun ‘we’ and rhetorical questions were common. students’ use of these features indicated that they were aware of the need to engage in some sort of dialogue with their readers. inclusive pronouns ‘help the writer construct dialogism between themselves and the audience by establishing the presence of the readership in the text, and making the discourse reciprocal’ (harwood 2005:347). the rhetorical questions also add a dialogic element to students’ writing, with the following as an example. example 8: ‘the museum has an influential role to play in the society. how does it use the components of various ethnic groups to define the national heritage? this has to be performed by making sure that various ethnic groups are represented’ (bms 401-11; student in media studies [author’s own emphases]). the writers anticipated the reactions of the readers and they continued to address them. the use of rhetorical questions was common in the argument stage of the essays. in the two examples below, the writers draw the reader into the text by using the inclusive pronoun ‘we’ so that the reader may be persuaded to see the writer’s viewpoint. example 9: ‘firstly, we must look at the definition in context’ (bms 302-12; student in media studies [author’s own emphases]). example 10: ‘in a nutshell, we can conclude that women in the media are portrayed in a stereotypical, often sexist and usually impossible way’ (bms302-3; student in media studies [author’s own emphases]). use of hedges, boosters and attitude markers the use of hedges was common in the argument stage in both corpora where students hedged their claims. example 11 below typifies the above mentioned: ‘because of these perceptions of viewing certain foreigners ‘traditions as ungood or weird, batswana tend to distance themselves from them.’ (bms 401-10; student in media studies [author’s own emphases]). media studies students tended to use more hedges than primary education students. i counted 16 instances of boosters in primary education corpus and 36 instances in media studies corpus and these appeared in the argument and conclusion stages of the essays and students tended to use these to express certainty, show conviction and belief about a certain point they were making. attitude markers were very uncommon in these corpora with only two instances of use of attitude markers in primary education corpus and nine instances in the media studies corpus. perspectives from the lecturers and students the third research question sought to find out factors that influenced the choice of interactional metadiscourse features by the students in both media studies and primary education in this study. to do that, i conducted interviews with students and lecturers in both departments of primary education and media studies for the courses in which these writings were produced. the interviews were exploratory in nature and focused on how students interacted with their readers and whether they were aware of their audience and whether students were aware of the language features they could use to interact with their readers. i was also interested in finding out whether students were encouraged to use first person pronouns in their writing. i asked for the views of the participants about the issue of audience in students’ writing. i focused on whether students’ writing has an audience and what kind of audience it was. students in both departments pointed out that their audience was their lecturer who reads and marks their work. the lecturers also felt that in most cases students write for them. a follow up question on whether students were able to interact with their audience was asked. one lecturer in the department of primary education felt that students were not able to engage in a dialogue with their readers because of their level. his comment was: ‘i don’t see that at this level (meaning that they are undergraduates) because if you write an academic paper for instance in the literature review that is what i try to do….but in students’ writing you seldom see that kind of writing because of their level.’ [lecturer ın prımary educatıon] one lecturer in the department of media studies perceived students’ audience as twofold. the lecturer made a distinction between academic writing and professional writing. according to him, when students engage in professional writing, they have an audience they are targeting. he pointed out that when students are clear about who their audience is their writing becomes very interactive. however, the three media studies lecturers emphasised the need for the writer to interact with the readers as something they would value in writing. lecturers were asked for their views concerning the use of personal pronouns in academic writing because some students had used these in their writing. primary education interviewees held different views about the use of personal pronouns in students’ writing. for instance, one participant commented that: somewhere we had a debate on that issue and some people were saying there is nothing wrong with using first person. that was within this department. people hold different views.’ [lecturer ın prımary educatıon] he, however, does not discourage students from using first person pronouns because they have to state what they feel in the first person if it is a question that requires them to state their point of view. the other two participants’ in the department of primary education responses suggested largely that the use of the first person pronoun ‘i’ was unacceptable in academic writing. responses like, ‘that it is not academic’, ‘it is not allowed’, and ‘it is not professional’ came out. one of the two participants argued that: ‘…yes they have personal opinions on some of those things but really at the level where we are now, they cannot say those things with authority. i have always encouraged them to say, “one would”…’ [lecturer ın prımary educatıon] he says writing this way takes the “blunt personal thing out” and therefore is acceptable in academic writing. this was similarly the case with participants from department of media studies. one participant pointed out that: ‘…there is some variety within the department. we have had debates within the department and there are some people who feel very strongly that the “i” should be removed… i don’t feel that.’ [lecturer ın medıa studıes] the other participant suggested that instead of writing: ‘i believe media in botswana is very racist’, [lecturer ın medıa studıes] she would prefer that the students write: ‘media in botswana seems to be portraying this as…’ she raised an interesting comparison by drawing on her own experiences of academic writing. she argued that: ‘it is the kind of thing i do for my academic papers, where there is some level of detachment…’ [lecturer ın medıa studıes] this view was also reported by students in the interviews. one of the students from the department of primary education said this: ‘but when it’s a general essay i don’t have to use “i think that…” i can say “one may think that…”’ [student ın prımary educatıon] another informant also from the same department commented that: ‘you will talk about “the researcher did this…” “we don’t use the “i”.’ [student ın prımary educatıon] students were quite rigid about this view in their responses and were adamant that it was an appropriate practice of essay writing. however, another lecturer in media studies was concerned that some students were very distant from their writing. he gave this illustration to emphasise how a writer can interact with the reader, ‘this essay is about this and when writing this essay i will do this and that…’ he argues that this would help the writers to launch the readers into their writing. he also pointed out that he wants his students ‘to associate with their work’ and not say ‘the researcher’ or the ‘writer’. he further mentioned that he values an essay that has ‘character’. he said that this is where ‘the writer not simply narrates incidents from a distance but is walking with the reader so that the reader can see the writer in the text’. furthermore, i asked both the lecturers and the students to elaborate on other language features apart from first person pronouns they can use to interact with the audience. generally, their response seemed to indicate that they were not aware of language features writers could use to interact with their audience. summary of results and pedagogical implications the limitations of this study need to be considered when discussing these findings. firstly, the corpus for this study was very small and it is not representative of the entire population in these two departments. secondly, my study did not focus on the relationship between the use of interactional metadiscourse and the quality of writing. i believe such information could have proved useful. in spite of the limitations mentioned above, i believe that this study provides useful starting point to understand how students at the university of botswana use interactional metadiscourse in their writing to interact with their audience and present a textual voice. overall, this study indicates that students at the university of botswana do use metadiscourse in their writing to interact with their audience and engage them in a dialogue. however, the results indicate that students had a narrow repertoire of interactional resources to use to present a textual voice. the results contribute to support the view that interactional metadiscourse is a universal feature of academic writing (crismore et al. 1993) and that academic writing is not completely impersonal (hyland 2002). the study has also revealed how the two groups of students differ in their use of interactional metadiscourse features. the results seem to indicate that even within the same discipline, there can be variations on how students use interactional metadiscourse features. for instance, media studies students were far more explicitly involved in their writing, whereas primary education students seemed to hold back and distance themselves from their writing. the interview data proved useful in highlighting the values, practices as well as lecturer’s beliefs about students’ writing and academic conventions. the findings seem to indicate that students’ awareness to interact with their audience can be overridden by the disciplinary conventions, beliefs and values about academic writing as seen from the interviews with the expects’ informants. for instance, the data indicated that lecturers held different and sometimes contradictory views with regard to the use of first person pronouns in academic writing. students are largely dependent on their lecturers’ for advice but there is seemingly conflicting advice given by lecturers on the use of the pronouns. this could possibly be some of the factors that influenced how students used interactional metadiscourse features in their writing, especially the use of personal pronouns. li and wharton (2012) posit that local institutional culture could have a noticeable influence on student writers’ use of metadiscourse. hyland (2002) commenting on this argument expresses concern that: conventions of identity are notoriously uncertain. on the one hand impersonality is seen as a defining feature of expository writing… and many textbooks and style guides advise students to avoid personal intervention… however other textbooks encourage writers to make their own voice clear through the first person. (p. 1095) these conflicting views might be problematic for the eap lecturers who have to prepare students for writing in the various disciplines because there seems to be no clear guidelines on the requirements of academic writing in the two departments. this means that students do what their individual lecturers perceive to be good practice. despite these conflicting views, the results of this study suggest pedagogical implications for the teaching of the preparatory eap writing course at the university of botswana. the analysis has helped to illuminate our understanding of how students use interactional metadiscourse features in their writing, and what influences their choices. the findings can inform the design of the eap writing course so that we incorporate the teaching of this in our eap courses. issues of audience, interaction and understanding the dialogic nature of academic writing, and presentation of voice in writing can be included in the eap writing course. we notice that students used a limited range of linguistic resources to position themselves, to interact with the readers and to present their voice in writing. students could therefore benefit more from explicit teaching about the different categories and functions of interactional metadiscourse features available. hyland (2001) argues that: academic writers have rhetorical options then, and the effects of manipulating these options suggest that there are considerable advantages for our students in being aware of them. the whole issue of consciousness-raising is crucial in eap and is central to learning to write effectively. (p. 224) for instance, depending on the rhetorical situation, students could decide whether to use interactional resources available to them to make explicit their perspective towards propositional information. students could be made aware that the presentation of author voice is marked by linguistic features such as hedges, boosters, engagement markers, attitude markers and self-mention. students could be made aware of the discourse functions of the first person pronoun and how students could use the first pronoun ‘i’ (and at what point in the text) to make themselves visible as well as assert themselves into the text. students could be made aware that texts are crafted out of other texts and that writers need to reflect both their voice and voices of those they have borrowed from and they need to be made aware of resources available to them to do so. although lecturers from the two departments held different views, particularly about the use of personal pronouns, this study proposes the inclusion of interactional dimension into the eap writing course as students may benefit from their teaching. it is important to complement the teaching of interactive metadiscourse features with the teaching of interactional metadiscourse features and awareness of audience in writing. in the light of the results found, i would argue that ‘issues regarding how much metadiscourse or writer and/or reader visibility to employ in writing are far from self-evident, but need more explicit attention in the esl classroom’ (adel 2006:200). conclusion this study extended the research on the study of interactional metadiscourse features by examining how students used these to present a textual voice. the study incorporated interviews with insiders to these two departments to see how they perceive the use of these features in academic writing. the results suggest that students’ use of these features might be influenced by how their lecturers perceive the use of interactional metadiscourse features. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references abdi, r., 2002, ‘interpersonal metadiscourse: an indicator of interaction and identity’, discourse studies 4(2), 139–145. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614456020040020101 adel, a., 2006, metadiscourse in l1 and l2 english, john benjamins publishing company, amsterdam. camiciottoli, b.c., 2003, ‘metadiscourse and esp reading comprehension: an exploratory study’, reading in a foreign language 15(1), 28–44. cheng, x. & steffenson, m., 1996, ‘metadiscourse: a technique for improving student writing’, research in the teaching of english 30(2), 149–181. crismore, a., markkanen, r. & steffensen, m.s., 1993, ‘metadiscourse in persuasive writing: a study of texts written by american and finnish university students’, written communication 10(1), 39–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088393010001002 halliday, m.a., 1994, an introduction to functional grammar, edward arnold, london. harwood, n., 2005, ‘we don’t seem to have a theory’, applied linguistics 26(3), 343–375. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/ami012 hyland, k., 2001, ‘humble servants of the discipline? 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(2) do media images and messages only reflect the world, or do they also create it? clearly they do both. but many studies demonstrate that media messages do not reflect the world as it really is. there are far more people of colour, disabled people, non-heterosexuals, seniors and poor people in the real world than we see on tv or in the movies. media portrayal of women often leaves much to be desired, especially women in advertising. discuss with reference to both print and broadcast media. (3) ‘gender based restrictions on media representations in africa constitute a form of neo-colonialism which are contrary to african cultural traditions’. explain, with evidence, whether you agree or disagree with this quotation. (4) what is now called ‘globalization’ would not be possible without mass media. communication through modern technology has the potential to spread democracy. but corporate control of media production simultaneously threatens the ability of citizens to receive unbiased news to have their own messages heard. discuss. course: bms 401-imaging africa (1) to what extent does the national museum of botswana conform to stereotypes about africa and to what extent does it provide an alternative afro-centric view of botswana? (2) if an ancestral mask or a traditional foot stool is taken from its original context and function (e.g. to an art gallery) is its artistic value enhanced or diminished? (3) in what ways do african artists or media practitioners provide a ‘counter narrative’ to colonial or neo colonial imaging of africa with respect to disaster? (4) ‘othering’ is a natural human instinct. it only becomes dangerous when it is used for the purpose of ‘social exclusion’. debate this quotation by applying it to specific examples of batswana imaging non-batswana. 2. primary education department: course: epi 442 – environmental education conservation strategies (1) discuss using elaborate examples, how indigenous knowledge can contribute towards sustainable use of the environment and its resources. (2) discuss how gender related activities contribute to natural resource depletion. in your discussion indicate how the environmental problems caused by such activities could be solved. (3) using examples in botswana and elsewhere, how local communities can be an instrument in conserving the environment. course: epi 200 – introduction to social studies let’s talk: primary schools pupils’ views on the usefulness of social studies in making good citizens in botswana. abstract introduction related literature approaches to writing methodology data presentation and analysis discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) nomalungelo i. ngubane department of languages and media, school of education, faculty of humanities, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa berrington ntombela department of english, faculty of arts, university of zululand, empangeni, south africa samantha govender department of curriculum studies, faculty of education, university of zululand, empangeni, south africa citation ngubane, n.i., ntombela, b. & govender, s., 2020, ‘writing approaches and strategies used by teachers in selected south african english first additional language classrooms’, reading & writing 11(1), a261. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v11i1.261 original research writing approaches and strategies used by teachers in selected south african english first additional language classrooms nomalungelo i. ngubane, berrington ntombela, samantha govender received: 19 aug. 2019; accepted: 08 apr. 2020; published: 18 june 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the teaching of writing in english first additional language (efal) classrooms remains less explored in the further education and training phase (fet) in south africa. this is so despite research showing a decline in the writing skills of second language learners, especially at the fet phase, calling attention to how writing is taught. objectives: the purpose of this study was to investigate writing approaches and teaching strategies used by teachers in teaching writing in selected efal fet classrooms in the pinetown district. method: a qualitative approach was adopted to observe five writing lessons across five schools using a video camera. discourse analysis was used to analyse data. results: the findings indicate that teachers mostly used a process approach to writing, which is in line with their curriculum. the study also found that teachers generally used a question and answer method to teach writing, which entails teachers controlling the interactions in the classrooms through a nomination-response cycle. analyses of lessons also suggest that teachers creatively employed code-switching to explain writing concepts better. conclusion: the study concludes that the effectiveness of any pedagogy depends on the teachers’ knowledge and understanding of writing and approaches to writing. for effective development of learners’ writing, the study recommends instruction methods that embrace collaborative writing activities in the learners’ zone of proximal development (zpd) and the recognition of learners’ home languages. keywords: narrative essay; english first additional language; discourse analysis; code-switching; collaborative learning; zone of proximal development. introduction the declining level of writing skills among english first additional language (efal) learners is a concern (akinyenye 2012; blease & condy 2015; pineteh 2014). in south africa, poor writing skills of learners have been mostly associated with teachers’ lack of knowledge of effective writing approaches to constructively support the development of writing, especially among second language learners (blease & condy 2015). many teachers in efal classrooms have limited understanding of the writing approaches and as such, they use inappropriate writing strategies in their classrooms (dornbrack & atwood 2019). even though the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) (department of basic education, 2012) advocates for the use of the process approach to writing, limited training opportunities on the use of this approach has been offered to teachers (dornbrack & dixon 2014). many teachers, therefore, struggle to translate the curriculum into practice. alongside these pedagogical challenges, pineteh (2014) noted that most teachers possess inadequate writing skills. they are not writers. this also affects their attitudes towards writing and the teaching of writing. this could be one of the reasons why scholars (akinyenye 2012; ngubane 2018) observed very little writing practices taking place in efal classrooms. despite the challenges associated with the teaching of writing reported by the studies discussed above, and the fact that these teaching challenges have far-reaching implications on the development of writing among learners, very little research in south africa has paid attention to the writing approaches and strategies used by efal teachers, especially at the further education and training phase (fet) to enhance learners’ writing practices. most studies (akinyenye 2012; julius 2013) focus on writing experiences in the foundation, intermediate and senior phases. not much is known about the writing approaches in efal fet classrooms. writing pedagogy in efal fet classrooms, 3 years prior to learners completing high school and joining higher education, cannot be ignored since it has implications for learners’ writing competencies for post-school education (dornbrack & atwood 2019). this study, therefore, investigates the writing approaches and teaching strategies used by teachers in efal fet classrooms in the pinetown district, south africa. the study was guided by the following question: what writing approaches and teaching strategies are used by teachers in efal fet writing classrooms? related literature blease and condy (2015) argue that writing is one of the most important language skills. it plays a significant role in the learning of language and for that reason writing cannot be ignored. writing is a tool for the creation and the expression of ideas. it is also a means for the consolidation of linguistic structures when it is used for interactive communication (isleem 2012). isleem (2012) also believes that it is through writing that learners develop critical skills like innovation, creativity and self-expression; these skills are essential for academic success. in the same vein, writing is significant for accountability in standardised assessments across the schooling curriculum (akinyenye 2012). furthermore, writing practice helps learners use their target language and explore various linguistic elements like grammar, idioms and vocabulary in their texts, and with more writing opportunities they can become better writers (isleem 2012). richards (2006) discovered a close link between thinking and writing which renders writing a crucial practice to develop among learners. similarly, dornbrack and atwood (2019) argue that writing activities in which learners are encouraged to brainstorm ideas, to be innovative and to think critically cultivate cognitive development essential for successful learning and post-school life. moreover, the ability to organise own thoughts and information through writing is a valuable skill for learning and post-school success. teaching approaches lie at the centre of teaching and learning (leach & moon 2008). it is what teachers need to know and the skills they need to command in order to make and justify the kinds of decisions that constitute teaching. furthermore, effective approaches are the cornerstone for active learning. in writing classrooms, teaching strategies refer to classroom ways of talking, showing and guiding, active participation so that the unknowing can come to know, those without understanding can comprehend and discern, and the unskilled become adept (leach & moon 2008). leach and moon (2008) define teaching methods as: [m]ore than the accumulation of techniques and strategies, more than arranging a classroom, more than formulating questions and developing explanations, but it is informed by a view of mind, of learning, learners, the kinds of knowledge, and outcomes that are valued. (p. 6) in a writing classroom, a teaching strategy would be influenced by the teacher’s beliefs and attitude about writing, his or her other knowledge about writing, learners’ writing abilities and proficiency levels, curriculum, as well as his or her objectives for the writing lessons (lee 2008). effective writing pedagogy is, therefore, a key to the successful development of efficient writing skills among learners. even though we know much about writing strategies in many classrooms such as in china and hong kong (lee 2008); taiwan (lan, hung & hsu 2011); and poland (mohile 2014); little is known about the writing pedagogy in south african classroom contexts, especially is secondary schools. this is so because, according to mpiti (2016), there is limited documented research on writing practices among second language learners and teachers in these contexts. approaches to writing product approach has been used in many writing classrooms since the 1970s (escholz 1980). in a product approach, teachers usually present learners with a model text to emulate and construct their own texts. escholz (1980) found that the product approach follows a traditional way of teaching writing as it demands that learners focus on the model, the form and the duplication of the teacher’s text as much as possible. for example, teachers using the product approach put more focus on the grammatical features of the text and the organisation of the text rather than the ideas and the thoughts within the text (ngubane 2018). accuracy in writing is the main focus in the product approach instruction. teachers assess learners’ writing based on how accurate they are in grammar, spelling and punctuation. in some classes, akinyenye and pluddemann (2016) found that learners are asked to analyse the main components of the teacher’s sample text and then copy the sample’s organisational structure to reproduce as their texts. all in all, the goal of teaching writing in product approach classrooms is for learners to produce a text that is similar in form and language conventions to the one they have learned. diversion in terms of creativity is less appreciated. while this approach is mostly criticised for its focus on the use of correct grammatical features, form and language features, such as spelling and punctuation; some scholars (badger & white 2000) think differently about the product approach. these scholars argue that the product approaches do recognise learners’ need for linguistic development and competence across different texts for them to become efficient writers. imitation is one method by which people learn. in other words, teachers are encouraged to balance the product approach with other writing approaches in order to effectively support the development of their learners’ writing skills. in a process approach, the focus of writing instruction is on the steps involved in drafting and redrafting texts (nunan 1999). when learners write, they go through various similar stages as writers. these stages involve brainstorming or pre-writing, writing, revising, editing and publishing (flower & hayes 1986): it is assumed that the stages of the writing process approach empower learners by enabling them to make decisions about the direction of their work through discussions, tasks, drafting, feedback and informed choices, thus enabling them to be responsible for making improvement themselves. (raimes 1991:410) raimes (1991) identified basic stages of the writing process that teachers may implement in their classrooms: pre-writing (selecting a topic and planning what to say) writing (putting a draft version on paper) revising (making changes to improve writing) editing and proofreading (working on expression and punctuation) evaluation (assessment of the written work) according to flower and hayes (1981), these five stages allow learners to generate ideas before they begin to write, to revise their ideas back and forth and to edit their ideas before the publication of the final product. tribble (1996:220) argues that ‘the process approach focuses on the learners’ independent ability to produce coherent texts after going through writing activities in stages’. this implies that in the process approach, the learners are given opportunities to be in control of their writing, while the teacher plays the role of supporting the development of writing by guiding and supporting. contrary to the product approach, learners in the process approach are not expected to complete and produce a draft of the text; however, they are expected to go through ‘processes of drafting and receiving feedback on their drafts, be it from peers and/or from the teacher, followed by revision of their evolving texts’ (tribble 1996:220–221). feedback during the writing process is crucial as it helps the learner to see the weaknesses in his or her writing and thus improve before reaching the final stage of the writing process. the caps curriculum for efal fet phase also emphasises that teachers should use the writing process to develop the learners’ writing skills. in particular, the curriculum emphasises that teachers should teach learners strategies of brainstorming before they write. teachers should also make learners aware of the importance of editing their work before presenting a finished text (dornbrack & atwood 2019). apart from the product and process approaches to teaching writing, the genre-based approach has also gained popularity as another approach to develop learners’ writing skills. developed from martin’s (1993) systemic functional linguistic (sfl) model of language, the genre-based approach places greater emphasis on the social context in which writing is produced. at the heart of the genre-based approach is the perspective that teachers should teach learners the explicit and systematic explanations of the ways language functions in social contexts. teachers in genre-based classrooms should, therefore, encourage learners to explore and exploit texts from different types of genres and thus be able to communicate in different contexts for different purposes and for different audiences. in explaining the role of the genre-based teacher, mpiti (2016) stresses that the teacher takes the ‘authoritative’ role to ‘scaffold’ or support the learners through guided activities as they move towards their writing goal and potential level. this scaffolding pedagogical approach is underpinned by vygotsky’s (1978) socio-linguistic theory, which capitalises on the interactive and collaborative nature of a writing classroom. vygotsky (1978) argues that scaffolding gradually lightens as the learners independently produce their own texts parallel to the model. at such a level, the role of the teacher then moves from explicit instructor to that of facilitator until learners gain writing independence. vygotsky (1978) proclaimed writing as a social practice. according to vygotsky (1978), what learners learn about writing, whether right or wrong, is mostly influenced by their social practices. similarly, delange, dipenaar and anker (2018) assert that learners develop and learn writing skills through ‘active’ participation within their social and cultural contexts, including their classroom. writing as a social practice depends largely on the language and the teacher’s ways of facilitating writing development. the role of the language teacher is to present writing as a means of interaction with others within the social context and thus use writing to share ideas about relevant issues affecting learners’ social contexts. teachers, according to mpiti (2016), should also provide opportunities in the classroom for such articulation of ideas to take place through writing. ‘the ultimate aim of any comprehensive approach to teaching writing is to produce confident, competent, and independent writers who write for people’ (blease & condy 2015:7). this means that if learners are to be effective writers, they must approach writing as a social practice and a purposeful task with intended readers in mind. therefore, it is important for learners to write with a clear understanding of their audience. methodology a qualitative framework underpinned this case study of five efal fet writing classrooms that were purposively sampled. participants’ consent was sought prior to data collection. permission was obtained from the department of education and school principals. five efal fet writing lessons were observed across five selected schools using a video camera. each observed classroom had an average of 45 students between the ages of 15–19 years. of the teachers who were observed, three were female between 35 and 50 years of age and two were male teachers between 40 and 55 years of age. all of them were from isizulu home language backgrounds and spoke english as a second language. all the lessons were 55 minutes long. classroom observation enabled the researcher to look directly at what was happening in the efal fet classroom, thus collecting data first-hand (creswell 2009). lessons were transcribed and analysed using the boundary exchanges and teaching exchanges model as proposed by sinclair and coulthard (1975). three major categories of the model: meta-interactive, interactive and turn-taking were also used to analyse the lessons. the names of the five schools were replaced by school a, school b, school c, school d and school e during transcription of the lessons. lessons were numerically labelled as lesson 1, 2, 3, and so on. data presentation and analysis this section presents data from classroom observation (writing lessons) to address the question on writing approaches and teaching strategies used by the teachers to teach writing. all classroom observations were video-recorded and thereafter each recorded lesson was transcribed verbatim. only lesson excerpts that showcased the strategies used by teachers were selected for analysis. learners’ names were removed and replaced with the letter x to protect their identities. lesson 1, school a duration of the lesson: 55 min teacher: okay [frame] today we are going look at the narrative essay [focus]. what does the word narrate mean? [elicitation] yes x? [nomination] learner: to narrate, eeeh … is to tell a story [response] teacher: good, to narrate is to tell a story. it is very important. so, what are the elements of a narrative story? what things must be included in the story? yes, x? learner: introduction. teacher: introduction. very good. you introduce your essay. what else? yes x? learner: the body. teacher: yes the body of the essay. but what must be in the body? what things are important in the body of the essay? the story. learner: the place. to indicate a change from a greeting to a topic, the teacher begins with a frame ‘okay’ (line a1:1) and focuses the lesson on the narrative essay. the teacher then elicits the meaning of ‘narrate’. the teacher then nominates (a1:1) learner x to provide the correct answer. the learner responds in (a1:2). the teacher then provides feedback, accepting the learner’s response and then proceeds to elicit the elements of a narrative essay. the lesson proceeds following the pattern: t-p-t (teacher-pupil-teacher). this pattern indicates a flow of teacher-learner interaction in the classroom. it also shows that interactions are regulated by the teacher. it also shows that learners do not speak randomly in the classroom; they wait for the teacher to nominate them to speak. this is a common practice to maintain order and to control proceedings in the classroom (sinclair & coulthard 1975). the second stage of the lesson: teacher: good. now [frame], let us move on to the stages of a narrative writing. [focus] what is the first stage of writing? [elicitation] learners: free writing. teacher: free writing and? learners: free writing and planning. teacher: second stage? learners: drafting. here the teacher focuses the lesson on the stages of narrative writing. the teacher does not provide learners with the stages of narrative writing but elicits them from the learners. the learners seemed to know these stages as they provide all the stages of the writing process when elicited by the teacher, for example in a1:12. (planning), a1:14. (drafting). badger and white (2000) also agree that these are the stages of the writing process. curriculum and assessment policy statement curriculum suggests that teachers use the process approach to teach writing. the teacher, therefore, seems to be following the curriculum. the lesson then progresses to the third stage where the teacher continues with the question and answer method as she provides more elicitations to help learners understand keywords in the topic which is another process of writing (badger & white 2000). lesson 2, school b duration of the lesson: 55 min the following extract shows how the teacher from school b taught narrative writing in her grade 12 classroom: teacher: okay [meta-interactive act] let us move on [directive]. what is the important thing to consider when writing your essay? [elicitation] learner: introduction. [response] teacher: no. before you even get to an introduction. raise your hands. [cue] yes, x. [nomination] learner: the topic of the essay. teacher: good, x (name of the learner). your topic of writing is the most important element that shapes your lines of thinking. [feedback] teacher: after the topic, what else must you think about? learner: planning, sir. teacher: so how do you do the planning for your essay? learner: you brainstorm the topic, sir. teacher: yes, you can brainstorm, you can brainstorm the topic, generating ideas or do a mind map, a flow chart or float lines. now, why is planning important when you are doing a narrative essay? so when you are going to do an essay you should have planning, planning is going to serve as a guide as to how you are going to go about presenting your story. in the above section of the lesson, the teacher uses the frame ‘okay’ to indicate that he is moving to the next stage of the lesson. the teacher elicits the important thing to consider when writing an essay. in the typical exchange of t-p-t, the learner responds with ‘introduction’, which the teacher rejects. it might seem that the learner who responded had spoken out of turn, because immediately when the teacher had rejected the response, he gives a cue that those who want to respond must bid for nomination by raising their hands. the teacher thereafter nominates a learner who responds ‘the topic of the sentence’, which the teacher accepts. the teacher proceeds by eliciting more things to consider when writing an essay to which learners respond with ‘planning’ and ‘brainstorming’, which the teacher accepts. the teacher emphasises that the topic of writing is the most important aspect of writing the essay as it shapes their thinking (b2:5). this implies that the teacher is well informed about the writing process that she is using to teach writing in her class. this is shown by the teacher’s elicitation of the learners’ understanding of the stages of writing through the question and answer method. the teacher elicits what learners think about the topic. the learner responded that planning is important (b2:7), and so is brainstorming (b2:9). this implies that the school follows the process approach to writing as recommended by the curriculum. interestingly, in the following stages of the lesson, the teacher spent more time explaining different aspects that form the body of a narrative essay such as the plot, climax and the characters. the teacher also stressed that the body of a narrative consists of a number of paragraphs. the focus on the structure of the body, that is, the paragraphs, is influenced by the product approach. this shows that the teacher draws from the process approach and the product approach to teach writing. in the last stage of the lesson, the teacher put emphasis on the feelings, the mood, the tone and diction of a narrative as a genre. these aspects are specific to genres and they vary according to the type of texts learners are learning to write. the teaching of these aspects of writing implies the use of a genre approach in addition to the process and product approaches that the teacher used in the earlier stages of the lesson. all in all, the teacher in the above lesson draws from three approaches: process, product and genre approaches at different stages of her lesson to teach writing. lesson 3, school c duration of the lesson: 55 min the lesson on the writing of an invitation letter in grade 10 classroom went like this: teacher: konje ke iyini writing? (what is writing?) learner: (silence) teacher: uma sibhala sibeka imicabango yethu, angithi? (when we write we express our thoughts, isn’t it?) teacher: today i want us to look at an invitation letter. alright? [frame] learner: yes. teacher: what is the reason for writing an invitation? x? learner: to invite. teacher: yes, (writing on the board) we write an invitation to invite someone to an occasion. what occasion can that be? learner: a wedding. the lesson follows a typical t-p-t pattern where the teacher elicits ‘what is writing?’, which, when learners do not provide a response, relegates it into a starter. interestingly, this starter uses both isizulu and english in line c3:1, ‘konje iyini writing’ to elicit the meaning of writing. the teacher then provides the expected response and proceeds to provide the focus of the lesson. she further code-switches (c3:3) ‘uma sibhala sibeka imicabango yethu, angithi?’ to explain what writing is. in this extract, learners do not bid for nomination but the teacher simply nominates each learner. the next section of the lesson: teacher: yes, rsvp. what does rsvp stand for? if we write rsvp in an invitation what do we want? to send you your reply usho ukuthi uyeza emcimbini angithi? [saying that you are coming to the function, isn’t it?] yes. so you reply very soon usho [saying] you will be coming and you phone the person whose number is given on the card. why must you phone usho uyeza [saying you are coming] x [name of the learner]? in this extract the teacher elicits the meaning of rsvp. when learners do not provide a response, the teacher goes ahead and provides the expected answer. interestingly, the teacher’s answer is a mixture of isizulu and english. the switch between isizulu and english is not necessarily triggered by the complexity of the answer – half of the answer is in isizulu and another half in english (to send you your reply usho ukuthi uyeza emcimbini angithi? [saying that you are coming to the function, isn’t it?]). in other words, the teacher indicates that rsvp is a reply and the content of the reply is given in isizulu. after providing the answer, the teacher proceeds eliciting the reason for rsvp. unlike the first elicitation, which was open to all learners, the second one is directed to one learner who is nominated to provide the answer. the teacher’s nomination could be triggered by the first awkward silence which forced the teacher to provide the answer. however, providing the answer that learners are supposed to know might indicate that the teacher had not taught them effectively. nominating one learner, therefore, serves to rescue the teacher from the perceptions of not having taught the learners successfully. lesson 4, school d duration of the lesson: 55 min teacher: today we are going to revise writing a narrative essay. but first, how do we define a narrative essay? how does it differ from other types of essays? a narrative essay, how do we write it? learner: it is a short story that talks about what happened. learner: a life story. learner: the writer is the narrator of the story. teacher: good. so we say it’s a short story [writing on the board]. we also say a writer could be sharing life experiences; and thirdly, the writer is also the narrator of the story. that is, it is written in the first person narration. right? learners: yes, sir. teacher: what else? learner: you write the story in the past tense. teacher: good. those are just the basics. there is more to writing a narrative essay. you must think about what you tell in your story in an interesting way. ukubhala ngendlela ehehayo [to write in an interesting way]. there are steps that we follow when we write a narrative essay, right? learners: yes, sir. the teacher elicited the meaning of a narrative. the teacher nominated learners to speak. the first learner provided a response. this is followed by another learner’s response before the teacher’s feedback. this shows that the learners’ speaking turns are not controlled by the teacher in the classroom as we have seen in other lessons in this study. the teacher used code-switching to reiterate how learners should write their narratives ‘ukubhala ngendlela ehehayo’ (to write in an interesting way). lesson 5, school e duration of the lesson: 55 min teacher: what is the first step of writing an essay? anyone who knows? yes, over there? learner: we brainstorm the topic. teacher: no, i said the first step. you were not listening. anyone? learner: we first choose a topic. teacher: yes, we choose a topic for writing. what else? learner: we brainstorm the topic. in this extract the teacher elicits the first step of writing an essay. the learner who is nominated provides an answer that is rejected by the teacher. the learner’s answer irritates the teacher who went on to reprimand the learner for not having paid attention when the teacher taught the steps. another learner is nominated who provides an answer that satisfies the teacher. the teacher then elicits the next step when another learner provides the same answer that the teacher had initially rejected. this indicates that the teacher regards writing as a rigid process that must follow specific steps without changing the order. however, this is not what normally happens in the writing class. the writing topic is usually provided by the teacher, which makes brainstorming the first step. nevertheless, the teacher seems to be promoting the process approach to writing (badger & white 2000): teacher: now i want you to choose a topic from a list of topics in your notes. choose the topic and create a spider diagram and start to think about what information you need for your topic. write as much information as you can. i give you 20 min to do that. you can use the back of your exercise books for this activity. write the topic clearly so that i can check if your ideas are in line with your topic. alright? this extract confirms that the topics for writing are normally provided by the teacher. from the above extract the teacher provided learners with the time to implement the spider diagram technique to brainstorm ideas for their writing. the teacher also explained that he will check their ideas to provide feedback on whether the ideas are in line with the topics chosen by the learners. this classroom discourse further confirms the implementation of the process approach in the writing classroom. by providing feedback on the learners’ ideas, it could be said that the teacher understands writing as a social practice. that is, the teacher understands his role of providing guidance and support as the knowledgeable adult in the classroom context. discussion classroom observation and analysis of the five writing lessons show classroom discourse that suggests different approaches to writing being implemented across the five schools. extract a1:1–14 from school a shows the teacher eliciting the stages of the writing process from the learners. different learners provide responses and they all give different stages of the writing process. these classroom interactions suggest that the teacher uses the process approach to teach writing. it also suggests that the teacher promotes classroom interactions and participation through an elicitation-response technique. in the extract of a narrative lesson from school b, the teacher explains to learners how they should approach their own writing by brainstorming their topics to generate the ideas for their writing. the teacher emphasises the use of a mind map or a flow diagram for the planning stage of writing. they also stress that the planning will help learners to produce coherent ideas in a coherent manner. this extract suggests that the teacher used the process approach to teach the writing of a narrative in her classroom. traces of a genre-based approach to writing were also noticed in this lesson when the teacher encouraged learners to also consider the tone and the mood, as well as feelings when crafting their texts (b2:17–52). classroom discourse from school c shows how the teacher elicited information that should appear on the invitation card. by drawing the card on the board, the teacher is providing learners with a model of an invitation card for the development of their own invitation cards. the modelling approach is most prominent in the genre-based approach to writing where the teachers bring a model text to be learned for learners to practise and master. the teacher did not actually bring the invitation card into the classroom; however, by drawing it on the board the learners got to see both the structure and the content of the invitation card. through the question and answer method the teacher also engaged the learners in the brainstorming about the content for the invitation card. it can, therefore, be said that the lesson followed both the process and the genre approach to writing. extracts from school d show that the teacher is putting more emphasis on the structure of the text, the paragraphs, as well as the number of words that learners must produce. these elements are most prevalent in the product approach to writing where the focus is mostly on the final product instead of on the processes of writing. it could be speculated that the focus of the lesson was on the structure of the text, which is the revising stage of the process, and not necessarily the planning or the drafting stage, as the curriculum suggests that teachers may not necessarily teach all the stages of the writing process in one lesson but they may select the stage they want to emphasise. nevertheless, based on the classroom observation, the focus on the structure implied a product approach. this suggests that teachers also use the product approach to teach writing. a narrative lesson from school e followed the process approach. the teacher first elicited the elements of a narrative (e5:1) and then through question and answer engaged learners in the brainstorming of the topic (e5:6). the teacher then instructed learners to choose a topic and directed them to use the spider diagram technique he had taught them to generate ideas for their topics (e5:7). learners were provided with time to practice the stages of writing in the classroom. in the later stages of lesson 5, the teacher also provided time for the learners to write their introductions so that he/she could provide feedback. this indicates the social role of the teacher as the knowledgeable adult in the writing classroom, that is, the role of providing support and guidance through feedback. the following section summarises the findings of the study. writing approaches employed by teachers findings from the analyses of writing lessons indicate that the teachers in the five schools used three approaches to writing. most prevalent in the writing classroom was the process approach, which views writing as a process that consists of different stages such a planning/pre-writing (selecting a topic and planning what to say); drafting/writing (putting a draft version on paper); revising (making changes to improve writing); editing/proofreading (evaluation of written work for refinement and improvement); and publishing (presenting the work for the reader) (flower & hayes 1981). over and above the process approach this study found that the product approach was used by some teachers to supplement the process approach. in such cases the study showed that the teachers used the product approach to emphasise the structure, organisation and conventions of the different genres they were teaching. this supports second language development and helps learners to become efficient writers. data from lesson observations and analyses of writing lessons also reveal the use of the genre approach by the teachers to highlight the schematic structures of genres such as the friendly letter, narrative, speech writing and the invitation card (mpiti 2016). teaching strategies used by teachers findings from the analyses of the writing lessons indicate that the teachers mostly used a question and answer method to teach writing in the five schools. this method entails that the teachers control the interactions in the classrooms through a nomination-response cycle. without teacher nomination, the learners remain passive. on the flip side, the study observed that the teachers used this method to invite participation from different learners in the classroom. however, the study found that the types of questions that the teachers asked solicited one-word response or short responses. this meant that learners’ second language production remained limited. the study also found limited interaction among learners in the writing classrooms. even though the learners were seated in pairs, the classroom pedagogy did not promote learner-learner interaction, which is mostly favoured for the second language writing classrooms as it provides learners with an opportunity to learn together and to help each other. vygotsky’s (1978) socio-cultural learning theory connects learning and social interaction. limited peer learning in the writing classroom could mean that the teachers are not aware of the socio-cultural learning theory and the learning benefits of peer learning for the development of writing skills. code-switching as a pedagogical tool the findings from the analyses of lessons suggest that teachers creatively employed code-switching for pedagogical purposes. code-switching is defined differently by different scholars. maluleke (2019) defines code-switching as an alternative use of two or more languages in a sentence or speech. in south africa code-switching is a frequent and accepted mode of communication among bilingual or multilingual speakers. songxaba, coetzee and molepo (2017) observe that code-switching has become a natural aspect of bilingual or multilingual classrooms in south africa. in situations where switching to isizulu explained concepts better, the study found code-switching to enhance learners’ understanding and thus fulfil an academic purpose. the notions of using learners’ home languages to enhance cognition and development is iterated by vygotsky (1978). informed by these findings, the study suggests that code-switching is a useful learning resource in multilingual contexts where english is an obstacle to effective teaching and learning. conclusion the success or limitations of teaching writing depends on a number of factors. firstly, it depends on the teachers’ knowledge and understanding of writing and approaches to writing. in this study the teachers seemed to understand the process approach they are expected to implement in their classrooms. secondly, successful teaching of writing depends on the instruction methods. the teacher-centred pedagogy that was used in the selected schools undermined learner-learner interaction and peer learning, which are central to the socio-cultural theory that underpinned this study. the types of questions asked by the teachers only necessitated that learners provide one-word answers or short responses. this again provided limited second language output in the writing classrooms. the traditional classroom also promoted individual thinking and learning. in the absence of collaborative writing tasks and peer support, weak learners remained weak (badger & white 2000). collaborative activities allow learners to exchange ideas, write together, share feedback, support each other’s language development and develop social skills and confidence in their writing (badger & white 2000). in this aspect the study, therefore, suggests that teachers need to be trained on interactive classroom pedagogy so that they are able to transform their writing classroom into social and supportive writing spaces for learners. lastly, the study found code-switching to be inevitable in second language writing classrooms where the teachers and learners are competent in more than one language. the study, therefore, concludes that code-switching, where it affords teachers and learners an opportunity to enhance teaching and learning of writing, should be used (chikiwa & schafer 2016). it is suggested that future studies extend the findings to perceptions of teachers on the writing strategies they use in their writing classrooms. acknowledgements competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions all authors contributed equally to this work. ethical consideration university of zululand approved the ethical clearance: uzrec 171110-030 pgm 2017/423. funding information the research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or non-profit sectors. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not 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cambridge, harvard university press, ma. reading2.pdf � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �� � a circle of learning: �e impact of a narrative multilingualism approach on in-service teachers’ literacy pedagogies belinda mendelowitz languages division, wits school of education harriet davis languages division, wits school of education abstract: !is paper explores the impact of a narrative multilingualism approach on in-service primary school teachers who attended the advanced certi"cate of education (ace) languages course at the university of the witwatersrand in 2009. !e teachers wrote their own language narratives and were required to implement language narrative work in their classrooms. !e paper is a case study of three teachers’ implementation of multilingual narrative pedagogy, and explores the ways in which each teacher translates this pedagogy into their speci"c contexts. !eoretically, the paper attempts to deepen and extend narrative multilingualism as an approach to language teaching. !e notions of uptake and pedagogical translation are explored at various levels, namely, the teachers’ uptake of a multilingual narrative approach and the learners’ uptake. !e most striking aspect of the data, across all teachers, is the process and dynamics unleashed in the classroom space. !e process of sharing language narratives recon"gured dynamics in the classroom and opened up the classroom space for teachers and learners. !e interventions that the pedagogy of narrative multilingualism a#orded enabled the validation of linguistic diversity. in a society where xenophobia and linguicism is prevalent, such interventions can play a valuable role in changing attitudes and teaching learners to value di#erence. furthermore, previously silenced learners found their voices and participated more in class activities. introduction !is article builds on previous research which argues that narrative multilingualism is a powerful means of creating awareness of linguistic diversity and identity issues among "rst year pre-service teachers (mendelowitz and article rw& � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # # $ � � % & � ' & � � � � � ( $ � ) * 42 reading and writing ferreira, 2007; ferreira and mendelowitz, 2009). + in this article, we explore the impact of a narrative multilingualism approach on in-service teachers’ literacy pedagogies across subject areas with a speci"c focus on teachers’ and learners’ shi$ing attitudes towards multilingualism. by narrative multilingualism, we mean a pedagogy in which reading and writing narratives about language histories and practices are central to the learning process. in particular, this pedagogy creates a space for the sharing of language histories and language practices among learners and teachers through narrative writing and storytelling, as well as critical re%ection about self and other. we argue that it is highly productive to use the experiences of students as a starting point for exploring multilingualism. !e paper is a case study of three teachers’ implementation and translation, in their own teaching, of the multilingual narrative pedagogy that they experienced on their advanced certi"cate in education (ace) course into their speci"c classroom contexts. we use the term translation of pedagogy to signify that this is a creative process. in the same way that stories are transformed as we retell them, and meanings shi$ when we translate from one language to another, pedagogy is reworked when a teacher transfers it from one pedagogic space to another, to meet the needs of a particular group of learners. some translations may be more productive than others and there are times when the pedagogy may become ‘lost in translation’. !is paper thus aims to answer the following overarching question: what is the impact of a narrative multilingualism approach on in-service teachers’ literacy pedagogies? !e three central questions of this research are as follows: 1. how did teachers translate the narrative multilingualism pedagogy used in the ace course and implement it in their classrooms? to what extent did they replicate or creatively rework the pedagogy in their classroom implementations? 2. how did language narrative work impact on classroom space and dynamics between teachers and learners and amongst learners? 3. what are the implications of the teachers’ translations of this pedagogy for multilingual education? 1 !e ace course material was adapted by davis from an english one course for b ed pre-service teachers at wits university called “language and identity”(mendelowitz and ferreira, 2007; ferreira and mendelowitz, 2009). � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # # $ � � % & � ' & � � � � � ( $ � ) * 43belinda mendelowitz and harriet davis in the article that follows, we will answer these three key questions through unpacking our theoretical framework, and then applying those concepts to the analysis of our dataset. context and curriculum !e research is located in gauteng, which is a highly diverse linguistic area. !is diversity is in turn framed by a society in which english occupies a hegemonic position despite there being eleven o&cial languages and in which xenophobic attitudes are prevalent (with language being one of the key markers of identi"cation and otherness). more speci"cally, this research is located at the wits school of education and the students participating in the study are in-service primary school teachers who attended the ace “language in my world” course in 2009. !is course is part of a semester long module called languages a. !is module is designed to meet the needs of both foundation and intermediate educators. it aims to provide both cohorts with expertise in teaching language and literacy in multilingual, multicultural classrooms; and to enhance their understanding of the role of language in the subject classroom. however, this paper focuses speci"cally on the intermediate phase educators. !e students in this course are markedly di#erent from undergraduate students, as they are generally of mature age and received teacher training prior to 1994. all the teachers are multilingual, with english as a second or third language. !ey teach in a range of urban schools, including ex-model c schools, township schools, inner city schools, and informal settlement schools. !eir learners make up a multilingual and heterogeneous group, re%ecting the social diversity that is characteristic of gauteng communities. frequently, the language of learning and teaching (lolt) does not match the learners’ home languages. !is applies to both english as lolt and african languages as subject and lolt. !e focus of this paper is on the assessment task set for the “language in my world” course (see appendix a: assignment 1 brief, section b). !e students were asked to write their own language narratives (assignment 1, section a) and then in order to turn the gaze from their own world to that of the classroom, they were required to enact a similar narrative pedagogy in their own classrooms (assignment 1, section b). !e data from section b is the object of our analysis. � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # # $ � � % & � ' & � � � � � ( $ � ) * 44 reading and writing students were prepared for this assignment in a number of ways. by working through various exercises the students explored their own multiple social identities as well as their own use of di#erent languages in di#erent situations. !erea$er, they read examples of language narratives from a variety of contexts: south africa, australia and the usa. !ese served as models of narrative writing as well as points of comparisions with their own language histories. in addition, the instructors on the course modelled the practice of narrative pedagogy by sharing their own personal language histories with the students. �eoretical framework !eoretically, the paper attempts to deepen and extend narrative multilingualism as an approach to teaching about linguistic diversity (in the english as subject classroom and across other subject areas), and draws on the teacher learning literature to account for various levels of teacher uptake and translation. !is is done in the context of a broader discussion about multilingual education. narrative multilingualism: a narrative approach to multilingual education as multilingual education takes many di#erent forms, it is necessary at the outset to de"ne the version of multilingual language education that we are using. we are not working with the version in which di#erent languages are used as the language of learning; rather we are working with the a#ective dimension, promoting respect for di#erent languages through the use of a narrative pedagogy. !is works at three levels: the learner re-valuing his/her language, the learners valuing one other’s languages and the teacher re-valuing the learners’ languages. we call this approach narrative multilingualism, and it includes working with a#ect and critical re%ection in relation to one’s own language and the language of others. in a similar vein, phillion (2002) coined the term ‘narrative multiculturalism’ while conducting research on teaching and learning in a multicultural classroom in toronto. she concluded that the multiculturalism literature/ theory were less useful than she had expected and at times tended to “obscure rather than shed light on the details of multicultural life” (phillion, 2002: 275). !is realisation led her to rethink multiculturalism as: a fusion of narrative thinking and multicultural thinking ... a person – centred, experiential, relational way of thinking about researching and writing about the everyday experience of multiculturalism (phillion, 2002: 277). , . / 0 1 0 2 3 4 1 5 3 / 6 7 8 9 : ; < < = = 0 > ? 0 @ ? / 0 1 1 1 a = / b c 45belinda mendelowitz and harriet davis in the same way, we argue that students can access the richness of linguistic diversity narratively, through exploring their own narratives, those of fellow students and a diverse range of published narratives. !ere is a growing move towards the use of narrative in multilingual and multicultural education (clark and medina 2000, phillion 2002, busch, jardine and tjoutuka 2006, mendelowitz and ferreira 2007, ferreira and mendelowitz 2009) and more broadly as a powerful tool for teacher language education (carter 1993, ball 2003, mendelowitz 2005). !is move towards narrative is congruent with the view that multilingual practices are situated rather than abstract competencies. blommaert, collins and slembrouck (2005) rede"ne communicative/linguistic competence as a negotiation of linguistic resources that is deployed di#erently across di#erent contexts. an important aspect of this approach is an exploration of the relationships between languages and identity construction (gal, 2006).within this new paradigm of multilingualism, spaces have been opened for using personal narratives of language learning and language practices as tools for teaching and learning about linguistic diversity. clark and medina (2000) use literacy narratives to facilitate pre-service teachers’ understanding of literacy, pedagogy and multiculturalism in a predominantly homogenous context. !ey concluded that reading and writing literacy narratives enabled students to develop critical consciousness of literacy and diversity and to challenge and disrupt stereotypes about others (clark and medina, 2000, 73). in contrast to clark and medina, mendelowitz and ferreira (2007) have utilised a narrative approach for teaching highly diverse cohorts of pre-service teachers about multilingualism in south africa. !ey conclude that language narratives (student and published) are a powerful educational tool, generating the opportunity for students to engage with multiple voices and to (re-) position themselves in a multiplicity of perspectives and experiences. while the theoretical framework so far, has discussed narrative in the context of multilingual education, it is necessary to provide an overview of narrative as a way of knowing, and the features that we consider essential for both the conceptualisation of narrative multilingualism, and for the analysis of the data. it is to this section that we now turn our attention. narrative ways of knowing narrative as a ‘way of knowing’ has a number of distinctive features that are valuable for promoting teachers and learners’ engagement with linguistic diversity. as a ‘way of knowing’ it is provisional and tentative, creating space , . / 0 1 0 2 3 4 1 5 3 / 6 7 8 9 : ; < < = d 0 > ? 0 @ ? / 0 1 1 1 a = / b c 46 reading and writing for the expression of individual and personal experiences located in speci"c times, places, spaces and communities. it thus facilitates the telling and retelling of human experience in both individual and social contexts. we consider the ideas that follow to be applicable to both narrative writing and storytelling. narrative is a primary act of mind, a fundamental human capacity for making sense of the world we inhabit. !is capacity for ordering experiences into stories is universal, cutting across all cultures and historical periods. a fundamental aspect of telling stories is the emotional component in relation to time, space and action. kearney (2002) argues that narratives have a double role and provide the reader with a newly imagined way of being in the world. kearney also examines the implications of narrative imagination for national identities. he claims that a nation can resist insularity by drawing on its own narrative resources to imagine itself otherwise, through its own eyes and those of others. we are interested in the ways in which teachers are able to re-imagine their classrooms through narrative multilingual work. we will apply these key concepts to the analysis of the data. pedagogy !e theoretical strands discussed so far relate directly to narrative theory and multilingual education research. however, these strands cannot account entirely for the di#erent ways in which teachers translated their learning on the ace course into their individual classroom pedagogies. to fully understand these moves, we need a theory of teacher uptake, and translation in relation to the narrative multilingual approach. intake, uptake and re!ection in the teacher education literature this process of teacher learning and transfer is frequently referred to as intake and uptake (pennington, 1996). while intake refers to the process whereby accessible input is processed and internalised, it does not necessarily result in the application of those ideas to an individual’s teaching context. uptake, on the other hand, refers to internalised learning and the transfer of those ideas to an individual’s teaching context. pennington argues that re%ection plays an important role in enabling teachers to process the input at deeper levels so that it ultimately becomes part of the teacher’s worldview and classroom behaviour. a related issue is mastery of content knowledge as a prerequisite for productive uptake. it has been widely acknowledged in recent discussions about the literacy crisis in south africa, that teachers frequently lack substantial content knowledge and that this serves as a barrier to productive pedagogical practices (van staden and howie, 2010). , . / 0 1 0 2 3 4 1 5 3 / 6 7 8 9 : ; < < = @ 0 > ? 0 @ ? / 0 1 1 1 a = / b c 47belinda mendelowitz and harriet davis methodology !is research is a case study of three teachers’ translations of the narrative multilingual pedagogy from the ace course into their own classroom contexts. each item of data consists of the teacher’s description of their lesson, their re%ection on the lesson and examples of learners’ stories generated by the narrative approach. !e full assignment included the teachers’ own language histories, and we have drawn on these where relevant. we have also drawn on their second assignment, where relevant, to contextualise their teaching contexts. e we have used thematic content analysis, as well as elements of discourse analysis, to analyse the data. !e three teachers’ assignments were selected through a process of purposeful sampling. f !e full cohort consisted of one hundred and seventy students. davis selected thirty from the larger dataset. we then did a preliminary analysis of the thirty assignments, and selected the three that illustrated emerging themes and pedagogies that were representative of key trends in the full dataset. a detailed pro"le of each teacher is provided per case study. it should be noted that we made a decision not to edit the extracts from students’ assignments. !e description and analysis that follows engages with the "rst two research questions concerning teachers’ translation of the narrative multilingualism pedagogy into their classrooms and its impact on recon"guring the classroom space and dynamics. description and analysis of data case study 1 – “opening gates and walking tall”: inclusivity, cultural pride and accommodation. mashudu teaches grades six and seven at an ex-model c school in the suburbs. "irty seven percent of his learners are foreigners. his #rst language is tshivenda. mashudu’s description of his pedagogy was extensive. he used the ideas from the ace course as a springboard and then transformed them creatively. while the ace course exposed learners to language narratives from a variety of contexts, mashudu chose to use cultural practices associated with di#erent linguistic groups as an entry point into sharing language narratives. instead 2 in the second assignment teachers investigated teaching and learning at their schools as well as their schools’ language policies. 3 !e names of the three teachers have been changed. we obtained written permission from the three teachers to use their work for research purposes. g h i h j k l k m n o l p n j q r s t u v w w x y k y z k [ z j k l l l \ x j ] ^ 48 reading and writing of beginning the lesson with the telling of his own language narrative (as most teachers did), he began with a video of african dance set in botswana. hence, he provided learners with a di#erent kind of model and modality, but one which was suited to his purpose. he described the opening of his lesson as follows: i played a video of an african dance and then a$er the video i asked the class to sit in their ethnic groups. i then asked them to come up with a song or poem or a story from their own language. each group was then given a chance to show-case their work and interpret to the whole class their work. if it was a song they had to tell us what it is about. i chose this method because it makes everyone important and when they show case their work they feel important. !e video was my choice based on the fact that it was a wonderful piece of work which the botswana had done and everybody loves it and was proud of them. so i wanted to rub that pride to them and start to walk tall about their languages. mashudu’s sense of ownership and agency of his pedagogy is reinforced through his use of the phrase “my choice”. pedagogy at its most productive is about teachers exercising choices and how to implement ideas and mediate learning. mashudu provides convincing reasons for his choices. !ere are two di#erent discourses operating in this opening description: a cultural tourism discourse and cultural pride. how do these two discourses work together and what tensions arise between these two discourses? mashudu’s overarching aim is clearly to promote sharing, recognition, and celebration of learners’ diverse languages and related cultures. in order to do this he divides them into ethnic groups and invites them to “show case” an aspect of their language and culture. in his repeated use of “show case”, the discourse of cultural display for outsiders is reinforced. !is is reminiscent of ipi tombi _ in the seventies and other similar performances where african culture is put on display for outsiders. in addition, mashudu’s organisation of the class into ethnic groups, although well intentioned, assumes that there is a linear uncomplicated relationship between language, identity and culture in a heteroglossic society. running alongside the ‘cultural tourism’ discourse, the discourse of inclusivity is strongly developed. his choice of the botswana dance video is designed to appeal to all the learners, as “everybody loves it”. he may have intentionally not chosen a south african ethnic group, given the large number of foreigners in the class. certainly the aim of his method was to “make everyone feel 4 ipi tombi was a musical staged in south africa in the seventies that showcased african culture. ironically, it was performed in segregated venues for a white audience. g h i h j k l k m n o l p n j q r s t u v w w x ` k y z k [ z j k l l l \ x j ] ^ 49belinda mendelowitz and harriet davis important”. metaphors of cultural and linguistic pride abound such as “rub that pride in” and “start to walk tall”, and these reinforce his stated aim. both the metaphors suggest that learners’ home languages are frequently marginalised at school, and that this lesson is a starting point for bringing about change. !e learners were “fascinated” by the video and mashudu used this response as a starting point for discussions about learners’ feelings about their cultures and their understanding of culture as a concept. he explained: !is process then opened a gate for me to introduce the language. i then showed them that language is power and is one of the most important instruments we use to be heard and understood. !e metaphor of ‘opening a gate’ recurs in his response and refers here to opening up classroom space for sharing language and culture, and later he uses it to refer to the ace course as empowering him to open his mind to new possibilities: “i feel so empowered by wits to help me open up such a gate”. once the gate was open, learners worked in their groups to prepare a song, poem or story in their own language, which they then presented and translated. mashudu’s work raised really interesting questions about how to deal with difference productively, while the route he chooses runs the risk of perpetuating cultural and ethnic stereotypes. however, his detailed re%ection on the impact of his lesson suggests that this was not the case. mashudu focuses on both the short term and long term impact of his language narrative work, suggesting that the learning continued long a$er the lesson and that the impact of the lesson exceeded his expectations: “little did i think it will take such a step.” he commented: if i were given a chance to reintroduce this lesson i will still go the same way because it makes learners to open up and feel free to do the exercise. what i have learned is that when we used english only as language the learners feel that their languages are not important. !rough this lesson, learners were proud of who they are and i felt good that i have done something about it. in this re%ection, mashudu points towards the way the narrative pedagogy recon"gures the classroom space and frees the learners from the usual constraints, in terms of language, identity and self-expression. !e lesson facilitated the reversal of the usual language hierarchy, and made marginalised g h i h j k l k m n o l p n j q r s t u v w w x a k y z k [ z j k l l l \ x j ] ^ 50 reading and writing languages and related cultural practices visible. mashudu considers this shi$ both in terms of local languages and the languages of foreign students. he is particularly struck by its impact on foreign students, who have been rendered invisible, struggling silently, until this point: !e congolese have started to share their culture with us with pride. ... it has also helped the parents to come to school and o#er to teach the learners their di#erent dances of their ethnic group. mashudu also comments that the lesson gave students who do not usually participate an opportunity to do so. !is enabled him as teacher to get to know his learners at a di#erent level. he illustrates this point by providing vignettes/ retelling the stories of two students of marginalised languages. in his retelling of the quiet struggles of these learners, he expresses admiration for their courage and determination to overcome di&cult circumstances. !e manner in which he retells these stories speaks volumes, is free of any de"cit/ victim discourses and is framed by acknowledgement for their achievements. he comments: “i have seen an enthusiasm that i dearly need to see on day to day. i also notice that other kids envy those who understand other languages.” !us, the learners began to see multilingualism as a valuable resource. as a follow-up to this lesson, the learners introduced a daily practice of greeting and saying prayers in di#erent languages. he also notes a long term shi$ in classroom dynamics that extends into other learning area. other learners are now opening themselves to learn. i notice this when i interact with them during life orientation. !ey express how they are learning and what it feels like. !is is a powerful conclusion that highlights the relationship between narrative, a#ect, learning and re-imagining in a speci"c time and space. another striking aspect of this case study is the growing sense of agency and empowerment experienced by mashudu and his learners. it seems that the lesson not only freed the learners, but freed mashudu as a teacher. !ese themes are picked up and developed in di#erent ways in the other two case studies. g h i h j k l k m n o l p n j q r s t u v w w b k k y z k [ z j k l l l \ x j ] ^ 51belinda mendelowitz and harriet davis case study 2 – widening the circle of learning: transformation, social justice and diversity sello teaches grade six and seven at a small community school situated near the inner city. his home languages are zulu and siswati. sello is very innovative and has a transformation agenda which is evident in his response to assignment two where he had to do some research into language learning and teaching in his own school. he makes the following point about change: i mean this is a new era and things need to be done in line with today’s order especially in the education sector, we need a shi$ in mindset. he takes ownership of the narrative multilingualism pedagogy, "nding his own ways to use it as a tool for the exploration of his students’ language repertoires. working in a distinctive way is important to him. in describing teaching at his school he remarks that “pedagogy and teaching styles vary from one individual to another. as individuals we are but uniquely us and that’s a vital element that we all employ in our daily practices.” in the light of his commitment to shi$ his practice it is interesting to look at his translation of the ace narrative pedagogy in his classroom. he creatively reworked the ace language narrative activities by extending the scope, depth and levels of learner participation. sello re%ected on his reasons for presenting this topic in four di#erent activities: my reason for this was to ensure that all learners with di#erent abilities are catered for especially those who still struggled to write or describe in writing. in order to promote inclusivity, sello began the lesson by asking learners to introduce themselves and list which languages they speak in di#erent domains. he re%ects that this gave his learners an opportunity to learn about one another’s language backgrounds. !is knowledge is o$en hidden because the children come from a variety of language backgrounds. he explains that many of his learners are “asylum seekers mainly from west africa and lately from zimbabwe”. consequently, learners code-switch to accommodate one another, or else they tend to operate in the main languages of the school as “the nguni dialects especially isizulu and isixhosa are leading the pack”. c d e d f g h g i j k h l j f m n o p q r s s t h g u v g w v f g h h h x y f z { 52 reading and writing in the second activity he required the learners to create a visual representation of their shi$ing language usage in di#erent domains and the related role changes such as learners, sons, daughters and peers. in this instance he replicated the basic activity from the ace course. however, he extended it by asking each language group to choose one learner to present his/her languages diagram orally to the whole class. in the third activity sello extended the circle of learning to include contributions by parents and caregivers. he designed an assignment in which the learners were required to ask their parents/guardians to tell a traditional story in their mother tongue language. hence, the individual child became a researcher and meaning maker. on returning to class the learners had to retell the story. !ey were instructed to pay attention to the “use of gestures so their audience/class can follow”. !us, storytelling is seen in terms of display of knowledge and performance. !e learners were encouraged to make use of a number of ways to tell and share the story. !is phase of the lesson further increased the opportunities for learner participation as they had to “prepare two /three questions about the story i.e. the moral of the story or something about the characters”. in so doing, his learners were able to engage with other features associated with narrative work such as retelling, performance and active listening. furthermore, the posing of questions placed the learners into a situation where they could provide input and negotiate meaning. !is move has implications with regard to power relations because the teacher now becomes a facilitator as opposed to the more conventional transmitter of knowledge, and it creates spaces for the teacher and his learners to become co-constructors of knowledge. !ese initial oral introductory discussions helped the learners to share and gain con"dence with their material before moving on to the di&culties associated with the "nal (fourth) independent written re%ective activity. !is is an important issue in all languages classes but particularly in the multilingual classroom where additional language learners frequently "nd writing more di&cult than the oral mode. in this "nal activity sello instructed the learners to write their own language stories: i asked them to use their own individual languages diary to write about their daily language experiences. i gave them some questions as guidelines…they had to describe not answering the questions but using them as guidelines. c d e d f g h g i j k h l j f m n o p q r s s t f g u v g w v f g h h h x y f z { 53belinda mendelowitz and harriet davis sello has now transformed the ace version of this task, so that these stories are not histories or accounts of past experiences, but concentrate on the learners’ current language practices across domains. having discussed the various phases of his lessons, it becomes clear that he has created opportunities for learners to work with a range of meaning-making modes (i.e. oral, written, visual and performance modes) and resources and audiences (i.e. self, peers and, in the third and fourth activities, in a wider context with family). in the re%ection section of his assignment sello makes some very interesting comments on multilingualism. in this regard the task helped him to learn that children from soweto and alexander townships had “more diverse experiences than those living in and around the suburbs”. by this he is referring to the multilingual nature of gauteng townships, including the use of hybrid urban varieties. he realises that multilingualism is complex and multifaceted. while it facilitates accommodation and communication, he expresses concern about language loss. he noted that “as they told their stories i realized that most of them were struggling to express themselves in their own languages and they would every now and then code switch to english”. !e limited ability to communicate in their languages of their parents caused him to say that “as much as multilingualism has many advantages it also carries with a fair share of disadvantages.” !is issue is developed by nomsa, the third teacher in the study. nevertheless, the narrative a#orded sello a rich dynamic space in his multilingual classroom for recognizing and valuing individual language use, and the need to avoid discrimination on the basis of language. he expresses the hope that for his learners the task “demonstrated that all languages are important and there’s no language which is superior or inferior to others.” case study 3 – “from their stories i learned a lot”: multilingual matters, mismatches and linguicism nomsa teaches grade six in a school in the township of katlehong. her home language is zulu. while mashudu and sello provided rich details about their lessons and re%ections, nomsa‘s description of her pedagogy was somewhat thinner as was her re%ection on her pedagogy. however, she re%ected extensively on what she learned about multilingualism from the learners’ assignments and included interesting examples of learners’ language histories to illustrate these issues. c d e d f g h g i j k h l j f m n o p q r s s t o g u v g w v f g h h h x y f z { 54 reading and writing initially, nomsa worked tentatively and somewhat unimaginatively as she did not transform and redesign the introduction to the task. !e following account shows that she began via a conventional, transmission mode: i told learners to list the o&cial languages. a$er mentioning all of them i asked them to mention languages they know or speak at school and at home. she does not provide details about the learners’ responses to these questions nor does she provide details about how the task was mediated and whether it was organised in pairs or groups. however, she enthusiastically elaborates on her subsequent sharing of her language history with the learners and her hope that this process of sharing and modelling will inspire the learners to tell their stories. she explains: i told them my language history, where i came from, languages that i acquire when i grew up i.e. at school, neighbours, high school, tertiary and at work. i did this because i wanted them to be free when they told their language histories. nomsa recognises the power of modelling the storytelling practice and in so doing she hopes that the dynamic of the class will become more vibrant as she explains that she “wanted them to be free when they told me their language histories.” !ere appears to be a tension between her desire to create a narrative space in the classroom and her use of transmission discourses at the outset of the lesson, which positions the learners as passive subjects who are required to follow the teacher’s instructions, answer questions and list information. perhaps related to this ambivalent pedagogy, there is a suggestion that she did not satisfactorily achieve her desired outcome of making the learners “free”, as she says that the learners were “shy to talk in front of their classmates”. as a follow-up task to the oral telling of the learners’ language histories she gave them homework to write about their language histories. here she had more success as “others did very well they understood the topic even the shy ones managed to write… and i think i will do it again in future”. like sello she has seized the opportunity to widen the learning circle by including the parents as her learners were told to write their stories at home “with the aid of their parents”. in 2008, south africa experienced a series of violent attacks on foreigners. one of the features of these incidents was the use of language as a marker of the “other”. !rough this narrative lesson she learned about the link between language use and identity and the impact of linguicism (language prejudice) | } ~ } � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 55belinda mendelowitz and harriet davis in the wider social community on her learners. she comments: “from their stories i’ve learnt a lot. others lost their fathers because of xenophobic attacks. !is made them not even to concentrate in class.” she also shows that she also came to learn about linguicism in the narrower social world of the family. she elaborated on this issue: i realised that learners experience di&culties in situations whereby a learner have parents who speak di#erent languages i.e. mother is speaking zulu where else father is speaking shangaan, sotho, pedi or xhosa etc. one parent want to dominate at home like children have to speak his her language at the expense of the other one, and no one seems to compromise that put a child in a tight corner. she explores the result of this requirement that within the family, children need to speak to each parent in his or her language. she feels this creates confusion and she notes that learners “expressed heavily their feelings and disappointments. !at taught me a lesson as a mother to avoid putting kids in that embarrassing situation”. what is striking is her a#ective engagement with these issues, and her empathy for the challenges facing learners in multilingual landscapes. like sello, she seems to be concerned about the issue of power relations associated with language use as in her own language narrative she foregrounds some di&culties experienced beyond the context of school. for her, living in a multilingual society leads to confusion and a feeling of being alienated, inhibited and frustrated at the lack of accommodation from the speakers of other languages. my worst experience was in venda. i couldn’t communicate with them to socialize. i wished heaven could open and swallowed me. !ey didn’t compromise, they spoke venda all the time. !e notion of ‘compromise’ and ‘accommodation’ are clearly important to her as a way to facilitate productive communication in a multilingual society. she observes that her learners seem more able to ‘adjust themselves’ than their parents as “when playing with friends they speak other languages, that means they have to codeswitch in order to belong or accommodated in that speci"c group…at school they meet di#erent groups speaking di#erent languages.” !is contrasts with her own experience of alienation and exclusion that she experienced in venda. | } ~ } � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 56 reading and writing in terms of pedagogy, nomsa’s learning on the ace course seems to be at the intake phase, rather than the uptake phase. she has clearly internalised the course input, but has not reshaped it substantially for her classroom context. however, there is evidence of a signi"cant a#ective shi$ in her attitude towards the learners, based on what she has learned from their assignments. !is is likely to ultimately recon"gure her relationships with learners. her conclusion points in this direction: and i promised to help those that are traumatised due to xenophobia, and seek help for them in order to make them accommodated at schools and in the environment where they live. discussion of !ndings: comparisions across teachers it seems "tting to liken the process of pedagogical translation to eva ho#man’s (1989) account of learning to speak a new language as an immigrant in her seminal autobiography lost in translation: since i lack a voice of my own, the voices of other invade me as if i were a silent ventriloquist. ...i do not possess them yet; they possess me. ...eventually the voices enter me; by assuming them i gradually make them my mine. i am being remade, fragment by fragment, like a patchwork quilt; there are more colours in the world then i ever knew (ho#man, 1989: 220). ho#man raises issues about taking on something unfamiliar and the process of making it your own. !e initial phase may include replication, ambivalence, using this new resource with limited understanding; and a loss of control. !e second phase includes a shi$ towards ownership, and agency as well as new possibilities, access to new experiences and new ways of seeing. !e teachers engaged in a similar process and remade their pedagogy in di#erent ways, to di#erent degrees of re-invention. having provided a detailed case study of each teacher we now attempt to compare these processes of pedagogical translation and to account for the di#erences that surfaced. mashudu and sello clearly exemplify what is possible when teachers have a good grasp of content knowledge and language pro"ciency in the lolt (we refer here to the lolt of the ace course, english). however, while this is a necessary base for productive uptake, it does not guarantee a transformed and imaginative pedagogy. both went way beyond the ideas provided in the ace course in terms of activities, modalities and scope. so what was at play here? | } ~ } � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 57belinda mendelowitz and harriet davis what is salient to both teachers is that they took ownership of the pedagogy, and exhibited agency in their pedagogical translations. mashudu and sello set their own imaginations free from the usual institutional constraints, and in so doing were able to create a more %exible space for their learners. sello values the individual and personal element of pedagogy and believes that it is important for each teacher to have the space to develop their own unique style. similarly, mashudu views himself as exercising pedagogical choices. in terms of content knowledge, both teachers embrace the new ideas that they have been exposed to from the ace course and the subsequent lessons with their learners. !is is powerfully manifest when they report with conviction and pride on the recon"gured dynamics in their classrooms: the opening of a narrative space, increased participation and collaboration between teacher and learners, the validation of diversity and the sudden visibility of previously marginalised languages, and the new knowledge of learners’ linguistic histories and identities. nomsa provides an interesting contrast to mashudu and sello on a number of levels. she grasps fragments of the new pedagogy but is still uncertain and ambivalent. she replicated the pedagogy from the ace course at a fairly basic level and was unable to own and transform it. while she was disappointed with the limited responses from learners, her use of transmission and instructional discourses raises questions about her willingness to deviate from the teachers as sole authority script. however, despite these limitations, there were small shi$s in her classroom and her determination to repeat the lesson next year indicates that an idea has taken root. unfortunately, her re%ection provides no indication of how she will change her pedagogy to generate more learner participation and engagement. !is resonates with pennington’s point (1996) about the relationship between deep re%ection and teacher uptake, and conversely, limited re%ection and intake. conclusion !is article has shown that using a multilingual narrative approach to multilingual education has a potentially powerful impact on teachers, learners and in some instances, parents. we write this article in the hope that other teachers and language teacher educators will be inspired to continue the circle of learning in their own contexts, whether they might be in urban townships, in leafy suburbs or under a tree in a forgotten corner of the country. it is a rich and � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �   ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¥ ¦ § � § ¨ � © ¨ � � � � � ª « � ¬ ­ 58 reading and writing rewarding journey and one that can never be completed, given the dynamic nature of languages in south africa and the rapid rate of change. it has been a layered journey, starting with the language narrative work with pre-service teachers (mendelowitz and ferreira, 2007). each new cohort contributes something new to our evolving understanding of language attitudes, practices and experiences in south africa. we are as much teachers as learners in this process of developing and re"ning a narrative multilingual approach to multilingual education. !e ace cohort, which is this focus of this article, has contributed to our understanding of the constraints and bene"ts of translating this pedagogy into south african urban classrooms. !e article focuses on three teachers who are representative of key trends in the broader dataset. using a narrative multilingualism pedagogy on the ace course generated awareness of linguistic diversity which teachers translated into their own classrooms, in di#erent ways and to di#erent levels of innovation and transformation. !e case studies of mashudu and sello highlight what it is possible to achieve when teaching linguistic diversity using a narrative multilingualism approach. nomsa’s case study, while tentative in terms of pedagogical change, shows that powerful learning occurred which changed the way she viewed her learners. !is is an important step in beginning to create a narrative space in the classroom. references ball, a. 2003. us and south african teachers’ developing perspectives on language and literacy: changing domestic and international roles of linguistic gatekeeping. in black linguistics: language, society and politics in africa and the americas, s. makoni, g. smitherman, a.f. ball, a.k. spears (eds). london: routledge, 186-215. blommaert, j., collins, j. and slembrouck, s. 2005. spaces of multilingualism. language and communication, 25: 197-216. bruner, j. 1986. actual minds, possible worlds. cambridge: harvard university press. busch, b. 2006. language biographies – approaches to multilingualism and education and linguistic research. in language biographies for multilingual learning, b. busch, a. jardine and a. tjoutuku. cape town: praesa/ uct. carter, k. 1993. !e place of story in the study of teaching and teacher education. educational researcher, 22(1): 5-18. clandinin, j. and connelly, fm. 2000. narrative inquiry: experience and story in qualitative research. san francisco: jossey-bass. clark, c. and medina, c. 2000. how reading and writing literacy narratives a#ect preservice teachers’ understandings of literacy, pedagogy, and multiculturalism. journal of teacher education, january-february, 51(1): 63-76. delpit, l. 1995. other people’s children: cultural con!ict in the classroom. new york: !e new press. � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �   ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¥ ¦ ® � § ¨ � © ¨ � � � � � ª « � ¬ ­ 59belinda mendelowitz and harriet davis danielewicz, j. 2001. teaching selves: identity, pedagogy, and teacher education. new york: state university of new york press. ferreira, a. and mendelowitz, b. 2009. opening up the contact zone: an undergraduate english course as multilingual pedagogic space. english teaching: practice and critique, special issue: subject english in bilingual and multilingual settings: embracing the linguistic other, 8(2): 54-79. gal, s. 2006. migration, minorities and multilingualism: language ideologies in europe. in language ideologies, policies and practices: language and the future of europe, c. mar-molinero and p. stevenson (eds). basingstoke: palgrave, 13-28. ho#man, e. 1989. lost in translation. london: minerva kearney, r. 2002. on stories. london: routledge. mendelowitz, b. 2005. representing shi$ing selves: re%ections on teaching memoir writing to pre-service teachers. perspectives in education, 23(1): 15-24. mendelowitz, b. and ferreira, a. 2007. engaging narratives: using language biographies to facilitate learning. salals (southern african linguistics and applied language studies), 25(4): 487–504. norton, b. 1977. language identity and the ownership of english. tesol, 31(3): 409-429. phillion, j. 2002. narrative multiculturalism. journal of curriculum studies, 34(3): 265-279. pennington, m.c. 1996. when input becomes intake: tracing the source of teachers’ attitude change. in teacher learning in language teaching, d. freeman and j.c richards (eds). cambridge: cambridge university press. van staden, s, and howie, s. 2010. south african teacher pro"les and emerging teacher factors: !e picture painted by pirls 2006. reading and writing, 1(1) 47-60. � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �   ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¥ ¦ ¯ � § ¨ � © ¨ � � � � � ª « � ¬ ­ 60 reading and writing appendix a part 1: language in my world assignment 1 note that this assignment is made up of two sections: section a and section b. section a: writing your language history (50 marks) write a minimum of 3-4 pages if handwritten or 2 pages if you type. for typed essays please use 12 font and 1.5 spacing. now that you have read the language histories of mathakga botha, gloria anzaldua, richard rodrigues, and trevor chauke you will see that these writers had both positive and negative experiences. your task is to write your language history in which you describe both the positive and negative experiences you have had. !erea$er, you must re"ect on the meaning of these experiences and then you must analyse these experiences by looking back at the metaphor on ‘interrogation’ and also by making links to (indicate similarities and di#erences) to the language histories that you have read. when you describe, include information on any of the following that are relevant to your language history: which language or varieties of one or more languages you understand/ speak/read and write; which language or languages were spoken around you when you were a baby; in what language did you utter your "rst word; who in%uenced your language development in what language or languages did you learn to read and write; what language(s) did you use during your childhood; which learning experiences have been positive or negative and why you found them so; ° ± ² ± ³ ´ µ ´ ¶ · ¸ µ ¹ · ³ º » ¼ ½ ¾ ¿ à à á ´ ´ â ã ´ á ã ³ ´ µ µ µ ä å ³ æ ç 61belinda mendelowitz and harriet davis !e contexts in which you use di#erent languages or language varieties that you know; the language variety that you "nd comfortable or di&cult to use and why. section b learners’ language histories (50 marks) now that you have read a number of language histories or narratives and even written your own you might want to see how you can make use of a similar exercise in your own classroom. if you are an intermediate/senior phase educator ask your learners to write their language histories. obviously for intermediate/senior phase learners you would not expect as much detail and complexity that you put into your work. if you are a foundation phase educator ask your learners to tell you and the others in the class the story of their language history for this assessment complete the following tasks: write a description (1 paragraph) of how you presented this topic to your class (5 marks) re"ect (1 page) and then indicate how you think the task worked. comment on whether you would repeat it or adjust it in some way in the future.(10 marks) include a few of your learners’ language histories as examples of the work that you did. if you are working with foundation learners you might want to describe some of their stories.(5 marks) comment (1-2 paragraphs) on your learners’ responses. discuss "rstly what you as a teacher learned from the activity; and then discuss what you think the learners gained from the activity. (10 marks). acknowledgement we wish to thank our colleagues pinky mokoe and ana ferreira for their valuable feedback on this article. !anks also to our colleagues who taught on the ace course and provided us with copies of their students’ language narratives: lesley masterson and joanna parmenter. we are grateful to the three teachers who gave us permission to use their assignments for this article. ° ± ² ± ³ ´ µ ´ ¶ · ¸ µ ¹ · ³ º » ¼ ½ ¾ ¿ à à á µ ´ â ã ´ á ã ³ ´ µ µ µ ä å ³ æ ç 62 reading and writing ° ± ² ± ³ ´ µ ´ ¶ · ¸ µ ¹ · ³ º » ¼ ½ ¾ ¿ à à á ³ ´ â ã ´ á ã ³ ´ µ µ µ ä å ³ æ ç abstract introduction research methods and design data generation strategies discussion of the results conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) ann-may marais department of higher education, faculty of language education, north-west university, mahikeng, south africa elsabé wessels department of higher education, faculty of language education, north-west university, mahikeng, south africa citation marais, a-m. & wessels, e., 2020, ‘investigating the interpretation and implementation of policies that guide the teaching of reading in the foundation phase’, reading & writing 11(1), a277. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v11i1.277 original research investigating the interpretation and implementation of policies that guide the teaching of reading in the foundation phase ann-may marais, elsabé wessels received: 12 dec. 2019; accepted: 10 sept. 2020; published: 27 nov. 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: there is growing international awareness of the dividends of early reading success and the consequences of early reading failure. many studies have shown that the educational achievement of south african learners is unacceptably poor. there are shortcomings in the curriculum for english home language (ehl) which could be the reason for educators’ uncertainties and frustration with the teaching of reading. objectives: to identify policies that guide the teaching of reading and to investigate the management of their interpretation and implementation. method: a qualitative case study design was employed, underpinned by the sense-making theory which was used as a theoretical framework. three primary schools in the lichtenburg circuit were selected as study sites. participants were selected purposively and data generation methods included document analysis, observations and interviews. inductive data analysis was applied through the identification of patterns, categories and themes. results: the results indicate that the ehl curriculum document is the only policy document that teachers in this study used as a guideline for the teaching of reading in the foundation phase. however, this document lacks explicit guidance on how reading should be taught. conclusion: the main policy that guides the teaching of reading in the foundation phase is the ehl curriculum. however, participants do not always understand the stipulations of this document and make partial use of the guidelines because they do not know how to interpret them. the curriculum lacks step-by-step guidelines on teaching activities for reading. thus, we suggest that professional development should be based on the needs of the educators. keywords: curriculum and assessment policy statement; english home language curriculum; interpretation; implementation; policy; reading policies; reading; teaching reading; foundation phase. introduction there is growing international awareness of the dividends of early reading success and the consequences of early reading failure. a number of studies have shown in recent years that the educational achievement of learners in south african schools is unacceptably poor (buhlungu et al. 2007; wium & louw 2011). the 2014 annual national assessment (ana) results indicated an average of 56% for english home language (ehl) for south african learners in grade 3, while the ana results of 2015 clearly indicated that learners struggle to read with comprehension (van der berg 2015). van der merwe (2011) has levelled the criticism that educators lack depth and interest and do not have the knowledge required to teach reading. the former minister of education, pandor (2008), noted that educators must receive support to implement the different reading policies, starting with the knowledge and skills that are necessary for teaching reading. the department of education (doe) also stated that educators do not know how to interpret and implement the different reading policies so that they provide explicit instruction to learners (department of basic education [dbe] 2008). proper interpretation and implementation of reading policies is essential for successful teaching. the purpose of this article, therefore, is to discuss how educators interpret and implement reading policies in the foundation phase. the focus of this article is on reading and reading policies, and how educators interpret and implement these policies in the foundation phase. in recent years, the educational achievement of learners in south african schools has been reported as unacceptably poor (wium & louw 2011). in an attempt to provide educators in the foundation phase with guidance to assist beginner readers, the department of basic education (dbe), provincial departments and schools have several policies and guidelines in place, which are relevant to teaching reading. these policies include the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) ehl (dbe 2011) (with supplementary documents like the programme of assessment, moderation reports, intervention, timetable, reading and phonics programme, annual teaching plans [atps], lesson plans and examples of worksheets, monitor and control reports and planning). other policies include the national reading programme for grades 1 to 3 (dbe 2013), area office policies, subject policies and internal school policies. in total there were at least five official policy documents to address the teaching of language, including reading. in addition, the policies provide guidance with regards to learner support when learners do not meet the appropriate reading levels. the curriculum is defined and used according to cross and conn-powers’s (2014) definition that a curriculum is a big plan that connects all the content areas together in an integrated structure. in addition, the national reading panel (2000) identified the five principal components of reading instruction. these are phoneme awareness, phonics, reading fluency and text comprehension (cross & conn-powers 2014). the wits education policy unit (2005) comments that educators have poor knowledge, do not understand the content (subject), and make mistakes with concepts in their lesson plans. schools must take curriculum planning, interpretation and implementation very seriously because the curriculum gives guidelines about what must be taught in class and what must be covered on a term-by-term basis (wits education policy unit 2005). wessels (2011) points out that planning includes implementation of the policy, the learning outcomes and activities that are aligned with the outcomes, as well as the learning and teaching support material (ltsm). education reading policies are in place to assist educators in teaching reading in a comprehensive manner (wessels 2011). however, nehal (2013) states that few studies deal directly with this issue as it manifests in the foundation phase. educators must know and be able to apply a variety of teaching pedagogies when they teach reading. educators know about the different methods and pedagogies mentioned in the policies but have no idea how to interpret and use them in their teaching (nehal 2013). theoretical framework this study was underpinned by the sense-making theory which was used as a theoretical framework. according to root (2013) the sense-making theory describes processes of how people think about certain things, how they understand them and how the meaning they gain leads to action or inaction. the sense-making theory is used to explain the experiences of interpretation, implementation and management of reading policies (root 2013). dorner (2012) asserts that studies in sense-making focus on what policy means, not only from knowledge, beliefs and attitudes but from the context and the learning situation and interaction that happens in that context. coburn (2001) notes that educators play a crucial role in the sense-making process as they mould the policy in their professional teaching. the process contributes to the educators’ understanding and knowledge of the relationship between policy and classroom teaching (coburn 2001). the appropriate interpretation and implementation of reading policies are essential for successful teaching. the main aim of this research is to determine how educators interpret, implement and manage reading policies for the foundation phase. the following research questions guide this article: how are foundation phase reading policies interpreted, implemented and managed in the foundation phase? the main research question divided into the following sub-questions: firstly, what policies and documents guide the teaching of reading in the foundation phase? secondly, how do educators interpret, manage and implement these policies? research methods and design research design for this article, we used a qualitative mode of inquiry. adam (2014) states that qualitative researchers study the phenomenon in its natural setting, with the intention to dig deeper into the significance that the phenomenon of the research ascribes to the topic under research. qualitative research provides information about the human side of an issue, such as social justice, beliefs, opinions, emotions and relationships of individuals. an advantage of the qualitative approach is to provide in-depth information and a deeper understanding of the phenomenon (adam 2014). the multiple case study design: … explores a real-life, contemporary bounded system (a case) or multiple bonded systems (cases) over time, through detailed, in-depth data collection involving multiple sources of information and reports a case description and case themes. (creswell 2013:97) in this project, we used a multiple case study to gain a broader understanding of the findings and to compare the case studies with each other to see the similarities and differences. the multiple case study allowed a wider exploration of the research questions and enabled the development of a more convincing argument. research paradigm and philosophical orientation a paradigm provides a philosophical foundation, which includes a philosophical and analytical lens. the paradigm that we have chosen was drawn from an interpretivist point of departure. maree (ed. 2009) states that interpretivism is about a perspective on a specific situation. it is a way to analyse a situation, to gain insight into certain people or a group of people and to attach meaning to the situation. deeper meaning can be explored, the situation can be better understood and thereafter recommendations can be made (ed. maree 2009). reality must not be conflated with our experiences, but the conflation of ontology (what is) from epistemology (what can be known) is termed by bhaskar (1978:16) as the ‘epistemic fallacy’. zuber-skerritt and wood (2019) confirm that conflation can be explained as ontology (an assumption about the nature of reality). this stipulates the form and nature of reality and what can be identified about it as epistemology (which refers to the nature of human knowledge and understanding or knowing about this knowledge) and axiology (which refers to beliefs, values and worldviews). as a result of axiology, researchers should include their cultural background, social justice and personal values in the research process (boughey 2012). for this study, we believe that the link between the worldview and paradigm is that we learn from each other and how we see the world. indeed, the worldview and paradigm influence our thinking and behaviour through the different lenses, but because we shall have a better understanding of the phenomenon, everyone has something to contribute to the value of the study to see the bigger picture (wood 2020). setting three primary schools in one of the circuits in the north west province of south africa were identified. the selected schools are the only three schools in this circuit that use english as their language of learning and teaching (lolt). each school has one class per grade. the schools are government schools and have more or less the same number of learners, which is about 300. each class has between 45 and 60 learners. the research sites for this research were suitable because the sites provided the opportunity to select different educators from different schools as potential participants. the three english primary schools were deemed sufficient for in-depth information and as suitable for a qualitative case-study design. participants participants were chosen using purposive sampling. according to mcmillan and schumacher (2010), purposive sampling is based on the awareness of the researcher, who in this case chose the participants purposively so that they either reflect essential characteristics of the population or are familiar with the phenomenon. jackson (2003:19) defines sampling as ‘decisions about where to conduct the research and whom to involve, an essential part of the research process’, and adds that sampling ‘usually involves people and settings as well as events and processes’. the logic of purposeful sampling is that a case study is in depth and this gives many insights into the topic (mouton 2003:135). the sample allowed different perspectives on the interpretation and implementation of reading policies. the participants in this study were all foundation phase educators from the three identified schools in a circuit in the north west province. there was only one class per grade from grade 1 to grade 3 in the foundation phase in each school. this means that we interviewed all the educators from the school who taught foundation phase (grade 1 to grade 3). the group of participants in this study was nine educators, one head of department (hod), one principal and two subject advisors. in total, the number was 13 educators involved in the foundation phase. one educator from each grade from grade 1 to grade 3 in the foundation phase in each school, the hod of the foundation phase (one hod per school), one principal per school and two subject specialists for ehl in the circuit. data generation strategies the data generation methods had to be in line with qualitative research, therefore document analysis, observations, field notes and interviews were used. document analysis documents of all types can help to uncover meaning, develop understanding and discover insights relevant to the research problem (wessels 2011). adam (2014) notes that document analysis is often used in combination with other qualitative research methods as a means of triangulation, to provide a confluence of evidence that breeds credibility (adam 2014). therefore, triangulation ensures the credibility of this qualitative research project. the data received from the different sources – document analyses, observations, interviews and field notes – were used together to add credibility, objectivity and validity to the interpretation of the data. all dbe documents and policies, including the internal school reading policies and documents, were looked at. the part of the educators’ language file dedicated to reading was investigated to establish if the work done in the schools was according to prescribed policies. the programme of assessment, work schedules, a reading programme, formal tasks (preand post-moderation), a list of ltsm, a timetable, daily or weekly preparations, minutes of meetings and interventions were looked at. the document analysis offered information about the educators’ application of policies, about what kind of policies and documents foundation phase educators use with regard to reading, as well as information about how the educators interpret and implement these policies and documents. observations the observations took place in a natural setting in the relevant classrooms. an observation schedule was drawn up to observe the teaching of reading in the classroom. the time allocation was arranged so that observation could take place during the language periods on the timetable and the dates of site visits were scheduled according to the participants’ convenience, the school’s schedule, and the researcher’s availability. the researcher visited each school for 2 days. during these visits, the grade 1, 2 and 3 educators’ teaching practices with regard to reading were observed to establish how these practices align with guidelines in the relevant policies and documents. the classroom was observed during the language period when reading was taught. the observations included the classroom environment (posters on the wall, language in the class) and resources available (big books, reading books, flashcards and other appropriate ltsm). the participants were also observed to determine whether they made use of different kinds of reading and assessment strategies. these observations informed the study on whether the educator interpreted and implemented the reading policies and documents that guide reading in the foundation phase. the researcher observed and took detailed field notes during the related lessons, in particular the reading lessons. interviews bourne (2003:19) notes that ‘interviews allow the interviewer to probe areas of interest as they arise during the interview’. it establishes a confidential relationship, making it an appropriate method to obtain information from an interviewee. the natural setting was the classrooms with the aim being to obtain first-hand information about the activities that take place in these environments. interviews were conducted with educators from grades 1, 2 and 3. the interviews took place individually and face-to-face. the interviews were semi-structured and where the questions were predetermined, the interviewer allowed flexibility. flexibility ensured that the participants could talk freely as the interviewer did not stick rigidly to the predetermined questions. a semi-structured interview with open-ended questions was chosen to create an opportunity to probe further to allow more clarifying, probing and cross-checking questions. an interview guide was used to guide the researcher and to probe some areas of interest and an appropriate method to lead the interview procedure. the recording of the interview data took place by means of note taking and audio recording as recommended by huberman and miles (2002) and de vos et al. (2006). furthermore, the interviews were conducted privately in the appropriate classrooms. interviews with the educators took place after observation. the observations allowed for ‘reading between the lines’ and the collection of data that would otherwise have been lost. all educators elaborated in detail on each question, irrespective of whether it would expose limitations in their schools or hod. the interview, even if it is time-consuming (an hour per participant), is one of the most critical data generation tools as it provides in-depth information and provides for follow-up questions if the initial question allows (mckeown & beck 2006:299). field notes the researcher did not only record what was seen and heard but also reflected on additional activities like how the learners responded to the teaching and whether the learners paid attention during class visits. the researcher made use of field notes to document observations and preliminary interpretations to follow up on during the interviews (mcmillan & schumacher 2010). data analysis inductive analysis was used in this study (mcmillan & schumacher 2010). creswell (2014) describes inductive analysis as follows: ‘qualitative researchers build their patterns, categories, and themes from the bottom up, by organizing the data into increasingly more abstract units of information’. this inductive process illustrates working back and forth between the themes and database until a comprehensive set of themes has been established. information from the observations and field notes, documents and interview transcripts was utilised to gain a better understanding. a systematic process was followed to analyse data by recording data, transcribing data and coding data into themes and categories. in the case of data generation through interviews, this meant that once the interviews had been completed, the data were analysed. the interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim (creswell 2014). the study followed a systematic process to analyse data by recording data, transcribing data and coding data into themes and categories. once the data had been coded, the data were organised according to the themes and categories. in accordance with standard, accepted principles of ethical research procedures, all relevant authorities were contacted and the research took place with the informed consent of all participants. all participants took part in the research voluntarily and they could withdraw at any time. in addition, the individual’s right to privacy was respected. as stressed in the consent forms, all participants took part in the research project voluntarily and the privacy of the individual and school was respected. confidentiality and anonymity were maintained at all times. the researcher also maintained academic objectivity at all times. trustworthiness was guided by bush (2012:81–86), who points out that different aspects should be considered when investigating the reliability, validity and triangulation of a qualitative study. furthermore, triangulation means that the researcher compares many kinds of evidence to determine the accuracy of the phenomena, in other words, to cross-check the data to establish trustworthiness. wood (2019) suggests that it is essential that the research should be confirmable. the extent to which the researcher can support the research, contributes to establishing whether the research is credible. the legitimacy of the interview was assured with a clear conceptualisation, the purposeful design of an interview schedule, as well as a set plan or protocol to conduct the interview. ethical consideration permission to conduct the research was obtained from the authorities and ethical clearance was granted by the nwu institutional research ethics regulatory committee (irerc) nwu-00386-16-a9, which attested that the study adhered to the requirements for informed, voluntary consent, confidentiality and measures to ensure no harm was caused to participants. discussion of the results three primary schools in one of the circuits in the north west province of south africa were part of the project. these schools have english as their lolt. all of the participating educators had the formal qualifications needed to teach reading in the foundation phase, except for one participant at school a. school a is a full-service school situated in a quiet suburban part of lichtenburg. it is located in an area that was formerly exclusive to whites and was the only english medium school in the old dispensation. school a has 320 learners and 14 staff members. the staff consists of the principal, 10 educators teaching from grade r to grade 7, a grade r assistant, a learner support educator and the administrative assistant (aa). school b is situated in a suburban area outside of town. school b has 271 learners and is a full-service school. the staff consists of nine staff members: the principal, eight educators teaching from grade 1 to grade 7 and the aa. school c is situated in a suburban area of lichtenburg. school c has 342 learners and is a full-service school. the staff consists of 12 members: a principal, 10 educators teaching grade r to grade 7, a grade r assistant and two aas. each school has one class per grade. the schools are government schools and have more or less the same number of learners, which is about 300. the data and discussion thereof will follow subsequently. two main themes with sub-themes were identified. the first theme involved the interpretation of policies and documents that guide the teaching of reading in the foundation phase. three sub-themes were identified; these are: reading policies used in the foundation phase, weaknesses of the caps ehl document (dbe 2011), analysis and interpretation of educators’ ehl files. the second theme entailed the implementation of policy documents, and two sub-themes were identified: skills and knowledge educators need to implement reading policies and other documents, as well as teaching methods and strategies educators use to teach reading. theme 1: interpretation of policies and documents that guide the teaching of reading in the foundation phase with regard to reading policies used in the foundation phase, the participants indicated that the caps ehl document (dbe 2011) was the primary policy applied in the classrooms to guide the teaching of reading in the foundation phase. this was confirmed during the classroom observations, as educators were mostly using the caps ehl document in class. although there were other support documents like a programme of assessment, dbe workbooks, atps and internal reading policies available, there was consensus among all of the participants that the caps document was the primary policy that guided the teaching of reading in the foundation phase. the following extract represents the point of view of the educators: ‘i think only caps, but there are other documents like readers, big books and atps that we must have and also follow what the subject advisors give to us.’ (school a, p5) another grade 1 educator said: ‘i struggle to manage all the assessments, documents and reports. the administrative part of teaching is killing me. i sometimes feel overwhelmed and hardly have time to support learners who need support.’ (school c, p7) weaknesses within the curriculum and assessment policy statement document the document analyses and interviews exposed that the caps ehl document (dbe 2011) lacks explicit and systematic guidance of the ‘how’ to teach reading in the foundation phase classroom. the caps ehl is explicit about the ‘what’ of teaching reading, for example the time allocation, activities like shared reading, independent reading, group-guided reading and paired reading. however, the participants agreed that the caps ehl document lacks explicit information on the implementation of the different reading strategies. they responded as follows: ‘there is no clear guidance on how to implement reading, i follow my own methods and hope that it is on the correct path.’ (school a, p2) the grade 2 educator stated that: ‘there are too many methods in the caps document and this makes us confused about what to teach. the methods are there but not clear on how to use the methods.’ (school b, p1) it is evident from the extracts that the caps document, as the main policy document guiding reading, lacks proper guidance on ‘how’ to implement the actual teaching of reading. the educators made use of their own methods and this showed some differences and inconsistencies in the approach to the teaching of reading. all participants mentioned that caps ehl lacks explicit guidelines on how to teach reading. however, the educators in school a did not have problems with interpreting and implementing the caps ehl document in their classrooms, while school b and school c educators struggled to interpret and implement the caps document. however, there are two essential issues in the case of the three schools studied: on the one hand, there was the general observation that the caps document lacked clarity on ‘how’ to interpret and implement the policy, which was acknowledged by all the educators across the three schools. this is in line with ekpiken and francis (2015) who observed that most of the problems and crises with education are issues with the policy itself and the interpretation and implementation thereof. this confirms that the caps ehl document lacks guidance on methods and strategies to teach reading. the caps ehl document provides the components of reading and assessment, but no methodology on ‘how’ to use these for teaching reading. this makes it difficult for teachers to translate content into practice. haris and ghazalie (2016) note that to achieve success, the curriculum must be interpreted and implemented appropriately to ensure that learners understand and master a lesson. this will result in changed behaviour, improved effectiveness, quality education and the promotion of learners. arguably, it is difficult for learners to understand the lesson content when educators themselves do not understand the policy content and implementation thereof (haris & ghazalie 2016). analysis and interpretation of educators’ english home language files all the schools had subject files for ehl, which included planned reading activities from grade 1 to grade 3. a detailed analysis of the educators’ home language files provided information about each school’s internal policies, the levels of planning involved in teaching reading, as well as assessment practices. these files should also entail the schools’ internal policies. an interesting observation was that the participants from school a all contributed to drawing up internal school policies like subject policies and foundation phase policies that are aligned with the caps documents for different subjects. the educators from school a collaborated to discuss the various caps documents and then drafted internally to assist and guide them with implementation. the hod from school a made sure that educators use the caps document to guide their teaching of reading and that all the supplementary documents stipulated by the subject advisors are implemented, even if they were not mentioned in the caps document, and also used an internal reading policy. school b and school c did not make use of any internal policies. the foundation phase educators from school a had an extra file for the planning of that week. all the educators did weekly planning with examples of the work that should be done for that week, including homework. these files are submitted to the principal every monday for moderation: ‘we submit every monday our weekly prep to the principal, he checks and signs it, there must be examples of the weeks’ worksheets and also homework included.’ (school a, p3) the hod commented that: ‘weekly planning must be done according to the caps document, and this is where the educators interpret and implement the caps document into their daily teaching and then send to the principal to be signed; if there is no planning, how can the educator teach and do not have all relevant resources and copies ready for that period?’ (school a, p5) the educators from school b did their planning to the best of their knowledge and they sent it to another educator to sign the plan, which indicates a level of initiative in the absence of a hod. although the educators may not have the right knowledge to provide guidance, signing each other’s work suggests a certain level of quality assurance and a step towards making sure that the work was covered as stipulated in the caps document. however, the absence of managerial support added a significant challenge to the implementation of the reading policies. the foundation phase educators from school c did weekly planning according to the caps document. examples of the work for that current week were included. there was no evidence that any person signed the weekly preparation: ‘i just do my preparation according to the caps document and then get worksheets and resources according to that.’ (school c, p3) according to the caps document, educators must use informal and formal assessments. the educators made use of both baseline and continual assessment, using the assessment strategies prescribed by the caps document, for example oral assessment, reading and written tasks. before the educator from school a can do any assessment activity, the hod has to moderate it to see if the task fits the atps and curriculum coverage. the educators complained that oral (speaking) and reading was taking very long and there was not enough time to do it properly. they paid more attention to the writing part of the assessment: ‘assessment is divided into different parts like first sounds, reading (individual reading and group-guided reading) and lastly, the written part, but oral and reading take very long because it is with each learner individually.’ (school a, p2) there was no moderation at school b because there was no hod. the educators mentioned in the interviews that reading and oral take much time and there was not enough time to use all the different assessment strategies. ‘oral and reading are a problem because it takes much time to complete it, and you only work with one child at a time.’ (school b, p4) there was no preand post-moderation in school c because there was no hod. assessment guides the educator to see what level the learners in the class are at and what they grasp so that the things they struggle with can be revised. interpretation of the curriculum and assessment policy statement document the participants did not complain much about the interpretation of the caps documents in connection with reading. however, they complained about the lack of clarity in the caps ehl document on how to teach reading, as this influences their daily teaching activities: ‘if the authority “up there” must come to our level themselves and interpret and implement all their prescriptions, they will realise that it is impossible.’ (school c: p3) ‘there is no clear methods or instructions on how to teach reading, it is like a “guessing game” and not sure if what i “guess” is correct.’ (school a, p3) the interpretation of the caps document determines largely how policies are implemented in the classroom. research (dorner 2012; dunn 2010) indicates that the implementation of policies relies on the interpretation of the policy. according to dunn (2010), a key aim of the curriculum is to provide more specific guidance for educators to implement and interpret the policy. however, dunn highlights a number of the terms in the caps document that need to be clarified to enhance the educators’ understanding. as early as 2005, the wits education policy unit commented that educators make mistakes with the concepts in their lesson plans because the educators lacked understanding and were in need of support and training. the educators in this project reported that they did not receive baseline training at the beginning of the year, or during the year. making sense of the curriculum before being able to implement it is important. colebatch (2014) explains that the sense-making theory implies that people should make sense of different concepts and knowledge before they will be able to implement new knowledge. in addition, how people understand policies is influenced by how they understand the different interpretations, professional training, institutional positions, values, experiences and how they ‘make sense’ of the policies. thus, if educators cannot make sense of the policy, they will not be able to implement it. theme 2: implementation of policies and support documents since theme 1 indicated the limitations of the capf ehl document, as well as educators’ inability to make sense of the policy documents, theme 2 focused on the implementation of the policy document, despite the two mentioned factors. skills and knowledge educators need to implement reading policies the findings indicated that educators needed skills and knowledge to implement reading policies and other supporting documents. although the educators tried their best, they, as well as the hods, indicated that they needed professional development to support them with the implementation of the policies and support documents: ‘the department must arrange in-depth workshops focus on reading, that the hods can train the educators and assist them when there were problems and also can send a whole class to the next grade to know that all of the learners can read on an appropriate level.’ (school a, p5) ‘yes, i try my utter best, i know like the resources we lack and we can make a plan to make it, but there is no time.’ (school a, p2) ‘yes, i think i have, but training would assist in developing myself to be more skilled in reading. we maybe have once a year of training on reading.’ (school a, p4) teaching methods and strategies educators use to teach reading the participants made use of different techniques, tools and strategies that are suitable for teaching reading as prescribed by the caps document. in school a, the class observation showed that the three foundation phase educators made use of the caps document and the dbe workbook. at school b and school c, the educators made use of shared reading and individual reading during class observation, no group-guided reading or paired reading. with regard to ltsm, most participants stated that they make use of pictures, flashcards of sight words, which are later used on the wall. the methods that the educators used were in line with the caps document because the caps document lacks explicit methodology on the ‘how’, according to the interviews. ‘the caps document is the most frustrating policy ever, we do not have a work programme to teach and find better ways to teach the learners. we have received no training at all for reading, just overall training for all four subjects in the foundation phase.’ (school a, p4) ‘teaching aids will assist with teaching reading, most educators do the lecturing methods to the little ones, they must refrain from that and use a methodology that will assist them, but the caps document is silent as far as methodology is concerned. educators must try to unpack the content and to turn it into activities, classroom management is the main problem and this is a skill that educators lack.’ (subject advisor) this suggests two issues: firstly, that the caps document lacks clarity in terms of the methodology to teach reading and, secondly, that educators are expected to interpret the content by themselves without explicit guidelines on how it should be done. yet, in all the classrooms, the participants only made use of direct teaching methods with learners seated in pairs at a table facing the chalkboard. the seating arrangement and the size of classrooms constrained the educators to the one teaching method that they were observed using. the learners could not work in groups because of how the educator arranged the classroom, as well as the overcrowding. conclusion the educational achievement of learners in south african schools is alarming and educators’ inability to interpret and implement the reading policies is often blamed (dbe 2008). thus, the motivation for this article was to report how educators interpret and implement the caps, assessment programmes and atps, to plan the teaching of reading in the foundation phase. the findings indicated that educators mainly use the caps document and dbe workbooks to teach reading in the foundation phase. a weakness about the caps document revealed during the document analysis is that caps is clear about ‘what’ to teach, but lacks clear, directive guidelines on ‘how’ to teach reading. therefore, educators are not sure how to interpret the caps document as part of their daily teaching. although the caps document mentions group-guided reading, paired reading, shared reading and individual reading, the findings revealed that independent reading and shared reading in class occurs most of the time, yet group-guided reading and paired reading do not take place. a possible reason might be overcrowded, under-resourced classrooms. based on these findings, and in line with ndou (2015), who comments that educators can implement the policies in any way they want to, we want to suggest that training for in-service teachers should focus on exactly how reading should be taught in the foundation phase. the atps provide detailed information about the assessment tasks, yet this needs to be supplemented by step-by-step guidance on exactly how the five components should be taught in each grade. educators need to have thorough, research-based knowledge on how to teach reading, but also on how to support learners who do not reach their benchmarks in reading. therefore, we recommend that the onset of in-service teacher development should be a needs analysis of the educators because this project indicated that teachers do not know how to interpret the policy documents in the best interest of foundation phase learners. acknowledgements first of all, with enormous pleasure, i express my deep indebtedness to my supervisor and co-supervisor, mentors and friends, prof. pontso moorosi and dr elsabé wessels. their exceptional guidance, support, friendship and enthusiasm were critical for my studies and it will inspire me throughout my career. they both taught me consciously and unconsciously, and the joy and enthusiasm they have for research was contagious and motivational. i would like to thank my mother and father, ann and bushy fourie. both have instilled many admirable qualities in me and provided me with a good foundation in life. i would like to thank all my friends and family, especially my parents-in-law, marthie and lood marais, for all their help, love and encouragement. i must acknowledge, with tremendous gratitude and deep thanks, my loving, supportive, encouraging and patient husband, chris marais. he has been there for me in the most difficult periods, always making them bearable. with his love, patience, support and unwavering belief in me, i have been able to complete this journey. i thank the national teaching awards of 2013 for my bursary from etdp seta towards further study. this motivated me to enrol for my master’s degree. thank you for this opportunity. i also thank my colleagues at lichtenburg primary school for their support and understanding during this time. above all, i owe all thanks to the almighty god for granting me the wisdom, health and strength to undertake this study and enabling me to complete it. competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interest exists. author’s contributions e.w. acted as supervisor with a-m.m.’s masters degree and gave input as co-author while a-m.m. wrote most of the article. funding information this 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university, potchefstroom. wits education policy unit, 2005, the state of teacher professionalism in south africa, south african council for educators (sace), johannesburg. wium, a. & louw, b., 2011, ‘teacher support – an exploration of how foundation-phase teachers facilitate language skills’, educational journal (sajcd) 58(2), 14–17. wood, l., 2019, participatory action learning and action research: theory, practice and process, routledge, london. wood, l., 2020, participatory action learning and action research, routledge, london. article information authors: samuel andema1, 2 maureen kendrick1 bonny norton1 affiliations: 1department of language and literacy education, university of british columbia, canada2department of language and communication, kyambogo university, uganda correspondence to: bonny norton postal address: 2125 main mall, vancouver, bc, canada, v6t 1z4 dates: received: 08 aug. 2012 accepted: 27 feb. 2013 published: 22 apr. 2013 how to cite this article: andema, s., kendrick, m. & norton, b., 2013, ‘digital literacy in ugandan teacher education: insights from a case study’, reading & writing 4(1), art. #27, 8 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v4i1.27 copyright notice: © 2013. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. digital literacy in ugandan teacher education: insights from a case study in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • theoretical framework • research site and research team • research methods • data analysis and research findings    • information and communication technology and educational policy    • information and communication technology and educational practice    • teacher educators’ response to information and communication technology training    • information and communication technology use for professional reasons    • information and communication technology use for personal reasons    • challenges teacher educators face in using information and communication technology       • limited access       • small computer lab       • electricity outages       • inadequate training       • irrelevant material • egranary as a pedagogical resource • ethical considerations • limitations of the study • conclusion and implications • acknowledgements    • competing interests    • authors’ contributions • references • footnote abstract top ↑ this case study investigated the relationship between policy and practice with regard to advances in information and communication technology (ict) in ugandan teacher education. our qualitative study, conducted in 2008, focused on the experiences of six language teacher educators in an urban primary teachers’ college (ptc). we also drew on insights from an interview with the then ugandan minister of ict, doctor ham-mukasa mulira and the national ict policy. whilst the minister expressed the hope that technology would transform ugandan education, our findings suggest that the success of ict initiatives depends largely on whether local conditions support such initiatives. despite their enthusiasm for digital technology, the participants were challenged by the expense of internet connectivity, inadequate training, power outages, and culturally irrelevant material. we suggest that ict policy should address teacher educators’ use of digital technology across diverse sites, and that innovations such as the egranary portable digital library might be particularly useful in poorly resourced educational institutions. introduction top ↑ information and communication technology (ict) is taking root steadily in the wider ugandan society (andema 2009; edejer 2000; mutonyi & norton 2007; nawaguna 2005). in 2006 the ugandan government launched a national ict policy framework that envisioned a uganda where national development broadly and human resource development more specifically would be achieved through efficient application of ict and digital literacies (the republic of uganda 2006). in that regard, several initiatives have been launched to promote digital literacy and ict integration in educational institutions across the country. unfortunately, to date, very little is known about the real extent to which the ict policy in education has promoted digital literacy amongst teachers and teacher educators so as to improve pedagogical practice (andema 2009; james 2004; mutonyi & norton 2007). researchers have stressed the need for detailed empirical studies into the ongoing ict initiatives in schools and communities to inform policy and curriculum development, taking into account the social, cultural and political histories of different local settings (mutonyi & norton 2007). mutonyi and norton (2007) assert that the collection of empirical data is crucial for policy makers and curriculum developers to allow them to better understand how people are accessing, adopting and using ict in particular contexts. our study, situated at bondo core primary teachers’ college1 (hereafter bondo core ptc) in uganda, addresses the relationship between educational policy and pedagogical practice. we frame our analysis within the new literacy studies (nls) theoretical framework as explained in the next section. theoretical framework top ↑ the new literacy studies theoretical framework was originally introduced in the works of gee (1996) and street (1984), but it is now widely associated with the work of scholars from a range of disciplines who are interested in the relationship between literacy practices and the context in which particular literacy practices are performed (prinsloo & baynham 2008). barton and hamilton (2000) highlight the central characteristics of an nls perspective as follows:• literacy is best understood as a set of social practices; these are observable in events that are mediated by written texts. • there are different literacies associated with different domains of life. • literacy practices are patterned by social institutions and power relations and some literacies are more dominant, visible and influential than others. • literacy practices are purposeful and embedded in broader social goals and cultural practices. • literacy is historically situated. • literacy practices change and new ones are frequently acquired through processes of informal learning and sense making as well as formal education and training. • the ways in which people use and value reading and writing are themselves rooted in conceptions of knowledge, identity and being. (p. 8) barton and hamilton’s (2000) description of the nls perspective above provides a rich and expanded definition of literacy that challenges earlier theories of scholars such as goody (1977) who tended to present literacy as a neutral and autonomous technology of modernity. new literacy studies seeks to shift our gaze from the limited psychological accounts of literacy to ones that capture the complexity of literacy practices interwoven into local ways of life. street (1984) posits that the technologies of reading and writing (and, by extension, digital literacies) are best studied in the context of the social, cultural, historical, political and economic practices of which they are a part. within the ugandan context, our overarching goal has been to understand how the teacher educators ‘take hold’ of the new literacies and adapt them to achieve their goals. the nls provided us the best lens through which to examine the policy context, and to document the teacher educators’ accounts of their lived experiences with the use of digital technologies to better understand the challenges and possibilities of ict integration in ugandan teacher education. research site and research team top ↑ our study is part of a larger collaborative research project on digital literacy and multilingual education in east african schools and colleges, being carried out by a team of researchers from the university of british columbia in canada, in collaboration with east african colleagues. of increasing interest in this collaborative study is digital literacy in the ugandan context (norton, jones & ahimbisibwe 2011; norton & williams 2012). this article specifically reports on a qualitative case study carried out at bondo core ptc by the three authors: one ugandan researcher (andema) and two canadian researchers (norton and kendrick). norton and kendrick have been conducting languageand literacy-related studies in east africa for over 10 years. andema, a teacher educator at kyambogo university in uganda, was an ma student at the university of british columbia, canada. norton and kendrick co-supervised him.bondo core ptc is part of the network of 10 national teachers colleges (ntcs) and 48 primary teachers colleges (ptcs) under the supervision of kyambogo university that oversees teacher education in uganda. it is the largest primary teachers’ college in uganda, with a student and staff population of 800 and 42 respectively. in addition to its regular programmes, the college has introduced ict in order to promote digital literacy amongst students and staff. the course covers areas such as: introduction to computers and the internet, microsoft office word®, excel®, powerpoint®, website design and project-based learning. research methods top ↑ this was a descriptive qualitative case study that sought to document the personal accounts of how six teacher educators in one primary teachers’ college viewed their use of digital resources to improve pedagogical practice. the six core research participants included five women and one man, ranging in age from 34–47 years. the reason for having only six focal research participants is that we wished to focus on language teacher educators, and the college had only six of them at the site. as duff (2007) has noted, the advantage of qualitative case study research is that it focuses more on in-depth analysis and detailed description and less on generalisation of research findings. drawing on duff (2007), we wanted to better understand and to represent as accurately as possible the teacher educators’ accounts of their experiences with digital literacies and the meanings they have constructed as implementers of ict policy in education. in order to protect the anonymity and privacy of our research participants, we assigned them pseudonyms. the pseudonyms of the five female teachers are jalia, hella, harriet, aisha and janene; the male participant is kamuli. all of the research participants were married and had extensive family responsibilities. the participants all travelled to their workplace from their homes which were located in different parts of the city. our fieldwork activities began with a visit to bondo ptc in march 2008 and ended with a digital literacy workshop in november 2008. during the data collection period, we positioned ourselves as participant observers and worked collaboratively with the teacher educators, which helped us to build trust and confidence with the participants. we administered two sets of questionnaires to the participants, one in april 2008 and another in november 2008. we also held two training workshops and one focus group meeting with the participants. the participants kept reflective journals during the study and, when possible, participated in on-line group discussions. we reviewed important documents such as the national information and communication policy in uganda, and ministerial statements and research reports in order to have a better sense of the context in which ict and digital literacy is being promoted in the country. andema and norton also had a key informant interview with the minister of ict, doctor ham-mukasa mulira, in kampala on 14 august 2009 with a dual purpose: to understand the ministry’s strategic vision for the promotion of ict and digital literacy in the country generally and in education more specifically, and to brief the minister on the goal of our research. in the following section we report the major findings of our study. data analysis and research findings top ↑ our investigations were guided by the research question: ‘what is the relationship between policy and practice with respect to the promotion of digital literacy amongst teacher educators in ugandan teacher education?’ as outlined in the previous section, to address this research question we used multiple data collection methods, namely, collection and analysis of documents and artifacts, questionnaires, interviews and participant journal reflections. we analysed data by triangulating the data from the multiple sources to identify patterns and themes so as to draw conclusions (duff 2007; yin 2003). in the next section, we present our findings under three major themes that emerged: ict and educational policy, ict and educational practice, and ict use by teacher educators. information and communication technology and educational policy our understanding of the ict policy landscape in uganda was informed by our interview with the ugandan minister in charge of ict, as well as by an analysis of a range of national policy documents including ict policy in the education sector (the republic of uganda 2006), education standards agency (2004), and farrell and shafika (2007). during the interview, the minister explained the importance that the ugandan government attaches to the promotion of ict for national transformation. according the minister, the ugandan government recognises that there have been many advances in ict at a global level, but the challenge is how uganda can harness it to capitalise on the country’s natural and human resources in order to improve the quality of life for ugandans in a sustainable manner. the minister regarded technology as a tool, and viewed the new technologies as part of the evolutionary process to meet human needs. as he said: ‘you see, technology is just a tool and the most basic technology of man say during the stone age – was his stone. when he shaped it, he could use it for anything and then as it evolved he made hammer. now we are looking at these modern communication tools. on their own, they are of no use. the question is how do we apply them? in this case, how do we apply them in education and literacy? education is so fundamental because today we are looking at the most fundamental requirement for national transformation and development – to have [an] educated human resource base.’ (samuel andema and bonny norton. interview with dr. ham-mukasa mulira. 14 aug. 2009) the minister further explained the importance that the government of uganda attaches to ict for national transformation: ‘as you go out you will see the vision of the ministry – ‘a knowledge-based society.’ how do we do that? we do that by making society knowledgeable. it means having a society which knows its environment, which can help it adopt and adapt its own environment, and therefore moves from one stage of living to another stage of living. that is a knowledge-based economy, because we cannot make wise decisions unless you know, unless you have a knowledge base. that is why we are moving from data to information to knowledge to wisdom, yes, and action. so, we are moving in phases to have a knowledge-based society, not only knowledge about what is happening in the rest of the world but also what is happening around us.’ (samuel andema and bonny norton. interview with dr. ham-mukasa mulira. 14 aug. 2009) we found the minister’s remarks very useful in seeking to understand the strategic vision of the ministry of ict and that of the government of uganda. he spoke with confidence about government’s commitment to transform the country from a subsistence peasant society into a knowledge-based modern country through ict application. this is further highlighted in the following remarks by the minister, who also underscored the significance of research on ict in education: ‘how do we get communities to understand the environment and use it well? that is when you said you are researching at the grassroots in ptcs and primary schools; that is where it should start. those youths or those children of today are the managers of society tomorrow and when they come to manage society, it should not be an option but an inevitability to know ict. those are the two points. one, how do we use ict to develop their knowledge base and not only in ict but geography, history, biology, science, mathematics etc.? secondly, how do we do it so that they are ict-enabled?’ (samuel andema and bonny norton. interview with dr. ham-mukasa mulira. 14 aug. 2009) the minister’s comments provided useful insights into the strategic vision of the government with respect to the role of ict in social transformation and national development. he explained that the ugandan government is committed to promote ict in order to help uganda evolve into a knowledge-based society. he encouraged us to view icts as tools that can be shaped in a variety of ways to meet societal needs, which is the same argument the new literacy scholars such as barton and hamilton (2000), and street (1984) have made of literacy. street (1984) particularly encourages us to focus more on how people take hold of literacy in specific contexts. the minister also argued that for icts to be able to function well in a given community, they must be able to adapt and be adopted to fit into the local context. according to the minister, icts only become useful when they are applied to serve societal needs. his perspectives on ict are consistent with the official government position articulated in the national ict policy framework. the government’s strategy is to: (a) integrate ict in mainstream educational curricula as well as other literacy programmes and provide for equitable access by pupils and/or students at all levels. (b) include ict education in curricula from primary to university level. establish computer labs in schools. setup e-learning programs in schools to ensure broad use of ict for training in education institutions. (the republic of uganda 2006:13) from the policy perspective, it can be argued that uganda has an elaborate policy and a clear vision for ict application. however, the study is concerned with the translation of policy into practice. the question is to what extent do the teacher educators apply technology in their classroom practices? what are the institutional practices that facilitate or impede the use of digital resources as pedagogical tools? thus, in the following section, we now report on our findings regarding ict and educational practice at the college. information and communication technology and educational practice at the institutional level, we found that the college administration at bondo was committed to promoting ict in their institution. with the support of the ministry of education and donor agencies, bondo ptc has established a computer lab equipped with computers and internet connectivity so as to promote digital literacy amongst students and staff. the administration has established an ict department and appointed a tutor to head the department. at least one laboratory assistant has been employed to assist in training students and staff in ict use. records also indicate that ict has been included on the teaching timetable, copies of which were displayed on the notice boards at the staffroom and in front of the office of the academic registrar. however, whilst the college has made considerable efforts to promote digital literacy, many of these initiatives had not accomplished their goals. in the section that follows we examine the ict training our participants have received; their use of ict for both professional and personal uses; and the challenges they have experienced in using digital technology. teacher educators’ response to information and communication technology training through the use of semi-structured questionnaires, the teacher educators were asked to state whether they had received any formal training in ict. from their responses, we learnt that five of the six participants at bondo ptc had received some formal training in ict. the sixth participant revealed to us that he had learnt to use the computer through a friend who trained him informally from an internet café in town. this underscores the importance of informal networks and the need to incorporate them into the new initiatives to build a sense of ownership and to guarantee the sustainability of such initiatives (barton & hamilton 2000). in order to have a better sense of the kind of training the participants received, we asked the participants to provide examples of the ict training they had received. two participants reported that they had received introductory computer courses; three had received training under connect-ed, which was a three-month training programme for teacher educators and students at ptcs; four reported that in addition to the connect-ed training, they had also taken ict as a course unit during their masters degree programmes at makerere university; and two said that they had attended the harvard education online course. from their responses, it was clear that the participants at bondo ptc were committed to ict training. they not only enrolled in ict training programmes designed for them as teacher educators at bondo ptc but they also took advantage of other ict training programs offered at universities and other institutions of learning. even more interesting to note was the fact that the teacher educator who missed the regular training organised for teacher educators at the college was prepared to take personal initiative to train himself in ict with the support of friends and people around him. from their personal accounts it was clear that the teacher educators were committed to embracing ict. however, whilst the participants’ positive response to ict training programs was crucial in preparing them to implement the ict policy, it could not explain adequately how ict was being used in the local context. in that regard, we had to examine the tutors’ use of ict for professional reasons, as reported on below. information and communication technology use for professional reasons through the use of questionnaires and journal reflections, participants were asked to draw from their personal experiences and describe if and for what professional reasons they use ict. from the information gathered, we learnt that most of the teacher educators at the college use ict mainly for preparing their own lecture and teaching notes. examples of the participants’ use of the internet for professional reasons are summarised in table 1.from table 1 it can be seen that high on the participants’ list of internet use for professional reasons was supplementing or updating teaching notes. the participants’ use of internet resources for teaching is further explained by one of the participants as follows: table 1: professional reasons for using information and communication technology (n = 6). ‘my participation in the use of ict has changed my attitude and ways of teaching language. i realised that i don’t need to go to the library to read each day and every book related to a topic which may not even be there, but there is a simple and quick way of getting the ‘wanted’ information on the net.’ (hella, journal entry, 21 june 2008)hella’s remarks help explain her commitment to technology. she feels her participation in the use of ict has not only changed her attitude toward her profession but it has also changed her ways of teaching language. she reveals that her participation in the use of ict has relieved her of the burden of having to always search for books, which are seldom available in the library. indeed, when we visited the ptc library, what we found was a small reading room with hardly any useful books for students or staff to read. in such situations, the teacher educators have limited options other than to use the internet to get more information to update their teaching materials. she also expresses the frustrations teacher educators face in looking for resources to facilitate their teaching. she describes the option of getting information from the internet as ‘simple’ and ‘quick’. hella’s comments resonate well with de roy (1997), who recognises the potential icts hold to transform education in africa where schools and the education system are in crisis, but he goes on to assert that in order for their transformative potential to be realised, they must be responsive to the local realities. for example, according to hella, icts will serve her well if they are quick and simple. hella’s fascination with the use of ict in her professional practice was echoed by her colleagues in the study. for instance, aisha had this to say with regard to her use of ict in her professional practice: ‘ict has enhanced my work as far as teaching is concerned because before i go to teach, when i have something missing in my content, i usually visit the computer lab to do some surfing, and get at least some knowledge about what i am going to teach. and normally when i have prepared some work on the computer, students get access to them in their free time and do their supplementary reading.’ (aisha, questionnaire 2, 20 november 2008) similar enthusiasm regarding the use of the internet for teaching was also expressed by jalia, who reported: ‘i use internet to find resources for reinforcing/enriching my presentations, to create resources (notes, questions) and update my website … i can present a lecture using power point/overhead projector. i can upload information and refer students to it.’ (jalia, journal entry, 09 april 2008) jalia’s emphasis on revealing her ability to make a presentation using powerpoint® needs to be put in perspective. in the western context (european and north american), it would be relatively simple for a teacher educator to make a presentation using powerpoint®; in uganda, however, it is not as simple because powerpoint® projectors are still largely a preserve of those fortunate enough to be working in international organisations and powerful ministry headquarters, urban churches, and media organisations. many university lecturers in uganda have never used powerpoint® to make a presentation. it is therefore a great achievement for jalia to be able to use powerpoint® for presentations. being able to master modern technology seems to enhance jalia’s identity and self-worth, giving her the status that comes with being able to use ict for professional practice. from the ability to use powerpoint®, jalia appears to have derived a new identity, which has changed her status from that of an ordinary teacher educator to a more versatile contemporary professional. it was not surprising that she turned out to be the most active member of the group in bondo ptc. she regularly volunteered to take minutes during our meetings, and also prepared the minutes and sent them to the members of the group via email. she would photocopy documents at the photocopying machine at the computer lab by herself. she was also the first participant to register for the online google group discussions. she even managed to post articles online for discussion, and eventually she became the coordinator of the group. her colleagues relied on her for support whenever they needed assistance with ict. another practice that was high on the list was using the computer and the internet for building a ‘question bank’ for easy access. what this means is that the participants used computer technology to store a set of examination questions from previous years to be used for setting another examination. over time, the teacher educators accumulated a stock of examination questions that they could use to set examinations with ease. this is a common practice in schools and colleges in uganda, where the system of education is mainly driven by examinations (muwanga et al. 2007; ssekamwa 1997; the republic of uganda 1992, 2004). teachers in uganda are under enormous pressure to produce good grades in examinations instead of focusing on developing skills, values and attitudes in young people. an example of the kind of pressure teachers have to endure from the community can be seen in an article written by fred muzaale (muzaale 2013) which appeared in the daily monitor of wednesday 30 january, 2013, with a headline ‘70 school heads face demotion!’ the article reads in part: at least 70 head teachers of government-aided primary schools in kayunga district whose schools failed to score at least two first grades in last year’s primary leaving examination results face demotion, authorities have said. …. the district was ranked among the 10 worst performers with schools in bbale county failing to score any first grade. ‘we shall sit to decide the fate of these head teachers next week. they signed the contracts and they know what is coming,’ mr ouma said. while appearing at a talk show on radio kayunga, the district lc5 chairperson, mr steven dagada, blamed the poor performance on teachers. (n.p.) it is therefore understandable that the teacher educators were using modern technologies primarily to make lesson notes and accumulate examination questions because of the importance ascribed to them by the system and the community. as long as the structure of education in the country remains pyramidal, and as long as the examination results continue to be the only measure of success in schools, the transformative potential of digital literacy to engage students and teachers to generate knowledge might not be easily realised. our study also examined the participants’ personal use of the internet in order to have a sense of their digital literacy practices across diverse sites. we next report on our findings regarding ict use for personal reasons. information and communication technology use for personal reasons through the use of questionnaires, the participants were asked to state if they used the internet for personal reasons. they all answered in the affirmative. all six reported that they used the internet for sending and receiving emails, and three of them said that they used the internet for getting news updates. one participant said she used the internet for receiving health-related information and one reported that she used the internet for entertainment (music). table 2 shows how the participants responded:high on the list of internet use for personal reasons was email communication. participants reported that they used the internet to send and receive mail from relatives, friends and colleagues, locally and internationally. their preference for using email compared with other forms of communication such as the ordinary postal mail and telephone was attributed to it being fast, quite cheap and convenient. second on the list of ict use for personal reasons was reading the news, with three of the six respondents reporting that they used the internet for this purpose. this was not surprising, considering the fact that, by ugandan standards, many people find the cost of a newspaper at 1200 ugandan shilling ($0.66) rather expensive. where they have free access to the internet, the participants normally prefer to read online, especially the local newspapers. one participant reported that she also used the internet to access information on health. interestingly, the ugandan ministry of health is beginning to use the internet for health awareness campaigns on different health problems (nalumaga 2007). understanding the digital literacy practices of teacher educators in their everyday lives is useful if the integration of ict in teacher education is to succeed in the ugandan context. the participants’ responses appear to highlight their readiness to use the internet to look for information that is of relevance to their immediate and personal needs. further, it can be deduced that the participants’ preference regarding use of the internet for personal reasons is linked to the consideration of cost, relevance and convenience. this indicates that free access is important in motivating teacher educators to use the internet. the more exposure users have to the internet in their daily lives outside the classroom, the more ict skills they will develop, which they can transfer into their classroom application. the question that needs to be asked is the extent to which policy makers recognise and build on these non-formal digital literacy practices amongst participants in order to consolidate ict programs. as hull and schultz (2002) assert, there is clearly a complementary relationship between personal and professional ict usage. challenges teacher educators face in using information and communication technology to further understand how ict was functioning at the college, we investigated the challenges the teacher educators faced in trying to use ict. the evidence shows that the teacher educators faced many challenges in their professional practice. these included the points discussed below. limited access the greatest challenge reported by all the teacher educators was the problem of having limited access to ict facilities, especially the internet. the only internet access point at the college that was readily available to both students and staff was the one at the computer lab. yet, for the whole of 2008, the internet connection at the college had been cut off due to non-payment of the connection fee, which the college was expecting to receive from the ministry of education, but to no avail. participants found the lack of internet connection to be very frustrating, as echoed by harriet: table 2: personal reasons for using information and communication technology (n = 6). ‘previously i used to give students some links where they could get relevant information such that they could read on their own but due to lack of internet service at the college this is not possible now.’ (harriet, questionnaire 2, 20 november 2008)lack of easy access to ict facilities also arose from the fact that the time scheduled for staff to have access to the computer lab was not always convenient, because the teacher educators usually have tight schedules at the college. this is how hella articulated the problem in one of her reflections: ‘access to resources is still a problem in the college because sometimes the computer lab is open when i have classes, then during my free time it can be locked or it is fully occupied.’ (hella, journal entry, 21 june 2008). small computer lab participants also reported that the small size of the computer lab at the college was an impediment to their use of ict in their professional practice. for example, according to hella:the computer lab is very small. it cannot accommodate the big number of students at the college. (hella, journal entry, 21 june 2008) harriet concurs with hella on her concerns over the problem of inadequate infrastructure: ‘due to large classes, a significant concern revolving around infrastructural or equipment accessibility especially by students was a big challenge. many times i gave students practical activities like building blogs but they were let down by lack of equipment and poor access.’ (harriet, journal entry, 02 may 2008) as seen from the responses of the participants, the ict infrastructure at the college was still fragile. as a result, the teacher educators had limited access to the internet at the college. only two of the respondents (aisha and hella) had personal computers, but they had no internet connectivity. during the study, we tried to support the teacher educators with funds to enable them to access the internet at internet cafés or elsewhere in the city; again, some had no internet cafés close to their places of residence. even when others could drive back to the city to have access to the internet, they could take hours to reach due to traffic jams. electricity outages there is also the problem of unreliable electricity from the national grid, and frequent blackouts. as such, even if a participant made it to the internet café, he or she might still have difficulty accessing the internet. inadequate training after interacting with the teacher educators at bondo ptc for months, our team also came to realise that the training the teacher educators received was too basic to enable them to use ict competently and confidently in their professional practice. participants felt they were not given enough hands-on experience during training. consequently, they struggled to remember the skills they were introduced to during training. for example, when we asked participants to register for the online google group discussions, most of them found it difficult to follow the registration instructions online. when we asked janene, the deputy principal at bondo ptc (who was also one of the participants) to explain why some teacher educators had not registered for the online discussions by the agreed date, she looked at us, started laughing, and whispered to us in low tone:‘some of us lack the skills. we have not been practising these things. we still need assistance.’ (janene, interview, june 2008) when we asked the participants to state in their reflective journals their reasons for not participating in the online discussion, kamuli simply put his reason as: ‘…inadequate knowledge and skills on how to use the internet services.’ (kamuli, 12 june 2008) hella made a similar disclosure when she said in her response that: ‘there is a weakness with ict use due to lack of skills by both students and myself. for example the other day i opened some information on the internet, suddenly, it disappeared. i was puzzled. then i realised i must have touched a key, which i could not restore. i lost the document.’ (hella, journal entry, 26 june 2008) irrelevant material the teacher educators also reported that most of the materials they found on the internet were not relevant to the local situation, which they find very discouraging in their efforts to use the internet resources to teach. this is how harriet narrated her personal experience:‘one of my most challenging experiences in language teaching using ict resources was when i needed some information about language and culture – i got a lot of information but when i read through, i realised it wouldn’t be applicable for my student – there was no way i could relate this information – i could not see the relevance. all the information i got, talked about language and culture in a different context. i therefore decided to change the heading and typed ‘relationship between culture and language’ i got a lot of information but still it was not leading me to what i wanted. i got a bit disappointed; i had spent almost an hour on the computer, yet i was not getting exactly what i wanted.’ (harriet, journal entry, 15 june 2008) in view of the challenges associated particularly with the internet we made some effort to explore alternative resources. in the following section we report the participants’ perspectives on the use of an alternative digital resource known as the egranary digital portable library. egranary as a pedagogical resource top ↑ to address the challenges outlined above, we introduced the participants to the egranary digital portable library. this technological innovation, developed by the widernet project (n.d.) at the university of iowa in the united states of america, is an offline digital library that comprises of a 750 gb hard drive with specialised browsing software, which can be attached to a personal computer or a local area network. it contains approximately 10 million educational documents, including websites like wikipedia, which can be browsed like the internet. although electric or solar power is needed to run the system, there is no need for connection to the wider internet, and the costs are limited. this ‘internet in a box’ is thus ideally suited to poorly-resourced communities. not only does egranary provide a wealth of information for users, but users can also develop digital skills, such as browsing and searching, without connectivity. furthermore, the system can be updated and includes software that enables users to upload local content and distribute it to other users. the participants were introduced to the egranary digital library in a one-day workshop held at bondo ptc in november 2008. after the workshop, they were asked to describe if and how the egranary digital library could best be incorporated in their teaching. participants gave interesting insights, as highlighted in a sample of their responses below: ‘the egranary is a very useful avenue to getting as much information as one could. the problem we have encountered is that our college in particular is not connected to the egranary yet, and if it could be incorporated into the teaching, students would benefit from a lot of information.’ (aisha, questionnaire 2, 20 november 2008) aisha’s opinions on the benefit of incorporating egranary into teaching are echoed by jalia in the following commentary: ‘egranary digital library is a welcome venture. it has a lot of information and [is] detailed in most cases. since the college is unable to provide connectivity to the lab the egranary will be very useful and it will motivate tutors to search for new information. when we still had connectivity tutors actively and meaningfully visited the lab and their lesson presentations were improved! i believe we shall get more information to enrich our teaching and also improve on our professional growth. members can access information related to their research topics much easily and also encourage them to be more innovative in their areas of specialisation.’ (jalia, questionnaire 2, 20 november 2008) indeed, as jalia has pointed out, the egranary digital library offers unique advantages that make it ideal for the ugandan situation. some of the advantages include: it is easy to install; it is fast, up to 5000 times faster than satellite connection; it can cut internet connectivity costs; it looks and functions like the real internet; users need no additional training; content and software are updatable via a subscription to the egranary digital library update service. a serious shortcoming, however, is that emails cannot be sent and received on this system. ethical considerations top ↑ in order to maintain high ethical standards, the proposal for this study passed through the behavioural ethics review and approval process of the university of british columbia. participants voluntarily signed consent forms to participate in the study. we agreed to use pseudonyms instead of participants’ real names in order to guarantee confidentiality and to protect their privacy. a member check was also completed; each participant was provided with an opportunity to read and respond to the draft report to ensure accuracy in reporting. limitations of the study top ↑ considering the fact that this was a case study based on the experiences of only six research participants in one college, the findings of the study may not be used to make generalisations on a wider scale. however, they provide useful insights into the challenges and possibilities of ict integration in similar contexts. conclusion and implications top ↑ our study, though limited in scope, sought to investigate the relationship between ict policy and professional practice in ugandan teacher education, and what insights could be drawn for the promotion of digital literacy in developing countries. whilst we agree with the framers of the ict policy that ict may have the transformative potential to radically improve the quality of education in uganda, our findings suggest that the success of such ict initiatives will largely depend on the extent to which the local conditions are favourable to the introduction of such initiatives. despite their enthusiasm for digital technology, the teacher educators in our study struggled with access because the ptc found internet connectivity unavailable or prohibitively expensive; their training was inadequate; power outages were frequent; and material on the internet was not always relevant to ugandan needs. however, where possible, the participants made use of the internet for both professional and personal purposes, particularly with regard to preparing teaching notes, keeping past paper questions, and sending and receiving emails. we conclude that ict policy should address people’s use of digital technology across diverse sites, and that innovations such as the egranary portable digital library might be particularly useful in poorly-resourced educational institutions. acknowledgements top ↑ we wish to acknowledge and thank the participants in our research study, who generously contributed their time and insights. funding from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada is also greatly appreciated. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationship(s) which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions the study reported in this article is part of a larger, multi-site project led by b.n. (university of british columbia) and m.k. (university of british columbia). although s.a. (kyambogo university and university of british columbia) was the primary researcher for the site reported on in this article, all three authors contributed to the study design, data collection, and analysis. the manuscript was written collaboratively, with s.a. 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primary teachers’ college is a pseudonym. abstract introduction literature review language structure of isixhosa methodology results discussion conclusion acknowledgements references appendix 1 about the author(s) mikaela a. daries department of linguistics and applied language studies, faculty of humanities, rhodes university, makhanda, south africa tracy n. probert department of linguistics and applied language studies, faculty of humanities, rhodes university, makhanda, south africa citation daries, m. a. & probert, t.n., 2020, ‘a linguistic analysis of spelling errors in grade 3 isixhosa home-language learners’, reading & writing 11(1), a265. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v11i1.265 note: this article was republished with the spelling error in ‘southern bantu langauges’ corrected to ‘southern bantu languages’ in five instances. the publisher apologises for any inconvenience caused. original research a linguistic analysis of spelling errors in grade 3 isixhosa home-language learners mikaela a. daries, tracy n. probert received: 27 sept. 2019; accepted: 16 july 2020; published: 15 oct. 2020; republished: 10 nov. 2021 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: spelling is a vital component of literacy. this is because spelling includes multiple metalinguistic components, such as phoneme-grapheme awareness, orthographic awareness and morphophonemic knowledge. despite this, there remains, to date, insufficient literature on spelling in the southern bantu languages and, more specifically, in isixhosa. objectives: this study explores the nature of spelling among grade 3 isixhosa home-language learners and provides a linguistic analysis of the types of errors produced by these learners. method: data were collected from 51 isixhosa home-language learners using a carefully designed isixhosa spelling task, which included both real and pseudowords. results: the findings showed that grapheme complexity was a significant predictor of spelling error production in isixhosa. furthermore, the main error type for both real words and pseudowords was errors of omission, specifically 〈n〉 in nasal blends and 〈h〉 in aspirated digraphs. conclusion: while the isixhosa orthography is transparent, and thus relatively predictable in decoding, its agglutinative, conjunctive character coupled with the existence of a number of complex graphemes presents a greater challenge for spelling. this supports the need for targeted instruction of complex graphemes in isixhosa pedagogical practice to improve encoding skills. keywords: spelling; spelling errors; literacy; isixhosa; southern bantu languages. introduction 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, 2012, 2017) have shed light on the literacy underperformance of south african children in comparison with international standards. for example, in the latest pirls (howie et al. 2017), south africa was placed last out of 50 countries, which translates as south african learners lagging six years behind those learners from the top-performing countries. in addition, 78% of these learners are unable to read for meaning (howie et al. 2017). a greater cause for concern is that learners learning to read in a southern bantu language attained the lowest scores, with 88% of isixhosa learners unable to read for meaning compared with 57% in the english language group (howie et al. 2017). there are many contributing factors to the literacy crisis (de vos, van der merwe & van der mescht 2015), which include, but are not limited to, social factors such as low adult literacy levels, family background and poverty (pretorius & mokhwesana 2009). additionally, there are a number of contributing schooling factors such as weak institutional functionality, resource shortages, overcrowded classrooms, weak teacher content knowledge and pedagogical skill, and wasted learning time (pretorius & mokhwesana 2009; van der berg et al. 2016). in addition, there remains a lack of understanding of exactly how literacy develops in the southern bantu languages (de vos et al. 2015). an understanding of the linguistic literacy skills that contribute to reading success in these languages can assist in developing pedagogically sound curricula and teaching practices. the current article reports on an investigation into a largely neglected variable in the understanding of reading development, which is that of spelling (fleisch, pather & motilal 2017; schaefer & kotzé 2019; treiman 2017). specifically, the main purpose is to explore the nature of spelling in isixhosa by identifying the patterns of spelling errors made by isixhosa home-language grade 3 learners. literature review in comparison with research on reading, there has been less research done on spelling. in particular, research looking specifically at spelling error analysis in south africa is extremely sparse. conceptualising spelling requires an understanding that spelling is not a single skill but rather involves the integration of several skills. if one were to simplify it, spelling is understood as a process of encoding, in which spoken words are converted into written symbols (mpiti 2012). studies on spelling have centred around three central topics (fleisch et al. 2017). the first deals with the developmental stages of spelling, the second the relationship between spelling and reading and the last, to a lesser extent, the linguistic categories and analysis of spelling errors (fleisch et al. 2017). these topics have been explored predominately in english, with few studies focusing on african languages (alcock & ngorosho 2003, 2007; de sousa, greenop & fry 2011; diemer, van der merwe & de vos 2015). in our literature review, we address the skills involved in spelling, generally, and spelling in alphabetic orthographies, and describe research relating to spelling error analysis. skills involved in spelling spelling involves the integration of several skills including phonological, morphological and orthographic awareness (ehri & wilce 1982; pijper 2003; swayer & joye 2006; wagner & torgesen 1987). phonological awareness (pa), which refers to the awareness and ability to manipulate sounds of one’s language (anthony et al. 2003), has been identified as an important contributor to spelling (bruck & treiman 1990; treiman 1993; vellutino et al. 2004). specifically, pa enables children to learn phoneme-grapheme correspondences, which is useful for creating accurate spellings (griffith 1991). for example, weinrich and fay (2007) found that phonemic awareness skills were significant in predicting spelling ability in english-speaking children. in the south african context, de sousa et al.’s (2011) study, which investigated spelling performance by 30 emergent bilingual isizulu-english and 30 monolingual english children in grade 2, argued that pa is well represented in spelling. the findings of their study showed that first-language (l1) pa is related to spelling across languages in emergent bilinguals. they assert that an awareness of phonemes and their ability to be segmented and manipulated enhances learners’ decoding skills, which leads to spelling success (de sousa et al. 2011). similarly, diemer’s (2015) study noted that spelling is directly related to phonological representations but is also influenced by grammatical knowledge. she found that spelling in isixhosa was significantly influenced by pa. morphological awareness (ma) has also been shown to play a role in spelling (see apel & masterson 2001; mann & singson 2003; nunes & byrant 2009). nunes, bryant and bindman (1997)’s study showed that in english, scores on a ma task (namely word and sentence analogy) predicted 6–8-year-old children’s successful spelling of the regular past tense verbs as -ed in both words and pseudowords, even after controlling for pa. furthermore, deacon, kirby and casselman-bell’s (2009) study showed that ma is a robust variable in predicting spelling outcomes. results of their study showed that ma measured in grade 2 determined 8% of the variance in spelling measured two years later, even after controlling for verbal and nonverbal intelligence, pa, short-term memory and rapid automated naming. these results demonstrate that ma has a significant role in children’s spelling development. in addition, orthographic knowledge is important for spelling in that learners are expected to engage with the orthographic features of a language such as the letter names and sounds or alphabetic, within-word patterns and syllable structure (fleisch et al. 2017). therefore, templeton and morris (2000) reason that if learners are not able to memorise the complete and accurate orthographic representation of a word, then their ability to spell a word will reflect the orthographic knowledge they were able to utilise in processing the word for spelling. zaric, hasselhorn & nagler’s (2020) study on german children provides further support for the role of orthographic awareness in spelling, with their results showing that word-specific, as well as general orthographic knowledge contributes to spelling performance, over and above intelligence and pa. similarly, mpiti (2012) argues that spelling involves visual memory and the knowledge of orthographic rules and conventions (kress as cited in pijper 2003; richards 2001:14; wagner & torgesen 1987). thus, with respect to the skills required for spelling, children need to simultaneously integrate not only phonological, but also morphological, orthographic, lexical and grammatical knowledge in order to become accomplished spellers (alcock & ngorosho 2003). however, little is known about spelling in the southern bantu languages and thus the relationship of the above listed metalinguistic skills to spelling in isixhosa should be interpreted within this constraint. spelling in an alphabetic language the knowledge of orthography, defined as the understanding of the conventions used in the writing system of one’s language (treiman & cassar 1996), has been shown to facilitate children’s spelling development. thus, in an alphabetic writing system, spelling involves the process of mapping grapheme to phoneme (park 2011). given that isixhosa is an alphabetic language, this section reviews spelling in alphabetic languages. caravoles’ (2004) cross-linguistic study of alphabetic languages highlighted both the similarities and differences between alphabetic orthographies and how these impact spelling development. in particular, the study reviewed english, french and czech studies to uncover what spelling acquisition characteristics are universal and which are language specific (caravoles 2004). caravoles acknowledges that studies focusing on spelling development in languages other than english are significantly rare and, thus, her study provides only preliminary insights into spelling development across languages. she notes that alphabetic orthographies share one key and possibly universal quality (caravoles 2004): they are all based on the alphabetic principle, which is the understanding that graphemes represent particular phonemes in spoken language (caravoles 2004). however, she explains that the extent to which languages adhere to the alphabetic principle will determine the degree to which learners can exploit the principle when spelling (caravoles 2004:4). alphabetic languages exist on a continuum between transparent, in which there is a consistent one-to-one mapping of phoneme to grapheme, and opaque, where there is an inconsistent mapping of phoneme to grapheme. depending on the type of orthography, learners are required to use different types of orthographic and linguistic knowledges when spelling (caravoles 2004:4). only few cross-linguistic studies have examined spelling development in relation to the consistency of the orthography. concerning the languages of focus in caravoles’ (2004) study, english is considered opaque and czech is considered transparent. similarly, isixhosa is also considered a transparent language. caravoles’ review revealed that learners learning to spell in more consistent orthographies tended to perform better than their english counterparts. this was rationalised under the understanding that orthographic consistency promotes faster spelling development and thus learners are able to learn the basic phonological spelling skills and conventional spelling skills with more ease (caravoles 2004). however, bigozzi et al. (2016:2) argue that spelling is made more challenging in transparent orthographies, in which the regularity of the orthographic system is higher in grapheme-phoneme relations (forward regularity, e.g. decoding) than it is in phoneme-grapheme relations (backward regularity, e.g. encoding). caravoles’ study showed that there are clearly differences in spelling development across alphabetic orthographies and recommends that further cross-linguistic longitudinal studies be conducted on languages other than english to confirm or deny the preliminary findings. this provides further motivation for studies of this nature. other noteworthy variables mentioned in caravoles’ (2004) study that seem to play a role in spelling development in alphabetic orthographies include the morphological information encoded in the languages and its impact on the phoneme-grapheme consistency (caravoles 2004), the presence of borrowed words that have retained their spelling from their host language, archaic spellings that reflect historical word pronunciations, pedagogical practice, home literacy, phonotactic constraints and syllable structure (caravoles 2004). spelling error analysis there is a growing body of research dedicated to the exploration of patterns in spelling errors in attempts to facilitate our understanding of reading underachievement (fleisch et al. 2017). bahr et al. (2012:6) state that the qualitative evaluation of linguistic patterns of spelling errors is important for two reasons. firstly, the study of the patterns of spelling errors can enhance our understanding of how learners with language impairments organise their phonological, orthographic and morphological knowledge (bahr et al. 2012). secondly, broader knowledge about spelling errors can lead to the creation of individualised instruction and intervention programmes for learners (bahr et al. 2012). it is for the above-mentioned reasons that spelling errors are the focus of the current study. cook’s (1999) classification of errors (namely omission, substitution, insertion and transposition) has been used by researchers to qualitatively categorise spelling errors, especially in studies seeking to understand how to better teach english as a second language (alhaisoni, al-zuoud & gaudel 2015; golshan & reigani 2015; khider & othman 2018). further, these categories have also been used in research on word recognition in english and isixhosa (probert & de vos 2016). alcock and ngorosho’s (2003) study looked at spelling development in kiswahili with a focus on the patterns of errors made in kiswahili writing. kiswahili is a southern bantu language which is similar in structure to isixhosa. while they did not exclusively use cook’s (1999) classification of errors, the error types identified lend themselves quite closely to those used by cook but with more precise margins. the results of the 50 real-word spelling task revealed that the most common errors identified, were those containing digraphs followed by the confusion of the letters 〈l〉 and 〈r〉 and the addition and omission of 〈h〉, 〈y〉 and 〈w〉. another prominent error type identified was the omission of a nasal consonant in a ‘consonant cluster’ (alcock & ngorosho 2003). the latter result was reaffirmed in a later study by alcock & ngorosho (2007), in which they found that consonant clusters consisting of a nasal consonant in the initial position of a word followed by an additional consonant were more difficult to spell than words that contained either type of consonant in isolation. this result was reasoned to be as a consequence of the lack of salience of consonant clusters in kiswahili (alcock & ngorosho 2007). they concluded that spelling is different to reading in transparent languages in that phonological decoding is a necessary but insufficient skill needed for spelling success (alcock & ngorosho 2003), suggesting that there may be other skills more significant for spelling success in african languages (alcock & ngorosho 2003). more research is needed on the skills underpinning spelling in african languages. research looking specifically at spelling error analysis in south africa is extremely sparse. fleisch et al.’s (2017) study, which investigated spelling errors made by english second-language learners, is one of the first to provide an in-depth understanding of the patterns and prevalence of spelling errors in south africa. it focused on monosyllabic three-letter word spelling errors and provided important insights into the understanding of second-language reading underachievement (fleisch et al. 2017). the data for their study were drawn from previously conducted learner literacy tests as part of a randomised control trial. their findings revealed that over two-thirds of the 2500 learners misspelled simple monosyllabic three-letter english words which are assumed by the national curriculum to have been taught in the second term of grade 2, confirming the large body of research about the reading and writing underachievement of learners (fleisch et al. 2017). the most prevalent error type identified was associated with the incorrect identification of the middle vowel sound, an indication of weakness in phoneme awareness (fleisch et al. 2017). the findings also showed low levels of encoding in the spelling test which imply that the learners were failing at the initial ‘learning to read’ foundational skills (fleisch et al. 2017). fleisch et al. provided an in-depth analysis of error categories that were present in the learner data, which they later refined to the linguistic categories: alphabetic, l1 interference and vowel error. according to fleisch et al. (2017), the growing exploration into the identification of error patterns in spelling could prove useful in facilitating our understanding of reading underachievement and how it can be incorporated into pedagogy. this is because the study of learners’ spelling errors provides an opportunity to understand and facilitate the learners’ spelling difficulties (al-zuoud & kabilan 2013). while fleisch et al.’s (2017) study was instrumental in introducing a body of knowledge dedicated to understanding spelling errors in the south african context, a gap remains in exploring error patterns in southern bantu languages, specifically l1 spelling in isixhosa. in this currently underexplored domain, this research on spelling is important as it adds to the growing understanding of literacy in southern bantu languages. language structure of isixhosa isixhosa is an agglutinative language (probert & de vos 2016). consequently, a single orthographic word in isixhosa can represent a whole sentence (spaull, pretorius & moholwane 2020). for example, the orthographic word ndibabuzile in isixhosa (‘i asked them’) has the stem -buz‘ask’ with separate morphemes ndibaand -ile attached. words in isixhosa therefore tend to be longer than their english equivalents due to the extensive use of affixation on nouns and verbs in isixhosa (probert & de vos 2016). for example, the verb in isixhosa allows for nine positions into which a grammatical morpheme may slot (gxilishe et al. 2009). these include subject and object, tense, negation, causative, applicative and so forth (gxilishe et al. 2009). this is illustrated in (1) below: (1) abantu abasebenzi   aba-ntu a-ba-sebenz-i   nc2-people neg-sm-work-neg   ‘the people are not working’ moreover, isixhosa has a transparent and conjunctive orthography. in conjunctive orthographies, linguistic words and orthographic words coincide. this is seen in the example ndibabuzile given above. however, in disjunctive orthographies, such as sesotho, linguistic words and orthographic words do not coincide. 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. orthographic knowledge in isixhosa can thus be rather dense and can make spelling a challenging task for learners. therefore, while the isixhosa orthography is transparent and relatively predictable in decoding, its agglutinative, conjunctive character coupled with the existence of a number of complex graphemes presents a greater challenge for spelling (the encoding of phoneme to grapheme). research is thus needed on spelling, and on the types of errors learners encounter when spelling in isixhosa. with this in mind, the following two research questions are addressed in this study: what is the spelling ability of grade 3 isixhosa home-language learners? what are the patterns of spelling errors made by grade 3 isixhosa home-language learners? methodology participants and research setting this study is a small-scale, exploratory study, which used a cross-sectional design. the study was conducted at a quintile 3 primary school on the outskirts of a township in the eastern cape. isixhosa is used as the language of learning and teaching (lolt) at the school until the end of grade 3, after which a transition is made to english as the lolt. all participants in this study were grade 3 isixhosa home-language learners. however, participants’ exposure to and use of english in daily activities varied. participants comprised 51 grade 3 home-language isixhosa learners, which included 21 boys and 30 girls. the average age of the participants was 8 years old. all learners participated on a voluntary basis after returning informed consent forms signed by their parents or guardians, as well as providing their own verbal assent. all learners’ identities were kept confidential. measures a standardised spelling task for the southern bantu languages has yet to be developed. therefore, taking into consideration the literature, and keeping to the phonological and orthographic structure of isixhosa, an isixhosa spelling task was developed. this spelling task included two sub-tasks: a real word and pseudoword task. spelling task the spelling task was group-administered by trained research assistants who are isixhosa home-language speakers. words were read aloud one by one and then repeated once more. learners were informed that they would first be spelling the real words followed by the pseudowords. the research assistant informed them when the transition was made. the spelling task consisted of 24 items, which included 12 real words and 12 pseudowords. the design of the spelling task took into account three considerations, namely frequency, grapheme complexity and word length in syllables (word length). for the real word spelling task, words were sourced from a list of the top 300 high frequency words in isixhosa, which was drawn from a corpus of 170 000 tokens of isixhosa words (rees & randera 2019). grapheme complexity was controlled for, as it has been noted that spelling in southern bantu languages seems to be more difficult due to the variety of complex graphemes and the agglutinative nature of the language, which makes words longer and denser (diemer 2015). with respect to grapheme complexity, a range of words including those containing no complex graphemes to those with multiple complex graphemes were included. the third consideration was word length. the length consideration ensured that words ranged from disyllabic to quadrisyllabic. lastly, to ensure that the task was fair and appropriate, all real words chosen had lexical meaning. the pseudoword spelling task was designed to be symmetrical as far as possible to the real word spelling task. as such, grapheme complexity and word length were controlled for. pseudowords were used as participants cannot rely on prior knowledge to spell the words but have to access their own graphemic knowledge of the language. this allows for a true representation of the learners’ encoding abilities. a list of real words and pseudowords used in the spelling task are included as table 1-a1 and table 2-a1 of appendix 1. data coding and analysis once the task was administered, the spelling subtask was coded using a binary set of codes, that is, correct and incorrect. a secondary analysis was performed on the results documenting the errors found in the spelling tasks. the errors were coded according to cook’s (1999) classification of errors (namely omission, substitution, insertion and transposition), with additional error categories included, based on the error types identified in the data. thus, the error categories used for this study were: blank, illegible, alphabetic (errors in which there were more than three graphemes added or excluded, or which had no phonetic or orthographic relation to the target word), omission (leaving out graphemes), substitution (replacing graphemes with incorrect ones), insertion (adding of incorrect graphemes), transposition (swapping graphemes around) and graphemes written backwards. ethical consideration ethical clearance was obtained from the rhodes university ethical standards committee and the eastern cape department of basic education (nr 2019-0461-452). results the results of the study are organised as follows: (1) grade 3 spelling scores and (2) patterns of spelling errors. cronbach’s alpha values were used to assess the reliability of the spelling task. the shapiro-wilk normality test revealed that data were not normally distributed (p < 0.001) for both real word and pseudoword subcomponents of the spelling task. research question 1: what is the spelling ability of grade 3 isixhosa home-language learners? although the main focus of this study was not on the proportion of correct and incorrect spelling, but rather on the specific patterns of spelling errors, it is nonetheless important to first establish an understanding of the learners’ spelling ability. the average mark for the spelling task (both real words and pseudowords) was 15.8 (65.8%). the descriptive statistics for the spelling results are depicted in table 1. table 1: descriptive statistics (n = 51). from table 1, it is evident that the learners performed better on the real word spelling task (m = 9.37, sd = 3.96), than on the pseudoword task (m = 6.45, sd = 3.35). a paired t-test revealed that this difference in performance was statistically significant (t = −10.3, p < 0.001; cohen’s d = −1.44). research question 2: what are the patterns of spelling errors made by grade 3 isixhosa home-language learners? the results of the real word and pseudoword spelling tasks are presented below. in particular, this section outlines the types of linguistic errors the learners made on each task and the pertinent patterns identified in the types of errors produced. real word spelling results the words that were most incorrectly spelled were phandle (33.3%), ngaphakathi (29.45%) and umakhulu (29.45%). the words with the most errors recorded were ngaphakathi (24 errors), phandle (21 errors) and namhlanje (21 errors). the words that were least incorrectly spelled were oku (10%), amanzi (14%) and amabali (16%). these words also contained the lowest number of errors with five, seven and eight errors made per word. as noted in the methods section, the words ranged in length and grapheme complexity as a means to determine which of these factors influenced the learners’ spelling to a greater extent. therefore, in order to precisely identify the degree to which word length or grapheme complexity influenced the spelling results, a linear regression was conducted with the number of errors made per word as the predicted variable and word length and grapheme complexity as predictor variables. this is illustrated in table 2. table 2: linear regression: real word errors predicted. the model revealed that word length and grapheme complexity account for 73% of the number of errors made per word (r2 = 0.734, p < 0.05). only grapheme complexity was a significant predictor (β = 0.84, p < 0.001). it is therefore evident that grapheme complexity is a primary factor influencing the production of errors in the real word spelling task. in terms of the types of errors made by the learners, the most prevalent error types identified were errors of omission (34.7%) and alphabetic errors (25%). furthermore, the incorrect representation of complex graphemes accounted for 49% of the overall errors made by learners. this supports the view that the difficulty for spelling in isixhosa lies in the presence of complex graphemes. in particular, learners struggled with the representation of digraphs, aspirated digraphs and nasal blends, with the words with the highest error rates being ngaphakathi (24 errors) and phandle (21 errors), each of which contains these complex graphemes. in particular, the most common omitted letters were the omission of 〈h〉 in aspirated digraphs such as 〈ph〉, 〈kh〉 and 〈th〉 found in the words phandle, umakhulu and ngaphakathi, and the letter 〈n〉 in nasal blends, consonant blends and digraphs that begin with the letter 〈n〉, such as 〈ndl〉 in phandle, 〈nj〉 in namhlanje, 〈nd〉 in amaqanda and 〈ng〉 in ngaphakathi. there were no significant trends in the substitutions of letters for the real word spelling task. pseudoword spelling results the learners performed significantly worse on the pseudoword spelling task than the real word spelling task (t = −10.3, p < 0.001), but this is to be expected as the learners would never have encountered these words before and the real words were chosen specifically from a list of high frequency isixhosa words. the words that were spelled most incorrectly were ingxembo (86.3%), tshafiba (78.4%) and khuqahleyo (60%). the words with the most errors recorded were ingxembo (60 errors), khuqahleyo (53 errors) and tshafiba (52 errors). the words that were least incorrectly spelled were tuza (21%), lwesha (25%) and ngela (27%). these words also contained the lowest number of errors with 12, 15 and 15 errors made per word. as noted in the real word error analysis, the words ranged in word length and grapheme complexity as a means to determine which of these factors influenced the learners’ spelling to a greater extent. as was done with the real words, a linear regression was conducted to observe whether word length or grapheme complexity was a stronger predictor of error rates in the pseudowords. the results of the linear regression are reported in table 3. table 3: linear regression: pseudoword error predicted. the model reaffirmed the results of the real word analysis. the model showed that word length and grapheme complexity combined account for 58% of the variance in the number of errors made per word (r2 = 0.576, p < 0.05) with grapheme complexity being the only significant predictor (β = 0.655, p < 0.05) contributing 65% of the variance in error production. these results, therefore, confirm that the presence of complex graphemes in isixhosa presents a challenge to learners when spelling. in terms of the types of errors made by the learners, the most prevalent error types identified were omission errors (35%) and substitution errors (34%). furthermore, the incorrect representation of complex graphemes accounted for 55% of the overall errors made by learners, with the learners struggling mainly with the representation of the nasal blends 〈ngx〉 and 〈mb〉 the aspirated digraph 〈kh〉, the click 〈q〉 and the digraph 〈hl〉, all of which appear in the words with the highest error rates. of the 35% of omission errors made, the most common omitted letters were 〈g〉 in the word ingxembo, 〈h〉 in nokhubela and 〈n〉 in inkweseva. of the 34% of substitution errors made, the most common substitutions were the substitution of 〈dl〉 in ndlashaza for other digraphs such as 〈hl〉 or 〈tl〉, the substitution of 〈mb〉 in ingxembo for 〈g〉, 〈l〉, or 〈ng〉, the substitution of 〈v〉 in inkweseva for 〈mb〉, 〈z〉 or 〈b〉, and the substitution of 〈hl〉 in khuqahleyo for a variety of different letters, for example 〈sh〉 and 〈k〉. of the 11% of insertion errors, the most common inserted letter was 〈n〉 in the word initial position of tshafiba. discussion the findings of this study help to provide insight into the types of difficulties learners may face when spelling in isixhosa. the main purpose was to explore the nature of spelling in isixhosa by identifying the patterns of spelling errors made by isixhosa home-language grade 3 learners. the results show that the isixhosa home-language learners performed significantly better on the real word spelling task than on the pseudoword spelling task. this is to be expected, as the real words were all high frequency words in isixhosa. in terms of the essential skills necessary for spelling as noted by mpiti (2012), the results of the real words spelling task indicate that many of the learners have mastered many of the phonological representations of the real words and have been able to recall their spelling from their visual memory. however, since the learners cannot rely on their visual memory for pseudowords, they are required to draw largely from their knowledge of phonological representations of the sounds and thus the poor results of the pseudoword spelling task (m = 6.45) could be due to poor pa skills. this is because, as shown in diemer (2015), pa and spelling are closely correlated, and together with phoneme identification and phoneme segmenting account for 50% of the variance in spelling in isixhosa grade 3 learners. the error analysis revealed that for both the pseudoword and real word spelling task grapheme complexity is a significant predictor of spelling error production in isixhosa. these results provide empirical evidence supporting diemer (2015) who suggested that orthographic knowledge, in reference to complex graphemes in isixhosa, can be rather dense and can make spelling a challenging task for learners. furthermore, the results support both caravoles (2004) and bigozzi et al. (2016) who noted that orthographic complexity, more specifically inconsistencies in phoneme-grapheme and grapheme-phoneme correspondences, can make spelling challenging for learners. the challenges experienced by learners with complex graphemes in spelling may also be indicative of poor pa, and lack of phonics instruction, which makes build-up of orthographic awareness slower. notably, the most common errors in both the pseudoword and real word spelling tasks were errors of omission. specifically, for the real word task, it was the omission of 〈n〉 in nasal blends, 〈ndl〉, 〈mhl〉 and 〈ngx〉, and 〈h〉 in aspirated digraphs 〈kh〉, 〈ph〉 and 〈th〉. similarly, for the pseudoword task learners struggled mainly with the representation of the nasal blends 〈ngx〉 and 〈mb〉, the aspirated digraph 〈kh〉, the click 〈q〉 and the digraph 〈hl〉, with the most common omitted letters being 〈g〉, 〈h〉 and 〈n〉. these results are similar to those found by alcock and ngorosho (2003) for whom the most common errors identified were the addition and omission of 〈h〉, 〈y〉 and 〈w〉 and the omission of nasal consonants in a ‘consonant cluster’ (alcock & ngorosho 2003, 2007). this result was reasoned to be a consequence of the lack of salience of consonant clusters in kiswahili (alcock & ngorosho 2007). however, in isixhosa there are many complex graphemes in the language and, in particular, the aspirated digraphs and nasal blends are high frequency phonemes in the language. one possible explanation for the prevalence of errors of omission could be as a result of the inconsistency of the grapheme to phoneme correspondence with complex graphemes in isixhosa. isixhosa has a transparent orthography. thus, typically there is a one-to-one mapping of phonemes to graphemes in the language. furthermore, the language typically follows an open consonant-vowel syllable structure. however, with complex graphemes, often more than one grapheme corresponds to a single phoneme, for example 〈ph〉, 〈mhl〉, 〈ngx〉 and 〈ncw〉. thus, it may be the case that the learners are omitting the letters of the graphemes so as to adhere to the consonant-vowel structure of the language and one-to-one mapping of phoneme to grapheme. it could also be that the learners have not yet acquired the representations of said graphemes or they have not received explicit instruction regarding the representation of complex graphemes. in either event, complex graphemes form an important part of isixhosa orthography and the lack of knowledge of their representation influences a learner’s orthographic awareness. templeton and morris (2000) state that if learners are not able to memorise the ‘full conventional orthographic representation’ of a word, then their ability to spell a word will illustrate the orthographic knowledge that they have used to process said word. thus, the prominence of omission in relation to complex graphemes suggests that the learners do not have sufficient orthographic knowledge of complex graphemes. another prominent error identified was alphabetic errors, which include all errors in which there were more than three graphemes added or excluded, or there was no phonetic or orthographic relation to the target word. this error category was used by fleisch et al. (2017) and referred to similar characteristics as mentioned in this study. according to fleisch et al. the prevalence of this error type indicates that learners have not yet acquired the basic understanding of the relationship between phoneme and graphemes, which is a key stage in learning to read. it is interesting that the learners made more alphabetic errors in the real word task (25.3%) than in the pseudoword task (14%) as one could assume that they would rely on their prior knowledge to spell the words and thus make individual graphemic errors in their attempts to spell the words, with some resemblance of the target word intact. this was not the case, as the alphabetic errors had no phonetic or orthographic resemblance to the target word. this further suggests that these learners have poor phonological or orthographic awareness. conclusion the main research objective of this study was to investigate the nature of spelling in isixhosa, and identify the patterns of errors in isixhosa spelling. in terms of the learners’ spelling performance, the findings showed that learners performed significantly better on the real word spelling task (m = 9.37, sd = 3.96) than on the pseudoword task (m = 6.45, sd = 3.35). with respect to the types of errors learners made, the findings revealed that the main type of error in the real word task and pseduoword task were errors of omission. in particular, the learners appeared to struggle mainly with nasal blends and nasal digraphs (〈ndl〉, 〈ngx〉, 〈nkw〉, 〈nd〉 and 〈ng〉) and aspirated digraphs (〈kh〉, 〈ph〉 and 〈th〉), omitting the 〈n〉 or 〈h〉. nasals tend be omitted when they were the initial consonant in a grapheme cluster. further, grapheme complexity was found to be a significant predictor of spelling difficulty in isixhosa, which supports the patterns of errors identified in the error analysis. therefore, while the isixhosa orthography is transparent and relatively predictable in decoding, its agglutinative, conjunctive character coupled with the existence of a number of complex graphemes presents a greater challenge for spelling. the pedagogical implications of these results are as follows: since grapheme complexity is a significant predictor of spelling difficulty in isixhosa, this suggests that greater attention should be paid to teaching learners the representation of complex graphemes in isixhosa as a means to enhance their spelling ability, orthographic awareness and pa. fleisch et al. (2017) state that teaching learners about spelling conventions will, as a direct consequence, improve their spelling and reading knowledge. in addition, arndt and foorman (2010) highlight the pedagogical implications of educators focusing on the improvement of spelling ability, targeting the learners’ weaknesses particularly, as a way to create better readers. therefore, further research into spelling in isixhosa is vital as it may enable meaningful contributions to be made to current pedagogical practices. since there is no research on spelling patterns in isixhosa, it was difficult to conduct a reflection or comparison to related research. thus, there is an urgent need for further research to confirm the above findings and to investigate the possible causal elements contributing to the gaps in learners’ spelling ability in isixhosa. we believe that this study provides a glimpse into unexplored territory that could provide valuable information for future literacy research. furthermore, insight provided from this study may also assist in motivation for the design of more individualised instruction and intervention regarding spelling in isixhosa, based on research in isixhosa, and facilitate our understanding of literacy underachievement in south africa as a whole. acknowledgements thank you to maxine schaefer, tracy kitchen and gwyn ortner who proofread earlier versions of this article. competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interests exist. authors’ contributions all authors contributed equally to this work. funding information this research received funding support from the rhodes university research committee grant fund. data availability statement the data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, t.n.p., upon reasonable request. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any 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published: 14 feb. 2013 how to cite this article: lukhele, b.b.s., 2013, ‘exploring relationships between reading attitudes, reading ability and academic performance amongst primary teacher trainees in swaziland’, reading & writing 4(1), art. #28, 8 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v4i1.28 copyright notice: © 2013. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. exploring relationships between reading attitudes, reading ability and academic performance amongst primary teacher trainees in swaziland in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • theoretical framework • research questions    • background to the study    • the participants    • data collection instruments and analysis    • procedure    • data scoring and analysis • results • discussion and recommendations • suggestions for further research • acknowledgements    • competing interests • references abstract top ↑ in this research study, relationships between attitudes to reading, reading ability, vocabulary and academic performance were investigated. the data were gathered and triangulated from an attitude questionnaire, an author and magazine recognition test, as well as from reading comprehension and academic test performance of 84 firstand third-year students studying for a primary teacher’s diploma at a college in manzini, swaziland. the results suggest that whilst there is no relationship between reading attitudes and reading ability, there is some relationship between reading ability and academic performance. the statistical analyses further indicate a relationship between reading and vocabulary ability of the participants. the findings have grave implications regarding attitudes to reading, reading ability and academic performance for a professional cadre that is expected to be influential in the academic lives of impressionable primary school children in an english as second language (esl) context. introduction top ↑ attitudes to reading for leisure were examined in a swazi context featuring teacher trainees enrolled for the primary teacher’s diploma at a teacher training college in manzini, swaziland. the basis for the study was that the affective domain – attitudes, motivations, interests and personal evaluations on any phenomenon – seems to be influential in the behaviour and practice of additional language (al) learners, as research suggests. the concept of attitudes to reading is defined by mckenna, kear and ellsworth (1995:937) as: ‘the beliefs that an individual harbors in relation to the object, the behavioral intentions that concern the object, and the feelings the individual experiences because of the object’. these authors argue that it is vital to recognise the important position of ‘attitude’ when we seek to cultivate readers. the study involved not only the examination of reading attitudes, but also compared these attitudes to the students’ reading ability, vocabulary knowledge and academic performance. theoretical framework top ↑ reading attitudes seem to emanate from perceptions acquired from people’s reading history and experience (guthrie & greaney 1991). day and bamford (1998) argue that a learner’s experience of reading in the first language influences the learner’s attitude to reading in the al. furthermore, it seems that cultural beliefs are another cradle for the incubation of negative or positive attitudes towards reading (mckenna et al. 1995). a culture where reading is viewed in a negative light by people whose approval a learner seeks, may not encourage positive reading attitudes. this argument underscores the role of teachers, parents and communities in the development of positive reading attitudes. parents, teachers and communities play a significant role in the mentoring and modelling of the culture of reading, as each group serves as a vital part in the multilateral nature of influence on a child (mckenna 2001). in the same vein, mathewson (2004), in his model of reading attitudes, asserts that a positive reading attitude does not guarantee actual reading behaviour. he suggests an additional element: the intention to read/continue reading. he argues that measuring whether attitudes are positive or negative is of little consequence: one’s attitude may be positive but one may lack the intention to read, resulting in non-reading behaviour being exhibited. mathewson’s model of reading attitudes features external motivators and internal states as components that influence one’s intention to read/continue reading. external motivators, comprising ‘incentives, purpose, norms, and settings outside of readers’, form part of the model and, like internal emotional states, they work on one’s intention to read and/or continue reading, with reading behaviour as an outcome. without this aspect, extensive reading remains wishful thinking for the individual. mathewson’s reading attitude model brings in ‘prevailing feelings about reading, action readiness for reading and evaluative beliefs about reading’ as component factors in the reading attitudes (1994:1435). emotional states and external motivators also influence one’s intention to read. this model brings about some balance in one’s understanding, in the exploration of reading attitudes. it is argued that attitudes to reading are set early in the life of an individual, but they are not permanent, whether they are essentially positive or negative (mckenna et al. 1995). it is further suggested that reading attitudes seem to be more positive in the lower grades than in the higher grades (mckenna et al. 1995). an increase in reading seems to improve not only a reader’s reading ability but also a reader’s attitude to reading. furthermore, it is suggested that attitudes are a ‘stable construct’ among children, emphasising the importance of developing positive reading attitudes early in the life of a child (smith 1990). research further suggests that reading attitudes are affected by such factors as socio-economic status, home environment, availability of spare time, amount of television watched, quality of kindergarten instruction, library facilities and availability of reading resources at home (walberg & tsai 1995). it appears that, in some cases, the more years some students spend studying in english as an al, the less inclination they have to read in english during their leisure hours, due to the lack of interest in reading extensively (camiciottoli 2001). in contrast, it seems that the more students read in the first language (l1), the more enthusiastic they are to find and read books in the al (english). it seems that there is a positive correlation between reading attitude and reading in the first language, underscoring the view that the students’ success in reading in l1 influences their al reading attitude. the challenge apparently faced by students in developing countries is the lack of reading resources in both the first and additional languages. that being said, roy-campbell and qorro’s (1997) study in tanzania underscores the positive self-perceptions of learners’ reading attitudes in spite of this lack of access to reading resources in africa. however, enquiry into the reading attitudes of tertiary students reveals that extended failure in reading may lead to students’ reluctance to make any attempt at using new reading strategies (pretorius 2005). in her study, pretorius observes that, because reading is so effortful, students may be reluctant to invest even more effort by applying new strategies. clearly, students’ attitudes to reading may be transformed by the experience of sustained success at reading, with the concomitant consequence of increasing the participants’ confidence levels. reading ability further seems to provide for the extension and increase of vocabulary. research suggests that the more a student reads for leisure purposes, the more vocabulary the student acquires (feitelson et al. 1993; lao & krashen 2000; min 2008; roberts 2008). the amount of reading a learner does not only improves reading proficiency but also assists in vocabulary mastery. research further suggests that reading extensively not only has a positive effect on reading ability but also a positive effect on academic performance, as argued by collier (1989). she refers to academic discourse as ‘school language’ which can be acquired through exposure to different texts. knowledge of text-types, technical vocabulary, and mapping out relationships between textual elements are necessary skills in text comprehension (just & carpenter 1987), and can be attained through the actual reading of texts. increasingly, research seems to suggest that good readers (in general) perform better than non-readers academically. elley (1991) observed that primary school learners who accessed and read more leisure resources not only did well in reading ability tests but also showed a remarkable improvement in their academic work. it appears that an explanation of this improvement lies in corson’s (1997) argument that science and mathematics discourse has its roots in graeco-latin languages. vocabulary that emanates from the graeco-latin background has low-frequency words that a learner can best acquire through exposure to texts that make use of such vocabulary. african learners are at a disadvantage in this regard as african languages do not share the graeco-latin base. this kind of exposure seems to be facilitated by reading for pleasure and by exposure to expository texts. in light of corson’s argument, pretorius’s (2002) study of grade 4 learners suggests that there seems to be a significant positive correlation between reading ability and academic performance. further research on this link provides more support for the claim that reading ability correlates significantly with academic performance (pretorius 2002; pretorius & bohlmann 2003). that there is not much material for leisure reading in the siswati mother tongue is a cause for concern. attempts at introducing a siswati newspaper have been rendered ineffective because the paper does not get sufficient readership. nevertheless, students who, despite the odds, have developed a love for books, read all the available siswati texts that are not prescribed for their class and/or level. the main challenge in this regard seems to be that many young swazi people and their parents tend to undermine the importance of siswati since they believe that it offers no future job opportunities as compared with those offered by a mastery of english. this negative attitude toward siswati has resulted in very little leisure reading being done in l1. however, good readers generally read anything they can find and so they will read whatever is available in the l1 (grabe 1991:388). still, it seems that teachers in primary and high schools need to play a more proactive role in influencing young people to love books and leisure reading. on the whole, at the lower primary level in schools, some learners struggle to learn to read, to identify and recognise words and make sense out of them, a common occurrence as stanovich (1991:418) observes. by the third grade, learners embark on a more complex task that should take them through their academic career: reading in order to learn (heath 1991:5). up to that point, teachers concentrate mainly on getting their learners to master the decoding of a text and read fluently. in the higher grades, children need to develop automaticity in their decoding skills in order to simultaneously to engage the higher order skills of processing the meaning of a text (grabe 1991:380). unfortunately, this is when most teachers in this country no longer stress the importance of reading in all the disciplines. this, in turn, creates serious reading difficulties and exacerbates the learners’ poor inclination towards reading, thereby precluding the inculcation of a reading culture in the land. as already pointed out earlier, however, most schools, even some of those in urban areas, do not have any reading material that can help foster a love of reading at the primary school level. in most schools, class readers are a luxury only afforded by the well-to-do. unless books are donated by publishing houses in the country, few school principals make books a priority in their yearly budget of school finances. secondary schools are no better off. very few school administrators are enlightened about the role that books and/or class readers can play in the development of proficiency in the al and success in learners’ academic performance. their argument is that they were able to learn english without reading books; they generally do not understand what has changed in the learning and teaching of english. and so they insist that teachers of english just have to make sure that learners master and pass the al. clearly, there seems to be no urgency regarding the cultivation of a culture of reading in this country. reading for leisure purposes is restricted attitudinally and by lack of leisure reading resources. provision of reading resources normally follows a grave conviction regarding the outcomes of such an exercise. in this country, swaziland, reading has to be viewed as an activity that must be sown, nurtured, carefully tended and encouraged in order for it to become part of the culture of the land. no research has been carried out in this country on attitudes toward reading held by teachers in general and student teachers in particular. the purpose of this study was to find out whether teacher trainees held positive or negative attitudes toward reading, and whether these were linked to their reading ability, vocabulary levels and academic performance. research questions top ↑ there were four research questions: 1. what are the participants’ attitudes to and perceptions of extensive reading? 2. is there a relationship between the students’ reading attitudes and their al reading ability? 3. is there a relationship between the students’ vocabulary knowledge and their al reading ability? 4. is there a relationship between the students’ academic performance and their al reading ability? background to the study the rationale of the study was based on the fact that the teacher trainees would, on completion of their diploma, leave for schools in the country to be influential in the lives of impressionable young swazi learners. in light of this momentous task, a crucial question was: what kind of influence would the new teachers wield in terms of attitudes to leisure reading? what are their attitudes toward extensive reading? do these attitudes affect their reading ability? how does their reading ability affect their academic performance? this study was undertaken against the backdrop of a country grappling with a myriad challenges, such as the looming insolvency of the state and the scourge of hiv. problems such as the lack of leisure reading materials seem to be insignificant in light of these socio-economic challenges, yet the worst collapse the country can experience is of an academic nature. this is a context in which reading resources are inadequate, if not non-existent; in most primary and secondary schools, and very little reading is ever done. there are very few books written in both the siswati and english languages and this is the prevailing state of affairs. the literature that is produced as siswati novels and short stories is used as prescribed texts for secondary and tertiary siswati literature courses. the participants eighty-four students in the college were asked to be part of the study. thirty-nine were in the third and final year, and 45 in the first year of study, all working towards attaining the primary teacher’s diploma (ptd). the ptd first-year students (n = 45) were aged between 18 and 41. the third-year students (n = 39) were in their final year at college and their ages ranged between 18 and 35. the students were assured that their identities would not be disclosed in the research study and that their privacy would be protected.the university of swaziland (uniswa) which is the certifying and accrediting body for all the academic colleges in the country (including the training college) requires that, on entry for the ptd, students should hold credit passes in at least four subjects, such as geography, history, religious education, home economics, agriculture, biology, science, mathematics and the siswati language, as these are core subjects in primary school education. on enrolment, the students do all these subjects and other non-core but compulsory courses such as art and craft, chalkboard writing, physical education, teaching aids, music and academic communication skills, all aimed at enhancing teaching professionalism amongst the trainees. data collection instruments and analysis the researcher used a 41-item questionnaire exploring the attitudes of the teacher trainees regarding leisure reading. this instrument was designed in light of mckenna’s (2001) model in which he focuses on three principles: the first being ‘the direct impact of episodes of reading’ (italics mine); the second relating to one’s ‘beliefs about the outcomes of reading’, and the third pertaining to one’s ‘beliefs about cultural norms concerning reading (conditioned by one’s desire to conform to those norms)’ (mckenna 2001:139). table 1: attitudes toward and perceptions of extensive reading. table 2: some questionnaire responses. table 3: culturally-held views about extensive reading. the second research instrument used in the study was a criterion-referenced reading comprehension test. it comprised a reading passage and questions based on the passage. questions requiring literal understanding of the passage, inferential and vocabulary knowledge were to be answered in writing. the third instrument was a vocabulary-levels test developed by laufer and nation (1995) in which five levels of test difficulty were tested: the 2000, 3000, 5000 and 10 000 word levels and the university word list (uwl). academic performance was also measured. data for this part of the study were gathered from continuous assessment and the examination scores at the end of the academic year. the researcher chose some subjects that would make up the mean score to represent academic performance (ap), namely: academic communication skills (acs), social studies, mathematics, science and agriculture. the final grade was made up of 50% comprising assignments and tests in the individual specialisation subjects and two other subjects: acs and education, and 50% being the final examination score. procedure the questionnaire was the first to be administered. this was followed by the reading comprehension and vocabulary tests. data scoring and analysis eighteen questions in the questionnaire were coded for the variable data on attitudes and perceptions. the raw score obtained from the coding was converted into percentage points for the purposes of statistical analysis. the vocabulary test was marked and the scores were converted to percentage. academic performance was compiled from the participants’ end-of-year results, from key subjects such as english, mathematics, science, agriculture, academic communication skills, education, social studies and siswati. results top ↑ the exploratory question sought to investigate the participants’ attitudes toward and perceptions of extensive reading. based on the questionnaire data, the researcher found that the participants’ attitudes toward extensive reading were positive, as depicted in table 1 below.it appears that the answer to the exploratory research question, judging from the descriptive statistics above (table 1), is that the participants were enthusiastic about reading. below (in table 2) are some of the questionnaire items and the participants’ responses. the results as shown in table 2 seem to indicate that the majority of the students (63.5%) enjoy reading. the students felt that reading was a pleasant activity that had made a positive contribution to their proficiency levels in english as an al. the results also indicated that there are some remnants of culturally-entrenched attitudes to reading that seem to influence the reading patterns of young swazi students and the population in general. table 4: reading attitudes, reading ability and vocabulary knowledge. table 5: word levels performance and quartiles. responses to the question (#21, shown in table 3): ‘reading novels and magazines is a ‘woman thing’, not for men’ indicate that 13.5% of the participants seem to concur with the statement (including those who responded with not sure). furthermore, one cannot ignore the fact that the findings indicate that 33% of the participants responded with ‘not sure’/‘agree’/‘strongly agree’ with regard to the statement that it was unacceptable to read in public places, and that about 27% still felt that too much reading was hazardous to one’s mental health. in short, almost a third of the students still seem to harbour rather negative cultural views toward extensive reading. perhaps this can be linked to negative attitudes culturally-transmitted early in the life of a child. the next focus is the statistical findings. the second research question was: is there a relationship between the students’ reading attitudes and their al reading ability? the table below shows the descriptive statistics. as can be seen, the students’ attitudes toward reading seem to be convincingly positive. however, these statistics show a remarkable contrast to the students’ reading ability and vocabulary skills. the juxtaposition of the reading performance against the reading attitude scores depicts two distinctly different pictures in that the reading performance displays a mediocre reading ability ranging in the fifties, for a group whose reading attitude levels are relatively high. a pearson’s product-moment correlation was performed on the two sets of data to test for a statistical relationship. the results indicated that there was no correlation between reading ability and reading attitudes in this study i>r = 0.0801, p = 0.469). furthermore, the researcher enquired: is there a relationship between the students’ vocabulary knowledge and their al reading ability? the descriptive statistics (as shown in table 4) indicate a clustering of both the reading and vocabulary scores around a mean in the lower fifties (53% and 51% respectively). as in the reading test, the participants’ vocabulary skills indicate rather low achievement (tables 4 and 5). the performance of the participants in the vocabulary test is interesting in the sense that, on scrutinising the performance at all the word levels, one encounters a remarkable pattern of uniform achievement. the 3000, 5000, university word list and 10 000 word levels appear to be a serious challenge to the participants, with most of them scoring up to half the total score on each word level. only one student scored 89% in the uwl. considering the participants’ performance in the 3000 and 5000 word levels, the 10 000 word level was, not surprisingly, beyond their capability. none of the participants scored above 50% in this category, with 89% of the first year and 82% of the third year scores clustering between zero and 22%. the quartiles (shown in table 5) in the 2000 and 3000 word levels indicated that the 50th and 75th quartiles of the participants appear to have reached mastery (85%) of the 2000 word level. however, on the whole, the students seem not to have attained mastery of the 3000 word level or any of the other higher levels. the upper 25% of the class achieved 72% mastery at the 3000 word level, but even the high performing students had not yet achieved mastery levels (85%) at the 3000 word level. none of the quartile groups achieved mastery levels in the university word list. the results indicated that there was a moderate, albeit highly significant, relationship between the participants’ vocabulary knowledge and their reading ability (r = 0.482, p < 0.000). finally, the researcher tested for a relationship between participants’ reading ability and their academic performance: is there a relationship between the students’ academic performance and their al reading ability? table 6 below shows the descriptive statistics obtained. as can be seen, the standard deviation in the reading ability shows the scores clustering in the mid-fifty per cent mark, as did the academic performance mean. clearly, the statistics indicate homogeneity in the reading and academic performance means. with regard to inferential statistics, the results were remarkable. table 6: primary teacher’s diploma 1 and 3’s academic performance and reading ability. the fourth research question was: is there a relationship between the students’ academic performance and their al reading ability? the null hypothesis was rejected, as a pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficient indicated some relationship, albeit a low one, at r = 0.294, p = 0.007 between the subjects’ reading ability and their academic performance. discussion and recommendations top ↑ the gist and tenor of the study was its provision of empirical evidence that not all is well regarding reading attitudes, academic performance and reading ability in this country. the study findings have raised serious concerns about the reading and vocabulary proficiency of students in the country. the findings suggest that the reading ability of our students is far below the acceptable standards for effective academic pursuits. it was distressing that the participants had not reached mastery of the basic high frequency words (the 2000–3000 word levels) and that they had poor knowledge of common academic words: a grave setback to their reading and academic ability. reading ability does not necessarily mean that every student will achieve academic success, but being unable to read well usually means that a student will not achieve such success. furthermore, the results seem to indicate that the majority of the students have a positive propensity toward reading. students felt that reading was a pleasant activity that had made a positive contribution to their proficiency levels in english as an additional language. perhaps the positive attitudes are a step in the right direction towards the intention to read and/or continue reading (mathewson 2004). the implications of the findings from this study are significant for practitioners in the al teaching area and for teacher education. one recommendation is that as language learning and teaching practitioners, we have to make that clarion plea, as stated by bakka (2000:83): ‘back to books!’ preservice teachers need to get hooked on leisure reading so that they can become real readers and teachers of reading. greater exposure to academic and leisure texts would undoubtedly increase these students’ reading skills as well as their specialised vocabulary knowledge, an achievement that would greatly facilitate the reading and comprehension of academic texts. also, a campaign such as south africa’s ‘masifunde sonke’ (‘let us all read’) would be a good place to start. such a task might have financial implications; however, there is a need for commitment from all education stakeholders, especially the ministry of education, to make a difference in this country’s deteriorating reading and academic standards. clearly, change at the country’s educational policy and planning level cannot be overemphasised. merely paying lip-service to improving the rapidly falling educational standards will only worsen the situation. mckenna argues that ‘if we are to be successful in changing children’s attitudes toward reading, we must target the factors that affect those attitudes’ (2001:139); one such factor that must be targeted is the child’s belief about the outcomes of reading, such as feeling self-confident and stimulated to continue reading. students should be self-driven to engage in more reading. mathewson (2004) states that there is a need for the teacher and/or lecturer to get to know the students’ motivations, ‘values, goals and self-concepts’ in relation to reading, through personal discussions, interviews, their writing, their choices of books and through close observation (2004:1455), in order to influence them in a positive manner and help change their attitudes. another pertinent recommendation from this study is that, for practical reasons, extensive reading in all genres should cut across the curriculum, involving, ideally, all departments in the institution. in light of this, collateral (additional) reading on content subjects should be a requirement in every subject and/or course. this additional reading should have a mark attached to it and must be reflected in the final grade. furthermore, a programme to get teachers started on strategically-planned reading instruction in the schools is recommended. this campaign has to be aimed at empowering teachers in primary schools to start reading and in turn, they would assist swazi youth to start reading. in addition, the provision of storybooks in both the home language and english, to pre-school and primary school children throughout the schools situated in low socio-economic contexts, to be read to the children by their parents or caregivers, would go a long way toward developing and nurturing a culture of reading in the communities, and amongst swazi children. this would start communities on a reading journey towards the inculcation of a culture of reading and enjoyment, with their own children. furthermore, to complement the above-mentioned recommendation, effort must be made to empower parents and caregivers by engaging them in community literacy programmes so that they, in turn, may assist their children with home-based reading. the community could ‘adopt’ the children of illiterate parents for this purpose (lituanas, jacobs & renandya 2001:224). the home environment appears to be very influential in the development of good reading attitudes (conlon et al. 2006). the professional cadre can help, after some in-service training, to educate and train their communities on how to engage in home-based storybook reading. roberts’ (2008) study indicates that this is a viable option. the success of such efforts could ensure cooperation between home and school literacy programmes. moreover, esl classrooms in this country would benefit from an injection of leisure reading resources. it is true that ‘the quality of an education system depends vitally on access to books’ (pretorius & mampuru 2007:56). studies have repeatedly shown that novels are a welcome relief to schools where extensive reading is introduced (roy-campbell & qorro 1997:134; izizinga 2000; elley & mangubhai 1983; elley 1991). however, the ailing economy of swaziland and misdirected government spending might not accommodate this requirement to provide extensive reading materials for the school and college libraries. with time and effort, language practitioners may assist in the translation of these negative mainstream beliefs about reading into positive reading behaviour instead of putting up with ‘mechanistic literacy’, which is superficial literacy that is aimed at simply attaining jobs (bakka 2000). it is with this outcome in mind that i make the above recommendations for the college, the esl context in swaziland and, by extension, the language learning and teaching context in africa. suggestions for further research top ↑ further research on the complex relationship between reading attitudes and reading ability still needs to be conducted. the current study has only scratched the surface in the local context.another area of interest would be that of a longitudinal study, tracking the effectiveness of the students who participated in this study, in the teaching of reading at the primary level, in the schools to which they have been assigned. finally, an intervention programme aimed at investigating what extensive reading can achieve with regard to the reading ability, language proficiency and academic performance of college students, could make a difference. this study could involve a long-term intervention project that would require revamping the present college library with leisure reading material in order to get students started on a reading programme. still, the researcher would do well to heed green’s advice that a programme like this cannot be “a stand-alone” component’ in the esl classroom (2005:308). acknowledgements top ↑ the researcher is indebted to the student teachers who participated so willingly in this study and made it possible to learn more about pre-service teachers’ reading attitudes, reading ability, vocabulary levels and academic performance in the swazi context. my gratitude also goes to my supervisor, prof. e.j. pretorius, the administrators of the faculty and the lecturers. thank you for your role in the completion of this project. competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationship(s) which may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this paper. references top ↑ bakka, p., 2000, ‘back to books: functional literacy‘, in k. parry (ed.), language and literacy in uganda: towards a sustainable reading culture, pp. 83–87, fountain publishers, kampala.camiciottoli, b.c., 2001, ‘extensive reading in english: habits and attitudes of a group of italian university efl students’, journal of research in reading 24(2), 135–153. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9817.00137 collier, v.p., 1989, ‘how long? a synthesis of research on academic achievement in a second language’, tesol quarterly 23(3), 509–531. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3586923 conlon, e.g., zimmer-gimbeck, m.j., creed, p.a. & tucker, m., 2006, ‘family history, self-perceptions, attitudes and cognitive abilities associated with early adolescent reading skills’, journal of research in reading 29(1), 11–32. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1111/j.1467-9817.2006.00290.x corson, d., 1997, ‘the learning and use of academic english words’, language learning 47(4), 352–367. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0023-8333.00025 day, r.r. & bamford, j., 1998, extensive reading in the second language classroom, cambridge university press, cambridge. elley, w.b., 1991, ‘acquiring literacy in a second language: the effects of book-based programs’, language learning 41(3), 375–411. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1991.tb00611.x elley, w.b. & mangubhai, f., 1983, ‘the impact of reading on second language learning’, reading research quarterly 19(1), 53–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/747337 feitelson, d., goldstein, z., iraqi, j. & share, d., 1993, ‘effects 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66–70, fountain publishers, kampala. just, m.a. & carpenter, p.a., 1987, the psychology of reading and language comprehension, allyn & bacon, boston. lao, c.y. & krashen, s., 2000, ‘the impact of popular literature study on literacy development in efl: more evidence for the power of reading’, system, 28, 261– 270. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0346-251x(00)00011-7 laufer, b. & nation, p., 1995, ‘vocabulary size and use: lexical richness in l2 written production’, applied linguistics 16(3), 307–322. lituanas, p.m., jacobs, g.m. & renandya, w.a., 2001, ‘an investigation of extensive reading with remedial students in a philippines secondary school’, international journal of educational research 35, 217–225. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0883-0355(01)00018-0 mathewson, g.c., 2004, ‘model of attitude influence upon reading and learning to read’, in r.b. ruddell & n.j. unrau (eds.), theoretical models and processes of reading, pp. 1431–1461, international reading association, newark, de. mckenna, m.c., 2001, ‘development of reading attitudes’, in l. verhoeven & c.e. snow (eds.), literacy and motivation: reading engagement in individuals and xgroups, pp. 135–158, lawrence erlbaum associates, mahweh, n.j. mckenna, m.c., kear, d.j. & ellsworth, r.a., 1995, ‘children’s attitudes toward reading: a national survey’, reading research quarterly 30 (4), 934–956. min, h-t., 2008, ‘efl vocabulary acquisition and retention: reading plus vocabulary enhancement activities and narrow reading’, language learning 58(1), 73–115. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2007.00435.x mokhtari, k. & sheorey, r., 1994, ‘reading habits of esl students at different levels of english proficiency and education’, journal of research in reading 17(1), 46–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9817.1994.tb00051.x pretorius, e.j., 2002, ‘reading ability and academic performance in south africa: are we fiddling while rome is burning?’, language matters 33, 169–196. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10228190208566183 pretorius, e.j., 2005, ‘what do students do when they read to learn? lessons from five case studies’, south african journal of higher education 19(4), 790–812. pretorius, e.j. & bohlmann, c.a., 2003, ‘a reading intervention programme for mathematics students’, south african journal of higher education 17(2), 226–236. pretorius, e.j. & mampuru, d.m., 2007, ‘playing football without a ball: language, reading and academic performance in a high poverty school’, journal of research in reading 30(1), 38–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9817.2006.00333.x roberts, t.a., 2008, ‘home storybook reading in primary or second language with preschool children: evidence of equal effectiveness for second-language vocabulary acquisition’, reading research quarterly 43(2), 103–130. http://dx.doi.org/10.1598/rrq.43.2.1 roy-campbell, z.m. & qorro, m., 1997, language crisis in tanzania: the myth of english versus education, mkuki na nyota, dar es salaam. smith, c.m., 1990, ‘a longitudinal investigation of reading attitude development from childhood to adulthood’, journal of educational research 83(4), 215–219. stanovich, k.e., 1991, ‘word recognition: changing perspectives’, in r. barr, m.l. kamil, p.b. mosenthal & p.d. pearson (eds.), handbook of reading research ii, pp. 418–453, longman, new york. walberg, h.j. & tsai, s-l., 1995, ‘correlates of reading achievement and attitude: a national assessment study’, journal of educational research 78(5), 159–167. abstract introduction purpose of the study literature review and the theoretical framework of the study methodology results and discussion conclusion acknowledgements references footnote about the author(s) shivona mathura school of education, college of humanities, university of kwazulu-natal, pietermaritzburg, south africa free-queen b. zulu school of education, college of humanities, university of kwazulu-natal, pietermaritzburg, south africa citation mathura, s. & zulu, f-q.b., 2021, ‘using flashcards for english second language creative writing in grade 1’, reading & writing 12(1), a298. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v12i1.298 original research using flashcards for english second language creative writing in grade 1 shivona mathura, free-queen b. zulu received: 10 sept. 2020; accepted: 07 july 2021; published: 31 aug. 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: english second language (esl) learners have difficulty constructing sentences due to internalising information in their home language and thereafter translating it into english. learners who have difficulty speaking english generally encounter problems writing it, which hampers their creative writing ability. objectives: the purpose of the research was to identify a teaching strategy to facilitate esl learners with creative writing. this study explored the influence of flashcards on the creative writing skills of grade 1 esl learners and improved the researchers’ teaching practice. method: this qualitative study depicted an action research design and utilised an inductive approach to data analysis. convenience sampling was used when selecting the participants who were 31 grade 1 learners in a school in pietermaritzburg. the flashcards were used during the implementation stage of the action research process as an intervention to enhance learners’ creative writing skills. findings: the findings indicate that learners who participated in the study had improved in their written assessments. there were three themes identified, which included misspelt words, incorrect use of tenses and ungrammatical sentence construction. flashcards revealed the correct sentence writing techniques by depicting sentences. learners’ written pieces were more logical and they participated actively during lessons. this enhanced the researcher’s teaching practice, which catered to both visual and auditory learners. conclusion: the findings suggest that the use of flashcards had a positive effect on esl learners’ creative writing skills. this encouraged participatory teaching and learning, which can be of benefit to many teachers seeking to engage learners using alternate learning styles. keywords: visual aids; language development; sentence construction; language of learning and teaching; english second language. introduction teachers have the challenging task of developing learners cognitively and linguistically (haerazi & irawan 2019). the issue facing many teachers in south africa is the difference between the language of learning and teaching (lolt) and learners’ home language (jordaan 2011a). for this reason, it is imperative that teachers devise appropriate teaching strategies that are applicable to both english home language and english second language (esl) learners. the lolt impacts both teachers and learners, as teachers are required to bridge the gap for esl learners who have difficulty understanding concepts taught in english (probyn 2008). jordaan (2011a) established that south african teachers found it difficult to teach at different linguistic levels for esl and english home language learners in their classes. this resulted in time pressures when they had to pre-teach the vocabulary and concepts required in a particular subject (jordaan 2011a). teaching english is not only transmitting knowledge to the learners; instead, it is enabling learners to read, speak and to write with fluency (rasheed, zeeshan & zaid 2017). in south africa, the foundation phase refers to grades r–3. this includes learners between 5 and 9 years of age, with learning areas focusing on literacy, numeracy and life skills (western cape education department 2013). the english curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) stipulates four categories of english that should be covered in the foundation phase. these are listening, speaking, reading and writing (department of education 2011:8). the section of writing consists of shared writing and individual writing (department of education 2011:11). shared writing focuses on learners copying captions or sentences off the board and whole class or group writing. individual writing is developed further in the year in grade 1 and consists of learners writing their own captions and sentences relating to events, such as news or stories. it is challenging to adopt appropriate teaching strategies within the classroom when teaching learners creative writing skills. ‘children begin grade 1 by “writing” using pictures but as they master the skills of letter formation they can start to copy individual words, captions and full sentences’ (department of education 2011:18). in grade 1, creative writing is entry-level story writing, which falls under individual writing outlined in the caps document. ‘the idea of creative writing should foster children’s background; it should inspire them to use their own experience to create and to convey themselves’ (nino & paez 2018:104). creative writing becomes meaningful when learners understand the concept of story writing, as well as the vocabulary needed to accomplish this task (mukoroli 2011). the challenge is when esl learners have difficulty in understanding the lolt when it is not their home language (jordaan 2011a). this challenge is more pronounced in an english medium school with the majority of the learners being esl learners. the participants in this study consisted of both esl and english home language learners, while the research site is an english medium school. to address this challenge, teachers should try to relate new vocabulary needed for creative writing activities to everyday life or present visual aids to assist the esl learners’ understanding process. jordaan (2011b) mentioned that there is limited research on the development of language skills of south african learners, particularly in the foundation phase. in line with this statement, sitompul (2013) found that research on using flashcards to teach young learners’ vocabulary was still rare. flashcards can be used as visual prompts to promote the recognition of sight words in reading and vocabulary extension, and to improve learners’ creative writing skills by providing context for new words introduced to learners (muhammad, almas & muhammad 2016; mukoroli 2011; nugroho, nurkamto, sulistyowati 2012). vocabulary or word flashcards can be used to teach the spelling of newly learnt words, which can aid learners’ reading and writing skills (komachali & khodareza 2012). flashcards encourage active participation in lessons by both learners and teachers, which fosters an interactive learning environment (nugroho et al. 2012). a number of external professional development initiatives are available for south african teachers such as short courses, workshops and university qualifications. however, there is still a need for research that supports teacher inquiry as a form of professional development (manfra 2019). teacher inquiry as a form of professional development involves teachers taking responsibility for their own learning, situating learning in their own classrooms and linking it to their practice (manfra 2019). teacher inquiry is a ‘transformative model’ (kennedy 2014:347) of professional development that provides a platform for teacher learning. teacher learning in an inquiry perspective deals with the challenges related to teacher learning from cognitive and practical perspectives including the need for teachers to implement problem-solving skills and rethink practices that have proven to be unsuccessful in the classroom (manfra 2019). this article thus presents an action research on how flashcards were used to teach creative writing to esl learners in grade 1. purpose of the study the purpose of this action research was to explore the influence of flashcards on the creative writing skills of esl grade 1 learners. using flashcards in the classroom as a tool may aid writing and be of benefit to learners. using action research was beneficial to identify a viable teaching strategy to improve instructional practices. the research question addressed by this action research study was: how does the use of flashcards as a teaching strategy enhance writing skills of esl grade 1 learners? literature review and the theoretical framework of the study writing is a skill that is developed at an early phase of language education and is vital in the teaching and learning process (muhammad et al. 2016). similarly, nino and paez (2018:111) mentioned that ‘writing is a skill that can be developed from different creative ways as children enjoy games and use their imagination to contrast with reality’. when writing, students activate their ‘cognitive, linguistic and cultural aspect in their mind’ (haerazi & irawan 2019:10). creative writing is introduced in grade 1 and the foundation is laid for learners’ future academic writing. writing proficiency can be hindered or enhanced by both teachers and learners (muhammad et al. 2016). teachers need to prompt learners and provide adequate motivation and feedback, while learners need to be enthusiastic about their learning (muhammad et al. 2016). for the purpose of the study, the prompts that were used to aid learners’ writing were flashcards, consisting of words that can be used to make sentences. an example is the beginning words of the sentence ‘i went to’ or ‘i have a’. these phrases served as prompts for learners when they started their creative writing process. flashcards are cards that contain either pictures or words, which serve as visual aids for learners (adas & bakir 2013; baleghizadeh & ashoori 2011; komachali & khodareza 2012; sartika 2020). they can be used to help learners identify spelling and contexts of words and in this way aid learners in their writing abilities (bloch 1999; sartika 2020; skarr et al. 2012). as stated by adas and bakir (2013), repetitive exposure to material is beneficial to esl learners. learners can store words that they have been repeatedly exposed to and retrieve these words from their memory immediately (miles & ehri 2017). having knowledge of the vocabulary needed and being familiar with it can make the task of writing easier (mukoroli 2011). studies (aulia 2018; harisanty et al. 2020; skarr et al. 2012) on teaching creative writing using flashcards suggest that it has many advantages in language teaching. these include consolidating vocabulary, and motivating learners by gaining interest. they can be used for any age group or ability group of learners, are portable and can be used at any time, can be arranged to create logical grouping of the target words, are cost effective, provide a visual link to second language learners and can be used for practising structure and word order or for a variety of games (haycraft 1978; nugroho et al. 2012; skarr et al. 2012). ‘besides increasing student vocabulary, flashcards can also be used to improve foreign language understanding’ (harisanty et al. 2020:4). flashcards containing pictures have the ability to provide meaning to abstract concepts encountered by esl learners (sartika 2020). according to aulia (2018), flashcards allow teachers to explain concepts and provide a variation in teaching strategies in a classroom setting. using flashcards may enable teachers to present learning materials in interesting ways, while aiding learners’ understanding of teachers’ explanations (sartika 2020). this study is informed by situated learning theory. several researchers such as brown, collins and duguid (1989); scardamalia and bereiter (1985); durning and artino (2011), lave and wenger (1991), and putnam and borko (2000) have supported this theory. the theory is underpinned by three cognitions, namely ‘cognition as situated, cognition as social and cognition as distributed’ (putnam & borko 2000:4). putnam and borko argued that the situated learning theory allows for multiple conceptual perspectives and multiple (individual and sociocultural) units of analysis. these multiple perspectives thus provide powerful tools for understanding student learning in a classroom setting. this theory suggests that learning is constantly taking place in the classroom, due to teachers learning through practice, as well as social and cultural factors that influence learning and teaching (putnam & borko 2000). a study based on writing done by scardamalia and bereiter (1985) used this theory to develop prompts they called procedural facilitation which aided learners in their writing process (collins, brown & newman 1987). this approach provided prompts and modelling of expert processes for the learners, while gradually minimising support and allowing learners to write without guidance. in this study, flashcards were used to prompt learners in their elementary stages of writing by providing the basic words utilised in creative writing. this facilitated learners’ creative writing process and promoted confidence in word recognition. when using situated learning theory, the context in which learning occurs is fundamental, and the manner in which learning takes place is based on the situation (anderson, reder & simon 1996). this theory is relevant to this study due to the fact that learners’ social contexts determine their home language. the location of the school determines teachers’ lolt when teaching writing, as this is dependent on the surrounding residents and the common spoken language. as stated by anderson et al. (1996), emphasis needs to be placed on what is learnt in the classroom and what is required outside the classroom. during the research, flashcards were used in reading groups, as this allowed for more focused sessions, with smaller numbers. reading groups are based on learners’ academic ability and therefore learners of similar intellectual capacity were grouped together. this enabled the researcher (author 1) to identify learners who had difficulty with word recognition and creative writing. methodology research paradigm considering that action research is used for improving teaching practice as part of a process of change (koshy, koshy & waterman 2010), this study is thus located within the critical paradigm. cohen, manion and morrison (2011) explain that the critical paradigm acknowledges ideological and political contexts of educational research and aims to emancipate individuals. this action research study is thus emancipatory due to changing conditions which hamper desired improvement in classroom practices. we argue that conducting this action research is a ‘transformative professional development’ (kennedy 2014:689) activity which is liberated from the imposed activities of the school management team or department of basic education officials. furthermore, the first author of this article reflected on her teaching practice and designed an intervention that aimed to change and transform her teaching practice. bertram and christiansen (2014:27) state that ‘the critical paradigm sees reality as shaped by social, political, cultural, economic and other dynamics’. in relation to this study, social and cultural backgrounds foreground learners’ language. learners’ home language is also dependent on their socialisation and upbringing. by changing teaching strategies, learners’ academic writing improved, which was beneficial to both the educator and the learners. using flashcards was of benefit to those learners who learn visually, as the words were seen and associations made. by experimenting with a new teaching strategy in order to assist grade 1 esl learners and change the focus of standardised writing approaches, the researchers’ teaching practice was improved. research site this action research study was conducted in a primary school located in the umgungundlovu district in kwazulu-natal. the school in which the study was undertaken is classified as a quintile 5 school. this is also one of the ex-model c schools, which accounts for the school being well-resourced, due to the majority of school funding being received from school fees and fundraising activities, with minimal funding from government. a large number of the learners at the school, where the action research was conducted, are esl learners from surrounding urban areas in pietermaritzburg, with the majority speaking isizulu as their home language. the lolt of this school is english and therefore all lessons are delivered in english. sampling convenience sampling was used in this study, due to members of the target population meeting certain criteria, such as easy accessibility, geographical proximity, availability at a given time, or the willingness to participate (cohen, manion & morrison 2011; etikan, musa & alkassim 2016). this method of sampling is used for the benefit of the researcher, as the sample is easily accessible (bertram & christiansen 2014). the sample consisted of 31 grade 1 learners within the age range of 6–7 years. the researcher (author 1) intended to use flash cards to enhance their creative writing skills. method action research consists of four steps, namely (1) planning, (2) implementation, (3) observation, and (4) reflection (bertram & christiansen 2014). planning includes the preparation of all the materials needed for the action research, including lesson plans and materials (nugroho et al. 2012). the planning stage included a week of observation of learners’ sentence construction and the preparation of flashcards to facilitate their writing skills. the lesson plans for the 6 weeks of research were also planned during the first week. a baseline assessment was carried out in the form of a written task, where learners had to write four sentences based on their june holiday experience. the learners who did not understand the concept of sentence writing merely wrote words, some of which were unidentifiable. flashcards were printed in text boxes, and thereafter cut out and pasted onto cardboard, which was then laminated. implementation requires the researcher to take action and execute the plan formulated in the previous step. within the second stage, flashcards were used 3–4 times a week to help learners grasp the spelling and identification of words that can be used in their creative writing. learners were given creative writing activities to complete each week. during week 5, learners did not complete a written activity due to a public holiday and time constraints. observation is defined as the researcher monitoring the effects of the action research in its context (nugroho et al. 2012). in step 3, the learners’ sentence writing skills were observed again, at the end of the 6-week cycle, to identify if any improvements had occurred. the flashcards were also evaluated within the fifth week of the research and new words were added due to a need that was identified. these words were common words that are used in creative writing tasks. the function of reflection is to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the research and whether it has been successful (nugroho et al. 2012). within the last stage, reflection on the efficacy of flashcards on improving esl learners writing was carried out and the determination of whether this method should be employed or changed in future, as well as whether a new cycle of action research needed to be carried out. data collection the data collection methods that were utilised for this study included unstructured observations and document analysis. unstructured observations allow the researcher to observe the situation and review observational data before making assumptions (cohen, manion & morrison 2007). observations were carried out within the first week and across all the stages of the implementation of the teaching strategy. through observation, the learners’ level of writing capabilities was identified and a baseline assessment was conducted. informal assessment was also conducted in each week while learners were performing their creative writing tasks, as well as while the flashcards were being used in the classroom. the observations, research notes documented, and evidence gathered from learner books determine whether the words flashed to learners generated any change in their writing patterns. document analysis included learners’ work books, tests and exercise books, which were analysed to compare sentences written before and after the use of flashcards. data analysis an inductive approach to data analysis was used in this study. inductive analysis begins with observations, raw data collection and pattern detection to reach the development of general conclusions (bertram & christiansen 2014:117). the first step of the analysis involved observation of learners during lessons. within the second step, which is the raw data collection, the initial baseline assessments of learners’ writing were inspected and thereafter the creative writing activities performed by learners each week were assessed to identify if any patterns occurred with the words being flashed and the words used by learners within their creative writing. within the third step of the analysis, themes were detected and identified after comparing learner books and finding common mistakes. designing an action research project raises complex ethical issues (nolen & putten 2007:402). in line with nolen and putten (2007) principles of ethical issues (informed consent, protecting the confidentiality of participants, autonomy of participants) and the south african council for educators (sace) ethical standards for teachers were followed. relevant gatekeepers’ permission for the study to be undertaken was obtained and autonomy of participants were considered, as permission from the school principal was obtained along with permission from parents for learners to participate in the study. in place of names, pseudonyms were used to ensure that the school and participants remain anonymous. according to bertram and christiansen (2014) beneficence refers to research being of benefit and therefore it is reflected in this study, as the findings benefited learners and the researcher. results and discussion during the observation, it was noted that some learners were unable to construct a single sentence, even with guidance, while others were able to write sentences without much added help. figure 1 displays learners’ assessment results of four tasks. figure 1: analysis of creative writing assessment tasks. figure 1 indicates the results achieved by learners for four creative writing assessment tasks. these tasks were, my holiday, ushaka excursion, my pet and fun in the sun. learners were marked on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being the lowest score and 5 being the highest, based on their punctuation, spelling and spacing, and creativity. the number of learners who scored a mark of 1 decreased during the research period, while the number of learners who scored a mark of 4 increased by the fourth assessment. this clearly points to the positive effects that flashcards had on learners’ writing abilities. the assessment results suggest that the use of flashcards was of benefit to learners who were spelling words incorrectly, as the repetitive visual representation of the words aided with familiarity and identification of words. these results correspond with a study based on flashcard use by nel and nel (2016). the flashcards incorporated words in the past tense, such as ‘bought’ and ‘played’, which exposed learners to words that can be used in their writing within the correct tense. many learners were found to be using the word ‘played’ in their creative writing pieces, which signposts the positive effects of using flashcards. when addressing grammatical errors, it is important to make learners aware of the language that can be used and how it can be utilised. for this reason, flashcards containing parts of sentences were made to help esl learners with the initial process of constructing a sentence and the vocabulary needed. figure 1 displays the words selected for the flashcards. similarly, in an action research study based on flashcards, sartika (2020) found that exemplary sentences printed on flashcards should be related to learners’ everyday life. the findings of the study revealed that learners who participated in the study had improved in their written assessments, as compared to the results previously obtained in their baseline assessment (figure 1). many learners used the words that were flashed to them, as these were conventional words used during their written news and sentence writing activities. vocabulary flashcards allow learners to encounter and learn words, while storing these words in their memory due to repetition (komachali & khodareza 2012; miles & ehri 2017). learners’ familiarity with the words allowed them to express confidence when writing, given that they were exposed to these words on a regular basis and the context of these words were explained in detail, with examples provided. mukoroli (2011) refers to this process as personalisation, when words become better understood through relation to context or experience. figure 2 indicates the flashcards containing starting points of sentences which were made to help learners who were struggling to construct sentences, for example ‘i went to’. this enabled learners to identify what a sentence should look like, namely a string of words together. figure 4 illustrates the writing skills of an esl learner, in comparison to that of an english home language learner in figure 4. figure 2: flashcards for grade 1 learners’ creative writing. figure 3 shows the work of an esl learner who had difficulty grasping the concept of sentence writing. this learner could not write a single sentence during this task. the letters put together did not form a word, let alone a sentence. figure 3: baseline assessment task of an english second language learner. figure 4, on the other hand, displays the creative writing task of an english home language learner. this learner was able to write three sentences without much assistance. although there were spelling and grammatical errors, this is common within the foundation phase and even more so in grade 1, as this is where sentence writing is officially introduced. due to creative writing being a new concept to grade 1 learners, it is expected that spelling and grammatical errors may occur. figure 4: baseline assessment task of an english home language learner. the research was aimed at using flashcards to help learners identify that by stringing words together, one can make a sentence, provided that it makes sense. for example, from the flashcards in figure 1, the cards ‘i went to’, ‘the’, ‘mall’, ‘with’, and ‘grandpa’ were displayed on the board to show learners how to construct a sentence using these words. the themes identified during the observations included commonly misspelt words, incorrect tenses and ungrammatical sentence construction. these themes are elaborated on below. misspelt words during observation of learners undertaking their creative writing tasks, there were common words that were misspelt. a list of the words identified, as well as frequently used words in creative writing, was drafted. this list comprised 14 words, which were then added to the flashcards previously made. figure 5 displays the words that learners regularly misspelt. figure 5: commonly misspelt words by english second language learners. the most common of the misspelt words is ‘some’ which learners often spelt as ‘sum’ due to the phonetic sound of the word. learners at a young age often sound their words before writing them and hence spelling errors are common at this stage of writing. this is referred to as phonemic awareness (muhammad et al. 2016). most learners only fully develop phonemic awareness by the end of grade 1 (durwin & moore 2019). nicholson (1998) asserts that when learners’ spelling improves, they become confident in story writing. figure 4 indicates an english home language learner who spelt the word ‘some’ as ‘sum’ due to sounding the word first and thereafter writing it. incorrect tenses the second theme identified was incorrect tenses in creative writing. learners were found to write in the future tense when the correct tense of the news written is the past tense. a study carried out by toba, noor and sanu (2019) revealed that, esl university students struggle with spelling, tenses and grammar due to limited knowledge and exposure to english. likewise, many of the participants had limited prior english exposure. a popular word found to be used in the wrong tense was ‘eat’. for example, learners wrote sentences such as ‘we eat some food’ (l11). figure 6 displays an esl learner’s creative writing with the incorrect tense. figure 6: incorrect tenses in creative writing. ungrammatical sentence construction the third theme detected during the research was ungrammatical sentence construction. this included learners writing sentences that did not make sense to the reader, due to a lack of grammatical knowledge in the language in which the sentences are expressed. an example of ungrammatical sentence construction is depicted in figure 5. second language english learners have the difficult task of mastering the grammatical rules that encompass a second language (mukoroli 2011). the three themes discussed above have provided clarity on the areas that are lacking in the development of grade 1 esl learners’ creative writing skills. learners do not have adequate grounding in english for them to express their ideas in writing. writing of sentences, which is what creative writing entails, is only introduced in grade 1 and therefore is an unfamiliar task to learners at this stage of schooling. in spite of these hampering factors, learners were still able to produce improved results during creative writing assessments. while many esl learners seemed to have improved, this was not the case with all learners. a selection of esl learners who had difficulty grasping the english language still encountered problems during their creative writing tasks. one learner in particular seemed to have no visible improvement, even with the flashcards containing the initial formation of a sentence being placed on the board for her to identify what a possible sentence could look or sound like. in contrast, some esl learners demonstrated minimal, but visible improvement due to their calibre of writing, prior to the research, being so poor. the fact that the learners in the study displayed noticeable changes in their creative writing patterns revealed that the research was successful and esl learners have benefitted from the use of flashcards as a teaching strategy. similarly, various studies undertaken by researchers such as skarr et al. (2012), sitompul (2013), komachali and khodareza (2012), and durwin and moore (2019) all yielded positive results when using flashcards to improve esl learners’ spelling and vocabulary. parents of esl learners who had difficulty were encouraged to use flashcards at home to aid these learners with their word recognition and the process of creative writing. english is a global language that is used at primary and tertiary levels in education, as well as in many professions around the world (adas & bakir 2013; flanegin & rudd 2000; pakir 1999). the study revealed that learners who are exposed to english in the home environment dexterously grasp the concept of creative writing and are able to write clearer, more detailed sentences. learners who were not exposed to english outside the classroom environment generally had greater difficulty understanding the lolt and therefore struggled with creative writing tasks. homework and reinforcing learning that occurs in the classroom is another factor that contributes to learner progress and development. the esl learners who unremittingly perform homework tasks generally excel in the classroom, as juxtaposed with those learners who do not do homework or practise their sentence writing. apart from verbal explanations, flashcards enhanced learners’ creative writing. the research was conducted to assist in improving the researcher’s teaching practice, which it has accomplished. by utilising flashcards as a teaching strategy, the researcher was able to connect with learners and encourage them to actively participate in lessons. the esl learners were more confident as the words flashed became familiar to them with increased exposure. putnam and borko (2000) stated that situated learning plays a crucial role for teachers to learn new, innovative ways to improve on their teaching practice. in line with the situated learning perspective, using flashcards has enabled the researchers’ teaching methods to cater to different learning styles, which included audio and visual learners, while also developing academic writing skills of esl grade 1 learners. the classroom grew to be interactive and more pleasant for the researcher, as well as the learners. this correlates with the ‘cognition as distributed’ (putnam & borko 2000:5) aspect of the situated learning theory which was applied to the research. the theory further stipulates cognition as situated, implying that learning is co-dependent on the environment in which it takes place. flashcards allowed for the classroom to become an interactive platform of learning. lastly, the flashcards were found to be effective when put into operation in learners’ reading groups. these groups are based on learners’ reading ability and therefore learners were more comfortable saying the words with peers of a similar competence level, as their recognition of the words corresponded. reading groups allow for a manageable number of learners for teachers to work with. flashcards are versatile and have proved to be of benefit to esl grade 1 learners in aiding their creative writing process, while also improving the first author’s teaching practice. conclusion the study aimed to determine the effect that flashcards as a teaching strategy had on esl grade 1 learners’ creative writing skills. the main findings indicate that many learners had benefitted from the use of flashcards and their writing skills had improved. the learners were receptive to this technique and willingly participated in lessons, which made the learning process a participatory and enjoyable one. since esl learners are required to learn to read and write in english, using this approach was found to be effective in aiding this development. some learners may not have shown visible improvement during the study, but that could be due to learners having different developmental paces, which cannot be avoided. the action research undertaken overall proved to be successful in determining that the use of flashcards enhanced the creative writing skills of grade 1 esl learners. this study may prove to be of benefit to teachers who have multiple linguistic groups in their classrooms or esl teachers around the world. further research is recommended to determine the impact of flashcards on other learning areas. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions s.m. conducted the action research in her grade 1 class as an honours research project under the supervision of f.-q.b.z. who provided input on the methodology and ongoing support with corrections and feedback regarding the article structure and information. ethical considerations ethical clearance was obtained from the university of kwazulu-natal (hssrec/00000033/2019). funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability this research received no specific grant from any 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https://www.westerncape.gov.za/dept/education/services/795/17465. footnote 1. l1 refers to learner 1, as learner identities are not revealed. abstract introduction translanguaging enhancing reading ability through text prediction the study intervention data presentation findings incidental to the study discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) vukile d. mgijima department of communication, management sciences and law, mangosuthu university of technology, durban, south africa citation mgijima, v.d., 2021, ‘advancing text prediction skills through translanguaging’, reading & writing 12(1), a284. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v12i1.284 original research advancing text prediction skills through translanguaging vukile d. mgijima received: 29 mar. 2020; accepted: 08 jan. 2021; published: 23 june 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: making predictions on how events might unfold when reading a text improves comprehension. research on reading and making predictions tends to focus predominantly on the effects of making predictions as a reading strategy in monolingual contexts. so far, there is a paucity of research on the effects of reading development strategies in which learners are encouraged to read a text and express their predictions on how the events might unfold in the text in a different language from the one the text is written in. objectives: this study investigated the possible effects of translanguaging techniques on the readers’ ability to make plausible predictions of events when reading texts. method: the study adopted a solomon four quasi-experimental design in which a total of 215 grade 4 bilingual isixhosa and english learners from different primary schools participated. results: the findings demonstrated that translanguaging techniques, in which a tapestry of the learners’ linguistic repertoire is used simultaneously in one reading lesson, have a positive impact on the learners’ ability to make plausible predictions on how the events might unfold when reading texts. the findings also indicated that accurate text prediction is determined by a number of factors, which include the reader’s familiarity with the content, the context of the reading text and the vocabulary used therein. conclusion: for text prediction as a reading development strategy to be successful, the text and the reader’s knowledge of the word, the world and the language ought to match. otherwise, text prediction may be hampered due to lack of the reader’s relevant background and linguistic knowledge. contribution: this article fills out the research gap that has been caused by limited research on the effects of translanguaging on the text prediction abilities of multilingual learners. it contributes significantly to the body of research by providing some of the strategies that multilingual learners can utilise to enhance their reading comprehension. keywords: text prediction; translanguaging; reading comprehension; solomon four; multilingualism. introduction reading is one of the essential skills that empower learners to meet their most vital needs and enhances meaningful participation in the social, cultural, political and economical domains of their community. however, it has been observed that the reading development of multilingual learners in elementary grades in south africa often leads to poor performance and results in learners who struggle to read for meaning (dbe 2014; howie et al. 2017). although there might be a number of reasons for this lack in reading ability (modisaotsile 2012), the reasons they are not receiving much attention include the dominance of monolingual approaches employed to teach reading in multilingual communities. this study sought to investigate the effects of translanguaging, a teaching strategy that employs a tapestry of the learners’ linguistic repertoire, on grade 4 multilingual learners’ ability to make predictions when reading texts. making predictions on how events might unfold when reading a text improves comprehension (roit 2016). thus far, however, there is limited research that focuses on the effects of translanguaging on reading and text prediction in multilingual contexts. the study responds to the following question: how effective is translanguaging on the text prediction skills of learners who have been trained to apply it to make predictions on how events might unfold when reading a narrative text? translanguaging this article adopted a translanguaging framework to address the text prediction abilities of the learners. translanguaging is an umbrella term used to refer to a communication encounter in which multilingual interlocutors engage various semiotic means to express thoughts. the concept, which is attributed to cen williams (baker, jones, & lewis, 2012; hornberger & link 2012), also refers to a pedagogical practice in a multilingual context in which learners receive input in one language and give output in a different one. in essence, it strikes a balance between the learners’ language deficiency and content learning, in that the learners are allowed to utilise the variety of languages at their disposal to interact with the teacher, the content and with each other in a learning process. for instance, one can read a text in one language and retell or explain it in another. thus, translanguaging is an apolitical transformational tapestry of sense-making mechanisms that a multilingual person engages in to communicate. various models through which translanguaging can be incorporated as a pedagogical approach have been proposed. these include hornberger’s continua of biliteracy (hornberger & link 2012) and makalela’s ubuntu translanguaging (makalela 2016) models. the continua of a biliteracy lens posits that learning occurs at various intersections along and across continua at which one’s knowledge and use of different language varieties and literacies meet. the continua enable one to see how possible it is for infinite, elusive, unpredictable, interrelated and simultaneous opportunities for literacy to develop within the continua, taking into account various contexts, content, linguistic and literacy repertoires that learners bring to the learning environment. according to hornberger and link (2012): … the continua of biliteracy lens reminds educators that the more students’ contexts of language and literacy use allow them to draw from across the whole of each and every continuum, the greater are the chances for their full language and literacy development and expression. (p. 243) at the centre of the continua of biliteracy are multilingualism as a resource, and translanguaging as a vehicle through which biliteracy can be achieved. therefore, as a framework within which a study can be conceptualised, translanguaging presents a positive angle from which multilingualism should be researched. makalela (2016) proposes a model in which an african value system of interdependency, ubuntu, is the framework for translanguaging. the model is introduced through a scenario about international trade and the co-existence of numerous language groups in the limpopo valley to show the notion of confluence of african multilingualism. it shows how confluent, fluid and porous languages have become and questions the relevance of the separatist orientation towards language education and literacy development in the 21st century. the ubuntu lens fits well as a pedagogical strategy in a multilingual context since, in an african multilingual context for example, one language is not enough to complete the cycle of meaning-making. this, therefore, explains why ‘the notion of translanguaging fits in to account for complex multilingual encounters where speakers use more than one language for exchange of input and output’ (makalela 2016:190). it is noteworthy, though, that translanguaging is quite a recent concept whose theoretical underpinnings are still emerging. nonetheless, there is a growing body of research that demonstrates positive effects of translingual interplay between home and school literacy practices worldwide. for instance, translanguaging has been broadened to include multiple discursive language practices (garcía 2009) and semiotic repertoires (wei 2018), including technology (vogel, ascenzi-moreno & garcía 2018), wherein a multilingual person engages in a communication process. thus, a translanguaging framework fits this study since the participants were encouraged to read a text in one language and give their predictions on how the events might unfold in the text in another language. enhancing reading ability through text prediction previous studies show that encouraging learners to engage in making predictions when reading texts increases reading interest and comprehension (block & duffy 2008; duke & pearson 2004). making predictions involves forming hypotheses about what will happen next, or what ideas the text will advance, followed by continuous evaluation of these predictions and hypotheses and revising them as the reading warrants (roit 2016). the process employs a great deal of relevant existing knowledge on the topic. however, one might need to exercise due diligence when making predictions about a reading text since each text is unique and, thus, calls for specific prior knowledge. the knowledge facilitates understandings of the ideas as the reader interacts with the text. duke and pearson (2004) provide some of the practical examples of what a teacher should do to enhance text prediction skills of learners. they suggest that before reading a story, students should be encouraged to generate expectations about what the characters might do, based on their (the reader’s) own experiences in similar situations. in essence, studies suggest that encouraging learners to engage their knowledge and experience prior to reading can be productive in various ways. for instance, a reader brings to the reading process their experience, knowledge of the language and thought development, which aid their ability to anticipate that which has not yet been stated in the reading – the reader’s expectation. this observation concurs with goodman and goodman’s (1976) view about reading, according to which reading is viewed as a psycholinguistic guessing game in which a reader selectively processes new information using knowledge of available language cues to arrive at a decision. in this manner, reading becomes an interactive meaning-making process between the reader and the text in which a readers, as block and duffy (2008) put it: … proactively search for meaning as they read, using text cues and their background knowledge in combination to generate predictions, to monitor those predictions, to repredict when necessary, and generally to construct a representation of the author’s meaning. (p. 21) in addition, mcintyre, hulan and layne (2011) suggest two ways in which a teacher can enhance the learners’ ability to make predictions when reading texts, which are: using a ‘take a picture walk’ and an anticipation guide. with regard to ‘take a picture walk’, mcintyre et al. (2011) suggest that before reading, a teacher can allow time for the learners to view the pictures and illustrations in the text, and then make predictions based on what they see. the teacher can also use an anticipation guide, in which the learners can indicate whether statements that make predictions about the text to be read are true or false. this can be taken as a true-false quiz before, during and after reading. as the learners read the text they can check their answers, and change them accordingly as the reading progresses. encouraging learners to make predictions when reading texts fosters comprehension, keeps the reader actively engaged and improves reading ability. it also allows the reader to go beyond the text and construct a richer understanding of the reading text (allbritton 2004). therefore, reading comprehension is a fluid interactive process in which a reader obtains information from the text, makes predictions on how the events might unfold, monitors their predictions, and then re-predicts in a continuous cycle. to comprehend, the reader must use the text cues at their disposal to predict, monitor their prediction as they continue reading the text, and revisit their predictions to check for accuracy. for prediction to be successful as a comprehension strategy, the reader ought to know how to predict, monitor and revise their predictions in due time and due parts during their reading. as may have been noticed in the foregoing review, research on reading and making predictions tends to focus predominantly on the effects of making predictions as a reading strategy in monolingual contexts. so far, there is a paucity of research on the effects of reading development strategies in which learners are encouraged to read a text and express their predictions on how the events might unfold in the text in a different language from the one the text is written in. this study, therefore, investigated the effects of translanguaging on the reader’s ability to make predictions as one of the comprehension strategies when reading texts. the study this study adopted a solomon four quasi-experimental design. a solomon four design is a pre-test–post-test experimental design. it is similar to other experimental designs in that it has randomised groups, all of which get post-tested. conversely, the design differs from other pre-test–post-test experimental designs in that it has two pre-tested experimental groups, one of which gets treatment, and two post-tested control groups that have not been pre-tested, one of which gets treatment. in other words, this design allows one to have four groups comprising two experimental groups (herein, groups a & b), which receive treatment or intervention, and two control groups (herein, groups c & d) that do not. in this study, a translanguaging intervention was administered, in which two languages, isixhosa, which is the participants’ home language, and english, their first additional language, were used simultaneously in the same lesson. a total of 215 grade 4 learners in four different rural schools in quintile 2 in one district in the eastern cape participated in the study. rural schools were preferred for the study because they often perform the lowest according to the annual national assessment reports (see dbe 2014), and need more support to advance quality education. purposive sampling was used to select the schools. the schools whose learners participated in the study were chosen based on their shared characteristics. the schools were ranked quintile 2. schools ranked quintile 2 are mostly rural and have learners from disadvantaged backgrounds measured by the socio-economic conditions and literacy rate of the surrounding communities in which the schools are situated. a quintile 1 ranking indicates an impoverished school, while a quintile 5 indicates an affluent school (van dyk & white 2019). learners in schools classified as quintile 2 are exempted from paying school fees, and are provided with meals at school. quintile 2 schools are the poorest of the schools while quintile 5 schools are rich schools that cater for learners from financially affluent families. this quintile ranking of schools determines the financial status of the school for budget allocation and government funding. it is noteworthy that learners in poor and rural districts are more disadvantaged, and that learners in these areas tend to perform at a level lower to that of learners in urban areas due to, inter alia, lack of resources. the schools whose learners participated in the study were also chosen on the basis of the languages used for teaching and learning from grade r to grade 3 – isixhosa, which is supposed to be the home language of all or most of the learners at the school, and the learners must be transitioning into english as the language of teaching and learning in grade 4. both english (as first additional language) and isixhosa (as mother tongue) were offered at the schools in grade 4. the schools were randomly assigned to different groups, with the first two schools whose names starts with a letter closest to ‘a’ assigned to the control groups, while the other two were assigned to the experimental groups. data were collected through a battery of tests which contained a mixture of multiple choice and open-ended questions. the participants attempted two sets of pre-tests and post-tests: one set was in their home language, while another was in english. each set had two different reading passages of about 300 words, followed by comprehension questions. the passages were curriculum-based fictional narratives about animals. to ensure the quality and the appropriate level of the language in the passages, a readability test was run on the english passages using online readability tests (readability formulas 2017). both the isixhosa and english texts were examined by language specialists for appropriateness and were found to be reader-friendly and suitable for grade 4 learners. a total of 15 comprehension questions in each language were set. for the purposes of this study, much attention was paid to two questions that assessed the participants’ ability to make predictions on how the events might unfold in the text. ethical considerations permission to conduct research from which this article came was obtained from the eastern cape department of education in 2017. intervention the intervention was administered to the treatment groups (groups a & b) during the participants’ scheduled regular class time and in the regular classrooms used for teaching english and isixhosa as subjects during their usual periods. four language teachers who taught in the two experimental schools were briefed on translanguaging and what it entailed as a pedagogical approach. they were involved in developing lesson plans on teaching reading in more than one language simultaneously in the same class. during the induction process, the researcher demonstrated how one could use more than one language simultaneously in one classroom. more attention was paid to how to use translanguaging methods to teach learners to make predictions when reading texts. after the training, the teachers were provided with lesson plans and stories they could use to implement the initiative as suggested. the treatment was introduced a day after the learners had written the pre-tests. the researcher remained available to provide guidance at the first experimental group site, while the teachers who had been trained in the approach provided the intervention to the second experimental group in a different school. learners were provided with one reading passage in which both isixhosa and english had been used. the passages that were used for the translanguaging treatment were curriculum-based fictional narratives that had been obtained from the learners’ textbooks. before reading, learners were encouraged to make predictions about the text to be read, including what they thought the text would be about, based on the clue words that were written on the board at the beginning of the class. reading was done in an interactive way in which the teacher read the text aloud while the learners read along silently. at some point during the reading, the teacher asked the learners to take turns reading the text aloud while the rest of the class was reading along silently. during the exercise, the teacher often checked with the learners to verify or redirect their predictions. this was done in a dialogical way in which the teacher asked questions to get learners to respond to or think about the predictions they made at the beginning of the reading. questions, answers of which could be located in paragraphs that were written in english, were asked in isixhosa, and vice versa. thus, translanguaging methods were used to explicitly teach the learners how to read a text through the juxtaposition of the languages of input and output. think-aloud strategies were also used. to this effect, the teacher read the text aloud, paused at certain points and asked questions, answers of which could only be provided by making logical inferences. the teacher also verbalised their thinking in order to help learners make the correct inferences. this exercise explicitly showed how learners should make predictions when reading texts. after the intervention, the participants were assessed on their ability to make predictions when reading texts. even though a translingual approach in which the input and output languages were juxtaposed was used during the intervention, the participants were required to respond to test questions in the language the questions were asked in. that is, for the english reading test, the participants had to respond in english, while the same was held for isixhosa. this was done in order to be in line with the current standard practice in formal academic assessments in which a test-taker has to respond in the same language in which the assessment questions have been asked. data presentation presented below are the processes followed to analyse the data in order to make findings. the findings were tested against the null hypothesis which posited that the performance of the participants regarding the target ability would remain the same in both languages and in all groups of participants regardless of the intervention. making predictions in isixhosa the participants in the first experimental (group a) and control (group c) groups were assessed on their ability to make plausible predictions on how the events might unfold in the texts they read. for isixhosa home language, the post-test results indicated an improved performance for the two groups. the participants in the first experimental group (group a) displayed much more improvement than those in the control. the descriptive measures of central tendencies and dispersion of the results of this assessment are presented in table 1. table 1: making predictions in isixhosa. table 1 displays the mean scores of the participants from the first experimental group (group a) and the first control group (group c) on their ability to make predictions on how the events would unfold when reading texts in isixhosa home language. it shows that the participants in the first experimental group (group a) obtained a mean score of 1.48 and a standard deviation of 0.64 in the pre-test, and 1.64 with a standard deviation of 0.63 in the post-test. with the standard deviation lower than the mean for each assessment, the level of homogeneity with regard to the ability to make predictions on how the events would unfold when reading texts in isixhosa was strong in both the pre-test and the post-test. in other words, the scores of most of the participants could be located around a central point. at face value, the mean scores of the two tests show that the participants performed better in the post-test than they did in the pre-test. to verify this assumption, the pre-test and post-test scores were run in a t-test. the results of the t-test reflected a statistically non-significant difference at an alpha value of 0.05 (t = 1.420; df = 49; p > 0.05). in other words, even though there is some difference between the mean scores of the pre-test and the post-test within this group, the difference is too marginal to be considered statistically existent. therefore, this accepts the null hypothesis which posited that performance of the participants on making plausible predictions regarding the events in the text would remain the same regardless of the intervention. the fact that the results of the t-test reflected a statistically non-significant difference also implies that the difference in the performance between the two assessments should be viewed with caution, because there might be a shadow on the researcher’s overall results. with regard to the first control group (group c), table 1 shows that the group obtained a mean of 1.13 with a standard deviation of 0.94 in the pre-test, and 1.20 with a standard deviation of 0.83 in the post-test. since the mean score for each assessment was higher than its standard deviation, the group was deemed homogenous. the results of the t-test reflected that the difference between the pre-test and the post-test was statistically non-significant at an alpha value of 0.05 (t = 0.296; df = 23; p > 0.05). this, therefore, accepts the null hypothesis which posited that performance of the participants on the ability to make predictions would remain the same between the pre-test and the post-test. the fact that the results of the t-test reflected that the difference between the pre-test and the post-test was statistically non-significant also implies that the difference in the performance between the two assessments should be viewed with caution, because there might be a shadow on the researcher’s overall results. the post-test scores of the first experimental (mean [m] = 1.64; standard deviation [sd] = 0.63) and the first control (m = 1.20; sd = 0.83) groups were tested via a t-test to measure their variability. the results revealed that the differences between the two groups were statistically significant at an alpha value of 0.05 (t = 4.116; df = 31; p < 0.05). the null hypothesis, which predicted no variability between the two groups, was therefore rejected. an analysis was also run between the second experimental (group b) and control (group d) groups. table 2 shows the results of the two groups. table 2: making predictions in isixhosa post-test. concerning the groups that wrote the post-test only, the second experimental (group b) and control (group d) groups, it was observed that the second experimental group obtained a mean score of 0.88 and a standard deviation of 0.90, while the second control obtained a mean score of 1.33 and a standard deviation of 0.77. the second control group (group d) performed better than the second experimental group (group b), because its mean was higher. the scores of the two groups were tested via t-test. the t-test results of the two groups indicated a statistically non-significant difference at an alpha value of 0.05 (t = 1.390; df = 34; p > 0.05) and, therefore, accepts the null hypothesis. the statistically non-significant difference reflected by the t-test results implies that the difference in the performance between the two groups should be viewed with caution since there might be a shadow on the researcher’s overall results. a one-way analysis of variance (anova) was run on the post-test scores obtained from the four groups (i.e. groups a, b, c & d) to measure the significance of the variance between the four groups’ performances on making predictions on how the events would unfold when reading texts in isixhosa. table 3 shows the results of the anova in which variance in performance within each of the groups that wrote the pre-test and the post-test (i.e. groups a & c), and between the four groups, was measured. table 3: analysis of variance results on making predictions in isixhosa. the results of the anova displayed an f-ratio value of 3.65804, and a p-value of 0.013319. therefore, the differences in the performance between the four groups were statistically significant at an alpha value of 0.05. (f = 3.65804; df = 3; p < 0.05). thus, the null hypothesis which predicted that there would be no difference in the performance between the four groups was rejected. making predictions in english concerning english first additional language, the post-test results indicated improved performance on the first experimental (group a) and the control (group c) groups. the descriptive measures of central tendencies and dispersion of the results of this assessment are presented in table 4. table 4: making predictions in english. table 4 shows the mean scores of the participants from the first experimental group (group a) and the first control group (group c) on their ability to make predictions on how the events would unfold when reading texts in english first additional language. table 4 shows that the participants in the first experimental group (group a) obtained a mean score of 0.51 with a standard deviation of 0.86 in the pre-test, and 0.94 with a standard deviation of 0.90 in the post test. the table also indicates that the group was not homogenous at pre-test, hence the mean was higher than the standard deviation. the post-test results of the first experimental group (group a) showed some improved performance, since the mean score of the post-test was higher than the pre-test and the standard deviation was lower than the mean. the differences between the pre-test and the post-test results were tested via a t-test. the results revealed that the differences between the two assessments were statistically significant at an alpha value of 0.05 (t = 2.079; df = 50; p < 0.05). the null hypothesis, which predicted that there would be no difference in the performance between the two assessments, was therefore rejected. this implies that the translanguaging techniques were effective in inducing the participants’ ability to make predictions on how the events would unfold when reading texts in english first additional language. with regard to the first control group (group c), the participants obtained a mean score of 0.58 with a standard deviation of 0.96 in the pre-test, and 1.33 with a standard deviation of 1.12 in the post-test. the post-test results indicated some improvement in the performance of the participants since the mean of the post-test was higher. furthermore, the dispersion level for each test was lower than its mean score, which indicated that the group was homogenous. the results of the two assessments were measured in a t-test. the results of the t-test reflected a statistically non-significant difference between the pre-test and the post-test at an alpha value of 0.05 (t = 0.297; df = 29; p > 0.05). therefore, the null hypothesis, which predicted that there would be no difference in the performance between the two tests, was confirmed. this implies that the difference in the performance between the two assessments should be viewed with caution, because there might be a shadow on the researcher’s overall results. according to the results of the first experimental (m = 0.94; sd = 0.90) and the first control (m = 1.33; sd = 1.12) groups, the groups that had attempted a pre-test and a post-test were analysed to measure the level of comparability. to this effect, a t-test was run. the results reflected that the two groups were statistically significant at an alpha value of 0.05 (t = 2.232; df = 30; p ≤ 0.05). this implies that the null hypothesis which predicted that there would be no difference between the two groups, regardless of the intervention, was rejected. an analysis was also run between the second experimental (group b) and the second control (group d) groups. table 5 shows the results of the two groups. table 5: making predictions in english – post-test. concerning the groups that did not write the pre-test, which were the second experimental (group b) and the second control (group d) groups, the results indicated that the second experimental group (group b) obtained a mean score of 0.67 with a standard deviation of 0.80, while the second control group (group d) obtained a mean score of 0.42 with a standard deviation of 0.74. each group was deemed heterogeneous since the standard deviation for each was higher than the mean. however, the second experimental group (group b) performed better than the second control group (group d), hence the mean of the former is higher. the t-test results of the two groups reflected a statistically significant difference between the two groups at an alpha value of 0.05 (t = 4.356; df = 29; p < 0.05). therefore, the null hypothesis which predicted that there would be no difference between the two groups due to the intervention was rejected. a one-way anova was run on the post-test scores obtained from the four groups (i.e. groups a, b, c & d) to measure the significance of the variance between the four groups’ performances on the ability to make predictions on how events would unfold when reading texts in english. table 6 shows the results of the anova in which variance in performance within each of the groups that wrote the pre-test and the post-test (i.e. groups a & c), and between the four groups was measured. table 6: analysis of variance results on the ability to make predictions in english. the results of the anova displayed an f-ratio value of 10.01516, and a p-value of 0.00001. therefore, the differences in the performance between the four groups were statistically significant at an alpha value of 0.05 (f = 10. 01516; df = 3; p < 0.05). thus, the null hypothesis which predicted that there would be no difference in the performance between the four groups was rejected. a comparison of the ability to make plausible predictions between english and isixhosa to refine the extent of the influence of translanguaging on making plausible predictions, the scores of the first and the second experimental groups were combined to form a grand score, and further analyses were conducted on them. the same was done with the control group scores. the results each group obtained for each language were compared within and between the groups to measure the influence of translanguaging on the target ability between the two languages. table 7 displays the post-test results in which the two languages were compared within each of the groups. table 7: a comparison on making predictions between english and isixhosa. table 7 shows that the participants in the experimental groups scored a grand mean of 1.43 with a standard deviation of 0.74 in isixhosa, whereas they obtained a grand mean score of 0.61 with a standard deviation of 0.84 in english. with regard to isixhosa, the grand mean (1.43) is higher than that of english (0.84). the standard deviation is lower than its grand mean in isixhosa, while it is higher than the grand mean in english. this suggests that the participants in the experimental groups were fairly homogenous in their home language while heterogenous in their first additional language. with regard to the control groups, the table shows that the groups obtained a grand mean score of 1.16 with a standard deviation of 0.88 in isixhosa, while their grand mean was 0.95 with a standard deviation of 1.10 in english. as observed in the experimental groups, the grand mean in isixhosa (1.16) is higher than that of english (0.95). the standard deviation is lower than its grand mean in isixhosa, while it is higher than the grand mean in english. this suggests that the participants in the experimental groups were fairly homogenous in their home language while heterogenous in first additional language. the results show that the level of homogeneity was stronger in isixhosa than it was in english for both the experimental and the control groups, since the standard deviations in isixhosa were the furthest from their grand means. with the highest grand mean and much stronger level of homogeneity of the two, the participants in the experimental groups performed better than those in the control groups when it comes to making predictions. the scores obtained in each language were tested via a t-test to measure the variability between the two sets of groups. table 8 shows a comparison of the grand mean scores and the results of the t-test on the ability to predict text between the experimental and control groups for isixhosa. table 8: a comparison of the grand mean scores and p-value on the ability to make text prediction in isixhosa. table 8 shows a comparison of the grand mean scores and the results of the t-test on the ability to predict text between the experimental and control groups for isixhosa. the t-test results revealed that the differences between the two sets were statistically non-significant at an alpha value of 0.05 (t = 2.318; df = 213; p > 0.05). the null hypothesis, which predicted no variability in performance between the experimental and the control groups, was therefore confirmed. this implies that with regard to isixhosa, there was insufficient evidence for one to attribute the difference in the performance to the translanguaging techniques employed. furthermore, the fact that the t-test results came out non-significant means that the difference in the performance between the two sets should be viewed with caution, because there might be a shadow on the researcher’s overall results. the english scores too were subjected to a t-test. table 9 shows a comparison of the grand mean scores and the results of the t-test on the ability to predict text between the experimental and control groups for english. table 9: a comparison of the grand mean scores and p-value on the ability to make text prediction in english. table 9 shows a comparison of the grand mean scores and the results of the t-test on the ability to predict text between the experimental and control groups for english. the results indicated that the differences in performance between the two group sets were statistically significant at an alpha value of 0.05 (t = 1.159; df = 208; p > 0.05). in this regard, the null hypothesis which had predicted that there would be no difference in the performance between the two group sets, regardless of the intervention, was therefore rejected. thus, the difference in the performance as far as english was concerned could be attributed to the intervention administered. at face value – looking at a higher grand mean and a stronger level of homogeneity – the results show that the participants in the experimental groups performed better in one language than they did in the other when it comes to predicting how the events would unfold in the text. to consolidate this assumption, the scores of the experimental groups were subjected to further t-tests to measure the extent of the difference in the performance between the first additional language and the home language. table 10 shows a comparison of the grand mean scores and the results of the t-test of the experimental group on the ability to make predictions between isixhosa and english. table 10: a comparison of the grand mean scores and p-value on the ability to predict text between isixhosa and english. the results indicate a statistically significant difference between the languages at an alpha value of 0.05 (t = 8.971; df = 295; p < 0.05). thus, the null hypothesis which had predicted that there would be no difference in the performance between the two languages, regardless of the intervention, was rejected. this means that as far as the text prediction was concerned, translanguaging techniques were more effective in isixhosa than they were in english. findings incidental to the study further analysis was run on the data to assess how the participants performed in the various types of questions in the test. the results revealed that the participants performed fairly well in multiple choice questions and in questions in which they were required to locate and retrieve information from the text. for instance, when asked what they thought would happen to the lion at the circus, some learners simply rewrote a sentence that mentioned the key word ‘circus’ as the answer (i.e. that ‘the hunter came and took the lion away to the circus’). the fact that the learners rewrote the sentence that mentioned the key word shows that they did not understand the question. however, some who seemingly understood the question did not know what a circus is or what happens at it, as observed in the excerpt shown in figure 1. figure 1: (a–c) learner responses to a text prediction question. figure 1 shows one of the questions in which learners were required to make predictions about how the events might unfold in the story. the results of the quantitative analysis showed that the participants exhibited an improved performance with regard to text prediction in english. however, the qualitative analysis exhibited that some of the learners may never have been to or heard of what happens at a circus. as a result, their predictions about what would happen to the lion at the circus were not accurate. what has been noted in the responses in the above excerpt (figure 1), is that the learners understood the question but could not provide the expected correct answers due to lack of adequate background knowledge. it is noteworthy that the more students’ contexts of language use and literacy allow them to draw from across the whole of their backgrounds, the greater are the chances for them getting and providing the answers correctly. as can be seen in the responses above, the readers’ pre-existing knowledge related to the text content plays a pivotal role. pre-existing knowledge helps readers compensate for gaps in text-based information by affording quick and relatively effortless access to relevant information in long-term memory, based on incomplete text-based information as cues. there are various ways in which prior knowledge can be activated to aid a reader to interact with the text and understand it better. these include asking a few questions to find out what the reader already knows about the topic and then providing the new knowledge that the reader might need (mcintyre et al. 2011). since this was a formal assessment, at which a test-taker had to be silent, read on their own and attempt the test, it would be inappropriate to ask questions to check if the test-takers had sufficient background knowledge about the topic of the text content. discussion the findings exhibited better comprehension of the text and the production of more relevant predictions on how the events might unfold. the results agree with other studies on comprehension and text prediction (see duke & pearson 2004) in which the learners exhibited an enhanced reading performance, as a result of which the learners could, after making predictions, read without any teacher support. it is worth noting, however, that duke and pearson’s study was conducted in a monolingual context in which their participants used one language to predict how the events would unfold in the text. in our case, the participants were trained on how they could use a tapestry of languages at their disposal to interact with texts. they, however, had to write in a language that was prescribed for assessment purposes. it is noteworthy that the application of text prediction as one of the components of reading comprehension changes as a reader gets better at reading in terms of grade levels and text types. in other words, even though the strategy remains the same – that is: reading, making predictions, monitoring the predictions and revising them when necessary – a reader might need to adjust the strategy to suit the text type and the purpose for which the text is being read. according to block and duffy (2008), comprehension gets progressively more difficult from grade to grade. in this study, however, text prediction was kept at an elementary level in which the participants predicted what they thought would happen next, or what could happen if the scenario were different, due to the grade level of the participants. nonetheless, making predictions on how the events might unfold as one reads a text has been shown to assist with comprehension as a reader reads, predicts and checks their predictions against the actual events in the reading. reading texts becomes more and more complex, and might require the predicting–monitoring–re-predicting cycle to be applied in more sophisticated ways that might necessitate more information, sufficient vocabulary and improved experience (mcintyre et al. 2011). what has been observed in this study is that the readers’ background and related vocabulary is a contributory factor to text prediction when reading. without sufficient background knowledge and vocabulary, a reader may have a hard time providing accurate predictions on how the events might unfold. translanguaging allows a reader to draw from a whole range of their linguistic background, thus increasing their chances of making correct predictions. therefore, it is recommended that, for text prediction as a reading development strategy to be successful, the text and the reader’s knowledge of the word, the world and the language ought to match. translanguaging is one of the pedagogies that enables knowledge of the word, the world and the language of a multilingual reader to match. conclusion this article has demonstrated that translanguaging enhances text prediction abilities of multilingual learners. it has been observed that the participants’ ability to make plausible predictions on how the events would unfold in the text improved due to translanguaging. however, the participants’ performance improved more significantly in isixhosa, their home language, than it did in their first additional language, english. this might be due to the fact that translanguaging plays a facilitative role in sense-making in which readers utilises their entire linguistic repertoire to decipher content. while a reader also brings meaning to the text in order to make more sense of it, reading involves deciphering a written linguistic code. making sense of a text, therefore, requires a reader to relate various meanings of the text to what the reader already knows, albeit in a different language. in order to make relevant predictions from a reading text, a reader relies on salient textual cues and background knowledge. therefore, the readers’ pre-existing knowledge, related to the text content, plays a pivotal role. prior knowledge helps readers compensate for gaps in text-based information by affording quick and relatively effortless access to relevant information in long-term memory, based on incomplete text-based information as cues. while the results showed that the participants exhibited improved performance with regard to text prediction, the quality of the english responses exhibited that the participants could not provide the expected correct answers due to lack of adequate linguistic knowledge. the ability to make predictions and express them in an additional language might be a cognitively demanding task for a grade 4 learner, hence the relatively deficient performance in english. one of the reasons advanced to this effect, is that at grade 4 learners are still at the elementary stages of acquiring the additional language, and, in some cases, the so-called home language, and thus have not yet established a solid linguistic arsenal from which to draw when attempting to clearly express thoughts. nonetheless, the groups that received the translanguaging intervention, which were the first and the second experimental groups, displayed an improved performance in the said skill due to the intervention. it would be more interesting to find out how the participants would have performed if they had been allowed to use their home language to respond to english questions in the actual test, as was the case during the intervention in which they received input in one language and gave output in another. the current practice in assessment unfortunately prevents such an exercise from being effected: a test-taker is expected to respond to questions in the language in which the questions have been asked. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions v.d.m. declares that they are the sole author of this research article. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability the author confirms that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references allbritton, d., 2004, ‘strategic production of predictive inferences during comprehension’, discourse processed 38(3), 309–322. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326950dp3803_2 baker, c., jones, b. & lewis, g., 2012, ‘translanguaging: origins and development from school to street and beyond’, educational research and evaluation 18(7), 641–654. https://doi.org/10.1080/13803611.2012.718488 block, c.c. & duffy, g.g., 2008, ‘research on teaching comprehension: where we’ve been and where we’re going’, in c.c. block & s.r. parris (eds.), comprehension instruction: research-based best practices, 2nd edn., pp. 18–37, guilford publications, new york, ny. department of basic education (dbe), 2014, annual national assessment diagnostic report – first additional language and home language, department of basic education. duke, n.k. & pearson, p.d., 2004, ‘effective practices for developing reading comprehension’, in a. farstrup (ed.), what research has to say about reading instruction, pp. 205–242, international reading association, inc., newark, nj. garcía, o., 2009, bilingual 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management perspective’, south african journal of education 39(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v39ns1a1820 vogel, s., ascenzi-moreno, l. & garcía, o., 2018, ‘an expanded view of translanguaging: leveraging the dynamic interactions between a young multilingual writer and machine translation software’, in j. choi & s. ollerhead (eds.), plurilingualism in teachingand learning: complexities across contexts, pp. 89–106, taylor & francis ltd., london. wei, l., 2018, ‘translanguaging as a practical theory of language’, applied linguistics 39(1), 9–30. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amx039 reviewer acknowledgement open accesshttp://www.rw.org.za page 1 of 1 the editorial team of reading & writing recognises the value and importance of the peer reviewer in the overall publication process – not only in shaping the individual manuscript, but also in shaping the credibility and reputation of our journal. we are committed to the timely publication of all original, innovative contributions 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access your details on the website, you will need to follow these steps: 1. log into the online journal at http://www. rw.org.za 2. in your ‘user home’ [http://www.rw.org.za/ index.php/rw/user] select ‘edit my profile’ under the heading ‘my account’ and insert all relevant details, bio statement and reviewing interest. 3. it is good practice as a reviewer to update your personal details regularly to ensure contact with you throughout your professional term as reviewer to reading & writing. please do not hesitate to contact me if you require assistance in performing this task. duncan hooker submissions@rw.org.za tel: +27 (0)21 975 2602 fax: +27 (0)21 975 4635 reading & writing journal of the reading association of south africa article information authors: kate linnegar1 janet condy1 emma mckinney1 affiliations: 1faculty of education and social sciences, cape peninsula university of technology, south africa correspondence to: janet condy postal address: po box 652, cape town 8000, south africa dates: received: 30 june 2013 accepted: 10 feb. 2014 published: 05 may 2014 how to cite this article: linnegar, k., condy, j. & mckinney, e., 2014, ‘the impact of poor working memory skills on a grade 2 learner’s written and oral literacy performance’, reading & writing 5(1), art. #37, 6 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v5i1.37 copyright notice: © 2014. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. the impact of poor working memory skills on a grade 2 learner’s written and oral literacy performance in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction    • theoretical framework    • what is working memory? • research method    • research design       • data collection procedure       • data analysis       • trustworthiness       • intervention programme • findings    • concentration    • reading and reading comprehension    • writing • discussion • conclusion • acknowledgements    • competing interests    • authors’ contributions • references abstract top ↑ this research examines the effects of poor working memory skills on a grade 2 learner. mediated learning is the theoretical framework that underpins this research project as the focus is on developing cognitive functions, particularly focusing on the working memory of a learner. an independent case study was conducted on one learner, using a qualitative research approach. interviews and observations were conducted and inductively analysed. the learner followed a six-week intervention programme which was dynamically informed by recent literature as well as observations, interviews and a psychologist’s report. the findings indicated that the learner’s working memory, with particular reference to processing and storage, was challenged. the large demands of the classroom environment led to memory failure and he was prone to making errors. he experienced slow progress in his reading abilities, was unable to retain words and his reading was inconsistent. to alleviate some of his working memory demands, activities and instructions were broken down into smaller components to minimise his memory load, thus avoiding working memory related failures. introduction top ↑ this research aims to examine the effects of poor working memory skills on a grade 2 learner and explores how these difficulties impact on his performance in literacy. working memory is a mental workspace that can be used flexibly to support everyday cognitive activities that need both processing and storage, such as comprehension, reasoning and learning (alloway 2006:134). in a classroom situation, learners with poor working memory skills tend to forget lengthy instructions, miss out letters or words in sentences and fail to cope with simultaneous storage and processing demands (ibid:137). this research explores the theoretical framework applied to working memory according to haywood (1993). working memory will be defined and discussed, including the different components involved in working memory. an intervention programme focusing on supporting one learner experiencing working memory deficit in a literacy classroom environment will be discussed. theoretical framework haywood (1993:27) explains that mediated learning experiences (mle) are essential for the adequate cognitive development of learners. through mle the learner learns how to solve problems. with the help of the mediator, attempts are made at extending the learner’s thinking process so that they can transcend the experience and learning into new everyday life situations. basic cognitive functions need to be acquired; these can be achieved through learning (ibid:30). mle assists learners in developing these cognitive functions by developing an understanding of the meaning of the world. this entails helping them to understand that events, objects and people have meaning beyond themselves and that the world has a predictable structure and understanding (ibid:27). he believes that this structure helps learners to know what to do in future situations. according to haywood (ibid:27), the immediate goal of mle is for learners to acquire the important cognitive functions that trigger the ability to learn effectively across different fields. if some aspects of cognitive development have not been stimulated through mle, it is possible to mediate these aspects at a later stage through carefully constructed teaching. with regard to the case study, the learner had deficits with his working memory. this study used mle and constructed teaching to assist the learner in utilising his working memory and to limit his impulsive responses, with the hope of improving the quality of his engagement with tasks. the purpose of this research was to explore what effects the implementation of working memory skills will have on a learner during classroom learning activities. through the literature reviewed on working memory, this research will also ascertain what effects working memory skills have on the learner’s performance in literacy. what is working memory? according to alloway (2006:134) working memory is the ‘system responsible for temporarily storing and manipulating information’. alloway (ibid:134) states that working memory is a mental workspace that can be used flexibly to support everyday cognitive activities that need both processing and storage, such as comprehension, reasoning and learning. however, the capacity of a learner’s working memory is limited (ibid:134). if the learner is storing a surplus of information in a cognitive activity or the process demands on their working memory are too great, it could lead to ‘catastrophic loss of information from this temporary memory system’ (ibid:134). riding, grimley, dahraei and banner (2003:149) cited in baddeley and hitch (1974) developed a working memory model with three components: the central executive, the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketch pad. all three components have a limited capacity for information they are able to store and manipulate. the central executive component functions as the control system and is responsible for coordinating the input and output of information and for sending the information to the sub-systems (ibid:149). this component deals with cognitively demanding tasks such as mental arithmetic and problem-solving (ibid:149). riding et al. discuss the function of the phonological loop, which is the part of the working memory that deals with verbal information over short periods of time as well as written material. lastly, the visuospatial sketch pad processes and stores visual and spatial information. according to baddeley (2003:837), the working memory model makes two predictions: firstly, if two tasks make use of the same component of working memory, they cannot be performed successfully together. secondly, if two tasks make use of different components of working memory, it should be possible to perform them together. in general classroom learning situations, children with poor working memory skills can forget lengthy instructions, miss out letters or words in sentences and fail to cope with simultaneous processing and storage demands (alloway 2006:137). a reason for these failures is that the simultaneous storage and processing demands of the learning activity are beyond the working memory capacities of these learners. alloway (ibid:137) suggests that in isolation the learner should be able to store information without difficulty. however, the added processing demands of the classroom environment increase the working memory demands and therefore lead to memory failure. a learner with a weak working memory capacity is therefore limited in their ability to perform in different classroom learning activities (ibid:137). according to gathercole and pickering (2000:177), there are links between a learner’s capability to store and manipulate information over brief periods and their achievements in different learning outcomes such as vocabulary, language comprehension, reading and mathematics. alloway, gathercole and elliot (2010:632) agree with this idea as they claim that there is now substantial evidence that working memory is linked to key learning outcomes in literacy and numeracy. daneman and carpenter (in riding et al. 2003) hypothesise that: working memory is used to represent the strategies and skills used in a complex mental task such as reading, with the remaining capacity used to store the resulting products of the reading comprehension. (p. 149) they suggest that whilst information is being processed and the products of this processing are being stored, the two components of processing and storage compete for the limited capacity of working memory available, resulting in the learner losing some of the stored information. alloway (2006:134) states that working memory is important for working out complex mental activities because the learner has to keep in mind some information whilst processing other materials at the same time. alloway (ibid:134) emphasises that carrying out mental activities like this are effortful and error-prone as any minor distraction, such as an unrelated thought or an interruption by someone else, will most likely result in complete loss of the stored information and so a failed attempt at the activity. therefore, a learner with a limited working memory capacity will have difficulties in trying to work out mental activities. this review of the literature and theory surrounding working memory has examined the use of mle programmes in supporting learners’ cognitive development. working memory has been defined and discussed with reference to the different components involved in working memory. the challenges facing learners with working memory difficulties have been highlighted with the subject area of literacy being given as an example. research method top ↑ research design an independent case study was conducted on one learner who experienced difficulties with his working memory. according to shank and brown (2007:64), researchers need to take their time observing, probing and gathering different types of information to get an insightful look at the learner. a qualitative research method was used. qualitative research is ‘a type of empirical research that focuses on the study of meaning’ (ibid:239). this research project was conducted within a grade 2 classroom environment in a private mainstream primary school in a high socio-economic urban area of cape town, south africa. purposive sampling was used. according to bogdan and knopp biklen (2007:73), certain case studies are chosen because they are thought to facilitate the development of the evolving theory. one learner was intentionally chosen. the learner was a six-year-old boy who was referred to an educational psychologist as he was exhibiting difficulties in task completion and understanding. the psychologist’s report stated that this learner experienced difficulties with his working memory. he had the potential to achieve a high standard of work and giving him strategies to help him utilise his working memory more effectively would assist him in achieving better results. the learner attended a grade 2 class in a private mainstream school. the learning support teacher at this school and the learner’s previous grade 1 teacher were purposively selected to gather a deeper knowledge of how this learner’s working memory impacted on his academic abilities. data collection procedure multiple methods, namely observations, interviews and document analysis, were used to collect the data as literature has suggested that the use of multi-methods will ensure that the study has been investigated using different sources of information, thus giving the data variety (henning, van rensburg & smit 2004:6). after using interviews, observations and documents as methods of data collection, the information was triangulated to interpret the results. in the following paragraphs the advantages and disadvantages of interviews, observations and document analysis will be briefly discussed.the researcher decided to use semi-structured interviews with the grade 1 teacher and the learning support teacher as she realised she needed to gather information, opinions and insights from different perspectives (shank & brown 2007:63). in preparation for the semi-structured interviews the researcher prepared a set of questions, further in-depth probing questions, as well as a column to record any interesting body language that may have occurred during the interview (koshy 2010:87). one of the advantages of conducting an interview is that ‘interview transcripts provide powerful evidence when you are presenting your data and making conclusions’ (koshy 2010:88). through these interviews, the researcher was able to obtain another perspective on the learner and was able to identify common themes in each teacher’s experience with the learner. these interviews took place in august 2012, before the implementation of the intervention programme. observation plays an important role in gathering data. observation is a natural process as we are always observing people and occurrences and, based on these observations, we make judgments (koshy 2010:92). as a participatory observer, the researcher observed the learner, within the classroom setting whilst he was completing his work. shank and brown (2007:62) feel that observation is critical and simple. they state that ‘while there are many observational protocols, the basic idea is simple – go somewhere and pay attention’. the researcher found that an advantage of observing the learner is that she got an opportunity to make a note of his reactions, such as frustration and disinterest, which are also important aspects of data collection (koshy 2010:94). however, if the learner is aware of the observation it may affect his behaviour which might negatively impact the result of the observation. since the case study’s performance was inconsistent and varied from day to day or during different times of the day, the researcher observed the learner in the morning and after break over a four-week period. the learner experienced the greatest challenges in literacy, so the researcher observed his performance in various activities in this learning area, namely reading, comprehension, grammar and creative writing. a set of guidelines, established by the researcher, were followed to help guide the observations. these guidelines gave the researcher criteria for the observations. the focus of the observations was on the way the learner was able to answer questions verbally and in written form. during some of the observations, the learner was observed in a micro-group setting with four learners in the group and other observations were conducted individually with him at his desk. from the observations, after taking continuous notes on the pre-planned observation schedule, the researcher gathered data that gave an indication of how the learner was able to use his working memory in literacy activities. according to koshy (2010:90) documents can offer significant evidence for the research study and are useful for building the whole picture of the particular case study chosen. the learner’s educational assessment was used to gather background information. a registered psychologist’s report indicated that the learner had a weak working memory. however, this information was limited and did not contribute to developing the intervention programme. data analysis henning et al. (2004:101) describe data analysis as taking apart words, sentences and paragraphs in order to make sense of, interpret and theorise the data. in the course of the inductive data analysis, the researcher transcribed the interviews and referred to the observations, dividing the information into smaller and more meaningful sections. the interviews were transcribed verbatim and compared to the observation schedules. after reading all this data many times common themes began to emerge. these themes were coded and categorised and refined into three conceptual similarities: concentration, reading and reading comprehension and writing. trustworthiness when considering the validity of data in action research, researchers need to consider the accuracy of what is collected and used as evidence. koshy (2010:98) posits that ‘we have to be aware that the conclusions are based on the quality of what we gather as data’. interpretations of the same observations can vary between different people and this can affect the validity of the data presented. by interviewing the learner’s previous teacher and the learning support teacher, who both had a chance to observe him, the researcher was able to discuss the observations with them and determine common themes, thereby making sure that the data was valid, reliable and accurate. the researcher used triangulation to gather interpretations of a teaching situation from three different points of view (koshy 2010:98). according to rule and john (2011:109), ‘triangulation refers to the process of using multiple sources and methods to support provisions or findings generated in a case study’. through using triangulation the data was shared and checked; it was gathered from the interviews, observations and document analysis, and confirmed with all involved. rule and john (2011:111) state that conducting research ethically will improve the quality of the research and contribute to its trustworthiness. written permission from the principal of the school to conduct the research study was obtained, as well as written consent from the learners’ parents. these responses were kept anonymous and confidential. it was important for the researcher to respect and protect the learner’s and his family’s rights to be fully informed of the researchers’ intentions and for them to decide whether they would like to take part in the study. intervention programme underpinning the intervention programme was the theory of mediated learning. haywood (1993:28) believes that every child, no matter how ‘intelligent’, must acquire the basic cognitive functions in order to think logically, perceive the world in structured, orderly and reasonable ways, know how to learn and apply his intelligence to new learning and problem-solving situations without further need of mediation. the focus of the intervention programme was to give the learner strategies to help him utilise his working memory more effectively in the literacy lessons. gathercole and alloway (2007:13) recommend that the teacher monitor the learner’s classroom learning activities and modify them in order to ensure that he is working within his working memory capacity rather than being overloaded. it was important to ensure that the learner could remember what he was doing. many learners with low working memory simply forget what they have to do next (alloway 2006:138). in cases where the learner had forgotten crucial information or instructions for a literacy task, the instructions were frequently repeated to him and he was encouraged to request information when he needed it (gathercole & alloway 2007:15). it was ensured that instructions were as brief and simple as possible. what was included in the intervention programme was to always ensure that the learner had not forgotten crucial information by getting him to repeat the instruction. to alleviate some of his working memory demands, activities, such as reading comprehensions and instructions for starting a literacy activity, were broken down into smaller components to minimise his memory load, thus avoiding working memory related failures. the overall amount of material that had to be stored was reduced (gathercole & alloway 2007:16) by shortening the sentences that needed to be written or the number of instructions that needed to be remembered. multi-step tasks were separated into separate independent tasks, supported by visual cues. the learner was encouraged to use different tools that support memory, such as useful spelling charts displayed in the classroom, dictionaries and picture cards. these tools assisted him in reducing the processing demands and storage load of the tasks. learners with low working memory skills have difficulty in writing sentences (gathercole & alloway 2007); in this study the learner was urged to write shorter sentences with simple vocabulary, using common words instead of more unusual ones. these interventions took place during all literacy lessons, including grammar, creative writing and reading comprehension. findings top ↑ from the analysis of the data collected from observations of the learner and interviews with his previous teacher and the learning support teacher, the following themes became evident: • concentration • reading and reading comprehension • writing. concentration on observing the learner in the literacy classroom, the researcher found that he frequently forgot lengthy instructions as he often failed to cope with simultaneous processing and storage demands. the demands of the learning activities were beyond his working memory capacities. alloway (2006:137) explains that in isolation the learner should be able to store information without difficulty. however, the added processing demands of the classroom environment seemed to increase the working memory demands on the learner, which led to memory failure. when carrying out mental activities, the learner was prone to errors. minor distractions, such as an unrelated thought that sprung into his mind or an interruption by someone else, sometimes resulted in him losing the information he had stored. thus, he experienced a failed attempt at his activity and needed to start over again. the researcher recalled from observing the learner that ‘he gets distracted easily by other thoughts and ideas and by his peers around him’. his previous teacher said that ‘he would often get distracted while working on paper, so i found that having him one-on-one with me would often work best for him’. reading and reading comprehension after interviewing the learner’s previous teacher and the school’s learning support teacher, as well as observing the learner in the classroom whilst he was working, it was evident that he struggled in the areas of simultaneous memory processing and storage. according to the learning support teacher, this was a challenge he had presented with throughout his schooling thus far. whilst observing the learner during reading comprehension activities the researcher was able to see that he was able to recall an answer from the text verbally but struggled to write this answer in his workbook. he tended to leave out words and his sentences were often disjointed. during her interview, the learning support teacher, who had an extensive background knowledge of the learner, discussed his reading progress; she said that:‘after learning his first set of words, she [his previous teacher] noticed that he showed very slow progress. … he wasn’t retaining the words as much as he should, he wasn’t progressing as fast as he should and it [his reading] was very inconsistent’. in a reading lesson during observation, the learner frequently did not remember what he had read and was unable to answer questions about the story. he had to go back and read over the text another time. it was observed that ‘he can recall simple points from the text but had to read over the text again to find more complex answers’. gathercole and pickering (2000:177) believe that there are links between a learner’s capability to store and manipulate information over brief periods of time and their achievements in different learning outcomes such as vocabulary, reading and comprehension, thus echoing the learning support teacher’s sentiments. this was evident from the class observations of the learner. when doing comprehensions, the learner would need to ask for support in answering questions and he would need to read over the story a few times. during the observations it was noticed that: ‘he had to read over the story quite a few times to find the answers, he got quite anxious and needed a lot of support and prompting from [the teacher]’. writing after examining the learner’s literacy workbook it was noted that when writing sentences and stories, the learner repeatedly missed out letters or words in his sentences. the research has shown that when utilising one’s working memory to recall an answer from a text or a sentence you want to write, you are not only focusing on the formation of the sentence and letters, but also on the spelling of the words (gathercole & alloway 2007). this made writing a very slow and lengthy process for the learner. his previous teacher recalled:‘when it came to writing the answers down in his book, he wouldn’t always get through as many answers as he wanted. … his sentences weren’t often full sentences, which in year 1 was what he was supposed to be completing. … he would leave out words or he would just get distracted and not complete the task or sentence he was busy with’. the learner also struggled to copy work off the whiteboard in the classroom, something also noted by his previous teacher. he would often lose his place and forget what he was supposed to be doing. discussion top ↑ alloway (2006:138) states that on many occasions learners with low working memory simply forget what they have to do next. this was noticed in observing the learner. in cases where the learner had forgotten important information, this information was frequently repeated and the learner was encouraged to ask for information when he needed it, assisting him to stay on task (gathercole & alloway 2007:15). it was ensured that instructions were as brief and simple as possible. one of the best ways to guarantee that the learner had not forgotten important information was to get him to repeat the instructions. to alleviate some of his working memory demands, activities and instructions were broken down into smaller components to minimise his memory load, thus avoiding working memory related failures. the learner was able to focus for a longer period of time and remember what he was supposed to do next. one of the significant findings was that the overall amount of material that had to be stored was reduced by shortening the sentences that he had to write and the number of instructions that he needed to remember (gathercole & alloway 2007:16). this alleviated the working memory demands on the learner and he was able to focus better on his work. multi-step tasks were broken into separate independent tasks, which were supported by visual cues. the learner was encouraged to use different tools to support his memory, namely spelling charts displayed in the classroom, his dictionary and picture cards. this assisted him to reduce the processing demands and storage load of the tasks. using visual aids assisted the learner in remembering where he was and what he was doing as trying to think of how to spell a word would not distract him.learners with low working memory skills have difficulty in writing sentences (gathercole & alloway 2007). when writing, the learner wrote shorter sentences with simple vocabulary, using common words instead of more complex ones. this helped his sentences to flow and not to be disjointed. after a while, the learner was able to start self-correcting his work, by reading over his sentences to see if he had left any words out and checking to see if they made sense. conclusion top ↑ this research has explored what working memory is and the challenges learners with weak working memory face in a literacy classroom. the areas that were focused on were concentration, reading, comprehension and writing. this was a qualitative study of one learner and the findings cannot be generalised. moreover, it is possible that the growth observed only occurred due to the intervention programme. even if there were limited benefits to this learner, it seems a slight improvement that allowed this learner an opportunity to attempt to reach his potential. perhaps further improvements could have been achieved if the intervention programme had been run over a longer period of time. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions k.l. (cape peninsula university of technology) was a part-time honours student and conducted this research in her own class. j.c. (cape peninsula university of technology) and e.m. (cape peninsula university of technology) were lecturers on this programme and provided support and feedback to k.l. throughout this project. references top ↑ alloway, t., 2006, ‘how does working memory work in the classroom?’, educational research and reviews 1(4), 134–139.alloway, t., gathercole, s. & elliot, j., 2010, ‘examining the link between working memory behaviour and academic attainment in children with adhd’, developmental medicine & child neurology 52(7), 632–636. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8749.2009.03603.x, pmid:20163434 baddeley, a., 2003, ‘working memory: looking back and looking forward’, nature reviews: neuroscience 4, 829–839. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nrn1201, pmid: 14523382 bogdan, r.c. & knopp biklen, s., 2007, qualitative research for education, pearson, boston. gathercole, s. & alloway, t., 2007, understanding working memory, harcourt assessment, london. pmcid:pmc2662929 gathercole, s. & pickering, s., 2000, ‘working memory deficits in children with low achievements in the national curriculum at 7 years of age’, british journal of educational psychology 70, 177–195. http://dx.doi.org/10.1348/000709900158047, pmid:10900777 haywood, h.c., 1993, ‘a meditational teaching style’, international journal of cognitive education and mediated learning 3(1), 27–38. henning, e., van rensburg, w. & smit, b., 2004, finding your way in qualitative research, van schaik, pretoria. koshy, v., 2010, action research for improving educational practice, sage, los angeles. riding, r., grimley, m., dahraei, h. & banner, g., 2003, ‘cognitive style, working memory and learning behaviour and attainment in school subjects’, british journal of educational psychology 73, 149–162. http://dx.doi.org/10.1348/00070990360626912, pmid: 12828810 rule, p. & john, v., 2011, your guide to case study research, van schaik, pretoria. shank, g. & brown, l., 2007, exploring educational research literacy, routledge, new york. pmcid:pmc2206633 entire issue.pdf african literacies: which of them matter, and why? kate parry hunter college, city university of new york abstract: !is paper draws on data collected at the kitengesa community library in masaka district of uganda to discuss some of the di"erent literacies that are important in african environments. first, the literacies associated with di"erent languages are analysed, these being classi#ed as supralanguages (english in uganda), lingua francas (such as kiswahili), and local languages (luganda in kitengesa). literacies also vary with social context, and the paper considers the cases of school, family, peer group, and private literacies. work at kitengesa has shown that although literacy is generally thought of as part of school life, other literacies are developing in response to the opportunities provided by the library. supralanguage and school literacies remain dominant, but it is argued that they will become much more productive if supported by other literacies and that it is a major function of a community library to help such other literacies to develop. !e plural use of the word literacy is quite recent, and the oxford english dictionary has not caught up with it. !e dictionary’s entry for the word is, in fact, a good summary of traditional attitudes: literacy: !e quality or state of being literate; knowledge of letters; condition in respect to education, esp. ability to read and write. also transf. 1883 new eng. jrnl. educ. xvii. 54: “massachusetts is the #rst state in the union in literacy in its native population”. 1888 new princeton rev. dec. 336: “education is more general, our literacy greatly increased, our habits and tastes more refined”. 1893: athenæum 19 aug. 255/3: “it was for mr. edgar to trace the gradual progress in scotland from illiteracy to literacy”. !e de#nition presents literacy as a unitary ability or condition that is characteristic of human beings as individuals, while the quotations show clearly the strong association between literacy, education, and progress. since the 1980s, however, scholars have increasingly questioned these assumptions, and in working towards a richer understanding have regularly used the noun in the plural in order to emphasise the diversity of communicative practices that it rw& article 10 reading and writing names. an early and important advocate of this usage was brian street, who, in literacy in !eory and practice, pointed out that “comparative material … demonstrates that … practices and conceptions [related to literacy] are very di"erent from one culture to another” (street, 1984: 2), and he therefore suggested, “we would probably more appropriately refer to ‘literacies’ than to any single ‘literacy’” (1984: 8). in the twenty-odd years since street developed this idea, scholars have had a #eld day with literacies, a more recent example being the book multiliteracies, which represents the thinking of a gathering of american and australian scholars known as the new london group. !ey emphasise not only the “increasing salience of ethnic and linguistic diversity” but also the “multiplicities of communications channels and media” (cope and kalantzis, 2000: 5); thus they talk about literacies in many di"erent communicative modes—in visual images and specialised kinds of talk, as well as in various forms of script. in this paper i will not go so far, preferring to de#ne a literacy as ‘a use of language in written form’. i do so because written language—whether on paper or on screen—is of increasing rather than decreasing importance in most parts of the world, and that if literacy is used, without a quali#er, for communication that does not involve written text, we will have to invent another term for communication that does. on the other hand, i support strongly the notion of plural literacies, especially in the multilingual and multicultural contexts of africa. to illustrate my argument i will refer to a single literacy project, the kitengesa community library, located near the trading centre of kitengesa in masaka district in the central region of uganda. my husband and i have a home near kitengesa, and there in 1997, i met mawanda emmanuel, the director and headmaster of a local secondary school, who told me that he wished to set up a community library. i decided to work with him on the project, so we began in 1999 with a box containing 160 books, which was all i could a"ord at the time. seven years later, when this paper was #rst written, that box had grown into a building and the collection to more than 2,700 books; the building had solar electricity, which gave it light at night and ran two computers, and the library had well over 500 members. !e main purpose of the project was and is to serve the people who live around kitengesa, including the students and teachers in mawanda’s school, but it also provides a means of documenting the literacy practices that develop in an african community that has long been interested in education but has hitherto had little access to books. accordingly, we have since the beginning kept careful records of our stock and of how it is used. over the #rst year we asked the students who borrowed the books to write a report on each one, saying who they had read or lent it to and how they and others had reacted to it. later we instituted a book for people to sign when they came into the 11kate parry library, in which we asked them to indicate their reason for coming. finally, every loan of a book is recorded, and the librarians keep track of which among the books that we do not lend appear to be the most used. !is information is the basis of my discussion of literacies, though i believe that the points i make apply well beyond kitengesa. given this journal’s focus on africa, the idea of multiple literacies should not be strange, for we all know that on this continent linguistic multiplicity is the norm (mazrui and mazrui, 1998, parry, 2009, rubagumya, 2009). as i have put it in a previous article, it is usual in africa to grow up within a three-tiered system consisting of a single supralanguage, one or more lingua francas, and any number of local languages (parry, 1999). !e supralanguage—english, french, or portuguese—is an inheritance of colonial rule and is used for central government and for the higher levels of education, if not throughout the system. !e lingua francas—the best known of which are kiswahili in east africa and hausa in west, but there are many others—are usually african languages that were spread through precolonial patterns of trade; they are used for general communication across ethnic groups, and, though they have a place in most education systems, tend to be learned informally. many of them also function as local languages for subsets of their speakers. !e local languages are associated with particular ethnic groups and many have rather few speakers; but they inspire deep loyalties, giving the term mother tongue, in the sense of the language that a child learns #rst, great emotive force. for each of these languages, i would argue, there is, at least potentially, a corresponding literacy, and each of these literacies is important, though for di"erent reasons and in di"erent ways. for most africans there is little argument that supralanguage literacy matters—even the humblest peasants in adult literacy programmes in uganda express a desire to learn english (carr-hill et al., 2001: 90), and many of the users of the kitengesa library value it precisely because it provides access to english books (dent and yannotta, 2005). in focusing on english, these people are showing a good understanding of what has been called the ecology of literacy (barton, 1994): english not only has a long and extensive tradition of writing (as do french and portuguese as well), but it also dominates the education system, being taught in most cases from the beginning of primary school and being the medium of instruction throughout the secondary if not the primary level (mazrui, 2004, schmied, 1991). also, through the system of educational certi#cation, the supralanguage controls access both to jobs in the modern sector and to political power. in uganda, for instance, candidates for political posts have to demonstrate that they have attained speci#ed levels of education before they can stand for election and those levels cannot be attained without a good command of english. 12 reading and writing but the dependence of most african countries on supralanguage literacy raises serious matters to consider. first, there are political issues: many african writers, though superbly pro#cient in the supralanguage themselves, have questioned whether it is an appropriate medium for the conduct of national life and still more for the education of the nation’s children. !eir objections are, #rst, that the supralanguage is foreign, and, second, that it is associated with colonial rule; thus, to continue to use it is to accept continued “colonisation of the mind” (ngugi wa !iong’o, 1986). for less literary minded people the problem is more practical: the supralanguage is simply so hard to learn. english and french, in particular, have more than usually di$cult writing systems; it surely does not make sense to ask people to learn initial reading in these languages if there are other choices available. !en, even once the learner has “cracked the code” of the system (downing, 1979), the language remains foreign, and in rural environments, especially, there is little support for what is learnt in class. compounding these problems is the fact that most supralanguage materials also represent a culture that is foreign, and linguistic and cultural di$culties combined can create extraordinary di$culties of interpretation (baleeta, 2004, parry 1994, 2005). pedagogical matters, then, are of great concern in supralanguage literacy: all too o%en the task of teaching and learning in the supralanguage proves too di$cult and teachers resort to teaching, and students to learning, by rote (rubagumya, 2009: 50-51). !e provision of appropriate materials is another, closely related matter, and here is where our evidence from kitengesa comes into play. most of the members of the library are students at kitengesa comprehensive secondary school, and as secondary school students they have seven years of primary education behind them. it is interesting to note, then, how simple the material is that these students choose to take out and read: the most popular book in 20042005 was a title called magulu and the gorilla, the opening of which runs like this: there once lived a man called magulu. he was a hunter. one day magulu went to hunt in an open grassland. !e place was far away from his home. he went to hunt with all his six dogs. as magulu was hunting, the clouds gathered. soon it started to rain. and the rain became a storm. magulu looked around for shelter. !en he saw a hut in the distance. smoke was coming from the hut. magulu went to the hut. he entered the hut with all his six dogs. inside the hut, magulu found a very beautiful woman … (matovu, 1994:1) !is book is written for primary school children, but it is at this level of language that these secondary school students are comfortable reading. !e point 13kate parry is even more important for people who have dropped out of school at primary level, of whom there are many around kitengesa. one of them spoke forcefully about the frustration of seeing many beautiful books, all of which were too di$cult to understand. !e di$culty of understanding is partly a matter of language, obviously—especially one of vocabulary—but it is also one of culture. magulu and the gorilla is a traditional african folktale translated into english, and this genre has fairly consistently proved the most popular one in the library. second most popular is a category that we call “modern stories”, that is, stories set in modern africa, featuring african characters. !ird in popularity, though falling well behind the story books, are books categorised as “health” and “morals”, both of which categories include material on sex education and emotional health; but serious as these topics are (and the students take them extremely seriously, for masaka district has had plenty of experience with hiv/aids), the books are put into contexts familiar to african students and are written in simple english. all this means that even for english language books the library cannot and must not depend on donations from abroad; for donated books are far more foreign and are usually in language that is too di$cult. to many people, the fact that lingua franca literacy matters is somewhat less obvious. yet the most widely used african lingua francas—kiswahili and hausa—have long traditions of literacy as well as being spoken by millions of people. !ey enable communication across extensive regions and among wide ranges of ethnic groups, and literacy in them gives access to valuable historical information. most important, they are indigenous african languages and are spoken by ordinary people; unlike the supralanguages, they have never been con#ned to an educated (and westernised) elite (mazrui and mazrui, 1998: 77). similarly, the lingua francas present less serious pedagogical problems than the supralanguages do; there is more support for them in the environment, their literatures and vocabulary are culturally accessible, and the writing system is in every case much more transparent than it is for english or french. !e argument for using lingua francas in african education systems seems unanswerable, and, indeed, they #gure prominently in o$cial education policies. in uganda, for instance, the education white paper of 1992 (which is still the basis for national education policy) stipulated that kiswahili should be a compulsory subject in primary school and should be increasingly emphasised (uganda government, 1992: 17-22). !is is not to say that there are no pedagogical problems with regard to the lingua francas. !ey are, by de#nition, second languages for most of their speakers and have sound patterns and grammatical rules that are di"erent from those of the speakers’ #rst languages. hausa, for example, has grammatical gender, 14 reading and writing a feature that presents di$culties for many of those who use it as a lingua franca; and since the language is largely learnt informally, the di$culties are typically not addressed, so that, for example, the gender distinctions are simply ignored by those who speak hausa along the border between nigeria and cameroun. since in printed hausa these distinctions are always maintained, a con&ict is created between what is heard in the environment and what is read in the books. educators, then, have to decide how insistent on “correct” usage, according to native speaker norms, they should be with regard to students’ writing. a high degree of insistence loses some of the advantages of accessibility and environmental support that the lingua franca has; but a more casual attitude might well be interpreted as a suggestion that lingua franca literacy does not matter so much a%er all—especially if, as is the case at present, there is strong pressure for grammatical accuracy in written use of the supralanguage. another matter of concern is the nature of the materials available in the lingua francas. both kiswahili and hausa have written traditions that extend back several hundred years, and they have plenty of material in print. !is material is limited, however, in terms of genre, much of it being religious or educational. !ere is little scienti#c discussion, nor is there a great variety of literary forms, especially when considered in comparison with the supralanguages. more material can be produced, of course, but it will inevitably take time, especially when writers, having been educated in the supralanguage, #nd that language easier to use. one answer, for the meanwhile, is to focus on translation, as julius nyerere did in rendering shakespeare’s julius caesar in kiswahili (mazrui, 2004: 126). translation forces the development of the language in terms of vocabulary and makes new rhetorical structures and genres available for writers to employ in original works. it is important that such sophisticated material be developed if african languages are to be seen as appropriate media for real, grown-up, reading, and not just for the education of children. but the real matter with the african lingua francas is political. on the one hand they face increasing competition from the supralanguages (especially english) as the latter are spread through education and through access to the global media. on the other hand, the lingua francas are all too o%en distrusted as being associated with particular ethnic groups whose dominance is feared by others. both problems may be compounded by straightforward prejudice: many southern ugandans, for instance, consider kiswahili to be the language of thieves, and therefore they refuse to learn it (kagaba, 2000: 30). such attitudes are hardly justi#able, but they are nonetheless powerful, and they can only be overcome by determined and sustained o$cial support for the lingua francas. if governments want the lingua francas to &ourish as media for literacy, they cannot simply legislate their use; they must put resources behind 15kate parry them so that teachers can be trained and translators and materials producers encouraged (mcgregor, 2000: 10). local language literacies, on the other hand, matter for somewhat di"erent reasons. like the lingua francas, the local languages are obviously identi#ed as african and are equally obviously not identi#ed with an educated elite. but most local languages have little or no tradition of literacy—some do not even have an orthography. literacy in such languages will not, then, give access to a signi#cant amount of material; it is important to encourage it precisely so that such material can be developed and thus to a$rm the cultures with which the languages are associated. !e development of local language literacies is also important for ensuring that the languages themselves survive. at present these languages may not seem threatened, being still universally spoken within their communities; but their speakers o%en do not maintain them if they move to the towns, and a%er a generation or two of education and urbanisation many of africa’s languages may be in danger of extinction. !e experience of the celtic languages, especially the relatively strong position of welsh, suggests that widespread access to highly valued written texts may be critical to the maintenance and potential for revival of these languages (durcakz, 1982). !e local languages have an obvious advantage as media of instruction: they are the mother tongues of their speakers and as such are the most appropriate medium for the teaching of initial literacy; and they have the additional advantage, like the lingua francas, that their orthographies maintain a good match between graphemes and phonemes. !e problem is that material for literacy instruction o%en does not exist at all, nor are there many teachers who, having been themselves taught in the supralanguage, feel competent to teach in a local one, even if it is their mother tongue (keshubi, 2000: 49). and both materials production and teacher training are extremely di$cult because of the sheer multiplicity of the local languages: in uganda there are more than thirty of them, in nigeria well over 400 (hansford, bendor-samuel, and stanford, 1976, ladefoged, glick, and criper, 1971). it is clearly not possible to provide a teacher training college or even a set of books for each one. !e solution, it seems to me, is to get away from top-down models of teaching and learning to ones in which students themselves are the sources of information and the producers of texts. such methods have been used successfully at elementary level in the united states (heath, 1983: 315-42), and i myself have used them to great e"ect for teaching teachers in china (parry and su, 1998); they can undoubtedly be used in africa, but only if the established models of instruction are subverted. !e kitengesa community library is a step towards such subversion in that it provides students with direct access to books, thus reducing their dependence 16 reading and writing on their teachers as mediators of knowledge. on the other hand, the collection clearly re&ects the problems of lingua franca and local language literacies discussed above. !e local language is luganda, and since its inception the library has maintained a policy of acquiring every luganda book that is available. despite this policy our stock in july 2006 included only 203 luganda books, as against 2,496 english ones, and there were only #ve in kiswahili. !e last problem can be addressed: we can buy more kiswahili books, and since few people will read them under present sociolinguistic circumstances, we will look for ones with parallel translations in english or luganda. !ese may become a valuable resource if and when the government becomes serious about its policy of promoting kiswahili at secondary level, and they will open the way for monolingual kiswahili texts. as for luganda books, we will continue to buy whatever we can #nd, but we are also encouraging students in the school to produce their own luganda texts, which we will print out and distribute. some may be concerned that such student-produced texts may not be in “correct” luganda, but i don’t think that such a concern for correctness should stop their production. !e writing of the language is more important than its standardisation. di"erent languages, then, mean di"erent literacies. but literacies vary along other dimensions as well, according to their purposes, their genres, the technologies through which they are mediated, the social contexts in which they are practised, and many others. i cannot hope to be comprehensive here, so i will take only one more dimension into consideration, namely the literacies associated with di"erent social contexts. nor can i cover all the possibilities in this dimension, but i will consider those that seem to be most important at kitengesa. !e dominant literacy, in kitengesa as elsewhere, is undoubtedly the literacy of school. school is where most people learn to read, and most reading is done in and for school classes. so close is the association between schooling and literacy that many ugandans use “reading” as a synonym for “studying”. yet many schools, including kitengesa comprehensive secondary school, are pitifully short of books: they do not even have basic textbooks, and in those cases where textbooks are available, the range is still narrow; neither teachers nor students expect to get information from more than one book per subject (liang, 2002, muwanga et al., 2007). !ese conditions have tended to reinforce those top-down models of instruction that i mentioned earlier. as one highly experienced trainer of teachers in uganda has said: most teachers assume that they “possess” their classes and adopt a teacher-centred mode of teaching, assuming the role of experts who have to perform all the time. … !eir conception of their role as 17kate parry teachers, together with their failure to understand what the reading skill entails, leads them to usurp the learners’ role. during reading lessons, they take it upon themselves to read to and for the class, even when the pupils have the same text in their hands. (izizinga, 2000: 67-68) an important role for the kitengesa community library, then, is to complement the schools by providing textbooks, making a greater variety available than is usual, and giving students opportunities to read them for themselves. !is role in relation to school literacy is signi#ed clearly by the library’s proximity to kitengesa comprehensive secondary school and by the fact that members of the school are entitled to free membership of the library (other library members have to pay a small annual fee). library policy is to hold at least one complete set of textbooks for each subject at both primary and secondary levels of education, and where possible we provide alternative sets. !ese books are kept in the library as reference books, so that students and teachers alike must come into the building to read them. !e library has thus become a place of study: of 7,262 visits paid to the building between january and october 2005, 4,279 or 59%, were for the declared purpose of “reading books”, while a further 1,262 or 17%, were for “revising”. of course, visitors may have been reading other books than textbooks, but the impression that the librarians get is that textbooks are the most popular genre for in-library reading. kitengesa comprehensive secondary school teachers also o%en give students assignments that are based on work to be done in the library (dent and yannotta, 2005). but is school literacy enough? all too o%en it is narrowly constrained, dominated by teachers who are themselves controlled by centrally developed curricula that are enforced through the medium of exams. students who have no other literacy available are unlikely to extend and transform the literacy they acquire in school, and once the last of their exams is over, they tend to abandon it altogether. it is vital, then, to encourage the development of literacies in association with other social contexts, and that is another important function of the library. studies conducted in north america and britain (e.g. heath, 1983, wells, 1986) have long since demonstrated the importance of literacy as a part of family life, and heath’s work, in particular, brought out how variable family literacy can be. an important question for the kitengesa community library, then, is whether and how it is contributing to literacy in the family. !ere is good reason to believe that it is doing so, if only because most (68%) of the books that the library lends are borrowed by women and girls—and in the local community girls are expected to go home a%er school and to stay there, 18 reading and writing helping with household chores; thus a book borrowed by a girl is likely to be read at home. !e reports that the students submitted over the #rst year when they were borrowing books also suggest that girls are likely to share them with more people (either by reading them aloud or by passing them on) than boys are likely to do. in the course of 1999, 87 loans were made to 15 boys and 195 to 54 girls: the girls reported that they read each book aloud to an average of 2.7 listeners, while the boys reported reading each book to only 2.1; likewise the girls lent each book to an average of 2.4 readers and the boys to only 2.0; the girls’ listeners and readers were also more likely to be children than the boys’ were, with 47% of the girls’ being under #%een, as opposed to 32% of the boys’ (parry, 2004). it seems, then, that books once borrowed, especially when borrowed by girls, get passed around and read aloud within the home. we need to know much more, however, about the circumstances and manner in which this happens, to get a full understanding of the library’s contribution to family literacy. !e library seems also to be encouraging the development of literacy practices as part of interactions within peer groups and among friends. again, such literacy practices have been documented in north america, where students o%en use them in opposition to the discipline imposed by the school and to the dominance of their teachers (camitta, 1993, gilmore, 1986; leander, 2004). in the context of kitengesa, peer group literacy practices do not work in opposition to the formal education system so much as in addition to it. !e resident librarian reports, for example, that one of the students who helps him run the library became interested in one of the new science books that i purchased for the library in 2005. !is student then recommended the book to another, who recommended it to another, who proceeded to tell a group of students from a di"erent secondary school about it. five of these students then came to the library to read the book and promised, in consequence, to become fully paid-up members (field notes, 29 january 2007, 11). if such incidents occur frequently, the reading of books will become associated with friendship networks as much as, or even more than, with classroom activities, and this could be an enormously signi#cant development in that it would undermine the teachers’ monopoly of knowledge. moreover, peer group literacy is already going beyond the school curriculum. !e library has been the base for two student clubs, the newspaper club and the straight talk club, straight talk being a monthly newspaper pullout that is devoted to disseminating information about hiv-aids. !e newspaper club meets daily at lunch time to read articles aloud from both the english and the luganda newspapers; the straight talk club meets in single-sex groups to discuss the articles in straight talk and then in a combined group to resolve any language di$culties encountered. finally, the books that get borrowed—traditional stories, modern stories, and 19kate parry the rest—are passed from one student to another within friendship networks, and the students have o%en been heard talking about the books. with family literacy and peer group literacy in kitengesa we are seeing written text—in the form of library books—being taken into existing social groups and becoming part of an already established network of oral interactions. but books can also be read privately by individuals, exposing those individuals, at least potentially, to an in#nitely wider range of in&uences. !is kind of literacy practice has o%en been assumed to be the norm (howe, 1993), and the assumption has led to enormous claims for the consequences of literacy as such (goody, 1968, ong, 1982). !e assumption and the claims have been e"ectively disproven in the work of street and others, yet there is a small baby that should be preserved from the bath water: when books can be borrowed they can be read by individuals on their own, and more than one student from kitengesa has indicated that this is an important point. as one girl wrote in a book report, the title girls growing up (nganda, 1994) was a book for “reading secretly”. nor is the potential for “secrecy” in reading important only for sex education (especially so in a society that is reserved about such matters); it has the potential, at least, for people to improve their knowledge and thus their social status. !e librarian explained the process by which this can happen when describing how he held his own in conversation with the teachers in the school, who were much more quali#ed than him at the time, in terms of formal education levels: we used to have tea in the sta"room there …and … talk about things, like … economics, …and then the economic teacher would talk something, then when i go back i make sure that i go and read something about that so that maybe at lunch i will also have something to say about it …i took that advantage because i was in the library and then i would read and read and read so next time i had something … (field notes, 29 january 2007, 6) !us he acquired a considerable reputation for being knowledgeable, all on the basis of what he had read on his own in the library. !is man, it must be admitted, is exceptional: there is no doubt that for most of the people around kitengesa, and probably many others in africa, literacy begins and ends with school literacy. our librarian and our library, however, have demonstrated that that does not have to be the case. !e availability of books outside school, and unmediated by teachers, has opened up a space for family, peer group, and private literacies to develop, and it has gone some way—though not, i think, far enough—to encourage the development of literacy in the local language. and while school literacy will remain the one that 20 reading and writing matters most in terms of social status and access to employment, it will itself become far more productive and e"ective if supplemented and supported by these other literacies (cf. ntuli and pretorius, 2005). finally, i should say that libraries are certainly not the only institutional structures through which these literacies can be encouraged and promoted. i have been most impressed by what i have learned from colleagues in south africa about family literacy projects, local language publishing, and research in workplace literacy practices (desmond, 2004, land, 2005, mashishi 2009, prinsloo and breier, 1996). all such projects help us to think about and work on literacy matters beyond the school, and it is important that we do so—because there are multiple literacies, and they all matter. acknowledgement an earlier version of this paper was presented as the keynote address at the reading association of south africa’s 2nd annual literacy conference, held in cape town on 11-12 november, 2006. i am grateful to the organisers of the conference for inviting me to make the address, to the american embassy in pretoria for its support, and especially to janet condy and mastin prinsloo for their generous hospitality. references baleeta, m. l. 2004. cultural background and test performance on unseen passages. master’s dissertation, makerere university, kampala, uganda. barton, d. 1994. literacy: an introduction to the ecology of written language. oxford: blackwell. camitta, m. 1993. vernacular writing: varieties of literacy among philadelphia high school students. in cross-cultural approaches to literacy, b. v. street (ed.). cambridge: cambridge university press, 228-246. carr-hill, r. a., okech, a, katahoire, a. r., kakooza, t., ndidde, a. n., and oxenham, j. 2001. adult literacy programmes in uganda. washington, dc: world bank. cope, b., and kalantzis, m. 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conclusion recommendations acknowledgements references about the author(s) funmilayo m. oguntade department of general studies, school of sciences, federal university of technology akure, akure, nigeria citation oguntade, f.m., 2021, ‘content analysis of levels and aspects of comprehension in west african senior secondary school examination’, reading & writing 12(1), a293. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v12i1.293 original research content analysis of levels and aspects of comprehension in west african senior secondary school examination funmilayo m. oguntade received: 22 july 2020; accepted: 24 may 2021; published: 30 july 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: reading is one of the most complex and exclusively human mental activities. it is a foundational skill for all learning, whether at primary, secondary or tertiary levels. if students do not master effective strategies for reading, they may not be successful independent learners. the ability to comprehend written texts and answer relevant questions on them is a major feature that is examined in comprehension in the west african senior secondary school certificate examination. objective: this study was directed at analysing the content of the english language comprehension questions in the west african school certificate examination to identify the intensities of testing different aspects of comprehension so that teachers can lay emphasis on these aspects when they teach reading strategies to their students. method: the content analytical approach was used to identify the different aspects and levels of the comprehension passages. the analysis of the content was carried out by focusing on 10 different content sub-categories. results: the study revealed that most of the comprehension passages presented had never been used before and they were related to the students’ local environment. literal and inferential questions dominated while critical and evaluative questions were rarely asked. conclusion: in the light of the pedagogic importance of critical and evaluative questions, it is recommended that examiners and teachers should lay emphasis on questions that demand higher-order reasoning to prepare students for the contemporary demands of literacy. in line with higher-order questions, it is also suggested that the curriculum should be amended to encourage critical evaluative thinking among secondary school students as it is an important part of literacy and language development. keywords: content analysis; language testing; comprehension passages; secondary school. introduction reading is one of the most complex and exclusively human mental activities. it is one of the language skills that people must acquire before they can be considered literate. reading is an important aspect of learning a language or learning in general. reading is a receptive skill just like listening (oyinloye 2002). reading involves eye movement, speech, comprehension and vocabulary. in nigeria, where this study is situated, students have varying levels of text comprehension. this could be attributed to the students’ levels of independent reading, their socio-economic background, or their cognitive ability to interact with the coded message in a text, among many other factors (oyetunde 2002). jude and ajayi (2012) posit that the problem of poor reading comprehension usually leads to low academic achievement levels, which may lead to failure, frustration in reading and even students dropping out of schools. comprehension involves reasoning and the ability to make meaningful interpretation of written symbols throughout the reading process. in reading comprehension, the readers require the vital skill to read and recognise the form and supporting ideas of an argument, grasp details, and recast using their background knowledge, to understand complex ideas presented in a given text. comprehension is the aptitude to respond appropriately to matters raised in the text in question form. comprehension is defined as the ability to respond correctly to questions derived through ‘wh’-question transformations on the syntactic structure of given passages (jude & ajayi 2012). cabral and tavares (2002) assert that when one reads, it is imperative to understand what has been read; students who cannot readily reconstruct the author’s main idea, or identify the supporting ideas and supporting facts as well as some critical evaluation of a given passage or text, cannot read for their course, irrespective of what types of material they read outside of class. reading comprehension is the ability to read, understand, process, and recall what was just read. rutzler (2020) submits that having excellent reading comprehension skills is crucial because it increases the enjoyment and effectiveness of reading and helps people academically, professionally and in real life. students in secondary schools are being trained for the challenges of higher learning in higher institutions. a student that is not properly established in literacy skills may find it difficult to cope at the tertiary level. the development of essential intellectual and study skills, namely reading, writing and reasoning, is stated to be the basis for the success of any tertiary student (fairbairn & winch 1996). the ability to read with understanding should, however, not be taken for granted. not all students can read proficiently at the required level for successful academic performance. teachers of english language in secondary schools in nigeria, ghana, sierra leone, the gambia and liberia are expected to cover the entire curriculum for english language as designed by the west african examination council (waec). the curriculum is designed to help learners understand spoken english, to be understood when communicating in english, to be able to comprehend what they read, and to write effectively for others to understand. the different competencies of teachers of the english language, and their interest in different aspects of the subject matter, may result in teachers laying more emphasis on certain aspects of the english language curriculum than others. english is the medium of communication in the five countries that jointly run the waec. english is thus a critical subject that students must pass at credit level to proceed to a higher institution in all the countries where the examination is conducted. the ability of students to comprehend written text and answer questions on them is a major feature that is examined in the comprehension section of the west african senior secondary school certificate examination (wassce). this study was directed at examining the content of the english language comprehension questions in the wassce to identify the intensities of testing of different aspects of the comprehension examination paper. this is an area that is yet to be covered by researchers. the main aim of this study is embedded in the research questions: what are the various contents of comprehension passages in wassce? what are the levels and the aspects of comprehension tested in the wassce english language examination? importance of reading comprehension comprehension skills are important in language fluency and are necessary for language and literacy development. they are related to all subjects and are imperative to advancement in school. strong comprehension skills are required for students to excel in standardised state testing as well as placement testing at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. comprehension skills need to be applied by students at all levels of education. it is a skill that every student must practise frequently throughout every level of school. reading comprehension skills will help students not only in english class but in all areas of academic study. moore (2016) posits that comprehension skills acquired early in life and practised often and refined throughout primary school and secondary school will ensure students’ success in tertiary institutions and in their future career (moore 2016). reading is one of the most important academic tasks carried out by students either in primary or secondary schools, or tertiary institutions. the only difference is that students are exposed to several texts and textbooks that require independent reading in the tertiary institutions and at this level they are expected to comprehend what they read so that they can analyse, critique, evaluate and synthesise information from various sources. unfortunately, many students gaining admission into these tertiary institutions are ill-prepared to meet these challenges. many researchers in applied linguistics and reading research have shown that there is a relationship between reading proficiency and academic success (grisso 2018; stoffelsma & spooren 2018). they believe that poor reading ability results in poor academic attainment which eventually affects overall literacy development. at secondary schools in nigeria, students are required to read and understand texts from many different content areas in schools. thus students at this level need to develop the necessary reading skills to succeed in their academics. many of them do not have problems with reading words accurately but lack comprehension. given the impact that reading comprehension has on secondary school students’ success in their academics, it is essential to look at the contents of the comprehension examination in wassce. this will reveal the aspects and levels of comprehension in which the students need to have proficiency. aspects and levels of comprehension the centre for canadian language benchmarks (2015) asserts that understanding listening or reading texts generally entails three main levels of comprehension, namely literal, interpretive and applied. on the other hand, campton college (n.d.) identifies six levels of comprehension: literal, inferential, appreciative, critique, evaluative and essential. other researchers, such as ofodu, babalola and dada (2010) and lasisi (2003), identify literal, inferential, and critical or evaluative levels of comprehension. for many years, until recently, waec ensured that two comprehension passages were given to their students. this is an indication that they are interested in the impact comprehension can have on students. the content of the comprehension passages and the level of comprehension tested were looked into critically to see the trend of questions, types of comprehension and sources (excerpt or newly composed) of the comprehension passages given to students in wassce over the years so that researchers can make recommendations on what can be done to help students and determine ways to improve any shortcomings or gaps that may be discovered. this study uses three levels of comprehension, namely literal, inferential or interpretive, and critical or evaluative. the literal level of comprehension involves understanding the specific information in the text, that is, the main ideas, facts and stated points of view. the literal level is a prerequisite for higher-level reading and thinking (linde & fredrickson 2020). the inferential or interpretive level requires that readers or listeners make use of the information at the literal level to make inferences. at this level, readers can identify implicit relationships which are relationships that are not directly stated. also at this level, readers can identify unstated reasons for actions or beliefs based on explicitly stated information or clues from the text. conclusions can also be drawn based on specific facts, events, images, patterns or symbols found in the text (reading levels of comprehension [mt. san antonio college 2018]). at the critical or evaluative level, readers can understand ideas and information well enough to analyse, judge and critique the information and ideas. at this level, a reader is also able to explain and support their judgment clearly and can justify their stance (mt. san antonio college 2018). the critical or evaluative skill is required at the tertiary level where students will be exposed to more complicated materials. if students are poor in critical evaluation of texts or situations, they will not be able to cope with life challenges and academic studies. apart from testing students’ level of comprehension, other aspects like grammatical structure and functions, idiomatic expressions, figures of speech and vocabulary could also be tested in comprehension because examiners believe that mastery of all these aspects will aid comprehension. nordquist (2019) opines that sentence structure in english grammar is arranging words, phrases and clauses in a sentence and that the grammatical function or meaning of a sentence hinges on this structural configuration. organising expressions (thoughts) into structures suggests the intentions of the speaker or author to an audience. it is a technique that allows both the author and the audience to know what the author is trying to convey (gitlina 2010). the understanding of the structures of the language is put into practice in compositions and comprehension passages where conscious consideration of the structure of the expression is used as a guideline to the meaning of the expression. most students need some form of structure to their learning and to be actively and purposely engaged in their learning process. as a result, waec over the years (1988–2020) has tried to examine students’ knowledge about grammatical structures and functions by asking them to identify some underlined expressions within the comprehension passages given to them in english language examination. over the years the questions have been similar in the sense that the same pattern of questions has been set, with slight variation in the number of questions. for example, the questions have been on literal, inferential, grammatical and idiomatic aspects. students’ knowledge of vocabulary is very critical to the understanding of a text. comprehension is better when the reader knows the meaning of most of the words. hu and nation (2000) reported that their participants needed to know 98% – 99% of words in texts before adequate comprehension was possible, hence the importance of vocabulary cannot be overestimated. john (2017) opines that the link between vocabulary and the goal of reading comprehension is enormous. he further argues that if a student does not know the meaning of a word they will not be able to make sense of what they have read. alqahtani (2015) posits that vocabulary knowledge is often viewed as a critical tool for second language learners because a limited vocabulary impedes successful communication. a robust vocabulary, however, advances all areas of communication in the second language which are listening, speaking, reading and writing (alexander 2020). students are asked to give the contextual meaning of words taken from a given comprehension passage in the wassce. for students to acquire more vocabulary, language researchers believe that students need to read extensively, to do so using different texts and to make reading a habit. understanding of figures of speech is also important. this is one of the aspects of comprehension that is tested in wassce. a figure of speech is a word or phrase using figurative language. it is language that has another meaning than its literal definition. a figure of speech relies on implied or suggested meaning, rather than a dictionary definition. the purpose of a figure of speech is to lend texture and colour to writing. an idiomatic expression (idiom) is an example of figurative expression (word or phrase) that has a meaning that is conventionally understood by native speakers. idioms can be difficult to understand if a reader is not a native speaker of the language, because it is influenced by the culture and it allows a writer to draw on a rich cultural tradition and express complex ideas (thyab 2016). effect of schema on comprehension in presenting comprehension passages for examination, garth-mccullough (2008) suggests that different perspectives such as the students’ background knowledge (schemata), their socio-economic and cultural backgrounds should be taken into consideration. rumelhart (1980) suggests that a schema theory is a theory about knowledge. students’ background or prior knowledge is an important factor in determining how readers process the information available in written texts (garth-mccullough 2008). comprehension requires the reader to link prior knowledge with the new knowledge for comprehension to take place. for readers to comprehend communicative material, they apply their beliefs about the world and what they already know about the present topic as a lens through which they interpret and understand the message the writer is trying to convey (garth-mccullough 2008). the prior knowledge of students is in relation to some features of the text being read and these features include the origin of the text (local or foreign), source (newly composed text or an excerpt) and type (fiction, science, art, socio-economic, political, cross-cutting, historical, education). a text that is local in origin will likely contain ideas with which the students will be familiar. for example, a text addressing seasons of the year from the temperate environment would describe spring, summer, autumn and winter as against the rainy and dry seasons that the african students are familiar with. students who have read widely stand the chance of having come across reading texts that are excerpts, hence finding the comprehension examination easy; this is in contrast to reading texts that are newly composed by the examiner. the type of text can limit the extent to which the readers’ prior knowledge aids their understanding of the text. for instance, science-oriented texts treating issues such as climate change, the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect will most likely be strange to readers without a background in science. widdowson (1978) observes that ‘the learner may simply not feel himself in any way engaged by the text being presented to him’ if they read texts not from their background. ali (2016) confirmed in his research that linking the gist of the passages to ‘real-world’ language can provide a sense of purpose. these three attributes of the text to be read (source, origin and type) have effects on the extent to which the reader’s prior knowledge helps them comprehend the text. attributes of comprehension in this study are regarded as type, source and origin while the different aspects tested by examiners which have to do with the content of the comprehension are: literal, inferential, critical or evaluative, figures of speech, grammatical structures and their functions, idiomatic expression, and vocabulary. 21st century literacy literacy in the 21st century demands the ability to move confidently, efficiently and ethically between wide ranges of written and visual, print, live, digital or electronic text types according to purpose. (primary english teaching association australia [petaa] n.d.) ‘reading competence has a significant impact on the future of students. it can affect their level of education after secondary school as well as their career choices and eventual lifestyles’ (hock & deshler, as cited in joseph 2008). students in secondary school should be prepared for bigger challenges that they will likely face in the higher institution and beyond by gradually introducing them to skills that will enable them to cope. it is therefore imperative that the literacy skills of students be developed in their entirety right from primary school through secondary school, and hence should be assessed in the waec examinations. problems affecting comprehension considering that reading is a foundational skill for all learning, students who experience problems in comprehending texts, may not be successful independent learners. they will have challenges that will have a significant impact on their academic success after secondary school (bell 2004). the reason why comprehension challenges may impact negatively on students’ success is that at the higher institution of learning there will be higher academic demands that will require higher cognitive tasks than what is being demanded in secondary school. students who are adequately trained on how to use these skills from secondary school will have the potential of succeeding in their future endeavours. oyinloye (2002) identifies some problems affecting students in comprehension examination such as the students’ inability to identify the main ideas in a given passage, make inferences from what they have read, understand the information that is not directly stated, and identify the plot of the story. there are also some factors outside the classroom that affect language learning and achievement such as the socio-economic backgrounds of students. this can have an impact on language learning and achievement (ginsborg 2014). poor background in the english language may limit the ability of students to comprehend since english is not their first language. students who grew up in homes where their parents are illiterate may not get academic assistance from home and there is usually a disconnection from school when they get home. students who have educated parents are usually encouraged by their parents to read extensively. researchers in the past have tried to look into various areas of comprehension passages. ali (2016) in his research investigated how background knowledge affects students’ comprehension of passages using students from the department of english, college of arts, university of basrah. it was discovered that students who received the background information before treatment comprehended the passage better. this suggests that passages where the students are familiar with the underlying concepts and themes are easier to comprehend. thus, when examiners draw comprehension passages from sources in the students’ local environment, they make it easier for the students to comprehend. alonzo et al. (2009) in their research used a one-parameter rasch model to examine the relative difficulty of different multiple-choice reading comprehension items assessing students’ literal, inferential and evaluative comprehension of fictional narratives. the difficulty of questions derived from concepts identified as important components of reading comprehension by state content standards was also examined. these components include character, prediction and plot sequence. it was revealed from their findings that there is a curvilinear relationship between literal, inferential and evaluative comprehension. it was established that literal comprehension was the easiest while inferential and evaluative comprehension were considered to be more challenging. the findings also indicate that assessment objectives differ based on difficulty. this study examined the students’ level of comprehension by asking multiple-choice questions. the main difference in this testing is that they did not test all of the other aspects such as figures of speech, grammatical structures and their functions, vocabulary and idiomatic expressions. researchers have used content analysis techniques to analyse the body of a text and other communication materials to identify concepts, themes and ideas that regularly occur within the texts and communication materials (mayring 2014). the content analytical technique can be used to analyse education and examination materials (kleinheksel et al. 2020). this study will use content analysis to locate the different aspects and levels of comprehension. this study intends to identify aspects of comprehension that are tested often in wassce to encourage teachers to lay more emphasis on those aspects when preparing students for the english language examination. students will also be enlightened on what they need to watch out for when reading any text to develop their cognitive strategies for reading comprehension, in particular for the waec examination. theoretical framework this study spans two subject matter areas, namely reading comprehension and content analysis, which was used to analyse the comprehension examination given by waec at wassce. this study is tilted towards the cognitive interactive reading theories. cognitive interactive reading theories place equal emphasis on a reader’s schema and the print on the page as the basis of comprehending the content of the text (cornejo 2014). these theories opine that instruction word, sentence and text meaning are accustomed, influenced or moulded by the whole set of experiences and knowledge the reader brings to reading (kirby 2007). reading is hence a dialogue between the reader and the text and it involves an active cognitive process in which the reader’s background knowledge performs a crucial part in the construction of meaning (shihab 2011). thus, within the content analytical methodology employed in this study, the schema of the secondary school students was considered in terms of the attributes (type, source and origin) of the comprehension passages presented to the students by waec. content analysis is a method designed to identify and interpret meaning in recorded forms of communication by isolating the salient concepts and then creating a framework to organise the concepts in a way that can be used to describe a phenomenon (kleinheksel et al. 2020). mayring (2014) identified five modern hermeneutic approaches to content analysis; these are approaches in which the text has to be interpreted by the formulation of the analyst’s preconceptions, the intentions of the text’s author have to be found out and an additional explaining text has to be formulated. the five approaches are: (1) objective hermeneutics which draws inferences based on the objective of the social structures behind the text, (2) grounded theory which rests on a procedure of coding textual materials and defining the codes, (3) psychoanalytical text interpretation which was developed to draw inferences from the text to a deep structure of the contents, (4) phenomenological analysis which is directed at analysing the phenomenon through variation and reduction to its core concept, and (5) biographical analysis which interprets open-ended textual materials on individual life courses. this study utilises the grounded theory and phenomenological analysis approaches. coding rules were developed based on some phenomena (attributes) unique to the comprehension passages and the questions. the coding rules are the basis for categorisation and enumeration in content analytical techniques. the application of the categorisation process to the text identifies the relevant units that are unique to each category. enumerations of the text based on the categorisation lead to the development of relative frequencies or other statistical indices of the distribution of categories. the statistical measures so computed are measures of permeation (krippendorff 1967). for this study, the categorisation and enumeration resulted in the frequency counts that are presented in the tables. kleinheksel et al. (2020) classify content analysis into latent and manifest. latent content analysis involves the interpretation of what is hidden deep within the text: the researcher attempts to discover the implied meaning in the text. manifest analysis is conducted in a way that the researcher is thought to maintain distance and separation from the objects of study (texts). according to krippendorff (1967), it is based on some message characteristic (categorisation) that produces uniformity of comprehension for a large majority of the audience, that is, it is intersubjectively verifiable. in this study, manifest content analysis was carried out. to ascertain the extent to which the categorisation will yield intersubjectively verifiable results, the inter-coder reliability test was also conducted. methodology research design the study was based on the analysis of secondary time series data. these data were secondary because they were not generated directly by the researcher and they were time series because they covered several years. the purposive sampling technique was used to select a time series of paper i section b of english language questions of wassce covering 24 years. this section contains the comprehension passages. the questions for the 24 consecutive years were selected to ensure an adequate trend was available. in all, 48 passages were covered by the study. the main analytical approach used in this study was content analysis. the widely accepted term for systematic inquiries into communication is content analysis. to do content analysis, key symbols and themes items are classified and tabulated to ascertain their meanings and probable effects. content analysis as a research method is a systematic and objective means of describing and quantifying phenomena (downe-wamboldt 1992; sandelowski 1995). content analysis is a research method used to make replicable and effective interpretations and coding textual material and it systematically evaluates texts such as documents, oral communication, and graphics (gheyle & jacobs 2017). duriau, reger and pfarrer (2007) define content analysis as a class of research methods at the intersection of the qualitative and quantitative traditions. it is promising for rigorous exploration of many important but difficult-to-study issues of interest. comprehension is one such difficult issue because it is the ability to analyse, critique, evaluate and synthesise information from various sources. many second language learners of english have challenges with comprehending texts not because they cannot read, but because reading requires making use of different types of skills at the same time. comprehension could be influenced by the students’ background, culture, socio-economic status, the teaching style of their teachers, among others. franzosi (2004) describes content analysis as an objective, systematic and quantitative description of the content. for this study content analysis coding rules were used. the rules were developed specifically for analysing the selected comprehension passages. the rules were discussed with the other five waec examiners (these are english teachers who mark the wassce english language paper i) and reviewed based on their comments. an intercoder reliability test was conducted to test the reliability of the coding rules. to test for intercoder reliability, a reliability sub-sample was created. this comprised comprehension passage paper i past questions for 3 years. three research assistants were trained on how to use the coding rules. these comprehension passages were analysed based on the coding rules. the intercoder reliability is to ensure that the coding rules are appropriate and that the concepts coded are clear enough to enter into the spreadsheet. a concurrence of 80% and above implies that the coding rules and instructions are adequate to ensure intercoder reliability. if the concurrence is lower than 80%, the coding rules will be revised and the coders retrained while the intercoder reliability test will be re-conducted (macnamara 2005). for this study, a concurrence of 82% was obtained. the coding rules were used to analyse the content of the comprehension passages and corresponding questions were analysed for 24 years covered by the study. the output of the coding was initially entered into a spreadsheet before being exported to the statistical package for analysis. the analytical tools used were descriptive statistics comprising mainly frequency distribution, percentages, mean, median and mode. in carrying out content analysis, texts were analysed to determine the frequency of occurrence of specific concepts or words within the texts and coded into categories for building inferences. for the inferences to be valid, the classification procedure must be consistent (weber 1990). in table 1, following elo and kynga (2008), the comprehension passages were categorised by type, source and origin. types of comprehension were identified as fiction, science, art, socio-economic, political, cross-cutting, historical and educational while there were two sources: excerpt or newly composed. origin consists of local, foreign or not known. these were the attributes of the comprehension passages. the aspects that dealt with the content of comprehension tested were: literal, inferential, critical or evaluative, figures of speech, idiomatic expression, grammatical structure and function, and vocabulary questions. these content subcategories were developed based on the literature reviewed and the wassce english language curriculum. the contents of the comprehension passages and questions were then analysed and coded using the coding scheme. table 1: coding scheme for content analysis. results contents of comprehension passages tested in west african senior secondary school certificate examination type, source and origin of comprehension passages the attributes of the comprehension passages, namely type, source and origin of the passage, may influence the students’ ability to comprehend the passages. secondary school students are usually grouped into arts, commercial and science classes. while students in the arts and commercial classes may be disadvantaged if the comprehension passage is science-oriented, they may have an advantage if the passage falls into the category of socio-economic, historical and arts-related stories. comprehension passages could be excerpts or newly composed. excerpts are comprehension passages that were taken from a longer whole of any text. passages that were newly composed are expected to be new to the students whereas it is not impossible that some of the students may have come across an excerpt; if that be the case, understanding such an excerpt will be easier for the reader. comprehension passages that are local in origin will most likely address themes that are not completely strange to the students and this can aid comprehension. types of comprehension passages the analysis of the comprehension passages based on the attribute type of comprehension passages is presented in table 2. the table presents the frequency distribution of the types of comprehension passages for 24 years. the passages that are fiction had the highest percentage with 39.6%. this was followed by passages dealing with socio-economic issues with 33.35% while science-related passages accounted for only 8.35% of the passages. arts and political discourse passages had 4.2% each while historical and educational passages had 6.25% and 4.15%. the fiction passages were the products of the examiners’ imagination and there was no possibility of the candidates having come across the stories earlier. also, the high preponderance of passages that are socio-economic may be a reflection of the importance of socio-economic challenges in national discourse in waec member countries. the examiners may assume the students need to be abreast of the critical socio-economic issues that were on the front burners of waec member countries. issues covered in the passages include crime, cultism, marriage and unemployment. the implication of this is that teachers of english language comprehension need to cover the topical socio-economic issues in the countries while teaching the students. also, they can encourage their students to read newspapers where they can obtain information on current issues and learn related vocabularies. the lower relative weights of arts and science-related passages mean that the examiners were conscious of the need not to put students who specialise in either of the two categories at a disadvantage in the english language comprehension examination. it could also be that the examiners expect students to at least have some knowledge in arts and science concepts in the course of their study in school. the science passages are in most cases educative and topical. typical examples are discourse on ozone layer depletion and climate change. table 2: types of comprehension passages. sources of comprehension passages table 3 presents the categorisation of comprehension passages by sources. there are just two sources: newly composed and excerpt. newly composed passages were the passages that never existed before the examination, unlike excerpts which were drawn from already existing texts. the newly composed text has the highest frequency of occurrence with 87.5% while comprehensions that are excerpts have just 12.5% occurrence. the implication of this result is to inform teachers that they need to prepare the students by giving them different texts that will give the students different exposure to issues from all walks of life. this will help in developing their background knowledge which will eventually aid how they will comprehend the text as advised by ali (2016) who confirmed in his research that linking the gist of the passages to ‘real-world’ language can provide a sense of purpose. table 3: sources of comprehension passages. origins of comprehension passages table 4 presents the categorisation of the comprehension passages based on origin. there are three categories under origin, namely local, foreign and not known. comprehension passages that are local in origin have the highest frequency with 62.5% occurrence followed by passages whose sources are unknown with 29.15% of occurrence. passages of foreign origin had the lowest frequency of occurrence at 8.35%. given this result, it appears the examiners are conscious of the fact that students will understand stories that they are familiar with, more than those that have a foreign background. passages of local origin will be better understood because they will most likely contain ideas with which the students will be familiar. for example, a text addressing seasons of the year from the temperate environment would describe spring, summer, autumn and winter as against the rainy and dry seasons that the african students are familiar with. in literature, garth-mccullough (2008) suggests that different perspectives such as the students’ background knowledge (schemata), their socio-economic and cultural backgrounds should be taken into consideration. table 4: origin of the comprehension passages. relative importance of types of questions table 5 shows that seven different types of questions were identified in the 48 passages covered. it also presents information on the frequency of occurrence of each type of question in the 48 passages. the types of questions presented to students in english language comprehension examination were literal, inferential, figures of speech, grammatical structure and functions, and idiomatic expression. the table also contains information on the average number of times (mean, median and mode) a particular type of question, for example literary questions, came up in a comprehension passage. table 5: relative importance of types of questions. table 5 shows that vocabulary questions and literal questions were the most frequent during the 24 years covered by the study. each of them had a 97.9% frequency of occurrence. further comparison of these two types of question reveals that literal meaning questions had an average rate of occurrence of four literary questions per passage while vocabulary test question had an average rate of occurrence of one question per passage. teachers of english hence need to pay more attention to the two types of questions while teaching their students. the next type of question that was important in terms of frequency of occurrence and hence should be given special attention by teachers of english language for the wassce is the grammatical structure which had the frequency occurrence of 93.75. the question with the lowest frequency of occurrence was critical or evaluative with 4.2%. this is an indication that in wassce students are not expected at this level to be saddled with higher-order thinking to a great extent. discussion the research question addressed in this study is: what are the different contents of comprehension passages tested in wassce? the analysis of the passages was carried out focusing on 10 different content sub-categories (see table 1). these are type, source and origin of comprehension passages; literal, inferential, figures of speech, grammatical structures and their functions, idiomatic expression, critical or evaluative, and test of vocabulary questions. the first three sub-categories were used to describe the attributes of the passages that may influence the students’ ability to comprehend the passages while the remaining seven sub-categories are the aspects being tested in comprehension passages in wassce. the results show that seven different types of comprehension passages could be identified: fiction, science, art, socio-economic, political, historical and educational. the dominant ones were fiction which accounted for 39.6% of the passages, socio-economic (33.35%) and science (8.35%). teachers of english language therefore ought to give their students opportunities to practise with the seven different types of passages while preparing for wassce. the relative importance of science-oriented passages shows that even an art student is expected to learn some science concepts in the course of their study. the science passages usually addressed educative and topical issues such as ozone layer depletion. the sources of the comprehension passages show that 87.5% of the passages were ‘newly composed’. the remaining passages were ‘excerpts’. this implies that students should not expect passages they have come across before in the examination. the results show that 62.5% of the passages had local origin while those of foreign origin were 8.35%. the reason for this could be that the examiners are following the theory proposed by researchers that students comprehend better when they have the background knowledge that relates to the story (garth-mccullough 2008; ginsborg 2014). the students should hence be taught with passages addressing themes mostly from nigeria or africa. the results of this study further show that the frequency of occurrence of literal questions is 97.9%. this implies that english language examiners asked more literal questions. literal understanding is the first and most basic level of comprehension in reading. thus, mastering this component of reading development means being able to understand literally what the author said. hence, teachers of english language should ensure that the development of literal comprehension reading starts from lower classes (primary schools) and develop this skill all through the students’ secondary education. a student who can understand information that is explicitly stated in a text over time will improve and graduate to making inferences and critically evaluate text. it is a prerequisite for higher-level reading and thinking according to linde and fredickson (2020). the frequency of occurrence of inferential questions was 52.1%. this implies that inferential questions are significant on average. hence, english language teachers need to teach students how to deduce meanings that are not directly stated in the passage. teachers should draw students’ attention to questions like this each time comprehension passages are given in class. this will help them to know the difference between inferential and literal questions. the teacher can also ensure that students are properly drilled. they can give students assignments on reading text that is a little taxing but interesting just to build the students’ skill in grammar, vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, among others. teachers can also encourage their students to read widely because that will expose them to cultures that they may not be familiar with but might have heard about in books. the frequency of occurrence of figures of speech was 54.2%. this implies that there was a 54.2% chance that figures of speech questions will occur in the examination. the english language teachers, therefore, need to teach their students the different types of figures of speech in english so that students can easily identify them at any time they come across them in a comprehension passage or use them appropriately even in their own communication when writing or speaking. reading extensively should be encouraged among students to build their knowledge in english language culture, vocabularies, figurative and idiomatic expressions. grammatical structure and function questions had a frequency occurrence of 93.75%, thus implying that they are inevitable in wassce. therefore, teachers should ensure that students are taught properly in class how to address them in comprehension passages. this is a question that has been consistently asked in wassce over the years. the idiomatic expression questions had a frequency occurrence of 20.85%. this result implies that idiomatic expression questions are seldom asked. this should guide teachers in the allocation of their time to this aspect of english language comprehension. the examiners of wassce were not expecting the students to have much mastery of idiomatic expressions. the reason for this may be that it was considered to be difficult to understand for students that are not native speakers of the english language since it is influenced by the culture and it allows a writer to draw on a rich cultural tradition that is not common to second language learners. teachers must lay emphasis on this aspect because these students need to have all-round development that will enhance not only comprehension but help them improve academically. with a frequency occurrence of 97.9%, vocabulary test questions were very important, hence students and teachers of english language should devote adequate time to vocabulary while covering the curriculum. furthermore, vocabulary questions attract 1 mark for each word tested and could attract up to 10 or 12 marks out of the 40 marks allocated to comprehension passages in wassce. the teacher can encourage healthy competition on reading with a prize to compensate whoever reads up to two or three books in a week. the school library should be properly equipped with recent and relevant books. critical or evaluative questions had a frequency of occurrence of just 4.2%. this shows that these questions are rarely asked. this may be because wassce examiners may believe critical or evaluative questions are above the standards required from the students. irrespective of this, critical evaluation skill is required by the students, especially in tertiary institutions. it has been confirmed by many researchers that students who are not good at comprehension of texts cannot do well academically (jude & ajayi 2012; rutzler 2020). at the tertiary level of education, students move into advanced learning. students who do not have a good foundation in comprehension may not gain admission into such institutions. if by chance they find themselves there, they may not be able to cope. at this level, students will be exposed to more complicated materials. hence, the teachers should devote adequate time to teaching this aspect even if wassce does not emphasise it. the examiners, curriculum planners, ministry of education and all stakeholders should take into cognisance the importance of critical or evaluative comprehension skill and ensure students are adequately trained on how to answer such questions in the examination. conclusion this study is a content analysis of aspects and levels of reading comprehension passages tested in wassce. the study was based on the analysis of secondary time series data of wassce paper i section b of english language questions covering 24 years. the questions were selected to ensure an adequate trend was available. in all, 48 passages were covered by the study. this study identified the key aspects of wassce english language comprehension questions being tested by classifying them by question attributes which are: literal, grammatical structure, vocabulary, inferential and figures of speech. others are idiomatic expression and critical or evaluative questions (table 1). the result revealed that more emphasis was laid on literal questions while wassce seems not to lay emphasis on critical or evaluative questions and this is considered to be of concern because this skill is highly required by students in higher institutions and people in all walks of life. the other category is the passage attributes which are: type, source and origin (table 1). it was revealed that most of the types of comprehension passages being presented in wassce were newly composed and they related to the students’ local environment. this is quite encouraging because it will help the students to some extent to relate with the passages and this will help in providing background information that can help in comprehension. the main objective of this study was directed at analysing the content of the english language comprehension questions in the wassce to identify the intensities of testing different aspects of comprehension to raise teachers’ awareness on the different levels of comprehension. this will have implications on teaching and will help the students become better comprehenders and readers. this will encourage teachers to lay emphasis on these aspects when they teach reading strategies to their students. this objective was met and it revealed that literal questions occurred frequently and that critical or evaluative questions were rarely asked. this was eye-opening and a solution for change in the area that concerns critical or evaluative questions that were rarely asked was proffered to examiners, teachers, curriculum planners and all stakeholders. recommendations in line with the findings and conclusion of this study, the following recommendations are made: each aspect of the comprehension passages identified by the study should be covered by english language teachers when preparing their students for english language examination and the teachers should allocate more time to teaching the aspects with high relative importance over time. teachers should employ methods of teaching that will cater for inferential questions in comprehension passages. the critical or evaluative skill questions that are rarely asked in wassce should be given more attention by teachers whether it is tested or not because it is a requirement for the current demands of literacy in the 21st century. students who are just leaving secondary school will require the critical or evaluative skill because it is essential in attaining higher education and having the skill can earn an individual a decent job, which in return will improve their living standard and contribution to society at large. in the light of the pedagogic importance of critical or evaluative questions, it is recommended that examiners and teachers should lay emphasis on questions that demand higher-order reasoning to prepare students for the contemporary demands of literacy. the curriculum and the wassce should be amended to encourage critical or evaluative thinking among secondary school students since it is an important part of all literacy and language. acknowledgements i sincerely appreciate my supervisor prof. g.o. oyinloye, ekiti state university, ado-ekiti, who encouraged me to embark on this research, prof. titi fola-adebayo, federal university of technology, akure, who is my mentor in academics and j.u. anyaele, who compiled the senior secondary school certificate past questions and answers for ssce, gce and neco english language theory/objectives with oral english, 1988–2017. competing interests the author hereby declares that no competing interests exist. author’s contributions f.m.o. is the sole author of this research article. ethical considerations this article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this research received no specific grant from 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and academic achievement of first-year science and mathematics students in a multilingual context’, international journal of science and mathematics education 17, 905–922. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-018-9905-z thyab, r.a., 2016, ‘the necessity of idiomatic expressions to english language learners’, international journal of english and literature 7(7), 106–111. https://doi.org/10.5897/ijel2016.0895 weber, r.p., 1990, ‘basic content analysis, second ed.’, quantitative applications in the social sciences 49, sage publications ltd., london. widdowson, h.g., 1978, teaching language as a communication, oxford university press, oxford. rw 10-1_2019_contents.indd http://www.rw.org.za open access table of contents i original research barriers to reading in higher education: rethinking reading support kristien andrianatos reading & writing | vol 10, no 1 | a241 | 30 september 2019 original research exploring teachers’ instructional practices for literacy in english in grade 1: a case study of two urban primary schools in the shiselweni region of eswatini (swaziland) patience dlamini, ayub sheik reading & writing | vol 10, no 1 | a229 | 17 october 2019 original research perceptions of undergraduates on the relationship between exposure to blended learning and online critical literacy skills titi j. fola-adebayo reading & writing | vol 10, no 1 | a200 | 30 october 2019 original research teachers’ perceptions of grades 8–10 english first additional language learners’ reading habits, attitudes and motivation tilla olifant, madoda cekiso, eunice rautenbach reading & writing | vol 10, no 1 | a254 | 04 november 2019 original research adapting a screening tool for dyslexia in isixhosa annelize clark, kalavani naidoo, adaiah lilenstein reading & writing | vol 10, no 1 | a235 | 27 november 2019 original research balanced reading instruction for improving teachers’ instruction of reading comprehension to runyankole-english bilingual children deborah k. namugenyi reading & writing | vol 10, no 1 | a205 | 12 december 2019 57 66 75 84 95 105 page i of i table of contents i original research english vocabulary exposure in south african township schools: pitfalls and opportunities lieke stoffelsma reading & writing | vol 10, no 1 | a209 | 21 february 2019 original research learning to teach writing through a distance education programme: experiences of rwandan secondary school english teachers epimaque niyibizi, emmanuel sibomana, juliet perumal reading & writing | vol 10, no 1 | a206 | 07 may 2019 original research using a translanguaging approach in teaching paraphrasing to enhance reading comprehension in first-year students vimbai hungwe reading & writing | vol 10, no 1 | a216 | 27 june 2019 original research the effect of social media on english second language essay writing with special reference to whatsapp sister l. songxaba, limkani sincuba reading & writing | vol 10, no 1 | a179 | 30 july 2019 original research mother-tongue education in a multilingual township: possibilities for recognising lok’shin lingua in south africa rockie sibanda reading & writing | vol 10, no 1 | a225 | 29 august 2019 original research bachelor of laws (llb) students’ views of their literacy practices: implications for support in a time of change bongi bangeni, lesley greenbaum reading & writing | vol 10, no 1 | a248 | 26 september 2019 1 11 21 30 37 47 vol 10, no 1 (2019) vol 10, no 1 (2019) special collection: digital literacy issn: 2079-8245 (print) | issn: 2308-1422 (online)reading & writing original research the impact of digital copyright law and policy on access to knowledge and learning tana pistorius, odirachukwu s. mwim reading & writing | vol 10, no 1 | a196 | 26 june 2019 115 reviewer acknowledgement reading & writing | vol 10, no 1 | a275 | 11 december 2019 122 abstract introduction literature methodology findings discussion limitations conclusion and recommendations acknowledgements references about the author(s) jessamy kromhout collegiate girls’ high school, port elizabeth, south africa eileen m. scheckle faculty of education, nelson mandela university, port elizabeth, south africa citation kromhout, j. & scheckle, e.m., 2021, ‘multiple voices: learners reflect on literature’, reading & writing 12(1), a304. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v12i1.304 research project registration: project number: 93296 original research multiple voices: learners reflect on literature jessamy kromhout, eileen m. scheckle received: 19 dec. 2020; accepted: 28 june 2021; published: 26 aug. 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: much of the research in literacy focuses on what learners fail to do, especially in the early grades, but it is equally important to research successful readers. in particular learners’ experiences with literature contribute to our understanding of the possibilities literary texts offer. this article focused on learners’ responses to advanced programme (ap) english, which was an optional subject offered at an ex-model c school, to understand how the learners had taken up these literary texts. objectives: this study explored how matric learners spoke about the literature they had studied, in their ap english, in an informal group meeting. methods: a qualitative case study was used to explore learners’ responses to literature. a final focus group meeting at the end of their matric year provides the data for this article. the transcriptions were coded using repeated patterns for themes to explore the stances taken in relation to the literature whether efferent or aesthetic. results: the data showed how learners had incorporated fragments from the literature into their own utterances so that their language use echoed the literature. in addition to an efferent exam focus, the literature and ap english practices were used in both art and home language english examinations. conclusions: learners need opportunities to talk about the multiple voices of literature in their lives. this kind of talk offers a different perspective on how literature can enrich, disrupt and extend learners’ thinking about literature and themselves. this research offers a counterpoint to examination results and contributes to building a nation of readers. keywords: advanced programme english; literature; bakhtin; dialogue; efferent and aesthetic responses; the waste land; multiple voices. elizabeth: i also quite like how, also just when you mentioned ozymandias, how i’ve also like personally identified with one of the poems we’ve kind of learnt. emma: anyone… elizabeth: but like like, you can, like of all the poems like you learn you can always go back to your favourite one. because, okay, i’m going to use it, but for me anyone [unclear] … i used it in every single flipping exam because it was my favourite and i could really read deep into it, and i felt like i could just work with everything, just … and when you find something like that that you really like and identify with, it’s just so nice to know that you’ve got like … patti: i can appreciate anyone because, because i never really liked e. e. cummings before that, and he’s always been like one of those, “mm, i don’t really, mm, i don’t feel you”. but then, but with anyone like i enjoyed it more. like, i feel, maybe he can write something. emma: and like, even when you take what people would call ‘generic’ poems nowadays, like the tiger. introduction the learners in this extract are reflecting on the poetry they encountered in the advanced programme (ap) english class. in particular, one used ozymandias as an inspiration in her art exam. her classmate, elizabeth, acknowledges her own connection to a particular poem which her friend suggests is anyone. this is a reference to e.e. cummings’s poem anyone lived in a pretty how town which elizabeth reported using ‘in every flipping exam’. a third learner, patti, comments on anyone and suggests it gave her a greater appreciation for the work of e. e. cummings. the last comment refers to a ‘generic’ poem, william blake’s the tiger. this conversation occurred in a focus group session at the end of the academic year where the participants reflected on the literature they had studied, specifically in their ap english class. this was an optional subject, from the independent examinations board (ieb) curriculum, offered at an all-girls government school. so, in addition to the prescribed languages of curriculum assessment policy statement (caps), a home language and an additional language, these learners chose to also do ap english which focused on literary studies, including film, and expected a level of intertextuality where learners made links between the different texts studied (ieb curriculum statement 2008). the focus group occurred on a saturday morning in the school library after they had completed their final english exams so this in no way contributed to any formal assessment. instead, it was a space to reflect differently and share their various responses to literature as we were interested in how they would talk about their literary experiences. talking about literature is a means to make sense of it. in fact, learners themselves state they don’t understand what they have read until they have spoken about it (chambers 1996) and others appreciate literature more when they have had a chance to discuss it (hébert 2008). talk also provides insight into both individual learners’ thinking as well as how cumulative dialogical exchange deepens participants’ engagement with literature. for those concerned with improving literacy it is useful to see a vignette of school learners discussing their personal responses to literature and get a sense of the trajectory of school literacy (cliff hodges 2010a). much of our literacy research in south africa focuses on what learners cannot do in relation to texts. the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) tests revealed how our young learners struggle to find basic information in texts (howie et al. 2011, 2017). while the use of decontextualised passages to assess how well learners read has been critiqued (janks 2011; prinsloo & krause 2018), these tests, like pirls, are still an indication that our young learners struggle to make meaning from the texts. what is also worrying from the cycle of pirls tests is that in addition to the majority of learners not reaching the lowest benchmark, at the other end of the scale, the number of learners who achieve the highest benchmark on pirls has also declined (howie et al. 2011). this means that even in the best resourced schools with a reading culture, fewer grade 4 and grade 5 learners reached the advanced benchmark where learners are expected to ‘integrate ideas as well as evidence across a text to appreciate overall themes, understand the author’s stance and interpret significant events’ (howie et al. 2017). as educators in south africa, we need to maintain, sustain and grow any pockets of excellence as we would like to move a growing number of learners to these high benchmarks. at one end of the education continuum is the recognition that success in early grade literacy is an important foundation for academic progress and enjoyment. so early grade literacy has been the focus of considerable research which often positions our young learners as deficient. at the other end of the education continuum, there is little qualitative research that explores matric learners’ literacies and in particular their responses to literary texts. matric learners talking about their responses to literature also provides an example of how literature can be meaningful for learners – something that testing does not explore. this article therefore examines research done with matric learners and focuses on how they talk about literature (varga et al. 2020) to understand how they connected with the literary texts they had studied. in particular, this article focuses on learners’ aesthetic stance towards literature (rosenblatt 1991) as an indicator of both personal enjoyment and meeting the caps development goals for literature study. the study of literature has always been a significant component of the english home language curriculum especially at the further education and training (fet) level where ‘literature study’ is repeated throughout the caps teaching plan and warrants a two-and-a-half-hour examination. the caps document also suggests that at home language level of study, learners will develop their ‘literary, aesthetic and imaginative’ (caps 8) abilities and that through engagement with literature learners will develop a sensitivity to language ‘that is more refined, literary, figurative, symbolic and deeply meaningful than much of what else they may read’ (caps 12). the ap english curriculum extends this goal with an exclusive focus on a deep appreciation of literature in english and the development of intertextuality and connections across texts. these learners’ conversations about literature need to be contextualised and explored with reference to rosenblatt’s (1991) efferent and aesthetic approaches to literature. this will be supplemented with a discussion of talk and how bakhtin’s (1981) concepts of dialogic talk, in particular, provides a lens to examine learners’ dialogic engagement and intertextual links. bakhtin’s interest in literature and his concept of double-voicedness echoed the multiple voices in the waste land which became a motif in this study. literature sketching the research landscape not much research has been written on matric learners’ responses to literature or even on the relevance or importance of literary texts for youth in the south african context. instead, research studies have, justifiably, pointed to problems or gaps in our literacy education. for example, a survey of the articles in reading & writing, looking at the titles and key words between 2015 and 2020, suggests that most research is carried out at the tertiary level (see boakye & linden 2018; nkoala 2020) and includes academic literacy across faculties (see andrianatos 2019; drennan 2017; esambe, mosito & pather 2016) as well as teacher education courses (see kimathi & bertram 2020; moodley & aronstom 2016) or teacher practices (see cekiso 2017; madikiza, cekiso, tshotsho & landa 2018). digital literacy has featured regularly and was the focus of a special collection in 2018. challenges in developing literacy in the foundation phase feature regularly (see cilliers & bloch 2018; daries & probert 2020; nkomo 2018; stoffelsma 2019) and less so at the intermediate phase (beck & condy 2017). as expected, multilingual challenges cut across all educational levels and include practices of code-switching and translanguaging in english first additional language contexts (see akinyeye & plüddemann 2016; hungwe 2019). these research studies clearly reflect the over-riding concern with access to literacy, often powerful forms of literacy (see gennrich & dison 2018; lloyd 2016), and the various challenges in developing levels of literacy that will enable learners, at whatever level, to exploit their literacy prowess in their personal and educational pursuits (see olifant, cekiso & rautenbach 2020). cliff hodges (2010b) noted a similar pattern in the united kingdom literacy association (ukla) journal literacy, with scant research on learners’ responses to literature, especially in the higher grades. in addition to surfacing the challenges and inequalities in the educational landscape, it is also valuable to see another side of literacy: what learners might do with texts beyond the requirements of passing exams, how learners talk about what they have read and how the literature they have read at school informs their personal and academic lives. although caps purports to encourage an appreciation for literature, assessing learners via an examination seems to mitigate this. the national reading coalition (https://nrc.org.za/) has extended notions of reading practices. in particular, reading for pleasure and gaining insights into ourselves and the world around us has informed the president’s reading circle initiative which seeks to cultivate: a love of books and reading that will open our minds and hearts to new ideas and lock in opportunities that flow from a broadened understanding of the country and the world around us. (https://nrc.org.za/president-reading-circle/) ideally, learners would develop a love of reading literary texts through their engagement with these at school but this personal response needs to be affirmed and nurtured. the requirements of the examination system and the need to produce essays that meet these requirements mitigate against this (doecke et al. 2009). both teachers and learners are assessed on how successfully they navigate this system, which may leave little space for developing a personal response to the literature. bakhtinian theory bakhtinian theory offers several entry points to understanding learners’ responses to literature. firstly bakhtin (1981) suggested that all literature contains echoes of previous utterances which are taken up and used afresh by different speakers. thus, speakers recontextualise what they have read in new circumstances and nothing is completely new or original. as ‘the word is born in a dialogue as a living rejoinder’ (bakhtin 1981:279), the social, interactive, generative elements of language are stressed as people draw on different levels of language in a heteroglossic mix. secondly bakhtin recognised different forces at play in language use, namely centripetal, a pull towards a central standardised language, and centrifugal, an outward, sometimes playful, and colloquial language use. these two forces he suggested act in tension. the centripetal forces of language serve to pull language towards the centre and result in common unitary languages that people share (bakhtin 1981). this understanding of languages as singular and standard ignores the contributions and purposes of the language users (bakhtin 1981). the individual’s voice, used in a dialogic context, may be fragmented, may draw on different levels and generational uses of language, and thereby exert a centrifugal force. as languages are used and speakers draw on other utterances and frame them uniquely in the mixing of ‘different linguistic consciousnesses’ (bakhtin 1981:429), languages become heteroglossic and hybrid. a singular, unitary language only exists as a concept; instead there are contextualised variations in talk so there are multiple meanings expressed by multiple voices (newell 2019). meaning making occurs in dialogic spaces where many voices are heard, rather than monologic, teacher-dominated spaces. understanding literary responses engagement with literature and the reader’s personal response has been difficult to pin down (hébert 2008), especially among young adults. rosenblatt (1994) proposed a distinction between efferent and aesthetic reading and argued that the reader’s personal response was central to an appreciation of the text. an aesthetic stance involves a personal appreciation as opposed to an efferent approach in which the reader is concerned with finding and possibly sharing information. although both of these responses to literature may be activated interchangeably, school engagement with literature involves ‘discourse production’ (hébert 2008) in the form of examinations or essays to be evaluated. so the efferent approach, in rosenblatt’s (1991) terms, is prioritised. an aesthetic stance, which values the ‘penumbra of private feelings, attitudes, sensations and ideas’ (rosenblatt 1994:184), is based on the interactions between the readers and the text in the activity of reading. in this process, what the reader brings to the text is central to the meaning that is created. therefore, there would be no true or singular meaning that the reader is trying to uncover. similarly, transformative reading (fialho 2019) focuses on reading as a literary engagement with personal connections. she suggests that this kind of reading recognises the reciprocal exchange between reader and text and suggests that through this personal involvement in the text, one’s sense of self is modified and expanded or augmented as there is a personal awakening (fialho 2019). responses to literature extend beyond personal involvement and appreciation. reading literature that excites the imagination prompts learners to ‘reflect on themselves as human beings as they shuttle back and forth between literature and life’ (cliff hodges 2010b:66). thus, their knowledge of themselves and the world expands. as the readers enter the fictional world and journey together with the characters, they experience a vicarious world, understand choices made and develop empathy (gabrielsen, blikstad-balas & tenaberg 2019). when readers identify with a character’s actions and understand the character’s perspectives it can result in reducing prejudice and accepting diversity (vezalli, stathi, giovannini, capozza & trifiletti 2015). the value of literary reading lies in the accretions of experiences and ‘the power of the text to linger’ (cliff hodges 2010b:67) and motivate re-reading and further reading. talking literature a sociocultural perspective involves understanding what people do with literacy (heath 1983) and in this case with literary texts. in particular, a sociocultural understanding involves a closer look at the meaning and meaningfulness of these texts for these learners outside of the classroom. talking about texts provides a space to think together with others and develop an understanding from the cumulative knowledge that is shared in a collaborative enterprise (mercer & howe 2012). busch (2010) argues that both the social context and the relationship between users contribute to the meaning making. if learners have not had wide exposure to books and stories as heath (1983) recognised, then they need many opportunities to engage with books and ‘require socialization into the ways of making sense of literary meaning and values’ (gabrielsen et al. 2019). this socialisation frequently occurs through talk, often at a socio-cognitive level in classrooms (hébert 2008). talking about texts is central to experiencing literature and making sense of what is read (hébert 2008). the power and possibilities for talk and learning from talk are evident in research in literature circles (daniels 2002; king 2001) or book clubs (mcmahon & raphael 1997; tichenor, piechura, diedrichs & heins 2020) which are premised on the notion of dialogic talk to develop learning (eeds & wells 1989). in these examples of literary talk, speakers take up and echo the words from the text both in their meaning making and in taking ownership as ‘how students talk about literature matters’ (gabrielsen et al. 2019). talking about literary texts ‘helps to confirm, extend, or modify individual interpretation and creates a better understanding of the text’ (eeds & wells 1989:27). if a dialogic space is created in which responsiveness is encouraged, longer exchanges of exploratory talk result (boyd, tynan & potteiger 2018). when learners engage in reflective talk, where they reflect on their thinking and learning processes, they begin to make meaning of their values and beliefs and the discussions that result ‘can lead to the transformation of ideas and actions’ (vetter & meacham 2018:229). encouraging talk about the literary texts motivates thinking and reflection, especially when the educator figure wants to learn about the learners’ responses to the texts (boyd et al. 2018). cliff hodges (2010b) argues that it is important to pay attention to those learners who do read if we want to understand the complexity of reading and to value learner voices. methodology design this study was part of a larger case study (yin 2009) investigating learners’ experiences of an ap english course. this was a 2-year programme that focused on literature and intertextuality. the data for this article came from a focus group reflection at the end of the learners’ matric year. as part of the case study this article offers a vignette (creswell 2013), or a moment in time, of these learners’ thinking about literature and possible connections they had made. participants eleven learners from a group of 12 participated in the final focus group meeting after completion of their final exams. the choice of meeting day and time was negotiated with the learners to fit in with their academic schedules. the participants chose to meet on a saturday morning in the school library. all ethical procedures were complied with as permission had been sought from parents and school administration for the case study and assent or consent depending on participants’ ages. participants’ anonymity was protected by the use of pseudonyms, in this case characters from literary fiction were chosen in line with the literary focus of the study. data collection method and procedure the reflection session consisted of individual writing and a focus group meeting. although this article will focus on what emerged during the focus group, the writing provided a space to focus on the ap english experience. talk is often used as a precursor, or scaffold, for writing, so that learners try out their ideas orally (chambers 1996) and build on each other’s understanding (beattie 2007) in preparation to write. however, writing can also be a form of thinking as pelias (2011) suggests that in the process of writing, understanding becomes clearer. in an effort to prompt their writing and channel their thinking to their ap english, learners were also given an outline of a body and invited to reflect on the course using the metaphor of written on the body, which echoed jeanette winterson’s (1992) eponymous novel with the palimpsest suggestion of layers of writing overlaid with later thinking. thereafter the participants gathered and responded to the prompt on what was meaningful about their ap english experiences. this was a dialogic space ‘predicated on ceding to students a degree of control of both content and behaviour’ (alexander 2018:31) where the learners took ownership of the discussion, which was supportive and respectful, thus meeting some of alexander’s criteria for dialogic learning. besides the opening and closing remarks, the teacher was silent and instead the learners proffered their thoughts and reflections on their ap english experience and built on each other’s comments. the focus group discussion was recorded and transcribed. data analysis using content analysis, the transcriptions of the focus group were coded for different themes to find repetitive patterns (saldanha 2009). firstly, we looked at how the learners spoke about the literary texts and how these informed different aspects of their lives. this also included particular positions and attitudes with regard to literature as they looked ahead to their future studies beyond secondary school. unsurprisingly there was a focus on literature in their academic lives, in terms of both home language english and other subjects such as art. in addition, there were specific comments on the literary engagement process of exploring poetry in particular and their growing appreciation for specific poems that resonated with individuals. in line with this qualitative approach and dialogic sharing, codes were emergent (creswell 2013) as evidenced in the participants’ utterances. the analysis also considered rosenblatt’s (1991) efferent and aesthetic stances in an effort to understand how learners used texts outside of the evaluative setting of literature examinations. findings as indicated, the focus group meeting occurred at the end of the matric year. as such it was an opportune moment for reflection before the participants embarked on tertiary studies and adult life. thus, this article presents a vignette of their thinking at this moment in time. we were interested in capturing and understanding how the literature of the ap english course might have informed the thinking and lives of the participants. it should be noted that for these learners the literature and the approach to literature were all part of the ap experience; however, in the analysis we will try to disentangle these. our focus first is on the literature and particularly the poetry and thereafter on the ap english experience ‘the waste land’ the opening extract between elizabeth, emma and patti reflects the interactive and shared nature of the group who could anticipate each other’s poetry preferences. their conversation shifted from shelley’s ozymandias, to e. e. cummings’s anyone lived in a pretty how town, and how this poem became a resource in writing examinations. the conversation built on an understanding of cummings’ oeuvre and how this poem led to an increased appreciation of cummings’s work in general. the dialogue developed further with a reference to blake’s the tiger, which is described as a ‘generic’ poem, or one that could appeal quite widely. in the following extract patti reflects on how ap english lingered with her in her art class: patti: i wish i’d used ‘a hand full of dust’ as a title for like this thing that i did with hourglasses and skulls turning into fish and stuff … that was cool. girls: (laugh followed by pause) patti: but then i suppose also my love affair with ozymandias … girls: (chuckle) patti: and um, but i had an artwork that was almost also subconsciously more based on ozymandias, well i suppose now when i look back and reflect, i’m like – that’s what i called this artwork, it’s ozymandias. it’s like the skull, and then there’s mountains, and there’s this dude walking into the mountains but there’s like no hope forwards or backwards, and there’s just like … emptiness. scout: almost like … ya (chuckles) patti: right? but it was like something i didn’t actually realise it was affecting me that much until like, you know, afterwards it was like, ‘wow’. in this interaction we see how patti moves from fragments of the waste land to a recognition of how images from ozymandias informed her artwork thinking. her description of her artwork suggests a level of abstraction, and reflects how comfortable she feels with using multiple images or ideas. she refers to her love affair with the poem and, in this way, she positions herself in relation to the poem by emphasising how much she appreciates it. bakhtin’s term ‘generational language’ (bakhtin 1981) also ties in with the language she uses here, as she uses the word, ‘dude’, as well as ‘like’ which is littered throughout the discussion. the generational language serves to unify the participants as they are part of a particular generation of people, but it also serves to decentralise the meaning found in ozymandias, as the centripetal and centrifugal forces are at play. this mixing of two different linguistic forms, sometimes from varied historical periods, in one concrete utterance is an example of bakhtin’s hybridity. as a result, this manner of mixing different languages has the possibility of creating a dynamic space that allows for new meaning, such as patti’s artwork or her ability to talk about poetry in a way that makes sense to her. this open discussion between the participants is the ‘quintessential form of dialogic interaction’ (applebee et al. 2003:700) as the learners themselves lead and volunteer their own contributions as they reflect on how they used literature. in particular they seem to draw on their knowledge of literature and apply it across academic disciplines. when elizabeth claims she used anyone in ‘every flipping exam’, she does not specify particular subject areas, although it does seem as if it was widely applied. similarly, patti’s artwork was infused with images from the literature they had studied in ap english and she recognises that this was done subconsciously and only on reflection did she observe the connections between her art images and literature. emma also draws on the waste land and recontextualises it in a different interaction: emma: i love the way … i actually love the way we’ve learnt how to intertextualise everything [regardless of the fact that we do different poems?] that we do in english, but i mean books that we’ve read in the past that we may have forgotten about. it’s like, ‘oh my word! that actually, you know, it links with that’. and i find it so weird, like anais said, when she writes paper 3 and t.s. eliot comes in, what i found is that when i … for arguments or discussions, or when i’m trying to persuade something, waste land comes in (giggles) … it’s like a random line from one of the poems. then i’ll actually stop, and like, ‘waaaiitt …’ that kind of thing. i did this to my mom, i don’t know what we were doing. i was trying to persuade her of something and i just said, ‘i will show you fear …’. here she recognises how she has made connections across texts and has seen links to previous novels she has read so that the literary works speak to each other in her sense making. this stepping back and thinking about her thinking is a significant metacognitive indicator as she is showing an awareness of what is informing her responses to text: her previous literary encounters. in these exchanges we can see how the ‘social, cognitive and metacognitive aspects … of the discussion are intertwined’ (hébert 2008:30). in addition, she draws on literary language ‘for arguments or discussions’, and specifically uses the waste land. in trying to persuade her mother she makes recourse to ‘i will show you fear …’ so the literary language of the classroom has been transposed and repurposed for persuasive family talk. ‘revolutionary road’ literature has the potential to challenge, cause discomfort or disrupt our thinking. anna comments on another text, in this case the film revolutionary road, and recognises that literature can affect one on a deeper, uncomfortable level. she states: ‘and for example, revolutionary road … now at first i didn’t really like it because it felt far too familiar to me. i could associate myself with april and i know what she felt like, which was scary. because you’re forced to see something, realise that you identify with it, and realise that you feel that way, and that is a part of you.’ (anna) anna is able to identify with the character of april and, as a result, she recognises that she has the potential to think and act in a similar fashion to the character. this resonates with zadie smith’s suggestion that literature challenges our sense of self: a great piece of fiction can demand that you acknowledge the reality of its wildest proposition, no matter how alien it may be to you. it can also force you to concede the radical otherness lurking within things that appear most familiar. (smith 2007) anna goes on to say how the literature required her to reflect on a deeper, uncomfortable level. she states that: ‘like, there was a lot of … of heavy stuff. like waste land. but ya, other than that … like that’s why like on my thing that i wrote here, ‘the hands felt the grit of ideas that didn’t want to be dealt with or confronted’. like me with revolutionary road. i felt trapped and i felt suffocated, whereas the thought of comfort was no longer there anymore. but then the other hand grasps hope. it’s the hope of a sunflower, the hope of the little black boy, that there is hope in all that darkness, which is kind of a valid.’ it is important to recognise that literature also includes the ‘heavy stuff’, which has the power to linger and in so doing ‘provokes thought about moral social and spiritual issues’ (cliff hodges 2010b:67). despite the negative associations of the poem the waste land and the film revolutionary road, anna does make reference to more positive aspects of the literature which include her references to the romantic poetry that was studied, which includes the poems ah! sunflower and the little black boy by william blake. advanced programme english experience although the pedagogy of the ap english classes is not the focus of this article, many of the learners commented on how this course informed their thinking, as they made intertextual links across literature. in addition, there were observations about practice such as emma’s comment ‘that in my vocabulary “add english” has now become a verb’ and that she applies the thinking to her other subjects, particularly home language (hl) english. she is aware of the different requirements of english hl and noted: ‘[w]ith the poetry that we’re doing in class, i find all these connections and like, i want to write this, but no, it’s add english. this is normal english, just talk about the poem itself.’ (emma) this comment suggests the more limited focus of the hl examination. the learners have developed such a familiarity with the poems that anna says ‘we have to look at the poetry as people’. she adds ‘like you’ve met the tiger. you can kind of figure out what kind of person they’d be, where they’d come from’. other learners spoke about their awareness of literature in general. for example, scout mentioned that ‘add english was, was a stepping stone, a launching pad’. she felt that ‘we’re like on the threshold of the front door, not even through the front door’ and ‘i’m absolutely starving. i want more literature and add english has given me that’. many of these responses carry suggestions of fialho’s (2019) personal awakening as the texts linger powerfully in their lives (cliff hodges 2010b). anais picked up this idea of the world of literature and shared ‘i started reading emma by jane austen the other day and, okay, i don’t like the main character and i’m still … i’m trying to read’. others looked back at their days of reading twilight and contrasted it with their current reading and future goals to read anna karenina, jane austen and the book thief (elizabeth), ulysses (scout) or charles dickens, the brontës and alexander dumas (emma). from this discussion it would seem that these are committed readers, aware of their trajectories of reading (cliff hodges 2010a) that extended from early grades through their ap english into future reading goals. discussion in these extracts we see how in the reading process, the readers bring their previous knowledge of the world and of texts to each new text they encounter (boyd et al. 2018). this knowledge of the world and other texts that have been read informs and enhances the meaning-making process (rosenblatt 1991). dialogic interactions allow for rich meaning-making opportunities as the participants bring varied experiences and backgrounds (newell 2019) to this joint interpretation exchange construction. the reader who has encountered many texts brings these multiple voices and recognises echoes and allusions in each new textual reading, in the form of a bakhtinian dialogic exchange. this kind of reading is more than comprehension as it is rather an interplay between the previous and new (hébert 2008) in accretions of appreciation and literary playfulness. learners make meaning of the text as the multiple voices of the class, the teachers and the texts themselves (newell 2019) are brought into dialogue. it seems axiomatic to suggest that the more learners have read, the more they can appreciate and draw from new texts; indeed these learners have shown how they have multiple voices to mobilise in their meaning making of future texts. learners who chose to be part of the ap english were expected to demonstrate their in-depth knowledge of individual texts as well as to make connections across texts and thus display intertextuality in their writing. this demonstration of understanding required an efferent approach (rosenblatt 1991), as examinations demand a public display of knowledge (hébert 2008). the timing of the focus group, immediately after examinations, also meant examinations were uppermost in the learners’ minds. in addition to the connections to examinations and schoolwork, learners’ focus group comments also included some very personal responses at the aesthetic end of the continuum. an example of this is in the opening extract where the learners commented on a personal poem, or one that resonated with an individual. anna’s strong emotional responses to revolutionary road is also at the aesthetic end of the continuum (rosenblatt 1991). what rosenblatt (1991) recognises is that these reading stances are not in opposition, but are often taken up interchangeably. she argues that the purpose of the text should determine the stance of the reader, so that scientific texts would require an efferent stance whereas literature, involving literary appreciation, would require an aesthetic appreciation of the images and language of this text (rosenblatt 1991). while the learners here shuttled between efferent and aesthetic stances, they also stepped back and considered their positions with regard to literature so that for some literature was presented as a metaphorical person with whom they had a familiar relationship and for others literature could be both inspirational and aspirational, as seen in their reading goals. literature that is inspirational is carried beyond the text and continues to reward the reader, as rereading novels can reveal new ‘nuggets’, according to emma. if we want a nation of readers, we need learners who have reading goals and a strong inclination to read widely and read for pleasure. this is surely one of the major goals of our education system that needs further exploration. limitations this article offers a small glimpse into what learners may say and do with the literature they have read. we acknowledge that as a small-scale study at a former model c school, it might be far removed from the literacy challenges facing the majority of educators and learners in south africa. we also do not want to suggest that these learners are in any way model learners but instead recognise that they have had educational and social advantages that have included access to a wide array of literature. instead, our focus is to share possibilities of engagement with literature and to recognise how learners take up the texts they have encountered and recontextualise and repurpose them for various contexts. conclusion and recommendations in conclusion, this study has sought to understand how a group of ap english learners reflected on the role of literature in their lives, both in and out of school. although this vignette presents a window in time, their multiple voices suggest a trajectory of reading that has led to this appreciation of literature and a sense of future readings. if we are to build a reading culture, we need to open up spaces for learners to talk about their reading and exchange ideas. in addition to providing suitable and varied books, we need more informal spaces where the voices of the learners can explore the voices of the literature in an aesthetic rather than an efferent approach. if research is to be of any value, it needs to feed back into the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom (cliff hodges 2012) and allowing multiple viewpoints is an encouraging shift towards developing a personal response to literature. in this way, we need no longer live in a ‘waste land’, but we are able to occupy a rich and generative space that gives people the freedom to encounter literature through multiple perspectives. acknowledgements competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions j.k. did the original research, generated and analysed the data together with her supervisor, e.m.s. e.m.s. reanalysed the data and wrote this article. ethical considerations all ethical procedures were observed: permission was sought and approved from the nelson mandela central ethics committee. permission was sought and approved from the school principal, parents and learners as well as from the department of basic education (h15-edu-ere-014). funding information this work was undertaken as part of a south african national research foundation (nrf) funded project entitled ‘dialogic engagement between local and university communities: enabling agency towards active citizenship in the context of education’. grant number 93296. data availability transcriptions of the focus group discussion are available from the authors. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references akinyeye, c & plüddemann, p., 2016, ‘the story of a narrative: teaching and assessing english in a township school’, reading & writing 7(1), 1–8. alexander, r., 2018, ‘developing dialogic teaching: 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mailto:publishing@aosis.co.za abstract introduction literature review conceptual framework research design and methods results discussion conclusion acknowledgements authors’ contributions funding information data availability disclaimer references about the author(s) vuyokazi fatyela department of literacy research unit, faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa janet condy department of literacy research unit, faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa lawrence meda research department, faculty of education, zayed university, dubai, united arab emirates heather phillips research department, faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa citation fatyela, v., condy, j., meda, l. & phillips, h., 2021, ‘improving higher-order comprehension skills of grade 3 learners in a second language at a quintile 2 school, in cape town, south africa’, reading & writing 12(1), a312. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v12i1.312 original research improving higher-order comprehension skills of grade 3 learners in a second language at a quintile 2 school, in cape town, south africa vuyokazi fatyela, janet condy, lawrence meda, heather phillips received: 08 mar. 2021; accepted: 19 july 2021; published: 14 sept. 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: developing higher-order comprehension skills of learners in primary schools is a challenge that faces many countries. south africa is no exception. primary school learners in south africa have particularly low literacy and comprehension skills: many learners struggle to read for understanding. there is little published scholarship that focuses on developing the comprehension skills of grade 3 learners in a second language. a lack of practical classroom knowledge in this area is what this article seeks to address. objectives: to improve the higher-order comprehension skills of grade 3 learners in a second language. method: a qualitative approach, using a case study design, within an interpretivist paradigm was devised and deployed. five struggling grade 3 learners were purposively selected to participate in an intervention programme. their parents or guardians and two current grade 3 teachers were interviewed. data were collected over a 10-week intervention programme. the first and last weeks were devoted to pre-testing and post-testing. the entire intervention lasted for 10 weeks. results: all the five grade 3 learners showed significant improvements in their comprehension skills when comparing their pre-test and post-test scores. conclusion: the post-test scores revealed the importance of a structured intervention programme for improving the four comprehension skills highlighted. mediation and scaffolding in the zone of proximal development were employed while concurrently developing their cognitive, social and language skills. keywords: critical thinking; curriculum; foundation phase; higher-order thinking skills; home language. introduction developing higher-order comprehension skills of children in primary schools is a challenge that faces many countries. south africa is no exception. primary school learners in south africa exhibit low literacy and comprehension skills: many learners struggle to read for understanding. these challenges are compounded by the fact that educators are not guided on literacy instruction. taylor (2014) found that only six universities within south africa provided undergraduate teachers with courses on literacy instruction and development, and the majority of tertiary institutions do not train their student educators to provide effective literacy instruction. thus, the cycle of low literacy and comprehension skills among primary school learners continues to exist. the present intervention was conducted to test whether it is possible, by means of a 10-week intervention, to raise the higher-order comprehension skills of learners in a south african urban ‘township’ school. the researcher was motivated by her own background as a grade 3 teacher. she observed that comprehension is one of the most challenging skills in literacy education that isixhosa home language (hl) learners in south africa struggle with. the researcher’s experience of teaching comprehension endorses the findings of van der berg et al. (2016) who state that 58% of south african learners have not yet learnt to read for understanding in any language by the end of grade 4. learners cannot make sense of what they read. this reading barrier constrains performance in annual reading assessments. before 2016, the researcher found it challenging to teach comprehension skills to her isixhosa learners, during her english class; they were seldom able to understand the higher-order thinking questions being asked of them in their texts and were unable to write appropriate answers in english. in an attempt to improve her comprehension teaching skills, she completed her honours degree in 2016, and was introduced to a variety of pedagogical approaches to explicitly teach comprehension skills. in 2017, she registered for her master’s degree, to continue this research focus where she linked theory and practice. she conducted a small research project while teaching nine specific higher-order thinking skills. the western cape systemic language results for this particular grade 3 class, in which the researcher taught from 2016 to 2019, are shown below (western cape education department [wced] 2016–2019): reading and viewing: 2016 – 25.5%; 2017 – 47.8%; 2018 – 51.9%; 2019 – 56.9% thinking and reasoning: 2016 – 21.6%; 2017 – 43.3%; 2018 – 50.2%; 2019 – 53.7% these results show some improvement: the teacher had more knowledge about the pedagogy of teaching comprehension skills in both first and second language. these literacy issues motivated the principal researcher to explore how she could develop higher-order comprehension skills in her grade 3 class teaching hl and english first additional language (efal), where the language of learning and teaching (lolt) is different from the mother tongue language of the learners. the south african curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) document (dbe 2011a) states that in the first few years of schooling the focus is on developing learners’ ability to understand and communicate interpersonally. in grade 2 and grade 3 learners begin to expand their literacy skills on this oral foundation. hence the research question is: ‘what comprehension skills did the learners develop during the 10-week intervention programme?’ pretorius and spaull (2016) stated that south african learners perform extremely poorly regardless of what language the reading tasks are assessing. this is confirmed by statistics south africa (2019:95) in stating that the quality of learning in the south african school system is a national challenge. a weak foundation in the early grades of learning literacy creates difficulties for learners in the later grades. the target for the national development plan (national planning commission 2011) is 90% for all grade 3 learners and 50% or more in the national literacy assessments. statistics south africa states that it is important to plan to achieve this target by ensuring that all learners in south africa acquire the knowledge and skills needed to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality in this developing country. the world bank group (wbg 2018) posits that developing countries and low-income countries are facing low learning levels. this is true in south africa, as many learners from poor households are far more likely to struggle to acquire basic literacy skills and continue functioning at a low learning level. as has been described, there is a plethora of research being conducted on the continued poor literacy rates of many of south african foundation phase learners (pretorius & spaull 2016; statistics south africa 2019; taylor 2014; van der berg et al. 2016). these low literacy rates emanating from a poor reading culture, particularly among township second language learners, constrain their ability to comprehend texts and develop higher-order thinking skills. this study is therefore of theoretical and educational importance as it investigated effective comprehension strategies for developing higher-order thinking skills of grade 3 second language learners. literature review comprehension is the product of a learner’s decoding and listening skills (piper, schroeder & trudell 2015; piper, zuilkowski & mugenda 2014). it requires learners to demonstrate understanding of concepts, to read by answering questions and interpreting the content. piper et al. (2014) explain that readers build ideas by combining the information in texts with what they already know. a learner reads the text and infuses his or her understanding with prior knowledge about the subject. the south african caps document (dbe 2011a) highlights that the national curriculum aims to produce learners who are able to: [i]dentify and solve problems, make decisions using critical and creative thinking, work effectively as individuals and as members in a team, collect, analyse, organize and critically evaluate information and to see the world as a set of related systems by recognizing that problem solving contexts do not exist in isolation. (p. 5) paradoxically, this is not happening in our south african schools: many researchers (mudzielwana et al. 2012; pretorius & spaull 2016; verbeek 2010) contend that too much time is spent on decoding skills and not enough time on developing meaning-making and higher-order thinking skills, especially with learners learning in their second or third language. yen and halili (2015) believe that developing learners’ higher-order thinking skills creates critical thinking in learners who can respond to real-world difficulties. they state that critical thinking skills do not function naturally: these skills need to be explicitly developed so that learners can achieve their highest thinking abilities. the constitution of the republic of south africa guarantees that south african children have a right to receive education in their hl or language of their choice. since south africa has 11 official languages, most learners do their first 3 years in their first or hl as the lolt (pretorius & spaull 2016). other than english and afrikaans, this means that there are nine african languages that can be used as lolt in the foundation phase (fp). the dbe policy on hl and efal posits that hl should be the language of teaching in grades 1–3. one of the language skills introduced in grade 1 is listening and speaking in english. other language skills such as reading, viewing and writing are introduced from grade 2 to grade 3. in grade 4 learners transition from using the hl as lolt to the use of english. in this study, the principal researcher introduced the grade 3 learners to the use of english to complete comprehension tasks as she believed it would assist them to transition more smoothly to grade 4 (pretorius & klapwijk 2016), where they have nine subjects as opposed to the four in grade 3. hence, reference is made to mullis, martin and sainsbury’s (2016) study, which showed that readers create meaning in different ways. the pirls literacy assessments test four comprehensively constructed skills of comprehension which are: focus on and retrieve explicitly stated information make straightforward inferences interpret and integrate ideas and information evaluate and examine content and textual elements. these four comprehension skills are the metacognitive skills and strategies that allow readers to examine their understanding and adjust their approach to answering comprehension questions (mullis et al. 2016). these were used as the foundation for developing the comprehension questions in this research. sari and sari (2019) state that for learners to gain good understanding in reading a text, teachers have to provide them with some interesting strategies to improve their reading comprehension. the authors argue that different and interesting strategies can be used to make the learning atmosphere enjoyable and increase their motivation. sonmez and sulak (2018) agree that reading comprehension strategies are the cognitive tools that can improve the academic performance of learners for whom comprehension is a challenge. the following is a brief description of nine comprehension strategies that were used in this research project to develop the comprehension skills of five grade 3 learners. anticipation guides adams, pegg and case (2015) state that an anticipation guide is a reading comprehension strategy designed to scaffold learners as they grapple with texts. sari and sari (2019) extend this definition by stating that anticipation guides use a series of statements to involve learners in making predictions. in order to do this, learners may depend on prior knowledge. the average number of statements may range from 6 to 12. for each statement, learners indicate whether they ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ with the statement. most of the statements must be true or false but a few must be written to be debated, discussed or argued. vocabulary – magic square vacca and vacca (2005:287) explain the magic square strategy as an activity sheet that has two columns: one for content area terms and one for definitions. learners are asked to match terms with definitions. in doing so, they must take into account the letters signalling the terms and the numbers denoting the definitions. the learners then put the number of a definition in the proper space (denoted by the letter of the term) in the ‘magic square answer box’. if their matchups are correct, they will form a magic square. the numerical total will be the same for each row across and each column down the answer box. this total forms the puzzle’s ‘magic number’. vocabulary – matching nam (2010) states that effective strategies to teach vocabulary can assist learners’ proficiency in the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. she states that vocabulary matching activities can be designed by teachers so that learners develop new vocabulary and understand different features of vocabulary. feature matrix to provide learners with the correct content and facts about a theme, the feature matrix compares different features of classification by finding their similarities and differences in a text. in this strategy, the teacher begins by making different informational texts available to learners (calo 2011). these informational texts help learners to become familiar with the concepts of the content (maloch & horsey 2013). think aloud the ‘think-aloud’ comprehension strategy is modelled to learners to allow them to share the development of their thinking strategies and to make their thoughts noticeable (sonmez & sulak 2018). learners are able to focus their thinking better when they participate in the ‘think-aloud’ strategy while it is being role-modelled by the teacher. the main purpose of this strategy is to support learners to obtain the ability to independently think aloud. my turn, your turn nomlomo (2010:51) states that in a classroom interaction ‘my turn, your turn’ is initiated by the teacher through asking questions or giving instructions. learners receive turns by responding to a teacher’s questions or instructions. she states that the kind of responses given by learners determines the kind and quality of questions posed by the teacher. this is considered as important in the ‘my turn, your turn’ strategy. van eerde, hajer and prenger (2008) agree that to facilitate effective communication in the classroom, it is vital that learners are provided with challenging, comprehensible and scaffolding input with meaningful feedback. reader’s theatre qannubi, gabarre and mirza (2018) state that ‘reader’s theatre’ can be used as a fun and exciting strategy in a classroom. ‘reader’s theatre’ is regarded as a play or a performance of a written text which delivers meaning to the audience if repeated and supported in reading. by including ‘reader’s theatre’ in learning literacy skills, this strategy arouses an interest in reading for meaning and improves learners’ comprehension, reading fluency and self-confidence. cloze ereke and okonkwo (2016) state that the ‘cloze’ strategy describes how individuals learn to complete a pattern. they are a type of fill-in-the-blank space with every six or seven words in the passage. this strategy can be used for different purposes such as testing language proficiency, reading comprehension, measuring the complexity of a comprehension text, reading for meaning, proficiency, and as a pedagogical tool. higher-order thinking comprehension shukla and dungsungnoen (2016) state that this is an important strategy. learners discover how to analyse, interpret, reason, synthesise, evaluate and create their own meaning and understanding. this teaching strategy increases meta-cognition: this skill is needed in problem-solving, as well as comparing, evaluating, justifying and making inferences. conceptual framework this study intersects three pedagogic priorities: vygotsky’s (1978) theory of social constructivism, cambourne’s (2004) instructional theory and bloom’s taxonomy (forehand 2018) theory of cognitive domain. interlinking these three theories provides background information on key relations between knowledge that is socially constructed, and higher-order thinking skills resulting in comprehension achievement. vygotsky was himself educated by a private tutor who taught using critical inquiry and philosophical discussions (verenikina 2010). from these lived experiences, vygotsky developed his theory on the role of social interaction, where both teachers and learners are active agents in the learning and development process. what is central for effective transference of knowledge is the quality of the teacher’s interaction. while the researcher was posing comprehension problems to her group of five learners, allowing them to collaborate among themselves and learn from the stronger learners, vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (zpd), was constantly being foregrounded. the researcher assisted her learners marginally beyond their current capability but was always mindful of extending their present higher-order thinking skills (cole & cole 2001). it was important for her to be ‘ahead of her learners’, meaning she needed to know their ‘actual and potential development’ (verenikina 2010:18). she was constantly shifting her learners to higher levels of understanding, by engaging them in cooperative dialogues, with herself as the more knowledgeable other (mko), and encouraging them to take the language being used in the class and make it part of their own, and then to use this speech in organising their own performances. these internal developmental processes happened with the researcher expecting the learners to participate in dialogue in all the strategies she introduced them to throughout the 10-week intervention programme (ip). similar to vygotsky, cambourne believed that knowledge and meaning are socially constructed through the processes of negotiation, evaluation and transformation. he believed that learners must experience ‘intellectual unrest’ if they are to engage with discussions and draw from their background experiences (cambourne 2004:36). transformation occurs when teachers create classroom environments where there is a deep exchange of knowledge and skills with multiple demonstrations. these discussions allow learners to explore, reflect on their learning and clarify meaning; all these depend on the level of application. learners need to apply the skills taught by the teacher. finally, they evaluate their own performances. bloom’s taxonomy was used in this study as a pedagogical tool to improve the cognitive skills of the five selected learners. the researcher attempted to move her learners from the lower-order levels of bloom’s taxonomy (forehand 2018) to higher-order thinking skills. she built upon, and extended, their knowledge. she guided them to construct new knowledge from the texts and encouraged her learners to transfer this new knowledge to their own communities by applying and implementing what was learnt in the texts. she role-modelled analytical skills by breaking texts into smaller parts and created opportunities for the learners to evaluate texts by offering opinions about the texts. research design and methods study design a qualitative approach, using a case study design, within an interpretivist paradigm was purposefully devised for this project and deployed consistently for the gathering and interpretation of both visual and textual data. the numerical scores from the pre-tests and post-tests were converted into quantitative data to provide visual representations using microsoft excel. these numerical graphs were then analysed to provide qualitative meaning to the values (antieno 2009). as the participants expressed their views during the ip, the researcher was able to interpret what she observed, and was able to understand their experiences and interactions. setting the school is situated in nyanga, a low socio-economic area of cape town. this community has 10 primary schools and two high schools. the majority of learners in this school are from the neighbourhood, where there is drug abuse, high unemployment rates, teenage pregnancy, and teenage parents with low literacy levels. the researcher taught a grade 3 class in this public school which will be referred to as school x. school x is a quintile 2, no-fee school, (gower 2008:15) where learners receive free books and food, three times a day. jomaa, mcdonnell and probart state (2010) that the purpose of a school feeding programme is to relieve short-term hunger, improve nutrition and to facilitate the cognitive development of learners. there are three classes per grade from grades r to 3 with a teacher learner ratio of 1:35. the lolt from grades r to 3 is isixhosa. from grades 4 to 7 the lolt is english. in 2018, at the time of this research project, there were 718 registered learners. participants the participants for this study were purposively selected (fraenkel, wallen & hyun 2012). five grade 3 learners were selected to be part of this study as they were facing severe comprehension challenges; they were the worst performing literacy learners in the class. a small sample of only five learners was preferred since the researcher intended to interact extensively with them (creswell 2012). two grade 3 teachers were interviewed, as they were able to provide more information about the comprehension challenges they faced with their grade 3 learners. the parents and guardians of the five learners were interviewed in an attempt to understand the learners’ literacy challenges outside the classroom. intervention programme an ip was developed where five grade 3 ‘learners at risk’ were identified. this 10-week ip was conducted from 10 april to 14 june 2018, 3 days a week, after school hours from 14:00 to 14:30. the first and last weeks were used to conduct pre-tests and post-tests. the actual teaching, which focused on building higher-order comprehension skills, was undertaken in between. in an attempt to reduce the learners’ risk (thompson et al. 2004), the actual teaching was conducted during the middle 8 weeks. for this process to be beneficial to the learners, the programme was structured around the correct level and pace of the learners, supporting vygotksy’s zpd concept. pre-tests and post-tests were developed as a measure of learning outcomes and skills before and after the teaching sessions took place, as well as evaluating the teaching methods (ivanitskaya et al. 2008). these informal tests included a variety of grade 1 to grade 4 passages. providing a variety of passages meant that the learners would be able to read and answer questions from a range of texts, with increased levels of complexity. this diagnostic information would provide the researcher with information about each learner’s strengths and challenges. each text included four question types similar to those used in the pirls assessments: (1) focus on retrieving explicitly stated questions, (2) making straightforward inferences, (3) interpreting and integrating ideas and information and (4) evaluating and examining content, language and textual elements. the justification for using these four comprehension question types is that they are similar to those used by the wced systemic tests. the texts were developed by a group of honours students over a period of 3 years and were trialled with their own class learners. the necessary changes were made to the texts and questions. the same post-test texts and questions were used. before the ip began, the researcher and her supervisor planned a draft schedule to guide them over the 10 weeks. this plan includes dates, times and content of what strategies to teach. they were cognisant of including cambourne’s (2004) eight conditions of learning: immersing learners in active learning environments, demonstrating how to ask questions and listen to each other, engaging in discussions sharing ideas and skills, setting high expectations of learners, allowing learners to take responsibility for their own decision-making and engagement, providing learners with time and opportunities to explore texts, encouraging learners to take risks and make predictions and allowing the more knowledgeable peers to help learners adjust, modify and extend their learning. the reason for reinforcing strategies was to allow learners to become familiar with them, moving them from being dependent to independent learners (vygotsky 1978). these strategies provided different cognitive levels as forehand (2018) and the caps (dbe 2011a) document describe. data collection five parents or guardians were selected to be interviewed. the researcher intended to find out more about the learners’ comprehension challenges outside the classroom. she included two grade 3 teachers in this study since they were teaching comprehension skills in their classes and were able to provide information about the comprehension challenges they face with their learners from a teacher’s perspective. twelve semi-structured interviews allowed the researcher to probe and explore interviewees’ attitudes, opinions and feelings (lambert 2012). some of the interviews were conducted during the week, inside the school premises. others took place at participants’ homes during weekends and lasted for 45 to 60 min. they were conducted in isixhosa, a language with which the participants were comfortable. as a participant observer, the researcher observed the five grade 3 learners during the 10-week ip with the specific aim of (1) immersing herself in the activities with which the five learners were occupied (cohen, manion & morrison 2017) and (2) recording the rich data she was observing. she believed that by doing this, it gave her a true and accurate view of what was actually happening, rather than relying on inferences. it was sometimes difficult for her to record all the information while participating in an activity. she made time to write up her reflections immediately after each lesson. in this study, the researcher used the learners’ five exercise books, in which they reflected on their learning experiences by using authentic language and words. these books helped the researcher find important information that enabled her to assess and analyse the fundamental phenomena in her study (creswell 2012). data analysis qualitative data were inductively analysed using content analysis. all the data were translated from isixhosa to english, transcribed by the researcher (creswell 2012) and checked for accuracy by the interviewees themselves, all of whom were native isixhosa-speaking people. she used this method of summarising many words into a few categories (cohen et al. 2017). these smaller units were based upon theories, experiences and previous knowledge (fraenkel et al. 2012). while inductively analysing all the data, she began to recognise patterns and similarities which she marked in different colours (creswell 2012). themes were developed which were linked to the literature review and relevant theories (creswell 2012). the numerical scores from the pre-tests and post-tests were analysed qualitatively. the principal researcher, who was also the class teacher, did not permit personal issues, such as bias or power, to affect her interpretation. she was thoughtful and respectful towards her participants. she used language that avoided ‘demeaning attitudes, biased assumptions, and awkward constructions that suggested bias because of gender, sexual orientation, racial or ethnic group, disability or age’ (creswell 2012:277). she avoided bias by selecting two teachers as part of the sample who were different in terms of age and work experience, and learners who were different in gender. to ensure the reliability of the test scripts, the scripts were marked twice to double-check the errors. ethical considerations the researchers received ethical clearance (efec 4-2/2018) from the university where the authors were studying, from the wced and approval from the principal, two teachers and learners’ parents or guardians. the researcher made sure that all the voluntary participants understood the purpose of the study and were informed that they could withdraw at any time. all participants and the school were allocated pseudonyms to protect their identities. the participants are referred to using numbers, such as learner 1 (l1), teacher 1 (t1) and parent 1 (p1). results to answer the research question, ‘what comprehension skills did the learners learn during the 10-week ip?’ the researcher presents the pre-test and post-test results of the five grade 3 learners (see figure 1 and figure 2) and provides discussions on each learner’s performance. the discussion will be based on the learners’ reactions to the following four levels of questions: figure 1: the pre-test results of the five grade 3 learners. figure 2: the post-test results of the five grade 3 learners. level 1: focus on and retrieve explicitly stated information. level 2: make straightforward inferences. level 3: interpret and integrate ideas and information. level 4: evaluate and examine content, language and textual elements. by the end of the 10-week ip, the five grade 3 learners made significant improvements in their understandings of the four pirls comprehension skills. the researcher now discusses each of the five learners’ pre-test and post-test responses to the questions from various texts. since these tests were written exercises, the authentic verbatim responses of the learners have been provided to show the progress of learners. learner 1 (l1) for l1, there was not much of an improvement in the skill ‘focus on and retrieve explicitly stated information’. at the beginning of the ip, t2 narrated: ‘to be honest our learners do not want to read because this type of question requires them to look for answers in the text but they still get wrong answers’. (teacher 2) despite this comment from t2, l1 began the ip with a strong base in this particular skill, receiving 75%, and showing a slight improvement of 16% in the post-test results. the greatest improvement in the post-test was for the comprehension skill of ‘making straightforward inferences with understanding’ which improved by 50%. there was a 25% improvement in the ‘interpreting and integrating ideas and information’ comprehension skill. by the end of the ip, l1 had moved from lower-order levels of bloom’s taxonomy (forehand 2018) to being able to interact more confidently with higher-order thinking skills. this modest improvement could have been the result of l1’s change in identity in week 8 when he narrated in his reflection that: ‘i am now able to explain my choices’. his confidence in speaking english improved so he was able to think and share his critical thoughts. by socially engaging with explicitly stated higher-order questions, l1 emerged as an independent learner (verenikina 2010) and this environment contributed to making the group activities less stressful for him. this is confirmed by the way l1 responded in the post-tests as can be seen in table 1. table 1: l1’s written pre-test and post-test responses. learner 2 (l2) t1 mentioned in her interview: ‘today’s education does not allow our learners to be critical thinkers. at grade 3 level when analysing the text our learners struggle to find the author’s message, summarise the text and to blend what they read in the story with their real life’. (teacher 1) l2’s post-test results showed that she improved in all four comprehension skills, indicating that, despite the comment made by t1, she was able to be a ‘critical thinker’. the most noticeable improvements were her ability to answer the ‘interpret and integrate ideas and information’ where she integrated texts with her real-life situations. contrary to l2 experiencing a language barrier, l2 shared during the interview, that she ‘enjoyed practising to role-play every story she read she even asked her mother to speak in english with her at home’. this enjoyment indicates that she was committed to improving her comprehension skills understanding. the enjoyment of speaking to l2’s mother is confirmed by vygotsky (cited in verenikina 2010:17) who emphasised that ‘children and adults are both active agents in the process of the child’s development’. through this co-constructing process, she gained self-confidence when participating in the class activities. this improvement is shown in table 2 by the way she answered the post-test questions compared with the pre-test answers. her post-test answers indicated how her sentence construction improved and how she thought more logically before she answered the questions. learning, at the higher-order thinking level, was occurring in her zpd (forehand 2018; verenikina 2010). table 2: l2’s written pre-test and post-test responses. learner 3 (l3) although l3 began this ip with strong pre-test results, the post-test results revealed noticeable improvements in his understanding of these higher-order comprehension skills. l3’s parent stated that: ‘he is able to read words but when i ask the meaning of some words he struggles with the meanings’. although, pretorius and klapwijk (2016:2) state that ‘low parental literacy is only one factor for the poor levels of reading comprehension in south africa’, l3’s parent actively participated in developing his literacy skills by asking the meanings of some of the words. his pre-test and post-test, however, demonstrated that he received the highest marks in all the comprehension skills of the five learners; he had achieved bloom’s higher-order thinking skills (forehand 2018). in his reflections, he wrote: ‘my group mates ask me to explain to them so that’s making me feel excited about these lessons’. while he was assisting his classmates, he was learning and benefiting from these experiences. table 3 shows how he was able to comprehend all four levels of questions, and his writing skills were more understandable. as l3 was engaging in cooperative dialogues with his peers, they were able to take l3’s language and make it part of their own private speech, and use this speech to organise their private independent performances until they become internalised (verenikina 2010). these developmental processes can only become sustained learning when people are interacting with more experienced people and, in this case, l3 willingly took on that role. table 3: l3’s written pre-test and post-test responses. learner 4 (l4) before the ip, t2 was asked: ‘how do your learners explain or summarise texts?’. she stated: ‘the children we teach today, they struggle to explain in their own words, what they read or what is being read to them. they are so lazy to think out of the box and to express their views.’ (teacher 2) l4’s post-test results indicate, however, that she showed a consistent improvement in her higher-order thinking skills, and she grew in confidence being able to share her opinions. by week 7 she began to evaluate her own responses and became more confident in justifying her answers. this indicates that she was achieving the highest levels of cognition as can be seen in table 4 comparing l4’s written pre-test and post-test contributions. her written answers were more to the point, correct and she provided reason for her answers. this example demonstrates that during the ip l4’s language and both her higher-order and lower-order comprehension thinking skills improved. cambourne (2004:36) explains that ‘transformation occurs when learners transform their knowledge that others have modelled into knowledge that is uniquely their own’. at the beginning of the ip, l4 was in a state of ‘intellectual unrest’ (cambourne 2004:36), unable to understand the higher-order questions. the 10-week ip provided her with ‘continuous opportunities for intellectual unrest to be resolved’, with her eventually developing bloom’s taxonomy’s highest levels of critical thinking (anderson & krathwohl 2001). table 4: l4’s written pre-test and post-test responses. learner 5 (l5) teacher 1 responded to the interview question ‘do you teach inference skills?’. ‘to be honest, i myself do not know what an inference is’. this response relates to what many researchers, such as mudzielwana et al. (2013), pretorius and currin (2010), pilanieta and medina (2009), and pretorius and klapwijk (2016), have found in their studies. these researchers found that teachers, from primary to high school, do not know how to model the teaching of comprehension skills. it was, therefore, pleasing to note that l5 showed a noticeable improvement in the second comprehension skill where he was ‘making straightforward inferences’ with understanding. in week 5 he reflected that: ‘i was able to give suggestions and share ideas to the group’. the confidence that developed from ‘giving suggestions’ and ‘sharing ideas with the group’ helped him to develop bloom’s higher-order thinking skills (anderson & krathwohl 2001) which have become evident in his written responses from his pre-test and post-test questions in table 5. his post-test answers suggest that by the end of the ip his language usage improved and he was confident to justify his answers correctly. table 5: l5’s written pre-test and post-test responses. discussion the aim of this article was to explore ‘what comprehension skills learners develop during a 10-week ip’. the post-tests show that all five ‘at risk’ learners made significant improvements in their understandings of the four comprehension skills with some learners achieving higher levels of criticality than others. this concurs with the view of yen and halili (2015) who state that when learners are exposed to an intensive language acquisition programme, it helps them develop their higher-order thinking skills. this improvement enables them to become critical thinkers who can solve problems on their own. anderson and krathwohl (2001) argue that in every level of education, there is a need to try to get learners to reach the highest levels in bloom’s taxonomy. despite low parental literacy rates and teachers either not believing in, or not knowing how to teach, higher-order critical thinking skills in south africa (pretorius & klapwijk 2016), these five learners showed steady progress over the 10-week ip, where they developed through bloom’s taxonomy’s lower-order cognitive skills to the higher-order cognitive skills and were able to evaluate texts. lee (2015) postulates that the use of questions helps learners make cognitive progress, to where they would be able to create new things. this resonates with the findings of this study of the five learners, who initially were only able to answer lower-order comprehension questions, and progressed to freely and willingly participate in higher-order thinking skills discussions. they finally created new ideas and information using what was previously learned from former texts and linking the content to their own experiences. it is important to note that the learners’ ability to progress is dependent not only on their cognitive abilities, but also on the social interactions that teachers promote (vygotsky 1978). like vygotsky, cambourne (2004) reiterates that knowledge and meaning are socially constructed through a series of negotiations, evaluations and transformations. the caps document requires grade 3 learners to develop the essential language skills of reading and viewing, listening and speaking in efal. english is the second language of these learners yet their oral skills developed week by week as the learners learnt to listen to the texts being read and responded by speaking in english in full sentences. this is an element of social interaction and language development that is pivotal in the learning theories of social constructivists (cambourne 2004; vygotsky 1978). by working in a small group of five, the learners learnt social skills and grew confident enough to participate in group discussions to learn from each other. conclusion the results of the pre-tests indicate that the five learners initially lacked an understanding of the four comprehension skills questions. the data presented discusses the challenges that these five learners faced within the four comprehension skills. bearing in mind the variables, which were similar to the pre-test conditions, the post-test results showed significant improvements in all four comprehension questions. it was unexpectedly pleasing to note the range of such upward movements in the results of each learner. by amalgamating elements of vygotsky’s (1978) theory of social constructivism, cambourne’s (2004) instructional theory and bloom’s taxonomy (forehand 2018) a sound and workable platform was created that suited the particular statistical parameters and theoretical requirements of this project. all the activities that were used with the learners encouraged social integration, sharing opinions and working constructively together. by doing this, the students challenged each other’s cognitive development, so that over the 10-week period, the learners grew in confidence, and were able to transform their own zones of abilities and independent thinking to higher levels of bloom’s application. this study was limited to five grade 3 ‘at risk’ learners who participated in a controlled 10-week ip focusing on developing higher-order comprehension skills. this study does not claim to be generalisable. although the sample was small, it is possible that its findings may be generalised by analogy to similar contexts. the researcher suggests three recommendations. first, it is recommended that this study, which contributes towards improving the higher-order critical comprehension skills of our fp learners, may be used by higher education institution lecturers when training fp teachers. second, it is recommended that teachers begin reflecting on their own teaching strategies, and develop similar ips, incorporating these nine strategies, to improve the comprehension skills of their learners. finally, this study may assist wced’s district-based support teams and higher education institutions by contributing to their professional development training courses focusing on the explicit teaching of comprehension skills. acknowledgements tha authors would like to acknowledge dr curr for the language editing of this article. competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions j.c. acted as main supervisor for v.f.’s master’s degree. l.m. and h.p. were co-supervisors and critical readers while v.f. wrote most of the article. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. data availability the authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within this article. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references adams, a.e., pegg, j. & case, m., 2015, ‘anticipation guides: reading for understanding’, mathematics teacher 108(7), 499–504. https://doi.org/10.5951/mathteacher.​108.7.0498 anderson, l.w. & krathwohl, d.r. 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in education’, the online journal of distance education and e-learning 3(2), 41–47. abstract introduction research design discussion conclusion acknowledgements references appendix 1 footnotes about the author(s) zaheera jina asvat wits school of education, faculty of humanities, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa citation jina asvat, z., 2022, ‘semantic waves and their affordances for teaching scaffolding to pre-service teachers’, reading & writing 13(1), a346. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v13i1.346 original research semantic waves and their affordances for teaching scaffolding to pre-service teachers zaheera jina asvat received: 30 nov. 2021; accepted: 08 june 2022; published: 29 july 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: research argues that parents/teachers and learners work collaboratively and this active participation in scaffolded activities builds knowledge and extends understandings. however, researchers who have explored scaffolding as a pedagogic tool do not demonstrate how this tool looks in practice. objectives: as a teacher educator, i introduce concepts like scaffolding as part of pre-service teachers’ theory of learning. the purpose of this article is to explore how the legitimation code theory (lct) concepts of semantic gravity and semantic waves, show modelling interactions that reveal the learning pathways leading to independent mastery of the task. method: the study was conducted in 2020, which presented a unique opportunity to watch one teacher teach three grade 3 learners online on a one-to-one basis, providing for comparisons between them. this qualitative study represented a case-study research design and employed data analysis using a semantic gravity translation device. convenience sampling was used when selecting the participants. a story, ‘a visit to the dentist’, was used to identify the metaphors in the text. results: using semantic waves, i show how the teacher works with concepts, criteria, text resources and learner understanding. the analysis exposed pathways that could now be purposefully designed. conclusion: further research is necessary to investigate the value of semantic waves as a means of enabling teachers to track these kinds of interaction. contribution: the findings provide the means to demonstrating how semantic waves may assist teachers to design and operationalise learning pathways in ways that scaffolding cannot. keywords: legitimation code theory (lct); semantic gravity; semantic waves; learning pathways; scaffolding; metaphor. introduction the foundation phase in south africa includes learners between 5 and 9 years of age in grades r to 3. four categories of english, including ‘listening, speaking, reading and writing’, should be covered in the foundation phase (department of basic education 2011:8). the writing section includes ‘shared writing and individual writing’ (department of basic education 2011). shared writing is described as the activity in which learners copy work off the board into their books. grade 1 learners are involved in individual writing when they write sentences related to their weekend news. at grade 3 level, learners should be writing stories. creative writing becomes meaningful when learners understand the task (mukoroli 2011) and can manipulate figurative language to write descriptively. the study of figurative language devices is not only a means to creative writing skills but ‘it is imperative that teachers design and implement instruction for figurative language interpretation to increase student comprehension’ (palmer et al. 2006:258). successful figurative language enactment requires that learners first recognise figurative language devices before they have the power to use them creatively to convey meaning. when the goal is creative writing, the study of figurative language devices may include stories as tools to evoke comprehension of how figurative language is used in text and how teachers may use everyday life to provide real context to describe the meanings portrayed. in this study, i investigated an attempt at a scaffolded model of the metaphor as a figurative language device that is intended to teach learners that metaphors have a literal meaning and an implied meaning that are both checked in the particular context. the analysis reported in this paper investigates how the teacher set up conditions of possibility for three learners to produce their own imagery using metaphors. scaffolding, in a construction site, is a temporary structure used to support the maintenance and repair of buildings, bridges and other man-made structures (jones & thomas 2015). when the building is capable of staying erect, the builder removes the scaffolding. likewise, wood, bruner and ross (1976), as the originators of this concept in education, showed that if parents/teachers scaffold learning when they introduce a task, they provide adequate support to keep children motivated to complete the task at a reasonable level of difficulty. this process assists the child in completing a task they would not manage on their own or in developing new understanding, empowering them to complete similar tasks alone (hammond & gibbens 2005). hammond and gibbens (2005) explain that during this process, parents/teachers and learners work collaboratively and this active participation ‘enables them to construct and, potentially, transform understandings’. i found that these descriptions of scaffolding are vaguely articulated without showing the patterns, models and knowledge-building pathways that productively lead to mastery of new content and skills. the concept of scaffolding in literature is associated with learning in a constructivist framework rather than a knowledge-building approach that directly addresses how teachers work with knowledge. as a teacher educator, i introduce concepts like scaffolding as part of pre-service teachers’ theory of learning, but this does little to provide them with models of pedagogic practice of what such learning pathways would look at. the gap between theory and practice is a central problem in teacher education (barends 2022; gravett & ramsaroop 2015; korthagen 2011). the purpose of this article is to explore how the legitimation code theory (lct) concepts of semantic gravity (sg) and semantic waves attempt to provide concrete ways of showing modelling interactions that reveal the learning pathways that lead to the independent mastery of the task. making these pathways visible, offers a means to enable pre-service teachers to track the kinds of interactions that result in learner independence. the main research question addressed in this research study is: how does the lct concept of semantic waves offer affordances for teaching scaffolding to pre-service teachers? the sub-question is: how does the lct concept of semantic waves offer pathways to track the kinds of interaction that result in learner independence? research design i am presently collaborating with teachers1 on a creative writing course for english home language (ehl) learners. the course spans over 20 days and lessons are 20 min daily. the purpose of the creative writing course is to enable foundation phase and intermediate phase learners to master figurative language to use in their writing of poetry, descriptions and stories. i am interested in the support that the teacher provides to enable learners to use figurative language devices independently in their writing. using the case study research design, i studied how one teacher presented a lesson to teach metaphors to three learners, individually on zoom.2 the teacher/learner interactions were based on an online zoom lesson context (merriam 1998) and this research method permitted analysis of these individual lessons with an exploration of the interactive processes involved in these lessons (verma & mallick 2005). i used convenience sampling to locate participants for this study from the target population who meet certain criteria, such as: having access to zoom and internet for 20 min daily, being in grade 3 and being willing to participate. the sample consisted of four ehl grade 3 learners within the age range of 8–9 years, living in gauteng. the teachers selected to teach the overall course were volunteers who have an online zoom platform setup and knowledge of creative writing skills. as they were volunteers, the individual teacher who was available to participate in the study only had under 1 year of teaching experience. the teacher in this study is ms carim, and the learners were sue, jayshree, naseema and batseba.3 these names are pseudonyms. in this paper, i report on the lesson which addressed metaphors. this lesson was the introductory lesson to metaphors and the learners were required to identify metaphors in the story titled ‘a visit to the dentist’. two methods of data collection were utilised: zoom lesson recordings and an interview with the teacher. a progression of 20 lessons were zoom-recorded for each of the four grade 3 learners. one interview was conducted with the teacher after recording all the lessons. all lessons were recorded, transcribed, coded and analysed using a translation device of the lct concept of the sg form. in doing so, certain semantic waves emerged. theoretical framework the theoretical framework that informed this study is the socio-cultural theories of learning. socio-cultural theories focus on learning as a socially based process, rather than an individual one. thus individual work can be accommodated but only in the context of collaborative work (vygotsky 1978). ‘learning involves a communicative process whereby knowledge is shared and understandings are constructed in culturally formed settings’, (vygotsky 1978 in hammond & gibbens 2005:12). the zone of proximal development (zpd) is a popular construct in sociocultural theory used to explain this process. the most frequently quoted explanation of zpd is the following: it is the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. (vygotsky 1978:86) these developmental processes can be differentiated in reference to actual and potential developmental levels. vygotsky (1978 in jina 2008) explains that when a child succeeds in tasks independently, we are assessing actual development, but if a child solves a problem under adult guidance or in collaboration with his/her peers, the child gains more (potential development). vygotsky emphasised that the same skill that a child learns through assistance will be mastered independently at a later stage and thus actual development will be eventually achieved and a new stage of potential development will be reached (vygotsky 1978 in jina 2008). i argue that learning took place when the learner was working within her zpd in the co-production of knowledge with the teacher through her role of mediating support, to assist the learner to learn independently. the zpd in this instance is co-constructed (hammond & gibbens 2005) through the engagement that takes place in the teacher/learner interaction as they work through a task. analytic framework this paper draws on the concept of sg from lct to analyse how the context-dependence of knowledge shifts over time in a lesson (maton 2013, 2014). sg describes the degree to which meaning is tied to a real-world context (stronger sg) or abstracted to a form that transcends contexts (maton 2014). in this study, stronger sg manifests as metaphorical comparisons drawn from personal experience or identified from text-based sources. for example, ‘my mummy is a pretty rose’ is closely connected to a learner’s personal perceptions of her mother. less context-dependent forms of knowledge could be types of figures of speech frequently used in creative writing practices. for example, ‘metaphorical comparisons attribute a characteristic of one object to another’ provides criteria for a concept that transcends the example of a metaphor in which a particular learner compares her mother’s appearance to a flower. over the course of a lesson, teachers shift knowledge between abstracted and more contextually dependent forms. these shifts are usefully depicted on a semantic profile, according to the strength of sg. the pathways that sg takes over time can be represented graphically on a semantic profile. the strengthening and weakening of sg (on the y-axis) is plotted against time (on the x-axis). the semantic profile is plotted as a single line, illustrating shifts between complex concepts (weaker semantic gravity, sg–) and manifestations of personal experience and/or real-world examples (stronger semantic gravity, sg+) (maton 2014). learning activities that focus on abstracted concepts, for instance how figures of speech may be used to evoke imagery in poetry would be characterised by sg–. these parts of the lesson could be depicted as a high flatline on a semantic profile (see line a in figure 1). knowledge generated from the learner’s experience, examples or case studies retains a sg+. in such cases, the semantic profile can be depicted by a low semantic flatline (see line b in figure 1). figure 1: illustrative example of semantic profiles. during the course of lessons, teachers mediate knowledge by making recurrent movements between more experiential and more abstract forms of knowledge (maton 2013). these create semantic waves (see line c in figure 1) that show a back-and-forth oscillation between experience/examples and complex concepts. a semantic wave is a profile that shows both weakening and strengthening of the sg of knowledge over a period of time. these can be represented by the upward shifts (from sg+ to sg–) and downward shifts (from sg– to sg+) of a semantic wave. for example, a lesson would begin with weaker sg if the teacher starts by giving a definition of a metaphor (e.g. ‘metaphor is a figurative language device that makes an implicit, implied, or hidden comparison between two things that are unrelated, but which share some common characteristics’ [zamboanga del norte national high school n.d.]). sg would become stronger if an illustrative example is added to the explanation (e.g. ‘we were tiny fish swimming in a sea of people’ compares the feeling of being in a crowd to being in a school of fish in the ocean). the knowledge would strengthen its sg further if learners generate a metaphor by drawing from their own personal context. the sg would be weakened if learners then engaged in an activity that requires them to identify metaphors in a story and extract the objects and grounds of the comparison, thereby creating a ‘combinatorial item’ (johnson & pascual-leone 1989:12). semantic waves reveal powerful and replicable ways to represent the knowledge-building pathways teachers construct as they interact with learners. semantic waves have been used extensively to trace the knowledge-building work teachers do in the lessons they teach. for example, jackson (2016) used semantic waves to map the knowledge formations of two kwazulu-natal grade 10 english literature lessons, one ehl and one additional language (eal) to illuminate distinctions between lessons with similar classification and framing profiles, thus uncovering reasons for the imbalances in literacy levels within the south african school system. curzon et al. (2020) apply semantic waves to computer science education by illustrating how the oscillating waves help show ways that an unplugged activity might be effective or not, and how adaptations to the activities may offer a more productive learning experience. walton and ruszynyak (2020) draw on semantic waves to frame both conceptual and contextual knowledge as foregrounded for pre-service teachers to have for inclusive teaching. in this study, i used a translation device (detailed in table 1) to define four strengths of sg as it manifests in my study. the translation device shows the indicators used to code the empirical data and shows illustrative examples. the four levels indicated should be understood as strengths of sg on a continuum rather than absolute fixed points (jackson 2016). table 1: translation device that defines four strengths of semantic gravity used to code context-dependence of knowledge in a grade 3 lesson on poetic devices. this translation device enables me to code interactions between the teacher and learners which are then plotted on a semantic profile. coding all four lessons in terms of the relative strength and weakness of sg allowed for a detailed illustration of the pathways on a semantic wave. the shape of the semantic waves reveals how the teacher supports learners in making semantic shifts to identify and analyse metaphors, first together and then to make those shifts independently. when teachers take particular shaped semantic shifts with learners and learners then can replicate those moves, they demonstrate their learning independently. in the section that follows, i analyse the learning pathways that the teacher traversed with three learners. the interaction in one lesson went beyond modelling the knowledge-building pathways to the learner traversing this pathway for herself. data analysis a metaphor is a figurative statement taking the form of ‘an x is a y’. bowdle and gentler (2005) define a simile as a figurative statement using a comparative term such as ‘like’ or ‘as’, taking the form ‘an x is like a y’. the categorisation comparison of the metaphor is emphasised in the verb ‘was’4, in that the learner draws an inference that the metaphor relies on a similar rule to that of the simile (in this case, that the use of ‘was’ indicates a metaphor in the same way that ‘as’ and ‘like’ indicate a simile). a metaphor as a ‘combinatorial item’ (johnson & pascual-leone 1989:12) can be related in a ‘– was a –’ sentence frame. metaphors and similes promote different comprehension strategies. specifically, a metaphor explains an idea or makes a comparison in a way that is not literally true. in bowdle and gentler’s terms: metaphors should invite classifying the topic as a member of a category named by the vehicle, whereas similes should invite comparing the topic to the vehicle. hence, i might describe the topic of the metaphor (i.e. tooth) to the category denoted by the vehicle (i.e. volcano): ‘the tooth was a deep red volcano’. this metaphorical category represents features that share some significant elements with ‘(a subset of) items that fall under the concept lexically encoded by the vehicle’ (dulcinati et al. 2014:72). for example, the metaphorical category volcano may include things that are red, fiery and destructive (e.g. some rotten teeth but also some erupting volcanos). the understanding must be established that the connections between the topic and vehicle must be recognised. if i take this metaphor to mean ‘the tooth was bloody and painful’, then i have chosen as ground some sort of colour and sensation. ‘a given metaphor may offer multiple potential grounds, and a given ground multiple potential interpretations’ (johnson & pascual-leone 1989:49). understanding a metaphor as an analogy ‘is a way of noticing relational commonalities independently of the objects to which those relations apply’ (gentner 1987:2). subsequently, one cannot access the metaphor without first recognising similarities across entities (pouscoulous 2014). the focus of the 20-min lessons is the oscillating sg in terms of metaphors as a figurative language device. the teacher’s overall goal in this lesson was to elicit the learners’ identification of metaphors within stories. as i coded the sg, i related the teacher’s questions to previous or successive questions and the learner’s responses. two of the three lessons comprise four phases (summarised below) with the bulk of the time spent on phase three. task orientation: the teacher identifies the lesson as a focus on metaphors. the teacher defines a metaphor. academic administration5: the teacher directs the learner to the story and tells the learner to underline the sentences with metaphors. task orientation: the teacher/learner reads the story sentence by sentence. the learner identifies the metaphor in each instance. the learner underlines the sentence with the metaphor. the teacher moves on to the next sentence. conclusion: the teacher makes concluding statements about the lesson. an analysis of sg makes known a more precise description of the interaction between teacher and learner. the teacher focuses exclusively on the story, ‘a visit to the dentist’, as an independent artefact and requires that the learners identify the metaphors using exact textual quotes. the tightly structured process moves learners from the definition of a metaphor into the identification of metaphors captured in a story. however, in the pedagogic space, the bases for approaching and relating to the text can vary, shifting along both the stronger and weaker sg continua. engaging in response to the identification of metaphors in a given text requires that learners demonstrate that they understand the implied comparison of the metaphor. in this particular text, ‘a visit to the dentist’, the weakening of the sg is supported by the teacher’s questions to focus learners on identifying the metaphor. bringing in information from beyond the story, strengthened the sg, allowing learners to better understand the broader associations of the metaphor. in the lesson engagement that analysed this text, interaction around the identification of the metaphors from the story frequently integrated knowledge from the learner’s personal context to represent the implied comparison of the metaphor. therefore, i did not find it entirely surprising that two of the three lessons contained sections of stronger sg in which the teacher engaged the learners’ experiences of visiting the dentist and of going to a mall. the analysis below refers to occurrences of stronger sg in pathways that went beyond the comparative nature of the metaphors in the text. in this analysis, the thick lines represent the learner’s turns, and the thin lines represent the teacher’s turns – together the line segments connect to represent semantic waves. jayshree’s lesson (see figure 2 following) is the only lesson from the three lessons in the data set in which the semantic wave shows two pathways (see c) of strong sg. these two pathways involve interactions concerned with jayshree’s experience of going to the dentist and going to the mall. figure 2: semantic profile for jayshree’s lesson. before traversing these two pathways, ms carim corrected jayshree’s confusion between the simile and metaphor. ms carim very good! ‘mom helped me rinse my mouth with warm salt water, and when i gargled, i choked. salt water drained down my throat, and i was a swimmer in the salty ocean’. (pauses briefly) jayshree i was like a swimmer in the salty ocean. ms carim ‘i was a swimmer’ not ‘i was like’, if i was ‘like’ then what would it be? jayshree a simile. ms carim yes. so, what does the sentence say? ‘i was a swimmer in the salty ocean’. so that’s a metaphor, right? general waving across the lesson includes the teacher reading from the text and learner identifying the metaphor as pertinent goals for the lesson. further engagement between ms carim and jayshree connects to a wave which weakens sg in order to conclude the topic on metaphors. at this point, ms carim asked jayshree to explain what a metaphor is and she used her understanding of similes in her explanation – ‘a metaphor is something that describes something that and doesn’t include an “as” or a “like”#’; and when prompted for an example, she responded, ‘hmm for example, “her heart is like gold”, then the simile is “her heart is like gold”. and the metaphor is “a heart is gold”.’ the end result is that jayshree can identify a metaphor in text but does not necessarily see the broader associations or implied comparisons of the metaphor. the analysis of naseema’s lesson (see figure 3) reduces the identification of the metaphor to an application of rules only. the categorisation comparison of the metaphor is emphasised in the verb ‘was’, in that the learner draws an inference that the metaphor relies on a similar rule to that of the simile (in this case, that the use of ‘was’ indicates a metaphor in the same way that ‘as’ and ‘like’ indicate a simile). the breaks in the semantic profile indicate when ms carim’s focus changes to a new phrase from the story. the waves begin with a stronger sg when the teacher reads from the text. the sg is weakened with an upward movement which represents the pathway taken to request naseema to identify the metaphor. as a result, there are many points where upward escalators are present. upward escalators represent shifts from relatively stronger sg towards relatively weaker sg (jackson 2016; maton 2013) (box 1): figure 3: semantic profile for naseema’s lesson. box 1: ms carim’s focus changes to a new phrase from the story. in the above extract, ms carim asked naseema to identify the metaphor. the expected reaction failed to come, as naseema was unsure. ms carim repeated the phrase from the story and naseema began reading the phrase. the teacher repeated the phrase and then funnelled (brodie jina modau 2009) her questions towards an expected answer – ‘was he using a metaphor to compare himself to a swimmer?’ naseema affirmed the presence of a metaphor. in turn 31, ms carim (44 years, female teacher) asked, ‘so what … what is the metaphor? the ‘what part’ of the sentence, just use one word then i’ll know. are you failing to see?’ naseema responded, ‘umm, “i was”…’ and ms carim commended her for the answer. this answer gives the appearance that naseema understood the metaphor, but from her engagement, we can see that this was not the case. when asked about her engagement with naseema, ms carim explained that ‘naseema had difficulty reading and comprehending texts, so it was hard for her to grasp literary devices.’ she further explained that: ‘i don’t think she [naseema] understood what a metaphor was. i think she looked for “were” or “was” in the sentence and identified it this way. but the actual concept of using a metaphor to compare two things and describing it wasn’t something she was grasping at all.’ when asked why she did not ask naseema to describe the comparison, ms carim said: ‘i think it’s because she seemed to get very uncomfortable when i did do this, and i thought leading her on would be a better approach so she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable as she really wanted to get things right.’ sue’s lesson (see figure 4 following) offers stark differences in comparison to the other two lessons. the lesson offers building distinct knowledge pathways that ms carim takes with sue so that ultimately sue could traverse them on her own. the wave begins at a weaker sg when ms carim introduces the metaphor. in this lesson, sue identifies the metaphor in each phrase and then ms carim further elicits sue’s understanding of the comparison. ms carim poses probing questions that require sue to explain the comparison that the metaphor represents, as in, for example, ‘is that a metaphor?’ and ‘could you perhaps explain what he means there, though?’ mostly she directs sue’s attention syntactically, focusing on the categories of a metaphor, such as an application of the rule that metaphors should invite classifying the topic as a member of a category named by the vehicle (bowdle & gentler 2005). for example, she asks, ‘but are we comparing “i was afraid” to anything?’ upward escalators are present typically when ms carim builds knowledge into more abstracted forms. these upward escalators usually occur where ms carim wants sue to explain the comparison that the metaphor represents. here, i elaborate on the two occurrences to illustrate how ms carim modelled semantic waves to enable sue to demonstrate this learning independently. figure 4: semantic profile for sue’s lesson. sue’s misunderstanding: the case of the ‘was’ for much of the lesson (see appendix 1 for the transcript of this lesson), it may seem as though ms carim’s work is focused on ensuring that sue keeps up with her in the identification of metaphors in the story, leading to a relatively weaker emphasis on sg in this process. that is, she reads descriptions from the story that require sue to identify the metaphor. the pathway d demonstrates how a misunderstanding is revealed when sue provides an incorrect response. here, sue identified the verb ‘was’ as the indicator of the metaphor. she said: ‘um. was … the dentist’s chair was a submarine?’ ms carim accepts this response; however, immediately thereafter slightly weakens sg by focusing sue’s attention on whether ‘i was afraid. i was a captive monkey to be analysed’ is a metaphoric description. ms carim here strategically works at a weakening level of sg. she intercepts sue’s misconception of the ‘was’ by reformulating instructions, thereby weakening the sg. ms carim focuses sue’s attention away from the literal meaning to the metaphorical meaning, such as when she says, ‘what is he comparing?’ sue has recognised the verb ‘was’ as an indicator of a metaphor in the same way that ‘as’ and ‘like’ indicate a simile. in preventing sue from forming a misconception, ms carim draws boundaries of how to identify the metaphor, by working at a relatively weaker level of sg, asking sue in turn 70, ‘is that a metaphor?’ and in turn 74 she keeps the sg at the same weakness by asking, ‘but are we comparing “i was afraid” to anything?’ this focus on the comparison of the categorisation is reinforced as ms carim realises that sue is pursuing a rule to identify the metaphor. therefore, she poses eliciting questions to help sue unravel the misconception of the ‘was’. she wants sue to classify the metaphor as a ‘combinatorial item’ (johnson & pascual-leone 1989:12) relating in a ‘– was a –’ sentence frame to identify the metaphors embedded in the story. ms carim did not recognise the metaphor that the fear the narrator feels at the dentist could be projected on the fear that one would feel as a captive monkey. in describing her pedagogic decisions of this episode, in the interview, ms carim explained: ‘i used questions to sort of lead in the direction of thinking that having a “was” in a sentence doesn’t always mean that it will be a metaphor. i didn’t just want to tell her, but i wanted to allow her to figure that out for herself. i wanted her to realise this so that she understands that a metaphor is used for comparative reasons.’ ms carim later tests to see if sue is still holding onto the misconception. in turn 98, she asks, ‘also is “the mall was very busy” a metaphor?’ this question generates more of an upward movement that is realised through sue’s answer specifying that the vehicle is absent and therefore there is no comparison: ‘they’re not comparing the mall to anything’. enabling sue to independently describe the comparison even though ms carim makes connections to real-world experience, she engages the story as a task that requires precise interpretation. she directs sue’s attention, focusing on the shift from the literal meaning to the metaphorical meaning in ways such as: identifying the metaphor as a ‘combinatorial item’ (johnson & pascual-leone 1989:12). describing the implied comparison. ms carim moves focus between conceptual criteria and text-based examples. by modelling a semantic wave with sue, sue corrects herself, clarifies criteria and then is able to speak more confidently about the task at hand, identifying and explaining metaphors. in the pathway illustrated by e on the semantic wave, sue is now replicating the upward escalators that ms carim has modelled. she reads the phrase from the story, identifies the metaphor, and then describes the comparison without being asked to explain. sue is working independently, and this process sets up conditions of possibility for her to produce her own imagery using metaphors. the lesson analysis just described, demonstrates how ms carim modelled pathways that sue could eventually traverse herself. while jayshree’s lesson includes less successful pathways into learner independence regarding the metaphor, the lesson contained several examples of strong semantic pathways. these pathways of strong sg were less valued since they demonstrate how the lesson became more context specific and therefore did not fully focus on the implied comparison of the metaphor. discussion the important characteristics of this metaphor lesson included an analysis of how ms carim supported the learners’ identification of the metaphor in texts, and this required that the sg and semantic waves be analysed for the purpose of illustrating the teacher/learner interaction. from a socio-culturalist stance, the teacher and learners had created zones of proximal development for each other. each learner worked within her zpd, with ms carim through her role of mediating support, to assist each learner in identifying metaphors from the text. while jayshree’s lesson and naseema’s lesson adhered to the identification of the metaphors in a text only, and were able to meet the expectations the task elicited, they were less effective at transferring the comparative nature of the metaphor. therefore, the lessons were also less effective at establishing the implied comparison in the metaphors represented in the story. in particular, lesson interaction between the teacher and learner explicitly connected the text to the metaphors in the story. teaching the learners how to identify metaphors depended on them relating the categorisation in a ‘– was a –’ sentence frame, and did not necessarily depend on the linking to the learners’ personal experiences to explain the comparison. therefore, the task did not explicitly call for an understanding of the implied comparative value of the metaphor. i hoped, however, that the teacher would help learners to understand the comparison. the analysis of the lessons found that the lesson in which ms carim was focused on sue identifying the metaphor and describing the comparison tended to address the implied comparison of the metaphor more thoroughly, and that sue also tended to model the pathways created. the analysis showed that the pathways modelled by ms carim played an important role in helping sue to work independently when identifying and analysing metaphors from a text. the analysis also indicated that ms carim weakened the sg when addressing sue’s misconception about the use of ‘was’, by using probing questions to enable her to identify a metaphor as a comparison between two things that are unrelated and to push her to describe this comparison. while all three lessons in the data set oscillated between strong and weak sg along a semantic wave, the rate of occurrence and relative value with which the teacher worked along these pathways was a distinguishing factor in the outcome of the interaction. sue was able to understand the implied comparison in the metaphor without ms carim exploring her experiences of going to the dentist and the mall, but using the visit to the dentist and the mall allowed jayshree to make some implied connections even though she relied more on the combinatorial rule to explain her understanding of the metaphor. while ms carim did not explicitly explore the combinatorial rule with naseema, the verb ‘was’ presented criteria for her to look for when identifying a metaphor in a text. conclusion hammond and gibbens (2005) argue that parents/teachers and learners work collaboratively and this active participation in scaffolded activities can build knowledge and extend understandings. the problem is that hammond and gibbens and other researchers who have explored scaffolding as a pedagogic tool do not demonstrate how scaffolding looks in practice. this paper offers a visual representation of the learning pathways across three lessons. the lct concept of sg provides a promising yet pedagogically responsive approach to illustrate how teachers could scaffold activities in lessons to support learners in producing these pathways independently. using semantic waves, i show how the teacher works with concepts, criteria, text resources and learner understanding. therefore, semantic waves provide a way that teachers can operationalise and design the learning pathways that do all these things that hammond and others talk about in decontextualised ways. as a teacher-educator, i present pre-service teachers with concepts like scaffolding as part of their theory of learning, but this does little to provide them with models of pedagogic practice of what such learning pathways would look at. the analysis exposed pathways that could now be purposefully designed for teacher/learner interaction to support learners in developing independence. making these pathways evident offers affordances for teaching scaffolding to pre-service teachers. further research is necessary for investigating the value of semantic waves as a means of enabling pre-service teachers to track the kinds of interactions that result in learner independence. acknowledgements i would like to thank ms carim, sue, naseema, jayshree and batseba for their participation and permission for this research project. i would also like to thank the wits lct hub for valuable feedback on earlier drafts. competing interests the author declares that no competing interest exists. author’s contributions z.j.a. declares that she is the sole author of this research article. ethical considerations ethical clearance was university of the witwatersrand, human research ethics committee, education, approved, risk level: minimal h20/11/24. funding information the research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or non-profit sectors. data availability the datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the author on reasonable request. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. references barends, z., 2022, ‘pedagogical choices to integrate theory and practice: conceptualisation and insights for literacy teacher education’, reading & writing 13(1), 9. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v13i1.333 bowdle, b.f. & gentner, d., 2005, ‘the career of metaphor’, psychological review 112(1), 193–216. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.112.1.193 brodie, k., jina, z., & modau, s., 2009, ‘challenges in implementing the new mathematics curriculum in grade 10: a case study’, african journal of research in mathematics, science and technology education 13(1), 19–32. curzon, p., waite, j., maton, k. & donohue, j., 2020, ‘using semantic waves to analyse the effectiveness of unplugged 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school, n.d., metaphor, viewed 18 march 2022, from https://www.znnhs.zdnorte.net. appendix 1 a visit to the dentist (story with embedded metaphors) (jina asvat 2020) ‘i woke up on saturday morning with a toothache. mom said that the tooth was a deep red volcano. mom helped me rinse my mouth with warm salt water, and when i gargled, i choked. saltwater drained down my throat, and i was a swimmer in the salty ocean. mom said that it was time to visit the dentist. the dentist’s chair was a submarine, and it dropped lower and lower. i was afraid. i was a captive monkey to be analysed. the tools on the tray were a fence of strange wires that crisscrossed in a crazy pattern. the dentist was a masked scientist looking down from above. he lowered the chair again. i opened my mouth wide. he put strange wires into my mouth. the pain had disappeared, and i was a silver-lined cloud floating above. on the way home, we stopped at the pharmacy to buy the medication. unfortunately, the mall was very busy. we were tiny fish swimming in a sea of people. i couldn’t wait to get out of there and go home. the drive home was a frustrating experience because the holiday traffic had turned the street into a parking lot. i promised to keep my teeth clean. i do not want to be a captive monkey ever again.’ lesson extract: ms carim and sue 58 t so, is he saying that he was swimming in the salty ocean? what is he comparing? 59 l he’s comparing that when he gargles… 60 t yes … 61 l [… h]is mouth, the saltwater drained down and then he is comparing himself to a swimmer in a salty ocean. 62 t yeah. so, you know like when you swim in the salty ocean or not? if you have before, already, you know you inhale that salt and you can taste this salt in your mouth and in your nose and even in your … you can feel it everywhere, isn’t it? 63 l (nods) 64 t so that, that is what it means: ‘mom said it was time to visit the dentist.’ do you like the dentist? 65 l hmm. i’ve never been. 66 t you’re lucky then. ‘the dentist’s chair was a submarine, and it dropped lower and lower.’ 67 l um. was … the dentist’s chair was a submarine? 68 t yes. so, we are comparing the dentist’s chair to a submarine? okay, now listen carefully to the next one: ‘i was afraid. i was a captive monkey to be analysed.’ 69 l i was afraid. 70 t is that a metaphor? 71 l um. yes. 72 t why? 73 l because it has the word was in it. 74 t but are we comparing ‘i was afraid’ to anything? 75 l no. 76 t no. so, okay, so let’s look at the next one: ‘i was a captive monkey to be analysed.’ what do you think of that sentence? 77 l that one is ‘was’ because they’re comparing the boy to a captive monkey. 78 t exactly. so can you see … can you see the difference between those two sentences? 79 l (nods) 80 t yeah. did you manage to underline it, or must i wait for you? 81 l i underlined. 82 t okay. ‘the tools on the tray were a fence of strange wires that crisscrossed in a crazy pattern.’ 83 l and the tools on the tray were a fence of strange wires that crisscrossed in a crazy pattern, the[y] were … 84 t very good, so what, because you’re comparing the tray to … 85 l um, the tray of the tools to ‘like a fence of strange wires that crisscrossed in a crazy pattern’. 86 t yes. ‘the dentist was a masked scientist looking down from above.’ 87 l the dentist was a masked scientist looking down from above. 88 t yeah 89 l so, they [are] comparing the dentist to a masked scientist who was looking down from above. 90 t okay, ‘he lowered the chair again. i opened my mouth wide. he put strange wires into my mouth. the pain had disappeared, and i was a sliver-lined cloud floating above.’ 91 l ‘the pain that disappeared’ and ‘i was a silver-lined cloud floating above’. they[are] comparing … the boy is comparing himself ‘to a sliver-lined cloud floating from above’. 92 t could you perhaps explain what he means there, though? why is he saying [he] is floating above? 93 l um, because the dentist lifted the chair. 94 t yeah, it could be that also, that’s not a bad observation. but it could also be that, you know, like sometimes when the dentist injects in your mouth and then they numb the pain in it [and it] feels like you’re floating because you can’t feel anything. but it could be also like you said, he lowered the chair and then he felt almost like he’s flying. you know, down. ‘on the way home, we stopped at the pharmacy to buy the medication. unfortunately, the mall was very busy. we were tiny fish swimming in a sea of people’. 95 l we were tiny fish swimming in a sea of people. compare, they [are] comparing him and his mommy, to tiny fish who are swimming in a sea of lots of people. 96 t yeah, so have you been to the shop when it’s really busy? and you just see crowds and crowds of people in front of you. 97 l yeah. 98 t okay. also is ‘the mall was very busy’. is that a metaphor? 99 l umm, no. 100 t why? 101 l because they’re not comparing the mall to anything. footnotes 1. only one teacher was available to participate in the study. 2. zoom is an app that allows you to set up collaborative virtual video and audio conferencing, etc. 3. in this study, i did not include the analysis of batseba’s lesson as her mother also interacted in the lesson. a parent’s presence would influence the findings. 4. was and were are past tense forms of the verb to be. 5. a term taken from jackson (2016). abstract introduction research methods and design discussion conclusion acknowledgements references footnote about the author(s) zelda barends department of curriculum studies, faculty of education, stellenbosch university, stellenbosch, south africa citation barends, z., 2022, ‘pedagogical choices to integrate theory and practice: conceptualisation and insights for literacy teacher education’, reading & writing 13(1), a333. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v13i1.333 original research pedagogical choices to integrate theory and practice: conceptualisation and insights for literacy teacher education zelda barends received: 23 aug. 2021; accepted: 16 jan. 2022; published: 10 mar. 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the theory and practice divide is a persistent conundrum in teacher education. moreover, foundation phase literacy teacher education is no exception because such graduates are expected to acquire knowledge and skills to address the challenges of the classroom. objectives: this article focuses on the application of an integrated approach to literacy teacher education. method: this conceptual article is structured to reflect how common pedagogical choices such as service learning, situated learning, reflection, and student support were used to design and enable integrated student learning experiences within teacher preparation programmes. results: by exploring the educational value of these pedagogical choices that informed the integrated approach, i developed an integration framework to inform the pedagogy of literacy education. conclusion and contribution: the integration framework reflecting the catalytic pedagogical choices could guide teacher educators regarding the approaches to address the persistent conundrum in overcoming the theory and practice divide in teacher preparation programmes. keywords: pedagogical choices; theory and practice divide; integrate theory and practice; literacy teacher education; pre-service students. introduction the question of which instructional strategies should be employed to integrate theory and practice needs to be addressed to contribute to meaningful learning experiences for pre-service students. learning to teach is a complex activity that is premised upon the acquisition, integration, and application of different types of knowledge practices (department of higher education and training [dhet] 2011:10) to develop and supply skilled instructional practitioners (ball & forzani 2011:18). to supply these skilled practitioners, teacher education programmes are professional programmes offered at higher education institutions and consist of two core components: coursework and work-integrated learning (wil). practical learning which refers to learning from and in practice is a component of wil and a vehicle that teacher education programmes could use to help student teachers to develop tacit knowledge which is an essential component of learning to teach (dhet 2015:10). even though the revised policy on the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications states that practical learning should make provision for learning from and in practice, this policy does not describe how such learning could be emulated in courses. nevertheless, it does link the learning of practice to wil which is intended to enhance student learning by integrating formal learning (theory) and workplace learning (practice) (barends 2015:65). appropriate pedagogical choices could enhance the quality of teacher education, an aspect that is questioned in literature as universities are still criticised for their unsatisfactory attempts to prepare teachers for the classroom, thus producing incompetent beginning teachers (gravett 2012:2). teacher education programmes are considered to be too theoretical and, as a result, teachers are not prepared for the reality of the classroom (gravett, henning & eiselen 2011). these programmes appear to deal with the theory and practice division in two ways, one being the ‘translating-of-theory-to-practice’ approach (gravett 2012:4). this simply means that theory is supplied in the coursework component of teacher education programmes and students then apply, implement, and test this knowledge through completion of assignments and practical experiences at school – the latter being the wil component of the programme. this is a rather linear approach to teacher education. another way in which teacher education programmes deal with the theory and practice divide is by simply increasing the practicum component of courses (gravett 2012:4). the gap between theory and practice has been a persistent issue. in fact, korthagen (2011:32) asserts the relationship between theory and practice has remained the central problem of teacher education worldwide. according to wubbels, korthagen and brekelmans (1997:76), the gap between theory and practice, or the difficulty to use or apply theoretical notions in classroom practice, exists because the context of practice differs from the context in which the theory was developed. in addition, theory is abstract and practice is concrete. gravett (2012:4–5) notes that theory is the formal knowledge about ideas, declarative knowledge, or episteme while practice is the practical knowledge or knowledge of how to do the work of teaching, also known as procedural knowledge. therefore, the national council for accreditation of teacher education (ncate 2010:ii) suggests that teacher education must shift away from a norm that emphasises academic preparation (theory) and coursework loosely linked to school-based experiences (practice). instead, it should move to programmes that are fully grounded in practice and interwoven with academic content. a growing body of evidence shows that student learning should take place in university lecture halls as well as be situated in workplaces and communities (barends 2015:65). due to the current reality of the disjuncture between context of theory and practice, educational theory as taught in teacher education programmes seldom gets a place in the practical teaching process. the preparation of pre-service teachers should be approached with rigour and intentionality (darling-hammond et al. 2019). moreover, literacy teacher education should be no different. research in literacy teacher education has shown that teacher education programmes ought to connect coursework with contexts as pre-service teachers need not only to demonstrate the mastery of content and pedagogical knowledge but also to have extensive opportunities to enact their knowledge in practice settings (feimen-nemser 2001:1016). furthermore, teacher education programmes should move away from programmes that are focused on what pre-service teachers need to know to a curriculum that is organised around core practices where knowledge, skills and professional identities are developed in the process of learning (grossman, hammerness & mcdonald 2009:274). pre-service teachers should be exposed to learning opportunities where the focus is on skills, knowledge, and reflection. taking guidance from grossman et al. (2009) and in an attempt to lessen the separation between theory and practice i had to explore the pedagogical choices i needed to make within my teaching so that pre-service literacy teachers can master content and knowledge of teaching as well as enact this knowledge in practice and in essence integrate their learning and, in doing so, disrupt the linear approach to literacy teacher education. since little is known about how literacy teacher educators are connecting fieldwork and coursework, i argue that an integrated student learning approach for the preparation of pre-service literacy teachers is needed to respond to the theory and practice divide. the purpose of this article is to explore the educational value of the pedagogical choices that informed a teaching initiative which led to integrated student learning within the literacy context. beyond illustrating the scholarly decisions that influenced the design of the initiative and describing the student experience based on researcher reflections, this article proposes a conceptual framework to provide a strategy to integrate theory and practice by delving into the theory used to understand the pre-service literacy student teacher learning. this conceptual article is organised into two sections culminating in the presentation of the integration framework. in the first i provide the background to the pre-service literacy teacher initiative and then illustrate how action learning was used as a lens to clarify the learning of the pre-service literacy teachers. in the second section i examine the pedagogical or scholarly decisions that informed the initiative and illustrate how the pre-service literacy student teachers learnt as a result of this learning experience. background: description of the initiative as a language and literacy education lecturer in the foundation phase bachelor of education (bed) programme at a research-intensive university, i became increasingly aware that the programme was not preparing the pre-service literacy student teachers to become effective teachers of language and literacy. as a response to this, i developed an integrated learning initiative that forms part of a final-year language and literacy education module. this module is positioned within the foundation phase bed programme which is an initial teacher education programme of which the primary purpose is to certify beginner teachers’ teaching. these teachers are responsible for laying the foundation for 5–9-year-olds’ literacy, mathematics, and beginning knowledge learning. my initial goal was to adapt my teaching approach to address the theory and practice divide in teacher education programmes. i therefore planned and implemented the teaching initiative which resulted in the addition of a service component to the language and literacy module. this module aimed to equip students with the knowledge and skills required to use children’s literature and teach literacy and language to afrikaans home language users. teachers of literacy have the responsibility to facilitate learning so that learners are taught to read and write. by implication, these teachers need to develop competence in teaching the essential literacy skills such as phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension (department of education 2008:12; eds. snow, burns & griffin 1998). this module thus provided pre-service literacy students with an opportunity to engage in a situated, authentic teaching experience at a primary school in the vicinity of the university for 11 weeks. pre-service literacy student teachers (n = 78) worked in pairs which allowed them to form a co-teaching relationship. each pair was assigned a group of learners (n = 10) and spent two afternoons in the workplace, an authentic context where foundation phase learners (grades 1–3) are taught. during this time students could practise and develop their teaching repertoire for the teaching of phonics, a core literacy practice (ball et al. 2009). in doing so, both the learners and the students were exposed to a concrete learning experience which also alludes to reciprocity within the service learning context (billig & eyler 2003:14). this initiative was grounded in an ‘accommodating-relationship’1 partnership established between a primary school and the university. what eventually emanated from this partnership is what billig and eyler (2003:14) refer to as a symbiotic relationship since the initiative enabled advantages for both partners. parallel to engaging in the teaching of unscripted phonics lessons (the community activity or service), reflection, which is a central principle to teaching and learning (harford & macruairc 2008), played an integral role in the lecture hall. reflection was used to help students make meaning of their real-life work experience. the co-teaching relationship also provided another space for meaning making and much-needed student support. supervision and mentoring played an integral part of the new module structure. at times i adopted the role of supervisor and mentor for students engaging in the initiative. i used reflection to facilitate the pre-service literacy teachers’ translation of the educational theory of teaching phonics into practice. during these reflective conversations i placed the students’ practice at the centre of their learning and through a process of analysis, helped them to make meaning of their experience. this is an example of inductive teaching and learning, an epistemological position in learning where students’ experiences are central to their learning (prince & felder 2006). moreover, considering how the various pedagogical approaches were used in this initiative, a non-linear approach to student learning evolved. research methods and design illustrating the pre-service literacy student teacher learning as a result of this initiative is an easy task as it demands a mere explanation of the processes employed. however, understanding the student teachers’ learning experience requires an analytical lens – a lens that enables the separation of the hidden layers in practical work. to obtain an understanding of their learning experience, the action learning cycle was employed to extract meaning and understand the students’ learning within the initiative. action learning when engaging in action learning, one creates an opportunity to learn from good practice, and to develop new ideas and solutions (marquardt 2004). action learning was to me as lecturer-researcher (teacher educator) to map out the ways the student teachers learnt while engaging in the initiative. in doing so, i could develop a strategy to support future teaching and learning activities within teacher education programmes. reflection, which is an important step in the action learning cycle (rhodes & brook 2021:75), demands that one makes sense of and reflects on past or ongoing experiences in order to change future practice (reynolds 2011:6). for the context of this study, it was imperative that i reflect on my own initiative and establish if and how it enabled student learning. understanding this would inform how the initiative should be adapted to enhance student learning. as part of the action learning process, reflection was used to inform my learning (marquardt 2004) – learning that would inform the pedagogy of teacher education programmes. by engaging in reflection, i thought deeply about what i was doing and why. i kept a teaching journal where i noted my ideas and thoughts on concepts. this was done from the inception of the initiative. consequently, the journal allowed me to go back and extract meaning while analysing the reflective notes, keeping in mind the ideas that emerged. there were three questions that guided my reflections: what are the students learning while engaging in the initiative? how are the students learning while engaging in the initiative? how is students’ learning enabled through this initiative? thematic analysis guided the inductive coding and identification of themes (ayres 2008:868). i read the journal to identify preliminary codes (benaquisto 2008:88). furthermore, i grouped these codes into broader themes according to the questions mentioned above. i had a very tacit role in this study as i was searching for meaning in my own experiment. inevitably, i was both the researcher and research participant while analysing my own data. i often became lost in this process, but this is expected within qualitative research as the researcher has a multiplicity of roles and responsibilities which are often enacted simultaneously (leckie 2008:771). however, i discussed the data with colleagues and inductively looked at themes related to pre-service literacy student teacher learning. these discussions, a means to determine trustworthiness (miller 2008:910), afforded me an opportunity to critically engage with and explore the data while refining my thinking during analysis. the action learning cycle which consists of four steps, namely act, reflect, learn, and plan (garratt 2011:30), was used to formalise, direct, and structure my thinking processes about student learning as a result of the initiative. as mentioned, i adopted the role of researcher and participant in this study. this may be considered a limitation; however, i strived to ensure that ethical considerations such as data accuracy and anonymity (denscombe 2007:141) were adhered to. ethical clearance was obtained before collecting any data for the purposes of this study. discussion to extrapolate the learnings of the pre-service literacy student teacher while participating in the integrated learning initiative, i had to examine the pedagogical choices that informed the initiative. what follows is a discussion highlighting the pedagogical value of the integrated initiative. pedagogical choices informing the initiative the concerns about teacher quality (dhet 2015:15) and teacher education (gravett 2012) influenced the decision to develop an integrated learning initiative. integration refers to the process of putting together formal learning and productive work (cooper, orrell & bowden 2010:40). in other words, connecting theory and practice as it involves the application of theory with real-world problem-solving, abstract thinking, practical actions, and discipline-specific skills or what shulman (1987) defined as ‘pedagogical content knowledge’ (cantalini-williams et al. 2014:5; cooper et al. 2010:40). darling-hammond, bullmaster and cobb (1995) describe integration by stating: effective teaching is context based and must be adapted to individual students. successful teacher preparation must involve not only a foundation of theoretical knowledge but also a rich array of classroom experiences that help teacher candidates integrate their formal knowledge of teaching and learning with the knowledge of adaptive practice that can be gained only by working with the guidance of experienced teachers. (p. 95) integration is not simply an action but rather a learning process which is encouraged for student learning in the workplace and university classrooms. this should require students to put theoretical knowledge into action and develop the ability to act knowledgeably and responsibly in the workplace context (cooper et al. 2010:40). developing integrated learning experiences is complex as it is driven by opportunities for students to apply their knowledge. all teacher education programmes include practicums, teaching practice, or practice teaching activities throughout their curriculum. during these instances, students are placed at sites to learn in and from practice. turney et al. (1985) state that such activities should be carefully planned like campus-based courses with a clinical curriculum. to achieve this, wil or practice experiences must be re-evaluated, coursework should be reimagined, and pedagogical approaches to teacher education should be reconsidered (grossman 2010). teacher education programmes are criticised for their linear approach to student learning (gravett 2012). the traditional approach to teacher education is that students learn theory and aspects of theory in the lecture hall and then test or apply this theory in practice during various teaching practice or wil experiences. these tests are executed through activities such as the teaching of lessons, the development of teaching and learning materials, and the writing of reflective reports while student performativity in teaching is assessed. research has criticised this approach to teacher education seeing as teaching is complex and learning to teach can only happen if practical content knowledge is central to teacher education (young et al. 2001:1). the balance between what is required of teachers and what is offered to them has a significant impact on the quality of their teaching and their capacity to implement effective instruction (young et al. 2001:1). with this in mind, i reflected on what pedagogical choices i had to make to facilitate the integration of theory and practice as well as how i structure my module to put practical content knowledge at the centre of my teaching. accomplishing this would disrupt the linearity within teacher education programmes. service learning, situated learning, reflection, and student support were integral pedagogical choices that made provision for the various convoluted dimensions at play regarding learning within teacher education. service learning service learning was integrated into the language and literacy module to place practical content knowledge at the centre of my teaching. this integration was not only informed by service learning being renowned to advance student learning in general, but also because it strengthens the students’ ability to apply what they have learnt in the real world (petker & petersen 2014:125). service learning, premised on experiential learning, is a reflective, relational pedagogy that combines community or public service with structured opportunities for learning (petersen & osman 2013:6). pre-service literacy students were placed in a situated learning space (a school environment) for 11 weeks. this learning space provided an authentic workplace where students engaged in the teaching of phonics lessons to foundation phase learners (addressing learners’ phonic knowledge was a need identified by the school). parallel to the 11-week service learning, students engaged in finding research-based answers for teachers’ phonics-related questions in the lecture hall. materials drew on topics covered by lecturers which include the relevance of teaching phonics, instructional routines, lesson components, and the assessment of phonics knowledge and skills. the purpose of the module of which this initiative formed part is to equip students with the knowledge, skills, and methods needed to use children’s literature and teach literacy and language in afrikaans as a home language. the service learning was structured in such a way to make provision for a literacy programme that focuses on the teaching of phonics. the content covered in the lectures was driven by guided reflection and conducted through robust discussions. through reflection, student learning was supported in that students were helped to make meaning from their experiences. the experience was therefore central to their learning and allowed them to be actively involved in contributing to their own learning. this is what morton (1996) calls a service-orientated approach to service learning. this approach also illustrates an example of an inductive approach to teaching and learning (morton 1996:279) which addresses the critique against teacher education as the focus is placed on practice as opposed to theory only. by implication, the pre-service literacy students were constructing and discovering knowledge while engaging in a process where they discovered theory as opposed to being taught theory and then being instructed to apply it at a later stage. the application of theoretical learnings to authentic or real-world situations was the initial goal that informed the planning and design of the initiative. however, adopting service learning as pedagogy afforded me an opportunity to draw on the value of situated learning experiences to inform student learning while recognising the complexity of teacher education. situated learning as mentioned before, it is the norm for student teachers in teacher education programmes to be placed at external sites for practical work. it is encouraged to ensure that through these placements, student teachers gain teaching experience in a variety of school contexts to reflect the socio-economic and cultural mix of society (deacon 2015). however, for this initiative the sole focus was not exposure to diversity, but rather student learning. therefore, intentional decisions had to be made about student placement for optimal student learning. students were placed at the service learning sites to grant them access to authentic workspaces so that they could draw on concrete experiences for their learning. situated learning allows for this as a situated learning space is one where learning and application thereof take place in the same location (lave & wenger 1991:29–30). students were assigned to teach phonics to learners at their specific service learning sites. thus, they were situated in a real-world environment with their peers in a co-teaching relationship. this led to the establishment of a community of practice. the community of practice was further expanded to include experts such as myself as the lecturer and facilitator of learning, as well as invited teachers from the service learning sites. as experts, we facilitated lecture sessions and supervised the work sessions at the sites which ran parallel to one another. the students, who had varying levels of expertise in the teaching of phonics, participated in the stipulated teaching and learning activities under our guidance. the weekly engagements were guided by carefully developed teaching and learning activities that considered students’ expertise at the time, and this evolved as student expertise progressed. moreover, students’ participation evolved and their responsibility for the teaching gradually increased. lave and wenger (1991) define this as legitimate peripheral participation. in the traditional, linear approach to teacher education, students would have abstracted theory by synthesising facts gained in the lectures and would then be expected to demonstrate their understanding of the theory by completing an assignment and applying this knowledge at practice sites. however, within this initiative, participation in this real-world environment broadened their learning to focus not only on theoretical content knowledge, but also on the rich tacit knowledge needed for explicit phonics instruction. this environment provided students with real-world teaching and learning scenarios. the prolonged engagement intended to foster their assigned group of learners so as to capture the group’s interest as their interactions for the 11 weeks would result in the students’ better understanding of the theoretical knowledge. students would therefore develop the ability to recognise patterns within the authentic learning space. through guided reflection they could judge the validity and reliability of new information as they acquired it. moreover, their perceptions could be challenged about learners and how they learn. this teaches students that teaching approaches need to be flexible to ensure that all learners learn. students should be able to identify conceptual coherence and make strong links between theory and practice, a characteristic of a good quality teacher education programme (council on higher education 2011:59). furthermore, the students were provided with an opportunity to observe, analyse, prepare, and teach a set of phonics lessons in an authentic and real-world environment while being situated in a context they would not usually choose themselves (robinson 2014). this experience was used to help students reason in practice and experience unfamiliar school contexts (robinson & rusznyak 2020), thus drawing on the strengths of situated learning as a pedagogical choice. reflection played an integral role in helping students to reason or make meaning. reflection placing practice and the student experience at the centre of student learning demanded a different presence from the student in their own learning. reflection was used to enable students to make meaning of their experience as well as to get students involved in contributing to their own learning. for the context of service learning, bringle and hatcher (1999:153) explain reflection as a process in which service learners think critically about their experiences as they look back on the implications of their actions and determine what they have learnt or achieved. reflection should be a process in which students examine and interpret their experiences in order to learn from them. reflection was iterative in this initiative as it took place at various stages. within the co-teaching relationship students were asked to reflect on and document their experiences in narrative form. in the narratives, students had to describe their experiences of teaching the unscripted phonics lessons by referring to what they did and illustrate the extent of learner participation. these descriptive narratives were used as a stimulus for the reflective conversations that emanated in the lecture hall. the reflective process demanded that students be analytical as they had to analyse concepts, evaluate their experience, and hypothesise theory (rusznyak & walton 2011). this process of analysis highlights the complex learning rooted in teacher education (cooper 2007). reflection was an enabler for this process. as the students analysed their experiences of teaching phonics (their data) they developed a need to find the facts, rules, procedures, and guiding principles, which they either found in their data or were helped to discover for themselves through their co-teaching relationship. this critical reflective process allowed students to ask questions about aspects of their teaching, the authentic learning space and about content. reflection was used to encourage students to talk about their teaching experience to show the ‘what, how and why’ of their teaching, thus creating opportunities for meaning making and reflective learning. the thinking behind this pedagogical choice was to create opportunities to have conversations that were theoretically robust (loughran 2019). these conversations took place parallel to the students’ teaching. upon reflection, the conversations seemed to allow for changes in their understanding of concepts and theory. the aim of the conversations was to allow students to revisit their practice while building a knowledge base for teaching. this learning informed their future practice, a process that shulman defines as pedagogical reasoning (shulman 1987). reflection was not used as a straightforward and uncontentious teaching and learning tool. instead, it was used deliberately as a pedagogical tool to integrate theory and practice. being able to reflect on teaching is a fundamental practice for teachers (biggs 2003; boud, keogh & walker 1985). initially, reflection was an abstract concept for the students but through focused engagement, they learnt its value. the students used reflection to critically analyse and evaluate their own practice while learning through each opportunity. reflection enabled both the students and i to inductively explore their experiences which in turn contributed to their learning. this gave rise to what black and plowright (2010:246) describe as reflective learning for professional practice. reflection was used as an empirical method to build pre-service literacy student learning and develop professional practice which inevitably aimed to disrupt the linear approaches to teacher education. furthermore, the students were actively involved and engaged in the abstractions of learning to teach phonics while situated purposefully within supportive relationships with peers, exemplifying collaborative learning (johnson & johnson 1999) and the social construction of knowledge (smith 2001). student support this initiative necessitated a unique way of student learning which was embedded in an authentic and real-world environment reliant on collaborative learning. co-teaching, supervision, and mentoring were used as a collaborative learning strategy to support the student learning while students were actively engaged in a contextual (situated) learning experience. co-teaching: linking theory and practice is an intricate process and cannot be achieved without purposefully scaffolding student learning. for this initiative, the student pairs had to share the responsibility of teaching the group of learners that were assigned to them. they had to plan together, teach together, and evaluate their own teaching. this purposeful co-teaching relationship was dependent on collaboration and served as student support. research has illustrated the value of collaborative learning (johnson & johnson 1999; slavin 1996). co-teaching may be considered an application of collaborative learning (friend et al. 2010) as it is a creative way to connect with and support peers while learning (villa, thousand & nevin 2013). furthermore, in a co-teaching situation multiple activities can occur simultaneously. students could play around with various teaching scenarios while teaching phonics such as differentiated teaching, teaching while the partner observes or assists, or team teaching (cook & friend 1995). students applied a combination of these approaches as they deemed necessary in their learner group situation. some students taught their phonics lessons and were able to analyse their experiences. as the students learnt to reflect on practice by engaging in the reflection sessions hosted during the lecture period, they constantly explored and discussed their experiences. in doing so, they made meaningful abstractions of their experiences and choices within the authentic learning space. this would not have been possible had students worked independently and in isolation. co-teaching is usually drawn upon when a generalist (teacher) and a specialist work together to achieve an educational objective (friend 2008:9). in this case, two novices worked together as equal partners who shared the responsibility towards obtaining a planned goal. the students managed the learning of the learners in their group as well as their own learning. the co-teaching relationship therefore enabled the students to be actively involved in their own learning, constructing their theoretical knowledge while reflecting and being situated in practice. supervision and mentoring: my reflection on this initiative suggests that the process could have been more efficient had the students been assigned a mentor teacher to supervise them with their group of learners and to help them make meaning throughout the process. however, sourcing such human capital within the boundaries of the initiative was difficult, and securing such help would speak to the ideology of teacher education. teachers from the service learning sites did in fact supervise the work sessions at the sites; however, only nine teachers were available to support students by probing and encouraging their approach as well as understanding learner responses. teachers also supported the novices to enact practices associated with teaching of phonics. these teachers were invited to the reflective conversations that happened on campus; however, the invitations were declined due to the teachers’ own responsibilities. throughout the course of this co-teaching initiative, my role as lecturer evolved into supervisor and mentor. students were presented with challenging experiences because of the situated learning space. raised levels of anxiety and uncertainty were often noted among students during the lecture periods when they invariably first debriefed before being encouraged to reflect on their experiences. research shows that students and workplaces require support before, during, and after practice-focused programmes. students needed support on how to approach learners as well as how to mitigate their expectations. additionally, they needed ongoing support to navigate their way through this adapted approach to teaching and learning, since the nature of the learning was different to that to which they had become accustomed. therefore, support was scaffolded through the weekly lectures and reflection sessions. student mentoring was twofold: explicit guidance was given to students regarding what they had to do within the initiative and how this related to their campus-based coursework, and, during their reflection process, i tried to help students understand the learning process. the scaffolding of students’ reflection allowed them to see the learning process holistically which meant i was able to help students identify good teaching practices associated with the teaching of phonics. as such they were not left to discover these lessons on their own (darling-hammond 2006). in summary, this initiative used common pedagogical approaches such as service learning, situated learning, reflection, and student support to inform the pedagogy of a literacy and language education module that attempted to address the theory and practice divide. it was context-based and provided students with a prolonged opportunity of real-world experiences (see figure 1). structured and purposeful activities helped students to integrate their formal knowledge associated with the teaching of practice. figure 1: integration framework. figure 1 provides a framework of common pedagogical approaches used to inform the pedagogy of a literacy and language education module which attempted to address the theory and practice divide. this integration framework shows that adding service learning to the theoretical literacy and language education module presented an opportunity for practice to be placed at the centre of student learning. because the service learning was actioned within a situated context, students could draw on their experiences to conceptualise knowledge for learning to teach phonics – a core practice for literacy teachers. pre-service literacy student teachers had to document and analyse their experiences so as to better their understanding thereof. they had to put forward the ‘what, how and why’ of their teaching. reflective conversations were used to facilitate this process, thus an inductive approach to teaching and learning was employed to enhance student learning. considering that this is a different approach adopted within teacher education, it was imperative that the students be supported. supervision and mentoring as well as the development of a co-teaching relationship served as a scaffold to student learning. integration is not simply an action but rather a learning process which is encouraged for student learning by considering the knowledge and practice of the workplace and university classrooms. integration of learning is possible if purposeful reflection and carefully planned activities are incorporated (cooper et al. 2010:40). for integration to be achieved, students should be required to put knowledge into action and develop the ability to act knowledgeably and responsibly in the workplace context (cooper et al. 2010:40). while documenting the pre-service literacy student teacher learning experiences and integrating the reform of teacher education programmes with theory and practice, a framework emerged. the framework illustrates the educational value of service learning, situated learning, reflection, and student support as pedagogical choices to integrate theory and practice within a module in a teacher education programme. in addition, it highlights the convoluted dimensions at play and illustrates student learning within the literacy context while disrupting the linearity within teacher education programmes. conclusion the preparation of teachers is a lengthy process which should be filled with high-quality learning experiences based on sound theoretical principles. additionally, time should be allotted for the application of theoretical principles to practice, as well as for reflection on learning (young et al. 2001:1). in this article i illustrated an integrated teaching and learning initiative which was planned as a high-quality learning experience as it was embedded within what ball and forzani (2009:503) consider a practice-focused curriculum for learning about teaching. the approach of this initiative disrupted the traditional, linear approach to teacher education. the integration framework reflects the catalytic pedagogical choices that informed the initiative by combining service learning, situated learning, reflection, co-teaching, and supervision as common pedagogical approaches within teacher education. this framework may enable teacher education programmes to move from common practice to good practice. its pedagogical value encourages the integration of theory and practice. by relying on these as pedagogical choices, attention could be drawn to the knowledge demands of teaching. student learning was organised around practice. students were afforded repeated opportunities to practice, carrying out the interactive work of teaching phonics – a core practice of literacy teachers. this granted students an opportunity to learn to teach by teaching and they did so by spending a prolonged period (11 weeks) in teaching practice embedded in a context that equates with the realities of the workplace. learning in and through workplaces and communities was a determining factor in this initiative. students learnt by teaching and not only by discussing the work of teaching. for the purpose of this study, i drew on my reflections to clarify the learning of the pre-service literacy teachers. however, by gaining insight from the students’ perspective of the initiative, as well as the assessment of students within the initiative, one could explore a different avenue to further inform teacher education programmes. by implication, based on the researcher’s reflections, the findings of this study illustrated how the pre-service literacy student teachers learnt as a result of an alternative approach to teacher education programmes. the findings and the proposed integrated framework could inform the pedagogical choices to teacher education programmes and in so doing help bridge the theory and practice divide in teacher education programmes. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. author’s contributions z.b. contributed to the design and implementation of the research, to the analysis of the results, and to the writing of the manuscript. ethical considerations this article followed all ethical standards for carrying out research, with approval from the research ethics committee: social, behavioural and education research (sber), stellenbosch university (project number 15380). funding information the author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and publication of this article: this work was supported by the national research foundation (grant number 129462). data availability the author confirms that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position any affiliated agency of the author. references ayres, l., 2008, ‘thematic coding and analysis’, in l.m. given (ed.), the sage encyclopaedia of qualitative research methods, vols. 1 & 2, pp. 867–868, sage, thousand oaks, ca. ball, d.l. & forzani, f.m., 2009, ‘the work of teaching and the challenge for teacher education’, journal of teacher education 60(5), 497–511. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487109348479 ball, d.l. & forzani, f.m., 2011, ‘building a common core for learning to teach and connecting professional learning to practice’, american educator 35(2), 17–39, viewed 20 july 2020, from https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/a297056807/aone?u=27uos&sid=bookmark-aone&xid=cf076b80. ball, d.l., sleep, l., boerst, t.a. 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educational laboratory, naperville, il. footnote 1. there is no formal partnership established between the university and the school; however the partnership that does exist is one based on accommodation — both partners accommodate while recognising the combined role they fulfil in teachers’ professional development. abstract introduction background and context objective of the study theoretical framework research methodology results and discussion conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) kofi p. quan-baffour department of adult, community and continuing education, school of educational studies, university of south africa, pretoria, south africa lineo rose johnson department of adult, community and continuing education, school of educational studies, university of south africa, pretoria, south africa citation quan-baffour, k.p. & johnson, l.r., 2022, ‘literacy matters in sustainable livelihood development among refugee adults in south africa’, reading & writing 13(1), a316. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v13i1.316 original research literacy matters in sustainable livelihood development among refugee adults in south africa kofi p. quan-baffour, lineo rose johnson received: 30 may 2021; accepted: 28 feb. 2022; published: 29 apr. 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: political and economic upheavals in the current millennium globally have displaced millions of people, making cross-border and forced migration a reality. many refugees are forced out of their countries and flee to other countries to find new languages with which they are not familiar. south africa as a signatory to the 1954 un convention on refugees and stateless persons accepts refugees (asylum seekers) from all over the world. the displaced persons are mostly illiterate in english and the indigenous languages of their new settlement countries. objectives: the study was set up to investigate the socio-economic value of literacy in the lives of refugee adults in south africa. hence, in this article, literacy refers to the ability to read, write, calculate, communicate and function in any language with a basic understanding in one’s environment. method: this ethnographic qualitative study used interviews, observations and focus group meetings to explore how literacy matters in the sustainable development of entrepreneurial activities among the refugee adults and youths in south africa. the study is grounded in paulo freire’s critical pedagogy theory and has some implications for adult literacy throughout the developing world where millions of adult refugees find themselves vulnerable. results: the study revealed that refugee adults learn functional literacy in english and other 11 local south african languages informally as communication skills for the survival of their small businesses and for social and economic use in their ‘adopted home’. they find it difficult to get employment in the formal sector and often use their ingenuity to create their own jobs for survival and livelihoods in informal trade and entrepreneurship. conclusion: the article concludes that within the public adult learning interventions by the department of basic education, where literacy programmes are offered, refugees should be encouraged and supported in attending formal classes to deal with their livelihoods and small businesses for survival. keywords: functional literacy; sustainable livelihood; communication skills; refugee adults; entrepreneurship; economic use; social use. introduction political and socio-economic unrests have become rampant occurrences during the present millennium in many parts of the world, and africa is no exception. civil wars and political and economic upheavals continue to displace millions of people on the african continent, making cross-border and forced migration familiar (international organisation for migration 2019). literacy, which for this article is described as the ability to read, write, calculate (numeracy), function and communicate in any language with a basic understanding and social use in one’s environment (unesco 2005), becomes a challenge to most of these refugee adults. this article focuses on the dearth of adult literacy of indigenous languages among refugees in south africa, and how their limitations become an impediment to their daily means of survival, socio-economic function, entrepreneurship, and livelihoods. the article is underpinned by paulo freire’s theory of critical pedagogy and literacy as a social justice issue. the research methodology in the article is guided by qualitative ethnographic enquiry through interviews, focus group meetings and observation. the article used thematic methods to analyse and interpret the findings. background and context the political decay and dictatorial regimes in the great lakes region, central african republic, somalia, mali, south sudan, ethiopia and eritrea, to name just a few, and the economic meltdown in many african countries such as zimbabwe, mozambique and others because of political and poor governance are cases in point. many adults and youths forced out of their countries arrive in other countries where none of the local languages is known. apart from the colonial languages (english, french, portuguese and spanish) which have become the de facto official languages or lingua francas, every african country has several indigenous and ethnic languages (quattrini 2019). the refugees or victims of political, religious and economic unrest migrate to countries they regard as safe havens and their adopted homes. these host countries often do not share the lingua francas or local languages that refugees1 used in their home contexts; therefore, forced migration results in refugees being unable to communicate upon arrival. following the definition of literacy used previously, refugees are thus illiterate in their countries of refuge. it is possible that most of the refugees leave their home countries with certain qualifications, economic independence and means of survival for their families but as a result of the struggle to reach their countries of refuge, sometimes their ability to make their livelihoods are lost on the way, leaving them destitute and their means of survival reduced to nothing. their loss can also include their means of communication; as a result, they start to learn foreign languages spoken in their countries of refuge. illiteracy, the inability to read and write, is one of the most complex constructs nested within the four levels of the brain, the person, the learning environment, and the cultural context (thomas, knowland & rogers 2020:2). according to johnson (2016), the impact of adult illiteracy and inability to adapt to cultural and learning environments remains a challenge with governments in formulating and implementing favourable policies. ‘the most crucial means in pulling a country out of poverty, and its underdeveloped status is to eradicate illiteracy continuously’ (yeoh & chu 2012:11). they further affirm that in addition to basic literacy, a pool of productive, trained and skilled human power will also bring social changes to a nation and help to realise the objectives of national policy and development planned by the government. the contemporary literature is pregnant with information on the value of literacy in today’s world. to argue that literacy – the ability to read and write, and use numbers – plays an essential role in people’s socio-economic and political lives in the contemporary world is not an exaggeration. people with good literacy skills enjoy a higher standard of living, have better opportunities for finding jobs, and continue learning new skills to help them in the workplace. a society’s economic prosperity and literacy significantly influence each other as they grow together (yeoh & chu 2012). the role of literacy in rural communities in africa cannot be overemphasised. in the developing world, literacy is an essential instrument for political, social and economic stability within and among nations. literacy is the foundation for lifelong learning and a kind of transformative development for improving individuals’ and communities’ quality of life (quan-baffour & romm 2015:459). literacy never ends; it enables individuals to acquire necessary skills, knowledge and values for a better life. it increases productivity and thereby enhances economic development. indeed, literacy is an indispensable tool for effective participation in today’s world of the knowledge economy. as a phenomenon that covers more than necessary reading, writing, and calculating skills, literacy is useful for the individual, family, community, entrepreneurship, economy, and other sectors of the nation. torres (2010:110) suggests that literacy can and does involve learning and education for a combination of personal satisfaction, healthier family life, more productive livelihoods, services, knowledge of rights and how to insist on them. literacy enhances livelihoods by assisting small-scale entrepreneurs in accessing credit to establish and manage their businesses. it also empowers community members, particularly parents, with the skills to support the education of children. it enables citizens to have a deeper understanding of local and national affairs at the community level to fully participate in civic or social affairs for development (johnson 2016; torres 2009:11). norton and campbell (2010:3) posit that literacy must not be seen only as a set of cognitive skills and should also be recognised as a tool for sociocultural practices associated with reading and writing. the value of literacy covers everyday activities and networks and its traditional role in schools, workplaces, and civic institutions. literacy is embedded in all human endeavours in today’s world, which is why rogers (2010:66) contends that vocational skills training and literacy learning should be integrated instead of keeping them apart. thus, in the vocational context, literacy can be integrated into skills training. using the craft or trade’s embedded literacy or trade as the teaching-learning materials, one learns covertly and overtly (rogers 2010:66). the role of literacy in health among rural women and their families is enormous. when a woman acquires literacy skills, the benefit spills over to the family and even neighbours. literacy among parents, particularly women, can reduce malnutrition and infant mortality. a child of a mother with a basic education has a 25% higher chance of survival than one with an illiterate mother (mckay 2000:62). thus, the mortality rates for children of mothers with no education are twice as high as those for children of mothers with literacy skills. there is a direct link between a woman’s education and the welfare of her children. literacy is critical because it improves healthcare, hygiene, nutrition, family planning, agricultural and other social issues (mckay 2000:57). literacy forms the basis for lifelong learning, that is, learning throughout life (torres 2009, 2010). as signatories to the 1954 un convention on refugees, the relatively peaceful countries on the continent, including south africa, accept refugees from the mainland and even beyond. most of the refugees in south africa come from english and non-english-speaking countries. these include countries from the far and middle east with hindi, arabic and other foreign languages. those from mostly french-speaking, spanish-speaking and portuguese-speaking african countries are illiterate in english and afrikaans and south africa’s 11 official indigenous languages. heugh (2007:4) asserts that the government has thus far failed to take serious cognisance of the relationship between language and literacy on the one hand and social and economic development on the other, for some sectors of society, including refugees in south africa. in the context of this article, literacy is seen not only as technical skills required for specific jobs but as a condition for a new cultural identity for survival in a new socio-economic and political environment. literacy is thus socially situated because it eases communication in the refugee’s pristine environment. that includes buying, selling, marketing of products, and other livelihood activities by new people uprooted by war and economic upheavals. refugees require functional literacy in the dominant languages of their new homeland to survive. unesco (2005:22) describes functional literacy as activities in which literacy is required for effective functioning for the individual, group and community to continue reading, writing, and calculating their own and community’s development. percy and homan (2015:425) affirm that literacy’s contextual nature goes beyond using reading and writing in the performance of everyday tasks to include reading for personal purposes, such as developing one’s knowledge and potential. rogers, patkar and saraswathi (2004), street (2014) and johnson (2016) allude to functional literacy as the process and content of learning to read, write and function relating to the preparation for work and vocational training as well as a means of increasing the productivity of the individual. this is as suggested by kajee (2011) that some literacy interventions can include addressing those who escape war-torn countries, to provide a better life for their families, to access better education, for employment and healthcare opportunities, and to engage in business. as used in this article, literacy focuses on challenges that refugees in south africa who scramble for livelihoods in foreign languages spoken in various provinces of the country face daily. the general lack of employment opportunities in the country and the language barrier exacerbate employment in the formal sector. even where they use their ingenuity to create their own jobs for survival, the refugees still need literacy skills to manage such small businesses successfully. while there are various studies in adult literacy in south africa, very few studies have focused particularly on the plight of refugee adults and their literacy challenges. this study therefore contributes to filling the existing gap in research on literacy for refugees in south africa. objective of the study this qualitative study’s main objective was to explore the value of literacy in various south african languages in order to promote the sustainable development of entrepreneurial activities among refugee adults in south africa. based on the introductory background, this article advocates for better livelihoods for refugees in south africa through literacy either formally or informally. research questions the following research questions were used in addressing the problem being studied: how does the knowledge and usage of south african languages facilitate entrepreneurial activities among refugee adults in south africa? how can refugees benefit from learning local languages in their daily interactions and communication with both the local people and their fellow refugees in south africa? what interventions can the south african departments of basic education, and small business enterprise, in partnership with other stakeholders, create in addressing refugees’ financial initiatives and literacy challenges? theoretical framework this study is grounded in the critical pedagogy theory, of which paulo freire is the chief proponent. through his theory of critical pedagogy, paulo freire has made an enormous contribution to educational transformation in our time because the struggle for the socio-economic and political emancipation of the oppressed still draws from his insights and experiences in brazil where he started his work with illiterate, economic and politically marginalised oppressed communities. the ideas and thoughts he expressed in his book, the pedagogy of the oppressed, are needed today as much as when they were first articulated and published in the 1970s (quan-baffour 2012). while there are other critical pedagogy theorists such as ivan illich, john holt, ira shor, john taylor gatto, matt hern and peter mclaren, paulo freire’s theory stood out as the most relevant to the study and was hence selected for this article for his action-reflection praxis or approach to literacy issues. unlike some proponents such as illich on de-schooling society (1971), the underlying principle of freire’s critical pedagogy is to use education as a process and method of setting people free from political, social and economic dilemmas and inadequacies. therefore, critical pedagogy calls for reflection and action upon the world to transform it (freire 1974). critical pedagogy is based on the premise that men and women are essentially unfree and inhabit a world rife with contradictions and asymmetries of power and privilege (dunkerly 2011; mclaren 2009:61; vassallo 2012:2). thus, education may either contribute to conformity and perpetuate existing political, economic and cultural order or reject it. therefore, the theory emphasises the objective and unbiased reflection on existing knowledge and practice (glass 2010). according to freire (2000:92), individuals are unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise incomplete reality. from the grassroots literacy, numeracy and skills learning to highly advanced formalised programmes, education should liberate adult men and women from ignorance, poverty and helplessness. from the above perspective, it is assumed that every human being, no matter how ignorant or submerged in the culture of silence is capable of learning or has the right to learn (freire 1974). the theory indicates that education should equip individual adults with essential skills and knowledge to navigate adequately well in their environments with confidence. critical pedagogy, therefore, has a significant influence on the socio-economically and politically oppressed people. that includes refugees, that is, people uprooted from their own countries by natural and human-made disasters who lack communication (language) skills for their places of refuge. they were dispossessed of their humanity because of their vulnerable circumstances as unemployed, marginalised, dispossessed, poor and destitute men and women in society. lately, in various countries, particularly in south africa, the vulnerability of refugees is exacerbated by xenophobia, defined as the fear of or hatred for foreigners or strangers, as embodied in discriminatory attitudes and behaviour, and often culminating in violence, abuses of all types, and exhibitions of hatred (mogekwu 2005). the theory conscientises and motivates them to seek immediate practical solutions to transform their circumstances through basic education such as literacy and numeracy. giroux (2010) submits that critical pedagogy allows people to read, write and learn from themselves, engaging in a culture of questioning that demands far more competence than rote learning and application of acquired skills. the theory advocates for adult learners to relate learning to their lived experiences and thereby write themselves in the concrete conditions of their daily lives. the theory also has some important implications for literacy and adult education (teaching and learning) throughout the developing world where millions of adult refugees find themselves vulnerable. as acknowledged by quan-baffour (2012), the educational ideas of freire have entered scholarly discourse from the most cosmopolitan centres to the most remote corners of the earth. the growing income gap between the rich and the poor in our midst today and the lack of education (knowledge and skills) among the economically active adults could be some of the consequences of lack of and inequality in access to education (quan-baffour 2012). the situation demands a critical reflection on education that can equip refugee adults with knowledge and skills to ensure their livelihood and improve their circumstances. in everyday life, humans engage in literacy to get things done, rather than develop literacy skills per se (macharia & lind 2010). the rural women who roast corn or sell fruits by the roadside and taxi ranks or sell indigenous crafts to tourists in the sub-saharan african towns and cities covertly and overtly employ and practise some form of literacy skills in all their business transactions and communication with their clients. in the world where human rights are often abused or encroached on, civic literacy can make people insist on or fight for their rights and understand their responsibilities as citizens and how the various arms of government function. literacy thus helps individuals fight for their rights, defend and liberate themselves from all forms of intimidation, abuses, and servitude. research methodology this article results from an ethnographic study undertaken to determine how literacy matters to the lives of refugee adults in south africa. the research was ethnographic because it related to the lives and activities of a group of people – refugee adults. creswell (2014:14) defines ethnography as an inquiry where patterns of behaviour, language and actions of entire cultural groups in natural settings are observed and interviewed to express their issues. the study was positioned in the constructivist paradigm. thus, it utilises various qualitative research methods in the form of interviews, focus group discussions and observations where the value of literacy among refugees in south africa was explored. the integrative research approach can facilitate the construction of robust strategies provided the problem situation lets one decide the methodology (niaz 2008). for this reason, the two researchers used multiple qualitative methods and approaches to data collection, which were likely to result in complementary strengths and non-overlapping weaknesses (johnson & onwuegbuzie 2004). the researchers used face-to-face interviews, focus group discussions and observations. as an ethnographic study the interviews, focus group discussions and observations were extended to a period of 5 months with the respondents to explore how literacy matters in the sustainable development of entrepreneurial activities among refugees in south africa. sometimes interviews and meetings had to be rescheduled when participants were too busy during the week. in some instances, interviews and focus group discussions were done after hours when participants were at their homes and on weekends for those who took days off, particularly on sundays after their church services. each interview session took about 30–40 min to complete, considering that these were very busy people trying to make ends meet. however, the focus group discussions faced several challenges, as many were cancelled due to the respondents’ time constraints and the discordance in logistical arrangements. it was also challenging to organise traders in the same businesses to come together for a single meeting for practical and logistical reasons. the data collection methods were supplemented with field notes that the researchers compiled for their several interactions and discussions with the respondents in their business spaces and selling stalls, meeting them over lunch or short breaks, in-between their busy days. the researchers integrated into the empirical research qualitative research methods where participants were interviewed and observed to get in-depth views on the role of literacy in their sustainable business enterprises. the advantages of ethnographic studies include staying and interacting with respondents in their settings where one gets to know them better and build trust between the researchers and the respondents. once the respondents grow to trust the researchers or get tired of any pretence, they can share their genuine experiences. population and sampling strategy the question of sampling arises directly from defining the population on which the study will focus (cohen, manion & morrison 2010:100). the refugee adults in south africa constituted the entire population for this investigation. as kajee (2011:434) observed, accurate statistics surrounding legal and non-legal immigrants in the country are difficult to establish, but what is clear is that they are a minority, yet are equally deserving of attention in literacies and the education system. due to time and financial constraints, the study focused on refugee adults subsets in four cities in the nine provinces, namely pretoria in gauteng, mafikeng in north west, kimberley in the northern cape and welkom in the free state. purposive and snowball or network approach sampling methods were used to ensure reaching the information-rich 100 respondents in their setting and meeting the criteria of issues in the study. the purposive sampling technique was used in selecting 100 participants engaged in livelihood activities in the form of small-scale businesses such as hair and beauty salons, dressmaking, shoemaking or repairs, tuckshops or spaza shops, fruit and vegetable shops, internet cafés and african foodstuff and restaurants. another determining factor arose from the size of the provinces and hence of the cities. while some of the locals speak english or afrikaans, there are dominant languages spoken in each province and region. refugees are therefore obliged to conform linguistically to their context and ‘do as the romans do’ by speaking the commonly spoken language. the 100 participants were refugee adults involved in various entrepreneurial activities mostly located in the city centres, townships and informal settlements2 of the selected cities and provinces, as mentioned above. after meeting one participant, the researchers requested to be linked to another entrepreneur who is a refugee. they were then able to secure appointments with the next participant through transect walks, and mobile phones, after which arrangements to meet the respondents in their respective business spaces were finalised within the 5-month timeframe. both male and female refugees participated in the study because they met the criteria for inclusion as refugee business owners. there were 52 female participants, translating to 52%, and 48% male participants. the participants in the study were between 18 and 40 years of age. data analysis de vos et al. (2011:309) affirm that the data collection methods in qualitative studies were analysed systematically to provide insights into the behaviour displayed and the meanings and interpretations that participants give to their lifeworlds, through an interpretive analysis. the researchers used the interpretive approach to analyse the data where they arranged the data by coding, clustering and comparing the narratives and conversations from the participants as suggested by roberts, dowell and nie (2019). the themes that were formulated in the subsequent section were drawn from the data that reflected social justice issues and marginalisation and discrimination of refugees as they try to become self-reliant in meeting their economic and financial needs. the themes illustrate some of their daily experiences and encounters with the clients of their small businesses. the thematic analysis using iterative processes therefore facilitated the formulation of themes, which stemmed from the questions using the interview questions as stated below. some direct verbatim accounts from the participants were used in formulating themes and accordingly formed the sub-headings used in the results and discussion section: what they do for a living and the motivation for it. when, how and why they started their business and their relationship with their clients. the use of various languages in conducting business. challenges encountered working and how they cope with language limitations. how the knowledge of language contributes to their business success or failure. trustworthiness and validity of results trustworthiness refers to the level of dependability or reliability of the data gathering instruments, the process carried out in data collection, the quality of the data and their validity (quan-baffour & romm 2015:28). the issue of trustworthiness is important in qualitative research in ensuring the dependability and reliability of the instruments. the process also included the field notes that were jotted down by the researchers as they took transect walks around stalls and different business spaces. the observations were also used to triangulate the information the participants provided through interviews and focus group meetings. in order to triangulate the data during the interviews and focus group discussions, the researchers used digital recorders. the recordings were later transcribed by the researchers during the data analysis and report writings. the use of recorders was useful particularly in verifying facts from interview guides and the field notes. besides, the researchers requested respondents to repeat or clarify any information or response that was not clear. that was to ensure that the correct information was recorded. the researchers also compared the various respondents’ data to see where they differed or corroborated to enhance the findings’ credibility. ethical considerations an ethical application was submitted to the institution as a policy imperative, which issued an ethics approval and a certificate to conduct the study, hence this article. before the discussion started, the researchers introduced themselves to the participants to break the ice at each site. to adhere to ethical principles, they informed the interview participants of the purpose and showed each of them that their participation was voluntary. the interviews were conducted in english as most of the participants had basic communication skills in english. in the few cases where participants were unable to express themselves well, the researchers engaged voluntary interpreters who knew the language of the participant. to allay any possible fears among the participants, the researchers did not ask for their names or any form of identification. the participants were assured that the information provided would be used only for the study and would not be divulged to any individual or organisation. that was to guarantee them that their legal or illegal residence status remained confidential. the researchers also told the participants that they were under no obligation or coercion to participate in the study and could opt out at any stage when they wanted to do so. none of the identified participants withdrew from the study for fear of any unethical issues. throughout the study, the researchers exercised flexibility and respect for the respondents’ time constraints whenever they arose; hence none of the participants complained of the researchers’ intrusion in their businesses and privacy. results and discussion the study was set up to investigate the socio-economic value of literacy in the lives of refugee adults in south africa. the study was a qualitative research study in which face-to-face interviews, observations, and focus group discussions were conducted with 100 participants deemed information rich. the study results revealed that refugee adults engaged in small businesses must learn functional literacy in english and other vernacular languages informally and formally to develop communication skills for the sustainable development of their small businesses in their adopted home. similar sentiments are shared in a literacy compilation of studies by unesco (2014), emphasising the importance of literacy and education for sustainable development. the refugee adults in south africa engage in various self-employment entrepreneurial activities for their livelihoods. when asked about the kind of work they do for a living, the respondents mentioned many entrepreneurial activities. the answers indicated the following breakdown of business ventures: forty-five (n = 45) own or work in hair salons and other beauty management (45%). twenty-five (n = 25) work in sewing and repairing shoes (25%). fifteen (n = 15) were seamstresses, either sewing or patching or mending dresses (15%). ten (n = 10) own or operate small restaurants for indigenous dishes (10%). five (n = 5) run retail shops (spazas) and internet cafés (5%). ‘one must be a hustler in this foreign land!’ asked why most of them were in a specific trade, the responses portrayed previous knowledge of various business ventures usually acquired in their countries of birth and origin. the merchandises were portrayals of what they did in their countries and based on the community needs identified in their locations before starting their businesses. other responses to the types of businesses indicated that they were based on affordability in establishing such enterprises. the above information indicates that most refugees in south africa rely on their ingenuity to initiate entrepreneurial activities to make a living. in their responses, the participants corroborated that job opportunities were scarce and the few were reserved for south african nationals. thus, to survive in their place of refuge, they must create their own jobs and generally engage in informal trading. as stated by ramjathan-keogh (2017), although the laws and policies on migrants, asylum seekers and refugees provide for opportunities that the country offers, in practice these foreigners still face barriers, such as the limitation on the right to work and lack of access to educational opportunities and language barriers hindering their ability to communicate effectively, among others. some of the businesses run by these refugees were legally registered with provincial authorities and the south african revenue services (i.e. they met income tax obligations). some respondents revealed that the locals rented their business premises to them due to lack of capital to operate and for rental purposes. the response from an interview with a female hairdresser from the great lakes region and the four focus group discussions in the four provinces epitomise all the participants’ feeling. she had this to say (reproduced verbatim): ‘jobs are scarce here. the few that exist are for the locals. therefore, for refugees to survive, one has no choice but to think out what work to start and fortunately, some of us have some economic and entrepreneurial skills.’ accordingly, the quest for survival motivates refugees in south africa to engage in self-employment activities such as small-scale business enterprises. by creating their jobs, they ease the host country’s burden because the government does not provide basic human needs such as shelter, food, clothing, children’s education and entertainment for refugees. they are also excluded from monthly social grants, and hence they have to engage in small businesses for survival. rather than the city authorities intimidating and harassing refugees engaged in businesses, as mentioned by some of the participants, the researchers were of the view that the department of small business enterprises should acknowledge and recognise the economic role played by these informal and small business refugee-entrepreneurs who contribute to the country’s economy by employing some locals and in some cases paying taxes. at the same time, their entrepreneurial activities lessen the burden of the government’s social grants, as they become self-reliant and provide for their families. lanciotti (2019) states that in uganda and ethiopia, the refugees in entrepreneurial activities contribute to these countries’ economies and should be recognised for employing locals and paying taxes. it is a view in this article that although functional adult literacy (fal) is crucial for refugees to be able to realise their rights to education, development and meaningful participation, including their self-reliance, this is often neglected and they received no support from governments and other agencies. this implies that the plight of refugees in their quest for better livelihoods and economic independence is far from over. oral proficiency challenge and foreign accent ‘bias’ of those interviewed in the four provinces, 45 respondents were literate and could communicate in english. in navigating their way into their businesses, they concurred that speaking english alone was never enough. they still had to learn local languages spoken in their areas and provinces, as their competitors spoke vernacular. however, the 35 respondents from pretoria, gauteng, alluded that there were advantages in that most clients can communicate and understand english well. in the northern cape, those in kimberley face literacy challenges as the province is inhabited by mostly people who speak afrikaans and another vernacular, setswana. thus, as foreigners, they needed to learn a local language fast and informally and sometimes communicate fluently to disguise their original accents: ‘one needs to learn and adapt fast. locals here can be sometimes antagonistic if they hear one with a foreign accent. as refugees, we always strive to integrate with the locals to learn the local language faster and easier.’ (shoemaker and repairer, male, west africa) respondents from the other two areas, welkom, free state, and mafikeng, north west, reported more significant benefits in communicating in english and another local language. ‘clients relate well with owners who speak their language. it is good for business to relate with clients’, a fruit and vegetable seller in mafikeng said. the notion is confirmed by the organisation for international migration report (2020), in the global compact for migration’s 23 objectives for safe, orderly and regular migration. of the 23 objectives, the 16th objective is about empowering migrants and societies to realise full inclusion and social cohesion; the 19th and 20th objectives speak about creating conditions for migrants and diasporas to fully contribute to sustainable development in all countries, promoting faster, safer and cheaper transfer of remittances, and fostering financial inclusion of migrants. the three objectives address particularly the issues around forced migration and literacy, and are well aligned with freire’s critical pedagogy as argued in this article (iom 2020:297). social justice and cohesion: ‘i do not discriminate’ the participants were asked when their businesses started, how they were conducted and what communication issues they experience with their clients. of the 100 participants interviewed, 44% (n = 44) said their enterprises have been in existence for 6–8 years; 40% (n = 40) mentioned 4–5 years and 16% (n = 16) said 2–3 years. regarding their clients, the participants corroborated in their responses that their customers cut across the whole spectrum of society – locals and foreigners, and all races (black, white, mixed race and asian). the respondents also revealed to the researchers that each small business employs at least 2–5 individuals. however, some enterprises depend on the season. ‘when business is doing well around easter and christmas seasons, my restaurant employs temporary workers to complement my permanent staff’, a female restaurant owner in pretoria claimed. the information above is laudable and significant because it indicates that these 50 small business operators have employed between 50 and 100 people made up of locals and fellow refugees for the past eight or more years. as one participant put it: ‘i am an ethiopian first and african second. i do not discriminate. i employ six people to work on a commission basis in my african restaurant and food shop. two of them are locals, four from eastern, western and central parts of the continent. we work as a big family. engaging locals and foreigners in my business has its advantages as we learn each other’s languages; we know each other’s cuisine and exotic foods from other countries. most importantly, here in pretoria, we have learnt sepedi fluently from our local workers and customers.’ the response above indicates that most refugees in south africa are not too much dependent on the government’s grants or handouts because they create jobs for themselves, fellow refugees and even local people (world bank 2018). that means the perception that refugees and, for that matter, foreigners have taken jobs from the locals is not entirely true. referring to paulo freire’s advocacy and promotion of social justice and how critical education can perpetuate discrimination or support it, in this case the refugees see themselves as exercising and promoting social justice principles, without favouring one person over the other (i.e. discrimination, whether local or foreigner) (freire 1974; krevh 2017). this view is in stark contrast to that of the locals who were perceived as being hostile to refugees with different accents, as stated above: ‘empower migrants and societies to realize full inclusion and social cohesion’ (iom 2020:297). multilingualism versus successful entrepreneurship or ‘loss of income’ people whose work provides services – repair of shoes, watches, seamstress, internet café, grocery shops (spaza) and others – interact with lots of people every day. the respondents were asked about the significant challenges facing them in interacting with clients; all (100%) mentioned language barriers. eighty percent also added frequent harassment by metro police who often seize their goods and extort money from them. the police often accuse them of operating illegally, sometimes soliciting bribes from them, threatening to deport them to their countries of origin, and even disregarding the legal documents when they produce them. such attitude from the police, as it echoed from the discussions, borders on xenophobia. indeed, as adults with different culture and language backgrounds, it cannot be easy to interact fluently with clients in a country where all languages are official. given the european incursion, english, french, portuguese and spanish have become the de facto official languages for many african countries. some refugees come from asia and speak arabic, hindi and other far eastern languages. these refugees are, therefore, illiterate when it comes to the local languages. when asked how they communicate and interact or engage in business transactions, they all said: ‘it is not easy’. as two of the three respondents from the democratic republic of congo, bangladesh and pakistan from the focus group discussions in pretoria put it: ‘we struggle to understand each other all the time. our english is little, and some of our clients do not speak english. seeing that literacy in the local languages can boost business we are learning it day by day, and we must learn fast lest we lose business and customers.’ one said: ‘although we sell good merchandise, sometimes we lose good money because customers are impatient when we cannot communicate clearly. they go to other shops and get services there, while we lose money. language for business use is highly critical.’ it is clear from the information above that literacy matters in the lives of refugee adults engaged in business ventures, regarding how they cope with the different languages spoken by their local clients. ninety percent of the participants said they rely on local colleagues who work with them and have picked up a few essential words for greeting and pricing their products and services. multiplicity of languages: ‘today is zulu, sotho, tomorrow xhosa, shangaan or ndebele etc.’ the remaining 10% of the respondents said they had acquired functional literacy in sepedi, setswana and sesotho. these are refugees who operate in towns where those languages are dominant. the case might differ for refugees who work in metropolitan areas such as pretoria in gauteng because of different languages. as affirmed by one seamstress: ‘today you hear zulu, tomorrow xhosa, shangaan or ndebele. and this makes it challenging to learn the language, as one must have functional communication in all of them. since i live and work in mamelodi, i am learning some sepedi to interact with my clients. i am trying hard every day to speak the language.’ literacy, especially understanding and speaking local languages, seems a significant challenge to most refugees in south africa. the response above affirm that literacy in local south african languages poses a great challenge to refugee integration and the sustainability of their livelihoods. as the responses above indicate, there are too many local languages in the country which makes it difficult for refugees to acquire them. since one cannot learn all the languages the refugees should learn the predominant language of the region in which they reside. in this way they can overcome some of the biases and can attract and retain more clients to their small enterprises. despite the above, in all four provinces, the researchers came across some refugees who were fluent in some local languages, such as sesotho, setswana, sepedi and zulu. these were refugees who have lived in communities and operated their businesses there for a long time or have local spouses and workers who teach them their languages, by speaking with them regularly. demand of refugees for functional and financial literacy training the responses also indicate that one cannot do business effectively without being literate in two or more local languages. when asked whether the respondents were interested in attending literacy classes, they all responded in the affirmative with some reservations. they added that time to leave work to participate in formal classes is itself a challenge. even if literacy classes can be organised for refugees, it was clear that very few would be able to attend. the respondents pointed out that as self-employed individuals, they are always at work to ensure that they do not miss customers and find it challenging to participate in adult literacy classes. that, therefore, leaves a limited window of opportunities to develop skills related to the effective use of functional literacy for business communication purposes. an article by jenkins (2020) in the financial times describes another form, financial literacy, as a requirement and a springboard for refugees to survive their financial challenges as they struggle in their small and medium enterprises, making the economy of their host nation more dynamic in the process. in their portal blog (https://www.afi-global.org/about/), the alliance for financial inclusion (afi), a registered organisation promoting and developing evidence-based policy solution to the vulnerable groups across africa, reports a successful intervention of the bank of uganda in training ugandan refugees on financial literacy. the intervention has led to the development of the national strategy for financial literacy of uganda (sflu) where refugees are benefitting from the services of the bank, which is instrumental in training them on financial literacy, helping them learn how to spend, budget, borrow, invest and plan for a future that is not solely reliant on aid (nabbanja & zahari 2021). it is the view of the authors of this article that the department of basic education in south africa should partner with stakeholders in literacy programmes to accord and engage adult refugees in literacy campaigns. although the ugandan project was a specific financial literacy programme, not a general literacy intervention, this article suggests that the knowledge of financial literacy can enhance and strengthen communication skills in a local language for refugees in entrepreneurial activities. the article further suggests that financial literacy should be provided in addition to general adult literacy classes, because literacy forms part of numeracy, which is included under the aforementioned definition of literacy. this could equip the refugees with necessary communication skills in at least one or two languages spoken in the country. similarly, the department of small business enterprises could also provide the refugee business owners with necessary accounting and management skills to ensure the businesses’ sustainability and continuous employment opportunities for the unemployed. conclusion this study was undertaken to explore the importance of literacy to refugee adults in south africa in their quest to engage in small business enterprises for survival. literacy, the ability to speak and understand a language to communicate or transact business, is of paramount importance to the sustainability of every business. the study revealed that refugee adults learn functional literacy in english and other languages informally as they communicate with their clients to sustain their small businesses in their adopted home. although the refugee entrepreneurs indicated lack of time for attending formal literacy classes, as they could not leave enterprises for classes, functional literacy offered in adult training centres could answer their literacy and communication problems. the study concludes that as literacy is a sine qua non to sustainable livelihood activities, refugee adults in south africa should take advantage of the available literacy programmes to acquire necessary communication skills in the local languages. that would enhance their socio-economic advancement in their adopted home. thus, over and above the need to learn a new language, the development of literacies, including, financial literacy, as argued in this article, could be a mitigating factor in improving literacy skills for refugees, as they navigate and grapple with their livelihoods and business enterprises in their adopted new homes. acknowledgements competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions k.p.q.-b contributed to the conceptualisation, formal analysis, investigation and drafting of article; l.r.j. did the methodology, formal analysis, investigation, review and editing, supervision and project administration. ethical considerations the research followed all institutional ethics protocols before conducting the study, and permission was granted (2021/07/0790188470/19/am). funding information this research received no specific grant from any 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and industrial purposes; informal settlements are extensions of townships inhabited by shack-dwellers, sometimes with limited essential services, and highly congested. abstract introduction policy and practice in the research literature a conceptual framework for the study of assessment policies theoretical framework research methods and design for policy analysis results of the study: how ‘structured, clear and practical’ is the curriculum and assessment policy statement document? conclusion: why the curriculum and assessment policy statement document is unlikely to improve reading comprehension acknowledgements references about the author(s) maryna m. de lange department of english, faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa christine winberg professional education research institute (peri), faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa hanlie dippenaar department of english, faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa citation de lange, m.m., winberg, c. & dippenaar, h., 2020, ‘why the english home language curriculum and assessment policy statement will not improve learners’ reading comprehension’, reading & writing 11(1), a260. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v11i1.260 original research why the english home language curriculum and assessment policy statement will not improve learners’ reading comprehension maryna m. de lange, christine winberg, hanlie dippenaar received: 14 aug. 2019; accepted: 20 feb. 2020; published: 27 may 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls), and similar international assessments, have consistently shown south african intermediate phase learners’ performance to be among the lowest worldwide. of particular concern is the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) for home language in the intermediate phase and, specifically, the document’s treatment of the assessment of reading comprehension. objectives: in this study, the caps requirements for assessing reading comprehension were examined, with the aim of laying the groundwork for an improved policy framework. method: the research design of the study involved evaluating the assessment of reading comprehension in the caps document, using a social realist approach to uncover its underlying structures and mechanisms. results: the study found that a principled approach to the assessment of reading comprehension was lacking, which had a cumulative effect across the caps document, resulting in random, yet highly prescriptive, requirements. conclusion: the study concluded that caps does not provide adequate guidance for improving reading comprehension and, moreover, that the prescribed programme of assessment is not supported by the research literature on reading comprehension. the study recommends that better, more evidence-informed and consultative policies and guidelines be introduced to support teachers in the assessment – and, ultimately, the improvement – of intermediate phase learners’ reading comprehension. keywords: reading comprehension; progress in international reading literacy study (pirls); curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps); home language; intermediate phase; assessment. introduction basic education in south africa has undergone significant change since the country’s transition to democracy in 1994. a central aspect of this change has been the adoption of outcomes-based education (obe), which places emphasis on the assessment of learners against predefined outcomes (spaull 2015). the south african department of basic education’s curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) continue a similar focus on assessment in its underpinning logic (govender & hugo 2018). while this focus places a considerable burden on teachers, it has not improved south africa’s basic education system (spaull 2015). the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) 2016 found that 49% of south african grade 5 participants were not able to reach basic benchmarks of reading comprehension (howie et al. 2017). international studies have shown that the explicit teaching of comprehension strategies is key to improving reading levels among intermediate phase learners (national reading panel 2000). in its report on this matter, the national reading panel highlighted the importance of reading strategy instruction, explaining that comprehension can only be improved if students are taught to use ‘specific cognitive strategies or to reason strategically when they encounter barriers to comprehension when reading’ (national reading panel 2000:39). the extent to which language policies specifically contribute to the low performance of learners in south africa is not clear, given that language disadvantages are strongly correlated with additional factors such as historical disadvantage, socio-economic status, geography, the quality of teaching and the quality of school management (rapetsoa & singh 2018). at the same time, caps has been shown to be a key determinant in how reading comprehension is taught (govender & hugo 2018; magagula 2016; weideman, du plessis & steyn 2017). the present study investigates learners’ reading comprehension in english home language in grades 4–6 and, in particular, whether caps (2011) supports and develops teachers’ assessment knowledge and practice. in an assessment-driven educational system, there is an urgent need for teachers (and teacher educators) to become ‘assessment literate’ (xu & brown 2017), that is, to develop a deep understanding of assessment so that they can implement policies in ways that are supportive of learners’ literacy development. recognising this need helps us understand how caps might enable or constrain particular assessment practices in theorising the relationship between policy and practice. the research question guiding this study is: how effective are the assessment requirements in the caps document (and its proposed amendments) in supporting the reading comprehension of learners in the intermediate phase (grades 4–6)? policy and practice in the research literature there is a considerable amount of literature on language policy, language assessment policy and the important role that policy plays in shaping the educational system (see, e.g., good et al. 2017). while there are many factors that contribute to the success (or failure) of an educational system, coherent and evidence-informed educational policies are chief among them (coffield 2012). the recognised link between the performance of a school system and its guiding policies makes it imperative that educational policies be grounded on a solid knowledge base (aydarova & berliner 2018). a logical approach to policymaking – especially in cases where policy principles are linked to implementation guidelines – is one that draws on a broad base of research and evidence in the field. policies need to demonstrate a logical relationship between the purpose and principles of a specific policy, the guidelines that policy offers, and the demands it makes on the implementers of the policy. these logical connections have been described as ‘the causal theory’ (fullan 2007), because they tell the story of why a policy is necessary, and they provide guidance and assistance to teachers with regard to implementation. policymakers need to understand the challenges of policy implementation and should also constantly evaluate the results of implementation. policies need to account for local contexts ‘across institutions’, including ‘culture, demography, politics and economy’ (pont & viennet 2017), as these contexts will affect the ways in which a policy is understood and shaped in different institutions. it is rare that policies are uniformly implemented: achieving this requires authentic participation on the part of stakeholders who share ‘common views and experiences of education’ (hopfenbeck, flórez petour & tolo 2015). teachers’ involvement in the policymaking process is therefore essential (good et al. 2017). assessment too often becomes the focus of educational policy, as it is assumed to be ‘relatively low cost’ and something that can be both ‘externally mandated and … controlled’ and implemented with ‘relative speed’ (hamilton 2007). however, attempting to drive educational change through assessment policy is likely to have unintended consequences, as several studies have shown (see, e.g., birenbaum et al. 2015). when assessment is used as a vehicle for changing an educational system, but is not grounded in assessment theory or research evidence, it is unlikely to be effective, and it may even have detrimental effects on the school system (hamilton 2007). in the south african education system, many studies have raised concerns about the number of inconsistencies and contradictions in caps documents, including the ‘misalignment of purpose and assessment’ (weideman et al. 2017). govender and hugo found that topics in the caps documents were ‘not presented in a systematic and sequential manner’ (2018:25). an earlier study concluded that teachers were often confused by the various caps documents in their subject areas and that ‘as a result … they decided to continue with the way they had been working throughout their years of teaching’ (khoza 2017:189). these research findings on caps are grounds for concern. they signal that the policy requirements associated with caps are unlikely to enhance the reading comprehension of learners in a meaningful way. a conceptual framework for the study of assessment policies policies that have the intention of improving reading comprehension tend to highlight the importance of the two main purposes of assessment, namely assessment of learning (summative assessment) and assessment for learning (formative assessment) (gilmore et al. 2009; hattie 2012). each of these different assessment purposes is underpinned by its own assessment principles. the principles underpinning the summative assessment of reading comprehension are validity, reliability and fairness. summative assessments are ‘high-stakes’ tasks that impact a learner’s school (and potentially post-school) trajectory; thus, considerable care needs to be taken to ensure that high-stakes assessments are valid, reliable and fair (stillman 2011). it has been suggested that the validity of reading comprehension testing should be measured against the standards of other learning areas, because language is the means by which learners access knowledge in all other learning areas (boals et al. 2015; keary & kirkby 2018; wolf, farnsworth & herman 2008). the content of summative comprehension tests therefore impacts their validity and fairness. formative assessment has been defined as ‘a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students’ achievement of intended instructional outcomes’ (popham 2008). formative assessment in reading comprehension is underpinned by learning-oriented principles, such as focusing on the ‘sub-skills and building blocks in the learning progression’ (popham 2008), targeting ‘areas of difficulty’ (hattie 2015), and providing ‘timely feedback’ on comprehension tasks (harvey & kosman 2014), as well as creating an alignment between formative and summative assessments (clark 2015). in order to formatively assess learners’ reading comprehension, the sub-skills of reading – including lexical proficiency and the ability to identify micro and macro text structures – should be assessed (clarke et al. 2013). researchers have pointed out that the sub-skills and knowledge areas on which feedback is provided during formative assessments should align with the content and format of summative assessments (popham 2008), given that part of the function of formative assessment is to prepare learners for summative assessment. in other words, formative assessment should not be random: it should be congruent with learning outcomes. educational researchers point out that formative assessment should target difficult skills or knowledge areas, rather than those areas in which learners are generally proficient (clark 2015). experienced teachers can often predict the stages in reading progression at which learners typically experience difficulty or confusion, while novice teachers tend to need guidance to ensure that they target the skills most relevant for formative feedback (hattie 2012). timeous feedback is clearly important if learners are to profit from formative assessment. over-assessment should be avoided in both formative and summative assessment, as there is no pedagogical basis for it; in fact, over-assessment has been shown to be detrimental to the quality of learning (wiliam 2006). the implications of the research on the formative and summative assessment of reading comprehension are summarised in table 1, which offers a conceptual framework for the analysis of caps. table 1: a conceptual framework for analysing the effectiveness of assessment requirements within curriculum and assessment policy statement (reading comprehension). theoretical framework in order to probe more deeply into how the caps document understands the formative and summative assessment of reading comprehension, this study draws on legitimation code theory (lct). lct identifies a range of dimensions that underpin knowledge-based practices: specialization, semantics, temporality, resources and autonomy. in this study, we draw on the dimension of semantics, which speaks to the heart of ‘meaning-making’ and is therefore particularly appropriate for an enquiry into the assessment of reading comprehension. the semantics dimension consists of two continua, semantic gravity and semantic density, which can be mapped on a cartesian plane to reveal the different ways in which meanings might be more or less theoretical or practical. in this study, we focus on semantic gravity, which refers to: the degree to which meaning relates to its context. semantic gravity may be relatively stronger (+) or weaker (−) along a continuum of strengths. the stronger the semantic gravity (sg+), the more dependent meaning is on its context; the weaker the gravity (sg−), the less dependent meaning is on its context. (maton 2014:129) weakening the semantic gravity in a policy document on assessment would involve stating the general principles of assessment, which are abstract and independent of the particulars of a specific context or case. strengthening semantic gravity, on the other hand, would involve applying these principles towards competent assessment practice. studying the strengthening and weakening of semantic gravity over a text thus provides a way of mapping variations across a policy document. the distinction between contextualisation and abstraction is particularly useful in policy analysis, as it can reveal both the strengths and the weakness of a policy document, as well as its gaps and blind spots. research methods and design for policy analysis the research design of this study is an evaluation of the south african english home language caps (2011) document through a study of its semantic gravity profile, with a specific focus on the assessment of reading comprehension. the conceptual framework outlined above, drawn from the relevant literature, shows that an assessment policy should be expected to reveal the relationship between the assessment principles that underpin the policy and the guidelines for practice specified in the document – or, to use the terms of the theoretical framework, between weaker and stronger forms of semantic gravity. for this reason, the analytical methods of the study focused on an in-depth discourse analysis. using a high-level theory such as semantic gravity requires a ‘translation device’ to link the abstract concept of semantic gravity to specific concepts related to assessment practice. the first step was thus to develop and test a translation device that could determine the relative strength and weakness of semantic gravity across the caps document. four levels of semantic gravity were identified, extracted from the conceptual framework. to avoid confusion, these levels of semantic gravity were numbered, from sg1 (weakest level of semantic gravity) to sg4 (strongest level of semantic gravity) (see table 2). sg1 represents the context-independent aspects of the policy, such as its broad purposes, principles and definitions. sg2 corresponds to the implications for practice that are inferred from the general principles, as well as the general requirements for practice. sg3 represents a strengthening of semantic gravity in the provision of guidelines for practice. sg4 is the most context-dependent level and contains exemplars of good practice and the detailed logistics of practice, such as the particular forms to be completed and the times of assessment. these four levels provide a useful mechanism for identifying shifts between stronger and weaker forms of semantic gravity and the relationship between them. due to the level of confusion we found in the caps document, such as random or illogical statements and non-sequiturs, we added an additional level: sg5, which represents no logical relation to context. table 2: a translation device for identifying semantic gravity in policy documents. in ‘translating’ semantic gravity into the key features of policy provision that guide the practice of assessing reading comprehension, we theorised that an ideal policy document would initially show weaker levels of gravity, that is, it might introduce the policy with a statement of its general purpose, the principles on which it is based and provide definitions of key terms. semantic gravity would be strengthened over the course of the policy document, for example the implications of the principles and recommendations for practice would be included, along with more practical guidelines and logistical requirements for teaching and assessment practice. such an ideal assessment policy document would be founded on research evidence and would contain clear statements of the purposes and the principles on which the policy is based. the implications of these evidence-based principles for practice would be logically connected to the requirements stipulated by the policy, which might also include sanctions for disregarding the policy. the policy would provide clear guidelines for teachers to follow, which might include practical and contextualised examples. finally, the policy might include specific requirements for practice, such as templates that need to be followed (or adapted) or particular materials that need to be used. figure 1 represents an ideal semantic gravity profile for an assessment policy. figure 1: an ideal semantic gravity profile for assessment policy. additional steps in our research process included examining all mentions of ‘comprehension’ in caps to develop an overview of how the document conceptualised comprehension. the sub-sections on assessment (curriculum and assessment policy statement [caps] 2011:88–104) were also analysed, with each sentence of those sections that specifically addressed the assessment of reading comprehension subjected to detailed analysis. to avoid a forced fit between the caps text and the translation device, analysis took place at two levels. the first level of coding was done without the translation device, which provided us with an overview of the content of the document and allowed us to highlight assessment-relevant concepts, such as ‘assessment is a continuous planned process’ (caps 2011:88). for the second level of analysis, the translation device was used to code the different sections of the document as sg1, sg2, sg3, sg4 or sg5. ethical consideration ethical clearance for the research study was granted by the cape peninsula university of technology and the western cape education department, with ethical clearance number: efec5-8/2018. results of the study: how ‘structured, clear and practical’ is the curriculum and assessment policy statement document? in this section, we present the results of the study. we start with an overview of reading comprehension in caps, and then focus more specifically on the assessment of reading comprehension and on the requirements for the assessment of comprehension (caps 2011). an overview of reading comprehension in curriculum and assessment policy statement minimal attention is given to the teaching of comprehension, or its assessment, in the caps document itself. this despite the importance of reading comprehension in the teaching plans, in which teachers are instructed to set comprehension exercises ‘every second week’ (caps 2011:14) and in the programme of assessment, which requires comprehension tests for ‘formal’ assessment, that is, for both examinations and continuous assessment towards the learners’ final marks (caps 2011:93–101). the caps document proposes only two reading strategies, neither of which is mentioned in the text itself. these strategies only appear in the glossary: rereading – rereading is a reading strategy that gives the reader another chance to make sense out of a challenging text. restating – restating is a reading strategy where the reader will retell, shorten, or summarise the meaning of a passage or chapter, either orally or in written form. (caps 2011:110). rereading is not helpful for enhancing comprehension (clarke et al. 2013). restating is a basic strategy (gill 2008), but there are many others (e.g. cause-and-effect and problem-and-solution) that are more appropriate for meaning-making at the intermediate level (meyer & ray 2011). the advice offered to teachers is not helpful; it includes making sure that learners ‘pause occasionally to check [their] comprehension and to let the ideas sink in’ (caps 2011:10), which is to be found mystifying during the reading process. teachers are told to instruct learners who do not understand what they are reading as follows: ‘reread a section if you do not understand at all. read confusing sections aloud, at a slower pace, or both’ (caps 2011:10). several researchers have found that the advice offered in caps with regard to reading is inappropriate and inadequate (e.g. rule & land 2017). when the 48 mentions of ‘comprehension’ are disaggregated across the document, and the semantic gravity translation device is applied to the analysis, the trends described above become more distinct, as table 4 shows. table 3: number of mentions of ‘comprehension’ in the curriculum and assessment policy statement document. table 4: types of mentions of ‘comprehension’ in the curriculum and assessment policy statement document. table 4 reveals that the caps document does not explicitly state the purposes, principles or definitions that underpin its approach to reading comprehension. the lack of a principled approach to reading comprehension poses a significant barrier to literacy instruction (gill 2008). caps provides minimal guidance or exemplars, and yet considerable emphasis is placed on prescriptive teaching plans and on the plan of assessment. the semantic gravity profile (figure 2) represents the mentions of reading comprehension across the caps document, with the numbers along the bottom of the graph referring to the pages of the caps document. level sg1 is the level of purposes, principles and definitions (which is absent from the text, but implied in some of the definitions in the glossary at the end of the document). level sg2 represents the implications for practice, such as ‘well-developed reading and viewing skills are central to successful learning across the curriculum’ (caps 2011:10). level sg3 provides guidelines and exemplar in support of practice, such as: ‘use guided group reading and independent/pair reading methods and gradually get learners to do more and more independent reading’ (caps 2011:10). level sg4 represents the logistics of practice, including timetables, templates and instructions, such as ‘term 2, weeks 1 & 2 information text – weather’ (caps 2011:25). figure 2: the semantic gravity profile of comprehension across the curriculum and assessment policy statement document. section 2 of the caps document, ‘introducing home language in the intermediate phase’, has only two mentions of teaching comprehension, one related requirements (‘you will also set a variety of comprehension activities to ensure that learners understand what they read’, caps 2011:10), and the other a guideline (‘pause occasionally to check your comprehension and to let the ideas sink in’, caps 2011:10). this is followed by an sg4 ‘flatline’ of comprehension activity requirements in section 3 (the teaching plan), which stretches from page 16 to page 88. there are three mentions of comprehension testing in section 4 (assessment in home language), including a claim that ‘a memorandum is better suited to a spelling test or a reading comprehension activity’ (caps 2011:90), and that ‘reading comprehension’ should include ‘vocabulary work’ (caps 2011:93). the semantic gravity is weakened slightly in the general guidelines provided in the ‘cognitive level’ tables (caps 2011:91–92), but strengthens in the requirements for testing in the programme of assessment (caps 2011:93–102). the section entitled ‘moderation of assessment’ instructs moderators to ensure that teachers assess ‘learners’ ability to analyse and synthesize information given in a text’ (caps 2011:103), and not to ask questions about general knowledge related to the text. the extract below provides an example of an instruction to moderators: the moderator will give good comment, among other things, on the levels of questioning in comprehension testing; the frequency of extended writing; the quality of assessment instruments and the developmental opportunities afforded and the teacher’s engagement with learner workbooks and evidence of learner performance. (caps 2011:103) the instructions to moderators are clear and logical, yet nowhere does the text instruct teachers on these requirements. caps concludes with a glossary of definitions, which is the only section that rises to sg1. the semantic gravity profile of figure 2, with its flatline at sg4 (the teaching plan) confirms prior research that finds the caps document to be ‘prescriptive’ (govender & hugo 2018; weideman et al. 2017). the missing assessment principles it has been pointed out that the lack of a logical progression from principles to practice is the main cause of policy failure (fullan 2007). as shown in figure 2, the caps document does not explicitly state the principles that underpin its guidelines and requirements for teaching or assessing reading comprehension. underpinning principles are implied in many of the instructions given to teachers, for example: ‘regular feedback should be provided to learners to enhance the learning experience’ (caps 2011:88), ‘language learning is a process’ (caps 2011:88), and ‘the work on which assessment is conducted must have been covered during the term’ (caps 2011:89). however, none of these implied principles is explained, referenced to research, or cross-referenced with the many requirements for practice. thus teachers are unlikely to understand why particular requirements are placed on them. searching for the missing principles principles are often expressed in the clear and precise use of terms. what we found in the caps document was imprecise (even colloquial) and non-standard terms, many of which were not defined in the text or glossary. the document’s use of the term ‘informal assessment’ is a case in point, partly because it is not defined, and partly because it is not recommended as an assessment practice. terms such as ‘formative assessment’ or ‘classroom-based assessment’ are more commonly used in the literature, while use of the term ‘informal assessment’ is generally regarded as undesirable, owing to its potential to create misjudgements (waggett, johnston & jones 2017). the formative assessment of reading comprehension requires specific techniques and methods (xu & brown 2017), with very particular sub-skills and reading strategies that teachers should monitor (shanahan & lonigan 2010). the caps recommendation that teachers use ‘many of [their] learning activities to assess learners’ performance informally’ is not derived from evidence or principles. the term ‘daily assessment’ is used interchangeably with ‘informal assessment’, and the term is similarly undefined, with no evidence to support its use. over-assessment has been shown to negatively impact teaching quality (wigfield, gladstone & turci 2016). the caps document is confusing with regard to the requirements for ‘informal daily assessment’, stating that ‘the results of the informal daily assessment tasks are not formally recorded unless the teacher wishes to do so’ (caps 2011:89). similar confusing directives have been pointed out by other scholars in their critiques of caps documents across a range of subjects (e.g., maddock & maroun 2018). the impact of the missing assessment principles on advice to teachers the lack of explicit principles to guide the teaching and assessment of reading comprehension has a knock-on effect across the caps document, resulting in increasingly confusing advice to teachers on assessment practice, such as the following: when giving a formal assessment task, there will be a focus on a particular skill, for example, listening and speaking or reading or writing. however, because language learning is an integrated process, more than one skill will be used. (caps 2011:88) the literature on the assessment of comprehension proposes the opposite to the advice offered above. an initial focus on particular skills and sub-skills, as well as on learners’ reading strategies, is recommended, with formative tasks becoming more integrative in preparation for summative assessment (e.g. garcía & cain 2014). a summative assessment task would generally require not only the integration of reading and writing skills, but also the application of reading strategies to understand the text at microand macro-levels. because explicit assessment principles do not guide practice, claims about assessment can become contradictory. in the passage below, for example, the supportive relationship between teaching, learning and assessment is misunderstood and a confusing claim is made about assessment not being ‘a separate entity’. this claim is then contradicted in commending integrated assessment practice, followed by examples of good practice: assessment in languages is ongoing and supports the growth and development of learners. it is an integral part of teaching and learning as it provides feedback for teaching and learning. it should be incorporated in teaching and learning instead of being dealt with as a separate entity. furthermore, integrated assessment of various language aspects should be practiced. for example, we could start off with a reading piece and do a comprehension test. language knowledge questions could also be addressed based on the same text. post-reading the text learners could be asked to respond to the text by, for example, writing a letter about the issues raised in the text or to write some creative response to the content of the text. to wrap up this activity, discussions could be held about the topic and in this way we address all of the language skills in one fluent, integrated activity. (caps 2011:88) the semantic gravity profile of the section quoted above (figure 3) reveals the confusion. implications for practice are stated, but these become illogical (sg5), before turning to general remarks about integrated assessment practice and specific guidelines for practice. figure 3: the semantic gravity profile of advice to teachers regarding assessment. in figure 3 the numbers along the bottom of the graph refer to the sentences in the passage quoted above. there is no reference to purposes or principles or definitions (sg1) in this passage. the passage opens with generic advice (sg2) that becomes confusing (sg5). more advice is then offered, as shown by the rise back to level sg2 (but on a new topic of integrative assessment), and the passage concludes with examples. guidelines for practice: missed opportunities in the cognitive levels table guidelines, such as those that appear in the above-quoted passage, are distributed across the document, but the ‘cognitive levels’ table (caps 2011:91–92) has a special focus on exemplary reading comprehension questions. this table is a missed opportunity in the caps document. firstly, it offers examples of different types of questions, in order of increasing difficulty and complexity: ‘literal’ questions, ‘reorganizational’ questions, questions that require ‘inference’, evaluative questions and appreciative questions (caps 2011:91–92). while distinctions between question types are useful, the research literature recommends that teachers need to explain and model reading comprehension strategies until learners begin to use these strategies independently (gill 2008). the most widely cited recommendation for improving reading comprehension is increasing explicit instruction in comprehension strategies (national reading panel 2000), rather than asking increasingly complex questions. caps does not guide teachers on how to help learners acquire the reading strategies that would enable them to address the recommended questions, or on how to assess these strategies. the suggested questions in the ‘cognitive levels’ table are generic (i.e. questions that readers at a range of levels would use); no attempt is made to adapt them for learners at the intermediate phase. a question such as: ‘what does a character’s actions/attitude(s)/motives … show about him/her in the context of universal values?’ (caps 2011:92) is clearly not appropriate for the intermediate level. the ‘knock-on’ effect of the missing assessment principles the plan of assessment is the main mechanism for guiding summative assessment practice (referred to as ‘formal assessment’) in caps. its intention is ‘to spread formal assessment tasks in all subjects in a school throughout a term’ (caps 2011:93). summative assessment in caps comprises both continuous assessment (referred to as ‘school-based assessment’) and two examinations, one in term 2 and one in term 4. four reading comprehension tests are required as part of the continuous assessment, or one per term. reading comprehension appears in two forms in the examinations: firstly, as comprehension tests covering a ‘range of texts … including visual or graphic texts’ (caps 2011:101) and, secondly, in the 2-h ‘integrated paper’ (caps 2011:98), consisting of ‘reading comprehension, language in context, writing – essays and transactional texts’ (caps 2011:101). as a guide for teachers, the following examples are offered as possible ‘transactional texts’: formal & informal letters to the press / formal letters of application, request, complaint, sympathy, invitation, thanks, congratulations, & business letters / friendly letters / magazine articles & columns / memoranda / minutes & agendas, newspaper articles & columns / obituaries/ reports (formal & informal) / reviews / written formal & informal speeches / curriculum vitae / editorials / brochures / written interviews / dialogues. (caps 2011:101) the above list is inappropriate for intermediate phase learners and would not meet the principles of validity or fairness in a summative assessment. it is in the programme of assessment that the cumulated effect of the lack of a principled approach to the teaching and assessment reading comprehension is most keenly felt. conclusion: why the curriculum and assessment policy statement document is unlikely to improve reading comprehension in this article we studied the caps requirements for assessing reading comprehension, with the aim of laying the groundwork for an improved policy framework for the assessment of reading comprehension. while several studies have critiqued the caps documents and pointed to the confusing nature of its guidelines for teachers (govender & hugo 2018; weideman et al. 2017), this study contributes to existing knowledge by empirically demonstrating how the breakdown in logic occurs across the caps document. we have shown how the lack of a principled approach is cumulative, and that without clear principles derived from research and theory to guide the teaching and assessment of reading comprehension, advice to teachers is likely to be random. the advice and recommendations for practice that caps offers become increasingly inconsistent over the course of the document, resulting in a plan of assessment that is largely inappropriate for the intermediate level. the semantic gravity tool we employed allowed us to map the underpinning structure of the caps document and thus to propose a way forward for the improvement of the caps document, or of other policy guides related to reading comprehension. this article has highlighted the lack of adequate guidance and support provided to teachers in terms of executing caps effectively and the study raises several implications for further research. in particular, it reveals the need to assess teachers’ (and teacher educators’) understanding of reading comprehension and, in turn, the level of training and support required to help them understand and apply principles of reading comprehension. it also reveals the necessity of incorporating key reading strategies for intermediate level readers – for instance, description, sequence, comparison, cause-and-effect and problem-and-solution (meyer & ray 2011) – into south african education policy in consultative and context-sensitive ways. the cover slogan of caps is ‘structured, clear, practical: helping teachers to unpack the power of the ncs’. the results of this study, however, suggest that considerable improvement is needed for the caps home language intermediate phase document to attain a logical structure, clear and principled definitions, and useful, practical guidelines for the teaching and assessment of reading comprehension. acknowledgements competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interests exist. authors’ contributions m.m.d.l. provided data and wrote the article, c.w. oversaw the content, data and edits, and h.d. moderated the article. funding information nrf grant number sarci150209113904. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created. disclaimer we proclaim that the views expressed in the submitted article are our own and not an official position of the institution or funder. references aydarova, e. & berliner, d.c., 2018, ‘responding to policy challenges with research evidence: introduction to special issue’, education policy analysis archives 26(32), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.26.3753 birenbaum, m., deluca, c., earl, l., heritage, m., klenowski, v., looney, a. et al., 2015, ‘international trends in the implementation of assessment for learning: implications for policy and practice’, policy futures in education 13(1), 117–140. https://doi.org/10.1177/1478210314566733 boals, t., kenyon, d.m., blair, a., cranley, m.e., wilmes, c. & wright, l.j., 2015, ‘transformation in k-12 english language 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1communication and study skills department, university of botswana, botswana correspondence to: boitumelo ramoroka postal address: po box 109, mogoditshane, botswana dates: received: 03 july 2013 accepted: 18 feb. 2014 published: 07 apr. 2014 how to cite this article: ramoroka, b.t., 2014, ‘integration of sources in academic writing: a corpus-based study of citation practices in essay writing in two departments at the university of botswana’, reading & writing 5(1), art. #41, 7 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v5i1.41 copyright notice: © 2014. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. integration of sources in academic writing: a corpus-based study of citation practices in essay writing in two departments at the university of botswana in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • justification • research methodology    • the corpus    • analysis of citations • results • discussion    • pedagogical implications • conclusion • acknowledgements    • competing interests • references • appendix 1    • assignment questions for media studies and primary education       • course: bms 302 – gender, sex and ethnicity in media       • course: bms 401 – imaging africa       • course: epi 442 – environmental education conservation strategies abstract top ↑ the ability to cite sources appropriately is an important feature of academic writing. academic writers are expected to integrate ideas of others into their texts and take a stance towards the reported material as they develop their arguments. despite this importance, research has shown that citation presents considerable difficulties for students, particularly non-native english speakers. such difficulties include using citations effectively in writing and understanding them in reading, expressing one’s voice and signalling citations in writing so that there is a clear distinction between one’s ideas and those derived from source materials. this study investigates the types of reporting verbs used by students to refer to the work of others and the extent to which they evaluate the work of others in their writing. it draws from a corpus of approximately 80 000 words from essays written by students in two departments at the university of botswana (botswana). the findings show that students used more informing verbs, associated with the neutral passing of information from the source to the reader, without interpreting the information cited, compared with argumentative verbs (which signify an evaluative role). the results of the study underscore the importance of teaching reporting verbs in the english for academic purposes classroom and making students aware of their evaluative potential. introduction top ↑ this article describes and interprets findings from a small corpus of non-native undergraduate essays from two departments at the university of botswana. the analysis focuses on how students use citations to report the work of other writers, and it specifically focuses on reporting verbs used when citing and the range of reporting verbs used by students to report the work of other writers. citation is an important convention of academic writing. it enables writers to develop their arguments persuasively and effectively and thus establish their authority and credibility. citation can be viewed as ‘attribution of propositional content to another source’ (hyland 2002b:115) and ‘central to social context of persuasion’ (hyland 1999:342). in citation, the content can be attributed to another source by the explicit use of reporting verbs. barton (1993:747) calls this evidentials of citation, which writers use to place a ‘perspective on the literature’. thomas and hawes (1994:129) refer to an evidential as a ‘metalinguistic representation of an idea from other sources’. the use of reporting verbs also ‘represents a significant rhetorical choice’ (hyland 2002:116) because it allows writers not only to report the source material but also to indicate their position or stance towards the cited material. scollon, tsang, li, yung and jones (1998) illustrate that boundaries between the writer’s voice and the voice of the source author are marked by direct and indirect quotations, which are signalled by reporting verbs. research into the use of reporting verbs in citation, and how writers use citations to position themselves in relation to other members of their discipline, has been investigated in depth (charles 2006; hyland 1999; thompson 2001; thomas & hawes 1994; thompson & yiyun 1991). research has also documented how citation is influenced by disciplinary culture (harwood 2009; hyland 1999). much work has also been devoted to the study of citation practices amongst both expert and novice writers. such studies tend to reflect the complexities of the use of citations and hence highlight the difficulties novice writers experience as they learn to cite materials in their writing. a study by mansourizadeh and ahmad (2011) compared the use and function of citation by experts and novice researchers who belonged to the same research community. they found that novice writers tended to use citation to attribute content to the source whilst expert writers used citations to provide support for their arguments and to justify their claims. they also found out that novice writers tended to use citations in isolation whilst expert writers were able to synthesise several sources in their writing. another interesting comparative study was conducted by barton (1993) to explore how experienced and inexperienced writers used evidentials in their writing to describe a perspective cited from the literature and take a stance. the study sheds light on how reporting verbs can be used in the construction of stance in academic writing. the study was based on a discourse analysis of the use of evidentials in argumentative essays written by experienced academic writers and essays written by students at wayne state university. barton collected a sample of written texts from these two groups. the experienced writers came from a variety of academic fields and had written argumentative essays that appeared on the back page of the chronicle of higher education newspaper. barton argues that the texts produced by experienced writers were essays rather than reports or letters to the editor. students’ essays came from different majors and programs; they were written for a university writing proficiency requirement and were written in an examination situation. in spite of the difference in experience between the two groups of writers and the writing conditions, barton (1993) argues that both groups were constructing an argument for a general academic audience and their texts could be said to be similar in terms of genre family (argumentation). the texts were chosen to find out whether there were similarities or differences in the way the two groups of writers constructed an argument. barton (1993) reports a significant difference in the use of source materials between the two groups. whilst the experienced writers used evidentials of citation to cite as well as place the literature within a critical perspective, students used evidentials in a neutral manner. barton (1993) encapsulates it in this quotation: the student writers generally maintain a neutrality in the use of evidentials of citation: the source authors (or the source, passages) state, say, call, refer to, believe and write, evidentials of citation which do not incorporate the perspective of the student writer. (p. 761) the studies on citation practices cited above have focused mainly on scholarly writings found in journals as well as student writing in the form of master’s dissertations and doctoral theses. the majority of these studies have focused on the use of citations in texts produced by native english-speaking writers. in contrast, this study focuses on citation practices of undergraduate student writers in non-native contexts writing in two different disciplines. justification top ↑ students writing a text for a university assignment are usually expected to draw from sources; lecturers attach much importance to how students integrate sources into their writing. the effectiveness of students’ arguments is judged by their ability to build on what other people have said and, at the same time, show that they can take a position and be heard. the way students integrate sources into their writing is supposed to ‘reflect both the utterer’s voice and the voices of those from whom s/he has borrowed the text’ (scollon et al. 1998:228). however, research has shown that citation presents considerable difficulties for students, particularly non-native english speakers writing in english (e.g. dong 1996; groom 2000; mansourizadeh & ahmad 2011; pecorari 2003). this is also echoed by hyland (2002b:116) when he says that ‘citation represents a feature which students, particularly non-native speakers, find difficult to either use effectively in their writing or understand correctly in their reading’.investigating citation practices in non-native contexts is therefore of interest in this study because it may shed light into the difficulties botswana second language writers of the english language experience as they learn to cite materials in their writing. it will also inform us of the types of reporting verbs students use to refer to the work of others and the extent to which they evaluate the work of others in their writing. it is also of interest to compare the less experienced writers (media studies students) with the more experienced writers (primary education students). the results of the study will offer valuable pedagogical implications for the teaching of citation in the english for academic purposes (eap) classroom. therefore, the present study seeks to investigate and compare the types of reporting verbs used by students from two university departments to refer to the work of others and the extent to which they evaluate the work of others in their writing. the aims of the study are: (1) to find out whether there are any differences in the use of reporting verbs when referring to the work of others in essays written by media studies and primary education students and (2) to find out the types of reporting verbs students in the departments of media studies and primary education use when referring to the work of others. research methodology top ↑ the corpus the study is based on a small corpus consisting of 40 essays written by undergraduate students from the university of botswana and is part of a broader study that looked at other aspects of english as a second language (esl) writing. table 1 shows the size of the corpus. the participants were from two departments, the department of media studies, which is in the faculty of humanities, and the department of primary education, which is in the faculty of education. the department of media studies offers the bachelor in media studies degree (bms). the programme introduces students to the world of electronic and print journalism. it opens career opportunities in journalism, both print and electronic, as well as script writing, advertising and public relations. the department of primary education runs in-service programmes for teachers who have been in the field for some time and who have had training up to diploma level. the department offers a bachelor’s degree in education (b.ed. primary). it also offers a bachelor of educational management programme for the improving of educational management. primary education students can be regarded as the more experienced writers compared to media studies students because they are teachers who have been in the field for a longer time. the students were selected through convenience sampling and the researcher did not in any way consider selecting a sample that was representative of the entire population. only students who were willing to participate in the study submitted their essays and completed a consent form. the students were in the third or fourth year of their study and had all done a writing course in which they were taught the basics of academic writing. the course included referencing and citation skills, which are commonly incorporated in the eap undergraduate writing course. the essays students wrote were part of the regular assessment requirements: students were given a writing task that required them to write an academic essay of about 1200–1500 words as homework. the rubrics required students to cite materials they had read to support their arguments, including at least five different sources (see appendix 1 for the assignment topics). analysis of citations the study employed both qualitative and quantitative approaches, including frequency counts and text analysis. i initially searched for reporting verbs manually in each text. this was done according to the function performed by verbs in a sentence. before going into the analysis, i shall present a classification of reporting verbs. swales (1990) distinguishes between integral and non-integral citations. in integral citations, the name of the cited author appears as part of the sentence, and in non-integral citations the name of the cited author appears in parentheses. according to petric (2007:240), the integral citations are divided into: (1) those with a controlling verb, (2) naming (where the citation is a noun phrase or its part) and (3) non-citations (where the author’s name is not followed by other data, such as publication year). the focus of the analysis of evidentials is on the use of integral citations with a controlling or reporting verb. in the analysis of citations, i used a classification system used by thomas and hawes (1994) for reporting verbs. they classify the reporting verbs according to the kind of activity referred to. they developed three categories of reporting verbs, which are (1) real-world or experimental activity verbs, (2) discourse active verbs and (3) cognition verbs. the category of ‘discourse activity verbs’ corresponds to a classification by thompson and yiyun (1991) who use the term ‘textual verbs’. according to thompson and yiyun (1991:369), this category refers to ‘processes in which verbal expression is an obligatory component’. they give examples like state, write, term, challenge, point out and name. cognition verbs correspond to thompson and yiyun’s ‘mental verbs’. these refer to mental processes; examples are believe, think, focus on, consider and prefer. the category that thomas and hawes call ‘real world or experimental activity verbs’ corresponds to thompson and yiyun’s ‘research verbs’. according to thompson and yiyun (1991:370), these verbs refer to ‘mental or physical processes that are part of research work’. examples are measure, obtain, quantify and find. they explain that these categories are not watertight and therefore there can be overlaps between the categories, which can make assigning reporting verbs to a single category difficult. in the analysis i focused on discourse activity verbs or textual verbs. a further division of these verbs is made by thomas and hawes (1994): they have two subcategories of discourse verbs, tentative and certainty verbs. according to thomas and hawes, certainty verbs state the reported proposition in conclusive and definite terms. they further group verbs of certainty into two sub-classes, which are informing verbs and argument verbs. these were the two classes that i was interested in for the analysis of reporting verbs. according to thomas and hawes (1994:140), informing verbs are associated with the ‘neutral passing of information from the source author to the reader via the reporting writer’. the writer does not comment or interpret the information being reported. these verbs do not signal evaluation or the writer’s point of view and ‘do not seem to have any explicit indication of persuasive intent on the part of the writer’ (ibid:143). the verbs mean the same thing as said. examples are report, note, refer to and so on. the other class of reporting verbs, argument verbs, signal an evaluative role in the sense that the writer interprets the information cited. thomas and hawes (ibid:140) stress that ‘the verbs do not signal neutrality in the communication of the information as the writer’s voice clearly intervenes’. they further argue that the ‘semantics of the verbs in this group make it clear that a particular stance is being adopted’ (ibid:40). examples are suggest, maintain, assert and criticise. the use of these verbs makes it clear that the writer is adopting a particular stance. hyland (2002b:116) also points out that using hedges like suggest opens an ‘evaluative space’ for the writer. to locate reporting verbs, i searched the corpus using wordsmith tools 5 (scott 2008) for citations that included a date or page number in parentheses. i recorded a citation only when the text attributed words specifically to an author, thus reflecting the analytical procedure that hyland (2002b) uses in locating reporting verbs in his study. the paragraph extract below taken from a student’s essay shows this: according to tumara (2001) human beings engage in activities which deplete the natural resources to try to meet their basic needs and raise their standards of living. warren (1992) points out that although women are equipped with knowledge about environment and natural resource base, and its use, they still engage in harmful environmental activities for critical reasons. (epi 442-student) as thomas and hawes (1994) indicate that there can be overlaps in assigning reporting verbs to a single category, i had to make decisions and examine the reporting verbs in context to determine whether they were informing verbs or argumentative verbs. in order to validate the results that i got from the initial analysis of reporting verbs, i used other strategies to ensure the validity of the results. one such strategy is discussed by dornyei (2007): the research design itself can be used to provide convincing evidence about the validity of the results. this concept of ‘triangulation’, which involves using multiple methods or perspectives, was used to do reliability checks. i analysed the essays again after a period of 12 months had elapsed. using the wordsmith tools 5 concord tool, i did a reverse check, using a list of features i identified in the initial analysis as a starting point for the second analysis. once i had identified reporting verbs, the corresponding features were searched for using the concord tool. the concordance provides a list of all occurrences of the search words in a corpus together with the context in which they occur. the concordance output was further subjected to qualitative analysis. this was done by carefully examining the contexts of these features to ensure that they actually functioned as either informing or argumentative verbs. this reflected the analytical procedure that mur duenas (2010) uses in his analysis. results top ↑ the first research question sought to find out whether there were any differences in the use of reporting verbs when referring to the work of others in essays written by media studies and primary education students. table 2 shows the total number of reporting verbs in the two sub-corpora and the frequency of reporting verbs per 1000 words. as can be seen from the table, a comparison of the two sub-corpora reveals a higher frequency of occurrences (both raw frequencies and frequency per 1000 words) in the use of reporting verbs in the primary education corpus than in the media studies corpus. the results indicate 39 occurrence of reporting verbs in the media studies corpus. these occurred in nine essays with a maximum use of five and a minimum use of three per essay. the results also indicate a very high occurrence of reporting verbs in the primary education corpus. the results show 158 instances of use of reporting verbs in the whole corpus. these occurred in 18 essays with a maximum use of 18 and a minimum use of two per essay. the two groups differed substantially in the use of reporting verbs. a t-test for independent samples results showed a significant difference in the use of reporting verbs in the two sub-corpora. as can be seen in table 3, there is a significant difference between the two groups (t = -3.074; df = 38; p < .05). this is an interesting finding because both media studies students and primary education students were required to use sources in their essays, but we see a significant difference in the frequency of use of reporting verbs by the groups. the second research question concerns the types of reporting verbs students use when referring to the work of others. examining the types of reporting verbs employed by the students helped to determine the rhetorical function of the verbs in use. generally, the results show that students used both informing and argumentative verbs in their writing but to different degrees. the pattern we see is that, across the two departments, informing verbs were by far the most common whilst there were substantially fewer argumentative verbs. there were 27 instances of informing verbs and 12 instances of argumentative verbs in the media studies corpus. in the primary education corpus there were 119 instances of informing verbs and 39 instances of argumentative verbs. the students used informing verbs, which are associated with neutral passing of information from the source to the reader without any indication of persuasive intent on the part of the writer. moreover, their use was from frequent than argumentative verbs, which signal the evaluative role in the sense that the writer interprets the information cited. this signalled the degree to which they commit to or detach themselves from the reported proposition. example 1 shows the use of an informing verb used to accompany a citation: example 1: zimbabweans are willing to work and do anything at low prices, therefore occupying job opportunities for the locals. furthermore, politics perpetuate the situation by debating that the ruling government offers foreigners job opportunities more than the locals. reynolds (1987 p. 175) says: living in large complex societies, often composed of several different ethnic groups, has become the fate of most of the world’s population today. nations and state figure predominantly on the international scene, with politicians vigorously and selfishly pursuing whatever they perceive in their nations interest. (bms 401 student) in the example above, the student introduces the report from sources in a neutral way without commenting on what has been reported. the student uses the verb ‘say’ to pass information to the reader without showing any intention to persuade the reader or to adopt a stance towards the material cited. this was a common trend in how students in both groups incorporated cited material. the students relied on a very restricted range of these verbs; the most common informing verbs used were say, according to, point out and state. the results show that writers in both departments displayed a clear preference for adopting a neutral stance to the material cited. this finding demonstrates that attribution of content to another source was the dominant function of reporting verbs in the students’ papers. this function of informing verbs is the simplest to use and ‘does not demand advanced rhetorical skills’ compared to argumentative verbs (mansourizadeh & ahmad 2011). however, when students used argumentative verbs, they used them effectively to support their argument and to indicate their stance as writers. example 2 indicates this particular function of argumentative verbs: example 2: media representations of women are full of stereotypes which are inevitable, especially in advertising, entertainment and news industries. … in terms of occupation, media coverage continue to rely on men as experts over women in virtually all fields. … women in the news are likely to be featured in stories about domestic violence than in stories about professional abilities or expertise (durkin 1985:54). durkin (1985) further argues that women in politics are equally sidelined. political and economic success stories are mostly masculine. (bms 302 student) in example 2, the writer has presented the original author’s point of view as an argument, and, in so doing, advances their own argument that women are sidelined in politics. this suggests that the verb argue has been imposed on the reported information by the writer rather than the source author and hence the writer’s voice intervenes on the reported information. discussion top ↑ the present study sought to explore the types of reporting verbs students use to refer to the work of others and the extent to which they evaluate the work of others in their writing. it also sought to compare the more experienced writers (primary education students) with the less experienced writers (media studies students). as shown by the results, whilst the two groups of students used reporting verbs in their writing, they were far more prevalent in the primary education corpus than in the media studies corpus. we have also seen that informing verbs were by far the most common in the whole corpus.the results suggest a number of possible explanations for the variation in the use of reporting verbs by the two groups of students. they suggest a tendency by primary education students to overly rely on the use of citations in their essays and used sources to present knowledge or arrangement of ideas ‘merely to fulfill the “requirements” set to pass’ (read, francis & robson 2001:395) rather than to present an argument. the results are consistent with what barton (1993) and mansourizadeh and ahmad (2011) found out when they compared the use and function of citation by experts and novice researchers. they found that novice writers tended to use citation to attribute content to the source rather than to provide support for their arguments and to justify their claims. petric (2007) raises an important point: that students, unlike scholars, write for a different audience and therefore have different writing goals. in that sense, when students write essays it could be to demonstrate their knowledge on a certain topic. petric (ibid:239) posits that students’ ‘use of citation for knowledge display and for demonstrating one’s ability to apply a theory may be a more prominent function of citation in students’ writing’. this could explain why students used informing verbs more often than argumentative verbs. another factor that is discussed by hyland (2002a:1094) is that the ‘academy’s emphasis on analysis and interpretation means that students must position themselves in relation to the materials they discuss, finding a way to express their own contentions and arguments … to get behind their words and stake out a position’. students are expected to develop ways of arguing and reporting on other views in a manner that is acceptable in the academy. however, petric (2007:239) argues that ‘students refer to the work of others in much higher standing than them; therefore, issues of power are also different, which may affect students’ confidence to express evaluation’. evaluation can also present problems for undergraduate students because ‘they are not at the appropriate level of cognitive or intellectual development to do so’ (thompson & tribble 2001:92). despite the small corpus that was used in the present study, overall, the results corroborate findings of earlier researchers, which reflect the difficulties novice writers have in incorporating sources in their work. the results also indicate that primary education students seemed to have more difficulties with incorporating source materials than media studies students, which is contrary to expectations. such difficulties include lack of strategies such as paraphrasing and summarising techniques that they could use to embed ideas they get from reading into their writing. the students tended to use less-demanding strategies like ‘cutting and pasting’ ideas from the sources into their writing in a rather reproductive way. pedagogical implications as presented earlier, citation is an important convention of, and plays a key role in, academic writing. but we have seen that it also presents considerable difficulties for our students. hyland (2002b:116) asserts that ‘this problem is often more than a deficit of vocabulary, but is symptomatic of a larger issue of how to appropriately acknowledge sources in academic writing’. in the eap writing course, the use of sources in writing is often taught at a technical level: students are introduced to the mechanics of citations such as how to incorporate direct and indirect quotes and how to paraphrase or summarise information. all these are related to helping students avoid plagiarising. this means that, although students are aware that they needed to cite sources that they use in writing, they might not be aware that reporting verbs can be employed differently to perform different functions. the use of reporting verbs is therefore one area in which the students need help. hyland (2002b) encapsulates it well when he says: although reporting is often treated in eap materials as the application of standardized conventions and advice about avoiding plagiarism, students need to know more than the necessity and mechanics of referring to existing literature. they also need to present literature in ways that their readers are likely to find convincing. (p. 130) the findings can therefore inform the design of the eap writing course in that they support incorporating the teaching of reporting verbs into our eap advanced writing course. the results also indicate that students used a limited range of linguistic resources to report the work of other writers and students can benefit from becoming more aware of resources available to them to do so. conclusion top ↑ this study provided a picture of how students at the university of botswana used reporting verbs in reporting cited material. the findings reported high use of informing verbs, which are associated with neutral passing of information from source to reader. the students used a limited repertoire of argumentative verbs, which signify the evaluative role. the findings of this study have contributed to research on the use of citations by confirming the difficulties non-native students have as they learn to cite materials in their writing. the findings suggest that the university of botswana eap lecturers should assist students to become aware of the various linguistic choices they have when they want to report cited material. acknowledgements top ↑ i would like to thank the university of botswana students who agreed to participate in this study. competing interests i declare that i have no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced me in writing this article. references top ↑ barton, e.l., 1993, ‘evidentials, argumentation, and epistemological stance’, college english 55(7), 745–769. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/378428 charles, m., 2006, ‘phraseological patterns in reporting clauses used in citation: a corpus-based study of theses in two disciplines’, english for specific purposes 25(3), 310–331. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2005.05.003 dong, y.r., 1996, ‘learning how to use citations for knowledge transformation: non-native doctoral students’ dissertation writing in science’, research in the teaching of english 30(4), 428–457. dornyei, z., 2007, research methods in applied linguistics, oxford university press, oxford. groom, n., 2000, ‘attribution and averral revisited: three perspectives of manifest intertextuality in academic writing’, in p. thompson (ed.), patterns and perspectives: insights into eap writing practice, pp. 14–25, university of reading, reading. harwood, n., 2009, ‘an interview-based study of functions of citations in academic writing across two disciplines, journal of pragmatics 41(3), 497–518. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2008.06.001 hyland, k., 1999, ‘academic attribution: citation and the construction of disciplinary knowledge’, applied linguistics 20(3), 341–367. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/applin/20.3.341 hyland, k., 2002a, ‘authority and invisibility: authorial identity in academic writing’, journal of pragmatics 34(8), 1091–1112. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0378-2166(02)00035-8 hyland, k., 2002b, ‘activity and evaluation: reporting practices in academic writing’, in j. flowerdew (ed.), academic discourse, pp. 115–130, longman, london. mansourizadeh, k. & ahmad u.k., 2011, ‘citation practices among non-native expert and novice scientific writers’, journal of english for academic purposes 10, 152–161. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2011.03.004 mur duenas, p., 2010, ‘attitude markers in business management research articles: a cross cultural corpus-driven approach’, international journal of applied linguistics 20(1), 50–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.2009.00228.x pecorari, d., 2003, ‘good and original: plagiarism and patchwriting in academic second language writing’, journal of second language writing 12, 317–345. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2003.08.004 petric, b., 2007, ‘rhetorical functions of citations in high and low rated masters’ theses’, journal of english for academic purposes 6(3), 238–253. read, b., francis, b. & robson, j., 2001, ‘playing safe: undergraduate essay writing and presentation of the student voice’, british journal of sociology of education 22(3), 387–399. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425690124289 scollon, r., tsang, w.k., li, d., yung, v. & jones, r., 1998, ‘voice, appropriation and discourse representation in student writing task’, linguistics and education 9(3), 227–250. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0898-5898(97)90001-2 scott, m., 2008, wordsmith tools version 5, computer software, lexical analysis software ltd, liverpool. swales, j.m., 1990, genre analysis: english in academic and research settings, cambridge university press, cambridge. pmcid:pmc1664324 thompson, g., 2001, ‘interaction in academic writing: learning to argue with the reader’, applied linguistics 22(1), 58–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/applin/22.1.58 thompson, g. & yiyun, y., 1991, ‘evaluation in reporting verbs used in academic papers’, applied linguistics 12(4), 365–382. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/applin/12.4.365 thomas, s. & hawes, t., 1994, ‘reporting verbs in medical journal articles’, english for specific purposes 13(2), 129–148. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0889-4906(94)90012-4 thompson, p. & tribble, c., 2001, ‘looking at citations: using corpora in english for academic purposes’, language learning and technology 5(3), 91–105. appendix 1 top ↑ assignment questions for media studies and primary education course: bms 302 – gender, sex and ethnicity in media choose one of the topics below and write an essay of about 1200–1500 words on the topic:a) discuss the media treatment of one social group of your choice. what factors or contexts do you feel are relevant for understanding the ways in which this group is, or has been, represented? b) do media images and messages only reflect the world, or do they also create it? clearly they do both. but many studies demonstrate that media messages do not reflect the world as it really is. there are far more people of colour, disabled people, non-heterosexuals, seniors and poor people in the real world than we see on tv or in the movies. media portrayal of women often leaves much to be desired, especially women in advertising. discuss, with reference to both print and broadcast media. c) “gender-based restrictions on media representations in africa constitute a form of neo-colonialism which is contrary to african cultural traditions”. explain, with evidence, whether you agree or disagree with this quotation. d) what is now called “globalisation” would not be possible without mass media. communication through modern technology has the potential to spread democracy. but corporate control of media production simultaneously threatens the ability of citizens to receive unbiased news to have their own messages heard. discuss. course: bms 401 – imaging africa choose one of the topics below and write an essay of about 1200–1500 words on the topic:a) to what extent does the national museum of botswana conform to stereotypes about africa and to what extent does it provide an alternative afro-centric view of botswana? b) if an ancestral mask or a traditional foot stool is taken from its original context and function (e.g. to an art gallery), is its artistic value enhanced or diminished? c) in what ways do african artists and media practitioners provide a counter narrative to colonial and neo colonial imaging of africa with respect to disaster? course: epi 442 – environmental education conservation strategies choose one of the topics below and write an essay of about 1200–1500 words on the topic:a) discuss using elaborate examples how indigenous knowledge can contribute towards sustainable use of the environment and its resources. b) discuss how gender-related activities contribute to natural resource depletion. in your discussion, indicate how the environmental problems caused by such activities could be solved. c) using examples in botswana and elsewhere, explain how local communities can be an instrument in conserving the environment. abstract introduction overview of literature review conceptual framework professional development training with national professional teachers’ organisation in south africa methodology findings and discussion conclusion and recommendations acknowledgements references about the author(s) chantyclaire tiba faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa citation tiba, c., 2023, ‘motivation to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies after a workshop’, reading & writing 14(1), a405. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v14i1.405 original research motivation to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies after a workshop chantyclaire tiba received: 12 sept. 2022; accepted: 22 nov. 2022; published: 13 apr. 2023 copyright: © 2023. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: teachers are important role players in improving literacy; however, they lack the expertise to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies. studies have showed that when teachers are motivated to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms, learners’ comprehension is improved. objective: the aim of the study was to investigate what motivates teachers to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms after a workshop. method: purposive sampling was used and 20 teachers took part in this study. the research followed a qualitative approach, and the data were obtained from teachers’ responses to an open-ended questionnaire. thematic analysis using concepts from shulman’s ‘pedagogical content knowledge’, vygotsky’s ‘social constructivism’, bundura’s ‘self-efficacy’ and chalmers and gardiner’s ‘academic professional development effectiveness framework’ was conducted. results: one key finding was that teachers developed competence through effective pedagogical practices used by facilitators of the workshop; this boosted their confidence. conclusion: the findings suggest that professional development training plays an important role in making teachers aware of reading comprehension strategies, equipping them with skills that will enable them to guide learners to become proficient readers. contribution: the uniqueness of this study is that it hinged on collecting empirical evidence, within a south african context, on what motivates teachers to explicitly teach reading comprehension in their professional practice after being exposed to a repertoire of reading comprehension strategies during a workshop. keywords: explicit strategies; professional development; reading comprehension strategies; reading motivation, reading problems; reading proficiency; self-efficacy; teacher development. introduction it is important for learners to acquire reading skills as they will need these skills in all spheres of their life. reading occurs on a daily basis as we: have to read the newspaper in the morning, read typed text at the bottom of a television screen later in the afternoon, follow a recipe to make dinner, read a quick e-mail or text from a friend, study from a textbook for a high school quiz, or enjoy a novel before bed. (marchand-martella & martella 2013:3) the ability to read proficiently influences learners’ academic performance (boakye 2021), as it improves their understanding of various subjects across the curriculum (schmidt, condy & tiba 2021). the importance of reading is acknowledged by cekiso (2017) who states that all academic achievement depends on a learner’s ability to read efficiently. however, many south african learners lack the ability to read for meaning as evident in the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) 2016 (howie et al. 2017) and this, among other factors, has been attributed to teachers’ training and teachers’ lack of expertise to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies (cekiso 2017; phala & hugo 2022). in 2012, the national education evaluation and development unit (needu) reported that many south african teachers lack the ability to answer questions that required higher cognitive functions of inference, interpretation and evaluation (taylor et al. 2012). this suggests that some teachers lack the ability to strategically read a text for comprehension. if teachers cannot read for meaning, medina et al. (2021) questioned whether they would be able to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies to learners. in medina et al.’s study, teachers were taught how to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies, and they integrated these strategies during teaching which improved their learners’ reading behaviour. it is against this background that a professional development training workshop was organised with the national professional teachers’ organisation in south africa (naptosa) and was aimed at making teachers aware of reading comprehension strategies, and equipping them with skills that are needed to explicitly teach these reading comprehension strategies. researchers such as ying and aziz (2019), boakye (2021) and li et al. (2022) have acknowledged the importance of explicitly teaching reading comprehension strategies as they have the potential to improve the reading ability of learners. with explicit teaching of reading comprehension strategies, teachers show learners how to find information within a text through scaffolded and guided practice before the learners are required to perform the task on their own (marchand-martella & martella 2013; rupley, blair & nichols 2009). therefore, the teacher’s role is important in making learners aware of reading comprehension strategies and intentionally teaching these strategies to learners so that they become competent readers. muzammil and suhono (2019) and cekiso (2017) state that teachers have the responsibility to teach learners how to read and how to apply the knowledge to comprehend any text. many studies on professional development in equipping teachers to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies have been conducted in developed countries such as the united states and ireland (concannon-gibney & murphy 2012; medina et al. 2021). it appears evidence is lacking in south africa regarding what motivates teachers, after a professional development workshop, to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms. the uniqueness of this study is that it hinged on collecting empirical evidence, within a south african context, on the impact of a workshop in motivating teachers to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies in their professional practice. therefore, the researcher hoped to gather qualitative evidence that will show the impact of a workshop in motivating teachers to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms, and provide recommendations for future practice. the research question that guided this study was: what motivates teachers to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms? in understanding the topic under study, the following section focuses on existing literature in relation to reading comprehension, the benefits to learners and challenges teachers face regarding explicit teaching of reading comprehension strategies as well as empirical studies in which professional development training developed teacher’s knowledge and skills on how to teach reading comprehension strategies. overview of literature review muzammil and suhono (2019) explain that to be a good reader, one has to comprehend the text one is reading. therefore, reading and comprehension are interlinked, and have been defined by vongkrachang and chinwonno (2015) as a learner’s ability to recognise words, develop and use vocabulary, and have the ability to use a variety of strategies to read a text for comprehension. the skills that learners need to read proficiently should be taught in the foundation phase (grades 1–3) because this could ameliorate future problems with reading (phala & hugo 2022). therefore, teachers have to make an intentional decision to explicitly teach learners reading comprehension strategies (phala & hugo 2022). according to marchand-martella and martella (2013) and hilden and pressley (2007), explicit teaching requires teachers to skilfully teach a lesson through guided practice and monitor learners. an array of literature has shown the benefits when reading comprehension strategies are explicitly taught to learners. for example, boakye (2021) reported that learners’ understanding of texts improved after being explicitly taught reading comprehension strategies. boakye found that deeper learning occurred as learners were engaged, which made it easier to understand concepts, and learners were confident in their ability to read text. schmidt et al. (2021) examined the teaching of higher-order comprehension strategies to a grade 2 learner who struggled to read for meaning. the ‘think aloud’, ‘anticipation guide’ and ‘magic square’ strategies were explicitly taught to the learner. the findings suggest that the learner felt safe and her confidence was boosted to read texts. these findings are congruent with the study of li et al. (2022) which showed that after reading comprehension strategies were explicitly taught to chinese english first language (efl) learners, the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group. this suggests that explicit teaching of reading strategies may improve reading comprehension. this is consistent with what rouijel, zohri and bouziane (2019) concluded: that to improve a given cognitive skill, be it lower-order or higher-order, it must be taught purposefully and explicitly. in their study, explicit teaching of critical thinking skills had a positive effect on learners’ use of higher-order thinking skills in reading comprehension. this correlates with other studies such as a study by muzammil and suhono which found that after the explicit teaching of reading comprehension strategies, learners learnt to extract explicitly stated information, and make straightforward inference and prediction from a text. despite these benefits, findings from studies by hilden and pressley, klapwijk (2012) and cekiso (2017) suggest that the time for training, the time for preparing lessons, the time for supporting learners, as well as overcrowded classrooms could hinder teachers from explicitly teaching reading comprehension strategies. in a study by hilden and pressley in particular, teachers who declined to participate in a professional development training on explicit teaching of reading comprehension strategies indicated other commitments, time conflicts and that the programme would be time-consuming. in the study by klapwijk, she found that it took time and practice for teachers to realise that reading strategy instruction is not separate from but related to their teaching of comprehension. professional development training can develop teachers’ knowledge to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies. for example, in a study by medina et al. (2021), which focused on the influence of sustained, school-based professional development on explicit reading comprehension strategy instruction, the teachers participated in an intervention to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms. the findings revealed that teachers obtained knowledge and developed skills to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies. these teachers were able to gradually release responsibility to learners during teaching. in klapwijk’s (2012) study, after a reading strategy instruction intervention, teachers developed confidence to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies. for example, they changed the way they interacted with learners and texts and engaged more in reading strategy discourse. concannon-gibney and murphy (2012) found that professional development deepened teachers’ knowledge to teach reading comprehension strategies as they were given the opportunity to practise in their classrooms and share their experiences. conceptual framework four frameworks guided this study: shulmans’s (1986, 1987) pedagogical content knowledge (pck), vygotsky’s (1978) socio-cultural perspective of learning, bandura’s (1977) theory of self-efficacy and chalmers and gardiner’s (2015) academic professional development effectiveness framework. shulman (1986, 1987) described three domains that are needed for effective teaching. these domains are content knowledge (ck), pedagogical knowledge (pk) and pck. content knowledge refers to teachers’ knowledge about the subject matter they teach; teachers were taught subject matter included in the intermediate phase. pedagogical knowledge refers to techniques or methods that teachers use in their classrooms. the facilitators used different pedagogical approaches such as group work and reflective feedback. pedagogical content knowledge, according to mishra and koehler (2006:1027), is defined as: ‘the ability of a teacher to know what teaching approaches fit a content and also knowing how elements of the content can be arranged for better understanding of learners’. therefore, pck is an amalgamation of ck and pk (shulman 1986, 1987). in the context of this study, the facilitators taught content of the intermediate phase, using different pedagogical strategies that engaged the teachers. the pck framework guided the facilitators when planning and delivering content during the workshop. according to vygotsky (1978), learning occurs in a social context where people learn from the more knowledgeable other (mko). the mko, in the context of the workshop, were the facilitators. a social environment was created wherein the teachers actively collaborated with their peers and the facilitators. while collaborating, knowledge was co-constructed through participation and interaction. to facilitate learning, the facilitators scaffolded learning within the zone of proximal development (zpd) until teachers could independently practise in their classrooms and give feedback in class. self-efficacy is a component of bandura’s (1977) social cognitive theory, and it is defined as one’s ability to perform a given action to achieve a specific goal. in relation to this study, self-efficacy is the teacher’s knowledge acquired during the workshop and the ability to use it in their classroom practice. the facilitators modelled, with authentic texts from the intermediate phase curriculum, how teachers could explicitly teach the three reading comprehension strategies. these teachers were given activities that required them to practise the three strategies taught to them in their classrooms. because of these experiences, when analysing data, the researcher was interested in information that links to the teachers’ self-efficacy. in understanding the impact that the workshop had on teachers’ motivation to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies, the academic professional development effectiveness framework (chalmers & gardiner 2015) was used. the framework is ‘designed as an evaluation tool to facilitate the systematic collection and analysis of data related to the intended outcomes of the teacher development programmes’ (chalmers & gardiner 2015:81). chalmers and gardiner (2015) proposed four indicators that can be used to ascertain the impact of a professional development training, which are input, process, output and outcomes. input indicators refer to the ‘human, physical and financial resources dedicated to particular programmes’; output indicators are ‘results or outcomes of the programmes which are measurable such as the number of programme participants’; process indicators have to do with: how programmes are delivered within a particular context referring to policies and practices related to learning and teaching, performance management and professional development of staff, quality of curriculum and the assessment of student learning, and quality of facilities, services and technology. (chalmers & gardiner 2015:86) finally, outcome indicators ‘focus on the quality of provision, satisfaction levels and the value added from learning experiences’ (chalmers & gardiner 2015:86). in this current study, the outcome indicators assisted the researcher to collect as well as analyse data in relation to the impact the workshop had on motivating teachers to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms. therefore, when analysing data, the researcher looked for evidence that links to the quality of the workshop, and the teachers’ satisfaction with the value of the workshop. professional development training with national professional teachers’ organisation in south africa there are many unions protecting the rights of teachers, and the quality of education in south africa, among which is naptosa – a professional organisation of teachers with headquarters in pretoria. one of the goals of naptosa is professional development of teachers. a reading for meaning (r4m) workshop was advertised and 20 intermediate phase teachers voluntarily enrolled. the aim of the workshop was to make teachers aware and deepen their knowledge of how they could explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms. the workshop took place online on ms teams over three weeks. the workshop ran for 5 h from 09:00 to 14:00 every saturday. each week a strategy was taught to the teachers in order to give them enough time to practise using the strategy, and they were provided with powerpoint presentations, texts and videos to deepen their knowledge of the strategies. the three facilitators scaffolded and explicitly taught three reading comprehension strategies. these strategies included: ‘my turn your turn’, ‘anticipation guide’ and ‘think aloud’. according to schmidt et al. (2021:270), the ‘my turn your turn’ strategy involves the teacher sharing an aspect of what was read, for example ‘this reminds me of the time when …’ or ‘how do you think the character is feeling?’ and the learner then shares something in return. schmidt et al. (2021:270) further indicated that one of the benefits of the ‘my turn your turn’ strategy is that learners ‘engage in active thinking during reading to gain a deeper meaning of the reading passage’. this strategy focuses on predicting, making connections, clarifying, paraphrasing, summarising and inferring. with ‘anticipation guide’, learners respond to a set of statements to activate their prior knowledge, get their opinions about statements and stimulate their interest to read the text (roozkhoon & samani 2013). this is a higher-order thinking strategy as it challenges learners’ thoughts, assumptions and experiences. according to rupley et al. (2009), ‘think aloud’ or ‘talk aloud’ involves teacher discussion and teacher-student interaction, and an important feature is that teachers verbalise what they are thinking. in other words, teachers model how strategic readers think when they read. for example: ‘our country does not have that sort of thing but we have …’, ‘i think i know what is coming next …’, ‘i wonder what they are going to …’ and ‘i can imagine what it is like to …’. ‘think aloud’ is intended to help learners ‘get inside the teacher’s mind’ and begin to understand what strategies they can use when doing similar tasks (rupley et al. 2009:128). with ‘think aloud’ the key strategies to learn are predicting, making connections, paraphrasing and summarising, inferring, activating prior knowledge, visualising and generating questions. after each strategy was taught, teachers were given a task to practise these strategies in their classrooms and provide reflective feedback during the next online session and on the telegram platform, which was used for communication. these enabled teachers to demonstrate understanding and reflect on using these three strategies in their different school contexts. the teachers and facilitators all discussed strengths and areas of improvement. in a study by mathew, mathew and peechattu (2017) it was concluded that reflection leads to professional growth, as teachers may decide to do things in a different way or according to their strengths. therefore, reflection could change teachers’ practice (avalos 2011 cited in bevik 2014). this is evident in the study by concannon-gibney and murphy (2012) where teachers’ knowledge deepened because they were given an opportunity to reflect on their experiences explicitly teaching reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms following professional development training. methodology this is a qualitative-interpretive study in which empirical data were collected and interpreted in relation to teachers’ perspectives on the impact a workshop had in motivating them to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms. according to creswell (2015), researchers should attempt to understand a situation from the participant’s unique experiences. purposive sampling was utilised for this study as the researcher wanted specific participants who would provide information that would answer the research question. therefore, the participants were information-rich as they had certain characteristics (smith & osborne 2008). this aligns with punch and oancea’s (2014) definition of purposive sampling, as a deliberate selection of participants who are knowledgeable about a phenomenon of study. twenty qualified teachers voluntarily participated in an online professional development workshop on ms teams over 3 weeks. the researcher was one of the facilitators of the workshop. these teachers were trained on how they could explicitly teach three reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms. the telegram platform was created for communication with the teachers. this is an impact study; therefore, the ‘outcome indicators’ of the academic professional development effectiveness framework (chalmers & gardiner 2015) guided the researcher when developing the questions in the open-ended questionnaire. the rationale of using a questionnaire was to adhere to the physical distance regulation during coronavirus 2019 (covid-19). the advantage of using an open-ended questionnaire was that the participants could freely express themselves, as it was anonymous, about the impact the workshop had on their motivation to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies. an open-ended questionnaire was emailed to teachers after the workshop to solicit information on the following questions: ‘what were the strengths of the workshop?’, ‘what were challenges of the workshop?’, ‘how could the workshop be improved?’, ‘what can you say about how the workshop was presented?’, ‘how has this workshop influenced your teaching?’ and ‘would you like to add any other comment?’ all these questions link to issues of the outcome indicators, which include quality of the workshop, teachers’ satisfaction and how the workshop changed teachers’ pedagogical approaches. the training workshop took place in 2021 on ms teams over a 3-week period. each week a strategy was taught to teachers and they were given a task to use the strategy in their classrooms and provide feedback to their peers and facilitators either during an online session on ms teams or on telegram. thematic data analysis was utilised and the following four phases suggested by braun and clark (2006) were used: (1) familiarisation with the data through reading and re-reading data, (2) colour-coding information that links to the research question, (3) searching for themes that link to what motivates teachers to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies, following a workshop, and (4) reviewing themes. the themes were reported in the findings and discussion section, linking these to the conceptual framework and literature. permission to conduct the study was granted by the university where she works (efec 2-8/2019). at all times, confidentiality and anonymity were maintained as participants’ names were not mentioned when reporting data. teachers signed a written consent form agreeing to be part of this study. all data collected were in accordance with the ethical standards of the wced. trustworthiness was achieved as the other two facilitators, who were part of the team for the workshop, critically reviewed this article. they ensured that the themes discussed linked to the research question. findings and discussion the research question that guided this study was: what motivates teachers to use reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms? the findings are supported by comments made by teachers from the open-ended questionnaire. each comment made by a teacher is in inverted commas or quotation marks when reporting findings. from the findings, it became evident that teachers were generally satisfied about the workshop and planned to integrate the strategies they were introduced to in their classrooms. the key finding was that teachers were competent as they acquired knowledge and skills to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies. however, some teachers were concerned about time required to practise during the workshop and to implement the strategies in their classrooms. teachers’ competence teachers developed knowledge and acquired skills required for them to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies. the knowledge and skills were acquired through effective pedagogical practices used by the facilitators. during the workshop, after each strategy was taught, teachers were required to teach it in their classrooms and reflect on their experiences either using ms teams or telegram. the teachers indicated in the questionnaire that the feedback sessions were beneficial. eleven out of the 20 teachers made the following comments on the questionnaire: ‘the ability to provide feedback following implementation’; ‘… implement as well as feedback each week’; ‘loved the different methods teachers were using and how it works in their schools’; ‘i love the sharing and feedback sessions. very well presented course’; ‘… very engaging; very practical strategies and ideas-approach that ensures we are able to do it in the classroom’; ‘excellent strategies and the ability to share experiences has been great’; ‘that we could go back to school and apply the topics and give feedback’; ‘i enjoyed hearing how other teachers approached the topics [strategies] and how they implemented them constructively’; ‘i loved that we were given a chance to role model all the reading strategies presented’; ‘practical nature of the activities. reflecting and feedback gap between first and second sessions gave us time to practice and reflect’; ‘… what was covered and then take it back and implement it in our classes’. the findings suggest that through teachers’ application of and reflection on their practice, they developed competence, as their knowledge and understanding of the three strategies increased through discussion with their peers and facilitators. in the study by concannon-gibney and murphy (2012), teachers improved their knowledge to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies because they shared their experiences with colleagues. therefore, they recommended that future professional development training should give teachers opportunities to discuss and reflect on their practice. this reinforced what was found in a study by medina et al. (2021): that professional development training equipped teachers with knowledge and skills to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies. the teachers in medina’s study acquired knowledge that enabled them to gradually release responsibility to learners when teaching in their classrooms. the finding of this current study aligns with vygotsky’s (1978) concept of the mko. the facilitators who were the mko modelled and guided teachers until they could independently implement the strategies taught to them during professional development training in their classrooms. in relation to the ‘outcome indicators’ of the academic professional development effectiveness framework (chalmers & gardiner 2015), the teachers felt the reflective feedback sessions after implementation of strategies in their classrooms were relevant. this is because the teachers learn from each other’s experiences. it appears the teachers were satisfied as they gained knowledge through active participation during the reflective feedback. another pedagogical approach that the facilitators used was group work. according to the teachers, group tasks created an inclusive environment in which all of them participated and interacted in a risk-free environment. through collaboration with peers and facilitators, their knowledge of the three reading comprehension strategies increased. ten out of the 20 teachers wrote the following comments in the questionnaire: ‘… the facilitators used strategies such as group work’; ‘the interactive participation of everyone. the small group break away’; ‘it was good that we participated in the activities because it made the understanding thereof easier’; ‘the collaboration and interaction of teachers’; ‘the small group sessions were excellent idea’; ‘the interaction with the facilitators and workshop members as well as their encouragement’; ‘social constructivism at its best. collaboration best practices shared. safe learning environment’; ‘the workshops were very informative. i enjoyed the discussions and the fact that we were actively involved’; ‘all the teachers were given opportunity to participate in the classroom. when we work together, we learn from one another’; ‘this course spoke directly to the need that … it was interactive’. the findings suggest that the teachers were satisfied with the interactions, engagements and discussion in the group sessions during the workshop. they experienced first-hand the benefits of the learner-centred approach, which changed their perspective of teaching. social constructivist theorists such as vygotsky (1978) emphasise that learning takes place when people construct their own knowledge rather than being passive. therefore, the facilitators in this current study, who were the mko, used group work as a pedagogical approach to facilitate construction of knowledge. eleven out of the 20 teachers suggested that a hands-on approach where they were engaged with the content developed their competence. the teachers wrote the following in the questionnaire: ‘… the hands on inclusive approach’; ‘each strategy was practiced by us, taught by us and reflected on by us … wonderful job of modelling – clear – easy to follow – great notes’; ‘hands-on approach. practical presentations’; ‘i enjoyed the hands-on approach of the workshop. it was much easier to retain’; ‘it has shown me once again that teacher centered teaching is not as effective as …’; ‘the practical part – drawing up the activities. working in groups to share ideas’; ‘i’ve been given practical skills to use’; ‘i loved all the new strategies that was introduced to us and the manner it was demonstrated. it was all hands on learning’; ‘i feel comfortable with all the strategies, i grew interest from the course and i quickly practice it and i presented it …’; ‘yes more equipped …’; ‘the practical component will be able to use it across all subjects’. general knowledge suggests that people learn by doing. from the findings, teachers felt competent as they gained knowledge from practical activities they were involved with, in the workshop. there is a high level of achievement when people are actively involved in their learning (rupley et al. 2009). in a study by concannon-gibney and murphy (2012) the practical activities facilitated teachers’ implementation of reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms, as they had experienced how the strategies might work during professional development training. the facilitators of the workshop in this current study did not teach content (ck) in isolation; teachers were supported using different pedagogical (pk) approaches that actively engaged them. according to shulman (1986, 1987), effective teaching occurs when there is a blend of ck and pk. in relation to the concept of ‘outcome indicators’ of the academic professional development effectiveness framework (chalmers & gardiner 2015), the hands-on activities made teachers confident and comfortable to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms. eight out of the 20 teachers were generally satisfied with the workshop and they made the following comments: ‘it’s my first year teaching language. this course certainly made me competent in teaching. teaching these strategies to my learners as well as colleagues’; ‘it has made me more aware of planning my lessons well and of focusing on strategies that will improve my learners reading for meaning’; ‘i am definitely more confident in my teaching. i use it in most of my subjects’; ‘i managed to share some strategies with a colleague’; ‘it has motivated me to get back into classroom teaching, however i can encourage future teachers to use these strategies’; ‘the course taught us great strategies and enhanced our knowledge greatly’; ‘i knew very little in the beginning about the strategies being dealt with. after the course i feel more competent’; ‘it opened my eyes to so many other strategies that can be easily integrated into my classroom’; ‘extremely positive influences. i’ve learnt so many classroom friendly techniques and methods’; ‘the different strategies learnt it was quite relevant to use in the classroom. i have tried some of these strategies successfully and i have learnt new ways of doing something’. the findings reveal that professional development training made teachers aware and developed their knowledge and skills to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies, which increased their self-efficacy. according to bandura (1977), when an individual believes they can execute something, they will be motivated to do it. teachers’ high self-efficacy could be ascribed to the different pedagogical approaches used by the facilitators. it appears that some of the teachers in this current study knew about the reading comprehension strategies but the professional development training made them aware of how they could explicitly teach these strategies in their classrooms through guiding, modelling and supporting learners until they become independent readers. there is evidence that the workshop was effective which links to the concept of the ‘outcome indicators’ of the academic professional development effectiveness framework (chalmers & gardiner 2015). time as a challenge although some teachers indicated that they were adequately competent to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies, some were concerned about time in relation to the additional work that was required from them during the workshop to do activities and time to assist learners in the classroom when reading comprehension strategies were explicitly taught. four of the teachers mentioned the following: ‘personally, time constraints’, ‘time’, ‘took too much time [workshop]’, ‘time to address struggling learners’. one could infer from this finding that teaching explicitly takes time both in the preparation of and delivering the lesson. according to marchand-martella and martella (2013), explicit teaching includes paying attention to instructional detail as teachers have to design their lesson in a way that they can teach learners skills and support them to become independent readers. in a study by hilden and pressley (2007), some teachers declined to participate in professional development training on explicit teaching of reading comprehension strategies due to their workload. in a study by klapwijk (2012), some teachers felt that reading instruction strategy intervention was an additional burden to their existing administrative workload. as a result, it took considerable time and practice for some teachers to realise that reading strategy instruction is not separated but is integrated into teaching comprehension. it appears that some of the teachers in this current study did not see explicit teaching as part of their daily teaching of reading comprehension. conclusion and recommendations this is a small-scale study that examined teachers’ motivation to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies in their classroom practice after attending a r4m workshop. the findings revealed that the teachers were generally satisfied and they planned to change their pedagogical approach to be more learner-centred. the teachers gained knowledge and skills to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies through effective pedagogical practices such as reflective feedback, group work and hands-on activities used by the facilitators. these findings link to the ‘outcome indicators’ of the academic professional development effectiveness framework as teachers valued the quality of the workshop. these teachers were confident in their ability to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms. however, the teachers indicated time that was required from them to actively participate in the workshop and time to implement the strategies. from the findings, the researcher concluded that teachers will gain knowledge and skills that are needed to teach reading comprehension strategies to learners when they are explicitly taught through guiding, modelling, scaffolding and reflective practice during professional development training. the facilitators of the workshop transferred knowledge gradually, using different pedagogical approaches, until the teachers could independently practise and reflect on their teaching. teachers’ perception of teaching reading changed as they experienced first-hand the benefits when reading comprehension strategies are explicitly taught in the classroom. this is linked to the ‘outcome indicators’ of the academic professional development effectiveness framework. this study adds to the body of knowledge which reported that professional development training should focus on explicitly teaching reading comprehension strategies to teachers, so that skills acquired can be imparted to learners (ying & aziz 2019). as medina et al. (2021:828) note, ‘teachers cannot effectively teach what they do not know’. therefore, the department of education should invest in professional development training on teaching reading comprehension strategies. the facilitators taught three strategies during the workshop. given the importance of reading for comprehension and the crucial need to improve literacy in south africa, it is recommended that professional development on reading comprehension should be ongoing over a longer period, including many strategies teachers could use to improve learners’ comprehension. an ongoing workshop would equip teachers as they would have time to practise and also familiarise themselves with these reading comprehension strategies, enabling them to easily integrate these strategies into their classroom practice. in their study, hilden and pressley (2007) found that it took time before teachers became nearly proficient in using reading comprehension strategies in their practice. as a result, they recommended continuous professional development that could last a few years so that teachers are supported. another recommendation is that the r4m workshop should be made compulsory for all teachers every year to add to their existing repertoire of reading comprehension strategies. teachers who had previously attended workshops should be encouraged to refresh their knowledge. this study is limited as only 20 teachers participated, so the findings cannot be generalised due to the small sample size. another limitation is that data were only collected using a questionnaire. it is recommended that in future studies, for more depth and objectivity of knowledge teachers acquired, a pre test and a post test should be administered. another recommendation is that these teachers should be followed up in their classrooms and observed to see how they are implementing the strategies taught to them and to ascertain if new knowledge was actually acquired during professional development training. however, this small-scale study is important as it has provided additional insight into the role of professional development training in equipping teachers to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms. acknowledgements thanks go to all teachers who participated in the study. competing interests the author has declared that no competing interests exist. author’s contributions c.t. is the sole author of the article, from conceptualisation to the final write-up. ethical considerations permission to conduct the study was granted by the university where she works (efec 2-8/2019). at all times, confidentiality and anonymity were maintained as participants’ names were not mentioned when reporting data. teachers signed a written consent form agreeing to be part of this study. all data collected were in accordance with the ethical standards of the university. funding information the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or 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reading strategies in teaching reading comprehension to rural year 3 esl learners in malaysia’, international journal of current innovations in advanced research 2(5), 6–26. abstract introduction literature review theoretical framework results and discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) janet l. condy department of research, faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa citation condy, j.l., 2023, ‘using community of inquire to explore teachers’ responses to a reading-for-meaning course’, reading & writing 14(1), a393. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v14i1.393 original research using community of inquire to explore teachers’ responses to a reading-for-meaning course janet l. condy received: 03 july 2022; accepted: 23 nov. 2022; published: 12 apr. 2023 copyright: © 2023. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: although one of the most significant educational goals is to teach learners to comprehend written texts, the global education monitoring report (unesco 2021) identified that many children and adolescents have not acquired the minimum proficiency in reading even at the end of their secondary school career. south african literacy rates have remained with approximately 78% of grade 4 learners unable to answer basic literal questions. objectives: to explore teachers’ responses to an 18 h online course on reading for meaning for grade 4–7 teachers, using the community of inquire (coi) framework. method: an interpretive paradigm, using a qualitative approach and a case study design, was used for this 18 h online study which was conducted between february and march 2022. ten teachers were purposively selected for this research article. results: after inductively and deductively analysing the data collected from the post questionnaire survey and the online telegram application comments, the teachers’ responses to the three coi presences are presented. conclusion: when reflecting on the conceptualisation of using the coi framework, the social presence dominated. the teaching presence became important when the teachers reflected on their teaching experiences. the cognitive presence then interacted with both the teaching and social presences as the teachers began to be more aware of their own changes in how they taught. contribution: the study found that using the coi framework was appropriate for understanding the teachers responses to an online course for reading-for-meaning. keywords: community of inquiry framework; comprehension strategies; critical thinking; online; qualitative; professional development. introduction education is a basic human right, as reported by the world development report (2022), yet the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) pandemic forced many schools to shift from face-to-face education to online education. this was true in south africa with statistics south africa (stats sa 2022) reporting that online education led to further deepening the divide in access to education, making it more unequal. provincial minister of the western cape education department (wced) schäfer (2022) shares the ‘dire’ results of the wced 2021 systemic tests in october 2021. they are compared to the 2019 tests as testing could not take place in 2020. the results indicate that the grades 3, 6 and 9 language pass percentages were down 8.0%, 3.4% and 3.5%. schäfer states that the language scores have fallen up to 70% of a school year behind previous cohorts, with the greatest learning losses seen in the foundation phase. she believes that the younger learners did not have the same ‘self-discipline, maturity or structure that the older learners would have when managing the rotating timetables and learning at home’ (2022). worldwide, disadvantaged learners have been the most seriously affected by the pandemic. the global education monitoring report (unesco 2021) posits that online platforms, which allowed for the continuity of education, were used more in high-income countries (96%), compared to middle-income countries (92%) and low-income countries (58%). in low-income countries schools were closed for longer than in high-income countries. although the south african department of basic education (dobe) designed remote learning programmes, only 11.7% of schools offered online schooling, while other schools offered rotational options, thus deepening the urban-rural divide where twice as many learners chose rotational learning in urban areas compared to rural areas (stats sa 2022). disadvantaged learners struggled with not having their own space for working at home and they had less access to digital assets, with 70.5% of grade 7 learners not owning mobile phones (stats sa 2022). urban learners had more access to internet and wi-fi than rural learners, and school children needed to fulfil childcare responsibilities and experienced less support at home and school. these inequalities have consequences that reinforce disparities between urban and rural contexts and these schools may continue to have less access to plans that address learning recovery. although one of the most important educational goals is to teach learners to comprehend written texts, the global education monitoring report (unesco 2021) identifies that many children and adolescents have not acquired the minimum proficiency in reading even at the end of their secondary school, stating that schooling does not necessarily lead to literacy skills acquisition. equally, the progress in international reading literacy studies (pirls) for 2006, 2011 and 2015 results show that south african literacy rates have remained very low, with approximately 78% of grade 4 learners unable to locate explicitly stated information (howie et al. 2017). recently, many researchers have conducted research into teachers’ inabilities to teach comprehension skills (howie et al. 2017; olifant et al. 2021; pretorius & spaull 2016; rule & land 2017). public education cannot be easily reformed, but with the fast shift to digitalisation during the covid-19 pandemic, education systems need to keep up to date and will have so much to gain if they do. hence, the purpose of this article is to use the community of inquiry (coi) framework to explore teachers’ responses to an online course on reading for meaning. data were collected using two online platforms: surveys and the telegram online application. literature review the pirls document states that reading is a ‘constructive and interactive process where meaning is constructed through the interaction between the reader and the text’ (howie et al. 2017:6). for the older primary school learner, once ‘reading skills have been automated, and reading is relatively fast and accurate’ (pretorius & spaull 2016:6), either before, during or after reading, the reader draws from their prior experiences and background knowledge and is able to construct and reflect on their reading experiences. in the older grades, there are longer and more complex texts, with learners being expected to engage critically with a text, make inferences, integrate their prior knowledge and background with texts to construct deeper meaning and understand the underlying relationships of the texts. comprehension skills elleman and oslund (2019:4) state that ‘reading comprehension is one of the most complex behaviours in which humans engage’ as it requires both linguistic and cognitive processes, ‘word reading abilities, working memory, inference generation, comprehension monitoring, vocabulary and prior knowledge’. duke and cartwright (2021:s28) extend this definition of comprehension teaching by suggesting the foundational constructs include word recognition and language comprehension, while broader constructs include ‘culture, content and pedagogical knowledge, and vocabulary’. there may be a mismatch between knowledge assumed by the teacher and the knowledge of the reader; this may be in the form of race, religion or socio-economic status, hence the reason why ‘social justice concerns are relevant’ (elleman & oslund 2019). similarly, ntshikila et al. (2022) concur that pedagogical approaches, language differences and socio-economic factors contribute to the complexity of the teaching of comprehension. despite a plethora of research studies conducted on understanding the teaching of comprehension in south african schools, learners continue to read with little understanding (beck & condy 2017; duke & cartwright 2021:s28; elleman & oslund 2019; fatyela et al. 2021; ntshikila et al. 2022; pretorius & spaull 2016). these researchers report that reading is a learned skill yet it is necessary for teachers to know ‘how their learners construct meaning’ (bruggink et al. 2022:3). teachers are ill prepared to understand how to teach reading for meaning and the foundational reading skills, and do not receive adequate input in literacy instruction during their undergraduate studies. the pirls assesses four levels of text comprehension. the lowest level of comprehension – retrieving explicitly stated information – expects learners to locate the answer in the text. the ability to make straightforward inferences is the next level of comprehension skill level. this type of questioning allows readers to ‘move beyond the surface of texts and to resolve gaps in meaning’ (howie et al. 2017:24). these two skills are generally the least difficult of the comprehension skills. the third level of comprehension is ‘interpreting and integrating ideas and information’ where learners construct meaning by linking personal knowledge and knowledge of the world with the meaning in the text (howie et al. 2017:25). the highest level of comprehension is ‘evaluate and examine content, language and textual elements’. mullis and martin (2013) state that learners at this stage are able to adjust their thinking from not only making meaning of the text but also being more critical of the text. motivation and engagement duke and cartwright (2021:s31) suggest that motivated and engaged readers experience high reading abilities; and that ‘not only does motivation impact positively on the ability to comprehend a text, but good comprehension skills impact on the motivation to read’ (bruggink et al. 2022:12). teachers who explicitly set out to encourage learners’ reading interests, help them build strong decoding skills to enable comprehension, and create a positive sense of value of reading often bring about reading success. bruggink et al. (2022:34) state that having successful critical reading skills ‘is more important for motivation, than motivation for success’. learners like to have control over their reading processes and this leads to further motivation. reading comprehension strategies when using a variety of comprehension strategies either before, during or after reading lessons, the teacher explicitly sets goals to scaffold readers’ efforts to decode passages and understand vocabulary with the ultimate aim of effectively constructing the meaning of passages and enhancing comprehension. bruggink et al. (2022:28) argue that ‘teaching reading strategies should never be seen as the goal in itself, but as a means to achieve better comprehension of passages’. since ‘reading comprehension takes place in the mind of the reader without being explicitly visible’, it is challenging for teachers to know how to help their learners read in ways that enhance comprehension and how to effectively select appropriate reading comprehension strategies (bruggink et al. 2022:28). during the intervention programme (ip) the teachers were introduced to five reading comprehension strategies: the anticipation guide was originally developed by herber (1978) as a strategy used to take the process of reading content material from a passive state to active participation and discussion where students predict, activate their prior knowledge, make connections to their lived experiences and understand inferences, ultimately strengthening their comprehension (sari & sari 2019). there are a set of statements to which students respond individually, and the value lies in the discussion that takes place after the exercise. this process, which can be used across all subjects, is easy to implement, is enjoyable and increases learners’ motivation. my turn your turn is an oral strategy where teachers and learners read through texts, occasionally stopping to take turns talking and discussing (olifant et al. 2021). the teacher role models higher-order critical thinking skills such as: predicting, connecting, inference, clarification and paraphrasing. this strategy goes beyond verbal communication, as it is a learner-centred approach. cloze procedure is used widely for measuring students’ comprehension ability. typically, a passage of appropriate length and difficulty has every nth (5th, 6th or 8th) word deleted, yet there is no strict law. two sentences are left intact with no deletions: the topic sentence that carries the main information and the concluding sentence that provides the summary of the text. students use their linguistic, textual and lived knowledge to read the text and understand it, determining the logical relationship between the sentences (ereke & okonkwo 2016). graphic aids such as a feature matrix, venn diagrams and concept circles are aids used to enhance students’ understanding and interpretation. it may be that concepts are buried in the text, and particularly charts and tables are helpful to readers by summarising, comparing and organising information. students learn to recognise and interpret separate elements presented in graphic aids, they are able to analyse and understand the relationships between the elements, they pose questions and seek answers to the issue being discussed, and they make inferences and draw conclusions from graphic aids (vacca & vacca 1986). philosophy for children is a pedagogy originally developed by philosopher lipman (2009). although there are some differences in the way it is practised, it is generally used to create a space that encourages dialogue and student engagement where they learn to think for themselves, reason logically and make judgements as a community of shared inquiry. they attempt to seek answers to life questions that interest them. the teacher’s role is to provide a safe and respectful space that facilitates democratic and reasoned collaborative inquiry. theoretical framework garrison, anderson and archer’s (2000) coi framework, as shown in figure 1, underpinned this study. it was deemed appropriate as it provided a sense of order and a theoretical base to this online synchronous research project. garrison et al.’s study was originally based on john dewey (1938) who viewed teaching and learning as a collaborative constructivist educational experience using the principles of interaction and continuity. he believed ‘that learners were able to construct and confirm meaning’ through collaboration where learners took responsibility for their learning (swan, garrison & richardson 2009). more recently, armellini and de stafani (2016:1202) state that ‘it is through such interactions that ideas are communicated and knowledge is constructed, while it is through continuity that the foundations for future learning are laid’. the coi is a dynamic framework constantly seeking balance among the three presences, with the intersection being crucial for a successful educational experience. figure 1: the community of inquiry framework. the coi framework embraces a constructivist paradigm seeking to understand how people construct knowledge and what the interaction and relationship is between the teaching, cognitive and social presences (akyol et al. 2009:123). armellini and de stafani (2016:1203) suggest that the teaching presence is ‘the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realising personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile outcomes’. this definition includes the teacher’s role as being a complex one: developing the programme, the teaching of appropriate activities as well as role modelling critical discourse and reflection. effective teachers attempt to maintain a balance between content, pedagogy and technology knowledges. armellini and de stafani (2016:1023) describe the cognitive presence as ‘the extent to which the participants in any particular configuration of a coi are able to construct meaning through substantiated communication’ leading to a higher level of cognition. dewey (1938) believed for reflective and critical thinking to be successful, there were five phases of reflective thought, namely suggestion, intellectualisation, guiding area, reasoning and testing, ending in a resolution. these reflect the four categories of cognitive presence (garrison et al. 2000), namely triggering event, exploration, integration and resolution. the cognitive presence, as described by armellini and de stafani, suggests that critical learning moves through different levels of cognitive processing from a triggering event, exploration, integration and resolution. the pirls (howie et al. 2017:6) reading passages, developed by the international test designers, were selected to target four levels of cognitive processes of comprehension: level 1 – focus on retrieving explicitly stated information, level 2 – make straight forward inferences, level 3 – interpret and integrate ideas and information, and finally level 4 – evaluate and examine content, language and textual elements. kreijns et al. (2014:8) add that the social presence ‘is associated with the degree of participation and social interaction among the collaborative group members and, as such, is therefore considered a critical variable for learning’. more recently, armellini and de stafani (2016:1203) proposed that the social presence contributes to augmenting and supporting the cognitive presence. armellini and de stafani argue for a re-conception and an extension of the definition of the social presence to include the ability of teachers to identify with building a sense of community, to communicate purposefully in a trusting environment and to develop inter-personal relationships when working online by projecting their different personalities. they, therefore, view the social presence as being a core online component, mediating between both the teaching and cognitive presences and central to achieving critical thinking in the 21st century. throughout the online workshop, and in her planning, the researcher focused on integrating the three presences to achieve an in-depth understanding of the five reading comprehension strategies, extending the participants’ critical thinking and learning outcomes. research design and methods an interpretive paradigm, using a qualitative approach and a case study design, was used for this small online study which was conducted between february and march 2022. the aim of this article is to establish the roles that cognitive, social and teaching presences (garrison et al. 2000) played during an 18-h online reading-for-meaning workshop with grade 4–7 teachers. the online lessons took place on microsoft teams over four wednesday evenings for 1.5 h and four saturday mornings for 3 h, with a total of 18 h over 5 weeks. the researcher worked with one teachers’ union who advertised the workshop nationally to only their grade 4–7 teachers and on completion of the course the teachers received 18 continuous professional teacher development points. participants thirty-five teachers voluntarily enrolled for this workshop which was advertised throughout south africa, and all teachers completed the pre questionnaire. the purpose of the pre questionnaire was for the researcher to understand what experiences, if any, the teachers had of the comprehension strategies she had planned to share during the workshop. the results indicated that the majority of teachers had not heard about these comprehension strategies, hence she designed the online reading-for-meaning course to cover all five comprehension strategies. all 35 teachers were invited to join the online teams and telegram application platforms, yet many teachers experienced connectivity issues and teaching commitments during these times. they were encouraged to upload, onto the telegram application, photographs and videos of their teaching literacy techniques and to involve themselves in participant-researcher and peer communications in the form of public postings. ultimately, only 10 teachers were purposively selected (henning, van rensburg & smit 2004) for this research article as they attended all eight teaching sessions and completed the post questionnaire. the demography of the 10 teachers is shown in table 1. table 1: demography of the participants. data collection the researcher designed the course content based on the grade 4–6 basic education department’s workbooks for terms 1 and 2, where she role-modelled the different comprehension strategies using the participants as students. debriefing sessions followed each teaching session, discussing the new learnings and teaching. at the beginning of the 18 h reading-for-meaning workshop, the teachers completed an online pre questionnaire where they were asked to self-evaluate their prior content knowledge and their level of confidence and ability related to their teaching and understanding of the five comprehension strategies that were included in the workshop. at the end of the workshop they were asked to complete a similar online post questionnaire and to re-evaluate their understanding of the comprehension strategies and provide reflections on the following topics: what were the strengths of this course? what were the challenges of this course? how could this course be improved? what can you say about how the workshops were presented? how has this course influenced your teaching? would you like to add any other comments? this data, together with the comments posted on the online telegram application, assisted the researcher to interpret the experiences and interactions of the 10 teachers. this online telegram application was used as a textual and non-textual source of information and a knowledge-sharing tool. during the online workshop, participants were able to immediately reflect on their learning after each session using the telegram application, which saved time and costs and overcame place limitations (alawadhi & dashti 2021). data analysis underpinning this qualitative study, the researcher used the coi framework in order to develop an in-depth understanding of the teachers’ experiences when interacting with critical comprehension skills. thus, a combination of deductive (theory driven) and inductive data (data driven) analyses was used throughout the data collection process. the researcher constantly searched for similarities and outliers (henning et al. 2004), developing smaller meaningful units. ethical considerations at the beginning of the workshop the participants signed consent forms and were informed that they could withdraw at any time. in this research article, they have been allocated pseudonyms such as participant 1 (p1) and lecturer 1 and lecturer 2 to protect their identities. cput faculty of education: research ethics clearance certificate. dr candice livingston as the chairperson signed and dated this form on 28 august 2019. efec 2-8/2019. results and discussion the researcher attempted to answer the research question: ‘how could the coi framework be used to explore teachers’ responses to an online course on reading for meaning?’ it was difficult to code these three presences in separate categories as they often overlapped. in the evidence provided, the teachers refer to their experiences of using the five reading comprehension strategies. the spelling, grammar and punctuation in the participants’ responses have been retained to capture the authenticity of their comments. an example of community of inquiry’s ‘cognitive presence’ within learning communities, the cognitive presence (including the four-phase categories of triggering event, exploration, integration and resolution), according to garrison and arbaugh (2007:161), is ‘the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse’. their four-phase process is explained below with evidence from teachers’ comments uploaded on the telegram application and taken from the post questionnaire: a triggering event: an issue or problem is identified for more inquiry: i am starting a new topic next week and have planned the comprehension question strategies discussed in workshop 1. i would like to implement some of the vocab strategies from today. i look forward to giving feedback next saturday. i agree wholeheartedly with the fact that we neglect our strong learners, which frustrates them. i absolutely agree … we are forced to complete curriculum instead of focusing on the learners at the level they are to help the get to the level they need to be. very true …, especially with fal [first additional language]. they are hesitant to look silly in front of their peers. exploration: teachers explored difficult and puzzling curriculum issues through critical reflection and discourse. they may have had these views before the workshop, yet this safe space allowed them to voice and explore their current concerns: here is the feature matrix strategy [a picture is uploaded of her feature matrix]. i tried to incorporate with a language exercise in my afrikaans class this week. i love this!! do you mind if i steal this for revision next term. [p10 uploaded a video on telegram about cloze procedure.] p9 responded by saying: i know of cloze procedure but have never used it in my class. will definitely try to use it soon. integration: where teachers constructed meaning from the ideas developed during exploration: … listening to other teachers and how they implemented these strategies in their classes. … hearing how other teachers approached the topics and how they implemented them constructively. … the ability to provide feedback following implementation. the feedback each week. loved the different methods teachers are using and how it works in their schools. that we could go back to school and apply the topics and give feedback the following session. … giving feedback after using the strategies. i have used the venn diagrams but i will try the concept circle. very practical strategies and ideas – ‘boots on the ground’ approach that ensures we are able to do it in the classroom. resolution: where the teachers applied the newly gained knowledge in their classrooms: … i could identify with your challenges and experiences. i found paired reading works well and i use simpler texts taken from lower grades to assist learners with reading problems. i must say that my level of anxiety around the children not being able to read with understanding has diminished tremendously, due to having more and different tools and strategies. i always had a special word for the week and an idiomatic expression on the discussion board. i’ve used the feature matrix for categorizing the pets, wild animals and domestic animals. i’ve incorporated the my turn, your turn strategy because of this learner is very impulsive, shouting out randomly, and it worked so well. discussion from the start of the reading-for-meaning workshop, this group of teachers was explicitly and regularly encouraged to develop inter-personal relationships both on teams as well as on the telegram application. it is through these interactions that ideas were communicated and new knowledge was constructed (armellini & de stafani 2016). despite swan et al. (2009) claiming that in their research, they discovered the online inquiry rarely moved beyond the coi’s exploration phase, the researcher was pleased to notice that there was evidence that some teachers seemed to experience all the cognitive presence phases from expressing a triggering event to exploration, integration and application. this may have been as a result of the content and process of the teaching presence where the workshop was explicitly planned to introduce teachers to a variety of new comprehension techniques. they were encouraged to apply these strategies in their own classrooms and feedback was provided during the next lesson. these goals were specifically voiced at each workshop and from the participants’ comments, the feedback from the researcher-directed debriefing sessions were valued (swan et al. 2009). the designed learning activities created a safe and cohesive space for the teachers to make sense of the complex new comprehension techniques, moving the teachers towards asking more critical questions. this suggests that, with time, the teachers’ confidence, success with using these strategies and motivation levels grew (bruggink et al. 2022), resulting in cognitive shifts in their understandings of the comprehension strategies. it was hoped that this continual dialogue, within the cognitive presence, would lay foundations for improved and sustained critical literacy teaching and discourse. an example of community of inquiry’s ‘teaching presence’ this is a reflective discussion between p9 and her lecturers, after she applied the anticipation guide strategy in her own classroom: ‘i did an anticipation guide for my poem that the learners will start tomorrow and they loved it. i will post a copy of it here [telegram]. … the engagement was amazing. we did a lot of discussion in english but i told my learners that next time would be done more in afr. [afrikaans] [smiley face, smiley face] … thank you for the valuable lessons and strategies that you have given me.’ (p9, female, teacher) response from lecturer 1: ‘p9 your experience of the anticipation guide is totally delightful [smiley face] i’m so pleased you did it in your poetry class – and your discussions in english – no worries as you do more of these activities their confidence in speaking afrikaans will increase – especially if you are having fun [smiley face].’ (lecturer 1, female, adjunct professor) response from lecturer 2: ‘hi p9 wow!! that is awesome dear!! i think you will definitely see a difference with the fal [first additional language]. greater confidence and greater engagement will follow!!!! thank you for your participation and for always sharing!!! wish you well with the strategies dear [smiley face].’ (lecturer 2, female, post-doctoral fellow) discussion the ‘teaching presence’ is defined as the planning and the teaching of activities, through modelling of critical discourse and reflections (armellini & de stefani 2016). in this scenario, p9 used the telegram application to freely express her ideas of using the anticipation guide in her class while two lecturers responded to her comment. p9’s metacognition and independent reflection of her experiences of using an anticipation guide with her learners, before a poetry lesson, shows her cognitive reflective ability that she socially constructed (armellini & de stefani 2016). the teaching presence is evident in two different phrases offered by the two lecturers as support: ‘[a]s you do more of these activities their confidence in speaking afrikaans will increase – especially if you are having fun and i think you will definitely see a difference with the fal.’ this is evidence of the modelling and critical discourse, encouraging social interactions between the lecturers and p9. these statements indicate that the teacher’s ability to transfer this new comprehension strategy to her poetry lesson led to bidirectional motivation between herself and her students resulting in the engagement that ‘was amazing’ (bruggink et al. 2022). there was a clear intention to support and make sense of p9’s existing literacy knowledge by confirming her understanding of using this new technique and providing her with peer support. the use of smiley faces indicates these interactions were of a social nature. this is an example of a learning experience resulting in meaningful overlaps between the teaching and cognitive presences which became social. however, since this online discussion was an experience shared only between p9 and her two lecturers, it did not enhance cognitive responses from other participants on the telegram application. an example of community of inquiry’s ‘social presence’ this is a reflective discussion after the philosophy for children lesson was modelled. we used the starter e-text it’s a book. the times at which the messages came through the online telegram application are inserted, to indicate how quickly the teachers responded to having experienced this activity: p3: we respected each other and enjoyed ourselves while learning from each other (10:32) p9: i thought it was an interesting discussion. it made everyone’s opinion count and be valued by all. we were respectful, we listened to each other and gave each person an opportunity to speak. i almost changed my mind about the books … (10:34) p5: i liked the way the question was debated on a friendly and respectful manner, it made everyone think about their own answer (10:34) p10: definitely respect for all opinions. made me think that i should give e-books another try … (10:34) p8: a good exercise to respect each other’s opinion … (10:35) yes i was always part of an extra mural at high school, a debating group, where we had evening events and this activity reminds me of that experience (10:45) p10: it allows them to think of deeper questions that leads to discussions (10:48) p3: you can make suggestions or guide (10:48) p8: i referred to the question asked where to use this strategy (10:51) p10: definitely history as well (11:17) p3: definitely across the board will develop fabulous vocabulary (11:18) p8: it is a good strategy to enable all learning styles (11:21) discussion after the philosophy for children activity, where an e-book it’s a book was used as a starter text, followed by teachers engaging in an inquiry, the teachers were asked to share their reflections of this technique using the telegram application. as can be seen by the evidence provided, as well as the times at which the comments were posted, that it is through the social, public ‘collaborative constructivist’ dialogue that ideas were expressed and deeper knowledge was created (garrison et al. 2000:92). the social presence, as an outcome of the teaching presence and essential for the cognitive presence, was evident in the various modes of teams’ online discussions. in this scenario, the teachers responded verbally, put their hands up and contributed when it was their turn, wrote comments in the chat room as well as posted comments on the telegram application. the social presence became a mediating variable between the teaching presence and the cognitive presence (armellini & de stefani 2016) as p10’s comment on telegram highlights: it allows them to think of deeper questions that leads to discussions. this linked to what garrison et al. (2000:94) believe is the cognitive presence, which is defined by participants constructing meaning through sustained communication, creating pathways towards critical thinking. to enhance the cognitive presence and to reach critical thinking that was ‘rich, coherently organised and persistently exploratory’ (garrison & anderson 2003:19), the teachers offered comments relating to the learning domains of evaluating and creating. examples of evaluating comments are: it made everyone think about their own answer, respect each other’s opinion and it is a good strategy to enable all learning styles. one teacher offered a suggestion on how to expand the learners’ knowledge by stating: you can use it [philosophy for children] in history and across the board which will develop fabulous vocabulary. these statements promote dewey’s (1938) principle of interaction and continuity and link with bruggink et al. (2022:12) who state that ‘success is more important for motivation, than motivation is for success’. conclusion this research study set out using an interpretivist paradigm in an attempt to answer the research question: ‘how could the coi framework be used to explore teachers’ responses to an online course on reading for meaning?’ the teachers were introduced to a variety of previously unknown comprehension strategies. when reflecting on the conceptualisation of using the coi framework and the nature of the findings of this online study, the social presence dominated. the teachers engaged with each other, built on each other’s experiences, shared their opinions, provided positive responses to some of the strategies, shared their enthusiasm about their application experiences, and discussed how this workshop broadened their knowledge and use of a variety of comprehension strategies for reading for meaning. the socialisation of the content occurred independently and in groups, discussing the comprehension strategies, which led to sustained knowledge of teaching these new strategies. the teaching presence became important when they reflected on their teaching experiences. through these reflective sessions, teachers were interacting and communicating with each other, constructing deeper knowledge of the comprehension strategies. the teachers could safely voice their experiences and difficulties when applying these strategies within the curriculum and across subject areas, dealing with large classes, working with differently abled learners and how to manage the many learning styles of their learners. by regularly discussing the comprehension strategies, the teachers began to develop a more critical discourse of each strategy. the cognitive presence then interacted with both the teaching and social presences as the teachers began to be more aware of their own changes in how they taught, managed and monitored their comprehension learning; they were becoming metacognitively aware. the teachers were developing cognitively, while socially sharing their teaching experiences. the researcher concurs with armellini and de stefani (2016) that it is through the social presence, being the core component of the coi framework, we may achieve critical and sustained thinking. the juxtaposition of these three presences positively impacted the teachers’ ability to teach these new comprehension strategies, at the same time developing their motivation, and encouraging them to use them more frequently in different subject areas. this study was limited to reflecting on 10 teachers’ experiences of participating in the 18-h workshop on teaching comprehension skills. it was limited to being presented only online using teams and the data collection was limited to using comments from the online telegram application and data from the pre and post questionnaires. the results may not be generalisable to other groups of teachers. future studies may include longer workshops with follow-up face-to-face interviews and possible classroom visits where one could observe how teachers model the strategies, ask appropriate questions and provide face-to-face feedback. acknowledgements lauren walford proofread this article. competing interests the author(s) declare that they have no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. author’s contributions j.l.c. contributed to the design and implementation of the research, to the analysis of the results and to the writing of the manuscript. funding information this work was supported by the national research foundation (grant number srug190411429569). data availability the author confirms that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency. references akyol, z., arbaugh, j.b., cleveland-innes, m., garrison, d.r., ice, p., richardson, j.c. et al., 2009, ‘a response to the review of the community of inquiry framework’, the journal of distance education 23(2), 123–135, viewed n.d., from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/105536/. alawadhi, s. & dashti, m., 2021, ‘the use of the telegram application as an information sharing tool. journal of information and knowledge management 20(02), 2150024. https://doi.org/10.1142/s0219649221500246 armellini, a. & de stefani, m., 2016, ‘social presence in the 21st century: an adjustment to the community of inquiry framework. british journal of educational technology 47(6), 1202–1216 https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12302 beck, s. & condy, j.l., 2017, ‘instructional principles used to teach critical comprehension skills to a grade 4 learner’, reading & writing 8(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v8i1.149 bruggink, m., swart, n., van der lee, a. & segers, e. 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organization (unesco), 2021, global education monitoring report 2021/2: non-state actors in education. who chooses? who loses?, place de fontenoy, paris. vacca, r.t. & vacca, j.l., 1986, content area reading, 3rd edn., pp. 131–141, scott, foresman and company, london. world bank group, world development report 2022: finance for an equitable recovery, viewed n.d., from https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2022. washington, dc. http://www.rw.org.za open access page 1 of 1 reviewer acknowledgement acknowledgement to reviewers in an effort to facilitate the selection of appropriate peer reviewers for reading & writing, we ask that you take a moment to update your electronic portfolio on https://rw.org.za for our files, allowing us better access to your areas of interest and expertise, in order to match reviewers with submitted manuscripts. if you would like to become a reviewer, please visit the journal website and register as a reviewer. to access your details on the website, you 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https://rw.org.za/index.php/rw/user https://rw.org.za/index.php/rw/user mailto:publishing@aosis.co.za abstract introduction literature review theoretical framework research methods and design site participants data collection data analysis ethical considerations results and discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) heather n. phillips department of research, faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa citation phillips, h.n., 2023, ‘developing critical thinking in classrooms: teacher responses to a reading-for-meaning workshop’, reading & writing 14(1), a401. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v14i1.401 original research developing critical thinking in classrooms: teacher responses to a reading-for-meaning workshop heather n. phillips received: 16 aug. 2022; accepted: 23 sept. 2022; published: 31 jan. 2023 copyright: © 2023. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the progress in international reading literacy study of 2016 lays claim to the need for critical thinking to be developed since, in the south african context, 78% of learners could not even retrieve explicitly stated information (lower-order thinking) from texts, as opposed to 4% in the rest of the world. critical, higher-order thinking and reading-for-meaning skills development are imperative to allow learners to become active participants in this changing world. objectives: the study focused on teachers’ responses to a reading-for-meaning workshop aimed at empowering teachers with tools or strategies to improve learners’ comprehension through developing critical, higher-order thinking skills. method: the research is an interpretative, qualitative study which aimed at understanding how critical thinking is integrated into reading for meaning in classrooms. the microsoft program teams was used as the online platform to present the workshop which facilitated synchronous e-learning. purposive sampling was applied and 36 intermediate and senior phase teachers teaching from grades four to nine solicited. data were collected from a telegram chatroom and a web-page questionnaire which was inductively analysed. results: teachers experienced all the strategies positively and, on implementation in their classrooms, found that these strategies encouraged learner engagement, improved interpretation, boosted confidence and led to meaningful engagement with texts and deeper thinking which allowed them to think more critically. conclusion: the reading-for-meaning workshop provided the tools which teachers used to encourage learners to express their opinion and answer more critical questions based on predictions, make inferences, make connections, clarify, summarise and paraphrase, and so develop critical thinking skills and subsequently improve comprehension skills. contribution: on a conceptual level, the article has established a connection between the theories of critical thinking and pedagogical strategies. this opens up new directions for research for scholars in the field of literacy and education. keywords: critical thinking; higher-order thinking; anticipation guide; philosophy for children; my turn, your turn; reading for meaning; critical pedagogy. introduction for many generations, learning content was deemed enough for learners to enable them to succeed in life. learners themselves thought it was enough to learn the way their parents did (murawski 2014). with education evolving and the paradigm shifting to the management of ‘instant communication, 24/7 news cycles and the desire to know as much as possible as quickly as possible’ (murawski 2014:27), there is the realisation that instant adaptation is needed. knowledge is no longer enough. de bono (2004:6) states, ‘creative, constructive design and operating aspects of thinking are just as important as knowledge’. learning critical skills has now become imperative so learners can become ‘both the inventors and the critics of the new information’ (murawski 2014:27), to enable them to participate in this rapidly changing world. from an educational perspective, critical thinking often relates to the learners’ acquisition of the three highest skills levels in blooms taxonomy which include analysing (breaking down ideas into components), evaluating (to judge evidence) and creating (placing components together to create an original, coherent whole) when reading a text (van der zanden et al. 2020). from a cognitive perspective, critical thinking refers to the learners’ ability to use texts to make inferences, calculate likelihoods and make informed decisions or judgements. in the south african context, the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) 2016 results lay claim to the need for critical thinking to be developed, since the evidence show that 78% of south african learners in grade 4 did not reach the lowest benchmark, as opposed to the 4% rate internationally (howie et al. 2017). the lowest benchmark is the first level of comprehension skills which is the explicit retrieval of information. this is evidence of the low level of reading-for-meaning skills in south african schools. therefore, there is a need for developing teachers by empowering them with strategies to teach reading-for-meaning skills with the aim of improving learners’ comprehension skills and critical thinking. to ensure that teachers are able to differentiate between ordinary thinking and critical thinking, there must be a clear understanding of the ‘processes that constitute critical thinking’ (behar-horenstein & niu 2011:27) and teachers need to ‘employ instructional strategies aimed at developing these processes’ (gul et al. 2014:46). murawski (2014) implies that the development of critical thinking in classrooms does impact learning in the future, promoting deep and critical thinking about decision-making later in life. for this purpose, it is vital to ask the question: how critical thinking is developed in the classroom and which strategies can be used to assist teachers to develop learners’ critical thinking skills? literature review the literature review gives an overview of the strategies taught to improve reading for meaning through the development of critical thinking. the discussion focuses on critical higher-order thinking skills and a discussion of the three strategies used: anticipation guides; ‘my turn, your turn’, and p4c thinking moves. critical and higher-order thinking and reading for meaning the mastery of reading comprehension in the 21st century requires students to develop their critical comprehension skills. this would allow them to think more deeply about texts, enabling them to answer more complex questions which ‘calls for independent integration, interpretation, critique and evaluation of texts’ (ortlieb 2013:145). the introduction of various strategies to create meaningful reading experiences is necessary to promote lasting and continual growth and development in reading (ortlieb 2013), as well as further improve the academic performance of learners (fatyela 2021). in their study, roozkhoon and samani (2013) found that deficient readers lack critical reading and thinking skills and concurred that the use of reading strategies can lead to proficient reading and promote academic success. in this project the researcher presents three instructional strategies used to assist teachers in developing critical thinking and comprehension skills in their classrooms, namely anticipation guides; my turn, your turn; and p4c thinking moves. in these three strategies learners are required to respond to questions and at the same time learn to question thoughts and ideas that have been taken for granted. these questioning techniques play a vital role in developing higher-order thinking skills (alsaleh 2020). learners are expected to disrupt the common way of thinking, engage in more thoughtful ways, dig deeply and develop the ability to inquire and be more reflexive in their thinking (lewison, leland & harste 2015). this critical stance is an attitude that needs to be nurtured continually as they interact with texts and, at the same time, with life more generally. teachers’ understanding of critical thinking in the classroom in a study conducted by choy and cheah (2009:200) teachers defined critical thinking to be ‘the impetus to facilitate thinking among students in the classroom and enable students to enjoy the process of learning … involves analysing information’, but suggest that students apply critical thinking only some of the time. however, choy and cheah (2009) propose that the lack of understanding, in their definition of critical thinking, implies that teachers themselves struggle with understanding the concept of critical thinking. dwee et al. (2016) indicate that a student’s response to critical thinking depends largely on how teachers understand and approach criticality in the classroom. when students are not actively involved in classroom activities, passive behaviour results from teacher-centredness if skills of critical thinking are not developed. teachers also allude to constraints that hinder the development of critical thinking which include ‘lack of time for designing and developing critical thinking activities’ (toshpulatova & kinjemuratova 2020:52) and because of a ‘lack of understanding of how to develop tools for fostering criticality they find integration difficult’ (choy & cheah 2009:198). teachers do, however, relate the importance of teaching critical thinking throughout the curriculum and with a focus on the use of effective teaching strategies (toshpulatova & kinjemuratova 2020). anticipation guide an anticipation guide is a metacognitive strategy (valle et al. 2020) and is effective in ‘activating prior knowledge, highlighting misconceptions and promoting reflection while learning … which provides a foundation for the assimilation of new knowledge’ (evans, kodela & khan 2022:1). in addition to these skills, the anticipation guide encourages learners to improve critical thinking through increased engagement, making predictions, arousing curiosity, comparing beliefs and making assumptions. the anticipation guide is a pre-reading activity which engages students in discussion in the class about a text, allowing them to examine their own thoughts and opinions about it (roozkhoon & samani 2013). the aim, according to ortlieb (2013), is to provide a purpose for reading which results in increased comprehension. the knowledge of what to expect in the text before reading it, motivates learners to brainstorm possible or anticipated outcomes. after this process learners can check whether their thinking about the text is aligned with what actually occurs in the text. this thinking and anticipation about the text ensures that critical connections are made (frankel, jaeger & pearson 2013). the implementation of the anticipation guide occurs in groups of four or five learners. the anticipation guide is based on a particular text. a series of statements related to the text are developed. the statements must allow for deeper thinking and should encourage arguments or debates. each group is provided with a template of certain statements. valle et al. (2020), evans et al. (2022) and fatyela (2021) explain that these statements are read by learners using previous knowledge to evaluate them, potentially challenging their own beliefs and assumptions (evans et al. 2022). learners are expected to share with their groups whether they agree or disagree with these statements, or choose whether the statements are true or false. a justification must accompany each answer and this leads the discussion in the groups (roozkhoon & samani 2013; valle et al. 2022). there is no right or wrong answer because learners are expressing their opinions. this process is facilitated by the teacher in the classroom. as learners connect the text to real life and personal experiences (fatyela 2021), they become more critical in their thinking and are able to understand different kinds of information (roozkhoon & samani 2013) and they ‘tend to integrate the new information they have received with the prior knowledge to form modified beliefs’ (sari & sari 2019:52). this results in learners fully engaging with their peers and teachers, defying the notion of banking education and passive learning (freire 1998), enhancing criticality and increasing comprehension. my turn your turn according to nomlomo (2010), the strategy ‘my turn, your turn’ is a pedagogical approach which is necessary in classrooms, to be used in any subject, since it encourages learner engagement. however, for turn-taking to be effective, four components are to be considered which include knowledge of students, knowledge of context, knowledge of pedagogy and knowledge of subject matter. these components are integral in creating an interactive environment within which turn-taking can flourish (appleton & harrison 2001:2). dewi, suharsono and munir (2018) agree and state that ‘turn-taking as interactional patterns of interactions might be influenced by the context where it is employed … [which will] influence the process of interaction production’. ryan and forrest (2021:3) describe turn-taking to be a greatly unappreciated strategy, since it ‘allows speakers to draw from a number of resources to project and co-ordinate turns to talk, enabling gaps, interruptions and concurrent talk to be minimised’. in the workshop the strategy of ‘my turn, your turn’ started with the teacher reading a text. nomlomo (2010) posits that turn-taking (‘my turn, your turn’) uses allocation and acquisition to manage the strategy. the allocation refers to giving a learner a turn to speak, while acquisition informs the speaker to act when it is their turn. small bits of the text are revealed at a time with the teacher modelling a reaction using the cue – my turn, for example: ‘what do you think the character will do next?’ my turn [teacher responds]: ‘i think he will go home …’ – your turn [cue for learner response] ‘what do you think?’ … the teacher expects learners to share their thoughts and ideas about possible answers to the question. the use of reasoning words like ‘think’, ‘because’, ‘agree’ and ‘might’ are words that prompt higher-order thinking (heron & palfreyman 2021). the modelling of the strategy is effective because learners will learn from teachers who share their thinking (calo 2011). the questions posed are pre-prepared and focus on specific higher-order and critical thinking skills. the questioning encourages learners to: predict, infer, connect, clarify, summarise and paraphrase. using higher-order question types will encourage active thinking during reading and promote deeper thinking about texts (schmidt, condy & tiba 2020). heron and palfreyman (2021) state that thinking and thoughts emerge through talk, so creating opportunities for learners to engage in discussion, questioning hypothesis, arguing and debating will support higher-order thinking in classrooms. philosophy for children: thinking moves reading for meaning requires learners to be able to critically analyse, infer, synthesise, interpret, integrate, evaluate and question what they read. murris (2014) questions whether teachers are equipped with the skills and knowledge to be able to develop these skills in learners. all learners have the ability to think, but the potential they have, needs to be nurtured into actual use. lipman’s philosophy for children (p4c) makes use of thinking tools or moves which teachers may use to get learners to engage in dialogue as they learn how to think, how to talk with others and explore ideas together (green, condy & chigona 2012). daniel, belghiti and slusarczyk (2017) suggest three important steps to implementing the p4c strategy in the classroom. the first step is to provide a suitable catalyst. the catalyst is a philosophical text which may be a book, image, photograph or film adapted to the learners’ age. the catalyst should include possible paradoxes and ambiguities that will captivate the learners’ curiosity and lead them to ask questions. learners work in smaller groups constituting a community of inquiry. the text will be read out aloud and learners will then take turns to read. in the second stage questions are collected. learners formulate questions based on the ambiguities in the text. this is a fundamental step since the learners take ownership of the lesson content and it empowers them, because they are taking on the role of the teacher. this means that the learners are ‘persons-who-think-and-question’ (daniel et al. 2017). the third step is the dialogue within the communities of inquiry (daniel et al. 2017). in this step learners are asked to choose the questions they want to answer within their communities. learners attempt to answer the questions and group members respond by using ‘thinking moves’. sutcliffe (2003) describes ‘thinking moves’ as an opportunity for learners to be: [a]sking for reasons for beliefs, building on each other’s ideas, offering counter examples to the hypothesis of others, pointing out possible consequences of particular ideas, utilising specific criteria to make judgements and cooperating in the development of rational problem-solving techniques. (p. 73) according to zulkifli and hashim (2020:32), lipman (1988), believed that ‘children’s existing literary experience lacked intellectual stimulation, causing the link between reading and thinking to be disconnected’. using this strategy stimulates learners intellectually and reading will become more than just words being read. if events in stories relate to their personal experience, they will be motivated to inquire and think about them and will be able to discuss and contest them (zulkifli & hashim 2020). this is more than just ordinary thinking. naseri et al. (2017:108) reference critical thinking as different to ordinary thinking: ‘ordinary thought is simple and without any criterion but critical thinking is more complex and has objective dimensions’. p4c is aimed at developing critical thinking which would enhance higher order comprehension skills. theoretical framework in this study critical pedagogy has been adopted, as its theoretical framework focuses on freire’s (1998) suggestions for the development of critical thinking in schools. freire promoted critical thinking as a way to mitigate the oppression of those who are underprivileged. through critical pedagogy and engagement in ‘critiquing personal, social and cultural forces’, those that are oppressed can be emancipated (uddin 2019:111). the current economic, social and cultural problems the world experiences need transformation and this is possible through conscientisation in which learners are taught to think critically, through participatory learning, and work towards creating a just and equitable society (rugut & osman 2013). freire’s notion of banking education resonates with the preconceived idea that learners know nothing, and that teachers need to fill learners’ heads with knowledge and that learners passively allow this to occur without question. this makes education ‘worthless and reasonless’, according to namita (2018), and buys into the idea that just having the knowledge is enough. abraham and lektor (2013) list some of the attitudes and practices of freire’s banking education to be: the teacher knows everything and the learner knows nothing; the teacher talks and the learner listens, meekly; the teacher chooses and enforces his choice and the students comply; the teacher chooses the programme content and the learner adapts to it (without consultation); and the teacher is the subject of the learning process, while the learners are mere objects. (p. 9) this notion of banking education relies on a pedagogy that is void of consciousness, communication and critical investigation. it suggests that any person who possesses knowledge can teach (namita 2018). freire (1998) does propose the dialogical method to effect the movement away from banking education; greater focus is placed on the relationship between the teacher and the learner. opportunities must be created for more dialogue between teacher and learner in the teaching learning process (abraham & lektor 2013) and participation by all stakeholders is key. learners should be given the freedom to, together with the teacher, take responsibility for their learning, be part of discussions and reflections and be part of transforming their reality because education is not isolated from the world or society – rather what is happening in the world influences what and why we learn. many teachers are steered away from engaging learners meaningfully in the process of learning, because they are busy preparing them for high-stakes tests, focusing on strategies that will improve test results and not considering critical thinking (uddin 2019). learning to be critical through questioning, debating, discussing and arguing issues in which the teacher is more of a facilitator, will lead to learners being motivated to think beyond and predict, infer, calculate likelihoods, make informed decisions and judgements which will effect transformation (abrahams & lektor 2013). the focus of the reading-for-meaning workshop in this research project was aimed at developing teachers in order to apply more critical thinking strategies through including opportunities for learners to participate, engage and think about knowledge rather than just accept it. this focus on the dialogical method will give learners a voice, ‘a technique to break the silent nature of students and the monologue of the teacher’ (uddin 2019:113), which for a long time have been stifling learner thoughts and expressions. research methods and design an interpretative, qualitative study aimed at understanding how critical thinking is integrated into the reading-for-meaning classes, as well as identify which strategies to teach critical thinking will best suit the needs of teacher and learner. site teams was used as the online platform to present the workshop which facilitated synchronous e-learning. there were eight sessions which spanned four weeks. this online platform allowed sessions to be interactive, with participants engaging in discussions, and allowed questions and answers to be dealt with in real time. this benefitted participants, since they felt part of the learning community with reduced feelings of isolation and frustration (poston, apostel & richardson 2019). participants were able to use the chatroom to communicate with presenters as well. all workshops were recorded to allow participants who were unable to attend, to watch the videos in their own time and keep up to date with the workshop presentations. teams provided a safe and private space for all teachers who participated in the workshops (poston et al. 2019). participants purposive sampling, a non-random technique, was applied to select people who were able to and were willing to participate in the research (etikan, musa & alkassim 2016). according to robinson (2014), researchers purposefully sample participants, based on their specific knowledge in order to collect rich data. the research focused on improving reading for meaning skills and critical higher-order thinking. the researchers approached a teacher union and offered the reading-for-meaning workshop to all teachers teaching in the intermediate and senior phase (intersen) nationally. the intersen phases include teachers of grades four to nine. the participants had to meet the criterion of teaching in the intersen phase. there were no incentives provided. an invitation was sent to all union members who were teaching in that phase and all participants readily available, were selected (showkat & parveen 2017). thirty-six teachers volunteered to participate in the workshop. the only motivation for participants was that the course would assist with their day-to-day teaching and that the workshop was offered online over 18 h. data collection a telegram group was created and all participants were added to the messaging app. telegram is an instant messaging programme, very popular and easy to use by the teachers who were participants in the workshop (nurvembrianti, arianti & noftalina 2022). telegram’s main feature was the ‘forwarding of messages from one group to another … and collecting data from these communities for close reading and mapping information sharing practices’ (peeters & willaert 2022). on this platform teachers were allowed to share reflections on their teaching and post video clips and photographs depicting the work done by learners after each session. discussions expressing their experiences during and after the implementation of the strategies in their classrooms were posted on the platform and extracted as data. in addition, data were also collected from a web-based questionnaire which was completed by the participants to give a general overview of the experiences and learning at the end of the workshop sessions. web-based questionnaires are more beneficial when compared to other collection tools in terms of ‘response speed, costs, response rate and variable costs’ (vasantha raju & harinarayana 2016:2). data analysis selected data relating to the themes on telegram and all the web-page questionnaires were printed as transcripts. after preparing and organising the data for thematic analysis, the transcripts were read and reread to become familiar with the data. the data were coded, connected to all reflections, statements and experiences and eventually categorised (lester, cho & lochmiller 2020). thematic analysis is useful since it allows the researcher to examine all the perspectives of the participants, ‘highlighting the similarities, differences and generating unanticipated insights’ (nowell et al. 2017). the themes which emerged from the categories were finally chosen and named. the four themes that emerged were: anticipation guides; ‘my turn, your turn’; p4c; and lastly, the final reflections of all participants at the end of the workshop. to ensure trustworthiness the researcher used the actual words with the grammatical conventions of the participants as they appeared in the telegram messaging box to which all participants gave consent. ethical considerations a research ethics clearance certificate was obtained from the institution concerned with the approval number: efec 3-2/2020. all the participants signed consent forms. they were assured that their identity would not be revealed, so pseudonyms were used to ensure anonymity and confidentiality. they were informed that if they did not want to participate, the researchers would exclude their responses from the research and that they could withdraw at any time. the data were stored on one of the researchers’ portable hard drives and protected with a unique password. results and discussion this research sought to examine teacher responses to the explicit teaching of three reading and comprehension strategies for the development of critical thinking skills in classrooms. the results are presented in the boxes. strategy 1: anticipation guide the first strategy taught was the anticipation guide. teachers implemented the strategy in their classrooms and box 1 shows responses that emerged. box 1: teacher reflections on using anticipation guides. the anticipation guide strategy was presented as a pre-reading activity using an english first-language text. teachers had the opportunity to ask questions for clarification to ensure that they understood the strategy well. one teacher remarked that she had ‘learnt to look at storybooks or written texts differently’ and that she would plan her lessons differently after learning this strategy. most of the teachers had positive experiences with their learners when implementing this strategy. ss and em were surprised by the discussion the strategy solicited among their learners, especially the learners who were generally more introverted or shy. in these lessons teachers provided the text but were not the pre-meditators and, therefore, learners could engage as they were not dependent on the teacher (micheletti 2010). the evidence points to a move away from the notion of banking education in which the learners become mere receptacles of knowledge. this is reflective of freire’s dialogical method in which both the teacher and the learner participate in the learning–teaching process. the answers were not transmitted by the teacher and there were no right or wrong answers; rather they were left to the learners to interpret based on their own experiences. the main focus was the reflection on learners’ prior knowledge, skilling them in ‘reading the word and reading the world’ (kahn & kellner 2007). lewison et al. (2015) agree that it is important for learners to use stories or texts and link these to a local context, adding their own lived experience, but later this should be connected to a more global context in which learners’ perspectives include the identification of larger social issues which impact the local ones, representing a more critical level of thinking. ab felt that the strategy boosted learner confidence and resulted in greater spontaneity. lc and kr responded to the results in lc’s lesson with surprise, since they did not expect the level of discussion with justification from the learners. their comments suggest that in their daily practice they were not used to this level of engagement in their classrooms. it was easier for learners to engage since the lesson was not dominated by the teacher. independent integration occurred as learners allowed the strategy to activate their prior knowledge and their experiences, and discover that they could personally connect with texts, incorporating new knowledge into prior knowledge (adams, pegg & case 2015). this led to more meaningful engagement with the text and deeper thinking since learners had to analyse and evaluate the statements, make judgements based on the analysis and evaluation, possibly forming new beliefs. strategy 2: ‘my turn, your turn’ box 2 presents the responses of teachers after they implemented the ‘my turn, your turn’ strategy. box 2: teacher reflections on using my turn, your turn. developing critical thinking is a skill that should be modelled. in the strategy of ‘my turn, your turn’ teachers model higher-order thinking skills by sharing their thinking with learners (fatyela 2021). although da found implementing ‘my turn, your turn’ difficult at first, she eventually used other means to get learners to focus. ab tried to get learners to do less talking when it was not their turn. the strategy of ‘my turn, your turn’ promotes discussion between teacher and learner, and among learners themselves. it is used to develop a variety of critical thinking skills which include: predicting, making inferences, making connections, clarifying and summarising/paraphrasing (ntshikila 2021). however, the above two teachers’ responses did not articulate the development of critical thinking skills with the use of this strategy, but are rather focused on discipline – learners knowing when to speak and when to listen – and general classroom management. nomlomo (2010) states that the focus of the strategy ‘my turn, your turn’ is to create opportunity for social interaction but also emphasises the importance of turn acquisition. in the implementation of this strategy, it is not only considered what knowledge will be exchanged but also how it will be exchanged (nomlomo 2010). according to uddin (2019) it is the classroom teacher who should, through various activities like ‘my turn, your turn’, create constant opportunities for learners to enhance their critical thinking skills and, through those strategies, connect teaching moments to real-life situations with the aim of enhancing reasonableness. em, however, expressed the value of integrating the strategy across the spectrum of other subjects and stated the importance of consistency in allowing learners to ‘express their feelings and ideas’ through predictions, inferences, making connections, clarifying, summarising and paraphrasing, which require higher-order thinking skills. getting learners to ‘express their feelings’ shows evidence of good quality questioning by the teacher during ‘my turn, your turn’. nomlomo (2010) indicates that questions of low-order thinking do not encourage learners to think for themselves and do not encourage discussion and expression of learner’s views. la indicated that learners with special needs are stimulated to participate in discussions, encouraging them to consider input and output, which suggests that they were able to use reason. this, according to forbes (2018), had more to do with how they were thinking rather than what they were thinking which conceptualises critical thinking. strategy 3: philosophy for children – thinking moves the presenters modelled a lesson using a p4c strategy and the teachers participated in the lesson. the following comments surfaced after the lesson (see box 3). box 3: teacher reflections on using philosophy for children: thinking moves. the teachers found value in the strategy because, firstly, tt felt that the learners were given an opportunity to create their own questions and then vote as a group to decide which questions would be used in the lesson. this step ensured that teachers and learners become co-creators of the knowledge during that lesson, ‘integrating the concept of questioning education’ and using ‘question-based education methods’ allowing learners to think dialectically. this promotes learners’ self-selection and decision-making (shih 2018:4). secondly, sr responded that this strategy allowed learners to ‘think of deeper questions that lead to discussion’, and thirdly, nk stated that ‘it encourages participation among learners’. the strategy embraces many of the critical thinking skills which includes creating original questions, deep thinking about text and the questions, thinking beyond the text and discussions of content in more meaningful ways (abraham & lektor 2013). during the implementation of this strategy there is a collaborative dynamic between the teacher and the learner rather than an authoritative one, which becomes an empowering process for both teachers and learners, more especially learners (shih 2018). four of the teachers highlighted that the strategy ‘was a good exercise to respect each other’s opinions’, ‘make everyone’s opinion count and be valued by all’, ‘respected each other … while learning from each other’ and ‘debated in a friendly and respectful manner’. in the use of the strategy philosophy for children, learners are exposed to a range of social circumstances that are used to teach moral lessons, like respecting each other’s views and learning how to treat and interact with others which enhances social engagement and critical thinking (safriyani & mustofa 2021). ultimately, the goal of critical thinking is for one to learn ways of thinking more deeply, solving problems better, communicating, collaborating and innovating more effectively in one’s personal, as well as organisational life. teachers were given the opportunity to do a final reflection on the workshop and the strategies taught specifically, reflecting on the value of the strategies and their impact on learner engagement and critical as well as higher-order thinking (see box 4). sr expressed that learning the strategies diminished her anxiety around learners not being able to read for meaning, as she now had the tools to assist them in developing their comprehension skills. this revelation is important since olifant et al. (2021) suggest that attention to comprehension is a neglected area in primary schools in south africa and that poor reading outcomes result from teachers not being able to develop reading skills well enough. they further relate that there is a need for teachers to be equipped with strategies that will empower them to overcome these challenges. box 4: teachers’ final reflections on the strategies taught during the workshop. it was important for rk ‘to create the environment for critical thinking’. ab discussed the importance of ‘teaching learners to become critical thinkers … giving them the scope to voice their own opinions …’ and kf felt that it was important that teachers aim to promote critical thinking. all the above participants realised the value of teaching critical thinking which forbes (2018) refers to as a ‘learned skill that can be developed rather than something which is innate’. murawski (2014:27) concurs that ‘critical thinking can be taught and should be taught in a directed manner providing students with practice while evaluating and testing ideas’ and the teacher should create the environment to increase learner’s participation and practice. five of the teachers expressed the opinion that the exposure to the strategies during the workshop resulted in them changing their pedagogies to include strategies that taught their learners to ‘explore, have more discussions, express themselves more, interpret sources, consider different views, respect opinions and promote tolerance and understanding’. these strategies can only be effected in classrooms where the role of the teacher also shifts from ‘the traditional provider of information to the role of guide, facilitator and learning advisor’ (lombardi et al. 2021:3). conclusion critical thinking, according to murawski (2014), is a skill that is fundamental for reading for meaning and is not a natural by-product of learning but a skill that should be taught to learners. in the reading-for-meaning workshop three strategies were taught to teachers to encourage critical thinking and improve comprehension skills: anticipation guide, ‘my turn, your turn’ and p4c thinking moves. the strategies were modelled and some of the teachers implemented them in their classrooms. teachers experienced all the strategies presented, positively and on implementation in their classrooms found that these encouraged learner engagement, improved interpretation and resulted in greater spontaneity, especially among the shyer, introverted learners. learner confidence was boosted which led to more meaningful engagement with texts resulting in deeper thinking which allowed learners to be more critical since they needed to analyse, evaluate and finally make judgements on their own. it can be concluded that the increased participation resulted in learners being able to express their opinion and answer, or attempt to answer more critical questions based on predictions, inference, making connections, clarifying, summarising and paraphrasing. learning was now no longer teacher-centred during these lessons and this new-found freedom empowered learners to think differently. most of the participants felt that although these strategies encouraged participation, the respect for another’s opinion, valuing input from peers and debating in a friendly manner created a collaborative space which enhanced critical thinking and problem solving. shih (2018) cites freire (1998) who stated that it does not matter how shy, introverted, ignorant or how silent their culture might be, everyone can enter into dialogue with another person in a critical mode. all that is needed, is appropriate tools to be provided for this dialogue with others. the conversationists will gradually reach a point where they are able to understand the contradiction between themselves and society, be more aware of the world around them and be able to manage it with a critical attitude. teachers are responsible for providing learners with these tools in order to create the freedom of educational practice. the availability of the tools will determine the influence of educators on learners developing critical thinking skills and improving comprehension (murawski 2014). with the pirls (2016) results showing that 78% of learners at grade four level are unable to answer higher-order critical thinking skills questions, it is imperative that teachers create classroom communities using strategies that explicitly enable learners to be more creative and think more consciously (uddin 2019). acknowledgements thank you to prof. janet condy for editing and critical reading. competing interests the author has declared that no competing interest exists. author’s contributions h.n.p. is the sole author of this article. funding information this work was supported by the national research foundation (grant number: srug 190411429569). data availability the author confirms that the data supporting the findings of this study are available 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language at the foundation phase: a case study of changing practice faith k. kimathi, carol bertram reading & writing | vol 11, no 1 | a236 | 27 august 2020 original research critical reading perceptions and practices of english first additional language learners in gauteng, tshwane south district tilla olifant, madoda cekiso, eunice rautenbach reading & writing | vol 11, no 1 | a281 | 10 september 2020 original research a linguistic analysis of spelling errors in grade 3 isixhosa home-language learners mikaela a. daries, tracy n. probert reading & writing | vol 11, no 1 | a265 | 15 october 2020 original research experiences in a tutoring programme for bed foundation phase isixhosa first-language students anneline j. carnow, andries steenkamp, christélle ekron reading & writing | vol 11, no 1 | a259 | 27 october 2020 original research investigating the interpretation and implementation of policies that guide the teaching of reading in the foundation phase ann-may marais, elsabé wessels reading & writing | vol 11, no 1 | a277 | 27 november 2020 reviewer acknowledgement reading & writing | vol 11, no 1 | a302 | 22 december 2020 58 66 76 87 97 106 114 page i of i table of contents original research pitfalls and possibilities in literacy research: a review of south african literacy studies, 2004–2018 claire biesman-simons, kerryn dixon, elizabeth pretorius, yvonne reed reading & writing | vol 11, no 1 | a238 | 12 march 2020 original research the cause-effect relation of latent variables in scientific multi-text reading comprehension: testing the sequential mediation model hsiao-hui lin, yuh-tsuen tzeng, hsueh-chih chen, yao-hsuan huang reading & writing | vol 11, no 1 | a256 | 30 march 2020 original research the elephant in the room: tensions between normative research and an ethics of care for digital storytelling in higher education daniela gachago, candice livingston reading & writing | vol 11, no 1 | a242 | 14 may 2020 original research phonological awareness and speech perception: skills of grade 1 english second language learners casey j. eslick, mia le roux, salome geertsema, lidia pottas reading & writing | vol 11, no 1 | a263 | 27 may 2020 original research why the english home language curriculum and assessment policy statement will not improve learners’ reading comprehension maryna m. de lange, christine winberg, hanlie dippenaar reading & writing | vol 11, no 1 | a260 | 27 may 2020 original research student perceptions of multilingualism and the culture of communication in journalism studies in higher education sisanda b. nkoala reading & writing | vol 11, no 1 | a258 | 28 may 2020 1 10 22 30 40 49 vol 11, no 1 (2020) issn: 2079-8245 (print) | issn: 2308-1422 (online)reading & writing article information author: nicole rimensberger1 affiliation: 1embury institute for teacher education, durban, south africa correspondence to: nicole rimensberger postal address: po box x5, dalbridge 4014, durban, south africa dates: received: 18 feb. 2014 accepted: 08 sept. 2014 published: 01 dec. 2014 how to cite this article: rimensberger, n., 2014, ‘reading is very important, but…: taking stock of south african student teachers’ reading habits’, reading & writing 5(1), art. #50, 9 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v5i1.50 copyright notice: © 2014. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. reading is very important, but...: taking stock of south african student teachers’ reading habits in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • teachers as readers • methodology • findings    • attitude towards reading    • reading habits: frequency of reading for pleasure    • reading habits: favourite book and last read books    • checking reading habits: holiday reading    • the role of reading and books • discussion • conclusion • acknowledgments    • competing interests • references • appendix a • appendix b abstract top ↑ this article explores the contradiction between student teachers’ acknowledgement of the importance of reading and their actual personal reading habits, and by doing so, attempts to dig below the surface and ‘take stock’ of future teachers’ attitudes towards reading at a private tertiary institution in durban, south africa. the rationale is that without fully understanding student teachers’ own attitudes towards reading, the challenges of literacy and reading in the classroom cannot be fully addressed. it does this through a survey of 171 student teachers that investigated how much or how little they read for pleasure, what texts they read for pleasure (fiction, non-fiction, magazines, newspapers, online), how many of them are engaged readers of extended texts (fiction and non-fiction) and finally, the role books and reading play in their lives. it emerged that student teachers’ positive attitude towards reading and their apparent understanding of its importance starkly contradicted their lack of own reading for pleasure and investment of their time in this activity. the acknowledgement of the importance of reading can be viewed as a small success. however, it is ultimately overshadowed by the reality that if this contradiction is not pointed out and interrupted, it could send a mixed message to future learners: that reading is important, but not pleasurable. introduction top ↑ through exploring the contradiction between student teachers’ acknowledgement of the importance of reading and their personal reading habits, this article is an attempt to take stock of future teachers’ attitudes towards reading. it does this through seeking answers to the questions how much student teachers read for pleasure, what types of texts they read and what role reading and books play in their lives. the rationale is that without fully understanding student teachers’ own attitudes towards reading, the challenges of literacy and reading in the classroom cannot be fully addressed. little research has been conducted on south african student teachers’ reading habits and, as a result, this article reflects on the local situation in relation to international research. internationally, studies have found that reading for pleasure is in decline (gallagher 2009, mokhtari, reichard & gardner 2009; national endowment for the arts [nea] 2007). mokhtari et al. (2009) examine the impact of internet and television use on the reading habits and practices of 539 college students at a midwestern university. they found that students rated recreational reading as important (60% rated it as extremely important) yet did not seem to actively pursue recreational reading and seemed willing to forgo it for other activities, such as academic reading, internet usage and television (mokhtari et al. 2009:617). a similar decline was noted by the nea (2007:7) which collated national data to create a reliable and comprehensive picture of american reading habits. it was found that nearly half of all americans aged 18–24 did not read books for pleasure. the south african situation is compounded, firstly, by the relatively small reading population where many who can and have the means to read, choose not to read books. secondly, it is compounded by a schooling system that is not producing children with functional literacy. for example, the proficiency in international reading literacy study (pirls 2006 and 2011), an international benchmark test for grade 4 and grade 5 learners, indicates that literacy levels in south africa are poor, lagging behind other countries. in addition it found that: • grade 4 learners, especially those tested in african languages, achieved well below the international centre point despite writing an easier assessment in 2011. • forty-three percent were unable to reach the lowest international benchmarks for reading and only 4% could reach the advanced international benchmark (compared to 8% internationally) (howie et al. 2012:112–113). providing children with positive reading role models is one aspect of addressing this problem and connects student teachers’ reading habits with future good practice. thomas (2012:30) argues that, particularly in educational research, knowledge should be seen as coming from immersion and informed reflection on practice. this study is firmly rooted within an understanding of educational research as research situated in practice. the current study was therefore informed by interactions and observations of students at a small, private institution focused exclusively on teacher training through my own teaching of an english course in the foundation phase programme. various initiatives from the private sector, governmental and non-governmental organisations and bodies have attempted to address the poor literacy levels as well as counter the decline in reading for pleasure. a further aim of these initiatives is to foster the growth of a culture of reading through targeted interventions (reading association of south africa [rasa] 2012; read 2010), a national book week (south african book development council 2012), creating more libraries and supplying books to underprivileged communities (room to read 2012), as well as supporting teachers and librarians (centre for the book 2012; rasa 2012; read 2010). all these initiatives acknowledge that the development of reading and literacy have a positive impact on educational results and improving overall life opportunities (book development council 2012; centre for the book 2012; rasa 2012, room to read 2012; read educational trust 2010). whilst literacy is afforded much importance and time by government and teachers because of poor learner performance (pirls 2011), the promotion of readership as a necessary, and equally important, extension of literacy has often been neglected. this point is particularly salient in my context of foundation phase education and raises the question: is literacy our only goal or do we adequately make student teachers aware of their role in promoting the reading that comes after literacy? a further effect of the poor performance of south african learners in benchmark tests such as pirls and the interventions offered by key role players, is that the overall message that reading is important is becoming louder. the current study revealed that this message had indeed been heard, but not sufficiently internalised to change personal reading habits. this is worrying, especially amongst student teachers, as the need to be passionate, particularly in the foundation phase, about narratives and stories is so important in starting children on the journey to becoming readers. teachers as readers top ↑ a review of the literature reveals that the issue of teachers as good role models for reading has long been a point of academic interest (mour 1977; mueller 1973). recent studies have further established the importance of good adult reading habits as a positive model for children (applegate & applegate 2004; benevides & peterson 2010; brown 2009; du toit 2001; mckool & gespass 2009). teachers who read for pleasure are more likely to choose appropriate reading strategies in their classrooms and present better models for reading (benevides & peterson 2010, burgess et al. 2011; mckool & gespass 2009). consequently, benevides and peterson (2010:291) point out that, ‘pre-service teachers who do not bring an enthusiasm for reading and engage in free-choice reading on a regular basis may find it difficult to model a love of reading’. despite acknowledging this importance, benevides and peterson (2010:298) observe that student teachers tend not to be enthusiastic readers. this study is motivated by a similar concern that within an already fragile education system, reading must be viewed as a valuable resource particularly in teacher education and therefore it is important to regularly take stock of this resource. the contradiction between student teachers’ acknowledgment of reading as a valuable activity and their lack of own reading for pleasure is not new. applegate and applegate (2004) refer to this contradiction as the ‘peter effect’ from the biblical story of the apostle, peter. in this story, peter is unable to give a beggar any money because he ‘could not give what he did not have’. applegate and applegate (2004) state: nearly all reading experts now agree that both skill and will must be considered in the conceptualisation of the ideal reader, the one with broad interests who samples widely and deeply from available sources of text and is motivated to read on a regular basis. (p. 554) this again reminds us of the importance of engaged and intrinsically motivated readers and the impact this has on increased reading ability and increased text comprehension, two factors which are linked to greater academic success. intrinsically motivated readers engage in reading for its own sake and to satisfy their own curiosity (applegate & applegate 2004:554). they argue that teachers must create a classroom environment which encourages the growth of such readers. this becomes difficult when they do not love reading themselves, and, as peter in the bible story, they cannot ‘give what they do not have’ (applegate & applegate 2004:556). applegate and applegate (2004) discuss the notion of aesthetic and efferent stances in relation to the reader and the text: in the aesthetic stance readers become absorbed in the text and live through the experiences of others. in contrast, the efferent stance has its primary emphasis in the ability to acquire and retrieve information. (p. 555) the efferent stance is sufficient for purposes other than recreational reading. however, being an engaged and enthusiastic (aesthetic) or transactional (efferent) reader has clear implications in the classroom. teachers’ views of reading will indirectly affect their choice of instructional strategies that are used in the classroom which will, in turn, influence the level of engagement of children with the reading material (benevides & peterson 2010; mckool & gespass 2009). it is the intention of the current study to examine student teachers’ reading habits in relation to enthusiastic and transactional reading patterns. the current study further underlines the importance of reading role models for developing reading habits in children. much of this role-modelling is centred around engagement with reading for pleasure. according to mckool and gespass (2009): more recently the explicit teaching of reading strategies has made its way into the forefront of policy makers and curriculum developers. while explicit teaching of skills and strategies is useful and necessary as a component of reading instruction, this explicit teaching without allowing for sufficient practice through independent reading is counter-productive. (p. 265) brown (2009) makes this point in her paper ‘harry potter and the reluctant reader’ which discusses the role of popular children’s fiction in developing children’s reading fluency. full emergence in the world of reading requires far more than simply a mechanical process of decoding signs (the alphabet) that represent words. this makes us ask: is reading simply a skill or is it something more? to be a ‘reader’ implies not just someone who ‘can read’, but perhaps someone who ‘does read’ based on some intrinsic motivation. brown (2009:50) argues that ‘something more’ means attaining a level of fluency that crosses the bridge from effort to ease and results in a kind of insatiable hunger for more. a reason for the failure of so many of our learners to acquire true reading fluency, as evident in the pirls results, is that it requires sustained effort. this makes a strong argument for the value of intrinsic motivation being a key factor for children to practice reading on their own. brown (2009) points out the importance of adults modelling enjoyment of reading in motivating learners to view reading as pleasurable and therefore worth the effort to attain fluency. this was shown to have a much greater impact on children’s perceptions of the pleasures of reading than simply telling children to read. in reality, however, south african teachers are questionable models for good reading practice. according to howie et al. ‘the pirls study showed that south african teachers read less often in their spare time compared to those in the highest achieving countries’ (see brown 2009:50). the current study confirms this. methodology top ↑ this study took its shape and form from the following questions: firstly, how much (or little) do student teachers read for pleasure; secondly, what texts are they reading for pleasure (fiction, non-fiction, magazines, newspapers, online); thirdly, how many are engaged readers of extended texts (fiction and non-fiction); and finally, what role do books and reading play in their lives? thomas (2012:40) argues that methods used in educational research should emerge from questions, rather than being prescribed in advance. he advocates methods as being the servants to questions and not the other way around (thomas 2012:38). the study made use of two instruments to gather data through two collection points. firstly, a survey questionnaire was completed and returned by 171 students of a total sampling unit of 249 registered for a first year english course. this survey took place at the beginning of 2012. secondly, an instrument asking students to list what they had read during the june and july holidays followed mid-year and tracked the same students who had responded to the initial survey. together the two instruments were used to triangulate the responses about reading attitudes and habits. they have been included as appendix a and appendix b. a limitation of reading research is that it depends on self-reported data and participants frequently respond to questions with what they believe is the ‘right’ response (mckool & gespass 2009:272). to minimise this and ensure greater reliability of the data reported, the study relied on cross-checking participants’ responses. this was carried out between questions in the survey as well as between the two data collection points. for example, a respondent who strongly agreed on an ordinal scale survey question that they loved reading could be cross-checked against what they reported actually reading during the holidays through the second instrument. this provided more reliable quantitative data on reading habits and attitudes. both quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis were used. the survey questionnaire responses were tabulated and analysed using microsoft excel®. responses from an open-ended question in the survey on the role that reading and books played were coded into four types, which were lifted from initial readings of the data. all comments were then classified according to these types. coded and tabulated data were converted to percentage points for reporting purposes. all respondents were required to sign an informed consent form and were free to refuse to participate in the study. as names needed to be tracked to link the data from two collection points, all respondents were given a number and a key was stored in a safe place in order to ensure confidentiality and anonymity for participants. whilst the study does not claim to investigate a new problem, or indeed seek an easily generalisable solution to the issue of reading amongst student teachers, it is in a particular, localised context, seeking to further a practical understanding of the problem by ‘explaining through the construction of potential narratives’ (thomas 2012:42). in this case, the study, through a mixed method approach, established a contradictory narrative between what student teachers say about reading and their own reading habits. findings top ↑ attitude towards reading analysis began with a review of reading attitudes and then attempted to draw out in more detail how this related to personal reading habits. respondents were asked to agree or disagree with the following statements: ‘i love to read’ and ‘i only read books when i have to for school or university’. responses are shown in percentages in figure 1 and figure 2. figure 1: ‘i love to read’. figure 2: ‘i only read books when i have to’. responses to ‘i love to read’ (figure 1) indicated significantly more positive than negative responses, although most (40%) indicated that they felt neutral about the statement. responses to ‘i only really read books when i have to for school or university’ (figure 2) supported this positive picture. the majority (32%) disagreed with the statement, 25% were neutral and 16% responded, ‘strongly disagree’. reading habits: frequency of reading for pleasure respondents were asked how often they read for pleasure. responses, shown in figure 3, indicate that only 16% read every day, 26% read once or twice a week and 33% read for pleasure every few months. this shows that positive reading attitudes do not necessarily translate into daily reading practice or are any indication of being what applegate and applegate (2004:554) refer to as an aesthetic reader. figure 3: self-reported frequency of reading for pleasure. this particular question did not distinguish text types, so to establish reading frequency related to different types of text, respondents were asked to indicate when they last read a particular text type. results are shown in table 1. table 1: frequency in relation to text type. numbers in bold indicate the most common response and in italics the second most common. together they show the most frequently read text type. table 1 clearly shows that extended texts such as novels and non-fiction books are read infrequently by most, whilst shorter texts such as magazines, newspapers and online reading (which included blogs, websites, social media sites – mainly facebook and twitter, etc.) are read more frequently. whilst reading for pleasure could entail many different types of texts, from magazines to blogs, it was decided to focus on extended texts such as novels and non-fiction books as this is the type of reading that needs to be modelled for children. for analysis purposes the two were combined and revealed that 66% of respondents read extended texts infrequently (a few months to a year ago or so long ago that they could not remember exactly when) and 19% had read an extended text within the last two weeks. interestingly, at the time of the study in february 2012, only 12% were reading an extended text. reading habits: favourite book and last read books the next section details what respondents’ favourite novel and last read novel were and through this, explores reading habits and patterns to indicate overall engagement with books. it was found that 26% could not name a title or author of their favourite book apart from broad genres such as love stories or horror, which were not counted. seventy-four percent could name a title or author who was their favourite. however, of this group, 17% had named either a shakespeare play, other well-known school set books or a current textbook as their favourite. in terms of what book respondents had last read, 17% did not respond or could not name the book they had last read. some interesting things to note about the remaining 83% of responses were that 15% named a school set book (such as a shakespeare play or animal farm by george orwell) and 36% named the same book they had for the question on favourite book. this could be interpreted to mean that students have a limited engagement with books. of course, one cannot say that students did not find favourites in their school set works or that the last book they had read was not indeed their favourite. however, this seems more unlikely when considering when students last read an extended text. figure 4 shows an analysis of time frames for the 36% of respondents who stated their last read book was also their favourite book. figure 4: when students had read last novel (also named as their favourite). fifty-four percent last read a book over a year ago. this shows that respondents did not read frequently and that they may have so little interaction with books that they struggled to name two separate titles. this may explain the lack of variety of response about their favourite book and last read book. checking reading habits: holiday reading to consolidate information on actual reading habits, respondents were asked what they had read during the june and july holidays. it emerged that only 30% had read an extended text during that period. in order to cross-check student reading attitude with their actual reading practice, the relationship between the responses to the statement ‘i love to read’ in question 1, and what they had actually read during the holidays was explored. results are shown in table 2. table 2: relationship between attitude and holiday reading. on the surface, these results confirm a link between reading attitude and reading habit. however only 55% of those who responded ‘strongly agree’ to the statement ‘i love to read’, had actually read a book, which for students who claim they love reading is very low. this indicates that having a positive reading attitude does not necessarily translate into regular reading. the role of reading and books this section will examine data from a qualitative point of view. the questionnaire allowed an open-ended response on the role reading and books played in student teachers’ lives. it was felt that this was important to ask, as, for those intrinsically motivated and enthusiastic readers, books and reading are important and ‘present’ in daily life. how people talk about books says much about how they value them. responses were first divided into negative and positive categories and showed that 81% made positive comments, 13% negative comments (such as overtly stating that they did not like reading) and 6% did not respond. secondly, four categories or types of responses were lifted from initial readings of the data. all positive responses were then coded into these four types. these are discussed below. type 1: ‘trite’ responses. trite responses revealed little personal relationship with reading and were characterised by using depersonalised language such as ‘one’ or ‘you’ instead of ‘i’ which created a sense of distance between the respondents and their attitude to reading. comments appeared to conform to understanding of the ‘correct response’ and often listed, in a rather clinical fashion, the benefits of reading, such as improving vocabulary and grammar. forty-one percent of responses were coded as trite and formed the majority. examples of responses coded as type 1 include: ‘reading is rather vital in one’s life as it builds up our vocabulary. it broadens our knowledge and we become aware of the reality that exists’ (respondent 9). ‘it plays an important role in one’s life. it improves your vocabulary, your style of writing and also advances your grammatical style of writing and your speech in a certain language’ (respondent 19). ‘reading is fun. there is always a variety to choose from’ (respondent 98). type 2: a means to an end. these responses indicated that reading was a ‘means to an end’. reading was regarded as useful and revealed some personal engagement, but was not characterised by pleasure. this type represents a transactional or efferent stance towards reading. twenty-seven percent were coded in this category. ‘reading has a relaxing effect on me. i read to relax. reading also helps me keep up on current events and news’ (respondent 70). ‘i only read gossip stories or stories about celebrities. it’s important when i have a project to do’ (respondent 112). ‘it helps me speak better. to understand and imagine my own picture of the story/text i am reading. reading stimulates my brain. i also gain more knowledge from reading’ (respondent 116). type 3: limited enjoyment. these responses revealed enjoyment of reading at a personal level, but engagement was limited by, for example, too little time, having too much work to do or not finding the right type of book. sixteen percent were coded limited. the following are typical examples from this category: ‘once i find an author that i enjoy i will read all her novels she has written. i do not enjoy novels that you have to think deep and has hidden meanings. i enjoy easy reads’ (respondent 25). ‘i battle reading but when i have a good book i really enjoy reading the book. i wish i read more’ (respondent 41). ‘i enjoy to read but i battle to find the time to read because i have a lot of things going on during the day. i would like to take more time out to read. i think it is important’ (respondent 147). type 4: a love of reading. these responses showed a genuinely personal relationship with reading that was experienced as a pleasurable and meaningful activity. whilst aspects were sometimes shared with the other types, what distinguished these responses was a clear sense of excitement and passion. sixteen percent were coded as having ‘a love of reading’ and could be seen as enthusiastic readers. ‘i love to read any book that is written by nicholas sparks and frances rivers. they both are brilliant authors! i always feel emotional while reading their books! it also links to the reality’ (respondent 64). ‘i love reading. it’s like a different world with new adventures. sometimes it [is] like your own tv because you can imagine what [is] going on in the book’ (respondent 158). ‘reading is my way of relaxing. i really enjoy reading. i am a huge fan of love stories. reading gives you a choice to get away from reality. i read as often as i can although it’s been difficult because i have been very busy’ (respondent 40). discussion top ↑ student teachers’ reading habits revealed that reading for pleasure was mostly limited to shorter texts such as magazines, newspapers and online reading (chiefly social media). for the purposes of this study, extended texts such as fiction and non-fiction books were focused on and it was found that these were read infrequently to the point that, for most, they had little day-to-day engagement that was characterised by pleasure. it was also the intention to examine this particular sample of students in terms of engaged and enthusiastic or transactional reading patterns as discussed by applegate and applegate (2004). the qualitative analysis revealed that 16% could be classified as enthusiastic and engaged readers who read frequently and for its own sake, whilst 27% could be classified as transactional readers who primarily read as ‘a means to an end’. trite responses and limited enjoyment present two further categories which do not completely fit into the efferent and/or aesthetic distinction. whilst the 16% who could be classified as having a limited enjoyment of reading might, given more direction and inspiration, become more avid readers, the majority (41%) who were coded as trite responses, present a much harder group to reach, as they were particularly disengaged when it came to reading. findings concur with international studies which found that student teachers are not avid readers, particularly of extended texts such as novels or non-fiction books (applegate & applegate 2004; benevides & peterson 2010, mckool & gespass 2009). this emerged clearly from taking stock of student teachers’ reading habits in a particular, localised south african context. to reiterate: • sixty-six percent did not read books frequently (last extended text was read a few months to a year ago or so long ago that they could not remember when exactly). • only 30% had read a book during the june and july holiday. • only 16% of the sample could be classified as readers who read for pleasure and enjoyment and as such are enthusiastic readers. a stark contradiction emerged between students’ understanding of the message that reading is important, particularly in an educational context and their own reading habits. respondents could readily point out the benefits of reading and in many cases responded with positive attitudes about books. this was interpreted as wanting to ‘give the right answer’. however, this positive attitude towards reading and apparent understanding of its importance, contradicted their lack of own reading for pleasure and investment of their time in this activity. ultimately, this contradiction, if not pointed out and interrupted, could send a mixed message to their future learners that reading is important, but not pleasurable and therefore not worth the effort. conclusion top ↑ findings indicate that it cannot be assumed that students studying to be teachers love reading, although it is generally accepted that teachers have the task of encouraging reading in children. whilst growing emphasis is placed on classroom strategies to engage children in reading, and encourage and nurture the growth of their intrinsic motivation to practice reading, studies such as this show that within teacher education we cannot assume that this is no longer necessary at tertiary level. it demands a back to basics approach for the lecture rooms where we need to draw on creative solutions to inspire our students to read for pleasure as well. it is up to adults, in this case teachers, to instil a love of reading in children and to be good reading role models for them. however, if we view our student teachers as a future resource, it remains doubtful that they can effectively do this without an intrinsic motivation to read themselves. attitudes that seem positive on the surface are contradicted by habits that regard reading as a difficult and onerous task. the danger lies in learners seeing behind the surface attitudes and the recursive cycle of reading continuing. acknowledgments top ↑ competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references top ↑ applegate, a.j. & applegate, m.d., 2004, ‘the peter effect: reading habits and attitudes of pre-service teachers’, the reading teacher 57, 554–563. benevides, t. & peterson, s.s., 2010, ‘literacy attitudes, habits and achievements of future teachers’, journal of education for teaching 36(3), 291–302. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2010.497375 brown, m., 2009, ‘harry potter and the reluctant reader: strategies for encouraging reading fluency’, mousaion 27(2), 47–57. burgess, s.r., sargent, s., smith, m., hill, n. & morrison, s., 2011, ‘teachers’ leisure reading habits and knowledge of children’s books: do they relate to the teaching practices of elementary school teachers?’, reading improvement 48(2), 88–102. centre for the book, 2012, home, viewed on 12 january 2013, from http://www.nlsa.ac.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=53&itemid=41 du toit, c.m., 2001, ‘the recreational reading habits of adolescent readers: a case study’, ma dissertation, university of pretoria, pretoria. gallagher, k., 2009, readicide: how schools are killing reading and what you can do about it, stenhouse publisher, portland. howie, s.j., venter, e., van staden, s., zimmerman, l., long, c., du toit, c. et al., 2008, pirls 2006 summary report: south african children’s reading achievement, university of pretoria, pretoria. howie, s., van staden, s., tshele, m., dowse, c. & zimmerman, l., 2012, pirls 2011 summary report: south african children’s reading literacy achievement, university of pretoria centre for evaluation and assessment, pretoria. mckool, s.s. & gespass, s., 2009, ‘does johnny’s reading teacher love to read? how teachers’ personal reading habits affect instructional practice’, literacy research and instruction 48, 264–276. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19388070802443700 mokhtari, k., reichard, c.a. & gardner, a., 2009, ‘the impact of internet and television use on the reading habits and practices of college students’, journal of adolescent and adult literacy 52(7), 609–619. http://dx.doi.org/10.1598/jaal.52.7.6 mour, s.i., 1977, ‘do teachers read?’, the reading teacher 30, 397–402. mueller, d.l., 1973, ‘teacher attitudes towards reading’, journal of reading 17, 202–205. national endowment for the arts (nea), 2007, to read or not to read: a question of national consequence, national endowment for the arts, washington dc. reading association of south africa, 2012, home, viewed on 11 january 2013, from http://www.rasa.uct.ac.za/ read educational trust, 2010, home, viewed 12 january 2013, from http://www.read.co.za/ room to read, 2012, home, viewed on 13 january 2013, from http://www.roomtoread.org/page.aspx?pid=320 south african book development council, 2012, home, viewed on 12 january 2013, from http://www.sabookcouncil.co.za/reading_promotion.html thomas, g., 2012, ‘changing our landscape of inquiry for a new science of education’, harvard educational review 82(1), 26–51. appendix a top ↑ appendix a: reading survey of first year students (2012) appendix b top ↑ appendix b: reading survey (2012): my holiday reading list abstract introduction literature review methodology and research design discussion of findings summary of main findings recommendations for future practice conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) anneline j. carnow faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa andries steenkamp department of senior phase & further education and training, faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa christélle ekron department of electrical engineering, faculty of engineering and built environment, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa citation carnow, a.j., steenkamp, a. & ekron, c., 2020, ‘experiences in a tutoring programme for bed foundation phase isixhosa first-language students’, reading & writing 11(1), a259. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v11i1.259 original research experiences in a tutoring programme for bed foundation phase isixhosa first-language students anneline j. carnow, andries steenkamp, christélle ekron received: 23 aug. 2019; accepted: 31 aug. 2020; published: 27 oct. 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: isixhosa students enrolled for the bed foundation phase qualification at a university in south africa failed their first year in identified at-risk subjects, namely mathematics in education, language in education and computer literacy. the students stated the reasons for failure as not understanding the concepts and terms of the subjects presented to them in english. objectives: a tutoring programme was initiated in the home language of the students with the aim of improving their understanding and chances at success. method: semi-structured interviews and reflective journals within a qualitative case study were used to understand how the tutees and tutors as key role players, the programme coordinator, lecturers in the three subjects and the tutor trainer experienced the tutoring programme. the study was framed within social constructivist theory and an interpretative paradigm employed for analysis of data. results: the findings suggested that tutoring in their home language grants isixhosa students an improved understanding of the concepts and terms of the course material, which they had difficulty understanding. conclusion: tutoring in the home language should become a mandatory practice for students whose home language is not the language of learning and teaching in the institution. the study contributes to knowledge on how tutoring in the home language provides isixhosa students access to the curriculum by assisting them in minimising their struggles with english as the language of learning and teaching. keywords: tutoring; tutors; tutees; higher education; language of learning and teaching; under-preparedness. introduction the majority of south african students are, upon entering higher education, academically under-prepared due to historically unequal socio-economic circumstances or under-resourced high schools in disadvantaged communities (council on higher education 2013:15). african students from previously disadvantaged backgrounds are still mostly affected by poor graduation and throughput rates (department of higher education and training 2013). under-preparedness, which manifests mainly as difficulty completing the formal curriculum and adjusting to independent study, is a significant contributing factor to student failure (council on higher education 2013). higher education has to offer well thought-through responses to improve completion rates (council on higher education 2013). as a response, the education faculty at a university in the western cape, south africa, initiated a home language tutoring programme for bed foundation phase isixhosa first-language students who either failed, or were at risk of failing in three identified subjects. students attributed their failure to often not understanding instructions, terminology and test questions in english, which is the language of learning and teaching (lolt) at the institution. the expectation was that the support would increase the students’ understanding of the terms and concepts as they relate to the subjects of language in education, mathematics in education and computer literacy, and that it would increase their chances of passing the subjects. this article is based on a study that was conducted towards a master’s degree in education. the tutoring programme under scrutiny was implemented over a period of one academic year, as funding was only awarded for that particular year. the aim of the study was to investigate the experiences of various stakeholders in the tutoring for bed foundation phase isixhosa students. the stakeholders in this study included the tutors and tutees as primary role players, as well as the lecturers in the three identified subjects, the programme coordinator, and the tutor trainer. literature review the topics included in this section are germane to the issues surrounding the subject of tutoring, and the opinions and experiences of all the participants in the tutoring programme as described in the introduction above. tutoring in education, tutoring can be defined as an intervention model that aims to improve the academic performance of individuals. the intervention as employed in this article was in response to the tutees’ need to understand the concepts and terms in the subjects mentioned. tutoring is regarded as tuition granted to students by fellow students who have excelled in, or completed, their studies to a higher level than that attained by the students they are tutoring (ed. goodlad 1995:2). the main aim of this approach to academic intervention is to enable students who receive the support to participate more actively in their own learning in order to gain the cognitive skills necessary to succeed (arcado-tirado, fernández-martín & fernández-balboa 2011). in a small group, students are often more likely to feel secure enough to ask basic questions that would be awkward to pose in a large lecturing hall. such a small group setting affords tutees the safe space and opportunity to correct misunderstandings without fear of ridicule. in the process they become more receptive to the views and ideas of others (loke & chow 2007). benefits for tutors include an increase in their confidence levels and a feeling of affirmation about helping others (carmody & wood 2009). arcado-tirado et al. (2011) report on a substantial difference in metacognitive abilities such as study planning and the effective use of study material between students who have the opportunity to tutor, and those who do not. language of learning and teaching versus mother-tongue education in south africa english as the lolt in classrooms is a barrier because english additional language learners find it difficult to express themselves in the additional language (paxton 2009). this problem, as it relates to south africa, stems from a large percentage of learners being taught and assessed in a language other than their mother tongue. according to paxton (2009), previously disadvantaged schools in south africa are becoming an english foreign language environment, partly due to learners’ limited exposure to english. this situation exists as a result of the home language becoming a substitute for the majority of teachers whose first language is an african language. it has become common practice for teachers to switch to the language they themselves and the learners are more conversant in, commonly known as code-switching, when explaining concepts or when teachers notice that their learners have difficulty in understanding the subject matter the teachers are trying to bring across to them (brock-utne & holmarsdottir 2004). teachers often experience difficulty in expressing themselves in english and use the home language for explanations, or transfer poor or the incorrect use of english to their learners. under these challenging circumstances, the home language becomes a tool to help learners to understand better, improving their chances for success in the subjects they offer (brock-utne & holmarsdottir 2004). brock-utne and holmarsdottir (2004) argue that empowerment through education can only be meaningful if tuition make sense and for that to happen, it must take place through a medium that the learners understand. according to these researchers the learners became more attentive when the teacher started translating the subject matter into their home language. they report on cases in schools in south africa where most of the talking in class is generally done in isixhosa although english is the lolt of the school and english textbooks are used. this heightened attentiveness of learners when the home language is used in classrooms serves as good grounds for the researchers’ encouragement of the practice of code-switching in classrooms. interviews conducted with tutees in this study show that most of them attended schools where the use of english was limited and where explanations were often in isixhosa. this practice seemed to have affected the tutees negatively when they became university students, as the findings later revealed. this situation is indicative of how most african-language students have difficulty in acquiring the knowledge and skills that are supposed to help them advance in life when they are subjected to a medium of instruction that is foreign to them when they reach university. learning and teaching happens best when it takes place in the language in which the individual student is most proficient. students at university are quoted as saying that ‘it is easy to learn when you are using your home language, but with english you need to start learning language before you get to the concept’ (paxton 2009). it becomes clear that the need for instruction in the home language of students, or at least support in the home language where the lolt is not their home language, cannot be ignored. higher education challenges in south africa and the need for support the slow pace of transformation in higher education institutions in south africa is a contributing factor to the struggles that african students are still experiencing, long after the doors of universities were opened to them (taylor 2004). despite reformations in the areas of changes in policy and increase in enrolment (seabi et al. 2012), higher education institutions still experience disappointing pass rates, with fewer black than white students completing their education programmes (boughey 2012). after more than two decades of democracy in south africa, poor quality of education in previously disadvantaged black schools still leads to poorly equipped students (in this case poor preparation in the english language) who have to cope with academic expectations at higher education institutions. jama, beylefeld and mapasela (2008) state that the tendency to say that ‘students do not study’ might not be the only and correct answer to the question of why students do not perform well academically and are at risk of failure or even dropping out. jama et al. (2008) propose that with a better understanding and consideration of the academic and social constraints that students face, different insights and answers may emerge as to why disadvantaged students do not perform academically well. the need for support for african-language students represented by the tutees in this study is emphasised in the call for the provision of compensatory education or a different support approach from universities in order to close the gap that exists in success between black and white students (taylor 2004). learning should be considered as a socially embedded phenomenon: individuals are shaped by the social contexts into which they are born (boughey 2012). given the historical and social contexts of black south africans, academic interventions for students can be more successfully addressed with calls for accelerated transformation and equity for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, rather than looking at deficiencies such as lack of talent, aptitude, motivation and study as arguments why black students fare so badly in south african higher education (boughey 2012). this contextual approach of greater chances of epistemological access for african-language students should include proper social and linguistic support such as mentorship programmes and increased representation of academic staff who speaks indigenous languages, an approach supported by seabi et al. (2012). this discussion thus argues for an interrogation of the theory that informs the intervention and support strategies for students from previously disadvantaged schools, and the study suggests that the strategies not be informed by the perceived inadequacies in the individual, but by the social context into which the students have been born and raised. the previous sections highlight the challenges that black south african students face upon entering higher education institutions. the sections allude to the difficulties the students face with the english lolt of the institutions and the continued educational disadvantages they face long after an equal political ideology was introduced. this next section highlights the value of tutoring as a support measure in both the academic and non-academic spheres of student life. tutoring as academic and non-academic support at higher education institutions in addition to mastering the academic course content, higher education students are required to learn to think independently and question established truths (karp 2011). although course material and lectures may support students to acquire such skills, the individual should still be able to synthesise a personal mode of autonomy and maturity. pearson and naug (2013), as well as the department of higher education and training (2013), argue for higher education to take responsibility for the provision of a learning environment which promotes the transitional needs of all commencing students, but especially those who have been disadvantaged educationally and socially, and are at risk of failure or withdrawal. the ideal support programmes for at-risk students are designed to nurture and supplement the necessary academic and life skills that will enable such disadvantaged and confused students to integrate more quickly, be successful and persevere beyond their first year (ginty & harding 2014). an integrated support approach would be a fair compensation for students who have been denied a sound preparation for university: such an approach would include both academic and non-academic factors to form a socially inclusive environment that addresses the social, emotional and academic needs of students (lotkowski, robbins & noeth 2004). through peer-assisted learning and tutoring, at-risk students are offered meaningful engagement opportunities for skill practice, social interaction and improvement of confidence; the one can even be viewed as a form of the other (ginty & harding 2014). according to spark et al. (2017), engagement, motivation and self-confidence will automatically increase when students are brought together for the purpose of mentoring and support. peer-assisted learning and tutoring as learning and teaching techniques make it possible to involve students actively in the learning process, a view that is supported by arcado-tirado et al. (2011) as stipulated above. student engagement in the form of peer-assisted learning and tutoring can successfully be used as a key strategy to address the challenges that higher education in south africa faces (farao 2017). while it can be argued that the above-mentioned benefits are common to any tutoring programme, this article emphasises the added value of such a programme in which the tutees can verbalise their struggles in a language that they are most comfortable with. the interpersonal support that happens during social integration through engagement in support programmes, such as peer-assisted learning and tutoring, can be regarded as among the most important types of assistance for university students (spark et al. 2017). the collaborative and interactive nature of small-group settings, such as peer-assisted learning and tutoring, fosters a deeper understanding of subject matter and the development of competencies such as critical thinking, communication skills, interpersonal relations and self-assessment, which are crucial for success in higher education (qureshi & stormyhr 2012). all of the competencies mentioned in this section have been described by tutees as benefits that they received from interacting with a tutor who understood and could converse with them in their home language. methodology and research design paradigm framework, theoretical framework and method of inquiry an interpretive position was chosen as a paradigm framework because of its philosophy which states that research is influenced and shaped by the worldview of the researcher and the group or the person being studied (willis 2007:96). willis (2007:96) holds the view that each individual participating in the research, whether the researcher or the person or group being studied, possesses a peculiar understanding of the world, which was gradually built up through experiences. as individuals in a sample group share their own understanding with each other, meaning is constructed and a new or different reality about the topic being studied is created as these individuals interact with each other socially. interpretivist researchers search for understanding of context; thus, the purpose of such studies is primarily to understand the particular context or situation of the person or group that lives the experience. the knowledge or reality constructed through the lived experience of the person or group is often referred to as contextual knowledge or local knowledge (willis 2007:99). the home language of the student and tutor participants in this study is isixhosa, while the lolt of the institution is english. in contrast to other tutoring programmes in which the language used is the lolt of the institution, this tutoring programme offered support in the home language of the students, isixhosa. the difference in language could be perceived as a different context to other tutoring programmes, and could suggest a different experience to the participants, which may result in the findings of this study being significantly different to tutoring programmes in another context. this research project depended upon constructivism as a learning theory. proponents of constructivism contend that the cognitive development of individuals, also referred to as their learning, is constructed as they have particular experiences in the situations they find themselves in, and as their thinking takes place in these situations. in these situations, knowledge is formed inside a person, as opposed to it being imposed from outside of them (schunk 2012:230–231). while some learning theories place the emphasis of learning upon the learners’ information processing abilities, constructivism places the emphasis on the active participation of the learner in the learning process and couples this emphasis with the importance of social interaction for knowledge construction (phillips 1995). constructivists, however, differ on the factors that affect learning and learners’ cognitive processes as these factors are represented in the two variants of constructivism, namely cognitive constructivism and social constructivism (liu & matthews 2005; schunk 2012:229). for this study, the focus was on the social constructivist tradition, which highlights the role of the social environment and the social factors that influence learning, and is often said to be derived from the work of vygotsky (liu & matthews 2005). bruning et al. (2004:193–194) contend that the vygotskian social constructivist view of teaching and learning highlights social activities: an individual’s learning takes place through interaction with adults or peers who have greater knowledge. this view of learning as a profoundly social activity during interaction with the support of more experienced partners in building students’ knowledge is supported by vygotsky’s description of learning as a socially mediated process (schunk 2012:274). bruning et al. (2004:195) claim that a constructivist approach manifests itself in many ways, some of which are the use of cooperative learning and guided discussions in tutoring classes. dialectical constructivism within the social constructivism variant proposes that knowledge construction takes place from both the workings of the individual’s mind, as well as external influences such as presented information in the form of teaching and exposure to models or the environment in which the individual finds themselves (bruning et al. 2004:196; schunk 2012:232). from this perspective, the personal interactions during collaborative situations such as tutoring are emphasised and it highlights the stimulation these personal interactions provide during developmental processes and the fostering of cognitive growth (schunk 2012:242). the theory holds that knowledge is co-constructed between two or more people, with language as the most important tool in the construction of knowledge during such interactions. the dialectical constructivist view was a relevant and useful perspective to consider in this particular study: through the use of a common dialect the effectiveness of social interactions in a peer-assisted instructional process were explored and both tutee and tutor became active agents in the learning process (schunk 2012:270). in addition to dialectical constructivism, vygotsky offers the zone of proximal development (zpd) which he describes as the difference between what a person is able to do independently and what that same person can potentially accomplish with the support of others (bruning et al. 2004:197). in the zpd, called a space or process, a person interacting with an adult or a more capable peer develops potential and can attempt tasks that they previously could not do. in the zpd, the adult, or more capable peer, shares knowledge or skill that makes the task easier for the person attempting a new task (schunk 2012:242). the two concepts within the social constructivist perspective, namely dialectical constructivism and zpd, were useful concepts to use as a framework in analysing the data derived from the experiences of the tutors and tutees. the tutees in this study averred that lack of understanding of the additional language-taught concepts and terminology contributed to their failure in the subjects. the tutoring offered to them in this study was provided in their home language with the aim of increasing their chances of better understanding and sense-making of the subject matter. the mediation process of tutoring provided by a more capable person thus holds a promising potential of support to a less capable person in developing a better understanding of the subject matter. the qualitative method of inquiry was adopted as it facilitated the process of understanding the individuals’ perspectives on their experiences in the tutoring programme (mouton & marais 1996:169). a qualitative approach was suitable, since the goal of the study was to hear and make meaning, or interpret the views of the participants (creswell 2014:37). the choice of a qualitative inquiry was suitable as we were interested in finding out what was happening, why it was happening and how it was happening the way it did (henning, van rensburg & smit 2004:3). the qualitative choice also gave voice to the participants and provided opportunity to probe in-depth and detailed understanding of meanings, attitudes and intentions (cohen, manion & morrison 2011:219; patton 2015:22). from an interpretive perspective it made sense to use a case study research design because it provided a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of a particular situation (nieuwenhuis 2010:75). the emphasis of the case study is on what specifically can be learned about the single case (stake 2005:443). the observation of wiersma and jurs (2005:202) that the findings of a case study represent a detailed examination of a specific event or programme, of which a tutoring programme is an example, gives credence to patton’s (2015:262) conclusion that the individuals, and the event or the programme become the case. in this research we made use of stake’s (2005:445–447) intrinsic case study model where the focus is not necessarily on theory building and representivity, but rather on a search for commonalities, as well as particularities in the case itself. the intrinsic case study method does not avoid generalisations, but describes the case in sufficient detail so that readers comprehend the interpretations of the researcher, and draw their own conclusions about the phenomenon. population and sampling in accordance with cohen, manion and morrison (2007), maxwell (2013:96) and nieuwenhuis (2010:79), a purposive sampling method was chosen as it would provide in-depth understanding and information-rich data that are pertinent to the research question and the goals of the inquiry. the total population consisted of all the tutees and tutors in the tutoring programme, the lecturers in the three subjects identified as challenging for isixhosa first-language students (mathematics in education, language in education and computer literacy), the programme manager and the trainer sourced by the institution for the training of tutors. a total of 30 tutees, divided into five groups, five tutors, three lecturers, one programme manager and one trainer participated in the programme, accounting for a population of 40. for data collection purposes, the focus shifted to at least 10 tutees, two per group, depending on their availability, as well as the programme coordinator, the lecturers and the tutor trainer, all of whom were mainly in a supporting role. data collection methods semi-structured interviews were used which afforded participants, from whom data was collected, the opportunity to express their views on their experiences, either as participants in the tutoring programme or in a supporting role (cohen et al. 2007:349). in addition to the interviews, tutees and tutors used reflective journals to reflect on, and write about, their experiences at the end of each tutoring session. three of the five tutors and four of the 30 tutees submitted reflective journals. the small number of tutees submitting reflective journals might serve as a limitation in terms of the validity of the findings in the study. data analysis in an effort to select, reduce and organise the information according to relevance and applicability, the first step was to read the reflective journals and transcripts of interviews to gain an overall picture of the information. in the next step units of meaning were identified for coding purposes and to identify categories based on the codes. this was followed by the identification and presentation of key themes and sub-themes. the final step entailed a more comprehensive and deeper discussion of the themes to facilitate insight into the comments and remarks of participants. discussion of findings table 1 represents the key themes and sub-themes as identified from the collected data. table 1: key themes and sub-themes. for the purpose of this article we decided to focus only on the key themes and their accompanying sub-themes that speak about the study challenges of tutees and tutors, and the benefits of tutoring from the perspective of the tutees, tutors and lecturers. although part of the population of this study, the views of the programme manager and the tutor trainer reflect in the theme of implementation, management and monitoring of the tutoring programme and are therefore not represented in this article. for information about the other identified key themes and their sub-themes, the reader is referred to the full study. study challenges of bed foundation phase isixhosa first-language tutees and tutors participating in the tutoring programme participants in this study attested to how students struggled with english as the lolt which is an additional language for them, and this struggle with the lolt was the cause for them misunderstanding and not fully comprehending the course material. the lecturer in mathematics in education commented: ‘for someone who is not first-language speaker … you hear something in a foreign language … you now have to translate it into your brain … translate the words and then you have to translate the concepts … you have to translate it again into mathematics.’ (lecturer, mathematics in education, l1) this comment is a confirmation that tutees’ and tutors’ main difficulty in the subject was closely linked to the challenges they experienced with english as lolt. the lecturer in language in education alluded to students’ general limited english reading when stating that: ‘they don’t take the notes and go read to understand … because they don’t read and write in english, it’s a big stumbling block for them. (lecturer, language in education, l2) according to tutees in this study, tutoring in isixhosa provided them the support they needed in understanding the concepts and terms better and aided them in mastering the course material. this better understanding resulted in the course material becoming accessible to them and they were able to prepare for, and complete assessments more confidently. tutors reported that: ‘they were all participating and sharing views … the more they gained knowledge.’ (tutor, tr1) ‘everything was clear … the questioning and the answers came out from them.’ (tutor, tr2) similarly, tutees said that: ‘some of the things they learn in class are difficult to understand but with tutor they understand them easier.’ (tutee, te1) this reported improvement in understanding led tutors and tutees to believe that institutionalised tutoring in their home language would be to their advantage. one tutor said that: ‘tutoring is a good thing and should probably be fitted formally into a student’s time table.’ (tutor, tr2) meanwhile a tutee commented that: ‘this would have helped last year … i would have done better.’ (tutee, te3) the deeper level of critical thinking skills and the frame of reference that is needed for success in mathematics in education and language in education were lacking in isixhosa students in the bed foundation phase course at the institution. according to the lecturer in language in education, tutees had an inability to engage with the theory of the subject, while the lecturer in mathematics in education spoke about students’ inability to think on a deeper, more critical level. according to the mathematics in education lecturer: ‘the students do not have a good enough frame of reference of their own. so their own maths teacher was probably not great, they probably never went to pre-school … and now they’re faced with this thing called mathematics.’ (lecturer, mathematics in education, l1) this statement suggests limited exposure to formal education in grade r or quality mathematics education, as well as the lack of an adequate frame of reference to help them understand and apply the course material in the foundation phase. tutees attested to how tutoring in their home language supported them in gaining a better understanding of the concepts and terms and aided them in mastering the course material. students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds to start their university studies often have difficulty finding their feet, due to a lack of skills and know-how that are needed to settle into the diverse culture of the university. computer literacy, as one of the at-risk subjects in which tutoring was offered, was identified by tutors and tutees as a challenge due to lack of exposure to computer skills prior to entering university. thus, limited computer literacy, coupled with students’ inadequate english language proficiency, negatively impacted their advancement towards academic success within a reasonable period of time. tutees and tutors commented that: ‘a disadvantage for us isixhosa speaking students, especially in the townships is that there are no computer classes.’ (tutor, tr3) one tutee stated: ‘i was so not ready for varsity, i won’t lie – i was scared, nervous and yeah, i felt small.’ (tutee, te6) for a student who, for the most part of their education up to that point, had been exposed to their mother tongue only, a situation with ‘lecturers who speak english all the time’ can be very overwhelming. the examples of the challenges discussed above suggest that tutors and tutees in the programme faced issues that extended beyond an inability to understand concepts and terminology in english. among the examples mentioned by tutees and tutors were socio-economic pressures, family responsibilities and other personal issues, such as transport and conflicting needs of self and family. african-language students from previously disadvantaged communities are not adequately prepared for the demands of higher education and can easily become distracted from focusing on the academic programme (mokoena & materechera 2012; seabi et al. 2012). the challenges that the tutees and tutors in this study experienced in terms of english as lolt and under-preparedness when entering university are evidence thereof. when considering all of the challenges mentioned above, tutoring in students’ home language offered an opportunity for tutees to eliminate at least one set of challenges – that of understanding the course material. the link between the literature and the data presented in the study as it pertains to the struggles students face with english as an additional language, as well as the correlation between the academic and non-academic challenges of tutees and tutors, is evident of the fact that the challenges of students in this study are inter-related and that the challenges cannot be dealt with in isolation. de klerk et al. (2017) amplify how students are at risk of failing when their non-academic needs are not met, while lotkowski et al. (2004) explain how non-academic factors such as lack of confidence and lack of commitment add to students’ risk of failure. the views of the researchers mentioned in this paragraph are amplified by pather’s (2013) claim of how first-year students who feel they cannot adjust to the new academic and social environment are often at risk of feeling alienated and may even drop out. tutoring with its cooperative nature offers an environment where students can engage with peers and exchange learning habits and success strategies, a view that is supported by pearson and naug (2013), ginty and harding (2014) and farao (2017). the efforts of providing support to the isixhosa students by initiating tutoring in their home language can be regarded as a step in the right direction, but its once-off nature does not make it a sustainable model. considering the challenges that african-language students experience with english as their language of instruction and how it prevents them from gaining equal access, as opposed to their counterparts who are more conversant in english, it seems that support in their home language should be a strong consideration to help them to be successful in their studies. isixhosa students at the institution, and african-language students elsewhere for whom english is an additional language, could benefit greatly when support is intentional, sustained and more of an institutionally structured programme, instead of an occasional, once-off intervention. benefits of tutoring the tutoring in their home language created opportunity for tutees to develop solutions for their academic needs. interacting with the tutors in their home language facilitated a more constructive and mutually beneficial cognitive experience and made tutees receptive to the course material while simultaneously building self-confidence. confirmation of this benefit was evident in statements such as: ‘during lectures you are afraid to like answer … during tutor classes at least you get to like express yourself more confidently … nobody will judge you.’ (tutee, te5) ginty and harding (2014) and lotkowski et al. (2004) promote and support non-academic aspects, such as sharing of techniques and strategies during engagement with peers, especially academically vulnerable students, as reflected in tutoring. the researchers acknowledge the value of support programmes designed to supplement both the academic and life skills that enable at-risk students to persevere in their studies. the data that were collected for the study clearly indicated that the benefits of the tutoring extended to the metacognitive advantage of the tutors as well, where metacognition is described as the student’s ability to think about learning, to think critically and to reflect on their own thinking. tutors said: ‘they should consider using students from foundation phase to tutor computer literacy because it is really very difficult for an fet student to fit into the tutoring programme for fp.’ (tutor, tr2) this statement is an example of the enhancement of cognitive processes such as reflecting and problem-solving. tutors demonstrated an awareness of metacognitive skills such as improved communication, organising and planning skills through comments such as: ‘it helps me with my communication skills, because i had to know-how to bring it across to the students/how to deliver my knowledge to them.’ (tutor, tr3) tutors demonstrated an elevated awareness of the learning process when commenting: ‘i must identify the challenges of my students.’ (tutor, tr2) recommendations by cook, kennedy and mcguire (2013) and de backer, van keer and valcke (2012), which state that metacognition in students is promoted by the social dimension present in tutoring, are strongly supported by the comments of the tutors. metacognition is teachable and learnable (mahdavi 2014) and the benefits of tutoring as an instructional approach should be explored and taken advantage of. the data from this study (as reflected in the comments of the tutors in the previous paragraph) illustrate the metacognitive benefits and inherent advantages associated with tutoring and how the tutors in this study benefited from it. given the transitioning and academic challenges that students from disadvantaged communities face when they enter university, they need metacognitive awareness which corresponds with meaningful, deep-level thinking for higher achievement. de backer et al. (2012) amplify this need for metacognitive awareness when stating that the majority of higher education students from disadvantaged communities lack the skill and ability to self-regulate their learning, a skill that is crucial for success at tertiary level. summary of main findings tutoring in their home language served as an aid for students whose first language was not the language of learning and teaching of the institution tutees found the course material more understandable when the concepts and terms were explained to them in their home language. with better understanding the curriculum became more accessible to them: in the process their chances of success in their studies increased. tutoring in their home language serves as a tool to overcome the academic and non-academic challenges of first-year students from disadvantaged communities the process of interaction in a language that both tutor and tutee understood created an atmosphere that was conducive to developing confidence and boosting self-esteem. increased confidence and self-esteem were evident in the comments that tutees made about their freedom to ask questions and engage on fundamental issues in the course material when conversing in their home language. tutoring is a successful tool in the enhancement of metacognition of tutees and especially tutors. recommendations for future practice tutoring in the home language of students from disadvantaged communities and whose home language is not english should be a mandatory requirement in the education faculty of the university tutoring in students’ home language should be considered as an institutional support structure available to all students whose home language is not english, instead of the opportunity for tutoring in their home language being an occasional event for first-year students or unsuccessful students. informal correspondence with the tutees indicated that their participation in the tutoring programme may have contributed to their success in the three subjects at the end of the academic year. another contributing factor worth considering is the fact that many of them had a second chance at interacting with the course material, this time in their home language. this recommendation for support in the mother tongue is emphasised by the council on higher education (2001) when stating that effective learning and teaching cannot happen where students are unable to understand the language of tuition. the cognitive, metacognitive and non-academic value of tutoring as a teaching and learning support strategy should be optimised at the university to meet its mandate of ensuring access to education for all, tutoring should be considered a part of the university’s service to first-year students from schools in disadvantaged communities. this recommendation is supported by norodien-fataar and daniels (2016) who appealed to the university involved in this study to ‘actively recognize and strengthen its support platforms to help students from disadvantaged communities towards success’. this recommendation finds further support from pather’s (2013) claim that the small class size and individual attention that students are privileged with in tutoring encourage them to persist and not drop out. conclusion this article discussed the experiences of role players in a tutoring programme for bed foundation phase isixhosa first-language students at a university in cape town, western cape, south africa. the study on which this article is based established that isixhosa foundation phase students struggle with english as the lolt. the tutees who participated in the tutoring programme underperformed in assessments due to an inability in understanding the concepts and terms of the course material they deal with. the study established that instruction in english was more of a barrier in the lecture room than a means to transfer knowledge. it was further established that students have difficulty in adjusting to the higher education culture, mainly because of their under-preparedness as a result of an historically unequal school education sector in the country. the struggles mentioned put many isixhosa students at risk of being unsuccessful, an aspect which is often misinterpreted as them being lazy or incompetent. it was illustrated how tutoring in the home language can be employed as a teaching and learning tool to assist students who struggle with the english lolt of the institution. the findings of the study showed how tutoring in their home language facilitated a more positive learning experience that supported their navigation through higher education. the most profound finding of this study lay in the fact that, when the tutoring was offered to tutees in their home language, which was not the lolt of the institution, they began to understand the course material better, which ultimately boosted their confidence and chances at success. during the tutoring sessions the tutees could engage with the course material in their own language, allowing them access to the curriculum, which was otherwise inaccessible to them given the english lolt of the institution. considering the importance of improved throughput and completion rates for students from disadvantaged communities whose home language was not the lolt of the institution, tutoring in the home language of isixhosa students must become an intentional institutionalised priority, instead of a once-off effort as was the case in this tutoring programme. acknowledgements competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions all authors contributed equally to this work. ethical consideration approval for the study was granted by the research ethics committee of the university and the research department of the education faculty approved access to the site, the students and the lecturers. participants were requested to sign a consent letter in which aspects like the purpose of the 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wiersma, w. & jurs, s.g., 2005, research methods in education: an introduction, 8th ed. pearson, boston. willis, j.w., 2007, foundations of qualitative research: interpretive and critical approaches, sage, thousand oaks, ca. article information author: caroline van der mescht1 affiliation: 1education department, rhodes university, south africa correspondence to: caroline van der mescht email: c.vandermescht@ru.ac.za postal address: po box 94, grahamstown 6140, south africa dates: received: 02 june 2014 accepted: 18 nov. 2014 published: 21 july 2015 how to cite this article: van der mescht, c., 2015, ‘“one day i will pick up a snake, wanting to read it”: becoming a successful reader in a rural environment’, reading & writing 6(1), art. #55, 6 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v6i1.55 copyright notice: © 2015. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ‘one day i will pick up a snake, wanting to read it’: becoming a successful reader in a rural environment in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction    • learning to read in rural south africa    • challenging deficit thinking    • the value of games and play in learning • research methodology and theoretical framework • findings: the school game    • discussion: implications for teaching and learning • conclusions and recommendations • acknowledgements    • competing interests • references abstract top ↑ children learning to read and write in rural areas in southern africa perform poorly compared to children in urban schools. the poor results of rural schools in national assessments of reading literacy are explained by the deficits of rural areas: poverty, under-resourced schools and under-qualified teachers. children in rural areas are frequently not exposed to home literacy practices, which prepare them for formal literacy learning at school. whilst acknowledging the impact of rural poverty on children’s performance, this article explores a role-playing game amongst pre-school and school-going children of rural villages that enabled some children to become successful learners. focusing on affect, i analyse the way in which the game motivated these children and suggest some of the benefits that promoting this practice may have for teaching and learning in rural areas. the continued underperformance of children in rural schools makes a compelling case for investigating ways of promoting learning and reading in rural homes. introduction top ↑ zhang (2006:583), reviewing the southern and eastern african consortium for monitoring education quality (sacmeq) findings for 2000, shows that rural children lag behind their counterparts in cities. this is confirmed by other large scale studies, for example, the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) reports that ‘almost half of the grade 4 learners came from schools in remote rural areas and achieved more than 100 points less than their urban peers’ (howie, van staden, tshele, dowse & zimmerman 2012:xvii). one hundred points is equivalent to two to three years’ of schooling (howie et al. 2012:xvii). zhang (2006:592) also highlights the fact that south africa shows the greatest regional difference in the ability of rural compared to urban primary school readers. zhang relates these differences to the high unemployment in south african rural areas, where large numbers subsist on grants or remittances. statistics south africa (2014:33) reports that 68.8% of south africans who live in poverty are in rural areas. whilst large-scale studies show inequality in the teaching between urban and rural schools, balancing those inequalities has focused on provisioning schools and training teachers. little is known of the literacy practices in rural homes that teachers can affirm and build on, although research into family literacy practices has offered intriguing insights (dixon & lewis 2008; land 2008; mweru 2011; prinsloo & breier 1996). this article examines the experiences of teachers who learned to read in disadvantaged rural areas and who went on to become successful students and committed readers. i will first give an overview of how they learned to read, then focus on a key practice referred to by the participants as the ‘school game,’ the term i use in this article. after presenting themes drawn from their accounts i will suggest that this game aligns with sound learning practices. the research also provides insight into what motivated these children to persist in reading. learning to read in rural south africa in her review of sacmeq 2000, zhang (2006:299) summarises the situation by writing that ‘rural students, as described above, suffered from inferior home and school circumstances’. fleisch (2008) gives more detail of an interlocking web of disadvantage, which reaches from the home to the school for underprivileged rural children. at a basic level, the attendance of children from poorly resourced homes is likely to be more intermittent than that of their peers and they are more likely to repeat grades as their families struggle to meet the costs of schooling. in addition, living in poverty affects the health of children and their ability to concentrate when they are at school. they are vulnerable to childhood ailments associated with poverty, for example, asthma, and to undiagnosed parasite infections such as malaria and bilharzia. rural schools may be too far from the home even for healthy children to walk the distance until they are older. there is a general understanding that schools in such circumstances need to make up for the deficits of the home. at the same time, little is known of the literacy practices in rural homes that teachers build on in early literacy learning. factors in rural homes that make literacy learning difficult for children living in them are the lack of reading materials in households and the low education attainment of rural adults. the pirls study (howie et al. 2012) shows that fewer than 50% of south african children have more than 10 books in their homes. this can be attributed to poverty, but is also because the highest rate of illiteracy is in rural areas. disadvantaged rural caregivers are, therefore, unlikely to purchase books or magazines. in addition, studies suggest that parents’ education, for many reasons, is a high predictor of children’s success at school (dubow, boxer & huesmann 2009:225). research conducted by land (2008) suggests that for many rural children home based literacy learning imitates caregivers’ own school experience of formal drill and repetition. parents offer their children instruction, based on ‘the oldest, most traditional teaching methods. she started off the session by randomly writing letters, moved to vowels and the … ma, me, mi, and so on’ (land 2008:59). these experiences undoubtedly communicate the importance of literacy and school learning to the child. however, literature on early home literacy suggests that children benefit from interactions that are warm, affirming, playful and fun. this study suggests that children seek out enjoyable literacy learning experiences with other children rather than with parents and adults. this is what helped them become successful readers in disadvantaged rural homes. challenging deficit thinking large-scale studies give one picture; individual stories may reveal another. there are indications that disadvantaged children in rural environments do have opportunities to learn to read at home. firstly, the concept of ‘illiterate’ parents is a contested one, as is the assumption that rural parents do not value literacy and are not able to help their children. adults who have low school attainment may still regularly read and write in the home, modelling literacy as a desirable practice. for example, one participant learned to read by sitting on her uncle’s lap whilst he did the accounts of his rural store. another was taught to read by her grandmother, who, as she was going to sleep, traced letters and words on the wall with her finger. the warmth suggested by these accounts is compelling. significantly, the children who experienced them went on to become successful students, in spite of parents who did not have a high level of school based learning. many participants of my study also write of deliberate teaching at home, as land (2008) describes. they repeated lessons to mothers and were tutored by older cousins, with an emphasis on learning the alphabet, writing one’s name and counting. they sat with school-going siblings doing homework, read their books and wrote in the backs of their exercise books. this shows how disadvantaged families use overlapping human and material resources to make up for the deficits in literacy skills or reading materials. by arranging these opportunities for their younger children to learn, adults mark it as a desirable occupation. these observations align with research described by fleisch (2008), who asserts that parents with low levels of school attainment may still be ambitious for their children. he writes of ‘the extraordinary sacrifices that families make to get and keep their children in school’, which shows: the extent to which families see education, particularly the acquisition of a post-secondary education, as an investment, possibly the most important investment poor people can make in a better future. (fleisch 2008:77) an example is of a participant whose mother tore open sugar packets for paper and wrote on them with sticks of charcoal so that her daughter would be ready for school. rural families may send children to live with relatives in a fostering system that gives the children access to better schools, as was the case with participants in my study. the value of games and play in learning research into early childhood development affirms the importance of fun and enjoyment in early literacy learning, as well as the benefits of learning through play (bodrova & leong 2005). this research is critical of the formality of the early literacy learning described by land (2008). heroman and copple (2006:68) describe play as a ‘nonlinear, dynamic, powerful network of relationships to learning’. a pamphlet distributed by the north carolina department of public instruction suggests that children learn best in child-initiated play, and lists the benefits: play helps children increase their memory, critical thinking skills, self-regulation, social skills, oral language skills, literacy skills, mathematical and problem-solving skills, and lays the foundation for all academic learning. (n.d.:2) these benefits are differently balanced depending on the structure of the particular game, with some games offering, for example, more social interaction and others more critical thinking skills. the participants in my study had formative early literacy learning experiences in a role-play game. in this kind of game children imitate a familiar context. this allows children to practise memory, language, social and oral skills, to negotiate, solve problems and practice self-regulation. on a different level, role-play allows children to participate actively in the process of learning. as role-play imitates real life situations it allows children to make sense of the world around them and to explore, experiment and investigate the possibilities of a context. this form of play has particular benefits for communication skills and language learning. best of all for disadvantaged rural children, role-play games need only the resources children themselves provide. it is therefore potentially a powerful resource for teachers in rural areas to harness for literacy learning in the home. research methodology and theoretical framework top ↑ the data of this research were collected from sixty-one teachers registered for an in-service bachelor in education (b.ed.) degree. all participants agreed to have their stories used for research. these teachers, now aged between 45 and 55 years, all had their initial reading experience in poor rural communities in either the northern cape or the eastern cape. they were asked to give autobiographical details and a description of a significant memory of learning to read, and to relate it to their teaching. i was primarily interested in how these individuals, who all became teachers and students in a degree programme, learned to read in disadvantaged rural communities. specific questions for the research were: what early reading experiences did these individuals have which may have contributed to their success as learners and readers? how did they feel about these early literacy learning experiences? to what extent did these early experiences motivate their later learning? are there early literacy learning experiences in rural areas that local teachers might build on? the parallels in the teachers’ experiences prompted me first to examine common themes. as one of the themes was the emotional associations participants had with reading, i also used categories from appraisal theory, a recent development in textual analysis developed by martin and white (read, hope & carroll 2007). similar to discourse analysis, appraisal theory has developed from systemic functional linguistics and focuses on interpersonal meaning in text through the communication of emotion, judgement or appreciation. emotion and attitude seemed an important dimension to investigate in accounts such as ‘it was quite stunning for me and i felt on top of the world’ (northern cape, participant 7). the participants’ accounts show that they grew up and were educated in the rural northern and eastern cape, the most rural provinces in south africa, where their home literacy was in setswana or afrikaans or, isixhosa. they described homes with no, or few, reading materials. they went to under-resourced schools, where they used slates for writing. there were few books in the classrooms and no sets of readers. books were not sent home. some schools were ‘platooned,’ that is, their classrooms used on alternate mornings and afternoons by two schools. they describe teachers who relied on chanting, rote learning and drill from a blackboard. in spite of these conditions, which match zhang’s (2006:299) description of ‘inferior home and school circumstances’ cited above, the majority of participants, or 77%, learned to read before attending school. the average age of their first literacy learning experiences in the northern cape cohort was 5 years 6 months and in the eastern cape 6 years 4 months. of those who learned to read at home, 18% had reading modelled for them by adults in their homes, 20% were deliberately taught by a family member in the style described by land (2008) above and 13% had a relative who was a teacher. unexpectedly, the largest proportion, nearly a third of the participants (29%), identified a role-playing game, which they called the ‘school game’, as their primary home literacy learning. early home literacy learning experiences are usually assumed to come from the modelling, teaching or participation of literate adults. peer teaching does not appear in the literature on reading as a strong element in pre-school learning, although paired reading is recommended as a strategy to increase young readers’ fluency (department of basic education [dbe] 2010). i was therefore drawn to investigate the participants’ accounts of the game and the kinds of reading experience it provided for them. findings: the school game top ↑ for the participants in this study, the school game was played with school-going children from the household, farmstead or village. older children already at school took the lead, imitating their own teacher and using their home language (setswana or isixhosa). they would write words on a zinc fence or water barrel with charcoal or white clay, or use brown wrapping paper as ‘books’. a child playing the role of teacher led the others in recitation and chanting. the school game may be a gendered activity: participants in this research were all women and rural boys may play different games. friends and colleagues assert that this game is still played by children from all language and socio economic groups. rural children of the current generation continue to play the school game. at a university winter school in 2013, forty one matriculants, who were the top achieving english students from rural schools in the area, all responded that they knew or had played the game as children. focusing therefore on the school game, i first searched inductively for themes. these revealed parallel experiences that culminate in the participants describing themselves as enthusiastic readers and successful students. in a second round of analysis i applied categories of the appraisal theory taxonomy to investigate what had generated their emotional connection to reading, whether positive or negative. the analysis suggests that the following five features encouraged participants to read. firstly, the participants emphasise that a sense of success, or of overcoming challenge, was an important motivating factor for them. this was often expressed through detailed descriptions of their struggle and effort: the lack of reading materials at home, long distances to walk, harsh discipline at school and few resources available. this struggle, however, is presented as a measure of their success. the greater the effort, the greater the sense these individuals had of achievement in adversity. for example: ‘i thanked god for the lovely school experience i gained from home [i.e.: the school game], because it saved me a lot of struggles … i wholeheartedly thanked god for my sister who gave me the basics, and encouraged me to love reading’. (northern cape, participant 8) secondly, participants were motivated by pride in their achievement. many described significant adults’ praise as a marker of success: teachers, librarians, principals and inspectors all contributed to these children’s image of themselves as good readers. other participants ascribed their school readiness to the school game, and wrote of the pride this gave them. for example, a participant whose sister in grade two taught her to read at the age of five wrote: ‘when i started school i already had a background of books, so i grasped everything easily and became a fast learner. that motivated me to always do my best in reading because it made me feel proud of myself’. (northern cape, participant 22) a third motivating factor for participants was that, in their communities, reading was an adult pursuit. imitating adults’ reading gave the children a sense of agency and power, especially if it enabled them to enter the adult life of the family by reading to or for family members. for example, one participant wrote: ‘this pretend play school made me very proud of myself and led me to like reading books. as the time went by i learnt to use other books as well as reading the bible for my grandmother and i was bragging about that to my friends’. (eastern cape, participant 5) in a further step, the school game enabled some children to take on the role of powerful adults and to explore the practices of schools by imitating their teachers. some participants describe how they developed strong identities as teachers and successful readers. for example, one participant wrote: ‘being able to read made me feel like a teacher. whenever i used to play school with my friends i was always the teacher. i had one teacher who was really my role model and i loved to imitate her’. (northern cape, participant 11) finally, children used the school game to mediate their relationships with peers, either by initiating or controlling the direction of the game. one participant used the school game to escape the local bully who was not fond of school and always avoided them when they played the game! appraisal analysis shows that many participants had an intense emotional response to this experience. many described reading generally as ‘exciting,’ or ‘interesting,’ but some added descriptors like ‘stunning,’ ‘a blessing’ or ‘i felt on top of the world.’ words like ‘love’ and ‘passionate’ were commonly applied to reading. some read obsessively wherever they found texts, as the following participant relates: ‘i never passed a written piece of paper on the street without picking it up and reading it. one day after school i picked up a piece of paper only to realize it was soiled. the other children made it a joke (laughing) saying that it served me right because i liked to pick up paper like a mad person and one day i would pick up a snake wanting to read it. even after that nasty experience i continued reading every piece of reading material i came across’. (northern cape, participant 32) unfortunately, many of them had less positive experiences at school and as a result some stopped reading, or read with little pleasure: ‘in the formal school i tended to have a negative attitude towards reading as it was enforced in us with lashes of sticks’ (northern cape, participant 8). for others, the positive experience of the game was enough to keep their interest in reading alive. the game seemed to give an early sense of agency and success that survived the potentially damaging school experiences for some individuals. discussion: implications for teaching and learning what can we say of the school game as a reading literacy experience? in addition to the general benefits mentioned earlier, such as learning to cooperate and negotiate, general language skills and self-regulation, the school game provides the following possible benefits for participating children. firstly, the school game provides mother tongue learning. in environments where the language of learning and teaching is not always the home language of the children, older peers translate literacy practices so that the experience is accessible to the whole group. whilst research shows that children are not necessarily disadvantaged by learning in an additional language, home language learning has many benefits for young children (cummins 1981). this thinking is behind the new incremental introduction of african languages draft policy (dbe 2013). secondly, although models of reading usually suggest an adult tutor, peer teaching has a number of advantages. at the moment peer teaching exists in the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) as ‘paired reading’ (dbe 2010). caps suggests that paired reading ‘provides children with reading practice and encourages reading for enjoyment’ (dbe 2010:17) and this was certainly the case in the school game. caps also suggests that ‘paired reading can take place at any time, anywhere, as a class reading activity’ (dbe 2010:17). the school game takes this experience a step further as it adds teaching to the reading practice. peers take the role of a ‘knowledgeable other’ (vygotsky) and, because their own level of learning is very close to that of the other children, scaffold learning experiences at a level that other children will be able to understand and access. at the same time, peers present reading as a prized social occupation in a context where adults are not necessarily modelling the value of school based learning in the home. furthermore, the school game, because it is based on the practices of local teachers, prepares children for the teaching style in the local school and gives access to the local community of practice. whatever the effectiveness of that teaching may be, there is an advantage to being familiar with expectations in a new environment. thirdly, the school game provides a space in which children can recall and practise formal learning. one participant comments: ‘this helped me a lot because in a way i was reinforcing what i was learning at school even though i was not aware [of it]’ (northern cape, participant 37). it has particular benefits for memory training. not only did children memorise their lessons at school and words from books as material for the school game, but they also played using those cognitive skills ‘the main learning experience was through memorizing and word recognition, as words were written on the side of the big water tank, which was used as a chalkboard’ (northern cape, participant 8). memory training is a powerful tool in the service of literacy learning and probably contributed to the participants’ early success. with regard to memory training it is worth mentioning the concerns raised by taylor about the ‘parrot reading’ which prevails in many classrooms (jansen 2013). although the participants of this research learned to read a generation ago and much has changed in the resourcing of rural schools, teaching styles have a longer lifespan. the national education evaluation and development unit (needu) summary report 2012 (2013) comments: too much time was spent on repetitive chorusing and discussing peripheral textual features. in other words, there appeared to be an emphasis on reading as collective decoding rather than on reading for individual understanding. (p. 7) it is important to remember that independent reading is the ultimate goal of reading instruction. a caveat therefore arises: a role-playing game will be limited to the models available to the children who play it. when their teacher has a reduced notion of literacy, or uses an ineffective methodology, for example the repetitive chorusing criticized by the needu report, that understanding will be perpetuated by the children in their game. more encouragingly, a rich engagement with text can also find its way into the school game. one participant and her friends were taught by a young aunt, and gives this account: ‘my aunty used to read in additional language and asked us open-ended questions. she used to read the book and summarized it according to our level because at that time she was in secondary school so she was reading her books and made it simple by translating into our home language. then she did summary and asked some questions. she used to encourage us to tell others about these stories. sometimes she also encouraged us to dramatize the story’. (eastern cape, participant 21) this account shows not only that the model provided by the local teacher is crucial to the school game experience but also that children are able to imitate a variety of effective teaching methods. conclusions and recommendations top ↑ it has become commonplace to blame a range of home and environmental deficits for the low levels of literacy achievement amongst rural and disadvantaged children. the difficulties of becoming a reader in rural south africa today should not be underestimated. however, this study shows that young children in remote, under-resourced areas have access to pleasurable experiences with texts that set them on a lifelong quest for learning. we should avoid deterministic thinking about the effects of poor rural circumstances. in conclusion there are two points worth highlighting. firstly, this research shows the importance of peer teaching within a role-playing framework. it suggests that peer teaching is potentially a powerful structure for learning, especially in rural areas where provisioning schools is still delayed by logistical difficulties. this research suggests that teachers and teacher educators should not underestimate the benefits of play structures such as the school game, already played by rural school children, to promote extramural learning and positive experiences amongst learners. it reminds teachers and teacher educators that disadvantaged environments may still provide rich, affirming literacy learning experiences for children. secondly, this research suggests that teachers in rural and urban schools in south africa should harness the motivating power of early success. all the participants in this study expressed the importance of a sense of achievement to their reading progress. the school game benefited them because it accelerated their reading when they were at school and this, even more than enjoyment, was the main motivating mechanism of their later success as students. the pride they felt, and the way in which their reading skills empowered them at home and amongst their peers when they played the school game, gave them strong identities as readers. to conclude in the words of a participant: ‘to add on, it does not mean that the home environment needs to be wealthy or to be in a big city. rural children can be equally advantaged or even more so, as long as there are adults around to help them learn … and that is exactly what my mother, my sister, adults who were around me and the children in the village did for me’. (northern cape, participant 7) acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the author declares that she has had no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references top ↑ bodrova, e. & leong, d.j., 2005, ‘uniquely preschool: what research tells us about the ways young children learn’, educational leadership 63(1), 44–47. cummins, j., 1981, ‘the role of primary language development in promoting educational success for language minority students,’ in california state department of education (ed.), schooling and language minority students: a theoretical framework, california state university, los angeles. department of basic education, 2010, curriculum and assessment policy statement, english home language, foundation phase, government printer, pretoria. department of basic education, 2013, incremental introduction of african languages draft policy, government printer, pretoria. dixon, k., & lewis, k., 2008, ‘parents, teachers and early literacy: the perceptions of parents and teachers of the roles they should play in developing early literacy’, in s. desmond & m. elfert (eds.), family literacy. experiences from africa and around the world, unesco institute for lifelong learning, cape town. dubow, e.f., boxer, p. & huesmann, l.r., 2009, ‘long-term effects of parents’ education on children’s educational and occupational success’, merrill-palmer quarterly 55(3), 224–249. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mpq.0.0030 fleisch, b., 2008, primary education in crisis. why south african schoolchildren underachieve in reading and mathematics, juta, cape town. heroman, c. & copple, c., 2006, ‘teaching in the kindergarten year,’ in d.f. gullo (ed.), k today: teaching and learning in the kindergarten year, pp. 61–68, viewed 12 may 2014, from www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/play/ktodayplay.pdf howie, s., van staden s., tshele, m., dowse, c., & zimmerman, l., 2012, pirls 2011: summary report, south african children’s reading literacy achievement, university of pretoria, centre for evaluation and assessment, pretoria. jansen, l., 2013, ‘sa’s shocking literacy stats’, the mercury, 22 october 2013. land, s., 2008, ‘whose family literacy? is there a ‘right’ kind of family literacy that is exclusively middle class and eurocentric?’, in s. desmond & m. elfert (eds.), family literacy. experiences from africa and around the world, unesco institute for lifelong learning, cape town. mweru, m., 2011, ‘sibling caregiving and the teaching roles of children during the early years in kenya,’ in a. bame nsamenang & t. tchombe (eds.), handbook of african educational theories and practices: a generative teacher education curriculum, human development resource centre (hdrc), cameroon. national education evaluation and development unit (needu), 2013, national report 2012, pretoria. north carolina department of public instruction n.d., the power of play in kindergarten, state board of education, office of early learning (pre-k – grade 3), viewed 12 may 2014 from http://www.ncpublicschools.org/earlylearning/ prinsloo, m. & breier, m., 1996, the social uses of literacy: theory and practice in contemporary south africa, sached books, bertham, south africa. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/swll.4 read, j., hope, d., & carroll, j., 2007, ‘annotating expressions of appraisal in english’, proceedings of the linguistic annotation workshop, prague, june 2007, association for computational linguistics, pp. 93–100. statistics south africa, 2014, ‘poverty trends in south africa. an examination of absolute poverty between 2006 and 2011, report no. 03-10-06’, statistics south africa, pretoria. zhang, y., 2006, ‘urban-rural literacy gaps in sub-saharan africa: the roles of socioeconomic status and school quality’, comparative education review 50(4), 581–602. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/507056 abstract introduction research methodology research findings discussion of the findings conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) christine winberg professional education research institute, cape peninsula university of technology, bellville, south africa hanlie dippenaar faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, wellington, south africa penelope engel-hills professional education research institute, cape peninsula university of technology, bellville, south africa heather phillips department of language, faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, mowbray, south africa citation winberg, c., dippenaar, h., engel-hills, p. & phillips, h., 2023, ‘writing together alone: digitally connected “snack writing” for progressing academic writing’, reading & writing 14(1), a414. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v14i1.414 original research writing together alone: digitally connected ‘snack writing’ for progressing academic writing christine winberg, hanlie dippenaar, penelope engel-hills, heather phillips received: 18 nov. 2022; accepted: 28 mar. 2023; published: 09 june 2023 copyright: © 2023. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: ‘snack writing’ is a term coined to describe regular short bursts of writing on a larger academic writing task. there is extensive research on academic writing, but research on ‘snack writing’ is limited. moreover, the idea of ‘snack writing’ in an online environment is not evident in the literature. objectives: the study objectives were: (1) to evaluate the effectiveness of an online ‘snack writing’ group, and (2) to identify what might enable or constrain productive academic writing amongst group members. method: a reflective evaluation approach was used, in which participant researchers studied online chat data over a 6-month period. the study was framed by activity theory, in which digitally connected writing is understood as a new mediational means within an academic writing system. results: ‘snack writing’ in a digital environment was found to be effective when the writing task was focused, appropriate to the time available, and connected to a larger writing task. goal setting, debriefing, and reflecting kept writers focused, while seeing a writing task develop over time enhanced confidence. including writers with different levels of experience was effective for developing and sharing writing practices. conclusion: regular participation in digitally connected ‘snack writing’ is effective as it builds a supportive writing culture. contribution: the study contributes to an understanding of how short bursts of writing in a digitally connected space could benefit academic tasks. the findings are therefore of use to postgraduate scholars, academics, and all those who want to progress an academic writing task when time is limited. keywords: academic writing; activity theory; online chat; online writing group; postgraduate scholars; research supervisors; ‘snack writing’; time management. introduction higher education is currently undergoing an ‘academic revolution’ that has largely been driven by massification (altbach, reisberg & rumbley 2019). academics are, consequently, confronted with increasing numbers of undergraduate students, many of whom require academic support. academic staff have also had to take on the responsibility of supervising an increasing number of postgraduate students (gray, madson & jackson 2018; petrucka 2019). in universities of technology, where more and more degree programmes and postgraduate specialisation are offered, pressure is placed on academics to attain higher degrees, to conduct research, and to publish their research findings. the ability to undertake academic writing projects is, in fact, central to the work of academic staff and postgraduate scholars. writing and publishing are the route to tenure and promotion in academia (matthews 2022), while for postgraduate candidates, mastery of academic writing is key to the successful completion of a thesis (eds. hardy & clughen 2012). when academic writing is experienced as a barrier, usually combined with feelings of isolation, this is associated with dissatisfaction with an academic career and non-completion of postgraduate study (tremblay-wragg et al. 2021). so how might academics find time in their busy schedules to progress their own academic writing, as well as support their postgraduate students as they tackle the daunting task of writing a thesis? how might academics build a writing culture in which to ‘publish and flourish’ (gray et al. 2018), rather than struggle in the existing, stressful culture of ‘publish or perish?’ (amutuhaire 2022). several studies suggest that the collegial environment of a writing group, whose members meet regularly to spend time writing, and to discuss their writing, could enable academics and postgraduates to develop their writing in a way that is supportive, rather than stressful (gray et al. 2018). such writing has been called ‘snack writing’ (hislop, murray & newton 2008) or a ‘power hour’, that may take place online (zihms & reid mackie 2021). in this article, we evaluate a ‘snack writing’ intervention that had the dual aim of supporting academic staff and their postgraduate students in their academic writing projects. this study, therefore, has the objective of evaluating the effectiveness of the online ‘snack-writing group’, and identifying what might enable or constrain productive academic writing amongst group members. the research question guiding the study is: how, and why, might productive academic writing in a ‘snack-writing group’’ be enabled or constrained? literature review ‘snack writing’ is a term first coined by hislop et al. (2008) to describe a strategy for tackling academic writing tasks when time is limited. ‘snack writing’ entails writing in short time slots. it has been found to be a productive strategy that works on many levels, including ‘generating text, boosting confidence [and] getting into the writing habit’ (murray 2014:6). drawing on the concept of ‘snack writing’ gardiner and kerns (2012) describe the practice of regularly writing in more detail in limited time. they define ‘snack writing’ as writing for ‘about 1–2 h a day for graduate students who are writing a dissertation, and about 45–90 min a day for researchers trying to increase their publication output’ (2012:256). ‘snack writing’ can be contrasted with ‘binge writing’, that is, writing only when one has a whole day, or more, allocated to a writing task. gardiner and kerns (2012) claim that ‘snack writing’ is more productive than binge writing. some academics have taken issue with the term ‘binge writing’ as it implies an eating disorder, and more recently murray (2020) substituted the term with ‘feast writing’, but continues to use the term ‘snack writing’. combining feast writing, that is, writing in large chunks of time, and ‘snack writing’ that is, writing a little often, for example in 30-, 60or 90-min slots, is ‘an effective strategy for making time for writing in academic or professional schedules’, while ‘still having a life’ (murray 2020). murray states that a ‘snack writing’ task is dependent on the actual time available, for example, some academics and postgraduates might ‘snack write for as little as 10–15 minutes, or sometimes for as much as 90 minutes’ (2014:6). like gardiner and kearns (2012), murray (2014) claims that ‘snack writing’ is more productive than feast writing because it is ‘less daunting and more productive to write little and often’ (2014:6). while ‘snack writing’ is generally agreed to be effective, there are differences with regard to the optimal time allocated to, and frequency of, ‘snack writing’. it is a long-term writing strategy that enables writers to adopt new writing behaviours, develop a support network, as well as overcome external barriers to writing (hislop et al. 2008). murray argues that successful snack writers also need a detailed design for writing before they can allocate writing tasks to the available time slots. without such a detailed design, it will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to undertake productive ‘snack writing’. this is because large semi-defined writing tasks (~3000 words) require large chunks of time, while smaller well-defined writing tasks (~500 words) can be done in short sessions (murray 2020:124). gardiner and kearns (2012) believe that ‘snack writing’ should not involve editing tasks, such as ‘revising wording, perfecting grammar or refining referencing. it is regular and uninterrupted time spent solely putting words on a page’ (2012:129). they also recommend ‘snack writing’ as a process in which ‘the writer does not edit or read or format’ (2012:241). they explained that 80% of the writer’s time will be taken ‘to edit, format, check facts, find references and so on’ (2012:240), and that this work should not be done in the more focused time allocated to snack writing. ‘snack writing’ should be reserved for ‘the most difficult work’. murray (2014), however, feels that both writing and revising are important tasks for snack writers. while there are differences in what ‘snack writing’ comprises, researchers agree that ‘snack writing’ should be used to advance a single academic writing task, such as a thesis chapter or a journal article. there has been extensive research on academic writing (de caux 2021; eds. hardy & clughen 2012; paltridge 2020), including social writing on writing retreats (murray 2012; tremblay-wragg et al. 2021 winberg, jacobs & wolff 2017); however, the research on ‘snack writing’ is limited. moreover, the idea of ‘snack writing’ as a form of social writing that could occur in an online environment that includes both academics and their postgraduate students, is not evident in the literature. it is this form of digitally connected ‘snack writing’ that this study investigated. theoretical framework: activity theory the study was framed within the activity theory (engeström 1999). the activity theory is useful for understanding a new practice, as well as tracing the historical roots of the practice. it raises awareness of the importance of the larger system at work in the accomplishment of human activity (engeström 2014). in this study, the lens of the activity theory provided a systemic view of ‘snack writing’ as a social practice. with the activity theory is understood that human activity is always undertaken by subjects, mediated by tools and embedded within a social context known as an activity system. the activity theory is particularly appropriate for the analysis of academic writing, as it foregrounds the social and contextual embeddedness of writing as a human activity (russell 1997). in an academic-writing activity system, the subjects are the writers whose purpose (or object) is to produce a high-quality academic text. the object can be given or projected, and at the same time may also be anticipated and constructed (engeström, puonti & seppänen 2003). the first principle of activity is that the object drives the activity (engeström 1999); and to work successfully on this object, tools or mediational means are needed. tools and mediational means in an academic-writing system would usually comprise: data, sources, references, templates, guidelines, laptops, and facilitators. in this study, the digitally connected ‘snack-writing group’ was understood as a new mediational means of facilitating writing within a larger system of academic writing. figure 1 represents an academic writing system in which the subjects (in this case the writers, both supervisors and students) work on the object (a piece of academic writing). in order to achieve the object (which might be producing around 300 words of text), they need mediating artefacts – sometimes referred to as ‘tools’ or ‘resources’ by activity theorists. the tools and resources would include a laptop (or other device), the guidance of more advanced others (such as more experienced participants in the group), references and other texts – and the space and time (ideally planned space and time) for doing the writing. figure 1: the ‘snack writing’ activity system. academic writing is deeply embedded within academic cultures, which is represented by the lower half of the activity triangle. the division of labour usually separates supervisors and students, as the students write and the supervisors assess the writing. in this case, however, the supervisors were not present as supervisors, but as fellow writers. this is different because supervisors do not usually share their own writing practices with their postgraduate candidates. in our ‘snack writing’ activity system, the supervisors and postgraduate candidates were more equal participants in a shared online space, each working on their own individual writing tasks. the community is also represented by other academic writers who are present in the form of other scholars and their texts, reviewers and potential examiners. the ‘rules’ include the generic rules for academic writing – how it is presented, structured, the kind of vocabulary that is expected, as well as the institutional rules that might include a thesis template, and how supervisors and examiners are selected. research methodology this study is a formative evaluation of an online writing intervention. formative evaluation is important in contexts where the continual improvement after an intervention is expected, such as in an online writing group (flagg 2013). in educational evaluation research, there are intersections between educational research and educational practices and between researchers and practitioners (nevo 2013). this was the case in this particular study. the description of the research methods below explains the different strands of the writing intervention and the evaluation research project, as well as their inter-relationships. the online ‘snack writing’ intervention between 28 april 2021 and 30 april 2021, a university institute for professional education research facilitated a 3-day online writing retreat for academic staff and postgraduate candidates. following the writing retreat, participants were keen to continue meeting online, and the institute initiated a ‘snack writing’ intervention that included postgraduate scholars and academic staff, most of whom were also supervisors. there were approximately 30 participants in the ‘snack writing’ group. attendance was voluntary, and hence the number of attendees per session fluctuated somewhat. over time the group consolidated into approximately 20 participants who attended regularly. these were mainly, but not exclusively, from departments in the education faculty. this research study arose from the decision to evaluate the educational intervention after a 6-month period. the ‘snack writing’ meetings took place on wednesday evenings from 18h00 to 19h05, although the final debriefing and reflection often continued for an additional 10–30 min. the ‘snack writing’ sessions were based on the pomodoro time-management method (cirillo 2018). the pomodoro technique is a timemanagement method developed by francesco cirillo in the late 1980s. it uses a kitchen timer to break work into intervals, typically 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. each interval is known as a pomodoro, from the italian word for tomato, after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer cirillo used as a university student. this particular pomodoro of a 25-min focused writing session is followed by a short break. the weekly sessions were made up of two pomodori comprising two 25-min intervals of uninterrupted writing, with each participant stating his or her goal for the evening beforehand. at the start of the online meeting, there was a 5-min input, usually a writing tip. after the first 25 min, participants briefly shared their progress, highlights, and challenges, either orally or in the chat, before continuing for another 25-min session. after the second pomodoro, participants briefly reported on their progress, be it successful or not. during the writing sessions, supervisors and students shared the same online space for slightly more than an hour, working on their individual academic writing tasks. these tasks varied from writing a journal article to working on a specific chapter of a masters or doctoral thesis. there was no supervision in the writing group, only the sharing of ideas, practices and writing tips. supervisors and postgraduate scholars were writing together in a digital space where the traditional power difference between supervisors and students was considerably reduced. the research evaluation study we studied the online chat data of the writing group on the experiences of academic staff and postgraduate candidates in their roles as writers during ‘snack writing’ sessions over a 6-month period. the data for the formative evaluation were sourced from the chat commentary that was posted in ms teams as part of the process during the ‘snack writing’ sessions. ms teams was chosen as the online platform for the ‘snack writing’ meetings. as ms teams is the institutional platform for online meetings and engagement, both staff and students were familiar with its standard features, such as posting in the chat, raising a hand to speak, or sharing a screen. a less familiar form of technology might have distracted the writers. the licence conditions allowed the researchers to extract an attendance report, as well as the chat data for each of the ‘snack writing’ sessions. the study participants comprised 24 members of the writing group who posted in the chat during the period of the study (26 may 2021 to 01 december 2021). the participants were categorised as follows: six postgraduate supervisors, eight academic staff members who were undertaking doctoral or masters studies, and nine postgraduate students. as can be seen in table 1, the group had a majority of female members. table 1: participants who posted in the online chat. the authors of this article are four postgraduate supervisors who constitute the core of the online ‘snack-writing group’. they were participant observers of the group, and included their own comments and reflections on the weekly sessions, which were described as ‘writing alone together’ because writers write on their own, but with an awareness of the group that they are a part of. usually one of the four authors played the role of facilitator. the queries, comments and reflections posted in the chat provided input from week to week, and helped the facilitators to select relevant resources to share with all group members. the writers grew together as a cohesive group of academic writers who shared the challenges of scholarly writing and celebrated their achievements. online chat data have frequently been used in educational technology research (e.g. aragon et al. 2009) and have been used to study online cultures (chen & wang 2019), as well as online practices (strobl et al. 2019). chat data are generally understood to be qualitative data, and thus subject to analysis in the same way as interview data (archibald et al. 2019). the chat data contained participants’ names and email addresses, thus needed to be anonymised. after anonymisation, we analysed the data, drawing on saldaña’s (2021) two-step coding process, namely in vivo coding followed by theoretical coding (see table 2). table 2: example of the two-step coding process. the first phase of data analysis involved becoming familiar with the data by reading and re-reading the extracted chat data. thereafter initial in vivo codes were manually generated by writing notes and highlighting interesting and recurring aspects of the data. the data were then interpreted through the lens of the activity theory, enabling the researchers to gain a deeper understanding of participants’ experiences and practices over time as online snack writers. the writers were engaged in a collective (yet individual) activity that was embedded within a larger system of academic writing. the activity theory enabled the researchers to unpack the complexities of this community of writers in which all were writing individually to further personal writing goals, but benefiting from the shared space, support and care of others who were writing collectively in the larger academic-writing activity system. ethical considerations at the time when the decision was made to conduct research on the programme, it was necessary to obtain ethics approval. hence, prior to extracting the chat conversations from the weekly sessions on ms teams, an application was submitted and, following review, an ethical clearance letter was obtained from the faculty of education’s research ethics committee (reference no. efec 2-03/2022). the purpose of the study was explained to all the participants during the introductory section of several of the ‘snack writing’ sessions, and all members of the group provided verbal consent. in addition an email was sent to all registered members of the ‘snack-writing group’ in which they were informed that all information would be anonymised and that prior to anonymisation they could request in writing that their data should not to be used, if that was their wish. the confidentiality of participants was maintained by removing names and other identifiers from the data, and randomly applying participant numbers. this anonymisation of the chat data meets ethical standards, as well as the south african legal requirements prescribed by the protection of personal information act (popia). research findings in this section, the key findings from our analysis of the online chat data are presented, drawing on the framework provided by the activity theory. ‘snack writing’ seems quite simple: a group of people get together online for approximately 1 h and spend most of the time writing in silence – but the tool is a little more complex than it seems. this is largely because of what happens before, between, and after the sessions. the object drives the ‘snack writing’ activity system the weekly writing goal (or object of the ‘snack writing’ activity) was something that writers set individually, usually a writing task that was achievable in the two 25-min sessions, such as writing a section of a paper that contributed to a larger writing outcome, i.e. a journal article. this gave writers (the subjects in the activity system) autonomy and control over their actions as their goals were individually formulated and then shared. thus at the start of the writing session, the participants set their writing goals. studies of postgraduate writing have shown that putting your goals into writing and sharing them with others helps you to achieve those goals (huang 2015; schippers et al. 2020), provided that the goals are appropriate. writers, then, wrote in silence on their own – but very importantly – with an awareness of colleagues being here in their own space writing all together. in the first weeks of intervention, many writers underestimated the time and dedication needed, as in the following example: ‘i have collected all the data … so i just need to start writing the article.’ (writer 1) writer 1 initially expected that writing would be easy. during the first few meetings, writers generally tended to set unrealistic goals, such as: ‘i’m working on my methodology chapter and an article simultaneously. if that is possible!’ (writer 2) by session eight, the same writer had modified her writing goal as follows: ‘i would like to summarize my methodology chapter’, and by session 10, her writing goal was reduced to writing ‘one paragraph in my methodology chap’. goals thus became progressively more focused, as well as more connected to the larger writing task, as shown in the following chat entry: ‘i am completing the writing task which i started yesterday. the goal was big so i will probably complete it sometime tomorrow. i am breaking it into small manageable chunks.’ (writer 3) writing goals also became more varied as writers expanded their understanding of what writing involved, as in the example below: ‘i want to write some thoughts by hand tonight. i want to write it down, annotate it, scribble all over it and then make sense of it.’ (writer 4) writer 4 engaged in brainstorming ‘by hand’, which was followed by annotation – both of which he understood to be forms of writing; writer 5, in the example below, similarly understood structuring and mind mapping as writing: ‘i am structuring a new article and by the end of today’s session, i want to have the complete structure in place with a mind map for the literature review.’ (writer 5) by the end of the 6-month period, the writers had come to identify forms of writing that happened at all stages of the writing process. ‘snack writing’ is a new mediational means each ‘snack writing’ session opened with a short input by the facilitator on the theme for the meeting, which was usually based on a question, or on feedback from the previous week’s meeting. following the brief introduction, the writers worked on their writing projects in silence. between the two pomodori was a 5-min break in which writers could connect with each other. these spaces enabled the sharing of writing tips and writing experiences. for example: ‘the ‘pause’ was good to break with one own thoughts for a while, come back and have a fresh eye on what i have written.’ (writer 2) participants used the break between pomodori to share writing tools that were useful, such as an academic word bank, a free online grammar checker, or reference manager. responding to a discussion on paraphrasing tools, one of the participants wrote: ‘i wrote 197 words and used a program called ginger to help me re-phrase the paragraph. after using it, i concluded with 211 words.’ (writer 6) participants also shared other research tips. for example, in an online chat about transcribing interviews writers 6 suggested that ‘voice-to-text technology can help’. unlike a writing workshop, in which a variety of writing tools and techniques might be shared over an intensive 1or 2-day period, tips and techniques were spread out over the 6 months of ‘snack writing’ meetings. the information provided, from writing theory to writing tips, was therefore not overwhelming. writing concepts, such as coherence and cohesion, made more sense to writers who were in the thick of dealing with coherence and cohesion issues. one of the writers felt inspired to ‘check for coherence’ following the session in which this was briefly discussed, claiming: ‘i found gaps or lumpy paragraphs … so i’m attending to this now’ (writer 7). much of the online conversation was about sharing practice, such as the extent to which writers used structure (e.g. headings, sub-headings) and how they created these structures (e.g. from a theoretical framework) to guide their writing. writers also discussed how much time they spent on free writing, as opposed to focused writing. academic writing is a social practice (murray 2012), and through sharing their practice, more experienced writers inducted new writers into academic-writing practices. there were short exchanges during most writing sessions; sometimes novice writers needed advice or support, and other times they needed reassurance, as in the following statement: ‘i am struggling to code my first interview. the codes overlap! i never knew it took so long. is it normal?’ (writer 8) colleagues could empathise with writer 8’s challenges and recommend resources, such as a coding manual. inevitably, not all ‘snack writing’ sessions were successful: ‘all i did was stare at the screen [and think about nodes] but it’s helping.’ (writer 9) the combination of empathy and writing advice created, as one writer put it, is ‘an amazing support structure’ (writer 2), which the following writer elaborated on: ‘psychologically it also feels as if you are holding on by attending this group! you don’t feel so guilty and it keeps you thinking, even if you have so much other work, even if you just think about things subconsciously.’ (writer 10) many of the comments in the chat expressed writers’ acknowledgment of the support that they received through sharing their progress and challenges with the group: ‘very inspiring writing knowing others are also writing. managed to write about 200 words and i’m very focused.’ (writer 11) there is something magical about writing in the company of others, knowing that all are encountering similar challenges, and that we can share both our struggles and our victories. participating in a larger community of writers the larger community of academic writers is always present through other texts, journal editors, and reviewers, as well as potential examiners. while the group members were the primary community, there were times when the larger community was foregrounded, as in the following exchange that occurred in session 13: ‘please help me to understand the following comment of a journal: ‘why would scholars outside of sa want to read this article – relate to emerging economy’?’ (writer 12) ‘reviewers often say that if they feel that your study is too context specific. so the way to get around that is to explain that the study is transferable to other similar contexts (e.g. emerging economies) or is relevant in all contexts that have whatever your focus is – e.g. first generation students. also refer to the international literature in your discussion so that you ‘internationalise’ a bit …’ (writer 13) in the exchange above, a more experienced writer shared her strategies for dealing with reviewers’ comments, but the exchange also reminded participants of the wider community in the academic writing system, and the implied audience of the text one is producing. the presence of more and less experienced writers helped to demystify academic-writing processes. the flattened hierarchy introducing ‘snack writing’ as a new tool into the activity system impacted the system as a whole. for example, ‘snack writing’ showed postgraduate candidates that supervisors were also writers. as academics, supervisors must be writers, their academic careers depend on it. including postgraduate writers and academics in the same writing group, powerfully demonstrated to the postgraduate students that academic writing is an important activity that takes time and dedication. the discovery that academic writing takes time and hard work was often remarked on. writer 1 found ‘that i am rewriting and rewriting, but i suppose that is how it goes?’, while writer 2 expressed the hope that it would become ‘easier to find the right words when you are in the field for a while’; ‘it takes me so long!’ she complained. it was not only the novice writers who encountered challenges. one of the supervisors wrote: ‘i have a challenge with some data that is contradictory. i understand what we need to be saying but must find the words to express this. i want to use this session to play with this. it is only a paragraph in our paper but important.’ (writer 14) it is an act of extreme self-discipline to give up evening time and family time to work on a piece of writing. the postgraduate candidates saw and experienced the challenges that their supervisors encountered in their own writing. they saw the difficulties that supervisors had in meeting their word count targets. they saw the time it took to edit and polish, and edit and polish again. nothing flattens the hierarchy quite as much as writing in the company of postgraduate candidates and their supervisors, when the candidates offer advice on online tools and supervisors struggle with an academic-writing task. ‘rules’ to support ‘snack writing’ there are several studies of snack writing, which we have learned from. but as a community of online writers – writing together alone – we arrived at our own set of ‘rules’ or guidelines. firstly, writing goals should be short, specific and appropriate to the time at hand (it is clearly not going to be possible to write an article in a 1-h ‘snack writing’ session). many of the writers confirmed the importance of a short and focused writing task, for example, a writer posted the following into the chat: ‘i’m surprised at how quickly time passed. i overestimated what i would be able to complete.’ (writer 15) the comment below offers an example of what is achievable in a snack writing session: ‘i managed to introduce a sub-section of the literature. it is more-or-less 150 words, but i am happy with the result.’ (writer 16) secondly, preparation is necessary. this usually required the writer to carefully select a piece of writing that was part of a larger writing project (e.g. an article or a thesis chapter). the careful selection of the writing task enabled the writer to be productive and focused in the ‘snack writing’ session. for example, a writer might post a goal in the chat that she intends ‘to finish a subsection i started on monday’ (writer 17). third, writing should be meaningful, that is, part of a greater whole (e.g. a thesis chapter) – there have been occasions when a member of the group used the ‘snack writing’ time to review an article or write a report – but usually realised that the hour of writing in the company of others is a time that is too precious to waste on more mundane writing tasks. many writers posted in the chat that they ‘enjoyed the moment on my own and being focused’ (writer 6). one writer reflected on writing meaningfully: ‘i can see that i make many subconscious decisions when analyzing and writing makes me realize and think about this!.’ (writer 18) fourth, while it seems that the average writer achieved around 150–300 words per pomodoro (25 min; and less if they are producing new text, more if they are revising) – it is not the number of words, but the quality of those words that matter. in this regard, follow-up is also necessary – this might entail checking on a reference, going back to the data, or doing editing and polishing. several comments in the chat indicated that the writer was going to continue writing: ‘using ‘concluding a paper’ [by] pat thomson … will work till late tonight … no netflix.’ (writer 19) ‘i am picking up the pace now, so i will continue for another hour to benefit from this momentum.’ (writer 20) a writer explained that the snack writing ‘sets one up’ to continue the practice of writing during the week: ‘i think the beauty of this approach is that it sets one up for further writing, like a ladder climbing slowly but surely.’ (writer 21) our final rule is ‘no going down the rabbit hole’ – which means that we usually leave the internet off as that is a dangerous place to go when you are trying to focus on a complex writing task. a writer noted the progress made by turning off the email: ‘today i made some good progress and realised that i can make some good progress if i stop checking in-coming emails.’ (writer 22) another writer discovered the benefit of writing without searching for literature: ‘wrote a page on ‘resilience’. trying to write without looking at the literature, so will go back to literature tomorrow to see how it resonates. first time just trying to go for own opinion and voice.’ (writer 23) discussion of the findings the first principle of the activity theory is that the object drives the activity system (engeström 1999). this became very clear with regard to the kinds of ‘object’ that the writers engaged with in the pomodori. the writing object needed to be focused, but related to the larger object, that is, the larger writing project. successful ‘snack writing’ requires writers to break down a larger writing task into smaller sections. this requires careful planning. small pieces of writing are more manageable than a large writing task, but without adequate planning there is the danger that these bits of writing will be disjointed. writers needed to have planned the whole writing task, the larger object, in order to appreciate how the short writing tasks are connected to the bigger writing project. the small writing tasks enabled writers to be focused, and the ‘snack writing’ sessions created opportunities for writers to achieve their writing goals within the time allocation. lack of focus, which is common when the writing task is overwhelming, may hinder a writer’s progress, resulting in wasted hours of writing time (de caux 2021). over the 6-month period, writers developed a deeper awareness of the object of their writing activity, and of the connection between any two writing tasks. following the analysis of the data, we could refine our initial understanding of ‘snack writing’ as an activity system (figure 1). figure 2 shows how the larger object of the writing activity, such as an academic article or a thesis chapter, lies beyond each individual ‘snack writing’ session, which is why ‘snack writing’ needs planning before the session, attaining focus during the session, and also needs follow up. the follow up occurred in the form of writers continuing with their writing after the session was over, as writer 6 explained: ‘i will continue for another hour to benefit from this momentum’. but follow up also involved working consistently on a related writing task outside of the weekly ‘snack writing’ session. this routine provided a sense of stability and enabled writers to complete their larger writing projects. as one writer explained: ‘i think the regular meeting is a kind of deadline – it keeps me focussed and ready for productive writing for 1 hr every wednesday.’ (writer 12) figure 2: the main object lies beyond the ‘snack writing’ activity system. figure 3: the writing subjects and the writing mediators constantly switch roles. in order to advance the larger writing task, writers needed to develop a writing routine beyond the weekly ‘snack writing’ sessions. these sessions laid the foundation for the kind of productive writing practice that would enable writers to accomplish the larger writing task. the presence of a supportive group meant that writers could ask for help, and help others. general writing tips were provided at the start of each session to benefit all writers, and more specific suggestions or tips were provided in response to individual writers’ queries. in the ‘snack writing’ activity system, the supportive group could be understood as participants switching rolls, sometimes being the writing subject and sometimes providing the mediational means for other writing subjects. according to the activity theory it is understood that mediational means to include human mediation, such as facilitators, in this case, supportive group members. as writing subjects became writing mediators, new learnings could be applied to their writing, enhancing their writing skills. the online community of practice allowed for the sharing of personal ways of undertaking writing tasks, thus peer learning took place. the ‘snack writing’ activity system could therefore be considered a form of continual professional development. supportive online communities are able to foster ‘well-being, a sense of control, self-confidence, feelings of more independence, social interactions, and improved feelings’ (barak, boniel-nissim & suler 2008:1867). sharing good practice in the sessions created a sense of accountability among writers and enhanced their focus. writing together lessens the feelings of isolation that are experienced by many writers and creates opportunities for them to share their frustration with others who are experiencing the same negative feelings (boix et al. 2021). the ‘snack-writing group’ became a social network that all participants could benefit from. the mediational means of the pomodoro, to a certain extent, addressed the challenge of limited time and the issues around time-management that confronted postgraduate scholars and academics alike. everyone complained about insufficient time for writing. however, as murray (2014) and gardiner and kerns (2012) repeatedly point out, ‘snack writing’ is more productive than ‘feast writing’. this is counter-intuitive, thus the initial perception of writers was that two 25-min writing spurts would not result in meaningful writing, because to write meaningfully, requires longer periods of time. however, this perception changed over the 6-month period. although the time-period was short and writers often commented that they could not believe that 25 min had passed, they also achieved real progress, despite the short time allocation. writers would comment, for example, that: ‘i wrote more than 400 words in my article’ (writer 11). writers experienced a sense of accomplishment when their goals were met, as in the following comments: ‘… my goal is achieved!’ (writer 8) or ‘i had a productive hour’ (writer 13). understanding what can be achieved in a short time allocation enables writers to gain a new perspective on the productive use of time (boix et al. 2021). conclusion the focus of this study was on the practices of an online ‘snack-writing group’ that was intended to assist academics and postgraduate scholars with their academic-writing projects. we addressed the research question: how and why might productive academic writing in a ‘snack-writing group’ be enabled or constrained? we found that the writers’ who regularly attended the online writing sessions, benefited by progressing their writing projects. some finished articles, others made substantial progress on a thesis. the study contributes to a deeper understanding of academic writing as a social practice that could be changed through the mediational means of an online writing community and through the flattening of the traditional hierarchy of research supervision. the online writing group is necessarily embedded in the social context of the wider academic community and its rules for academic writing. these rules have resulted in the publishor-perish culture (amutuhaire 2022), but through more collective agencies and actions, academics and postgraduates may take steps towards achieving a publish-and-flourish culture (gray et al. 2018). the research study also contributes to practice by showing the benefits of ‘snack writing’ as a supplement to traditional research supervision and as a supportive space for academic staff to progress their writing projects. the findings have implications for how supervisors and postgraduate scholars could become part of an online writing community that is committed writing, thinking about writing, as well as engaging in writing activities. as many postgraduate candidates are part-time students, and have limited time for their studies, ‘snack writing’ could help them to carve out a small space of time for their writing, and then to build a regular practice of writing. the study raised implications for further research. the participants in the study comprised a core group of approximately 20 writers who attended regularly over the 6-month period during which data were gathered. however, there were many more writers who participated irregularly, or who left the group after only attending a few sessions. further research is required to find out why some writers felt motivated to stay and others chose to leave. it would also be useful to research in more detail the preparatory and follow-up ‘snack writing’ practices of successful postgraduate scholars and academics. in conclusion, the research study shows that engaging in an online community of writers, as well as taking individual responsibility for writing outside of the group, is key to progressing a writing task. the ‘snack writing’ meeting was an important small space in a busy week where academics and postgraduate scholars prioritised 1 h to focus on a specific writing task and connect with others doing the same thing. this precious time helped the group to achieve big writing goals, one pomodoro at a time. acknowledgements the authors acknowledge the participants of the ‘snack-writing group’ who allowed us to use the chat data for this research. competing interests the author(s) declare that they have no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions c.w., h.d., p.e-h., and h.p. equally contributed to the writing and research of this article. funding information we acknowledge the funding received from the national research foundation’s south african research chairs initiative (sarchi) (grant no. sarci221202668078). data availability anonymised data are available from the cape peninsula university of 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online community to foster supportive research environments’, in researcher education and development scholarship online conference, october 14, university of the west of scotland, viewed 05 april 2023, from https://research-portal.uws.ac.uk/en/publications/the-power-hour-of-writing-an-inclusive-online-community-to-foster. article information authors: celeste combrinck1 surette van staden2 karen roux1 affiliations: 1centre for evaluation and assessment, department of science, mathematics and technology education, university of pretoria, south africa 2department of science, mathematics and technology education, university of pretoria, south africa correspondence to: surette van staden postal address: c/o george storrar and leyds streets, pretoria 0002, south africa dates: received: 10 dec. 2013 accepted: 19 may 2014 published: 14 nov. 2014 how to cite this article: combrinck, c., van staden, s. & roux, k., 2014, ‘developing early readers: patterns in introducing critical reading skills and strategies to south african children’, reading & writing 5(1), art. #45, 9 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v5i1.45 copyright notice: © 2014. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. developing early readers: patterns in introducing critical reading skills and strategies to south african children in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction    • research questions    • method       • participants       • data collection instruments • results       • introduction of reading skills and strategies in school context as reported by principals       • combined effect of conducting early home literacy activities and introducing four pivotal reading skills and strategies       • limitations • discussion • acknowledgements    • competing interests    • authors’ contributions • references • footnotes abstract top ↑ this study draws on the preprogress in international reading literacy study (prepirls) 2011 data. it aims to illustrate the effect of early home literacy activities and the early introduction of reading skills and strategies in the school setting on reading literacy achievement amongst south african grade 4 learners across the 11 official languages. south african learner performance is consistently poor across a variety of international assessment programmes. the prepirls 2011 study results place south african grade 4 learners’ results substantially below the international centre point of 500 at 461 (se = 3.7). as part of the reading achievement assessment, prepirls 2011 gathered background information in the form of learner, parent, teacher and school questionnaires. this study investigates two aspects as reported by parents and school principals of grade 4 learners: firstly, parents of grade 4 learners reported in the learning to read survey (or parent questionnaire) on the frequency with which early home literacy activities were conducted in the home before the learner commenced schooling. secondly, principals of learners reported on the grade level (from grade 1 to grade 4 and beyond) at which a number of critical reading skills and strategies were introduced to learners. fourteen such skills are identified, ranging from basic skills to skills with increased complexity. this study links the frequency of early home literacy activities, as reported by grade 4 learners’ parents, and the introduction of the 14 reading skills, as reported by school principals, to learner achievement scores in the prepirls 2011 assessment. introduction top ↑ a universally accepted goal of primary education is the mastery of reading comprehension, since reading comprehension provides the basis for most learning that takes place in secondary school (sporer, brunstein & kieschke 2009). this study aims to illustrate the link between the introduction of early home literacy activities as well as reading skills and strategies early in the foundation phase to aid the development of comprehension and thus reading literacy achievement amongst south african grade 4 learners. in south africa, grave concerns with regard to low levels of learner achievement pervade research initiatives and educational debates. despite considerable investments in educational inputs (such as policy and resources) and processes (such as curriculum provision and teacher support), outcomes (in the form of learner achievement) remain disappointingly low. despite national efforts, south african school learners have repeatedly been failing grades or leaving school, a trend that is reported by taylor, fleisch and shindler (2008) in their review of educational changes in south africa since 1994. almost half of the learners who dropped out of the system did so due to a lack of basic learning skills, more specifically a lack of adequate language skills. another reason for this high attrition rate can be attributed to child-headed families where parents are absent (richter & desmond 2008): those learners who leave school prematurely no longer deem education as important when compared to basic needs; rather, they seek out work to support and provide for their family (maclellan 2005). south african learners’ poor performance in reading literacy was first evidenced by the results of the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) 2006. as an international comparative study, pirls is administered in five-year cycles and requires the assessment of learners who have had four years of schooling (mullis et al. 2007). for most countries, this requirement translates to grade 4 learners. pirls 2006 aimed to describe trends and international comparisons for the reading achievement of grade 4 learners. it also focused on learners’ competencies in relation to goals and standards for reading education, the impact of the home environment and how parents foster reading literacy, the implementation of the curriculum, time and reading materials for learning to read in schools and classroom approaches to reading instruction (mullis et al. 2004). the south african pirls 2006 study assessed a first population of grade 4 learners, but also included a second population of grade 5 learners as a national option within the study (howie et al. 2009). south african grade 5 learners achieved the lowest score of the 45 participating education systems with a score of 302 (se = 5.6). grade 4 learners achieved on average 253 points (se = 4.6). average achievement for both these grades was well below the fixed international reference average of 500 points. in pirls 2011, the south african study assessed a grade 5 population in an attempt to develop trends from pirls 2006 to pirls 2011. however, to assess grade 4 learners, south africa opted to participate in the preprogress in international reading literacy study (prepirls) 2011. mullis et al. (2012) describe prepirls 2011 as a less difficult version of pirls which allows developing countries to assess children’s reading comprehension with shorter texts, easier vocabulary, simpler grammar and less emphasis on higher-order reading skills. prepirls is designed to test basic reading skills that are prerequisites for success in pirls (mullis et al. 2012). south african grade 4 learners were assessed across all 11 official languages. prepirls 2011 results point to continued underperformance by south african learners with little evidence of improved reading literacy scores, even when administering an easier assessment. the prepirls 2011 study results revealed that south african grade 4 learners obtained 461 (se = 3.7), the lowest reading achievement score in comparison with the international centre point of 500. in contrast, learners from botswana achieved 463 (se = 3.5) and learners from colombia obtained 576 (se = 3.4) (mullis et al. 2012). a further breakdown of south african prepirls 2011 results reveal severe learner underperformance on international benchmarks. the prepirls 2011 scores provide information on learners’ performance in reading achievement on a range of literary and informational texts (mullis et al. 2012). for each of these texts, learners responded to questions that measure a series of comprehension skills, ranging from retrieval to inference and integration and evaluation. achievement is reported at four points along a scale of international benchmarks and includes the advanced international benchmark with achievement at 625 points, the high international benchmark with achievement at 550 points, the intermediate international benchmark with achievement at 475 points and the low international benchmark with achievement at 400 points. achievement at the low international benchmark represents performance at basic reading levels. figure 1 illustrates south african grade 4 learners’ overall achievement on the international benchmarks1. figure 1: prepirls 2011 overall benchmark results. figure 1 indicates that 42% of grade 4 learners reached the intermediate international benchmark, with smaller percentages attaining the high international benchmark (18%) and the advanced international benchmark (6%) (howie et al. 2012). of concern is that as many as 29% of south african grade 4 learners did not reach the low international benchmark in prepirls 2011, thereby being unable to provide evidence for having mastered basic reading skills. a majority of 71% of south african grade 4 learners reached the low international benchmark (howie et al. 2012). attainment at this benchmark means that south african grade 4 learners mostly have the ability to locate and retrieve explicitly stated detail in a literary text and the ability to locate and reproduce explicitly stated information from an informational text (mullis et al. 2012). at this level, the majority of south african grade 4 learners are unable to make straightforward inferences, integrate ideas and evidence across text or interpret events to provide reasons, motivations or feelings with full text-based support. the home background is pivotal for learners’ scholastic achievement and social development (morrison & cooney 2001). pretorius and naude (2002) report on the ever-widening gap in performance between children from rural or township backgrounds and children from affluent areas as an additional indicator of learners’ poor reading skills. in the south african context, townships refer to those informal settlements, often found on the outskirts of urban areas, characterised by makeshift houses (or shacks). townships are associated with lack of basic services (such as water and electricity supply), lack of resources and generally poor quality of schooling offered to children. pretorius and naude’s research into the topic of poor reading and writing ability amongst children in south african townships found that only 36% of primary school children could take a book, turn it to the correct position and open it as if they were about to start reading from the book. only 43% of children knew that words tell the story in a book. the researchers ascribe this shortcoming to a lack of books in the home, to parents or caregivers who themselves are illiterate and do not themselves have a culture of reading at home and to the lack of print-rich environments to which these children are exposed. similarly, dieden and gustafson (2003) explore the roles of parents in urban and rural areas. they too claim that learners living in rural areas perform poorly since the parents are absent. resources at home can be seen as essential for the development of reading literacy (van steensel 2006) and lack thereof may affect learners’ performance in reading literacy. conversely mahery, jamieson and scott (2011) state that in more affluent areas, parents seem to live up to the expectations set out to assist their children with their literacy development needs. other research has shown (gonzalez-dehass, willems & holbein 2005; hofferth & sandberg 2001; sénéchal 2006) that parents who spend time on and actively make use of educational resources contribute to their children’s literacy development, a situation that may be linked to learners’ higher reading literacy achievement. by implication, underachievement in reading literacy translates into unskilled readers who are limited in their metacognitive knowledge about reading. according to mokhtari and reichard (2002), unskilled readers do relatively little cognitive monitoring and tend to engage with reading as a decoding process rather than a meaning-making process. unskilled readers are unlikely to detect contradictions in text, have trouble successfully resolving inconsistencies in understanding, exert little control of reading processes and are often unable to realise that they do not understand what is read (mokhtari & reichard 2002). on the other hand, skilled readers from a young age demonstrate awareness of what they are reading, why they are reading, have tentative plans or strategies in place for handling potential problems and monitor their comprehension of textual information (mokhtari & reichard 2002). ricketts, nation and bishop (2007) provide additional evidence of learners with poor comprehension, who make up approximately 10% of children aged 7–11 years old (nation 2005). these learners have age appropriate reading skills, but have difficulty with reading comprehension specifically. such learners may show strong phonological skills, but experience weaknesses in areas of language, such as listening, vocabulary and comprehending words with subtle inconsistent patterns in spelling and sound. weaknesses in these areas tend to co-occur, meaning that children with limited vocabulary may inevitably struggle to comprehend words (ricketts et al. 2007). taylor et al. (2000) place their work within effective schools and effective teaching traditions and conclude that effective teaching of reading strategies includes the use of small group instructional practices, coaching, systematic phonics instruction, higher-level questioning and balanced instruction on variables such as variable grouping patterns, support for reading, approaches to word recognition instruction, modes of learner interaction and practices to support text comprehension. additionally, taylor et al. (2000) list independent reading, involving parents in children’s reading tasks and maintaining learner on-task behaviour as practices employed by effective reading teachers. a distinction needs to be made between reading skills and reading strategies. afflerbach, pearson and paris (2008) explain that these terms are either used interchangeably, as complimentary relations (where strategies support skills) or to denote developmental progression (where phonics skills are followed by comprehension strategies). afflerbach et al. (2008) view reading skills as automatic actions that result in decoding and comprehension with speed, efficiency and fluency. reading strategies, on the other hand, are deliberate, goal directed attempts associated with decoding text, understanding words and constructing meanings of text. whilst afflerbach et al. (2008) offer a useful distinction, reading skills and reading strategies will be used interchangeably for the purposes of this study to describe features of children’s reading development as well as features of teachers’ reading instruction. research questions based on the prepirls 2011 evidence of south african grade 4 learners’ poor overall reading literacy achievement and poor benchmark attainment, the following questions are asked: 1. how often do south african parents of preschool learners engage in early home reading activities? 2. when do critical reading skills and strategies first receive major emphasis in instruction at primary school? 3. how does the early introduction of and exposure to comprehension skills and strategies in the classroom interact with early home literacy activities to affect reading achievement scores? method participants a nationally representative sample of 15 744 grade 4 learners from 342 schools participated in the prepirls 2011 study in south africa. the sample consisted of 7548 girls and 8196 boys. learners were assessed across all 11 official languages and were assessed in the language of learning and teaching (lolt) to which they were exposed in foundation phase. this means that learners were not necessarily tested in their home language, but rather in the language they were exposed to in school. the stratification by language resulted in the assessment of 1463 afrikaans learners, 2205 english learners, 1393 isindebele learners, 1090 isixhosa learners, 1209 isizulu learners, 1099 sepedi learners, 1431 sesotho learners, 1293 setswana learners, 2186 siswati learners, 1187 tshivenda learners and 1188 xitsonga learners. data collection instruments achievement tests: the prepirls 2011 assessment consisted of a reading literacy test in the form of two types of texts, namely reading for literary experience (or literary texts) and reading to acquire and use information (or informational texts). reading texts were followed by a range of multiple choice questions and open response questions for a maximum of three points. reporting of reading achievement results in prepirls 2011 are presented in terms of achievement above or below the fixed international centre point of 500 through the use of five overall plausible values2, as derived from item response analysis. background questionnaires: grade 4 learners, their parents, teachers and school principals responded to contextual background questionnaires that addressed a wide range of topics on aspects such as reading behaviour, attitudes, teaching reading and school organisation. for the purposes of this study, responses from one set of items from the parent questionnaire and one set from the principal questionnaire were used. parents of grade 4 learners were asked how often they engaged with their child before they started school in a range of literacy activities on a likert scale that included ‘often’, ‘sometimes’ and ‘never’. principals were asked at which grade (grade 1, grade 2, grade 3, grade 4 or none of these grades) a range of reading skills and strategies first received major emphasis in instruction at their school. both the principal responses and the parent responses were converted to a scale and then to an index for further analysis. procedure: the international association for the evaluation of educational achievement (iea) made the international database analyzer (idb analyzer) software available for the analysis of the pirls and prepirls datasets. this software was used for data analysis for the current investigation. variables from the school and parent questionnaires were analysed to obtain descriptive statistics and percentages for response categories as reported by principals and teachers in conjunction with grade 4 learners’ overall reading literacy scores. the analysis resulted in percentage reports for principal and parent reports on the selected variables, with the expected effect on reading literacy achievement for each reported percentage. results top ↑ means and percentages were used to gauge differences between groups. firstly, the introduction of early home literacy activities was considered and the frequencies between parents who reported conducting these activities rarely, sometimes and often were examined. mean reading achievement scores for different reported levels of conducting early home literacy activities were examined, as well as score-point differences between groups. secondly, frequencies of the grades in which school principals of grade 4 learners reported that reading skills and strategies first receive major emphasis in their schools were examined. cross-tabulations of grades in which reading skills and strategies first receive major emphasis and mean reading achievement scores were examined, as well as score-point differences between different grades of initial introduction. lastly, cross-tabulations of the early home literacy activities index and the principal index was created using idb analyzer. early home literacy activities: figure 2 illustrates parents’ reported frequency of conducting early home literacy activities with their child before they began school. figure 2: frequency of early home literacy activities reported by parents. there are seven activities that 20% – 25% of parents reported never or almost never engaging in with their child. activities parents reported that they most rarely engaged in with their children include: say counting rhymes or sing counting songs, play word games, read aloud signs or labels, play board games or card games, play with alphabet toys, play games involving shapes, play with number toys and play with building blocks. the low frequency of these activities specifically may point to the absence of resources that would allow for these activities to take place. typically, board games, cards, toys and alphabet toys are not widely available, especially in rural areas where a culture of activities with educational resources is not well established. the remaining activities, parents mostly reported conducting with their child either sometimes (34% – 55%) or often (33% – 54%). table 1 indicates that mean reading achievement scores can be expected to be higher when early home literacy activities are conducted by parents at least sometimes or often before the child commences school. table 1: early home literacy activities means and percentages based on parents’ reporting. reading achievement scores are higher for each of the early home literacy activities to which learners’ parents responded without exception. for example, for the activity tell stories, when the activity was conducted occasionally or often before commencing school, the mean reading achievement score was 471.87 (se = 4.69), whereas when this activity was conducted rarely or never, the score was 438.69 (se = 5.54). table 2 shows information on the score-point difference for reading achievement score in grade 4 based on whether parents reported often engaging in the early home literacy activity or almost never engaging in the activity. table 2: score-point differences based on frequency of early home literacy activities. differences in mean reading achievement scores are markedly affected by all the activities (scores 22.57 – 49.97), with two exceptions. two literacy activities that do not make a large difference in learner achievement are write letters or words (12.16 score difference) and talk about what you read (5.97 score difference). the activity play games involving shapes makes a difference of 49.7 points to the reading achievement score. the activities say counting rhymes or sing counting songs (43.49), tell stories (42.07) and play board games or card games (40.40) all make a large difference to reading achievement for those learners whose parents often engaged with them in such activities. in prepirls, a score of 40 points signifies a year of schooling. from these marked differences it would appear that early home literacy activities have an important impact on later literacy achievement. introduction of reading skills and strategies in school context as reported by principals descriptive statistics showed that certain reading skills and strategies in the principal questionnaire were under-reported (i.e. few principals answered these questions) for introduction in early grades. to investigate why this may be the case, a review of the revised south african national curriculum statement (department of education 2002) for grade r to grade 9 was done in order to establish the extent to which the items that were asked of school principals were in alignment with the curriculum statement in use at the time of the prepirls 2011 study, as illustrated by table 3. table 3: principal questions as classified by the curriculum statement. based on this classification of the items, only items that contain activities that should start in grade 1 according to the revised curriculum were selected for analysis. this decision was taken as the majority of principals reported that these activities were taught in grade 1, whereas later items were reported for higher grades in accordance with the curriculum guidelines. the first eight items were therefore investigated to establish if principals reported these activities for grade 1 level and to investigate any under-reported activities that could possibly impact learner reading scores. items that contain activities classified by the curriculum for higher grades were under-reported for lower grades; therefore, useful predictions based on these items could not be made due to small samples reporting such activities for grade 1–3.3 the grades in which school principals of grade 4 learners reported that these reading skills and strategies first receive major emphasis in their schools is shown in figure 3. these are the reading activities that should receive emphasis in grade 1 according to the curriculum. figure 3: grade by which reading skills and strategies first receive major emphasis. in excess of 75% of principals reported that basic reading skills (such as knowing letters of the alphabet, knowing letter-sound relationships and reading words) first receive emphasis in grade 1 or earlier. reading isolated sentences was reported by 56% (se = 3.4) of principals as an activity that receives emphasis in grade 1 or earlier. however, a steady decline in percentages is observed for the early introduction of skills and strategies such as reading connected text (31%, se = 3.5) and locating information within a text (23%, se = 3.4). skills that require learners to identify the main idea of a text (21%, se = 3.3) was hugely under-reported for first grade learners. table 4 provides information on how the early introduction of reading skills and strategies affects reading literacy achievement scores in prepirls 2011. the items containing activities that should be taught in grade 1 or earlier, as indicated by the revised national curriculum that was implemented in south african primary schools at the time of the prepirls 2011 study, are included. table 4: reading activities means and percentages based on grade initialised. table 4 indicates that average reading achievement scores can be expected to be higher when specific reading skills and strategies are introduced in grade 1 or earlier when compared to introduction of these skills and strategies beyond grade 2. reading achievement scores are higher for each of the reading skills and strategies to which learners’ principals responded without exception. for example, the reading achievement score for item 4 (reading isolated sentences) is 474.76 (se = 6.39) when the activity is begun in grade 1 or earlier, but when the activity is begun in grade 2 or later, the reading achievement score is 428.88 (se = 8.04). table 5 provides information on the score-point difference for each of the reading skills and strategies between their introduction at grade 1 or earlier and their introduction in grade 3 or later. table 5: score-point differences based on when skills are introduced. score-point differences are most pronounced for reading connected text (68.88 points), locating information within text (54.97 points) and reading isolated sentences (54.65 points). on the prepirls 2011 average achievement scale, 40 points represents one year of schooling. as indicated in table 7, the difference in scale score points for most of the activities translate to a difference of a year or more of schooling for those learners for whom the skill was introduced at grade 1 or earlier in comparison to those learners for whom it was only introduced grade 3 or beyond. combined effect of conducting early home literacy activities and introducing four pivotal reading skills and strategies figure 4 shows the effects of parents conducting early home literacy activities with their child before they begin school and introducing the four under-reported reading skills and strategies (reading isolated sentences, reading connected text, locating information within text and identifying the main idea of a text) in earlier grades. figure 4: effects of introducing the four neglected reading skills and strategies combined with parents conducting early home literacy activities. grade 4 learners who were in schools where the four reading skills and strategies were introduced in grade 1, combined with parents who often conducted the early home literacy activities with them had a mean reading achievement score of 562.16 (se = 14.43). this average achievement is substantially higher than achievement for those learners who were in schools where these activities were only introduced in grade 3 or later and who had parents who rarely or never conducted early home literacy activities with them. for these learners, mean reading achievement scores can be expected at only 432.20 (se = 10.53). limitations the limitations of the current study mainly pertain to its reliance on self-report questionnaire data. when using self-report data, one runs the risk of using data with some aspect of social desirability in respondents’ attempts to provide an overly positive image of themselves. principals reported on a variety of issues in the prepirls 2011 school questionnaire. it may be argued that principals are not accurately familiar with content being taught in the classroom. in this respect, principal responses to content questions could have been correlated with teacher responses from the teacher questionnaire if such analysis was aligned to the focus of the current study. if the prepirls 2011 study allowed for learner books to be examined, it could have provided a better indication of content being taught. however, prepirls 2011 took the form a survey study in which learner books did not form part of the methods employed. as a secondary analysis of data, the current study also could not employ learner books as part of its methods. in attempts to increase the accuracy of parent responses, questionnaires were provided to parents in both english and the language in which the child was tested. in this way, parents could switch between languages when encountering difficulties in understanding questions. response options in survey questionnaire are often problematic, since reference to ‘sometimes’ and ‘often’ are highly subjective. in the current study it was attempted to capture patterns in the data by converting individual responses to scales in attempts to counter the effects of subjective response patterns. it has to be kept in mind that the nature of survey research provides data that remain proxies (or approximations) of reality. nevertheless, it is seen as important for large-scale studies such as prepirls to collect information from schools, teachers, parents and learners to help ascertain the extent to which current research recommendations are being implemented and to capture the reported reality in schooling systems (mullis 2002). such reporting can also provide a springboard to further research. discussion top ↑ the current study utilised data from the south african prepirls 2011 study in an attempt to illustrate the combined effect of parental involvement in early home literacy activities and the early introduction of reading skills and strategies by schools as factors that contribute to higher attainment in reading literacy. in this study, the delayed introduction of reading skills and strategies in the foundation phase was found for four critical reading skills and strategies, despite an indication in the curriculum that these activities should be introduced in grade 1. these neglected reading skills and strategies are: • reading isolated sentences • reading connected text • locating information within text • identifying the main idea of a text. the results of the data indicate that these reading skills and strategies should be introduced in grade 1 for learners to achieve improved reading skills and, ultimately, higher reading achievement scores in studies such as prepirls 2011. the data also provide evidence that even when skills and strategies are entrenched as part of the national curriculum, these still do not receive emphasis. in this regard, schools play a pivotal role in ensuring the implementation of the curriculum to ensure learners have the best chance at sustained success and mastery. this study illustrates how the early introduction of reading skills and strategies in turn interacts with early home literacy activities which, when conducted frequently by parents before the child starts school, have a positive effect on the child’s reading achievement. it is of great importance that parents actively engage in early home literacy activities with their children, since they assist in the development of cognitive and linguistic skills, which in turn assist in learner reading achievement (see also sénéchal & lefevre 2002). in partnership with the school, children should be afforded as much as possible opportunity for practice (afflerbach et al. 2008). practice may help children to develop decoding skills, word recognition and understanding. yet, practice may still not be enough, in which case metacognitive instruction about how and why to use strategies, scaffolded and guided practice can be effective in ensuring the child makes progress. schools thus have the task of providing metacognitive instruction with explicit teaching practices. teachers can explain, use and model reading strategies by breaking reading down for the learner in order for them to become aware of readings’ parts, how they work together and combining such parts into the skilled performance of reading. the effects of parental involvement in early home literacy activities can be strengthened and reinforced through targeted opportunities for practice at school in attempts by teachers to adequately cover the prescribed curriculum. together, parents and schools have the responsibility to lay the foundations for reading in the first year of schooling. when both these interventions are in place, in other words schools start early with all seven grade 1 reading skills and strategies and parents conduct early home literacy activities with their children, then the learner will have a higher chance of mastering reading skills that are pivotal for later learning. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions s.v.s. (university of pretoria) served as co-national research coordinator for pirls 2011. c.c. (university of pretoria) focused on the analysis of data, whilst s.v.s. and k.r. (university of pretoria) provided the background, literature review and discussion for the article. references top ↑ afflerbach p., pearson p.d. & paris s.g., 2008, ‘clarifying differences between reading skills and reading strategies’, the reading teacher 61(5), 364–373. http://dx.doi.org/10.1598/rt.61.5.1 department of education, 2002, ‘revised national curriculum statement grades r-9 (2002)’, government gazette 23406, vol. 443. dieden, s. & gustafson, b., 2003, ‘child poverty in south africa: an assessment based on micro data for 1995’, international journal of social welfare 12, 326–338. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9671.00287 foy, p, galia, j. & isaac, l., 2008, ‘scaling the data form the timss 2007 mathematics and science assessments, in j.f. olson, m.o. martin, i.v.s. mullis (eds.), timss 2007 technical report: timss & pirls international study center, boston college, chestnut hill. gonzalez-dehass, a.r., willems, p.p. & holbein, m.f.d., 2005, ‘examining the relationship between parental involvement and learner motivation’, educational psychology review 17(2), 99–123. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10648-005-3949-7 hofferth, s.l. & sandberg, j.f., 2001, ‘how american children spend their time’, journal of marriage and family 63(2), 295–308. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2001.00295.x howie, s.j., van staden, s., tshele, m., dowse, c. & zimmerman, l., 2012, south african children’s reading literacy achievement summary report, centre for evaluation and assessment, pretoria. howie, s.j., venter, e., van staden, s., zimmerman, l., long, c., scherman, v. et al., 2009, pirls 2006 summary report: south african children’s reading literacy achievement, centre or evaluation and assessment, pretoria, south africa. maclellan, m., 2005, child headed households: dilemmas of definition and livelihood rights, paper presented at the 4th world congress on family law and children's rights, cape town, south africa, viewed 24 july 2013, from 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& sainsbury, m., 2004, pirls 2006 assessment framework and specifications, timss and pirls international study center, boston college, chestnut hill. mullis, i.v.s., martin, m.o., foy, p. & drucker, k.t., 2012, pirls 2011 international results in reading, boston college, chestnut hill. mullis, i.v.s., martin, m.o., kennedy, a.m. & foy, p., 2007, pirls 2006 international report: iea’s study of reading literacy achievement in primary schools, boston college, chestnut hill. nation, k., 2005, ‘children’s reading comprehension difficulties’, in m.j. snowling, c. hulme & m. seidenberg (eds.), the science of reading: a handbook, pp. 248–265, blackwell, oxford. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470757642.ch14 pretorius, e.j. & naude, h., 2002, ‘a culture in transition: poor reading and writing ability among children in south african townships’, early child development and care 172, 439–449. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004430214552 richter, l.m., & desmond, c., 2008, ‘targeting aids orphans and child-headed households? a perspective from national surveys in south africa, 1995-2005’, aids care 20(9), 1019–1028. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540120701842738 ricketts, j., nation, k. & bishop, d.v.m., 2007, ‘vocabulary is important for some, but not all reading skills’, scientific studies of reading 11(3), 235–257. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10888430701344306 sénéchal, m., 2006, ‘testing the home literacy model: parent involvement in kindergarten is differentially related to grade 4 reading comprehension, fluency, spelling and reading for pleasure’, scientific studies of reading 10(1), 59–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s1532799xssr1001_4 sénénchal, m. & lefevre, j., 2002, ‘parental involvement in the development of children’s reading skill: a 5-year longitudinal study’, child development 73, 445–460. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00417 sporer n., brunstein, j.c. & kieschke, u., 2009, ‘improving learners’ reading comprehension skills: effects of strategy instruction and reciprocal teaching’, learning and instruction 19, 272–286. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2008.05.003 taylor, n., fleisch, b., & shindler, j., 2008, ‘changes in education since 1994’, higher education 32, 3–5. taylor, b.m., pearson, p.d., clark, k. & walpole, s., 2000, ‘effective schools and accomplished teachers: lessons about primary-grade reading instruction in low-income schools’, the elementary school journal 101(2), 121–165. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/499662 van steensel, r., 2006, ‘relations between socio-cultural factors, the home literacy environment and children’s literacy development in the first years of primary education’, journal of research in reading 29(4), 367–382. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9817.2006.00301.x footnotes top ↑ 1.benchmark scales are cumulative. the percentage of learners who did not attain the low international benchmark and those who attained the low international benchmark add up to 100%. of the 71% of south african grade 4 learners who attained the low international benchmark, 42% attained the intermediate international benchmark, 18% the high international benchmark and 6% the advanced international benchmark. 2.plausible values consist of imputed values that were used during prepirls and pirls to estimate population characteristics accurately (foy, galia & isaac 2007). 3.small sample sizes reported for these activities resulted in large standard errors of the mean. abstract introduction significance of the study literature review research paradigm, approach and design results conclusion and recommendations acknowledgements references appendix 1 appendix 2 about the author(s) nomonde ntshikila research department, faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa janet l. condy research department, faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa lawrence meda research department, faculty of education, zayed university, dubai, united arab emirates heather n. phillips research department, faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa citation ntshikila, n., condy, j.l., meda, l. & phillips, h.n., 2022, ‘five grade 7 learners’ understanding of comprehension skills at a quintile 5 school in south africa’, reading & writing 13(1), a324. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v13i1.324 original research five grade 7 learners’ understanding of comprehension skills at a quintile 5 school in south africa nomonde ntshikila, janet l. condy, lawrence meda, heather n. phillips received: 24 june 2021; accepted: 01 dec. 2021; published: 24 feb. 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: research into language and reading scores show that south african learners struggle to read for meaning. many local researchers report on the inadequate teaching training programmes. teachers cannot teach basic comprehenion skills. objectives: this research identifies a gap in the research and records an intervention programme designed to engage learners and develop their higher-order comprehension abilities. this research analyses responses from five learners who engaged in a variety of literacy activities to extend their zones of literacy abilities to become independent critical thinkers. method: an interpretivist paradigm, within a qualitative approach, using a case study design was devised and implemented. five struggling grade 7 learners were purposively selected to participate in a 10-week intervention programme. data were collected using pre-tests and post-tests and the learners’ own exercise books to assess their academic performance in written comprehensions, their daily comments on their motivation charts, information from two interviews and the researchers’ participant observation scheduled notes. results: during the time of the intervention, all five grade 7 learners gradually learned and began to use higher-order thinking skills. conclusion: this small research project indicates that when a teacher explicitly planned and used a variety of literacy strategies to teach comprehension skills, not only did the learners enjoy the respectful discussions but this experience developed them into independent higher-order thinkers. keywords: cognitive thinking; critical thinking; qualitative research; zones of ability; higher-order thinking skills; intervention programme. introduction for economic development, stability in the labour market as well as sustainable lifelong learning, basic literacy skills are a prerequisite (radhamoney & hugo 2020). as suggested by the sustainable development goals (statistics south africa [sa] 2019:21) quality education is necessary ‘to empower people to achieve their dreams for economic advancement’. however, the post-apartheid democratic educational policies developed in 1994 have resulted in little change for high poverty communities, with the persistent continuation of unequal schooling. the complex nature of our relentless low literacy rates is influenced by pedagogical approaches, language differences and socio-economic factors. to sustain the parameters of a racist state, pedagogy was strongly behaviourist in nature. black learners were expected to learn information, obey and repeat the prescribed information. they had to mimic teachers and give back the texts in their original form, undermining the reading and comprehension skills of many black learners in south african schools. the lack of reading was more prevalent in poor communities where parents of learners were often ‘unable to read and write’ (völkel et al. 2016:13) with their children reading and writing at a functional level (howie et al. 2017). to compound this complexity, the amended curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) (2019) provides a curriculum that does not take into account the extreme poverty levels found in many township schools (pretorius & klapwijk 2016). since there are few and unsuitable resources available in these schools (brink, motolo & henning 2021; spaull, pretorius & mohohlwane 2020), teachers rely heavily on textbooks which encourages memorisation and a lack of higher-order criticality, and denies learners a safe space for debating and creativity. despite a plethora of initiatives to introduce constructivist pedagogies, and provide all schools with a variety of resources in different languages to encourage questioning, critical thinking and mutual discovery of knowledge, the south african education system continues to experience many literacy challenges (völkel et al. 2016). the 11 official languages in south africa is yet another sensitive issue, particularly when there is a discrepancy between the home language of the learners and the language of the tests (van staden 2016). the language in education policy (liep) attempts to address these language tensions and inequalities by acknowledging that our cultural diversity is a national asset (mothata & lemmer 2002). van staden (2016:2) argues that this policy promotes multilingualism by maintaining ‘home language(s) while providing access to effective acquisition of additional languages’. around 70% of primary schools in south africa complete their first three years of schooling in their african home language, with english taught as an additional language (pretorius & spaull 2016:1450). yet from grade 4, 90% of all teaching and learning is conducted in english. howie et al. (2017:94) indicated that in the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) 2016 assessments, for grade 4 learners, the average nine official african languages scores were considerably lower than those for english and afrikaans and when learners were tested in their own language they ‘achieved a higher mean score’. over the years, many isixhosa speaking learners have migrated from the eastern cape for better educational and career opportunities and in 2019 in the western cape, there were almost equal numbers of english and isixhosa speaking learners (cornelissen 2021) with fewer afrikaans speaking learners. in an attempt to provide an equal education system, the western cape education department (wced) have been conducting systemic tests in language and mathematics, with grade 3 and grade 6 learners (from 2002), and more recently in 2010 with grade 9 learners in the three official languages of this province: english, afrikaans and isixhosa. schools use these results diagnostically to identify areas of improvement and for the wced to provide necessary and appropriate support. the 2019 grade 6 systemic test results for performance in cognitive levels tested by language of learning and teaching (lolt) particularly ‘language’ are shown in table 1. analysing the sub-components of reading, the isixhosa results, for all aspects of literacy comprehension (literal, inferential, evaluative and knowledge recall) as well as the overall reading and viewing results, are much lower for black learners than for the afrikaans and english speaking learners. evaluative comprehension is particularly low for isixhosa speaking learners where the pass percentage is a mere 16.1%. conversely, howie et al. (2017) states that, where schools focus on academic success, a positive school environment, an abundance of resources and better trained teachers, learners realise higher reading achievements. table 1: the results of the 2019 grade 6 western cape education department systemic testing in language. today, many parents, who are themselves uneducated (pretorius & klapwijk 2016) require their children to have a better education and choose to send them away from township schools, to suburban schools where not only is the teaching and learning conducted in english, but the results are much better. they regard such schools as a means to social mobility and english has become a prestige language. as a result, their children are learning in a language with which they are unfamiliar, their parents cannot support them and this results in their children’s inability to acquire basic comprehension skills. many of these schools are quintile 5 schools, which means they are fee-paying and receive the lowest funding from the government because of the high economic status of the neighbouring community (eadie et al. 2021). however, this is an incorrect picture due to the high migration rate of families into the suburban schools (ogbonnaya & awuah 2019:2). despite the global education monitoring report: 2030 agenda (unesco 2018), which is to ‘leave no one behind’, it appears that for the isixhosa speaking community, historical disadvantages persist. all these issues contribute to reinforcing the generational cycle of poverty. significance of the study the western cape systemic tests include the following four comprehension skills: (1) focus on and retrieve explicitly stated information, (2) making straightforward inferences, (3) interpret and integrate ideas and information, and (4) evaluate and examine content, language and textual elements (howie et al. 2017). the pirls 2016 report claims that south african grade 4 learners achieved best at the lowest level comprehension skill, ‘focus on and retrieve explicitly stated information’, rather than the other three comprehension skills which require higher-order critical thinking. there have been many research studies conducted in how comprehension skills are taught in south africa (pretorius & spaull 2016; statistics sa 2019; taylor 2014; van der berg et al. 2016) but there has been a dearth of research conducted on teaching comprehension skills in an urban public mainstream quintile 5 school. this school is situated in a mixed socio-economic environment, inclusive of poor to wealthy families. according to bassadien and spencer (2016:2), ‘higher income residents replace lower-income residents’ and this is true for this school. many people have relocated because of high interest rates in this area and wealthier people have bought their homes. at the same time, and in the same area, there are many people who live on the streets, in backyards and in tin houses, whose children attend this school. this journal article emanated from a full master’s thesis; yet here the researcher focuses on only one of the research questions: ‘what effect did an eight-week ip have on the five grade 7 learners’ comprehension abilities?’ two sub-questions guided this study: how did the intervention programme (ip) assist five grade 7 learners to develop their higher-order thinking comprehension skills? how did the learners develop cognitively during the ip? the article begins with an introduction, followed by discussions of the significance of the study, literature review and theoretical framework. the research design and methods follow with results and discussion. the article ends with a succinct conclusion and implications for further research. literature review reading comprehension the national department of basic educations (ndbe) curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps 2012:10) for intermediate phase (grades 4–6) document acknowledges that ‘reading and viewing’ skills are essential as is developing vocabulary. although this document encourages educators to use a variety of comprehension activities to ensure their learners understand what they read, only phrases are provided, for example: activate prior knowledge, make predictions, visualise, compare, reflect on what you have read. there is no description of why and how teachers use these activities in their daily literacy pedagogy. in a study by cross and conn-powers (2014) a curriculum is defined as a big plan that connects all the content areas in an integrated structure. understanding comprehension question skills is a necessary skill that forms a critical part of the reading process (caps 2012; pretorius & lephalala 2011). yet many researchers report on south african teachers who neglect to teach comprehension skills and who lack the depth of content and pedagogic knowledge and interest to teach reading (marais & wessels 2020; moopelwa & condy 2019; pretorius & klapwijk 2016; spaull et al. 2020). the general education and training caps amendments (2019:10) document for grades 7–9 sets out formal assessment tasks according to bloom’s taxonomy, stating there is a need for ‘common language’ when discussing the various types of learning. three cognitive levels are discussed: low order, medium order and high order, with appropriate action words at each level. the document advises that these cognitive levels ‘should inform the learning, teaching and assessment strategies of each task’. many other developing countries such as kenya ‘face challenges in developing children’s literacy skills’ (pretorius & spaull 2016:7). in botswana, setswana is the national language with english as a second official language. mokibelo (2016) argues that: [t]here are other ethnic groups which are bazezuru and san who encountered problems with language-in-education policy because botswana’s education policy recommends the use of setswana in lower grades with a switch to english in standard 2 (grade 4 in south africa). (p. 158) the elimination of other languages creates inequalities and learning barriers for non-setswana speakers. the department of education in botswana excluded other languages in the lower grades. yet in south africa and kenya, the policy states that learners should use their mother tongue as the lolt in the foundation phase (mokibelo 2016) only. in south africa most parents prefer their children to learn in english as early as grade r. kenyan learners are experiencing comprehension challenges because learners cannot read and understand words in their mother tongue languages such as kiswahili. all they have is an imperfect ability to read in english (piper, schroeder & trudell 2016). the progress in international reading literacy study four comprehension skills the grade 7 caps (2019) curriuculum expectations are congruent with the assessment items found in the pirls study; hence, the researcher (together with her colleagues who had registered for an honours degree) developed and piloted a variety of texts and questions from grades 1–10. asking questions of texts is an important way of developing learners’ reading skills (howie et al. 2017:23). the questions began with simple memory recall, and gradually increased in complexity by asking more cognitively higher-order challenging questions. in the higher grades more emphasis is put on the higher-order questions such as ‘apply and evaluate’ as described by bloom’s taxonomy (caps 2019:10). the four pirls questions are discussed below. the first pirls comprehension skill is: ‘focus on and retrieve explicitly stated information’. this is a comprehension skill that requires learners to: [i]dentify information that is relevant to the specific goal of reading, including looking for specific ideas, searching for definitions, words or phrases, identifying the setting of a story (e.g. in terms of time or place), and finding the main idea. (howie et al. 2011:45) howie et al. (2017:23) contend that ‘focus on and retrieve explicitly stated information allows the reader to locate and understand content that is relevant to the question’. this comprehension skill, in terms of the testing process, requires the reader to focus on the text, at the word, phrase and sentence level, for the purpose of constructing meaning (howie et al. 2017). the second pirls comprehension skill is ‘making straightforward inferences’. according to mullis, martin and sainsbury (2016), ‘making straightforward inferences’ is a skill where learners use hints in a given text to resolve gaps in meaning. during straightforward inferences, learners have the ability to make connections that are implicit and may open to some interpretation based on their perspective (mullis et al. 2016). howie et al. (2017:45) state that making ‘straightforward inferences’ is essential for the ‘skilled readers to connect with two or more pieces of information and recognise the relationship even though it is not stated in the text’. the third pirls comprehension skill is ‘interpret and integrate ideas and information’, which is a reading skill where learners are expected to view ‘character actions by comparing and contrasting text information, inferring a story’s mood or tone, and interpreting a real-world application of text information’ (howie et al. 2011:45). mullis et al. (2016:47) substantiate that this is the ‘comprehension skill that allows readers to draw on their understanding of the world’. learners do not focus on only local understandings; rather this comprehension skill allows learners to think globally. the emphasis is on the importance of recalling and linking prior knowledge and lived experiences to the texts. the fourth pirls comprehension skill is ‘evaluate critique and examine content, language and textual elements’. it is the highest order and requires readers to process information in a given text and evaluate it (howie et al. 2011). this advanced cognitive skill enables learners to draw upon their prior knowledge, to reflect and judge the author’s language choices and devices for conveying meaning (mullis et al. 2016). learners need to find the ‘weaknesses in how the text was written or recognise the successful use of the author’s craft’ (mullis et al. 2016:21). in order for grade 7 learners to become critical and creative thinkers, their teachers are expected to select appropriate texts, and develop questions at the appropriate levels, to support the cognitive development of their learners. proficiency in reading and viewing using both literary and non-literary texts is encouraged, where learners are expected to recognise different genre structures, identify the audience, purpose and the context of texts. the caps (2019:10) assessment tasks require 30% low-order thinking (memory recall), 40% medium-order thinking (understanding and applying) and 30% higher-order thinking (analysing, evaluating and creating). conceptual framework two theories guided this study: vygotsky (1978) in terms of his theory of socio-culture learning and bloom’s (1956, revised 2001) taxonomy of cognitive development. these two theories have been fundamental to this study as they view reading as a constructivist and interactive process (howie et al. 2017). they stress the significance of social interaction through mediators, a more knowledgeable other or peer, and the importance of developing a stress-free environment. vygotsky’s theory supports the scaffolding of new knowledge, and learners working through their zones of proximal development (zpd) to develop higher-order thinking and comprehension skills. the 8-week intentionally initiated ip focused on the researcher interacting, mediating and scaffolding higher-order thinking and comprehension skills. during this time, the learners progressed from being dependent to independent thinkers. zavershneva and van der veer (2018:117, citing vygotsky 1978) stress that ‘the cognitive processes develop in social interactions with adults or more able peers’. according to kozulin (2012:2), vygotsky describes ‘learning situations facilitated by a go-between (mediator), [which ensure] that the learners understand the content at stake’. they require the mediator to support learners to reach the next level of cognition or be comfortable to work on their own without the help of a mediator. this is the space where vygotsky’s zpd apply. bloom’s taxonomy was selected for this study as the caps amendment (2019:10) document articulates it is an appropriate taxonomy for grades 7–9. bloom’s taxonomy assists teachers and learners to use a common hierarchical language to describe and classify the different levels of questioning in assessments and learning activities. the six levels of skills (remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating and creating) are graded in order from the simplest to the most complex and, in this study, the researcher was aware of asking questions from all six levels. research paradigm, approach and design this study was conducted within an interpretive paradigm, using a qualitative approach and a case study design. an interpretive paradigm was selected. it allowed an in-depth investigation about a particular phenomenon (yin 2018). a qualitative approach was selected. the researcher wanted to interact extensively with the participants during the ip. according to lapan, quartaroli and riemer (2012) all qualitative research has an interpretive perspective which focuses on uncovering details of the subject under investigation. a case study design was selected. the researcher conducted an in-depth investigation of the case, which was five grade 7 learners. a case study design allows an in-depth investigation of a phenomenon (yin 2018). setting this study was conducted in 2018 at a quintile 5 public primary school with 658 registered learners from grades r–7, who pay school fees of r2000.00 per annum. the teacher:learner ratio was 1:35. the school’s lolt is english yet 90% of learners are african home-language speakers speaking isixhosa, french, swahili, igboh, ndebele, shona and bemba and only 10% speaking english and afrikaans. many learners have to learn english first before they can learn the curriculum; they do this through a buddy system where stronger learners interpret the work for those who do not understand the lolt. participants purposive sampling targets information-rich participants (cohen, manion & morrison 2017) and was used to select five struggling grade 7 learners, and one grade 7 english teacher and one learner support teacher, both native isixhosa speaking. only five learners were selected who had the lowest marks in this class’s 2018 wced baseline tests. the researcher wanted to keep the number small so she could provide extensive interactions and support to each one during the ip. one grade 7 english teacher was selected since she was currently teaching these learners english. one learning support teacher was selected because she was supporting children as part of the inclusive education programme offered at the school. intervention programme a carefully planned and executed ip was put in place for a period of 10 weeks, starting from 10 april 2018 to 8 june 2018. the group of five grade 7 learners met with the researcher five times a week for 30 to 45 min, after school hours. these five learners were aged between 13 and 15 years old and were identified by the researcher as l1, l2, l3, l4, and l5. informal pre-tests and post-tests were developed over a period of 3 years by a group of honours students and individually administered as a diagnostic tool to assess reading comprehension skills (ivanitskaya et al. 2008). the texts, levels and appropriateness of the questions were improved on each year as students critiqued them among themselves. each text consisted of one comprehension passage with four comprehension questions adapted from the pirls document (2016). the researcher chose these four comprehension question types as they are similar to those used by the wced systemic tests. the researcher had one week to conduct the pre-tests where she read the passages and questions for l1, l2, l4 and l5 who were struggling to read and write on their own, despite being in grade 7. l3 was a more independent reader so she was able to read and write the answers on her own. the researcher began the pre-testing, using the easier passages from grade 1, systematically moving to the higher grades with more complex texts. the five learners reached ‘frustration level’ (burns & roe 1989:22) at the grade 7 passages, where she stopped the pre-testing. in all, five passages were used and 28 questions were asked. the same post-tests were conducted to determine the level of improvement of the five learners’ understanding of comprehension skills after the ip. an intervention schedule (appendix 1) was planned and followed by the researcher during the ip. the schedule guided the researcher to introduce and teach different literacy higher-order strategies (appendix 2). the researcher, who was also the social science teacher, chose to use a theme for the 10-week ip and this was negotiated and eventually chosen by the participants. they chose ‘slavery’ which was adapted from the grade 7 social science history topic: trans-atlantic slave trade (slavery in west africa) for term 2. the researcher was able to integrate these literacy comprehension lessons with the english content since she taught them english. the researcher used different comprehension strategies which included: cloze technique, my turn-your-turn, reader’s theatre, vocabulary matching, anticipation guide, magic squares, feature matrix, think aloud and comprehension questions (ntshikila 2021). for this research project, learners employed a modification chart. they used coloured paper to write their reflections of the lesson of what they had learnt and each week these comments were stuck together on a piece of paper to make a chain (rosario et al. 2019). the emphasis here was not on writing correct sentences and using correct spelling, but rather for the learners to express their feelings about what they had learnt that day. learners read out their comments. this taught them to give one another a chance to talk without criticism. hakim (2017:3) emphasises the importance of an ‘environment that is fair where learners are free to answer without critique’. the motivation chart gave the learners an opportunity to express themselves through writing, self-reflection and self-expression (rosario et al. 2019). data collection for this research project, the researcher used the results from the following data collection instruments: the learners’ exercise books to assess their academic performance in written comprehensions, two interviews and her own participant observation scheduled notes (creswell 2014; punch 2014). semi-structured interviews allowed the researcher to probe how the two teachers read and discussed passages with their learners, and how the five grade 7 learners understood the comprehensions (punch 2014). the researcher was a participant observer in a natural classroom setting where participants were involved in a natural phenomenon of comprehension teaching and learning activities while she made observations without manipulating any variables (okeke & van wyk 2015). the researcher observed the learning process while she guided her five learners to their zones of abilities and independence during the ip (vygotsky 1978). she mediated the learning process by asking frequent questions and persuaded her learners to ask questions to encourage discussion (vygotsky 1978). she purposefully arranged opportunities to conduct cooperative learning to encourage interactions among the five learners. during the ip the learners used exercise books to complete their activities. after every lesson, the researcher completed her observation schedule and the learners reflected on their learning in their modification charts. data analysis data analysis began at the same time as the collection of data. using both inductive and deductive analysis, she read and re-read the data to make sense of the individual responses (creswell 2014). she separated the data into smaller and more meaningful sections (henning, van rensburg & smit 2004). the themes that emerged, based upon the theories, were colour coded and presented in words and tables (creswell 2014). the researcher was also the english teacher for grade 7 and at all times during the pre-testing and post-testing, she attempted to remain objective, neutral and critical, endeavouring to avoid personal issues of bias or power that might disrupt her analysis of the learners’ work. the test passages were marked either right or wrong, limiting the possible influence of the researcher. she was considerate and polite towards all her learners and avoided making biased assumptions (creswell 2014). to ensure the reliability of the test scripts, scripts were marked twice to double-check for errors. the supervisor independently checked the marking of the scripts. the researcher and the two teachers were native isixhosa speaking people. the researcher translated and transcribed all interviews transcripts and asked the two teachers to check for accuracy (creswell 2014). ethical considerations ethical conduct goes beyond merely completing an ethical form, especially when working with grade 7 learners. once the purpose of the study was explained to all the participants, they were informed that their participation was voluntary and they were free to withdraw from the study at any point. the researcher was hypertransparent throughout the ip period; she built a reciprocal trusting relationship with her learners, by constantly ensuring her learners of the purpose of the study, confidentiality and privacy. the final signed consent forms were safely stored on the researcher’s computer. confidentiality was maintained throughout the study and pseudonyms were used. results to answer the main research question: ‘what effect did an 8-week ip have on the five grade 7 learners’ comprehension abilities?’ and the two sub-questions: ‘how did the ip assist five grade 7 learners to develop their higher-order thinking comprehension skills?’ and ‘how did the learners develop cognitively during the ip?’, tables and discussions on each learner are provided. the five tables provide evidence of each learner’s cognitive development and their written comments reflecting on their own learning experiences during the 8-week ip. discussions are provided where the learner’s cognitive and social development is discussed juxtoposing international literature and linking to bloom’s taxonomy and vygotskys social constructivist theory. table 2: learner 1. in week 1, l1 began with low-order ‘remembering’ when she stated: ‘i could not remember …’, indicating that the historical disadvantages of the past have continued to persist, where l1 was merely asked to repeat information from texts, which she was unable to do. this statement links to adesoji’s (2018:3) definition of bloom’s taxonomy level 1 of ‘remembering’: ‘memory of previously learned material by recalling facts, and concepts’. l1 was unable to ‘remember’ simple facts from the story, nor was she able to retrieve information from the story. she came into this programme being unable to repeat information. in order for the researcher to understand why l1 could not answer the lower-order comprehension skills, she interviewed both the current grade 7 teacher, and the past learner support teacher: researcher: how do you check your learner’s understanding of explicitly stated questions? grade 7 teacher: learners are too lazy to look back into the story to be able to answer the questions that require them to re-read the story. learner support teacher: i would ask those questions during reading and after reading. they normally refer back to the book to see if they can find information they need for the questions and most of them would just read through without understanding the text and would give any answer that they think it’s correct. by week 3, l1 was beginning to ‘understand’ the text and was able to challenge the statement by stating: ‘i disagree’ and she provided her own reasons. adesoji (2018:3) states that ‘understanding’ is ‘… an ability to demonstrate understanding of facts and ideas by organising and comparing’. l1 demonstrated an ‘understanding’ of the question by providing a relevant answer to the statement. l1’s higher-order thinking became more apparent in weeks 4–8 when she was able to ‘analyse’ her own thinking abilities. she reflected that she struggled. miri, david and uri (2007) substantiate higher-order thinking skills as the process where open-ended class discussions and inquiry-oriented experiments happen, learners are able to analyse, evaluate and synthesise. during the last week, l1 was able to, together with her group, construct her own meanings from the texts, interpret, evaluate and judge the values and ideas by providing their own combined reflections and opinions.vygotsky (1978), cited by zavershneva and van der veer (2018:117), stresses that the basic role of interaction in the development of a child is that ‘the cognitive processes develop in social interactions with adults or more able peers’. table 3: learner 2. from the data presented, there are examples of the development of l2’s cognitive processing skills. l2 began with lower-order thinking in week 2. she remembered a fact from the written text. in week 3, l2 was beginning to ‘understand’ the given information in the text and explained that ‘slaves did not like to be slaves because they were taken away from their homes and families’. to explore how the learners had been taught the skill of vocabulary and inference making, the researcher asked the following question: researcher: how do you teach vocabulary and inference? grade 7 teacher: … so with the vocabulary … if we not using a dictionary in caps term 2 we look at dictionary use in story telling. if it’s not the activity that need them to use dictionary then i try and teach them content try and read before that particular sentence and read the couple after and try to figure out what that word. try and understand without that word it’s almost like blocking out without that word. learner support teacher: we also look at inferences where we draw information from the story to explain maybe linking characters to real life characters. … i also tried to analyse to sort of evaluate the story to try to relate with their everyday life. table 4: learner 3. from week 5, l2 was able to apply her current textual knowledge to new and different situations. adesoji (2018:4) explains that the ‘“applying” level is the level where children solve problems to new situations by applying acquired knowledge, facts and rules in different ways’. l2 reflected that they were able to ‘use our brains …’ where she was able to transfer the information from the text to a new situation (feature matrix) and used her knowledge in a different way by comparing characteristics of slaves and masters. in week 6, she was able to ‘analyse’ through participating in the readers theatre how slaves were punished if they did something wrong in the plantations and how this made her feel ‘sad’. her reflections were becoming more detailed and she was able to analyse her own emotions. in week 7, l2 ‘felt good about our small class’; in this sense she was able to evaluate the group’s discussion where they ‘tried out many answers’. vygotsky (1978, cited by verenkina 2010:17) would say the learners are ‘co-constructing knowledge’ by reflecting and defending their opinions and judging what is good for the group. throughout the ip, l2 developed self-confidence stating in week 8 that she ‘was not shy’. vygotsky (1978, cited by verenkina 2010:17) states that ‘good learning occurs in the zone of proximal development’. mullis et al. (2016:24) explain that to ‘evaluate’ constitutes the highest level of cognitive development. the researcher had created a constructivist environment with these five learners, where they were expected to share their opinions; this is very different from the former behaviourist pedagogies used during the apartheid era. table 5: learner 4. l3’s cognitive development improved as the ip progressed. in week 2, l3 began with lower-order thinking skills of ‘understanding’. she showed an ability to understand the given information and to make sense of the new material as boles, goncher and jalayath (2015:5) state: learners ‘translate, interpret, and comprehend information based on prior learning’. l3 was able to use her prior knowledge to ‘understand’ the definitions of words and interpret the text about slave abduction. she agreed with the statement by providing extra knowledge which indicates that she clearly understood the statement. in week 3, l3 was beginning to ‘analyse’ the text: she was able to apply her thinking to new information. for example, during the ‘anticipation guide’, she interpreted, classified and explained the different purposes of ships. in weeks 4-8, l3 was beginning to evaluate her own learning processes. she presented and defended her opinions by critiquing herself by stating that she ‘struggled a lot’ but she ‘liked the challenge’ because she had to ‘think a lot’ and she ‘managed to complete the activity’. these comments are evidence that, by working in a group, l3 was able to learn within the zpd where she was developing her internal cognitive processes (vygotsky 1978, cited by verenkina 2010:17). the researcher purposefully set out to create an enabling literacy environment, very different to the former tradional classroom environments where learners had to mimic their teacher. from data presented, there is evidence that in week 2, l4 was ‘sad’ because she could not remember the details of the story: ‘remembering refers to recall or recognition of information, ideas and principles in the approximate form in which they were learned’ (anderson & krathwohl 2001). by week 3, l4 was beginning to ‘understand’ and had the ability to question the statement. l4 was able to understand the anticipation guide activity: she chose to ‘disagree’ with the statement and supplied her own reason for her disagreement, showing she understood the details of the story. the skill of ‘application’ refers to the ability to ‘select, transfer, use data and principles to complete problems or tasks with a minimum of direction’ (anderson & krathwohl 2001:3). l4 was able to apply her new knowledge of slaves, and had a deeper understanding of the rules that existed between masters and slaves. years later, after the first democratically elected government, these learners were encouraged to debate and discuss sensitive issues such as ‘masters and slaves’. higher-order thinking refers to learning experiences that enable learners to construct their own thinking skills by ‘inferring, estimating; predicting … and creative thinking’ (barak & dori 2009:2). between weeks 7 and 8, l4 was able to ‘analyse’ her own abilities where she was able to construct her own higher-order thinking through being able to read between the lines (inference) – ‘i felt as if i was not nice during the activity’ – making connections – ‘it was very bad because that is how slaves were treated’ – and interacting with the texts – ‘i was like a boss and making them sad’. table 6: learner 5. in week 8, l4 struggled to answer questions saying ‘they were very hard to answer first’, but through learning in the zpd (vygotsky 1978, cited by verenkina 2010:17) and scaffolding, in her group she acquired the group’s language and made it part of her speech, saying at the end that she ‘would like to talk all the time’. from the data presented, there is evidence that l5 in week 2 was unable to ‘remember’ facts from the story: ‘i could not remember all the things we read’. this low-order comprehension skill is where learners are required to remember facts from the text for the purpose of constructing meaning (howie et al. 2017). during week 3, l5 was able to, through the anticipation guide activity, ‘understand’ and responded appropriately with the statement ‘slaves were chained because they will runaway’. bloom’s taxonomy is clearly articulated in the caps amendment (2019) document, discussing the various cognitive levels at which learners need to perform. learners begin at the lower cognitive levels until they reach and perform at the higher cognitive levels. by participating in the feature matrix, l5 was beginning to perform at the higher-order thinking skills when she was able to apply her own knowledge comparing slaves and masters. in her reflections she stated: ‘i manage to answer all my questions and i was happy’. anderson and krathwohl (2001:3) state that ‘application’ refers to the ability to ‘select, transfer, use data and principles to complete problems or tasks with a minimum of direction’. it was gratifying to see that l5 was happy to safely discuss issues of social inequalities experienced in the past, in an academic manner. in week 6 l5 was able to analyse and reflect on her own learning processes during the activities where she took the lead with her group members: ‘i have to talk a lot and think a lot to assist the group so that we can get the correct answers’. at this stage of the ip, l5 was not only able to solve the problems by herself, but she was an independent learner; she became the ‘more experienced’ person (vygotsky 1978, cited by verenkina 2010:17). conclusion and recommendations despite little research being conducted on grade 7 higher-order comprehension skills, this researcher identified a gap in the current research and intentionally initiated an ip in which she purposefully set out to explicitly use a variety of literacy strategies to teach higher-order comprehension skills to her five struggling grade 7 learners. although many authors have written about teachers not being trained to teach comprehension skills (spaull et al. 2020; taylor 2014), this small-scale research project illustrates what can be done, where one teacher (the researcher) met with her supervisor on a regular weekly basis over a period of 10 weeks. they discussed ‘how’ and ‘what’ to teach during the ip, purposefully avoiding the former behaviourist pedagogies of the historial past. the results indicate what one teacher achieved when using intentionally focussed pedagogical literacy strategies. the 10-week ip, comprising the administration and marking of the pre-tests and post-tests and the 8-week ip, had a twofold purpose: firstly, to introduce five struggling grade 7 learners to a variety of fun comprehension strategies and, secondly, being mindful of challenging them cognitively and developing their ability to think critically. to effect this, learners required explicit teaching and continuous scaffolding to move from lower-order thinking to higher-order thinking skills. the small group of five learners created an environment very different from the mimicking expected in schools before 1994, where the researcher could easily monitor the social interactions and cognitive development of her learners during the ip, being constantly aware that these learners were not learning in their mother tongue language. being exposed to, and regularly participating in, the ip enabled learners to develop their higher-order critical thinking skills. a safe and encouraging environment was created with opportunities to grow in confidence, both linguistically and cognitively, even when discussing a sensitive issue such as ‘slavery’. this forum allowed learners to get to know their peers better, where they freely engaged in verbal discussions, were able to think for themselves and offered reasoned judgements, hence creating a respectful, democratic group climate. leaders were allowed to emerge naturally and transform the space into one that was comfortable and safe enough for them to share opinions, comfortably agreeing or disagreeing among themselves, ever mindful of not hurting each other’s feelings. the implementation of the various teaching strategies, taught explicitly, nurtured and supported their ability to successfully infer meanings from texts. over the weeks, it became easier for learners to make predictions, apply their argumentative skills, with justification, and make connections from the text to their real-life experiences. asking higher levels of questioning was observed when learners were able to: construct their own knowledge, analyse their abilities, evaluate their own ideas as well as the ideas of others and use appropriate language skills to ask thought-provoking questions. learners learnt to accept critique, respect the opinions of others and were exposed to different world views which enabled them to think beyond their texts. the synthesis of the two theories, vygotsky’s (1978) theory of the social constructivism and bloom’s (1956) theory of cognitive development, augured well for this study. vygotsky’s (1978) notion of scaffolding and explicit teaching assisted the learners to courteously participate in literacy debates that challenged the learners’ own cognitive development from ‘remembering’ content in the various texts to ‘evaluating’ new knowledge (boles et al. 2015). throughout the 10-week ip, regularly using the literacy strategies as described in appendix 2 encouraged the learners to further develop their english language and vocabulary abilities as well as their social interactions. the learners became less stressed and developed through their zones of abilities to become more independent critical higher-order thinkers. this study was limited to a small group of five struggling grade 7 learners from low socio-economic environments, although in a quintile 5 school, where isixhosa was their home language, over a period of 10 weeks. the aim of the study was to develop these learners’ higher-order comprehension skills. the findings imply that higher-order comprehension skills can be taught to grade 7 learners by a well-prepared, motivated and caring teacher, who uses a variety of literacy strategies to engage her learners. further studies may include using a similar ip to a larger sample over a longer period of time. an important consideration, emerging from this research, is the training of high-quality teachers to explicitly teach higher-order comprehension skills to include all grade levels. acknowledgements dr matthew curr who language edited this journal article. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions j.l.c., l.m. and h.n.p. acted as supervisors of n.n.’s master’s degree and gave input as co-authors while n.n. wrote most of the journal article. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability at the date of submission, this article was extracted from an unpublished master’s thesis. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references adesoji, a., 2018, ‘bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives and modification of cognitive levels’, advances in social sciences research journal 5(5), 292–297. https://doi.org/10.14738/assrj.55.4233 anderson, l.w. & krathwohl, d.r., 2001, a taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: a revision of bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives, longman, new york, ny. barak, m. & dori, y.j., 2009, ‘enhancing higher-order thinking skills among in-service science teachers via embedded assessment’, journal of science teacher education 20(5), 459–474. 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achievement between home language of learning and language of learning in south africa: evidence from prepirls 2011’, south african childhood education 6(1), a441. https://doi.org/10.4102/saje.v6i1.441 verenkina, i.m., 2010, ‘vygotsky in twenty-first century research’, in j. herrington & b. hunter (eds.), proceedings of world conference on educational multimedia, hypermedia and telecommunications,: aace, chesapeake, va, pp. 16–25. available from https://ro.uow.edu.au/edupapers/1022. völkel, g., seabi, j., cockcroft, k. & goldschagg, p., 2016, ‘the impact of gender, socioeconomic status and home language on primary school children’s reading comprehension in kwazulu-natal’, international journal of environmental research and public health (ijerph) 13(3), 322. https://doi.org/10.3390.ijerph13030322 vygotsky, l., 1978, mind and society: the development of higher mental processes, harvard university press, cambridge, ma. yin, r.k., 2018, case study research and applications: designs and methods, sage, los angeles, ca. zavershneva, e. & van der veer, r., 2018, vygotsky’s notebooks: a selection, springer, singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-104625-4 appendix 1 teaching intervention schedule. appendix 2 a brief description of nine comprehension strategies used in the ip. 1. cloze technique during a cloze activity, learners show their understanding of the content of a text by filling in the blank spaces with the correct words. learners are expected to fill in the missing words using words extracted from the text or words that will make sense and meaning as in the example below: fill in the missing words using the words below: kidnapped, woman and children, mansa musa, weaker, captives, barracoons, captured, chained, red-hot iron slaves who are __________________ would be _________________ and led to march for hundreds of kilometers. kings like_____________________________, raided their____________________________ neighbors and sold them. africans were often __________________________ by fellow africans. _______________________________________ would also be raided and sold to the european slave traders. _______________________________would be brought in the bases and were kept in ______________________________________ until they are sold. once they are sold, the slave traders used a __________________________________ to brand them. 2. my turn – your turn the teacher reads a passage, stops and begins a discussion by saying: ‘my turn’. she discusses a particular planned piece of content by verbally asking one of the following questions: predicting, making connections, clarifying, paraphrasing or summarising questions. she then offers her learners the opportunity to give their ideas by saying ‘your turn’. this activity promotes peer-learning where learners read and discuss texts, giving each other time to talk, time to listen, respect each other’s opinions at the same time as developing and expanding their vocabulary. predicting during the my turn – your turn activity, learners learn to predict the story by reading the title and looking at the pictures to imagine what would happen next. making connections learners connect two or more pieces of information that they read based on their life experiences to their background knowledge and share these connections with each other. clarifying occurs during reading. learners are expected to look at the title, use keywords, use other words as clues, and become actively involved in the reading text (caps 2012). when learners do not understand, the teacher asks them to take turns to stop and think about what they have read. paraphrasing/summarising refers to the summary of the main idea and ‘supporting ideas in a point form/paragraph as per the required length’ (caps 2012:17). the caps (2012) document emphasises the importance of summarising to assist learners to remember the main ideas of stories. 3. reader’s theatre reader’s theatre is where learners read and perform a script without memorising lines, and without the use of costumes. 4. vocabulary matching matching vocabulary assists learners with understanding words. the activity consists of two columns with only the vocabulary words in the left-hand column (out of context) and the meanings in the right-hand column, but in a mixed up, random order. the learners match the words to the meanings as in the example below. slave abduction match the word in the left column with the meaning in the right column. 5. anticipation guide anticipation guides are a reading strategy, which increases learner’s prior knowledge and the ability to interact with texts in any educational setting. this comprehension strategy can be used by groups of five, where learners read or listen to a story. on a page the teacher writes controversial statements in the left-hand column. there are five other columns for each learner where they respond to the statement circling whether they agree (a) or disagree (d) with the statement, emanating from the text, in the left column and discuss it with the members of the group. the statement is read and the learners explain why they are choosing to circle a or d. learners are required to use the same sequence in all questions as in the example below. slave barracoons in groups of five, read the statement in the left column and discuss it with each other. once you have all shared your ideas, then each person circles ‘a’ (agree) or ‘d’ (disagree) on their own sheet of paper reflecting on each person’s points of view. move onto discussing the next question. 6. magic squares a magic square activity is a square grid with a special arrangement of numbers in it. these numbers are special as the horizontal and vertical numbers add up to the same number. on a sheet of paper there will be two columns, one for content area vocabulary and one for definitions. the learners are asked to match vocabulary (letters) with definitions (numbers) which are in a mixed-up order. the students then write the number of a definition in the proper space (denoted by the letter of the term) in the ‘magic square answer box’. this total forms the puzzle’s ‘magic number’. students add up the rows and columns to check if they have the same number for each horizontal and vertical. if not they should go back to the vocabulary and definitions to re-evaluate their answers. see the example below. the vocabulary words are in the left of the column. find the correct meaning in the right column but in a mixed-up order. in the square below put the corresponding number in each block. 7. feature matrix the feature matrix is a strategy that compares or classifies characteristics as in the example below. compare characteristics of slaves and masters 8. think – aloud this strategy involves the teacher vocalising the internal thinking that she employs while reading a text. she purposefully interrupts herself, during modelled reading to assist the learners’ comprehension. first the teacher reads, then stops to share her thinking and invites learners to add to the thinking. the intention is that think alouds make explicit the cognitive processes that literate people use while reading and making sense of a text. teachers can use this approach to role model higher-order skills such as: predicting, clarification, making connections, inferencing, and summarising skills. 9. comprehension questions the teacher reads a passage and then invites the learners to respond. on a piece of paper, both the questions and the answers are provided, the learners underline the correct type of question – as in 1–4 below: retrieve explicitly stated information make straightforward inferences interpret and integrate ideas and information evaluate and examine content, language and textual elements ________________________________________________________________________ 1. question: would you hurt any of your friends?  answer: i would protect my friends as far as possible  1.   2.   3.   4. 2. question: what would happen if captives fought back their kidnappers?  answer: they would be punished by death  1.   2.   3.   4. 3. question: explain why kings like mansa musa raided weaker neighbours and sold them  answer: he had the largest and richest empire  1.   2.   3.   4. 4. question: what do you not like about this text?  answer: i do not like the fact that slaves were taken away from their families and treated so badly.  1.   2.   3.   4. http://www.rw.org.za open access page 1 of 1 reviewer acknowledgement acknowledgement to reviewers in an effort to facilitate the selection of appropriate peer reviewers for reading & writing, we ask that you take a moment to update your electronic portfolio on https://rw.org.za for our files, allowing us better access to your areas of interest and expertise, in order to match reviewers with submitted manuscripts. if you would like to become a reviewer, please visit the journal website and register as a reviewer. to access your details on the 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https://rw.org.za/index.php/rw/user https://rw.org.za/index.php/rw/user mailto:publishing@aosis.co.za abstract introduction theoretical perspectives purpose of the study research questions research method and design data presentation, analysis and interpretation discussion conclusion and recommendations acknowledgements references footnote about the author(s) rockie sibanda department of languages, cultural studies and applied linguistics, faculty of humanities, university of johannesburg, johannesburg, south africa citation sibanda, r., 2022, ‘learners’ reading between the signs in the english second language classroom’, reading & writing 13(1), a328. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v13i1.328 original research learners’ reading between the signs in the english second language classroom rockie sibanda received: 11 july 2021; accepted: 11 oct. 2021; published: 14 jan. 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: in south africa, developing criticality among learners is essential for their careers in school and outside school. however, knowledge and understanding of critical literacy within the schooling context is unclear, with only patchy guidance available for teachers. objectives: an intervention project was set up to discover how community signs could be used as a pedagogical tool for teaching learners to be critical readers. the focus of the study was teaching english second language learners to use language as an instrument for creative and critical thinking. method: in this ‘study within a study’, the learners’ role has been elevated to that of researchers. as ‘researchers’, the learners collected community signs from around their township and conducted interviews with community members. they analysed the signs and interview transcripts using fairclough’s method of critical discourse analysis. the social semantic theory was used to anchor this study. results: the first attempt at being critical readers was the categorisation of data. three categories that formed broad themes were observed. the learners’ responses gave insight into their own ‘processes’ of reception and processes of production of the signs. the results suggest learners developing an ability to read signs as instantiations of township discourses. conclusion: teaching critical literacy awareness can be achieved when teachers use texts drawn from familiar contexts. the study contributes to knowledge on how unconventional texts can be used in the classroom to develop criticality among learners. keywords: community signs; critical literacy; critical discourse analysis; social semantic theory; township. introduction in south africa, knowledge and understanding of critical literacy within the schooling context is unclear, with only patchy guidance available for teachers. theoretically, the new curriculum statements (ncs, grades 10–12) should produce a learner who is able to read and view texts for understanding and be able to respond to and critically evaluate a wide range of texts (department of basic education [dbe] 2011). relevant aims of ncs are to produce learners that are able to identify and solve problems and make decisions using critical and creative thinking, and critically evaluate information (dbe 2011). drawing on the ncs, the focus of this study is to investigate how community signs can be used as a tool to teach learners to read and think critically. in addition, if learners are able to interact critically with texts, they should be able to challenge perspectives, values and power relations embedded in texts (dbe 2011). developing criticality among learners is essential for their careers in school and outside school. while critical literacy is generally considered important for older children, researchers argue that younger learners can develop the skills necessary for constructing critical literacy as well (gregory & cahill 2009; silvers, shorey & crafton 2010; vasquez 2003, 2007). for learners, learning to become critically literate begins with the development of foundational comprehension skills, as suggested by hassett (2008). this involves making connections, inferring, questioning, visualising and synthesising. there is vast global interest in critical literacy, with an increasing number of classroom-based researchers exploring how teachers can support learners’ development of a critical literacy at any stage, including the early years. as the works of barbara comber (2003, 2013, 2016) in australia, hilary janks (2010, 2014, 2017, 2018a, 2018b, 2019, 2020) in south africa and vivian vasquez (2003, 2005, 2007, 2010, 2014, 2017) in canada have shown, teachers can respond to social issues raised by their learners by supporting their use of language practices to take action for change. for example, having learners collect attention-grabbing icons such as ‘signs, advertisements and multimedia forms of text from their neighborhood surroundings is one way to start developing their critical literacy’ (stevens & bean 2007:24). attention-grabbing texts such as community signs are found around learners’ neighbourhoods. several studies investigating the discourse of signs have mainly focused on shop signs, constructed with the reader in mind and what their needs are thought to be (leeman & modan 2010; lou 2007; papen 2012). many neighbourhood businesses carefully understand and determine the values and preferences of local neighbourhood communities (rahman & mehta 2020:35). storefront signs place texts in a seemingly innocuous way, but in a no less dominant manner, by considering who, what and how the signs index (ochs 1990; silverstein 2003). regardless of whether shop owners are the type of people their signs suggest, signage marks public space with personae for passers-by and ‘communicate identities and values which help them connect with certain types of consumers’ (rahman & mehta 2020:35). for example, in their study of shop signs in brooklyn, new york, trinch and snajdr (2016:73) show how ‘language is uniquely integrated into the human geography of diverse urban neighborhoods’. although an area’s linguistic landscape both delineates and represents the social context in which people find themselves and their languages (gorter 2006; shohamy, ben-rafael & barni 2010), stewart (1982) reminds us that ‘names on the land’ are determined by the dynamics of culture and custom. semiotic and material features of buildings, streets and typography can convey messages of distinctiveness and exclusion (aiello 2011; gendelman & aiello 2011). beyond serving as conventional geographical markers, a significant body of research suggests that signs can serve many other purposes. they can be effective in promoting change of behaviour in a variety of domains such as road traffic (huybers, van houten & malenfant 2004; pesti & mccoy 2001; sullivan et al. 2004). in the health domain, signs have been found to encourage change in behaviours (honnen & kleinke 1990), such as minimising smoking-related pregnancy risks (kollath-cattano, osman & thrasher 2017) and encouraging safer sex habits by promoting condom use (honnen & kleinke 1990; meis & kashima 2017). as this study demonstrates, township community signs reflect the thinking and behaviour of community members. through language discourses, township community signs provide ‘a window into the visual identity of the neighborhood’ (rahman & mehta 2020:35). this article reports on how secondary school learners begin to develop critical reading as part of a larger project exploring teaching critical literacy awareness using community signs. my study profiles a teaching intervention, undertaken with english second language (esl) learners at a typical township secondary school in south africa. as ‘researchers’, the learners collected signs found in their neighbourhood. the purpose served by community signs in this study differs from that of conventional signs, which transmit messages in an attempt to persuade people what to do or not to do (mcdougall, curry & de bruijn 1999). they are unconventional texts, falling mostly within the discourse of graffiti but containing messages constructed and understood within a particular context. it is within this context that this project aimed to integrate literacy and criticality in language teaching. it particularly aimed to investigate how community signs can be used as pedagogical tools to teach critical reading in the classroom. theoretical perspectives within the theoretical framework of social semiotic theory (jewitt 2006; kress 2010), this article conceptualises community signs as texts to develop critical reading. the term text implies both a reader and a writer. signage in this study is conceptualised as a ‘social practice’ (street 1984) promoting shared meaning between the writer and the reader. as texts, community signs carry within them particular histories of their composition. within those histories lie the lived experiences of township dwellers. before discussing the specific intervention strategy employed in the study, i present the understanding of signs, including the applicable elements of critical literacy, and the interaction between texts and identity formation. based on the work of de saussure (1959), signs or symbols that signify meaning (semiotic) constitute ‘text’ (stables & bishop 2001), and texts are read, in turn. as community signs stand, they can be recognised as a form of text. community signs represent a social discourse that distributes power among various individuals in the community, especially those who have no voice to contribute to social transformation because of being poor or uneducated in the formal sense. rooted in the critical social theories of paulo freire (1972), critical literacy encourages learners to question and challenge taken-for-granted assumptions through analysis of language and power. according to shor (1992:129), critical reading habits should go ‘beneath surface meaning […] to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, [or] process’. developing literacy in this sense is not merely ‘reading the word’, but also ‘reading the world’ (freire 1998). literacy itself is ideological and linked to power structures (street 2008). informal texts such as community signs can be empowering for poor communities because they ‘symbolize a critical state of consciousness in which these communities participate as critical minds within unstatic conditions of world and words’ (alshreif 2016:456). further, community signs do not merely a reflect individual abilities to read and write but aim to empower individuals to think critically, to understand their own realities, and to form new identities as they make new interpretations of reality. conceptualising community signs signs are semiotic devices found around neighbourhoods. rahman and mehta (2020:35) succinctly describe signs as ‘a window into the visual identity of the neighborhood’ that provides direct spatial semiotic – a visual sociology of place (krase & shortell 2011). signage is an interesting field of study, which prototypically represents and mediates between what zukin (1995) calls the visual economy of the landscape and market culture. research has shown that signs speak through language ideologies (irvine & gal 2000; schieffelin, woolard & kroskrity 1998), by marking the land not only for languages and their users, but, more importantly, for the ways in which people use language according to their prevailing sociolinguistic standards and values (trinch & snajdr 2016). as signs embody different language ideologies, they come to shape political, social and economic contexts (trinch & snajdr 2016). in their work, trinch and snajdr (2020) critically engage with the role of language in signage. similar to spoken utterances and written texts, signs are designed for particular audiences (bell 1984; warner 2002). as rahman and mehta (2020:35) point out, ‘signs convey messages beyond what is expressed within the text of the sign’. through personalities and qualities of type, signage becomes a source of messages and meanings that serves as a form of cultural expression. signs can reveal how inhabitants use semiotic resources to shape a place according to their ‘varied interests and tastes, and can also provide insight into the power dynamics that contribute to a social construction of taste’ (adami 2020:3). the notion of community signs implies a connection with reading and writing – with text (stables 1996, 1998; stables & bishop 2001; stables & scott 1999). community signs, as text, are a social construct that can provide a ‘voice to empower communities’ (iddings, mccafferty & da silva 2011:8). texts do not only intertwine with the distribution of power within communities, but also enable effective self-expression in any form (iddings et al. 2011). like the exospheric indexicality in graffiti (alshreif 2016), township community signs can create an exceptional context, becoming ‘part of the fabric of the ecosocial semiotic environment of a neighborhood’ (iddings et al. 2011:8). the study of community signs as critical pedagogy (freire 1970/1993) calls for teachers to adapt their teaching to lived experiences of learners. in this regard, learners are encouraged to construct new knowledges and develop critical consciousness (lehner et al. 2017). therefore, community signs are a sociolinguistic identity mostly understood and shared by township dwellers as ‘situated social practices’ (barton & hamilton 1998; street 1984). townships are typically densely populated urban residential areas with many examples of environmental print around them – mainly in english but also in local languages. most township dwellers are unemployed. to generate income, people set up ‘backyard businesses’ such as small grocery shops (known as spazas), barber shops, hair salons, panel beaters and vegetable stalls. these informal businesses usually have homemade signs and noticeboards, serving as some form of commercial advertisements for various products and services. neighbourhood or community signs are a common feature in townships. these informal texts are what comber and simpson (1995) and o’brien (2001) term ‘alternative’ texts. they can be found at the shops, nightclubs, schools and clinics, places of worship and community halls. signs at the gates of residential areas are a distinct feature of townships. most signs used as street names tell stories of the history of the place yet others are just street names. conceptualising critical literacy for lankshear and knobel (2003), critical literacy: involves awareness that all social practices, and thus all literacies, are socially constructed and ‘selective’ [and] they include some representations and classifications – values, purposes, rules, standards, and perspectives – and exclude others. (p. 11) freire and macedo (1987) view critical literacy as the ability to ‘read both the word and the world’. as freire suggests, ‘reading does not consist merely of decoding the written word or language; rather it is preceded by and intertwined with knowledge of the world’ (freire & macedo 1987:29). critical awareness can create possibilities for community participation, while reflecting on certain perceptions of social issues, even if participants are ‘illiterate’ in the formal sense. in this case, reading community signs aims to create critical awareness and consequently promote social justice. critical pedagogies can develop within learners the ability to interrogate canonical texts, often from home and community settings, thus opening up new spaces in which young people can draw on their funds of knowledge and cultural capital (gonzalez, moll & amanti 2005; lee 2007; morrell & duncan-andrade 2002; richardson 2006). a focus on young people’s funds of knowledge and unravelling of power relations needs to be extended to ‘recognise young people’s entanglements with objects outside school’ (pahl & rowsell 2011:131). engagement with out-of-school texts can offer ‘third spaces’ where these literacies are valued alongside canonical texts and young people’s out-of-school literacy practices are recognised (moje et al. 2004). purpose of the study following the work of lee (2007), proposing culturally responsive pedagogies to challenge deficit models of instruction in schools, this study demonstrates a sustained engagement with texts from local communities. the purpose of this study was to investigate the use of community signs as a pedagogical tool to promote critical literacy awareness in the esl classroom. the study aimed to equip learners with critical literacy skills to enable them to interrogate the production and reception process (fairclough 1992) of community signs. the ultimate purpose of this article is to share findings from a literacy intervention project, with a particular focus on changes and literacy gains made by learners reading community signs. the intervention employed classroom-based literacy practices aimed at engaging learners at various levels in becoming conscious participants in critical literacy. research questions the focus of this study is to address the following research questions: how do learners interrogate the production of community signs? as readers, how do learners engage critically with the social effects and implications of messages on community signs? research method and design research context this literacy intervention was administered to 20 grade 12 learners at a township school. their ages ranged from 17 to 19 years old. this study was conducted at longview township,1 one of the areas designated by the apartheid state for the ‘coloured’ community in gauteng. the township is predominantly afrikaans speaking though there is a significant presence of indigenous african language speakers. schools in townships are relatively poorly equipped, compared to those in former white-only suburbs. to counteract this resource deficit, this study demonstrates an innovative approach to teaching using community signs as classroom resources. data collection as ‘researchers’, the learners gathered community signs from around their township, at the gates of houses, shops, streets and other public spaces. in order to tease out the specifics of production and reception of signs, i divided the class into five groups of four leaners. each group chose a leader to present findings of their group to the whole class. each of the 20 learners interviewed two people from their community to establish their attitudes regarding the production and meaning of signs (reception). they posed the following questions: (1) what do you find interesting about signs found in your township? (2) what disturbs you about them? (3) what social issues do they portray? data analysis the analytical focus of the signs was on the linguistic features and the meanings people attach to them. the learners analysed the signs by categorising (dey 1993) them according to purposes they serve and how they are interpreted. the categorisation process served to assist learners to organise data, develop a general understanding of what is going on, and generate themes and theoretical concepts (maxwell 2008). in their analysis, the learners initially identified several categories such as vulgar, swearing, educational, goods and services, gangsters, violence, hiv/aids awareness, dogs, crime and domestic signs. with my mediation, the learners repeated the categorisation process and narrowed the data to three broad categories: crime and security, information, and sexist or vulgar. these distinct categories formed themes of discussion for this study (king 1998; smith 1995). as active participants in the study, each of the 20 learners analysed one sign from each of the three categories. they brought their analysis to their group discussion. the goal of the group discussion was to elicit individual responses and points of view. the following analysis and interpretation constitute group and individual responses. data presentation, analysis and interpretation in their reading and analysis, the learners answered the two research questions as they interrogated the production and reception factors of community signs. as readers, the learners engaged critically with the social effects and implications of messages on the community signs. the presentation and discussion of results in this section is in two parts: learners’ own analysis and residents’ analysis. only pertinent responses were chosen for this article because others were repetitive. based on the purpose the signs served, the learners categorised the signs into three main categories as illustrated in table 1. table 1: sample of community signs. learners’ own analysis the categorisation of signs (table 1) was the first attempt by learners at being critical readers. as the table shows, three broad themes emerged in the learners’ responses to signs found around their township. the learners’ responses give insight into their own ‘processes’ of reception and processes of production of the signs. the signs project the identities of authors and intended addressee (adami 2015). critical analysis of signs is informed by social factors and personal experiences of readers. crime and security data shows that most signs found in longview township denote crime and security. such signs portray longview as highly dangerous and unsafe to live in. that can be noted on signs such as, ‘gangsters’ paradise’, ‘mafia country, you enter you die’ and ‘west side, don’t enter’. the language on the sings was said to be used by tsotsis and gangsters to mark their territory. as one girl revealed, ‘the west part of longview is a no-go area for ordinary people. tsotsis rape, rob and kill people’. another learner indicated that the sign ‘wild, wild longview’ derives from ‘wild, wild west’, a concept associated with lawlessness. as stewart (1982) reminds us, names on the land are determined by culture and customs. therefore, learners strongly felt that signs in their community draw on negative popular culture and gangster practices depicted in american media: ‘american media has a negative influence on us. killing, just like people just having sex is common in most american media. it’s disgusting’. the learners perceive western media as glorifying gangsterism and casual sex. gangsterism and other crimes were seen as a serious concern in longview township. the seriousness with which residents reacted to the high level of crime is portrayed on the sign with a stark warning: ‘trespassers will be shot and survivors will be shot again’; as one learner suggested: ‘people don’t want to take chances with criminals but to ensure that they are real dead’ [emphasis my own]. vigilantism and killing of suspected criminals is prevalent among township communities that have lost trust in law enforcement and policing as one learner noted: ‘longview gangsters are free to do what they want. the police fear them’. it is interesting to note that the words ‘gangster’ and ‘gang’ feature prominently in the participants’ responses. this finding suggests that gangsterism is a major social problem in longview, like other townships in south africa. for example, in coloured communities of cape town, gangs are reported to dominate social and economic life for the working class (jacobs 2019). news reports and documentaries broadcast around the world depict the reign of terror that violent gangs exercise in townships (jacobs 2019). the learners described the frequency of gang-related killings in the townships as ‘daily bread’. although dated, kinnes (1995) reported that most attempted murder incidents in western cape townships were gang related, which is a common occurrence in present-day townships. closely related to signs denoting crime is the presence of dog-warning signs. data shows that the ‘dogs and security’ category has the highest number of entries (49 out of 87), which suggests serious security concerns in longview township. however, crime is a national concern as the 2018 global peace index ranked south africa as one of the most violent countries in the world, ranked 38 out of 163 countries (rsa 2020). depicting townships as violent (jensen 2001; lindegaard & hendriksen 2005) is not a general characteristic (maringira & gibson 2019) because as insiders themselves (kinnes 1995; maringira & gibson 2019) township dwellers typically stereotype townships as violent and risky. responses to signs denoting violence were constructed around victim discourse, which is a common narrative in townships. victim discourse depicts gangsters as the other, which is portrayed as the perpetrator. the otherness depicts power relations between the victim and the perpetrator. this relational identity of residents pitted against gangsters centres on power relations. sexist and vulgar in this category, the learners described profanity on the signs as typifying graffiti. the learners reported that signs frequently contain sexist slurs to describe women. they found sexually explicit language directed at women to be disturbing, as illustrated in signs such as ‘fuck longview bitches’, ‘son of a bitch’ and ‘jou ma se poes’ [your mother’s private parts]. the learners described such lewd language as degrading women. when commenting on the signs ‘i don’t have a wife, feel free to come in’ and ‘leave your panties at the gate’, one girl noted with disgust: ‘they are written by sick men who think that women are their sex toys’. this comment suggests resistance to objectification and positioning of women as tools for sexual gratification. the learners were very critical of the profanity on the signs, which they considered a bad influence because they ‘teach children to swear too much. they sing it [vulgarity] like an anthem’. by using the analogy of the national anthem, the learners view vulgar language as a common feature in their community’s speech pattern. they interestingly suggested that the sign ‘fuck the longview virgins’ emanates from a common myth in some african communities that ‘sex with a virgin cures aids’. they also suggested that the obscene message ‘fuck anc’ was directed at the ruling african national congress party because ‘people are angry about empty promises that anc makes’. the learners concluded that obscene signs with sexist connotations were mostly ‘directed at girls and women who men call bitches always’. the construction of community signs has an element of power dynamics, suggesting male dominance. although the study was conducted before the gender-based violence (gbv) narrative gained much traction, the learners demonstrated a deep understanding of violence against women. this is summed in one group’s comment: ‘the writers of these messages are sick men who enjoy abusing girls and women’. in this era of widespread sexual violence, studies of power and masculinity seek to understand the processes through which these signs are culturally produced and reproduced (larkan & van wyk 2014). gender relations depict masculinity and the process through which women are constructed as gendered beings (gibson & hardon 2005; hearn 2004). while much literature has pointed to conflicting aspects of masculine hegemony (shefer et al. 2005; spronk 2005), male learners in this study are found to behave contrary to gendered stereotypes depicted in the community signs and as such could be seen as examples of ‘positive masculinity’ (shefer et al. 2005). informative signs in their analysis of signs in this category, the learners identified ideologies underlining their production and reflected critical understanding of their meaning. however, street names that the learners collected were deliberately excluded from this article to protect the identity of the research site. only selected signs found to be interesting are presented in this section. these are signs such as ‘danger, gevaar, ingozi’, found on an electricity meter box, which the learners found useful so that ‘children won’t play with electricity’. for example, when commenting on the sign ‘save water drink beer’, one learner critically noted, ‘i don’t find this funny. it promotes alcoholism, which is a big problem in our community. and how alcoholics try to justify their habit’. the learners were critical of the alternative behaviour (geller, witmer & tuso 1977) that the sign proposed as relatively inconvenient (crump, crossman & nunes 1977). in contrast, the sign ‘no alcohol sold to persons under 18’, found at a nightclub, was identified as ‘trying to discourage us to drink’. in spite of the warning against selling beer to persons under 18, the learners revealed that in ‘longview most youngsters drink and buy beer from shops displaying this signs’. reacting to the sign ‘club 925’, outside a nightclub, learners noted: ‘this sign must read nine-to-five. it is written in sms [short message service] language’, which means the club is open from 9 pm until 5 am. in their analysis of another nightclub’s name blue magic, the learners described it as an epitome of evil; as one learner put it ‘there is nothing magical about the place. it’s as dirty as sodom and gomorrah’. the use of biblical analogy emphasises the ‘un-holiness’ with which the club is perceived. the learners revealed that the club is popularly known as ‘blue movie’, which depicts explicit sexual activity said to be a common occurrence at the club with ‘strippers, drugs and people having sex’. because of the perceived moral decadence in their community, the learners found useful messages in signs calling for safer safe, such as ‘safe sex saves lives’, found at a street corner. they said it is ‘a useful message to us young people to practise safe sex always’. a related sign, ‘wise people condomise’, on the wall of a stadium, elicited the response: ‘all the clever boys and girls use condoms every time they have sex with many partners’. this comment demonstrates the prevalence of casual sex among teenagers in this community. another sign, ‘fools love flesh on flesh’, on the wall of a local stadium, produced the reaction: ‘everyone knows about aids and only fools have sex without a condom’. the learners’ comments regarding sex demonstrate their understanding of the spread of hiv and responsible sexual behaviour. the learners identified humour in a sign found at a public toilet: ‘gentlemen, your aim is important. ladies, remain seated for the entire performance’. they described the sign as a clever portrayal of how men and women relieve themselves, whose purpose is to warn people not to mess the toilet when drunk. learners were fascinated by the imagery of theatre, ‘remain seated for the entire performance’, which they described as enhancing meaning. one learner made an interesting observation: ‘i think the sign was constructed by an irate toilet cleaner who was gatvol’. gatvol is an afrikaans expression meaning being ‘fed up’, which is commonly used in this predominantly afrikaans-speaking community. in this analysis the learners demonstrate an ability to use an ensemble of modes for making meaning as a whole (kress 2010). they found ambiguity in the sign ‘your hair cut while you wait’ humorous, as one learner jokingly remarked: ‘does it mean that at other saloons you leave your head and collect it afterwards?’ learners made interesting findings about signs found at spazas. spazas are informal convenience grocery stores often operating from some residents’ houses. their close proximity to customers’ homes makes them the bloodline of township life. signs at spaza shops were found to be sending humorous messages: ‘no credit till 30 february’, ‘don’t ask for credit, i’m also looking for one’, ‘mr credit died yesterday’, and ‘mr credit was killed by my cash’. to summarise the aim of these signs, the learners noted: ‘he is trying to tell us that he does not sell for credit. he is right coz many longview people can’t pay because they don’t work and some are crooks’. despite the inherent negativity in most signs, the learners found some signs bearing positive messages, which ‘tell us where we are coming from’ and portray ‘longview culture’. importantly, these observations draw on semiotics in that signs are perceived as embedded within a community (scollon & scollon 2003). as rowsell and pahl (2007) point out, when this material culture is brought into classrooms and conceptualised as ‘funds of knowledge’ (gonzalez et al. 2005), it supports literacy development. the learners identified 69 signs with positive messages, which suggests that the longview community is concerned about addressing social problems such as preventing the spreading of hiv and aids. although the learners perceived the sign ‘hloma nge condom’ [insert with a condom] as obscene, they found the message appropriate in prompting behavioural change and promoting safer sex practices. the learners suggested that displaying the sign at a nightclub was appropriate because most drunk people were likely to engage in unprotected sex there. according to geller, winett and everett (1982), signs displayed in close proximity to the point of action of particular behaviour are more effective because they specifically state the desired behaviour or describe alternative behaviours. as data shows, themes emerging from the categorisation depict the learners’ understanding of the purpose served by signs (reception) (fairclough 1992). as lankshear and knobel (2003:10) remind us, ‘the critical dimension involves awareness that all social practices, and thus all literacies, are socially constructed’. thus, the learners’ conception of how the signs are produced is informed by different township discourses such as crime and sexism. according to gee (2014), discourse gives us multiple identities such as victim-perpetrator discourse depicted in this study. residents’ analysis of the signs to inform the learners’ understanding of the production and reception of the signs, they posed three questions in their interviews with selected residents of their township. interviews with residents were an attempt to extract different opinions and understanding of the signs. the residents’ responses presented in this section were guided by the questions posed to them. question 1: what do you find interesting about signs found in your township? according to some residents, signs just ‘give directions’. an interesting response was: ‘signs are longview culture’. this view is consistent with the social semiotic approach to representation and communication, which sees all modes as meaning-making systems integrally connected with social and cultural systems (kress 2003). when asked what ‘longview culture’ is, the learners made several interesting suggestions. some suggested that it had to do with language. most suggestions hovered on the perceived culture of violence. an interesting suggestion was: ‘it means the way we do things here’. although this view seemed vague, it was thought-provoking and suggestive of the uniqueness of longview. although signs may be ‘a window into the visual identity of the neighborhood’ (rahman & mehta 2020:35), they may be ‘culture’ sensitive and likely to be better understood by insiders. for example, the signs ‘cut for the girls and grill for the boys’ and ‘cut for the girls and grill for the fucking ninjas’ could be understood within longview context. according to the learners, ‘cut’ refers to a piece of meat, which is associated with south african braai (barbeque) culture. accordingly, van leeuwen (2005) notes that ‘semiotic resources’ include semiotic modes such as language and everyday objects that carry cultural value and significance. in this approach, people express meaning through their selection of the semiotic resources that are available to them at a particular moment (moro, mortimer & tiberghien 2019). some responses in the study suggest that residents found the signs beneficial – ‘they teach us young people to behave’ – and offering valuable life lessons – ‘i love the positive message like to condomise. young people like us must protect ourselves from aids’. some respondents found some signs useful in promoting literacy: ‘children learn to read’; as one respondent attested, ‘i can understand them because they are written in afrikaans and english’. the signs were perceived as valuable sources of information: ‘we can see the prices at a spaza shop and buy happy’. question 2: what disturbs you about them? in their response to the above question, the residents expressed concern that ‘some signs give us a bad name’ and ‘they make our township dirty’. similar to learners, the residents maintained that most signs depicted violence. some of the prominent responses were ‘they encourage people to kill others’, ‘encourage us to be gangsters’, ‘they are written by gangsters’, and ‘gangsters write to frighten us’. of interest is one resident’s view that ‘gangsters rule longview’ and even mark their territory. similar to the learners’ responses, the word ‘gangster’ also features prominently in the residents’ responses. associated with this perception is the element of social positioning. the rhetoric in longview is detaching gangsters from the rest of the ‘law-abiding’ community. close attention is paid to language use as one respondent noted that signs contain ‘strong language and hate speech’ and others identified gender disparity: ‘women are still discriminated’, ‘men insult women’. one respondent was apprehensive that ‘the signs teach our children bad manners’, which underlines the key role of language as a tool for socialisation. some respondents dismissed the signs as insignificant and useless ‘graffiti’. interestingly, the study established that some of the people in this community were unable to navigate the meaning of the signs because they could not read; as one resident noted, ‘how will my grandmother get the message? she can’t read’. findings from my study show dominant english use in the signs, although longview is a predominantly afrikaans-speaking community, question 3: what social issues are the signs portraying? in response to the above question, one resident noted: ‘they teach the rules of our township’. ambiguity in this response suggested an unfixed signifier with possibilities for multiple meanings. the response sparked an interesting debate during class discussion as learners speculated about which rules the respondent was referring to. most speculations centred on gangs warning people. interestingly, the residents expressed sentiments similar to those of learners when commenting on crime: ‘gangsters rule longview’, ‘no one is safe’, ‘longview problems of crime and drugs’ and ‘they talk about crime in our township’. although the residents’ analysis does not focus on particular signs, their responses suggest an understanding of issues they portray, linked to the sociolinguistic context of their community. discussion data shows that most signs identified by the learners are witty or erudite and even cheeky (trinch & snajdr 2016). most signs are two-word or three-word texts, constructed on the principle of what scollon and scollon (2003:113) term ‘low semiotic intrusion’. they mark the township with ‘semiotic simplicity and textual brevity’ (trinch & snajdr 2016:73). in this study the analysis of signs is confined to textual and linguistic features, excluding the multimodal nature of iconic signs, which could have provided a different angle of analysis. multimodality (kress 1997) as a framework for literacy enables the understanding that meaning can be expressed in different modes. while trying to understand available meanings of community signs, the learners challenged their linguistic and literary prescriptivism. such criticality enabled them to challenge the common narratives and beliefs inhabited in their community. as literate young people, the learners had no trouble reading and interpreting the meaning of the community signs. however, they found written signs exclusionary and inaccessible to a certain portion of their community that is unable to read english or cannot read at all. in contrast, an interesting observation emerging from the study is that ‘everyone’ in longview knows street names: ‘though some of our parents can’t read, they know the street names, even those in english’. as trinch and snajdr (2016) observe, people do not talk much about signs per se but often discuss and recount their experiences depicted in the signs. as a ‘window to the community’, the signs in this study reflect the multilingual composition of longview. they demonstrate the students’ ability to work between different languages through a wide range of lexical and syntactical options (cimasko & shin 2017), which is a common feature in south african texts. languages other than english, which frequently appear on some community signs, are usually translated into english. for example, ‘basop, beware’ is a mixture of afrikaans and english, and ‘danger, gevaar, ingozi’ mixes english, afrikaans and isizulu. research has found that texts in multiple languages are better understood within their multilingual contexts (janks 2019). as janks (2019) points out, multilingual texts consisting of english, tsotsitaal (slang) and afrikaans would be incomprehensible outside of south africa. for example, basop lo inja is fanakalo, a pidgin mainly used in the mines of south africa and neighbouring countries. it is primarily based on isizulu, mixed with english and a little afrikaans (hurst 2018). the learners also identified derogatory ethnic terms such as darkies, koolies, boesman, which were written on public walls. these terms derogatorily refer to black, indian and coloured people. the presence of such terms may signify ethnic intolerance, which the participants disputed. they revealed that in their community there is no malice associated with the terms because they are usually meant to tease each other. the witty acceptance of such terms suggests an accepting and peaceful coexistence of diverse ethno-linguistic groups depicting a blurred line of racial ‘otherness in this community’ (smith & eisenstein 2013:1). these literal and sincere multicultural identity references comply with smith and eisenstein’s (2013) finding that residents living in a multi-ethnic neighbourhood use explicit ethnonyms to refer to one another. conclusion and recommendations in conclusion, the intervention project set out to discover how community signs could be used as a pedagogical tool for teaching learners to be critical readers. it also evaluated to what extent the learners were becoming critical readers. the project showed the tremendous impact that critical reading can have on learners’ thinking. for example, the nature of the learners’ responses suggests the beginning of a questioning attitude deriving from their awareness that language can be used to influence and manipulate people. the learners displayed a massive change in attitude by becoming affectively engaged with social issues in their community, in particular, and broader south africa by developing skills to resist unjust discourses portrayed in the signs. the criticality with which the learners questioned the purpose that the signs serve suggests that they were developing critical reading skills for different purposes. this is the central goal of critical discourse analysis – trying to understand how a particular person or a group of people filter words, phrases, sentences, and images they encounter in any given text to construe the unique meaning of that text or interaction. as critical readers, the learners were able to ‘read between the signs’ from around their township, an environment familiar to them. there is evidence that the learners were developing critical reading as they interrogated interplay between the construction and reception of the signs. they learnt not to accept ‘obvious’ statements in signs, while taking an assertive stand against the text’s assumptions (freebody 1992). most importantly, the learners were able to recognise their potential to become agents of change who can take action against social injustice. the intervention project created a learning space for reflective critical thought about language and society as learners were reading and analysing the signs. this is consistent with a strong assertion that critical literacy awareness can be achieved with texts drawn from familiar contexts. context is part of meaning that is communicated when reading texts. reading that is done within a context ‘conditions a reader’s expectations and makes interpretations appear possible’ (janks 2010). it is recommended that teachers should be aware of the possibility of obliterating overt critical issues when familiar texts are presented for critical reading. as insiders, learners are likely to ignore or overlook what may seem ‘common’ to them, which outsiders may view from a different critical perspective. this is what (gee 2014:89) describes as the ‘figured worlds […] that captures what is taken to be typical or normal [which] varies by context and by people’s social and cultural group’. different reading positions can be obtained from readers outside a particular context. as texts, community signs are socially constructed and located within a context that readers are likely to understand although they may not fully agree with their depiction. when using texts drawn on a familiar environment, teachers should recognise how learners relate to cultures, languages and social habits in the local literacies depicted in texts. acknowledgements the author acknowledges the contributions of all the participants in the study. competing interests the author declares that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. author’s contributions r.s. is the sole author of this article. ethical considerations ethical clearance certificate number h21/07/26 granted by the university of the witwatersrand. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references adami, e., 2015, ‘aesthetics and identity in digital texts beyond writing: a social semiotic multimodal framework’, in a. archer & e. breuer (eds.), multimodality in writing: the 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cape peninsula university of technology, wellington, south africa elna barnard department of foundation phase, faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, wellington, south africa citation coetzer, t., livingston, c. & barnard, e., 2023, ‘eleven grade 1 teachers’ understandings of mathematical language in a south african context’, reading & writing 14(1), a409. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v14i1.409 original research eleven grade 1 teachers’ understandings of mathematical language in a south african context tanja coetzer, candice livingston, elna barnard received: 26 oct. 2022; accepted: 23 apr. 2023; published: 07 july 2023 copyright: © 2023. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: fluency in mathematical language is essential for learning mathematics. teachers must understand and use their diverse mathematical knowledge, including language and communication difficulties inherent to mathematics instruction. according to recent south african research, grade 1 teachers are not equipped to utilise learners’ linguistic skills for efficient learning of mathematics. objectives: this research investigates south african grade 1 teachers’ mathematical language perceptions, experiences, and feelings. these grade 1 teachers’ transcripts were analysed to discover their understanding of the language of mathematics. method: exploratory, descriptive, and contextual research designs were used in conjunction with an adapted interactive qualitative analysis technique. focus group interviews, individual interviews, and lesson observations, together with a purposive sampling technique, were used to gather the data from both public and private primary schools. results: the results showed that grade 1 teachers view mathematics as a separate language with its own vocabulary and register. the findings highlighted the need to simplify the language of mathematics to enhance understanding. conclusion: this research concluded that language is essential to mathematics learning and that mathematics has its own register, which is acquired like any other additional language. to help isixhosa learners understand mathematics in english, scaffolding strategies must be aligned with their linguistic demands. contribution: this article provides important recommendations for teachers who need to recognise the reality that english is the lingua franca and ensure isixhosa home language-speaking learners receive the necessary support to acquire actual proficiency in the academic register of english for mathematical language learning. keywords: english grade 1 classrooms; grade 1 teachers; isixhosa home language-speaking learners; mathematical language learning; scaffolding strategies; south african context; understanding of mathematical language. introduction one of the primary reasons for south african learners’ poor performance in mathematics is that the significant role of language in education is overlooked in curriculum and teacher-training courses, resulting in a lack of language awareness. as a result, inadequate teaching strategies lead to language difficulties in curriculum areas such as mathematics (robertson & graven 2020:86). one of the crucial imperatives that was taken on by the south african government in 1994 was language planning. in this regard, as a way for the government to carry out this responsibility, the department of basic education agreed to draft linguistic policies and identify strategies to improve the state of african languages (department of basic education 2010; yu & dumisa 2015). in order to promote and develop african languages, the pan-south african language board (pansalb) was subsequently established. the pansalb was founded as a statutorily mandated authority to oversee and enforce the implementation of all 11 official languages of south africa. the pansalb has organised lexicography components for each official language to ensure terminology uniformity and promote multilingualism (mtsatse & combrinck 2018:22). however, despite the importance of language planning on the reunification agenda, it was evident that much of the african language terminology had not been updated since the apartheid era and is still in use today (mtsatse & combrinck 2018:22). moreover, according to webb (2013), the condition of african languages has not changed significantly since 1996. mtsatse and combrinck (2018:22) claim that the government has produced much too little evidence that south africa’s language policy has effectively promoted the ‘graphisation’ and ‘codification’ of african languages. mtsatse and combrinck assert that african languages have not been used meaningfully outside of formal schooling frameworks, such as in parliament, courts, academic institutions, schools, and the media in general. due to the absence of official social systems in which african languages are utilised, it appears that afrikaans and english maintain a higher linguistic status than african languages (mtsatse & combrinck 2018). van laren and goba (2013) and mtsatse and combrinck claim that the standardisation of african languages is an ongoing difficulty because it is difficult to locate precise, widely accepted vocabulary for mathematics translated from english into an african language. it seems unlikely that academic registers in all african languages will be established in the near future, especially due to the influence and status of english as the lingua franca (essien 2018; robertson & graven 2020). consequently, concerns regarding equal educational opportunities to become a successful academic participant in mathematics and the necessary language skills required to maximise learners’ potential to really make sense of mathematics still persist (engelbrecht et al. 2016; unesco 2016; un 2018). significance of the study robertson and graven (2020) claim that sustained and systematic investment is crucial in devising strategies to ensure that african language-speaking learners are provided the necessary support to achieve actual proficiency in the academic register of english for mathematical learning. recent research, however, shows that there is a gap between what ‘good practice’ might look like in south african classrooms, building on what already happens in them, and the reality of these classrooms and how teachers perceive and deal with african language-speaking learners within their classrooms (essien 2018; mtsatse & combrinck 2018; robertson & graven 2020). this article is derived from a full doctoral thesis. however, as the aim of this research was to explore, describe, and understand what grade 1 teachers’ understandings of mathematical language are in a south african context, the researchers only report on one of the sub-research questions, namely: ‘what are grade 1 teachers’ understandings of mathematical language in the context of south africa?’ in answering this research question, we add to a body of knowledge from which recommendations for grade 1 teachers and their understanding of mathematical language were developed, allowing them to provide the necessary mathematical language support to isixhosa home language-speaking learners receiving mathematics education in an english grade 1 classroom. the article begins with an introduction, followed by an explanation of the significance of the study, a literature review, and a theoretical framework. the research design and method are described, followed by the results and deliberation of the findings. the article concludes with a conclusion and recommendations. literature review understanding the relationship between language and mathematics mulaudzi (2016) highlights the significance of language for effective mathematical teaching and learning. he emphasises that the language of learning and teaching (lolt), through which mathematics is learned, creates the basis for mathematical teaching and learning to evolve in that language. extensive research confirms that many language qualities influence cognitive development (barwell 2016; das 2020; kotzé 2016; robertson & graven 2020; sfard 2012). despite the seeming complexity and inconsistency of the literature on the relationship between language and mathematics, there is a consensus that thinking occurs in some language or another (robertson 2017). vygotsky (1962) stressed that language and thought are inextricably linked and interdependent. therefore, it can be argued that external talk brings a thought to life, whereas inner speech focuses energy on words to facilitate thought processing. in light of the latter premise, language influences the thought process. however, the act of a thought has its own structure, while the act of translating the thought into language is challenging. this is not an unconscious process because thought only develops and is expressed through language. signs outside mediate thought, while word meanings internally mediate thought (vygotsky 1962). bruner (1975) highlights the significance of language as a medium for thought as well as its influence on cognitive development. consequently, thought is tightly bound to language and must adapt to it (robertson 2017). the mathematics register is a distinct manner of using language and communicating information (lee 2006; pimm 1987). thus, mathematical language is considered as a distinct ‘register’ inside an everyday language (e.g. english – ‘any language that has evolved spontaneously in humans via usage and repetition without conscious design or premeditation’) (le cordeur & tshuma 2019:107). in addition to the specialised vocabulary used in mathematics, the mathematics register also includes the language used to describe or explain a specific sort of mathematical problem (jourdain & sharma 2016; le cordeur & tshuma 2019). on the other hand, the mathematics register encompasses a great deal more than just lexicon and technical terms. it also includes phrases, words, and reasoning approaches in a specific context, all of which are expressed using everyday language (e.g. english) (pimm 1987). the grammatical structure and lexicon of a specialised language (i.e. mathematics) allow for the communication of a wide range of concepts. consequently, each language has its own mathematical register, which incorporates the various methods in which mathematical meaning is communicated in that language (ní ríordáin, coben & miller-reilly 2015; le cordeur & tshuma 2019). as can be seen, the complicated ‘register’ of mathematics is comparable to that of a language, and, as such, it needs similar language-acquisition skills. in line with this perspective, robertson and graven (2019) argue that mathematics teachers must discover ways to incorporate second-language teaching and learning strategies into their pedagogical repertoires to increase inclusivity in mathematics classrooms. this adds a new layer to mathematics education and reinforces the view that mathematics content cannot be taught without language. learning mathematics comprises the acquisition of the mathematics register automatically (setati 2005). according to meaney (2005), this enables learners to convey their mathematical reasoning with ease; ‘without this fluency, learners are limited in their ability to develop or rearrange their mathematical understandings’. once they have mastered the mathematical register, learners will be able to listen, ask questions, and converse, as well as read, record, and engage in mathematics. similarly, registers can be utilised in a variety of domains, as well as in any lolt. often, subtly, mathematics and ordinary language registers may be inhibited in an educational environment. learners must therefore be able to recognise each register in order to decide which is being used at any given time, which is a difficult task for many english language learners (ells) in multilingual classrooms such as south africa. thus, it is essential to understand how different languages and registers function, as well as the fact that the usage of numerous languages and registers can aid a learner’s improvement in mathematical understanding (ní ríordáin et al. 2015). mathematics is a discourse and a type of communication, which is more than just language (sfard 2012). rymes (2016:5) describes discourse as ‘language in use’. gee (1996) defines discourse as: ‘a socially accepted association among ways of using language, other symbolic expressions, and artefacts of thinking, feeling, believing, valuing, and acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or social network, or signal [that one is playing] a socially meaningful role.’ (p. 131) according to this explanation, discourses involve more than the use of specialised terminology and spoken or written language. communities, viewpoints, values, and beliefs all contribute to discourse in this regard (ní ríordáin et al. 2015). moschkovich (2012a:95) defines mathematics discourse practices as ‘social, cultural, and discursive because they come from communities and mark membership in different discourse communities’ to emphasise the notion that discourses are anchored in sociocultural practices. furthermore, mathematical discourses are cognitive in character since they make use of thought, signs, tools, and meanings. words, phrases, and texts have different meanings, uses, and intentions depending on the context. mathematical discourses occur within the framework of practices that are connected to communities. moschkovich (2012a) continues by stating that mathematical discourse practices are generated through actions, sense-making, focus of attention, and aims, and are anchored in social practices. as a result, multi-semiotic systems are included in mathematical discourse (e.g. speech, text, gestures, symbols, and visual images) (arzarello et al. 2009; robertson & graven 2020). mathematical registers the difficulty of functioning within english language registers is one of the most significant obstacles that ells experience while attempting to learn mathematics in an english-lolt classroom (robertson & graven 2020). halliday (1978) defines the mathematical register as a set of meanings suitable for a particular linguistic feature, along with the terminology and structures that represent these meanings. thus, the register of mathematics is a sense of mathematical language-specific meanings. in mathematics classrooms, multiple registers are utilised. to succeed in mathematics, learners must not only be comfortable with and educated about their everyday english register, but also be fluent in several mathematical registers (essien 2018; moschkovich 2005; schleppegrell 2011). for the understanding of mathematical registers and the ability to switch between them, strong language and metalinguistic skills are necessary. these skills are necessary for learners to communicate with their peers and cope with more complex mathematics (mandy & garbati 2014; planas & setati-phakeng 2014; robertson & graven 2020). as a new type of language that must be taught and mastered, mathematical registers provide a major challenge for ells (setati 2008). this is a specific challenge in south africa, where mathematics achievement is inadequate due to ells’ inadequate language skills, as they must master a specialised mathematical language to comprehend the mathematics curriculum’s content (department of basic education 2011; mulaudzi 2016; sibanda & graven 2018; robertson & graven 2020). the ell must not only seek to learn in english while also learning to speak english but must also operate within the english mathematical register before mastering everyday english (essien 2018; mandy & garbati 2014; robertson & graven 2020). therefore, in order to fully understand mathematics in a classroom where english is the lolt, ells may require more processing time compared to english mother-tongue speakers (mulaudzi 2016; setati 2008). consequently, these learners may fail to keep up in mathematics because they spend too much time attempting to understand and switch between registers (jourdain & sharma 2016; machaba 2018). furthermore, understanding mathematics-specific vocabulary is required for learners to be proficient in mathematics (moschkovich 2005; mulaudzi 2016; robertson & graven 2020). this mathematical vocabulary is not used in everyday english registers; hence, speakers of other languages have difficulty understanding it (jourdain & sharma 2016). not only are the technical words and vocabulary of mathematics crucial for learners’ capacity to comprehend and interpret mathematics, but they also have a significant impact on their future mathematical development (robertson & graven 2020). learning to operate in different registers poses significant difficulties for ells in this regard. this is particularly true when learning vocabulary because the meaning of words varies across registers (mulaudzi 2016; robertson 2017). everyday english versus mathematical english regarding mathematical teaching and learning, learners already have a vocabulary. although some lolt terms may be known to ells, they may have different connotations in the context of mathematics (morgan et al. 2014). machaba (2018) contends that non-proficient learners of the lolt will struggle to distinguish between the correct mathematical meaning of a common word and everyday english phrases. ‘volume, multiplication, parallelogram, operation, even, and odd’ are examples of these terms (ní ríordáin et al. 2015:14). therefore, it is crucial that both the learner and the teacher explore the numerous meanings and interpretations of mathematical terminology for them to comprehend the intended meanings and language patterns (mulwa 2014). in addition to the terminology used in everyday english, mathematics includes several of its own unique terminologies (le cordeur & tshuma 2019). therefore, if learners wish to be successful in mathematics, they must learn these terms, their basic mathematical meanings, and how to use them in different situations. teaching and learning mathematics in south african classrooms the phenomenon of multilingualism can be observed in classrooms all around the world. however, only major regional or national languages are used in the majority of classrooms, often for pragmatic or political reasons (gandara & randall 2019). in the multilingual setting of south africa, the presence of historically multilingual communities is seen in these schools (barwell et al. 2016; gandara & randall 2019). in spite of this, the majority of south african learners study mathematics in english, as this is the dominant language that the learners’ parents ‘buy into’ as the medium of teaching (robertson & graven 2020). consequently, there are many learners in south african schools who are not proficient in the lolt, which is often english (dale 2015; robertson 2017; robertson & graven 2018). mulaudzi (2016) and essien (2018) assert that english classrooms where mathematics is not taught in the learners’ home language (hl) are contexts in which there is a need for meaningful pedagogy on mathematics learning as well as the development of specialised skills that provide learners with a variety of opportunities to learn mathematics in such classrooms. in this context, essien (2018) explicates cummins’s (1979) claim that constructive cognitive development is achieved when a learner reaches a particular level of linguistic competence in a second language. for this reason, it can be assumed that language-deficient learners will be deprived of cognitive development. furthermore, essien found that learners in south african classrooms whose hl differs from the lolt are unfamiliar with the linguistic structures encountered during mathematics instruction. learners need to familiarise themselves with the structure of the mathematical language. this, however, necessitates that these learners understand both mathematical concepts and the language in which they are embedded. as a result, teachers are challenged to find a balance between english as the lolt and the language of mathematics. theoretical framework the interconnection between vygotsky’s learning theory and the five strands of mathematical proficiency both vygotsky’s (1978) learning theory and kilpatrick swafford and findell’s (2001) five-stranded model of mathematical proficiency, which place emphasis on the relationship between cognitive development and the general development of children’s mathematical proficiency, were used to interpret the empirical part of this research. the mathematical proficiency model developed by kilpatrick et al. (2001:5) consists of five ‘intertwining strands’ of mathematical proficiency, namely: ‘conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, strategic competence, adaptive reasoning, and productive disposition’. ramollo (2014:14) defines these strands as ‘various strands that incorporate knowledge about the interaction between the teacher, the learner, and the content and embrace the context for learning mathematics successfully’. thus, each strand should address the needs of ells (i.e. isixhosa hl-speaking learners) to become proficient in mathematics. teaching for mathematical proficiency, on the other hand, necessitates the same interconnected strands from both teachers and learners. thus, in order to teach for mathematical proficiency, a teacher must have the following skills: conceptual understanding of the core knowledge of mathematics, learners, and pedagogical strategies required for teaching; procedural fluency in carrying out basic instructional procedures; strategic competence in planning effective instruction and solving problems that arise while teaching; adaptive reasoning in rationalising a decision; and a positive attitude (productive disposition) toward mathematics, teaching, learning, and improving mathematics practice. the five strands of mathematical proficiency of kilpatrick et al. (2001) and the learning theory of vygotsky (1978) were combined to fit the context of south africa since the majority of south african learners enter school speaking a language other than the lolt, which presents a challenge for mathematics teaching and learning to most learners (essien 2018; robertson & graven 2019). a fundamental connection between vygotsky’s (1978) theory of learning and kilpatrick et al.’s (2001) five strands of mathematical proficiency is the development of cognitive competencies. the learning theory incorporated within kilpatrick et al.’s five strands of mathematical proficiency is particularly applicable to this research since learners with inadequate lolt fluency may regard language as a barrier to comprehending and becoming proficient in mathematics (robertson & graven 2020). according to prediger et al. (2019), intellectual resources, such as language or other physical resources, serve an important role in teaching and learning for both communicative and conceptual reasons. within each strand, vygotsky’s theory of learning demonstrates ‘the relevance of language in learning and cognitive development’. in this regard, the teacher applies intellectual and physical resources (depending on the needs of the learner) as scaffolds (support strategies) to enhance learners’ mathematical understanding (presmeg et al. 2016). research design and method the researchers conducted an interpretive qualitative case study using northcutt and mccoy’s (2004) interactive qualitative analysis (iqa) systems method to address the sub-research question: ‘what are grade 1 teachers’ understandings of mathematical language in the context of south africa?’ with the help of unstructured, open-ended focus group interviews, semi-structured individual interviews, and lesson observations, the researchers were able to identify a population, select a sample from that population, and then explore, describe, and understand teachers’ understandings of mathematical language in current mathematics practices in the context of south african english grade 1 classrooms. setting the researchers conducted this study in 2021 at public and independent primary schools in the western cape, metro east education district. the participating teachers ranged from newly qualified teachers to more experienced teachers teaching mathematics in english-lolt grade 1 classrooms. although the lolt of the classrooms is english, more than a quarter of the learners speak isixhosa as their hl, of which 41% is the highest percentage of learners whose hl is not that of the classrooms’ lolt. the teacher-learner ratio ranged between 1:29 and 1:37. participants all grade 1 teachers in the western cape constituted the study’s population. using the technique of purposive sampling, the researchers selected four schools and 11 grade 1 teachers (nine teachers representing three public primary schools and two teachers representing one independent primary school) as participants for this study (creswell 2018; cohen, manion & morrison 2018; okeke & van wyk 2015). the participants were selected so as to offer the researchers a rich and comprehensive narrative of their perspectives, experiences, and feelings regarding their understanding of the language of mathematics in a south african context (cohen et al. 2018; mohajan 2018). data collection the researchers acquired their data using an adapted iqa data collection method. in this sense, original iqa research often collects data using two techniques, such as unstructured, open-ended focus group interviews and semi-structured individual interviews (northcutt & mccoy 2004). nonetheless, the researchers introduced a third data collection approach, namely field observations of mathematics lessons. due to the covid-19 pandemic’s restrictions on social distancing, we conducted two separate face-to-face, unstructured, open-ended focus group interviews instead of just one, with a total of 11 grade 1 teacher participants (i.e. six grade 1 teachers participated in focus group 1, and five grade 1 teachers participated in focus group 2). these unstructured, open-ended focus group interviews informed the interview framework. the interview framework then guided the researchers’ data collection through the face-to-face mathematics lesson observations of 6 of the 11 individual participants (i.e. three grade 1 teachers from focus group 1 and three grade 1 teachers from focus group 2). after that, the interview framework helped guide the six semi-structured individual interviews, which took place online with the same six teachers whose mathematics lessons were observed. data analysis the data analysis process consists of three distinct steps. figure 1 depicts the data analysis process to show the relationship between the three processes. figure 1: qualitative data analysis process. the 11 participants of the unstructured, open-ended focus group interviews were involved in the first step of data analysis. during this interactive session, the participants of the focus group generated and recorded on index cards (inductive analysis) their perceptions, experiences, and feelings regarding the research statement (based on the sub-research question), namely: ‘tell me what you think or feel or call to mind when i use the term “mathematical language”’. the brainstorming exercise was followed by a deductive analysis exercise in which the participants sorted and clustered the written cards into groups that represented the topics. the written ideas were accompanied by descriptive paragraphs that served as the framework for the interview. the second step of the data analysis consisted of analysing the transcribed semi-structured individual interviews using john stuart mill’s analytic comparison technique as an analytical tool to detect patterns among themes (neuman 2014). the third step entailed analysing the transcripts of the field observations of mathematics lessons again, using mill’s analytic comparison technique (neuman 2014) as an analytical tool to get a chronological understanding of what transpired in each participant’s mathematics lesson. the data analysis of the individual interview transcriptions was compared to the data analysis of the field notes from the mathematics lessons to create a synthesis. after gathering and analysing the data, the researchers performed a literature check, using recent and pertinent research as a backdrop for articulating and formulating the findings. the data was verified using auberbach and silverstein’s (2003) criterion of transferability and maxwell’s five categories of validity in qualitative research (maxwell 2016). the descriptive validity of the data utilised in this study was ensured using iqa interviewing techniques, data-gathering techniques, and member checking. along with the descriptive validity, the interpretative validity includes the focus group interview members contributing their own data and analysis. additionally, the verbal and non-verbal replies acquired from the participants to validate the information they provided during the focus group interviews were incorporated into the transcripts of the individual interviews and classroom observations. the researchers conducted a literature review to establish the theoretical validity after the focus group interview participants had identified the themes and sub-themes. literature and direct quotations were used to support the themes and sub-themes. consequently, conclusions were reached based on the findings of the data and the literature. inferences were drawn from the data analysis, literature review, and theoretical framework to confirm the evaluative validity. ethical considerations the researchers sought ethical approval from the cape peninsula university of technology (cput) and the education authorities (western cape education department [wced]) before beginning the investigation. the participants were given informed consent forms to sign and the researchers made it clear that their involvement was voluntary and that they could withdraw from the processes at any time. participants remain anonymous and are simply identifiable by a number, for example participant 1. audio recordings and transcripts will be preserved in a secure safe for at least 5 years after the completion of this research. results the results of the two unstructured, open-ended focus group interviews, semi-structured individual interviews, and classroom observations are described in the three sections that follow. results of the two unstructured open-ended focus group interviews by employing mill’s analytic comparison technique (neuman 2014), the analysis of the two focus groups’ themes revealed the first pattern: the researchers found that both themes had similar content or flash cards, but they had different names, namely ‘mathematical language’ and ‘the language’. thus, the researchers decided to group together the two themes as they had similar or complementary content (method of agreement) into one category, namely: ‘mathematical language’. the theme, cards (thoughts), and descriptive paragraph indicated by the 11 teacher participants in both focus group interviews are shown in table 1 and table 2. table 1: the theme ‘mathematical language’ generated by group 1’s open-ended focus group interview. table 2: the theme ‘the language’ generated by group 2’s open-ended focus group interview. results of the semi-structured individual interviews of the category ‘mathematical language’ the semi-structured individual interviews were analysed to look for patterns. the researchers analysed the individual interview transcripts from the six participants individually to determine the following: if the participant agreed with the interview framework’s theme (method of agreement), if the participant disagreed with the interview framework’s theme (method of difference), and if the participant elaborated on or modified the interview framework’s theme (method of difference). as previously mentioned, the category ‘mathematical language’ was developed by grouping the themes ‘mathematical language’ and ‘the language’ derived from the two focus group interviews (see table 1 and table 2). when the researchers deliberated on the category ‘mathematical language’, the six participants, based on their personal perceptions, experiences, and feelings, expressed a variety of perspectives on their understanding of mathematical language. participants’ responses were as follows: ‘it is a language of its own’ (participant 1, educator, 30 years). ‘it’s a language of its own; i mean, we’re teaching the children maths and then they see it as numbers’ (participant 5, educator, 28 years). ‘but as far as mathematical language is concerned, we basically have to start right at the beginning. so, no matter what language they’re speaking or just say predominant language, even the english children are learning it [mathematics] for the first time.’ (participant 9, educator, 62 years) ‘so, language is … when we teach maths in the grade 1 classroom and not only for those learners that don’t speak english as their first language, but children don’t speak maths. maths language is something you teach them whether they are english speakers or not first language english speakers, and that is how you build any maths concept for a child, and from there you build onto those concepts.’ (participant 11, educator, 30 years) le cordeur and tshuma (2019) contend that mathematical language is perceived as a distinct register within an everyday language (e.g. english), and that learning mathematics entails the acquisition of the mathematics register itself (setati 2005; sibanda & graven 2018). therefore, the isixhosa hl-speaking learner must learn both the lolt, which is english, and the language of mathematics at the same time (sibanda & graven 2018). two of the participants agreed that mathematics has its own terminology, which is in line with the participants’ statements above. however, they stressed that mathematical terminology is difficult: ‘when i think of the language with regard to mathematical, or mathematics, the mathematical language, … then the first that … come to mind… is the mathematical terminology, … and the specific terminology we use when teaching a new concept … division of maths … part of mathematics [content area], that falls under mathematics. for example, addition, subtraction or objects, 3d objects, those kinds of terminologies. …these terms are a big word that might sound challenging for learners, … that can sometimes hinder them because they just think of this big word and what it means, overwhelms them.’ (participant 7, educator, 25 years) ‘i also think that it’s [mathematical language] about simplifying the terms because sometimes they get so overwhelmed. … you got to plus this and minus this, or if you even bring up the word divide, they’re like looking at you like, “what does that mean?”’ (participant 3, educator, 24 years) according to jourdain and sharma (2016) and le cordeur and tshuma (2019), the specialised vocabulary employed in mathematics is one characteristic of the mathematics register. this unique terminology is used to describe or explain a specific type of mathematical problem. ní ríordáin et al. (2015) assert that learners from various cultural or linguistic backgrounds frequently struggle to comprehend mathematical problems due to a lack of familiarity with these terms. in addition to the quotes provided by the participants thus far, they also acknowledged the significance of language to the understanding of mathematics. mulaudzi (2016) argues that the lolt in which mathematics is learned creates the foundation for the development of mathematical instruction and learning in that language. to be successful in mathematics, learners must not only be comfortable with and well informed of the everyday english register (i.e. lolt), but also be fluent in numerous mathematical registers (essien 2018; moschkovich 2005; schleppegrell 2011). three participants emphasised the significance of comprehending the lolt when introducing mathematical ideas: ‘… [a]nd with mathematics you need to understand the language that it’s being taught in [i.e., english-lolt]. so once you understand the language mathematics is taught in – concepts and all of those things that is part of mathematics become easier to understand.’ (participant 1, educator, 30 years) ‘the learners do not necessarily understand the language itself [language of mathematics] and/or if it is learners that perhaps struggle with english as it might not be their home-language, … they then struggle to understand the [mathematical] concepts.’ (participant 7, educator, 25 years) ‘the language [lolt] and the concept goes hand in hand. if they don’t get the language, they’re not going to get the [mathematical] concept; and if they don’t hear them often enough, then they may not be able to use it and remember it.’ (participant 11, educator, 30 years) this demonstrates that language (both the lolt and the language of mathematics) plays a role in fostering mathematical comprehension (barwell et al. 2016; das 2020; presmeg et al. 2016; robertson & graven 2020; vygotsky 1962). in addition, a participant’s response validated le cordeur and tshuma’s (2019) assertion that the language of mathematics necessitates similar pedagogic procedures to those employed when learning any other language. participant 9 stated the following: ‘if i teach say afrikaans, i would always put a visual with a word and we do a lot of repetition, so for mathematical language we would do the same. we would introduce a concept, we would give the concept a name, and then we would work around that concept and all the children are learning the same mathematical language.’ (participant 9, educator, 62 years) participant 9’s perspective above is consistent with robertson and graven’s (2019) argument that, in order to promote inclusivity in mathematics classrooms, mathematics teachers must find ways to incorporate second-language teaching and learning strategies. in conclusion, the method of agreement reveals that all individual interviewees agreed that mathematics has its own language with its own vocabulary (i.e. mathematical terminology). in addition, they have agreed that language plays an essential role and must be simplified for mathematical understanding. the method of difference, on the other hand, showed that only one person thought that mathematical language could be learned in the same way as another language. results of the field notes of the mathematics lesson observations of the category ‘mathematical language’ as one of the aims of this research study was to explore, describe, and understand what grade 1 teachers’ understandings of mathematical language are in a south african context, the researchers could not obtain a full picture of the category ‘mathematical language’ by just observing grade 1 teachers teaching mathematics. nevertheless, to a certain extent, the method of agreement revealed that the participants used visual representations for mathematical concepts, which form part of the language of mathematics. in this regard, all the teacher participants displayed mathematical information on a wall with all the mathematical terms together with pictures so that learners who speak isixhosa could understand the mathematics vocabulary. moreover, the researchers found that participants 1, 7, and 9 made the mathematics terms easier to understand by exposing learners to different words that meant the same thing. participants 5 and 11 made the language easier when they introduced word sums, for example, by using simple, everyday english that was relevant to learners’ everyday lives. participant 3 made the language easier to understand by giving learners the chance to revise terminology as a group before they did an individual activity about the same thing. the observations of these activities are displayed in table 3. table 3: activities observed during mathematics lessons related to the category ‘mathematical language’. participant 9 asserted that mathematics can be taught and learned in the same way as any other language can be. in this instance, the method of difference revealed that all the participants were using various language strategies (e.g. semiotic systems), which are also used in second or third language acquisition. for example, all the teachers employed visual representations to help learners learn the language and concepts of mathematics. through analysing the transcripts of the classroom observations for the category ‘mathematical language’ and comparing them to the transcripts of the individual interviews, the method of agreement showed that all six participants agreed that mathematics is made up of different terminology. they also agreed that language is a key part of understanding mathematics, which is why the participants tried to make mathematical terms easier to understand. during the analysis of the individual interview transcripts, the method of difference showed that only participant 9 mentioned that strategies for teaching mathematics in a second language could be used. in line with what participant 9 said above, it was noticed that all the other interview participants used second-language didactic strategies in their mathematics lessons without even realising it. deliberation on the findings according to the data in table 4, the category ‘mathematical language’ comprises the theme ‘the language (of mathematics)’. all participants had a firm grasp of the concept that mathematics has its own register (mathematical terminology) and should be learned like any other language. in this regard, the participants asserted that the language of mathematics is a new language that both english-speaking and isixhosa-speaking grade 1 learners must learn. however, participants believed that isixhosa learners lag behind english-hl learners because they must first comprehend the language in which mathematics is taught (i.e. english lolt) before they can make sense of mathematics itself (mulaudzi 2016; sibanda & graven 2018). in addition to the fact that mathematics has its own register, two participants stressed that mathematical terminology can be challenging for some learners because these terms are unknown to those from other cultural or linguistic backgrounds (ní ríordáin et al. 2015). as a result, the participants acknowledged the importance of language in mathematical understanding and emphasised the importance of understanding the english language when mathematical concepts are introduced (barwell 2016; bruner 1975; das 2020; moschkovich 2012a; presmeg et al. 2016; robertson & graven 2020; sfard 2008; vygotsky 1962). consequently, participants stressed the importance of simplifying (scaffolding) mathematical language for better understanding. they also emphasised the need for learners to hear both the english lolt and the language of mathematics regularly in order to grasp and apply them when mathematical concepts are introduced (essien 2018). another participant was of the opinion that the language of mathematics necessitates the same pedagogical techniques utilised when learning any other language (le cordeur & tshuma 2019; robertson & graven 2019). table 4: sub-research question, research objective and deliberation on the findings. according to vygotsky (1931), language is associated with cognitive development and occurs in a sociocultural environment. in addition, based on vygotsky’s theory of learning, moschkovich (2012b) claims that the language of mathematics refers to communicative skills that are necessary and adequate for participation in mathematical discourse. in this context, moschkovich (2012a) argues that the idea of ‘language’ must be expanded to include the interaction of multi-semiotic systems engaged in mathematical communication (i.e. natural language, mathematics symbol systems, and visual representations). therefore, the processes of language development and conceptual mathematical understanding are interdependent and interconnected (council of the great city schools [cgcs] 2016). to support isixhosa hl-speaking learners in becoming proficient in english for mathematical learning, teachers must provide specific scaffolds (i.e. multi-semiotic systems) during mathematical discourse to match isixhosa hl-speaking learners’ linguistic demands, thus fostering their acquisition of english mathematical proficiency (cgcs 2016; walshaw 2017). conclusion and recommendations as was previously stated, this research was conducted using the theoretical framework of vygotsky’s (1978) learning theory, which was incorporated into the five strands of the mathematical proficiency model by kilpatrick et al. (2001). this article reports on teachers’ understandings of the mathematical language in the context of south africa and findings are concluded and connected to the applicable strand ‘conceptual understanding’ only, in which teachers need to have a conceptual understanding of what the mathematical language entails to provide the necessary mathematical language support to isixhosa hl-speaking learners receiving mathematics education in an english grade 1 classroom. table 5 depicts the conclusion and recommendations. table 5: conclusion of the findings based on vygotsky’s theory of learning and kilpatrick et al.’s strands of ‘conceptual understanding’ of the mathematical proficiency model. the primary objective of this article was to report on grade 1 teachers’ understandings of mathematical language in the south african context. this study found that teachers must recognise that mathematics has its own register and is learnt like any other second or third language (le cordeur & tshuma 2019). in this regard, mathematics, like any other language, has its own mathematical discourse (i.e. terminology, grammar, syntax, word order, synonyms, conventions, idioms, abbreviations, sentence and paragraph structures), which is a specialised academic language (third language) that isixhosa-hl learners must acquire in addition to the everyday english language register (second language) in which mathematics is taught (jourdain & sharma 2016; ledibane, kaiser & van der walt 2018; essien 2018). according to ledibane et al. (2018), learners who do not speak english as their first language and are learning an academic language (i.e. mathematics) experience many of the same difficulties as those learning english as a second language, and thus learning skills similar to those used in learning any other language are required. thus, a scaffolded approach of using multi-semiotics (i.e. natural language, mathematical symbol system, and visual representations) to supporting isixhosa learners’ individual language needs should be implemented to support their mathematical understanding and to promote mathematical proficiency in the english lolt (cgcs 2016; vygotsky 1931; walshaw 2017). the reality is that english is the lingua franca in most schools, and we should ensure that isixhosa hl-speaking learners receive the necessary support in acquiring proficiency in the academic register of english for mathematical language learning. due to the global covid-19 pandemic, many educational institutions were unwilling to take part in the research as the teachers already had ‘too much on their plates’. this study was limited to a small group of grade 1 teachers in the western cape of south africa and focused solely on grade 1 teachers teaching mathematics to isixhosa hl-speaking learners in english-lolt classrooms. therefore, this research study does not provide generalisable findings to the wider grade 1 teacher population. furthermore, one of the original data collection methods of the iqa systems method, which is face-to-face individual interviews, was replaced with online interviews as the researchers had to limit any unnecessary face-to-face interaction due to the covid-19 pandemic’s restrictions on social distancing at the time. the researchers suggest that education programmes for pre-service and in-service teachers be developed and implemented in accordance with the findings of this study and monitor the outcomes thereof so as to inform current mathematics practice. we also suggest that additional research be conducted to determine how the recommendations made in this study can support other teachers (the wider grade 1 population). furthermore, we suggest additional investigations into issues such as the terminology used in mathematics for african languages as well as the availability and accessibility of bilingual teaching materials that could assist learners with limited mathematical proficiency in the lolt. acknowledgements prof. janet condy is acknowledged for proofreading the article and prof. candice livingston for the language editing of this article. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions c.l. served as the main supervisor and e.b. as co-supervisor for t.c.’s doctoral study. c.l. and e.b. gave input as co-authors of this article, while t.c. wrote the majority of the article. funding information cape peninsula 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173–184. https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2013.815986 yu, k. & dumisa, s., 2015, ‘community support: the missing link in indigenous language promotion in south africa?’, per linguam: a journal of language learning 31(1), 60–73. https://doi.org/10.5785/31-1-588 abstract introduction framework for the assessment of multi-text reading comprehension interactions in the reading comprehension process method results discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) hsiao-hui lin college of education, national taiwan normal university, taipei, taiwan yuh-tsuen tzeng center for teacher education, national chung cheng university, chia-yi, taiwan hsueh-chih chen department of educational psychology and counseling, national taiwan normal university, taipei, taiwan yao-hsuan huang department of educational psychology and counseling, national taiwan normal university, taipei, taiwan citation lin, h.-h., tzeng, y.-t., chen, h.-c. & huang, y.-h., 2020, ‘the cause-effect relation of latent variables in scientific multi-text reading comprehension: testing the sequential mediation model’, reading & writing 11(1), a256. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v11i1.256 research project registration: project number: most 107-2511-h-003-035-my3 original research the cause-effect relation of latent variables in scientific multi-text reading comprehension: testing the sequential mediation model hsiao-hui lin, yuh-tsuen tzeng, hsueh-chih chen, yao-hsuan huang received: 15 july 2019; accepted: 11 dec. 2019; published: 30 mar. 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the issue of science is seldom brought into focus because of the way developing assessments of students’ multiple text reading comprehension. objectives: this study tested the sequential mediation model of scientific multi-text reading comprehension (smtrc) by means of structural equation modelling (sem), and aimed to advance the scientific multi-text reading comprehension assessment (smtrca), with a focus on discussing the causal relationship of potential variables in smtrc. method: test items included 10 closed-ended and 7 open-ended questions and were categorised into four subscales: information retrieval (ir), information generalisation (ig), information interpretation (iip), and information integration (iig). results: the confirmatory factor analysis results showed that there was an acceptable goodness-of-fit among the smtrca, indicating that the construct validity was good. furthermore, the cronbach’s α of the test items was 0.88, indicating good internal consistency. in addition, using 1535 students, structural equation modelling was applied to analyse the relations of the latent variables. the findings showed that when readers are performing multi-text reading comprehension, ir will simultaneously have direct influences on ig, iip and iig. moreover, through ig, ir had an indirect impact on iip; through iip, ig had an indirect impact on iig; through the two intermediate mediators of ig and iip, ir had an indirect impact on iig. conclusion: in our data-driven model, multi-text reading comprehension is a hierarchical and complex cognitive process. that is to say, when an individual is engaging in multi-text reading comprehension, they will not just follow a single approach, but will deal with several cognitive processing routes simultaneously. recommendations are made for future research to explore the cognitive model of scientific multi-text reading comprehension and to determine whether there are differences among multiple groups, as well as standard setting to define the cut-off scores of the criterion-referenced model, to develop an assessment reporting system of scientific multi-text reading comprehension, and strategies for scientific multi-text reading. keywords: cause-effect relation of latent variables; scientific multiple text reading comprehension; sequential mediation model; cognitive mechanism of reading comprehension; psychology studies; science. introduction as scientific knowledge is accessed and internalised by students in various ways these days, the reading of multiple scientific texts has come to be an inevitable routine in everyday academic life. therefore, the research reported in this study highlights the pivotal place of scientific multiple-text reading comprehension. however, research on the processes of multiple-text reading comprehension is fairly recent, having only been carried out in the past 20 years or so. a decade ago, bråten, strømsø and britt (2009) pointed out that interpretation of the theory of multiple-text reading comprehension still tended to be individualistic, with different researchers propounding their own views, from hartman’s concept of intertextuality within literary theory, spiro’s cognitive flexibility theory, to the documents model which is now highly influential. according to current developments of reading comprehension assessments, the primary concern is to evaluate readers’ ability to hold in memory and understand the content of a single text (royer et al. 1996) and, further, to evaluate readers’ ability to make intertextual inferences (bråten & strømsø 2010; bråten et al. 2009), as measured by an intertextual inference verification task (intervt). however, on the way to developing assessments of students’ multiple-text reading comprehension, the issue of science is seldom brought into focus. in other words, what are the latent variables that can be used as key concepts of multiple text reading comprehension? the assessment model can be rigorously tested by using empirical data to establish the construct validity of the scientific multi-text reading comprehension assessment (smtrca), which can help to objectively evaluate students’ reading comprehension proficiency of multiple scientific texts. that is the first aim of the study. past research into reading comprehension has concentrated mostly on the subject of reading strategies, whereas the mechanisms of the processes of reading comprehension have received relatively less attention (goldman 2015). perfetti, rouet and britt (1999) advanced the notion that while an individual is engaging in multiple-text reading, they can firstly deal with the parsing of words, phrases, grammar and meaning of multiple texts to build an intertext model, which is then integrated with the individual’s prior knowledge to set up a situation model. after analysing the literature on the subject of multi-text reading comprehension, lin and tzeng (2018) put forward the process of multi-text reading comprehension consisting of four stages: (1) the first stage is information retrieval (ir), meaning that a reader can interpret words and phrases and analyse the forms of sentences; (2) the second stage is information generalisation (ig), meaning that a reader can extract the gist of a text; (3) the third stage is information interpretation (iip), meaning that a reader can establish a situation model surrounding the deep-level comprehension of a text; (4) the last stage is information integration (iig), meaning that a reader can deduce and add the information of content to the comprehended situation to express their positive or negative judgment of a text. in addition, chung’s (2000) research findings showed that the meanings of a series of logical conjunctions are retrieved appropriately at the stage of ir, which will benefit the individual in constructing the macrostructure of the text (i.e. the situation model). gil et al. (2010) further proposed that if an individual is capable of summarising the main points of a text, they will not only understand the text more profoundly, but also completely integrate the information from the different texts in the subsequent stage. other research (bråten & strømsø 2009; wiley & voss 1999) has shown that if readers, when explaining or developing their argument, are capable of restating it in their own words, that will give them a deeper level of integration comprehension. it is within this context that our research in the field of the mechanisms of the processes of scientific multiple-text reading comprehension will test the mediation model and the sequential mediation model by means of structural equation modelling (sem) and product of coefficients (sobel 1982) to determine whether ir will indirectly influence iig through these two intermediate mediators, viz. ig and iip. this is the second aim of the study, which will examine various interactions between the subcomponents of reading comprehension. to summarise, the research questions of the current study are as follows: does the smtrca have good construct validity and internal consistency? concerning the various interactions between the subcomponents of reading comprehension: will ir exert an indirect effect on iip through ig (ir → ig → iip)? will ir exert an indirect effect on iig through ig (ir → ig → iig)? will ir exert an indirect effect on iig through iip (ir → iip → iig)? will ig exert an indirect effect on iig through iip (ig → iip → iig)? will ir exert an indirect effect on iig through these two intermediate mediators, ig and iip (ir → ig → iip→ iig)? before proceeding to the research itself, we first provide a more detailed discussion of the theoretical framework underpinning multi-text reading comprehension. framework for the assessment of multi-text reading comprehension the construction-integration (ci) model, proposed by kintsch (1998), explains the cognitive processing patterns of single-text reading comprehension and consists of two cognitive stages: the construction stage and the integration stage, and two mental representations: the textbase model and the situation model (see figure 1). wolfe and goldman (2005) state that readers construct multiple layers of mental representations, including the surface form (the specific words, sentences and layout of the text), the meaning of the text itself (textbase) and the interpretation or model of the world referred to by the text (the situation model). figure 1: process of single-text reading comprehension. numerous studies on multi-text reading comprehension have been published recently. the documents model proposed by perfetti et al. (1999) has had a significant influence on current research. it is an extension of the ci model and includes the intertext model and the situation model. the intertext model primarily represents the meaning of each text, which includes the main information of the intratext, viz. the main information within a single text, the relationships and differences between the intertext information. in the situation model, readers can combine previously obtained knowledge with the intertext information, then come up with an explanation of the textbase model. they are then able to reorganise the new incoming information and continually turn it into the most up-to-date situation model (johnson & seifert 1999; rouet 2006). in addition to a series of higher-order processes and skills of cognition, multi-text comprehension also includes the utilisation of prior knowledge, sources, deeper-level strategies, task awareness, documentary expertise and personal epistemology. that is, multi-text reading comprehension is the ability of an individual to locate, evaluate and apply the diverse sources of information when constructing and communicating an integrated and meaningful representation for a particular topic, plan or situation (bråten & strømsø 2010; bråten et al. 2009). besides dealing with intratext reading comprehension, multi-text reading further requires linking the intertext information in order to develop the situated cognition of the text. lin and tzeng (2017) indicate that the cognitive process of multi-text reading comprehension (see figure 2) could be discussed from five aspects: prior knowledge, information retrieval, information generalisation, information interpretation and information integration. figure 2: process of multi-text reading comprehension. prior knowledge when readers are engaged in text reading, their prior knowledge relevant to the text can help them retrieve important information in the text and activate the basic model to assist their comprehension (rouet et al. 1996). at the construction stage of the ci model, the text information can activate the relevant knowledge in readers’ long-term memory to proceed to interpret what they are reading. however, at the integration stage, readers can establish a coherent situation model on the basis of their prior knowledge. information retrieval readers can retrieve prior knowledge from their long-term memory that is relevant to the text, and then attempt to interpret words, phrases and sentences, in order to comprehend the surface meaning of the text, that is, the microstructure. this kind of understanding is ‘direct understanding’ or literal comprehension, which is situated at the shallow level of information processing. information generalisation in the next stage, readers can extract the main concepts of the microstructure built during the previous stage, and establish an overall comprehension of the content of the text. the scope of concepts that is being extracted at the information generalisation stage does not go beyond the content of the text. at this point readers should have the ability to consolidate the information and subsequently facilitate the establishment of a coherent situation of text. information interpretation readers can recombine the main ideas of an article without creating any other new information. at this stage, they have to activate their prior knowledge, construct deeper comprehension, infer the implicit meaning of the text, and restate the text information in their own words in order to establish a situation model that conforms to the gist of the full text. information integration at this stage, readers can deduce and also add the information in the content to the comprehended situation to express their positive or negative judgment of a text (wolfe & goldman 2005). in the meantime, they can contrast and compare the intertext information to engage in the evaluative comprehension and critical comprehension of the content of the text. that is to say, a reader can deduce their own viewpoint to analyse the text content. this explains what the situation model is; as noted by kintsch (1998), it includes the content of macropropositions and the context of causal relations. according to the model of multi-text reading comprehension advanced by lin and tzeng (2017), in the first place, readers can retrieve information to interpret words and phrases and analyse the forms of sentences, and then understand the surface meaning of a text. next, readers can extract the main concepts to integrate into propositional networks and build the superficial level of description of meaning, that is, the gist of the text, bearing in mind that the scope of the concepts is not beyond the content of the text. this is called ‘information generalisation’ (ig). furthermore, readers can integrate the information of propositions that are extracted from the previous two stages with their prior knowledge. according to the prerequisite of not adding any new information, they can infer the implicit meaning of the text and establish a situation model which conforms to a deep-level comprehension of the full text. this is called ‘information interpretation’ (iip). in the end, readers can deduce and add their own viewpoints to the comprehended situation to express their positive or negative judgments on the text and even engage in the evaluative comprehension and critical comprehension of the text content. this is called ‘information integration’ (iig). in accordance with the theory put forward by linderholm, kwon and therriault (2014), to be successful in multiple-text comprehension (mtc), readers must keep track of more information and task goals compared to when reading a single text. based on the complexity of metacognitive processes, multiple-text comprehension is likely a task that places additional burdens on available cognitive resources, that is to say, intertextual information integration is more complex than single-text information integration. therefore, the assessment tool of the study is driven by the cognitive mechanisms of multi-text reading comprehension proposed by lin and tzeng (2017). in the cognitive mechanisms, three primary concepts, proposed by bråten and strømsø (2010), were utilised to design the smtrca, namely the sentence verification task (svt), the intratextual inference verification task (intravt) and the intertextual inference verification task (intervt). the full assessment, smtrca, is categorised into four sub-assessments, including ir, ig, iip and iig. interactions in the reading comprehension process in the past, research on reading comprehension usually emphasised the strategies of reading, for instance what strategies will improve students’ reading performance? because of stressing the test outcomes of reading, the strategies of teaching mainly focused on words, sentences and even the classification of paragraphs besides summaries and contexts by which students can infer new vocabulary (goldman 2015). in fact, the topic of the interactions involved in the reading comprehension process is also worth paying attention to, but research in this area is lacking. in a study involving 577 students in hong kong, chung (2000) examined whether logical connectives and paragraph headings would influence reading comprehension. results showed that although logical connectives do not make it possible to understand the microstructures of texts, they can make it easier to understand the macrostructures. in other words, if readers can conduct good retrieval of the lexical meanings of logical connectives at the ir stage, that will assist them in establishing macrostructures of the texts in subsequent stages. in addition, gil et al. (2010) invited 53 students to read seven different science texts about climate change. besides neutral descriptions, these texts also presented conflicting information. after reading the seven science texts, the subjects were instructed to write summaries or argumentative essays according to different group conditions. they were requested to perform three tasks, namely a svt, intravt and intervt task. results showed that students who wrote summaries obtained higher scores on the svt task than those who wrote argumentative essays for assessing memory of the text, deeper understanding of each single text, and the ability to draw inferences across texts in the intravt and intervt tasks. likewise, in their compositions, students in the summary condition covered the text materials more completely and merged information from the different sources. to put it another way, if readers can reinforce the macrostructures of texts and summarise the main points of the texts, they will not only understand the texts more deeply, but will also be able to integrate information from different texts more completely at subsequent stages. wiley and voss (1999) invited 64 students from the university of pittsburgh to take part in an experiment, in which the researchers provided several historical texts about ireland to the students. after reading the texts, the students were instructed to act as historians and construct narratives about the transformation of the population in ireland. in the process of the experiment, the expressions used in narratives would change into expressions used in summaries, explanations and arguments according to different groups. results showed that students given the task of constructing arguments gained better understanding than other students, and students given the tasks of constructing explanations and arguments obtained much more casual understanding than students given the task of narratives since readers can construct their own forms of expression to help their deeper and more integrated understanding when providing explanations and developing arguments. in addition, the study presented by bråten and strømsø (2009) also had a similar result in which readers given the tasks of constructing arguments and summarising information were more able to build deep-level and integrated understanding from the texts than those given the task of producing a general overview. in brief, these four processes of multi-text reading comprehension, ir, ig, iip and iig, not only show that there is a subtle time sequence, in which each process occurs step by step, but it also seems that they are likely to have direct or indirect influences on each other. this study specifically explores in what way these four processes of multi-text reading comprehension exert direct or indirect effects on one another, as reflected in research questions 2(a) – 2(e). method research framework to begin with, the smtrca was refined further in this study. that is, the items of the smtrca were dealt with by item analysis in order to modify them. in its modified form, a formal reading comprehension test was administered, and then the answer sheets were collected and analysed, using construct validity and reliability tests. confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) was applied to test the construct validity. by testing the goodness-of-fit between the theoretical model and experiment data, we could ensure that the constructs of the assessment would be supported by empirical data and would possess construct validity. to check the reliability, we tested the internal consistency of the assessment items, and then checked the reliability of the assessment. in the second stage of the study, there were three sequential mediation models to be tested and compared in order to select the best one and verify research questions 2(a) – 2(e) for research question 2. we also tested whether ir exerted an indirect effect on iig through the two intermediate mediators of ig and iip. research participants in the present study, there were 165 learners from grades 5–9 from taiwan who completed the pretest scale, and the relevant data of the assessment were modified through item analysis. thereafter, we invited 1535 learners from taiwan in grades 5–9, including 796 boys and 739 girls, whose average age was 13 years old and whose native language was chinese, to take the formal test. to balance the impact of the text sequence, the test question books were divided into two versions, a and b. in other words, half of the students were given version a (climate change is related to the three gorges dam vs climate change is unrelated to the three gorges dam) and the other half were given version b (climate change is unrelated to the three gorges dam vs climate change is related to the three gorges dam). development of the scientific multi-text reading comprehension assessment test domain the propositions of the assessment primarily discussed a scientific issue, namely the relationship between climate change and the three gorges dam. the relevant fields of research included meteorology, physics, geology, earth science, eco-environment, and so on. development of the test question book the unit of the reading texts of the assessment was ‘group questions’. each set of group questions consisted of one text and a set of items which were related to the text. the smtrca was composed of two texts. the style of writing for each text was an exposition of 983 to 1000 words. on the basis of the mixture of complementary texts and conflicting texts proposed by hartman and allison (1996), the texts held two opposing viewpoints on the topic of ‘the relationship between climate change and the three gorges dam’, that is to say, whether or not the three gorges dam has contributed to climate change. items development the smtrca consisted of two sets of items: 12 multiple-choice format items relating to ir and ig and nine constructed-response format items designed for iip and iig. each constructed-response format item provided answer hints, and a clear focus statement, to activate students’ prior knowledge and existing base model, which made them capable of practising dynamic mental activities, such as rhetoric, concepts and the interpretation and inferencing of semantic viewpoints, and then further organising their answer tasks. the framework of items is detailed as follows: provide instructions to students that they should answer the questions based on the text. example: why did the lakes such as dongting lake and poyang lake in the middle and lower reaches of the yangtze river shrink and dry up? students were asked to explain the author’s views and reasons based on the information in the text and to express their opinions on the author’s point of view. example: do you think that the author’s description that the three gorges dam contributed to successive years of drought in the yangtze river region is reasonable or not? please explain your reasons. analysis and results of the pretest in the study, item analysis was applied to test the pretest data, and the items of the pretest were selected and modified in accordance with the criteria of the elimination of items as follows: (1) test of homogeneity: to calculate the correlation between individual items and the full assessment, smtrca, and to delete those items with values less than 0.3 (nunnally & bernstein 1994); (2) test of consistency: to delete those items which, if deleted, would increase the value of the cronbach’s α; (3) principal axis factoring (paf) out of exploratory factor analysis (efa): to delete those items with factor loading values less than 0.3; (4) estimating critical ratio: to delete those items that do not reach the significance level. analytical results showed that four items should be deleted, specifically the first and second of the multiple-choice format items and the fourth and seventh of the constructed-response format items. analysis and results of the formal test question book constructs and items of the formal test question book as mentioned above, following item analysis and efa, four items were eliminated and 17 were retained. the retained items were: ir with three items, ig with seven items, iip with three items, and iig with four items. among them, iig was further divided into intratextual information with two items and intertextual information with two items (see table 1). table 1: summary of dimensions and primarily tested abilities in scientific multi-text reading comprehension assessment. scoring criteria and regulations of execution the smtrca is a group-administed reading comprehension test. every subject has a formal test question book and an answer sheet. the test takes 90 min, including the answering time (85 min), and the time for explaining the instructions of the test question book (5 min). the dichotomous scoring model is adopted by ir and ig, where each correct response scores 1 mark and each incorrect response scores 0. the range of scores of ir is from 0 to 3, whereas that of ig is from 0 to 7. in addition, the polytomous scoring model is applied by iip and iig, where the rating is based on reader-response performance and the total score is 4. the rating levels are as follows: (1) subjects who are unable to correctly construct earn 1 score; (2) those who are able to roughly construct earn 2 marks; (3) those who are able to correctly construct earn 3 marks; (4) those who are able to correctly and completely construct earn 4 marks. the range of scores of iip is from 1 to 12, and that of iig is from 1 to 16. data processing and statistical analysis after collecting the data of the formal test, item analysis, test of internal consistency and test of construct validity were firstly carried out, and then three sequential mediation models were tested in the next phase to verify their goodness-of-fit, which are described as follows. test of model 1: in model 1, there were two latent serial mediators, ig and iip, merged into a sequential mediation model by which we tested whether ir of multiple-text reading comprehension had an effect of sequential mediation on iig (abc: ir → ig → iip → iig). first, this study postulated that the predictor variable (ir) would initiate the first serial mediator (ig) and subsequently the second serial mediator (iip) with the criterion variable (iig) as the final consequent. test of model 2 (figure 3): in model 2, there were two latent serial mediators, ig and iip, merged into a sequential mediation model by which we tested whether ir of multiple-text comprehension not only had a direct effect on iig (f’1: ir → iig) but also exerted an effect of sequential mediation on iig (abc: ir → ig → iip → iig). first, this study postulated that the predictor variable (ir) would initiate the first serial mediator (ig) and subsequently the second serial mediator (iip) with the criterion variable (iig) as the final consequent. figure 3: the sketch of model 2: the sequential mediation model with information retrieval as the predictor variable. test of model 3 (figure 4): in model 3, we tested whether ir not only had a direct effect on iig (f’1: ir → iig) but also exerted three indirect effects on iig, namely (1) ae: ir → ig → iig; (2) dc: ir → iip → iig; (3) abc: ir → ig → iip → iig). therefore, the sum to which a direct effect plus three indirect effects of ir will be exerted on iig equals f’1 + ae + dc + abc which represents the total effect that ir has on iig. figure 4: the sketch of model 3: the sequential mediation model with information retrieval as the predictor variable. comparison of the three sequential mediation models: three competing sequential mediation models (model 1, 2, and 3) were put forward in the study and a chi square difference test was carried out to test whether there were differences between them. the indices, such as χ2, akaike information criterion (aic) and the bayesian information criterion (bic), were then referred to in order to identify which model best represents the cognitive mechanisms of multiple text reading comprehension. ethical consideration center for taiwan academic research ethics education certificate of completion, certification no. p106031740. ethical clearance number: 107wfa0310690 results tests of reliability and validity internal consistency reliability in the analysis of internal consistency, the results showed that the cronbach’s α of the full assessment, smtrca, is 0.88, the cronbach’s α values of the sub-assessments range between 0.66 and 0.86, specifically 0.66 (ir), 0.68 (ig), 0.83 (iip) and 0.86 (iig) in sequence. among these values, since the items for each sub-assessment are fewer than those of the full assessment, the cronbach’s α value of each construct is less than that of the full assessment, but the reliability of cronbach’s α of the full assessment is still within an acceptable range. construct validity in the analysis of composite reliability, results showed that the values are as follows: 0.61 (ir), 0.68 (ig), 0.83 (iip) and 0.88 (iig), all of which are more than 0.6 (fornell & larcker 1981), indicating that the composite reliability of smtrca is good. in addition, the maximum likelihood method was applied to conduct cfa. according to the statistical indices of model fit suggested by kline (2015) – including: (1) chi-squared significance (χ2), (2) the 90% confidence level of rmsea (root mean square error of approximation), (3) comparative fit index (cfi) and (4) standardised root mean square residual (srmr) – evaluation of the model fit was performed to examine whether the theoretical construct model of the assessment would be verified and supported by the empirical data. in terms of the results of the analysis, except that the chi-squared distribution reached significance level (χ2 = 269.18, p < 0.001), where there is significant difference between the hypothetical model and observed values, the other statistical indices are all located within ideal fit ranges, as follows: srmr is 0.032 (≤ 0.05), rmsea is 0.038 (≤ 0.05), the value of the 90% confidence level is between 0.032 and 0.044 (close fit) and cfi is 0.975 (≥ 0.90). therefore, the construct validity is good. tests of the mediation model model 1: analytical resuflts of the sequential mediation model in the study, ir was utilised to conduct the analysis of the effect of sequential mediation to test h1: ig and iip will mediate ir in sequence to influence iig. in the analytical results, except that the chi-squared distribution reached the significance level (χ2 = 294.772, p < 0.001), the fit indices of model 1 are all located within ideal fit ranges, where the aic is 22847, the bic is 23033, srmr is 0.037 (≤ 0.05), rmsea is 0.040 (≤ 0.05), the value of the 90% confidence level is between 0.034 and 0.045 (close fit) and cfi is 0.975 (≥ 0.90). in model 1, h1: ir exerts an indirect influence on iip through ig (a*b: ir → ig → iip, p < 0.001); h2: ig exerts an indirect influence on iig through iip (b*c: ig → iip → iig, p < 0.001); h3: ir exerts an indirect influence on iig through these two latent mediators, ig and iip, in sequence (a*b*c: ir → ig → iip → iig, p < 0.001). these values are all supported by the empirical data (see figure 5, table 2). figure 5: model 1: the sequential mediation model with information retrieval as the predictor variable. table 2: the testing results of the mediation effect of model 1. analytical results of model 2 in the analytical results, except that the chi-squared distribution reached the significance level (χ2 = 276.084, p < 0.001), the fit indices of model 2 are all located within ideal fit ranges, where aic is 22830, bic is 23021, srmr is 0.033 (≤ 0.05), rmsea is 0.038 (≤ 0.05), the value of the 90% confidence level is between 0.032 and 0.044 (close fit) and cfi is 0.974 (≥ 0.90). in model 2, h1: ir exerts a direct influence on iig (f’: ir → iig, p < 0.001); h2: ir exerts an indirect influence on iip through ig (a*b: ir → ig → iip, p < 0.001); h3: ig exerts an indirect influence on iig through iip (b*c: ig → iip → iig, p < 0.001); h4: ir exerts an indirect influence on iig through these two latent mediators, ig and iip, in sequence (a*b*c: ir → ig → iip → iig, p < 0.001). all of these values are supported by the empirical data (see figure 6, table 3). figure 6: model 2: the sequential mediation model with information retrieval as the predictor variable. table 3: the testing results of the mediation effect of model 2. analytical results of model 3 in the analytical results, except that the chi-squared distribution reaches the significance level (χ2 = 269.181, p < 0.001), the fit indices of model 3 are all located in ideal fit ranges, where aic is 22827, bic is 23028, srmr is 0.032 (≤ 0.05), rmsea is 0.038 (≤ 0.05), the value of the 90% confidence level is between 0.032 and 0.044 (close fit) and cfi is 0.975 (≥ 0.90). in model 3, except that h3 is not supported by the empirical data, that is, ir exerts an indirect influence on iig through ig (a*e: ir → ig → iig, p > 0.05), all the others are backed by the empirical data. h2: ir exerts an indirect influence on iip through ig (a*b: ir → ig → iip, p < 0.001); h4: ir exerts an indirect influence on iig through iip (d*c: ir → iip → iig, p < 0.01); h5: ig exerts an indirect influence on iig through iip (b*c: ig → iip → iig, p < 0.001); h6: ir exerts an indirect influence on iig through these two latent mediators, ig iip, in sequence (a*b*c: ir → ig → iip → iig, p < 0.001) (see figure 7, table 4). figure 7: model 3: the sequential mediation model with information retrieval as the predictor variable. table 4: the testing results of the mediation effect of model 3. comparison of the three sequential mediation models in the study, the chi-square difference test was applied to test whether there are differences among these three sequential mediation models. analytical results showed that there are statistically significant differences among them (table 5). the chi-squared distribution (χ2) of model 3 is kept to a minimum, indicating that model 3 is the best of the three. table 5: the results of the chi-square difference test. discussion general discussion the cognitive ability that is evaluated by the smtrca includes: (1) readers’ lexical comprehension of scientific text information (ir), (2) readers’ gist comprehension of scientific text information (ig), (3) readers’ construction of the situation model which conforms to the substance of the full text and keeps coherent (iip) and (4) readers’ evaluative and critical comprehension which is both intratextual and intertextual to scientific text information (iig). besides the results of the study and a general discussion, the research applications and research suggestions that we will provide for academic groups in the future can be seen below. scientific multi-text reading comprehension assessment, an assessment of reliability and validity internal consistency reliability the analytical results of cronbach’s α showed that except for ir and ig, the statistics of iip and iig exceed 0.70 and the alpha value of the full assessment is 0.88, indicating that the smtrca possesses internal consistency reliability. construct validity first, the items of the construct share a high proportion of variance in common, known as convergent validity. the values of composite reliability and the ratio of explained variance over total variance (kline 2015) are all more than 0.6 for the four factors of the smtrca. according to the criteria proposed by fornell and larcker (1981), the smtrca’s convergent validity is acceptable. second, the results of cfa showed that except for the chi-square distribution reaching the significance level, which means that there is an obvious difference between the hypothetical model and the observed statistic, both srmr and rmsea out of the absolute fit indices and cfi out of the incremental fit indices fall within ideal fit ranges. in other words, the model, which is composed of these four constructs of the smtrca, ir, ig, iip and iig, is supported by the empirical data, denoting that the smtrca has good construct validity. model 3 is considered the best model for cognitive mechanisms of multi-text reading comprehension all the chi square distributions of these three competitive models reached the significance level. however, the values of the chi-square distribution are the statistic on which a sample will depend, and the model will be rejected easily if the sample size becomes large enough. moreover, for these three competing models, all of the srmr and the 90% confidence interval of rmsea are less than 0.05 (close fit), and their cfi values are all more than 0.9, indicating that these three competitive models all lie within ideal-fit ranges. finally, following a chi-square difference test, the results of these three sequential mediation models showed that there are statistically significant differences among the three models, and that the chi-square statistic and the aic index of model 3 is the least of the three, indicating that model 3 is the best. primary effects among variables results (see table 6) showed that ir exerts direct effects on ig (a = 0.65, p < 0.001), iip (d = 0.16, p < 0.01) and iig (f’1 = 0.12, p < 0.05), indicating that when readers are performing multi-text reading comprehension, ir will simultaneously have direct influences on ig, iip and iig; in other words, the cognitive mechanisms of multi-text reading comprehension will not just have a single approach, but will have several processing routes, which are part of a complex cognitive process. moreover, the primary effects of ir on ig, iip and iig are significant but exhibit a trend showing a steady decrease in regression coefficients, which is in agreement with the viewpoint on the cognitive mechanisms of multi-text reading comprehension (ir → ig → iip → iig) put forward by lin and tzeng (2017). that is to say, ir is basically essential for any other type of comprehension, including ig, iip and iig, and, without it, the others cannot really operate. furthermore, ir exerts a greater effect on ig than ir on iip; similarly, ir will exert a greater effect on iip than ir on iig. the situation will correspond with the field of teaching where simply increasing the amount of students’ vocabulary and reading can only help improve their ability to retrieve information but will have a limited effect on development of the advanced level of reading comprehension, such as iip and iig. in terms of the best model of the study, model 3, the regression coefficients of ir on ig, ir on iip and ir on iig are 0.65, 0.16, and 0.12, which shows a descending trend, demonstrating not simply that when teaching reading, training students’ reading skills and teachers’ teaching strategies of reading are considered to be more important, but also that the necessity of literal comprehension (viz. ir) must not be ignored. in addition, our study found that the direct effect of ig on iig does not appear to be sufficiently significant (e = 0.04, p > 0.05), but the indirect effect of ig on iig relies on the full mediation of iip. that is to say, the strength of an individual’s ability to extract the major concepts of a text (ig) will not exert a direct effect on iig of the text; instead, an individual should combine these extracted concepts with their prior knowledge and describe the situation of the text in their own words (iip), which will then help them to move forward to the intratextual and intertextual iig. table 6: summary of model 3 results with information retrieval as the predictor variable (ir → ig → iip → iig). indirect effects of mediators and serial mediators results (see table 6) showed that ir exerts an indirect effect on iip through the partial mediation of ig (ir → ig → iip, indirect effect = 0.336, p < 0.001); ir exerts an indirect effect on iig through iip (ir → iip → iig, indirect effect = 0.121, p < 0.01); ir exerts an indirect effect on iig through the partial mediation of these two serial mediators, ig and iip (ir → ig → iip → iig, indirect effect = 0.252, p < 0.001). furthermore, ig exerts an indirect effect on iig through the full mediation of iip (ig → iip → iig, indirect effect = 0.386, p < 0.001). additionally, the hypothesis that ir will exert an indirect effect on iig through ig, was not supported by the empirical data (ir → ig → iig, a*e = 0.025, p > 0.05). as previously mentioned, derived from empirical research, multi-text reading comprehension is a hierarchical and complex cognitive process which operates from the information input stage, involving the comprehension of words, phrases and the patterns of sentences (ir) and the induction of the extracted gist (ig), to the information output stage, including the inference of connotations and the expression of main information (iip), as well as the deduction of opinions and the criticism and analysis of texts (iig). that is to say, when an individual is engaging in multi-text reading comprehension, they will not simply follow a single approach, but will deal with several cognitive processing routes at the same time. conclusion limitations and future research suggestions in terms of the present study, related future research, which will be derived from the framework of the smtrca, includes: exploring the cognitive model of scientific multi-text reading comprehension and whether there are differences among multiple groups, standard setting to define the cut-off scores of the criterion-referenced model and develop an assessment reporting system of scientific multi-text reading comprehension, as well as developing strategies and techniques for scientific multi-text reading. exploring the cognitive model of scientific multi-text reading comprehension the reading comprehension of both single-text (kintsch 1988) and multi-text (perfetti et al. 1999) retrieving information in the textbase model and then interpreting information in the situation model are serial processes. however, in this study, the primary effects of ir on ig, iip and iig are significant, and roughly represent that the cognitive mechanisms of multi-text reading comprehension may have several approaches. therefore, some recommendations are given according to these findings in this study. first, ir is basically essential for reading comprehension, because individuals who perform better in ir will have a more excellent performance in ig, iip and iig. second, the cognitive process of multi-text reading comprehension needs to be extended, because it may be done by parallel processing after ir. standard setting to build the cut-off scores of the criterion-referenced model in order to build standardised comprehension tests to help teachers understand whether students have ‘scientific literacy’ of science related to basic language and writing skills, and to teach scientific reading comprehension, we suggest that standard setting can be done to build the cut-off scores of the criterion-referenced test in the future. in much of the past research, we found that the response performance of evaluation is equalised to the same scale, and cut-off scores are decided through the relative position of a subject’s evaluation performance and ranked by percentage. this testing type is based on the norm-referenced model with a relative standard. in other words, the performance level of a subject will be classified into the other level according to the difference of the comparison group in which the subject attends, or, more exactly, the performance of a subject is in a state of change pending the extent of the comparison group. if the cut-off scores selected by the norm-referenced model are of great significance, the premise should be to satisfy these hypotheses that the tested population is similar, and the two-way specification tables on which items are based should be the same (cizek & bunch 2007). to overcome the limitation of the norm-referenced model which does not provide a precise explanation for a subject’s performance level, and to ensure that a subject’s performance will not differ according to the difference of the comparison group, the criterion-referenced model which provides an absolute standard should be adopted in the future. that is to say, cut-off scores are built from the standard setting (cizek 2006; eckes 2009) of performance, and students’ performance levels and the extent of their knowledge and ability are made in advance, in order to describe the content standard of what students ‘should know’ and ‘should be able to do’ and the levels of the content standard that students will reach. developing an assessment reporting system of scientific multi-text reading comprehension to give information feedback, including teachers’ teaching of reading and students’ reading improvement, we suggest that an assessment reporting system should be developed in the future. the many-facet rasch measurement can analyse a rater’s perspective on ability performance, for example assessment constructs, in detail and adjust a subject’s performance response to complement the variability in rater severity. in line with this, we offer some suggestions. the many-facet rasch measurement should be utilised to estimate subject ability in the future, and a subject’s statistical control of performance response will be adjusted by severity so that the evaluation of scientific multi-text reading comprehension will be independent and beyond rating variability. in addition, on the basis of performance level descriptions and cut-off scores formulated by standard setting, an assessment reporting system should be developed to provide analytical feedback which will fulfil a diagnostic function so that subjects will understand their strengths and weaknesses in scientific multi-text reading comprehension to which both teachers’ teaching of reading and students’ reading improvement will refer. exploring whether there are differences among multiple groups in the cognitive model of scientific multi-text reading comprehension specifically, further research should be done to explore other possible models of reading comprehension with more investigated variables, such as examinees’ gender, grade levels and type of text content. by means of testing and comparing the three sequential mediation models mentioned above, the results were as follows: (1) ir will have an indirect effect on iip through ig; (2) ir will have an indirect effect on iig through iip; (3) ir will have an indirect effect on iig through these two mediators occurring in time sequence, ig and iip. however, although the cognitive process of multi-text reading comprehension could be roughly seen through these research results, an analysis of multi-group structural equation modelling should be applied to test the goodness-of-fit of invariance across gender and grades on the cognitive model of scientific multi-text reading comprehension, including factor invariance, item intercept invariance, factor variance and covariance invariance across gender, and error variation invariance. that is to say, conducting the test of invariance across groups would help to explore the impact of the categorical variables on scientific multi-text reading comprehension. exploring the strategies and skills of scientific multi-text reading as adams and lowery (2007) pointed out, besides reading processes, for example general literacy and understanding, science reading relies more heavily on prior knowledge in science and reading skills. therefore, following the definition of the cognitive model of scientific multi-text reading comprehension, the strategies and skills of science reading which are based on language reading will be developed to help support students’ reading processes from textbooks, thereby enabling them to build effective learning strategies and so achieve the goal of lifelong learning. limitations first, this study can only provide a glimpse of the cognitive process of multi-text reading comprehension. there are four intratextual items and two intertextual items in iig of smtrca, and, in accordance with the opinions put forward by researchers (lin & tzeng 2017; linderholm et al. 2014), the ability of intertextual integration is more difficult and complicated. therefore, we think that there should be a latent construct, but we still have no idea what it is, and what its association with ir, ig and iip is. second, because we used multiple scientific texts that were limited to the topic of earth science in this study, there is no discussion on analysing the moderating effects of type of text content on the dependent variables of the scientific multi-text reading comprehension causal model. the limitations of this study are possible directions for future research, and we hope to continue to explore this important issue further. acknowledgements 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psychology 91(2), 301–311. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-0663.91.2.301 wolfe, m.b. & goldman, s.r., 2005, ‘relations between adolescents’ text processing and reasoning’, cognition and instruction 23(4), 467–502. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532690xci2304_2 abstract introduction method results discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) casey j. eslick speech-language pathology and audiology, faculty of humanities, university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa mia le roux speech-language pathology and audiology, faculty of humanities, university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa salome geertsema speech-language pathology and audiology, faculty of humanities, university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa lidia pottas speech-language pathology and audiology, faculty of humanities, university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa citation eslick, c.j., le roux, m., geertsema, s. & pottas, l., 2020, ‘phonological awareness and speech perception: skills of grade 1 english second language learners’, reading & writing 11(1), a263. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v11i1.263 original research phonological awareness and speech perception: skills of grade 1 english second language learners casey j. eslick, mia le roux, salome geertsema, lidia pottas received: 12 sept. 2019; accepted: 31 mar. 2020; published: 27 may 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: literacy achievement of learners is a concern in many developing countries, particularly for english second language (el2) learners with inadequate language development. it is important to investigate foundational phonological awareness (pa), as well as speech perception skills to guide the development of effective intervention for el2 learners to facilitate optimal literacy acquisition. objectives: the study aimed to describe the pa and speech perception in noise skills of south african grade 1, el2 participants, learning in an english first language (el1) context, to inform evidence-based support during literacy acquisition for el2 learners. method: a cross-sectional, descriptive design was employed. twenty-five el1 participants provided normative results for the phonological awareness test – 2 and south african english digits-in-noise test, enabling between-group comparisons with 25 matched el2 participants for quantitative data analysis. demographic and background information was obtained using parental questionnaires. results: the el2 learners presented with pa skills below those of el1 learners in all subtests. though the speech perception in noise skills of el2 learners were within the normative range for their age, their skills are also lower in comparison to el1 learners. conclusion: the findings support the inclusion of explicit pa instruction for rhyming, segmentation, isolation, deletion, substitution, and blending for el2 literacy acquisition. developing speech perception in noise skills is necessary to facilitate pa and phoneme-grapheme knowledge. this can enable decoding for early el2 literacy acquisition. keywords: language of instruction; literacy; multilingualism; phonological awareness; second language; speech perception. introduction oral language proficiency is fundamental to literacy development and academic success (hay & fielding-barnsley 2012:24; nyaga 2015:175). worldwide, particularly in developing countries, many young learners have insufficient language proficiency for academic learning, with resultant flat learning trajectories (taylor & von fintel 2016:75; wildschut, moodley & aronstam 2016:2). the learning challenges are particularly distressing in multilingual settings on the african continent, where teaching and language learning frequently occur in languages that differ from the learners’ first languages (howie et al. 2017:19). using the first language (l1) as the language of instruction is preferable since second language (l2) learners often have insufficient vocabulary knowledge and cognitive academic language proficiency (calp) to learn successfully in the l2 (webb, lafon & pare 2010:284; wildschut et al. 2016:2). for 65.3% of south african school learners, however, english language of learning and teaching (elolt) is preferred. although english is understood in most urban areas and used as the primary language for governance and journalism, it is the l1 for less than 10% of the general population (alexander 2018). many learners, therefore, receive instruction in their l2 (howie et al. 2012:9; taylor & von fintel 2016:76). while the complex linguistic landscape of south africa contributes to the academic challenges faced by learners, insufficient language proficiency is perpetuated by reduced opportunities, limited resources and low quality exposure in the home environment (alcock, ngorosho & matthew 2017:9; callaghan & madelaine 2012:13; howie et al. 2017:17). few learners, especially from rural areas and low-income families, have books available at home, and few books are available in their first language (cilliers & bloch 2018:2). this is a concern as literacy exposure is understood to support pa development (alcock et al. 2017:9) and children need to interact with texts to become independent readers (hay & fielding-barnsley 2012:24). learners with parents who have higher education levels are often approximately six months ahead in literacy development due to expectation differences (wildschut et al. 2016:2). for developing countries like south africa, low socio-economic status (ses) and subsequent limited resources may be identified as detrimental to literacy development. a lack of libraries, limited skills of teachers in the lolt, as well as poor learner-teacher ratios create further barriers to literacy development (cilliers & bloch 2018:2; howie et al. 2012:66). literacy development and academic underachievement are of critical concern on the african continent, particularly in south africa with 78% of grade 4 learners unable to comprehend text they read (howie et al. 2017:73). findings of the annual national assessments showed that the underachievement of learners increases over time, a circumstance which necessitates intervention (wildschut et al. 2016:1). recent research on literacy development identified risk factors that require intervention which includes low levels of language proficiency, vocabulary knowledge, working memory, speech perception, and phonological awareness (pa) skills (alcock et al. 2017:2; malda, nel & van de vijver 2014:35; wildschut et al. 2016:1). pa as well as speech perception skills, both of which are predictive of literacy achievement, require access to the phonological structure of speech (callaghan & madelaine 2012:14; goldstein et al. 2017:89). the phonological structure refers to a hierarchy of phonological complexity that develops through the perception of speech sounds from birth (webb & lederberg 2014:131). early language experience is therefore important, so consequential bilinguals experience challenges in developing appropriate pa in an l2 at school age (probert & de vos 2016:1). the developmental sequence of pa is typically described as progressing from metalinguistic awareness of rhyme, to awareness of syllables, and lastly phonemes. the skills required include recognising, discriminating, and manipulating sound units of words (goldstein et al. 2017:89; preston & edwards 2010:45). rhyming is regarded as a foundational skill of pa (callaghan & madelaine 2012:15). however, many el2 learners in south africa have reduced exposure to rhyme, as it seldom exists or occurs in african languages (prof. p.m. sebate, unisa, pers. comm., 05 april 2018). rhyming is regarded as an important supporting skill for listening and auditory memory to develop syllable and phoneme awareness for pa and literacy acquisition (cassady, smith & putman 2008:512; wildschut et al. 2016:2). phonemic awareness skills, particularly phoneme segmentation and phoneme blending, are sophisticated pa skills that should develop during grade r (age 6 years) and grade 1 (age 7 years) for literacy acquisition (callaghan & madelaine 2012:16; ouellette & haley 2013:35). these skills are required for understanding relations between spoken language and orthography, facilitating phoneme-grapheme coupling, known as phonics (goldstein et al. 2017:89). orthographic systems of languages influence the development of phoneme-grapheme representations. english, with its opaque orthography, presents difficulties for el2 learners who are required to master numerous vowel phonemes and many-to-one mappings (alcock et al. 2017:3; le roux et al. 2017:2; probert & de vos 2016:1). fine-tuned speech perception is a prerequisite to associate phonemes with graphemes and to refine phoneme representations for pa and word reading (chung et al. 2013:203). conversely, knowledge of phoneme representations is necessary to perceive and derive meaning from speech sequences (preston & edwards 2010:45). it is therefore hypothesised that the processes of pa and speech perception are linked by the internal phonological structure (chung et al. 2013:204). speech perception evidently lies at the heart of early literacy development. the development of pa skills may be delayed in children with normal hearing abilities who present with atypical speech production deficits, weak vocabulary and grammar, or delayed speech perception (preston & edwards 2010:45). speech perception in noise requires adequate phonological working memory, vocabulary, speed of information processing, and inference-making skills which reach optimal development at approximately 15 years of age (kaandorp et al. 2016:157; lagace et al. 2011:386). factors contributing to speech perception difficulties include limited language proficiency, poor auditory development, and a low signal-to-noise ratio (snr) (kaandorp et al. 2016:158; krizman et al. 2017:834). external noise and room noise disrupt learning and reduce the snr (mealings et al. 2015:2; obralić 2016:53). large average class sizes of 45 learners in south africa (howie et al. 2017:127) increase the distance between teachers and learners, resulting in reverberation that reduces speech intelligibility (mealings et al. 2015:2). research demonstrated that grade 1 learners need a favourable snr of approximately +15 decibels (db) to comprehend 95% of an auditory signal (lewis et al. 2010:761; mealings et al. 2015:2). with a clear correlation between listening conditions in a classroom and academic achievement (obralić 2016:55), it is a concern that many educational contexts are not conducive to learning due to unfavourable listening conditions (lewis et al. 2010:761). differences in speech perception are exacerbated under suboptimal conditions (krizman et al. 2017:835). a lack of access to linguistic cues reduces the comprehension abilities of el2 learners (krizman et al. 2017:834). furthermore, when el2 learners are expected to read, write, and learn in their l2, their level of language proficiency may decrease their rate of literacy acquisition (wildschut et al. 2016:7). despite the barriers faced by el2 learners, they are expected to acquire cognitive academic language proficiency (calp) and develop literacy at the same pace as el1 learners. while it is acknowledged that much research has been conducted on various issues relating to literacy, such research mainly emanates from developed countries, and further description of related difficulties such as pa and speech perception in noise is necessary for developing countries where literacy and educational practices differ (taylor & von fintel 2016:76). since literacy skill acquisition begins early with pa and speech perception in noise, early support for learners is essential (callaghan & madelaine 2012:13; goldstein et al. 2017:89). the required support, however, is often not available (cilliers & bloch 2018:1; howie et al. 2017:97). it is known that awareness of sounds in a language can be enhanced through providing explicit pa activities during pre-school and the foundation phase (le roux et al. 2017:7; lessing & de witt 2016:106). therefore, this study aimed to answer; ‘what is the level of el2 learners’ pa and speech perception in noise skills for learning in an el1 environment?’ the study further aimed to shed light on the implications of inadequate skills and to provide information for the support of el2 literacy development. method research design a cross-sectional, descriptive, between-group comparative design was employed. a once-off assessment was required to determine the level of pa and speech perception in noise skills of the participants. as south african normative data is not available for an in-depth pa test, scores of el1 participants were required to benchmark the level of skills required by el2 learners to function and acquire literacy in the el1 classroom. between-group comparison of participants in two groups (el2 group and el1 group) was thus required for quantitative analysis and enabled the researcher to determine and profile the skills of el2 learners to portray in visual depictions. the descriptive nature of the research, therefore, supported the study aim to describe the level of el2 learners’ pa and speech perception in noise skills. participant selection criteria and sampling procedures through convenience sampling, two schools were identified from which participants were selected. to minimise differences between participants, the schools were from the same district, used elolt, and followed the south african curriculum assessment policy statement (caps) syllabus with a phonics approach to literacy development. participants who met the criteria for inclusion in either the el1 or el2 group were selected using the non-probability purposive sampling method. english second language participants were selected first, after which matched el1 participants were identified (from those who provided consent) for valid comparison of skills. matching occurred according to their age, gender, and parents’ estimation of ses, which was determined through parental questionnaires. socio-economic status was categorised as low (< r5000), middle (between r5000 and r40 000) and high (> r40 000). the participants were selected if they were 6–7 years old and in their first year of formal schooling. to ensure consistency of education and sufficient english calp, the participants were required to have completed their grade r year at the same school the previous year. the participants were required to pass both hearing and language screening to ensure the validity of results. an otoscopic examination was followed by tympanometry. thereafter, hearing screening was conducted with the hearscreen™ application following the ‘child protocol’ of 25 db at 1000 hz, 2000 hz, and 4000 hz (swanepoel et al. 2014:848). the kindergarten language screening test ‒ second edition ([klst-2) (gauthier & madison 1998) for children age 4–6 years 11 months was used to identify participants with language difference, delay, or disorder to ensure validity of results. participant description fifty participants were selected from two schools in the tshwane district, south africa. the subject group included 25 el2 participants with a mean age of 79.34 months (3.40 sd). the control group of 25 el1 participants had a mean age of 79.53 months (3.42 sd). the gender distribution was 60% female in both groups. twelve per cent of parents in both groups indicated an estimated ‘high’ ses above r40 000 a month. sixty per cent of el1 parents and 52% of el2 parents indicated a ‘middle’ ses between r5 000 and r40 000 a month. the el2 participants spoke an african language as their l1. setswana (24%) and northern sotho (24%) were indicated as the most commonly spoken l1s in the el2 group. isizulu (16%) and tshivenda (12%) also occurred as l1. all el2 participants received no l1 book reading exposure in their home environment before attending grade r. materials the south african english digits-in-noise test (sa eng din test) (potgieter et al. 2016:410) was accessed via a samsung sm-g313h trend neo smartphone and sennheiser hd 202 ii headphones, to objectively determine speech perception in noise abilities of participants in the noisy classroom environment. digits-in-noise (din) testing is preferable as pure tone audiometric testing shows a weak relationship between pure tone thresholds and speech perception in noise skills (smits, theo goverts & festen 2013:1693). an advantage of the sa eng din test is the use of digits as speech material which eliminates potential influences of cognitive aspects such as auditory memory and the linguistic demand through the ‘closed-set’ (potgieter et al. 2016:406). since many languages in south africa use english digits, the speech material is mostly familiar to both el1 and el2 learners (smits et al. 2013:1694). to assess pa skills, the following sections of the phonological awareness test – 2 (pat-2) were used (robertson & salter 2007a:11): the phonological awareness section which includes discriminating and producing rhymes, segmenting sentences, syllables and phonemes, isolating sounds in initial, final and medial positions, deleting compounds, syllables and phonemes, substitution by manipulating, and blending syllables and phonemes. the phoneme-grapheme knowledge section which includes identifying graphemes (letter – sound) and decoding. a parental questionnaire was used to obtain demographic information and information regarding their estimated ses. data collection participants were individually assessed at their school. assessment lasted approximately one hour. the sa eng din test assessed speech perception in noise via automated presentation of digit-triplets through earphones, at a comfortable listening level. once the response was entered, the proceeding digit-triplet was presented at a level 2 db higher for a correct answer and 2 db lower for an incorrect answer. following the speech perception in noise assessment, instructions for the pat-2 (robertson & salter 2007a:15) subtests were given as instructed in the examiner’s manual to ensure validity of the results. questionnaires were collected from the parents. ambiguous or inappropriate answers were re-checked and confirmed through telephonic interviews. data analysis and processing the speech perception in noise scores of participants were automatically generated by the sa eng din test and evaluated according to south african normative data (methula, visser & zulu 2016; potgieter et al. 2018:661). scores are presented as the average snr yielding 50% speech intelligibility (digit-triplets perceived correctly), known as the speech reception threshold (srt). to score the pat-2, each participant’s total of correct answers were determined for every subtest, sub-section, section and total test score. using the pat-2 statistics manual, participants’ raw scores were converted to standardised scores according to age. due to sample size, means would be easily skewed by outlying results. thus, medians were calculated and used to allow el2 and el1 group comparisons. the pat-2 uses 100 as the mean standardised score and a standard deviation of 15 (robertson & salter 2007b:43). normative values for the south african el2 population are not specified in the pat-2. scores of the el1 learners in the control group were used to determine an approximate normative measure against which the skills of el2 learners were compared. the pat-2 therefore indicates level of functioning, and standardised scores are presented as opposed to age equivalents. to facilitate interpretation of the level of skills observed, the percentage of correct responses will also be presented. microsoft excel® spreadsheets were used to store data. quantitative data analysis was conducted using ibm spss version 23.0 for windows (ibm corp., armonk, n.y., usa). descriptive statistics of all data were determined including the mean, standard deviation, median, and interquartile range. significant differences (p < 0.05) between median standardised scores of el1 and el2 parametric data were identified with the wilcoxon signed rank test. spearman’s rank order correlation (rho) investigated potential relationships among variables. a 2-tailed significant difference test was used to investigate relationships within the groups. ethical consideration the research study was sanctioned by the research ethics committee of the faculty humanities at the university of pretoria (reference number: gw20170309hs). results the results of the el1 learners are regarded as a baseline indicator of the expected level of skills necessary for el2 learners to learn in the el1 environment. overall performance the scores of el1 and el2 participant groups for both the sa eng din test and total pat-2 were summarised, including significant differences (table 1). table 1: sa eng din test, total pat-2 and section scores: percentages, medians and interquartile ranges of english first language and english second language learners. the speech perception in noise and pa skills of el2 learners were both significantly below those of the el1 learners. regarding pa skills, the el2 learners scored below the el1 learners in both the phonological awareness and the phoneme-grapheme knowledge section. performance on the sa eng din test the speech perception in noise results of the el1 and el2 learners obtained via the sa eng din test are depicted according to the median srt scores calculated (figure 1). figure 1: sa eng din test: speech reception thresholds for the english first language and english second language learners. a more negative score indicates a lower srt and better speech perception in noise skills, as sounds are heard in a higher level of background noise. the median srt of the el2 learners was higher than the el1 learners, indicating a significantly lower (p = 0.008) score according to the wilcoxon signed rank test. performance on the phonological awareness section of the pat-2 the correct responses of learners for the phonological awareness sub-sections of the pat-2 were summarised as percentages (figure 2). figure 2: sub-sections of the phonological awareness section of the pat-2: the percentage of correct responses of english first language and english second language learners. a difference of more than one standard deviation can be noted between scores of the el1 and el2 learners across all phonological awareness sub-sections. the percentage of correct answers, medians, interquartile ranges (iqrs), difference in months and the significance of this difference between the el1 and el2 learners are recorded in table 2. table 2: comparison of scores for english first language and english second language learners in sub-sections of the pat-2: phonological awareness section. the wilcoxon signed rank test showed that el2 group scores differed significantly (p < 0.001) from those of the el1 group across all subtests. for rhyming production, the el1 group scored a median of 98 whereas more than 50% of the el2 group scored a median of zero. in the segmentation sub-section, for segmentation of sentences, the el1 and el2 learners obtained similar percentages of correct answers, however, in segmentation of phonemes, 92% of the el1 learners’ answers were correct, whereas, less than half of the el2 learners’ answers were correct. the el1 and el2 learners both obtained a median score of 108 for the isolation of initial sounds subtest, however, their percentage of correct answers differed significantly. the el2 learners had 90% of their answers correct in isolation of initial sounds, though this score declined for isolation of final sounds, and isolation of medial sounds. the el2 learners scored below the el1 learners in both deletion subtests with less than half of their answers being correct. the greatest significant difference is shown between the scores of the el1 and el2 learners for the substitution sub-section. the el2 learners’ percentage of correct responses in the blending sub-section on the syllable level is close to the percentage of the el1 learners. on the phoneme level, the percentage of correct answers provided by the el2 group was less than half of the el1 group’s. performance on the phoneme-grapheme knowledge section of the pat-2 the correct answers for the graphemes and decoding sub-sections of the pat-2 are depicted as percentages (figure 3). figure 3: sub-sections of the phoneme-grapheme knowledge section of the pat-2: the percentage of correct responses of english first language and english second language learners. though the pat-2 is not validated for el2 learners, the significant difference (p < 0.001) between the el1 and el2 group scores for both the graphemes and decoding sub-sections is notable as it was almost two standard deviations, which warrants intervention according to the pat-2 (robertson & salter 2007a:37). the percentage of correct responses, medians, iqrs, difference in months, and the significance of the difference between el1 and el2 learners for the graphemes and decoding sub-sections were tabulated (table 3). table 3: comparison of scores for english first language and english second language learners in the sub-sections of the pat-2: phoneme-grapheme knowledge section. in the graphemes sub-section, the el2 learners’ score was significantly below the el1 learners’ score. the median of 83 in the consonants subtest indicates that the el2 learners most frequently could identify fourteen consonants. the el2 learners scored a median of zero in four graphemes subtests. the el2 learners appeared to have difficulty with long or short vowels and vowel digraphs as they provided significantly less correct answers than the el1 learners. further analysis identified a strong, positive correlation between the graphemes and blending sub-sections (rho = 0.648, p < 0.001). the el2 group demonstrated decoding abilities at an age level of 27 months below that of the el1 group. the el2 learners scored a median of zero in six decoding subtests. the segmentation sub-section showed a medium, positive correlation (rho = 0.435, p < 0.03) to the decoding sub-section. a significant, strong, positive correlation (rho = 0.891, p < 0.001) was evident between the graphemes and decoding sub-sections. within-group analysis according to gender within-group analysis according to gender indicated no significant differences between the genders within groups for the sa eng din test, as well as the pat-2 total test and section scores. the scores of females were, however, consistently higher than that of males. between-group analysis according to gender between-group analysis of el1 and el2 males revealed a significant difference between their scores for the sa eng din test (p = 0.025). the el1 and el2 female group scores on the sa eng din test (p = 0.084) showed no significant difference, as the larger group requires a larger score to be deemed statistically significant. small sample size resulted in the between-group analysis of ses being deemed unreliable. between-group analysis of gender revealed significant differences (p < 0.001) between their scores for the pat-2 total test, phonological awareness and phoneme-grapheme knowledge sections, as well as all pat-2 sub-sections, evidencing a moderate level of internal consistency. parental feedback none of the el2 group parents indicated providing l1 book reading exposure in the home environment before their child attended grade r. six (24%) el2 parents conduct book reading monthly at home, while the remainder conducts weekly book reading activities. according to parents of the el1 group, all el1 learners (100%) receive weekly english book reading exposure. discussion the current study aimed to indicate the level of pa and speech perception in noise skills of grade 1 el2 learners required to learn in an elolt context. the results showed significantly lower pa and speech perception in noise skills of el2 learners in comparison to el1 learners, which is consistent with prior research (kaandorp et al. 2016:163; le roux et al. 2017:7; potgieter et al. 2016:410). understanding implications of these results for literacy development is important. the potential implications of the el2 learners’ level of skills are highlighted in the following discussion. speech perception in noise in the speech perception in noise results, the el1 group median srt is better than the pass or refer srt (-8.4 db) of adults with binaural normal hearing in the sa eng din test (potgieter et al. 2016:409). as the sa eng din test preliminary normative srt for children age 5–6 years 11 months is between -7.75 db and -6.31 db (methula et al. 2016), the median srt of the el2 participants was age appropriate. although scoring within the normative range for children noted above, the 1.4 db lower din perception of the el2 participants in this study is significant and corresponds to the 1.7 db identified in recent research (potgieter et al. 2018:660). the difference between din perception scores of this study differ from prior sentence-in-noise perception results (kaandorp et al. 2016:166). the closed set of digits limits number of speech sounds, thereby reducing the linguistic demand (potgieter et al. 2016:406). additionally, many african languages use english digits, and learners count with english digits in grade r, which increases familiarity and further reduces linguistic demand (department of basic education 2011:22; potgieter et al. 2018:657). the results therefore support the notion that el2 learners require a higher snr to benefit from linguistic information, placing them at a long-term disadvantage in their learning environment (lagace et al. 2011:386; potgieter et al. 2018:657). reducing class sizes, closing doors and windows or hanging curtains may enhance speech perception and in that way boost academic achievement (howie et al. 2017:174; mealings et al. 2015:2; obralić 2016:55). phonological awareness the reduced speech perception in noise skills of the el2 learners may contribute to their reduced phonological awareness sub-section score, which is significantly below that of the el1 learners for all subtests. this significant difference is a concern as pa is the strongest predictor of literacy success (webb & lederberg 2014:132). rhyming is regarded as a foundational pa skill (callaghan & madelaine 2012:15), therefore it is a concern that el2 learners in this study had difficulty with rhyming. for rhyming production, more than 50% of el2 learners scored a median of zero for rhyme production, which is consistent with results from another research study (willenberg 2007:24). limited rhyming exposure and reduced speech perception in noise skills may contribute to rhyming difficulties of el2 learners (prof. p.m. sebate, unisa, pers. comm., 05 april 2018). these findings support the notion of teaching rhyme awareness and production in pa, and offering literacy development programmes to provide opportunities for el2 learners to develop rhyming skills (hay & fielding-barnsley 2012:25; lessing & de witt 2016:113; wildschut et al. 2016:8). the relatively high level of skills demonstrated by the el2 learners in segmentation may be attributed to formal pa skill instruction provided in grade r (department of basic education 2011:24). there was, however, a difference of 48 months between the el1 and el2 participant age scores, which is supported by prior research (le roux et al. 2017:4). the correct responses of el2 learners decline from sentence segmentation, to syllable segmentation, and further to phoneme segmentation. the results provide evidence that to be effective, intervention should follow the pa hierarchy, developing awareness from larger units to phonemes (cassady et al. 2008:512). the percentage of correct responses of the el2 participants in the phoneme segmentation subtest was less than half of those provided by the el1 participants. this may be attributed to the focus on developing syllable awareness as opposed to phoneme awareness in the early school years (alcock et al. 2017:9). the low phoneme segmentation score of the el2 participants is a concern as awareness of phonemes supports development of phoneme-grapheme knowledge and is probably more closely related to literacy development than sentence and syllable segmentation (callaghan & madelaine 2012:14; cassady et al. 2008:512). in the isolation sub-section, the level of skills of the el2 learners gradually decreased when the subtest stimuli changed from the initial position in words to the final position, and further when the stimuli focussed on the medial position in words. in congruence with prior research, this study affirms that position within the word changes the salience of sounds for el2 learners, and is a crucial influence to difficulty within the same pa task that may be done in the classroom (cassady et al. 2008:512; willenberg 2007:24). during classroom pa activities, explicit instruction to learn the skill of deletion may be necessary as the el2 group had equal difficulty with both deletion subtests, which implies that their difficulty may relate to poor understanding of deletion rather than reduced phoneme-grapheme knowledge. additionally, many el2 learners did not understand the segmentation task, therefore the low score of the el2 group is potentially due to lack of exposure to this kind of activity in the home and classroom environment (department of basic education 2011:24; howie et al. 2017:176). the results support findings that show that el2 learners have greater difficulty with phonemic awareness tasks for explicit phoneme manipulation compared to forced judgement choices such as rhyme discrimination (willenberg 2007:26). the blending score of the el2 learners was at an age level 27 months below that of the el1 learners, which raises concern. although the difference between the el1 and el2 learners is less in the blending sub-section compared to the segmentation sub-section, in contrast with prior research, the el2 group have a lower level of blending skills than segmentation skills (le roux et al. 2017:7; ouellette & haley 2013:35). according to the findings of this study, the blending skills of the el2 learners on the syllable level is nearly sufficient, however, not at the phoneme level. as phoneme blending facilitates awareness of phoneme-grapheme coupling for literacy (ouellette & haley 2013:38), it is a concern that the correct answers from the el2 group was less than half of the el1 group. phoneme-grapheme knowledge further investigation relating to pa skills of the el2 participants provided information regarding various aspects of their phoneme-grapheme knowledge and decoding skills. in the graphemes sub-section, the el2 group age score was 34 months behind the score for the el1 group. as formal phoneme-grapheme instruction commences in grade 1 (department of basic education 2011:24), reduced previous exposure is a possible explanation for the low score of the el2 participants which makes phonemic awareness development difficult (ouellette & haley 2013:38). in agreement with findings in a previous study, the el2 participants most frequently could identify fourteen consonants (willenberg 2007:24). the el2 learners experienced difficulty with graphemes for vowels, particularly vowel digraphs. their difficulty may be attributed to less sophisticated skills for discriminating phonemes due to the reduced number of vowels in african languages and difference in the phonological structure between english and african languages such as setswana (le roux et al. 2017:2; malda et al. 2014:35; probert & de vos 2016:2). the strong, positive correlation between the graphemes and blending indicates that el2 learners’ poor phoneme-grapheme knowledge may contribute to their blending difficulties (ouellette & haley 2013:35). decoding despite the use of non-words, which reduce the impact of vocabulary knowledge on results, the el2 learners’ decoding abilities were shown to be 27 months behind those of the el1 learners. the results of the decoding sub-section therefore contribute to findings that show that learners with poor pa skills are at risk for literacy difficulties (preston & edwards 2010:44). the correlation between segmentation and decoding sub-sections indicates that segmenting skills support decoding skills through developing awareness of syllables and sounds. the strong correlation between graphemes and decoding is supported by the relation of the el2 learners’ median score of zero in the decoding subtests which contain graphemes they found difficult (consonant digraphs, consonant blends, vowel digraphs, r-controlled vowels, cvcv words and diphthongs). when evaluating the subtests where the el2 learners obtained a median of zero, it appears that the el2 learners had difficulty drawing on their insufficient phoneme-grapheme knowledge to decode words, particularly when adjacent phonemes change sounds in words (cassady et al. 2008:515; krizman et al. 2017:840). in the decoding subtests the el2 group were unable to generalise their limited pa and phoneme-grapheme knowledge to use blending and to decode nonsense syllables. with english being an opaque language, the el2 learners appeared to have difficulty with the many-to-one mappings of the syllables presented (alcock et al. 2017:3; probert & de vos 2016:2). it may be speculated that the el2 learners learnt their phoneme-grapheme correspondences through memorisation as opposed to understanding relations between letters and sounds (alcock et al. 2017:3; goldstein et al. 2017:99). a further concern is that their poor level of pa skills may promote reliance on memorisation of phoneme-grapheme representations and little generalisation of skills for literacy (goldstein et al. 2017:99). the language learning context may exacerbate the difficulties el2 learners experience in acquiring the necessary emergent literacy and language skills for literacy acquisition. english second language learners need to receive sufficient language stimulation and literacy exposure in the home environment (alcock et al. 2017:3; hay & fielding-barnsley 2012:24; lessing & de witt 2016:106). from parents’ responses it is evident that the el2 learners received less frequent exposure to book reading than in the case of el1 learners. reduced exposure to books reduces opportunities to engage phoneme-grapheme coupling skills and may extenuate reliance on print as opposed to decontextualised language and word play for literacy (goldstein et al. 2017:99; snyman 2016:8 willenberg 2007:26). limited literacy experience therefore may contribute to the lower decoding skills and overall poorer phonemic awareness skills of the el2 learners. providing a language and literacy home programme with pa, speech perception and decontextualised language tasks may serve to equip parents to support engagement with literacy activities in the home environment (lessing & de witt 2016:113; snyman 2016:8; willenberg 2007:26). conclusion the overall pa and speech perception in noise skills of el2 learners are insufficient to acquire literacy at the same level as and at an equal pace to the el1 learners. the results emphasise the educational significance of the investigation and provide ample evidence that supporting el2 literacy development in the foundation phase is to be regarded as essential. though speech perception in noise, phoneme-grapheme knowledge, and pa skills for literacy acquisition were assessed, future research may benefit from inclusion of constructs such as working memory, rapid automatised naming and listening comprehension. the fact that the educational setting was urban, despite being resource limited, reduces the ability to generalise the research findings to the broader educational setting in south africa. assessment in the l1 of el2 learners was not possible due to a lack of standardised tests in african languages. the need to develop standardised tests with normative data for the south african population is also highlighted, as without this information it is difficult to determine objectively which el2 learners are at a greater risk for delayed literacy development. going forward, the development of a multidisciplinary team-based perspective to implement recommendations will be vital. findings of this study highlight that support for el2 learners should include efforts to improve the snr in classrooms and reduce the linguistic demand to facilitate comprehension for el2 learners (mealings et al. 2015:15; obralić 2016:55). while working on pa tasks, the linguistic complexity, task difficulty, and position of sounds in words should be considered and scaffolded according to the level of understanding of el2 learners (callaghan & madelaine 2012:14; cassady et al. 2008:512). integrated pa skills training with explicit instruction for phoneme-grapheme coupling (particularly vowel phonemes), is strongly recommended and has been verified by research to effectively improve literacy skills of all learners in a classroom (le roux et al. 2017:7; lessing & de witt 2016:113; malda et al. 2014:44). promotion of literacy development should be a key consideration in all education programmes (cilliers & bloch 2018:1). research has shown that pa, speech perception, and decontextualised language tasks should be included in language and literacy home programmes, which may equip parents to develop their knowledge and support learners (lessing & de witt 2016:113; willenberg 2007:26). creating equitable opportunities for el2 literacy development poses a complex challenge. support is required for el2 learners who are already in the education system, who are experiencing a learning gap, with their decreased level of skills, as shown in the results of this study. there is also a need to begin new conversations about the education system to improve learning environments for future el2 learners. without adequate attention to the differences between learners regarding skills for literacy acquisition, the disadvantages el2 learners face are likely to perpetuate the literacy and academic underachievement of south african learners. supporting literacy skill development of el2 learners is therefore a crucial goal in education. acknowledgements competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions all authors contributed equally to this work. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit 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school setting’, south african journal of childhood education 6(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v6i1.340 willenberg, i., 2007, ‘foundations for literacy: emergent literacy competencies of grade r learners on the cape flats’, the south african journal of communication disorders = die suid-afrikaanse tydskrif vir kommunikasieafwykings 54(1), 20–28. abstract introduction literature review study 1 study 2 general discussion acknowledgements references appendix footnote about the author(s) mikaela a. daries department of linguistics and applied language studies, faculty of humanities, rhodes university, makhanda south africa centre for social development, faculty of education, rhodes university, makhanda, south africa tracy n. bowles department of linguistics and applied language studies, faculty of humanities, rhodes university, makhanda south africa centre for social development, faculty of education, rhodes university, makhanda, south africa maxine n. schaefer department of linguistics and modern languages, college of human sciences, university of south africa, pretoria, south africa citation daries, m.a., bowles, t.n. & schaefer, m.n., 2022, ‘the contributions of reading and phonological awareness for spelling in grade three isixhosa learners’, reading & writing 13(1), a365. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v13i1.365 original research the contributions of reading and phonological awareness for spelling in grade three isixhosa learners mikaela a. daries, tracy n. bowles, maxine n. schaefer received: 16 feb. 2022; accepted: 19 aug. 2022; published: 12 dec. 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: one factor which is consistently highlighted in research on literacy is the lack of understanding of how literacy develops in the southern-bantu languages. in particular, little is known about spelling in the southern-bantu languages such as isixhosa. objectives: through the use of an initial exploratory study and a conceptual replication study, we examined the relationships between reading, phonological awareness, and spelling in isixhosa grade 3 learners. the initial exploratory study sought to describe the relationships between reading and spelling, and phonological awareness and spelling in a sample of 49 grade 3 isixhosa learners. we then conceptually replicated this study with a larger sample of 200 grade 3 isixhosa learners. we expected that both reading and phonological awareness would be related to spelling and that the strength of the relationship between reading and spelling, and phonological awareness and spelling would vary with spelling ability, due to the changes that occur in the development of spelling. method: cross-sectional, quantitative secondary data were used from two different projects to answer the research questions. tasks of phonological awareness, oral reading fluency and spelling were developed and administered to the participants. results: we found that reading was a replicable predictor of spelling for grade 3 isixhosa learners and that phonological awareness was influential only at the mid-range of spelling performance. conclusion: our findings emphasise the importance of the reading – writing connection, and lend support for what has been found for other consistently written languages, adding to the growing body of knowledge of universal predictors of spelling development. keywords: spelling; phonological awareness; oral reading fluency; literacy; isixhosa; conceptual replication. introduction reading and spelling are essential academic skills necessary for future educational success and successful participation in modern societies (ehri 1987; pretorius & mokhwesana 2009; zarić, hasselhorn & nagler 2020). it is, therefore, concerning that most south african learners cannot read, write, and comprehend at grade-appropriate levels, with many learners declared functionally illiterate (spaull 2013). the 2016 progress in international literacy study (pirls) re-emphasised this, revealing that 78% of south african grade 4 learners are not able to read for meaning (howie et al. 2017). there are a number of contributory factors to south african learners’ underachievement (de vos, van der merwe & van der mescht 2015; van der berg et al. 2016). one factor, which is consistently highlighted, is the lack of understanding of how literacy develops in the alphabetically written southern-bantu languages (de vos et al. 2015; spaull, pretorius & mohohlwane 2020). in particular, little is known about spelling in the southern-bantu languages such as isixhosa, with most studies focusing on decoding ability and the related role of phonological awareness (makaure 2021; schaefer, probert & rees 2020; wilsenach 2013, 2019). consequently, the predictors of spelling are not yet well understood in isixhosa and further research is needed to enhance our understanding of spelling development in the southern-bantu languages. in this article, the relationships between reading, phonological awareness, and spelling in isixhosa were examined using secondary data from two studies. the first study was an exploratory cross-sectional study. the aim of the first study was to describe the relationships between reading and spelling, and phonological awareness and spelling in a small sample of grade 3 isixhosa learners. the first study was limited as it was cross-sectional and had a small sample size, giving us minimal evidence of the developmental relationship between variables, and leading to large confidence intervals of the estimates, respectively. we addressed these limitations by conducting a second, confirmatory study with four times the sample size. the following two research questions were addressed in each study: what are the unique contributions of reading and phonological awareness to spelling in grade 3 isixhosa learners? to what extent does the relationship between reading and spelling, and phonological awareness and spelling, differ on the level of spelling ability? in this article we start by providing an overview of spelling development and its relation to reading and phonological awareness. we then address the methods, results and a brief discussion of each study respectively, highlighting the differences between study 1 and study 2 in the description of study 2. we end with a general discussion of our findings and provide a conclusion. literature review spelling development spelling is the ability to recognise and reproduce spoken language in a correct sequence of written symbols (moats 2010; mpiti 2012; santoro, coyne & simmons 2006; weiser & mathes 2011). while there is not consensus on the development of spelling across languages, the main theories and perspectives are briefly reviewed below. these theories are, however, based mainly on english studies. cross-linguistic studies on spelling development are relatively limited (babayiǧit 2009). the earliest and most well-known model of spelling development was introduced by gentry (1982), who suggested that learning to spell takes place in five stages, from reliance on phonological knowledge to a dependence on orthographic and morphological knowledge (bourassa & treiman 2010; schlagel 2007). he posited that learners begin at the ‘precommunicative stage’ when the learner has partial knowledge of the alphabet but does not yet understand letter-sound relationships (gentry 1982). at this stage, spellings are characterised by the strategy of randomly selecting letter strings to represent words (ellis 1994). the second stage is the ‘semi-phonetic stage’, when learners have some grasp of letter– sound relationships, with spellings containing a partial mapping of phonetic content. it is at this stage that children often represent words, sounds or syllables with letters that match their letter names, for example, ‘u’ for ‘you’ (ellis 1994). in the ‘phonic’ or third stage, they begin to use phonics to map letter-sound correspondences, for example, ‘haws’ for ‘house’ (ellis 1994). in the later stages (transitional and correct stages), learners move from phonological spelling and start to incorporate morphological and orthographic knowledge when spelling (gentry 1982). critiques of the stage theory have stated that it provides a linear account of spelling and oversimplifies the picture with little consideration of the linguistic characteristics of the language being learnt (bourassa & treiman 2010). for example, different languages have specific morphological and orthographic knowledge needed to be acquired by learners and therefore some skills are grasped more easily than others and at different periods in spelling development (bourassa & treiman 2010). nevertheless, the theory acknowledges the developmental shifts when learning to spell, especially from a reliance on phonological knowledge to a dependence on orthographic and morphological knowledge (bourassa & treiman 2010; ravid 2012; schlagal 1989). however, babayiǧit (2009) argued that children may utilise both phonological and orthographic spelling processes in the early stages of development depending on the demand of the task, their level of alphabetic knowledge, phonological awareness and print experience. cross-linguistic studies which have examined spelling development and the specific skills most relevant for spelling development across languages are growing in number but most studies have focused on english (caravolas 2004; georgiou et al. 2020). nevertheless, there is a general acknowledgment that spelling relies on letter-sound knowledge (e.g. finnish, greek and english: georgiou et al. 2012), phonological awareness (e.g. english, spanish, slovak, and czech: caravolas et al. 2012), morphological awareness (e.g. english: apel et al. 2012), orthographic knowledge (e.g. english: apel 2009) and reading experience (e.g. finnish: leppänen et al. 2006; lerkkanen et al. 2004; french, dutch, german and greek; georgiou et al. 2020). as noted above, phonological awareness and reading are related to spelling ability. the interrelation between these concepts are addressed in more detail in the next sections. the relationship between phonological awareness and spelling phonological awareness is defined as the awareness of the sound structure of a language and the ability to perceive or manipulate sounds in a linguistic sequence (moll et al. 2014). phonological awareness is typically divided into the following linguistic components: onset-rime, syllables and phonemes (anthony & francis 2005; chard & dickson 1999; stahl & murray 1994; treiman 1991). there is an extensive body of research which confirms that phonological awareness is a significant predictor of both reading and spelling across different languages (adams 1990; babayiğit & stainthorp 2007; bryant et al. 1990; caravolas, volín & hulme 2005; hulme & snowling 2015; landerl & wimmer 2008; zarić et al. 2020). notably it has been revealed that phonemic awareness is the strongest predictor of early word reading in alphabetic languages (melby-lervåg, lyster & hulme 2012). similarly, research on the southern-bantu languages converge on the importance of phonological awareness for reading (lekgoko & winskel 2008; malda, nel & van de vijver 2014; wilsenach 2013, 2015, 2019). however, the relationship between spelling and phonological awareness in the southern-bantu languages is less clear. international research reports that phonological awareness plays a concurrent and longitudinal role in spelling performance (caravolas et al. 2012; harrison et al. 2016; landerl & wimmer 2008; lervåg & hulme 2010; veber nielsen & juul 2016). in particular, research has suggested that phonological awareness and spelling should have a stronger relationship in languages with transparent orthographies due to the consistent nature of the phoneme to grapheme and grapheme to phoneme mappings (e.g. leppänen et al. 2006; öney & durgunoglu 1997). phonological awareness is a necessary prerequisite for the conversion of phonemes to graphemes, the primary requirement of spelling across all alphabetically written languages. however, as noted in georgiou et al. (2012), these assertions are not made in consideration of the individual characteristics of languages with transparent orthographies. de bree and van den boer’s (2019) study of dutch spelling in grades 1 and 2 found that phonological awareness significantly predicted spelling in regression analyses. however, when reading was added into their regression model, phonological awareness along with other contributors (visual attention span and rapid automatised naming) were no longer significant, confirming the importance of reading for early spelling (de bree & van den boer 2019; desimoni, scalisi & orsolini 2012; keuning & verhoeven 2008; leppänen et al. 2006) and reaffirming the link between phonological awareness and reading (de bree & van den boer 2019; frith 1985). de bree and van den boer (2019) suggest that phonological awareness constitutes mainly as an underlying skill of reading and that phonological awareness relates to spelling but that it is not necessarily sufficient in explaining how learners convert phonemes to graphemes. thus, they suggest that further research is needed to investigate specific correlates and underlying skills related to spelling, for example, vocabulary knowledge, morphological awareness, and orthographic learning (de bree & van den boer 2019; kim, apel & al otaiba 2013). these results are of particular significance as dutch, like isixhosa, is considered to have a transparent orthography in which the regularity of the orthographic system is higher in grapheme–phoneme relations (forward regularity, e.g. reading,) than it is in phoneme–grapheme relations (backward regularity, e.g. encoding) (bosman, vonk & van zwam 2006; daries & probert 2020). for example, in isixhosa, there are a number of complex graphemes for which multiple letters represent single sounds e.g. <dl>, <ph>, <tsh> (spaull et al. 2020). southern african research on spelling in languages other than english confirms the relationship between phonological awareness and spelling. phonological awareness was associated with spelling ability in herero for a sample of grade 2 to grade 5 learners (veii 2003), in oshikwanyama for a sample of grade 1 learners, assessed again in grade 2 (nghikembua 2020), and in isixhosa for a small sample of grade 3 isixhosa learners (diemer 2015). makaure (2021) found similar results with 134 northern sotho-english bilingual learners. the study’s findings showed that phonological skill was one of the best predictors of northern sotho spelling. common to all these studies was the need to develop tests of phonological awareness suitable to each language, and sample. these were real word phonological awareness tests of phoneme isolation using sound matching (e.g. which one is the odd one out: sava, sina, zuva? (veii 2003)), real-word phoneme isolation tasks (e.g. what is the first sound of pedu? [nghikembua 2020]), and pseudoword tasks of segmenting (e.g. break up this word into its sounds: gofotsa) and elision (say hlenama without /hl/ [diemer 2015]). although various tasks have been used, an effect of phonological awareness on spelling was found across different south african languages and grade levels. the relationship between reading and spelling reading can be understood as the starting point of spelling, as what learners are able to read can provide the basis for what they are able to spell (bear et al. 2004). when learners read or practise reading, they are recognising common letter patterns in words, mapping sounds onto letters and letter patterns which develops their orthographic representations of words necessary for spelling (conrad 2008). this suggests that spelling can provide an indication of learners’ reading ability. furthermore, gentry (2004:11) states that ‘learners learn to read by spelling’ and knowledge of the alphabetic principle necessary for spelling supports reading. this is because spelling and reading rely on the same lexical representations (ehri 1997, 2005; perfetti 1997; templeton 2004). while the exact nature of the relationship between reading and spelling is not clearly defined and understood, there are a number of studies which indicate strong and significant correlations between spelling and reading ability (abbott et al. 2010; caravolas, hulme & snowling 2001; de bree & van den boer 2019; ehri 1997; foorman et al. 1991; georgiou et al. 2020; ritchey 2008). whilst there are few studies which examine the effect of reading on spelling in the african languages found in southern africa, existing studies confirm that reading ability is associated with spelling. for example, nghikembua (2020) reported a significant association between grade 1 reading and grade 2 spelling using a path analysis model in oshikwanyama. given cross-linguistic evidence on the role of reading for spelling in orthographies which vary in transparency (e.g. georgiou et al. 2020), one might expect to find a positive association between reading ability and spelling in other african languages. study 1 method study 1 was exploratory. we used cross-sectional data first reported by daries and probert (2020). participants the participants were 49 (20 female, 29 male; mage = 9.1 years, sdage = 0.7 years) grade 3 children attending one quintile 3 isixhosamedium of instruction school in a small low-income township of the eastern cape of south africa. participants were assessed in the third term of 2019. measures tasks of phonological awareness, oral reading fluency and spelling were developed and administered to the participants. the phonological awareness and spelling instruments used in both studies can be found on the open science framework (osf) (https://osf.io/cesgf/). spelling: the spelling task consisted of 12 real words which ranged from two to four syllables in length (daries & probert 2020). as described in daries and probert (2020), a number of linguistic decisions relating to word frequency, word length in syllables and grapheme complexity, were made in the design of the spelling task. the spelling task was scored using a binary set of codes, that is, correct and incorrect per item. the item scores were summed (max = 12) for each learner. the reliability of the task was 0.95 as measured by cronbach’s alpha (daries & probert 2020). reading: reading ability was measured using a one minute timed oral reading fluency task. oral reading fluency is defined as the ability to read a text quickly, accurately, and with meaningful expression (fuchs et al. 2001; spaull et al. 2020). oral reading fluency is often used as a measure of learners’ reading ability, and is traditionally calculated using a words-correct-per-minute (wcpm) score which reflects both accuracy and speed (spaull et al. 2020). the oral reading fluency task required the learners to read aloud an isixhosa short story from a grade 3 book for one minute. the story iyho! mkhulu lo mnqathe! (wow! a gigantic carrot) was used from the vula bula books and was 102 words long with a mean of 6.8 words per sentence, and 7.4 letters per orthographic word. the errors made during the tasks were recorded and subtracted from the total words the learner attempted to read to provide a wcpm score. the wcpm score was used in the analysis. phonological awareness: phonological awareness was measured using 48 pseudoword items (12 items per condition) at the phoneme and syllable levels using elision and isolation tasks (diemer 2015; probert 2016). pseudowords, ranging from two to four syllables long, rather than real words were used to reduce the influence of semantic information on responses. these tasks were developed in consideration of the linguistic and cognitive complexity appropriate for isixhosa and for grade 3 learners (diemer, van der merwe & de vos 2015). the item scores per task were summed per learner and these total scores were used in the principal components analysis to derive a final score. the reliability of the overall task was 0.92 as measured by cronbach’s alpha. procedures the order of task administration was fixed. the phonological awareness and oral reading fluency tasks were administered individually before the spelling task, which was administered in a group setting. each word of the spelling task was read aloud twice for dictation. task presentation for phonological awareness was fixed so that phoneme subtasks (isolation then elision) were presented first, followed by the syllable subtasks (isolation then elision). data analysis procedures: we used r version 4.04 (r core team 2021) for the analysis. the code is available on osf (https://osf.io/cesgf/). a principal components analysis, using the psych package (revelle 2021), was run on the four phonological awareness indicators to reduce the number of variables in the later analysis. we first specified four factors (one for each measure). there was only one eigenvalue above one, indicating that the data fit a one-principal component model. we extracted the scores of the first principal component for later analysis and labelled this phonological awareness. we used the raw total score for spelling to make it more comparable across studies. to estimate the predictors of spelling at the mean of spelling (research question 1), we used hierarchical linear regression analyses. we ran a series of models first with only the intercept, then added the covariate age, followed by reading, and phonological awareness in the final step so that we could estimate the unique effects of phonological awareness and reading ability, then calculated the change in r2 at each step. the residuals were not normally distributed so we used 2000 bootstrap resamples to estimate the slopes and their confidence intervals. to determine if the slope of phonological awareness for spelling, and the slope of reading for spelling differed by spelling ability level, we fitted quantile regression models using the quantreg package (koenker 2021) in r. quantile regression allows researchers to determine whether the relationship between predictors and an outcome variable depend on the value of the outcome variable, such as whether the outcome variable is low or high (petscher & logan 2014). for example, quantile regression was used by james et al. (2021) to determine whether morphological awareness had a similar contribution to reading comprehension for low-, middleand high-ability students on reading comprehension. the data for study 1 come from a cross-sectional design. to interpret the results of the quantile regression, we argue that students with low scores on the spelling task are at a different developmental level than students who score higher on the task. we interpret the various total scores on the spelling task as reflecting performance that corresponds to different spelling ability levels. thus, we fit the quantile regression to the data at the 10th, 50th and 90th quantiles (as done by james et al. 2021; mcilraith & reading research consortium 2018) corresponding to earlier spelling development, typical spelling development for the sample, and advanced spelling ability, respectively. we determined that quantile regression would best allow us to address the second research question. the interpretation of a quantile model slopes differs slightly from that of linear regression (petscher & logan 2014). it is recommended to use centred variables for the predictors such that zero represents mean ability. at each quantile, then, the intercept corresponds to the value of the outcome at that quantile. the slope of the predictor (let us call it x) should be interpreted as the difference in the outcome between a participant with mean of x and a participant at 1 sd on x (petscher & logan 2014). the confidence interval indicates whether this difference (i.e. slope term) is different from zero. in this study, we performed 1000 bootstrap resamples to estimate the confidence intervals. quantile comparisons are used to statistically test whether the slopes are different at each quantile (petscher & logan 2021). a goodness of fit statistic is also calculated for each quantile (koenker & machado 1999). results the descriptive statistics and correlations among the variables are presented in table 1. visualisations of the spread of the raw data, and assumptions of the linear regression, are presented in the osf project https://osf.io/cesgf/. phonological awareness and reading had moderate to strong correlations with spelling (r above 0.65). age was weakly correlated with spelling and reading, and had a weak negative correlation with phonological awareness (r = -0.35, p = 0.04). we categorised the sample into reading fluency groups using the suggested isixhosa fluency benchmarks for children in grade 3 (ardington et al. 2021, see table a1 in the appendix). in our sample, 31 children (61%) were not reading at the lower fluency threshold of 20 wcpm. 17 children (33%) read within the fluency zone of 20–34 wcpm which was a similar proportion found for isixhosa learners in term 1 of grade 3 (ardington et al. 2021). only one child read above the upper threshold of 35 or more wcpm. the sample includes slower readers than those sampled by ardington et al. (2021). table 1: study 1: descriptive statistics and pearson correlations for phonological awareness, reading, spelling and age. the results of the multiple linear regression and quantile regression are presented in table 2, following, and in figure 1 in the next section. the results were different for each estimation method. at the mean, both reading and phonological awareness were significant predictors accounting for 39.4% and 14.7% of the variance, respectively (see linear regression in table 2). the confidence intervals for reading and phonological awareness overlapped one another, indicating that the slopes may not be different from one another. the trend in the quantile regression results was that the difference in ability on spelling was larger for a participant 1 sd higher on reading (slope = 2.36), than phonological awareness (slope = 1.33) at the 10th quantile, and the trend was reversed at the 50th quantile (reading slope = 0.74, phonological awareness slope = 2.07). however, there was no difference in performance for participants at the mean or 1 sd above the mean on the predictors at the 90th quantile, possibly because the participants at the 90th quantile were perfoming at ceiling level on the spelling task. a quantile comparison test indicated that the slopes did not differ across quantiles, which is confirmed also by the overlap in confidence intervals at each quantile. figure 1: model coefficients with 95% confidence intervals for linear and quantile regressions for study 1 (end of grade 3) and study 2 (start and end of grade 3). (a) linear regression; (b) quantile regression: tau = 0.10; (c) quantile regression: tau = 0.50; (d) quantile regression: tau = 0.90. table 2: study 1: results of linear and quantile regressions of spelling predicted by age, reading and phonological awareness. discussion our first study was exploratory, and examined to what extent phonological awareness and reading predicted spelling at the mean, and at different quantiles of spelling performance, corresponding to low, medium and high performance on spelling. with reference to the first research question, we found that at the mean (linear regression), both reading and phonological awareness were significant (unique) predictors of spelling. with reference to the second research question, the quantile regression presented evidence that the strength of the predictors may differ at different levels of spelling ability, with reading ability leading to larger differences in spelling at the 10th quantile, and phonological awareness ability leading to larger differences in spelling ability at the 50th quantile. at the 90th quantile, the participants were at ceiling levels of performance in spelling. however, given the small sample size, all confidence intervals were wide, leading to the slope differences not reaching significance. study 1 provided evidence that both phonological awareness and reading are significant predictors of real word spelling in this sample, but there was insufficient precision to address whether these relationships do differ by levels of spelling ability. study 2 study 2 was conducted to determine whether the results of study 1 were replicable, and is, therefore, a confirmatory study. based on the results of study 1, and a review of the literature, we hypothesised that we would find similar trends to study 1 in study 2.1 in study 2 we expected that both reading and phonological awareness would be positively associated with spelling for grade 3 isixhosa learners as phonological awareness is a necessary prerequisite for the conversion of phonemes to graphemes, the primary requirement of spelling, across all alphabetically written languages (georgiou et al. 2012). additionally, research has attested to a relationship between spelling and reading (abbott et al. 2010; caravolas et al. 2001; de bree & van den boer 2019; ehri 1997; foorman et al. 1991; ritchey 2008). in addressing the first research question, our null hypothesis (h[0]1) was that there would be no relationship between reading, phonological awareness and spelling, and the alternate hypothesis (h[1]1) was that reading and phonological awareness would be positively associated with spelling. furthermore, we expected that the strength of the relationship between phonological awareness and spelling, and reading and spelling would vary with spelling ability, due to the changes that occur in the development of spelling. at early stages of spelling, reading should play a larger role, with a shift to phonemic decomposition as children become better spellers and then a shift to orthographic and morphemic spelling as children become more accurate spellers (ellis 1994; frith 1985; gentry 1982). the second null hypothesis (h(0)2) was that the strength of the relationship between reading and spelling, and phonological awareness and spelling, would not differ by spelling ability. we had specific alternate hypotheses for each level of spelling ability tested in our models, based on the results of study 1: h(1)2a: reading will have a stronger positive association with spelling, compared to phonological awareness, at the lower end of spelling ability. h(1)2b: phonological awareness will have a stronger positive association with spelling, compared to reading, at the middle of the range of spelling ability. h(1)2c: reading and phonological awareness will not be associated with spelling at the higher end of spelling ability. method we used secondary data from a collaborative literacy intervention project to perform a conceptual replication of study 1. the intervention project focuses on strengthening the isixhosa literacy skills of children in grades 1 to 3 in five schools in low socioeconomic areas in the eastern cape of south africa, as well as the upskilling and capacity building of teachers and literacy ambassadors (classroom assistants). study 2 draws participants from the same population of grade 3 learners in low-income quintile 3 township schools in the eastern cape. all participants attended schools in which the intervention took place i.e. there was no comparison/control group. the intervention results are not of interest to this article and will not be considered further. study 2 differs notably from study 1 in the following ways: phonological awareness was measured using a shorter task, the data was from an intervention project, participants were assessed at the start and end of grade 3, and the participants were sampled in 2021 which is the second year that covid-19 impacted the quantity and quality of education in south africa. participants two hundred participants (104 female, 96 male) were sampled from 12 classrooms (1–28 participants per classroom) and five schools (15–75 learners per school). the participants’ self-reported age at the start of grade 3 was 8.5 years (sd = 1 year) on average. the age difference between the study 1 and study 2 participants represented a large effect, t(247) = 3.97, p < 0.001, d = 0.63, 95% ci [0.31, 0.95]. the study 1 sample reported their age later in the school year (term 3) than the study 2 sample (term 1), so this difference somewhat corresponds to the 7.5 month expected difference in average ages. thus, in terms of school socioeconomic status and self-reported age, the participants were similar between studies. measures study 2 also included tasks of phonological awareness, oral reading fluency and spelling, with some differences addressed here. spelling: the spelling task administered in study 2 used eight of the 12 real words used in study 1. four words were replaced to enhance the complexity of the task as some ceiling effects were identified with the grade 3 sample used in daries and probert (2020). the cronbach’s alpha internal consistency for this task was 0.86. reading: reading was measured in the same way as study 1, with a new text. the story titled uhobe nombovane [ant and dove] was used. this reading passage was 72 words long with a mean of 5.1 words per sentence, and 7.8 letters per orthographic word. phonological awareness: phonological awareness was measured slightly differently in study 2 with regards to the stimuli, number of items and the way the final score was calculated. the stimuli were 12 real words on which participants were asked to perform the same operations as in study 1, i.e. phoneme and syllable elision and isolation. because of the reduced number of items, cronbach’s alpha was lower (α = 0.70). only a total sum score was available in the dataset. the phonological awareness tasks in both studies measured the same construct so their effect on the outcome variable (spelling) can be compared with the following caveats: raw or z scores cannot be directly compared as the tasks are not identical, and the lower reliability of the task in study 2 and the way the final score was calculated means that the final score includes more error compared to true score than in study 1. the effect of the latter is that the relationship between phonological awareness and the outcome will be attenuated (plonsky & derrick 2016). we return to the effect of this difference when interpreting the results of this conceptual replication. procedures the data collection procedures were the same as in study 1, except that data were collected at the start and end of grade 3, whereas for study 1, data were only collected towards the end of grade 3. the dataset was missing 3.1% of data points but under listwise deletion we would lose 69 (34.5%) participants. age and spelling at the start of grade 3 and spelling at the end of grade 3 were the variables with the most missing data. participants who had at least one missing data point had lower reading and phonological awareness scores (small effect size) and lower spelling scores (medium effect size) at the start of grade 3 than participants with complete data, i.e., the data were missing at random. since listwise deletion would drastically reduce the sample size and bias the estimates (woods et al. 2021), we imputed the missing data using predictive mean matching in mice (multiple imputation by chained equations) (van buuren & groothuis-oudshoorn 2011). we imputed 10 datasets with 10 iterations each and saved the final model’s final iteration as the dataset we worked with. the data analysis was similar to study 1, except that we used mixed models to account for the clustering of the data at school or teacher level. we used lme4 (bates et al. 2015), lmertest (kuznetsova, brockhoff & christensen 2017), and lqmm (geraci 2014; geraci & bottai 2014) to estimate these models. using mixed models, we are able to calculate the intra-class correlation (icc) to determine the proportion of variance in the outcome explained by the clustering variable (classroom or school). because we can account for clustering, the standard errors associated with the fixed effects (i.e. variables of interest: age, reading and phonological awareness) are less biased than using analytic methods which do not account for the clustering (theobald 2018). ethical considerations ethical clearance was obtained from the rhodes university ethical standards committee for both study 1 (ru-hsd--2019-0461-452) and study 2 (ru-hsd2020-1195-3307). ethical clearance was obtained from the eastern cape department of basic education for each study. results the descriptive statistics and correlations among the variables are presented in table 3. visualisations of the spread of the raw data, and assumptions of the linear regression, are presented in the osf project https://osf.io/cesgf/. on average, the oral reading fluency of the group was low at the start of grade 3 (m = 12.7, sd = 13.6), and had improved by the end of grade 3 (m = 30.7, sd = 19). there was a large-effect size difference in the reading abilities of study 2 participants at the end of grade 3 compared to study 1, t(247) = -5.29, p < 0.001, d = -0.84, 95% ci [-1.16, -0.52]. there were more learners at or above the threshold of 20 wcpm in study 2 (70%) than in study 1 (37%) at the same point in the academic year. there was no difference for spelling between the studies at the same point in the academic year, t(247) = 0.94, p = 0.348, d = 0.15, 95% ci [-0.16, 0.46]. the phonological awareness scores could not be compared directly because of the different way the construct was measured in each study. the correlations among variables was moderate to strong, which was similar to study 1. the correlation between phonological awareness, and reading and spelling was slightly lower than in study 1, probably due to the lower reliability of the phonological awareness task in study 2. as in study 1, age was negatively and weakly correlated with phonological awareness at the end of grade 3. additionally, the same negative correlation was found for spelling at the end of grade 3 in study 2. table 3: study 2: descriptive statistics, effect-size difference (cohen’s d) to study 1 and pearson correlations for phonological awareness, reading, spelling and age. the results of the linear mixed model and linear quantile models are presented in table 4 and figure 1. first, the intra class correlation (icc) was examined to determine whether school or teacher random effects should be included in the model. the icc for school level was 0.161 at the start of grade 3 and 0.025 at the end of grade 3, and at teacher level the icc was 0.084 at the start of grade 3 and 0.032 at the end of grade 3. we decided to use school random effects at the start of grade 3 and teacher random effects at the end of grade 3 because these levels affected the spelling outcome the most. we then fitted maximal models with varying intercepts, varying intercepts and slopes (uncorrelated) and varying intercepts and slopes (correlated). only the varying intercepts models converged and were used for further analysis. in the final step, we determined the fixed effects by comparing a null model (only the cluster predictor) to successive models adding age, then reading, then phonological awareness. for both timepoints, the model fit improved with the addition of each fixed effect. thus, we report the models using varying intercepts for school (start of grade 3) and teacher (end of grade 3) with all three predictors, in table 4. table 4: study 2: results from mixed-effects models at the mean, and 0.1, 0.5 and 0.9 quantiles at the start of grade 3 (school random effects) and end of grade 3 (teacher random effects). the linear mixed model, which estimated the mean, found that at both the start and end of grade 3, reading and phonological awareness were significant predictors of spelling. the 95% ci for reading at the end of grade 3 (beta = 1.47, [0.9, 2.0]) overlapped with the estimate in study 1 (beta = 1.27, [0.57, 2.14]. the 95% ci for phonological awareness for study 2 (beta = 1.71, [1.2, 2.2]) and study 1 (beta = 2.11, [1.32, 3.14] also overlapped, despite the change in measurement. as expected, the width of the 95% ci was smaller in study 2 because of the larger sample. the 95% cis of the start of grade 3 estimates (reading beta = 2.97, [2.5, 3.5], phonological awareness beta = 0.76, [0.4, 1.2]) did not overlap with those at the end of grade 3 for either study 1 or 2; the reading estimate was much larger, and the phonological awareness estimate much smaller. the linear mixed quantile regression results indicated that participants who had 1 sd higher ability in reading and phonological awareness had a similar increment in spelling score compared to participants at mean of these variables at the 10th and 50th quantiles at the end of grade 3 (table 4). at the 90th quantile, neither were significant, replicating what was found in study 1. the clustering at teacher level accounted for a large proportion of the variance at the 90th quantile (icc = 0.294) compared to the other quantiles (icc = 0.01610th, icc50th = 0.023). the start of grade 3 results established reading as a significant predictor at all three tested quantiles. participants with 1 sd higher on reading had higher scores on spelling than those at the mean at each quantile, with a slightly smaller difference at the 10th quantile. participants who differed by 1 sd on phonological awareness only had higher scores on spelling at the 50th quantile. the school that a participant was in had the largest effect at the 10th quantile (icc = 0.093), than the other two quantiles (icc50th = 0.008, icc90th = 0.014). discussion in the second study, we aimed to replicate the findings of study 1. we found evidence in support of our first hypothesis that reading and phonological awareness are related to spelling ability. these findings were replicated at the mean of spelling where the 95% cis of the estimates overlapped for study 1 and study 2. we also find evidence in support of our second hypothesis. comparing the start and end of grade 3 linear mixed model results in study 2, we found that reading was a stronger predictor of spelling at the lower ability level (i.e. start of grade 3) than at the higher spelling ability level (i.e. end of grade 3). the mixed-quantile regression results partially supported h(1)2a and h(1)2c. at the lower end of spelling ability, 1 sd change in reading lead to larger gains in spelling compared to 1 sd change in phonological awareness. when spelling ability was at ceiling level, neither phonological awareness nor reading were significant predictors. we had hypothesised that phonological awareness would become a stronger predictor of spelling at the mid-range of spelling ability. although it did reach significance at the 50th quantile at the start of grade 3, and the 10th and 50th quantiles for the end of grade 3, a 1 sd change in phonological awareness compared to someone at the mean lead to an increase in spelling scores that was lower than those of similar magnitude to a 1 sd difference on reading. general discussion in the two studies, we examined the relationships between reading, phonological awareness and spelling for isixhosa grade 3 learners. research has confirmed the importance of both reading and phonological awareness for spelling, and in this study, we contribute to the growing body of evidence from languages other than english by using data from isixhosa. additionally, we included a conceptual replication of our own work to determine the replicability of our findings. after running our analyses on a small sample of participants at the end of grade 3, we sought to replicate the analyses using a sample four times larger, and assessed at both the start and end of grade 3. the participants were similar in terms of the schools they attended and their mean age extrapolated to the end of grade 3. the participants’ end of grade 3 spelling scores did not differ between studies, but the study 2 participants had higher reading abilities at the end of grade 3. thus, in most respects, the participants were similar. these two studies indicated that in isixhosa, reading and phonological awareness make significant unique predictions to spelling (research question 1). reading was a consistent positive concurrent predictor of spelling in grade 3. this supports the findings of nghikembua (2020), who reported a significant association between grade 1 reading and grade 2 spelling in oshikwanyama. further this result seems to be in line with the perspective of bear et al. (2004) who explains that reading is the starting point of spelling in that what learners are able to read provides the basis for what they are capable of spelling. when learners read or practise reading they are recognising common letter patterns in words, mapping sounds onto letters and letter patterns which develops their orthographic representations of words necessary for spelling (conrad 2008). phonological awareness was a consistent positive predictor of spelling at the mean of spelling across studies, which is consistent with the findings for herero grade 2 to grade 5 learners (veii 2003), oshikwanyama grade 1 and grade 2 learners (nghikembua 2020) and isixhosa grade 3 learners (diemer 2015). however, its relationship to spelling differed across the spelling ability distribution (research question 2). in the quantile models, phonological awareness was significant at the mid-range of spelling ability (i.e. when the intercept corresponded to raw scores of 5 to 10). in the replication (study 2), phonological awareness’s effect was weaker than reading. this result is similar to what de bree and van den boer (2019) found for transparently written dutch. the difference in the strength of the relationship between phonological awareness and spelling at the 50th quantile in study 1 and study 2 may be due to how phonological awareness was measured in each study, and also possibly due to the study 2 participants having higher overall reading skills at the end of grade 3. overall, these two studies provide evidence for ellis’ (1994) observation that young spellers begin with early attempts at copying whole words (which relies on reading experience) to developing degrees of mastery of the alphabetic principle by using phonetic decomposition (which relies on phonological awareness) to finally develop orthographic and morphemic spelling (which relies on orthographic and morphological awareness) (frith 1985; gentry 1982). the influence of phonological awareness was restricted to the middle of the range of performance. at ceiling levels of spelling performance, neither phonological awareness nor reading were significant predictors, highlighting that other skills, such as orthographic or morphological awareness, may play a role. at the method level, we undertook a conceptual replication of study 1. we did this to address the imprecision in our estimates due to the small sample size, a limitation of many applied linguistics research articles. notably the measurement of phonological awareness in each study differed. the measurement of phonological awareness in study 2 more closely represented how phonological awareness has been measured in the past: a sum score of fewer than 15 items. when summing all items, these items are given equal weight in the phonological awareness construct. reliability is lower in a shorter than a longer test. however, in study 1, a principal components analysis was used on almost 50 items. in principal components analysis, items are weighted based on their contribution to the overall phonological awareness construct, thus providing a ‘truer’ representation of the phonological awareness construct. additionally, longer tests are more reliable. the briefer nature of the phonological awareness task included as a sum score in study 2, compared to a more detailed task converted to a principal components score in study 1 may have led to an underestimation of the role of phonological awareness in study 2. this is a limitation applicable across studies which use sum scores, and tasks with reliability on the lower end. overall, the findings of our study confirm the association found between reading and spelling ability, and phonological awareness and spelling ability in transparent orthographies using cross-sectional data. the strengths of our study included a replication aspect in which similar participants as those in study 1 were sampled at the start and end of grade 3. future studies could sample participants before they begin formal instruction and longitudinally follow their spelling development until grade 3. longitudinal studies can best address how various predictors relate to spelling over the course of development. we did not include additional variables known to affect spelling such as orthographic or morphological awareness (apel 2009; apel et al. 2012), and we included only one indicator variable per construct. future research could include multiple measures of the same construct and use a latent variable framework to better account for measurement error. sum scores are easy to use in practice and to interpret but the sole use of sum scores could lead to an underestimation of effects. as far as possible, researchers are encouraged to share item-level data, not only total summed scores, in their open access datasets which would allow these kinds of latent variable analyses. our findings emphasise the importance of the reading–writing connection. spelling was most related to reading ability, and phonological awareness was associated with spelling at the mid-range of performance. these results suggest that teachers should make sure children know their letter–sound correspondences, can blend these to form words, and can use these skills automatically for fluent reading which may in turn support spelling development. in conclusion, through the use of two studies, we found that reading was a replicable predictor of spelling for grade 3 isixhosa learners and that phonological awareness was influential only at the mid-range of spelling performance. these findings support what has been found for other consistently written languages, adding to the growing body of knowledge of universal predictors of reading and spelling development. acknowledgements the authors wish to extend their sincere thanks to the schools and learners for their generous participation in study 1 and study 2. further, a note of thanks must be given to the rhodes university centre for social development as the implementing partner of the literacy intervention, funded by the volkswagen community trust, for allowing us access to the secondary data used in study 2. we also acknowledge james et al. (2021) for making their code available (https://osf.io/96542/), which we were able to use for the current analyses. competing interests the first and second authors are part of the research team on the literacy intervention from which the secondary data were accessed for study 2. however, the authors have declared that no competing interests exist. authors’ contributions m.d. contributed to the conceptualisation, methodology, writing – original draft, writing, review and editing, visualisation. t.b. contributed to the conceptualisation, writing – original draft, writing-review and editing, supervision. m.s. contributed to the conceptualisation, analysis, writing review and editing, visualisation. funding information study 1 received funding from the rhodes university research community grant fund. the volkswagen community trust funded the project from which the secondary data was used for study 2. data availability the data are available via request from the corresponding author. the 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and study 2. footnote 1. these hypotheses and how they would be tested were pre-registered before the research commenced. the pre-registration is accessible on osf (https://osf.io/gbqx6) and also provides the results of the power analysis undertaken for the linear regression analysis. http://www.rw.org.za open access page 1 of 1 reviewer acknowledgement acknowledgement to reviewers in an effort to facilitate the selection of appropriate peer reviewers for reading & writing, we ask that you take a moment to update your electronic portfolio on https://rw.org.za for our files, allowing us better access to your areas of interest and expertise, in order to match reviewers with submitted manuscripts. if you would like to become a reviewer, please visit the journal website and register as a user. in order to be considered, please email submissions@rw.org.za indicating your intention to register as a reviewer for the journal. to access your details on the website, you will need to follow these 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https://rw.org.za mailto:submissions@rw.org.za https://rw.org.za https://rw.org.za/index.php/rw/user https://rw.org.za/index.php/rw/user mailto:publishing@aosis.co.za entire issue.pdf south african teacher pro�les and emerging teacher factors: �e picture painted by pirls 2006 surette van staden centre for evaluation and assessment, university of pretoria sarah howie centre for evaluation and assessment, university of pretoria abstract: !e progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) assessment is an international comparative study of reading skills of grade four learners. south africa’s "rst participation in the study took place in the 2006 cycle (mullis et al., 2007), with repeat participation planned to take place for pirls 2011. pirls 2006 results pointed to serious issues of under achievement among south african grade four learners, resulting in the adoption of the national reading strategy (department of education, 2008) and the foundations for learning campaign. while some time has passed since the release of the pirls 2006 results, participation in pirls 2011 would highlight trends and possible progress made since the pirls 2006 study. !is paper reports on the analysis of the grade four learner achievement in the pirls 2006 assessment into the teacher characteristics, use of resources and instructional practices and analyses of the pirls 2006 teacher questionnaire data. !e main "ndings outlined by this paper re#ects the need for teachers’ continued professional development at intermediate phase, the need to employ strategies to retain young teachers and the importance of making available good quality reading materials to schools. introduction in the last decade, south african teachers have faced extensive changes to the education system and south africa has successfully produced many policy (including curricula) documents, but has been less successful in implementing them. to add to the di$culties of implementation, there are many di%erences between schools in south africa, and, a&er thirteen years of democratic rule, schools that were previously designated for white learners only are still elite schools compared to those that were previously disadvantaged under the apartheid system. johnson, monk and hodges (2000) are of the opinion that rw& article 48 reading and writing south africa e%ectively still has separate education systems operating within the country in light of the starkness of continuing di%erences in teacher education and educational provision. fleisch (2007) also re#ects on this in his description of the country having two nations. howie (2001) earlier described south africa as containing features of both richer countries and poorer countries with regard to its education system. notwithstanding these continuing variances in education provision, the national department of education views teachers as key contributors to transformation in south africa. in the ‘revised national curriculum statement’ (department of education, 2002), the department presented a vision of teachers who are quali"ed, competent, dedicated and caring. teachers’ roles and functions are seen to include being mediators of learning, interpreters and designers of learning programmes and materials, leaders, managers, administrators, scholars, researchers, lifelong learners, community members and citizens, and assessors and learning area or phase specialists. in the next section, in the light of the above, the literature on teacher e%ectiveness is reviewed, on the assumption that teacher e%ectiveness is a critical component of the education system. literature review on teacher e!ectiveness ongoing concerns about the development of learners’ literacy skills in south africa drive the literacy teaching and learning research landscape. !ese include: concerns associated with school students’ development of basic literacy skills at the foundational levels of education (bloch, 1999, lessing and de witt, 2005); concerns about students’ acquisition of more advanced literacy skills in high school (matjila and pretorius, 2004, pretorius and ribbens, 2005); and concerns about the development of the advanced literate language skills needed for tertiary level education (pretorius, 2002). such concerns are consistently re#ected in local research (see howie et al., 2007). with regards to school-related factors impacting on the reading achievement of learners, howie (2006) reports a number of factors speci"cally related to learners in south african classrooms. !ese factors include inadequate subject knowledge of teachers, inadequate communication between learners and teachers in the language of instruction, lack of instructional materials, teachers’ abilities to manage classroom activities e%ectively and overcrowded classrooms. !ese factors are also highlighted by the department of education (2008). 49surette van staden and sarah howie sailors, ho%man and matthee (2007), in their evaluation of schools that promote literacy learning in low-income communities, summarized the work of a number of researchers (such as weber, 1971, ho%man and rutherford, 1984) who identify themes across e%ective schools that could guide reform e%orts in failing schools that operate in resource-poor environments. !e common themes in these schools that in#uenced learner achievement positively included: a clear school mission, e%ective instructional leadership and practices, high expectations for learners to achieve and perform at their best, a safe, orderly, positive physical environment, ongoing curriculum improvement, maximum use of available instructional time, frequent monitoring of learner progress and positive home-school connections. following their work on high-achieving schools from low-income environments in a sample of south african primary schools, sailors et al. (2007) identi"ed their own set of themes and factors that seem to impact positively on learner achievement. dovetailing with the work of other researchers, they cite the presence of a safe, orderly learning environment as having a positive in#uence on learner achievement. another factor identi"ed includes the presence of strong leadership that guides the school in terms of academic guidance, community relations and shared decision making. in describing teachers as ‘excellent’, a third factor is identi"ed that impacts learner achievement positively, where teachers are characterized as committed, competent, caring and collaborative. a fourth identi"ed factor is that of a shared sense of competence, pride and purpose in schools that function e%ectively in lowincome communities. lastly, community participation and engagement with the school constitutes a factor associated with higher achievement among learners (sailors et al., 2007). classroom teaching for reading instruction needs to be considered as the critical factor in preventing reading problems and must be the central focus for change (moats, 1999). teachers’ acquisition of the teaching skills necessary to bring about the development of literate language competency are critical, (zimmerman, 2008) especially as, in south africa, many assumptions have been largely unquestioned about how to teach reading and writing, which languages to use and what counts as high quality practice in classrooms (bloch, 1999). stoller and grabe (2001) emphasize that the requirements for the development of reading #uency necessitate that teachers as well as curriculum developers determine what instructional options are available to them and how to go about the optimal pursuit of instructional goals in various contexts. 50 reading and writing data sources and analysis !e main data source for this paper is the pirls 2006 database for grade four (mullis et al., 2007). !e pirls 2006 assessment consisted of a reading assessment, and in addition to that, contextual questionnaires that were administered to school principals, teachers, parents and learners. for the purposes of reporting results, this paper utilized the data obtained from the teacher questionnaires, as completed by teachers of grade four learners who participated in the pirls 2006 assessment. data analysis in this paper is limited to examining results of descriptive statistics to grade four learners’ teachers’ responses. !ese results are provided against the background of south africa’s overall performance in pirls 2006 compared internationally, as is reported in the pirls 2006 international report and grade four learner overall performance in particular. south africa’s overall reading achievement compared internationally a total of forty countries and forty-"ve education systems participated in pirls 2006. !e international association for the evaluation of educational achievement (iea) released the pirls 2006 international reading literacy achievement results on 28 november 2007 at boston college in the united states of america. !e results provided overall reading averages achieved by each participating country. !rough the use of item response !eory (irt) scaling, the pirls 2006 average is set at a "xed 500 points with a standard deviation of 100 points. participants’ achievements are therefore placed relative to the international mean of 500. appendix a provides the distribution of reading achievement as taken from the pirls 2006 international report (mullis et al., 2007). internationally, pirls 2006 required the assessment of learners who have had four years of schooling and for most countries this requirement translated to grade four learners. !e south african pirls 2006 study assessed this "rst population of grade four learners, but also included a second population of grade five learners as a national option included in the study. appendix a indicates that south africa achieved the lowest score of the forty-"ve participating education systems. appendix a also indicates that the international report only provides results for south africa’s grade five population. with an 51surette van staden and sarah howie average age of 11.9 years, the south african learner population was the oldest across all participating countries. grade four learners achieved on average 253 points (se=4.6)1, while grade five learners achieved on average 302 (5.6). average achievement for both these grades is well below the "xed international average of 500 points. closest to south africa in reading achievement was morocco, the only other african country that participated in pirls 2006, with a grade four average of 323 points (5.9). according to pirls 2006, south africa had the highest infant mortality rate (53 per 1000 live births), the lowest life expectancy (46 years) and the highest learner-to-teacher ratio of all the participating education systems. in terms of budgetary expenditure on education as a percentage of the gross domestic product (gdp), south africa is ranked average in comparison to the expenditure on education by other countries (howie et al., 2007). south africa’s overall achievement for grade four learners nationally by language !e pirls 2006 reading assessment was administered to a sample of 16,073 grade four learners in all eleven o$cial languages in south africa. it has to be kept in mind that the results for each language are in terms of the language of the test, not home language. children were tested in the language in which they had been receiving instruction for the "rst three years of formal schooling. average achievement scores that are provided here per language are therefore for learners who completed the assessment in the language of the test (the language that should have coincided with the language in which the learner has been receiving instruction for the "rst three years of schooling), and may therefore be di%erent from the learner’s home language. figure 2 indicates that the learners who wrote the pirls 2006 assessment in afrikaans achieved the highest average score of 351.70 (12.04), closely followed by learners who completed the assessment in english (346.82, se=17.46). learners who completed the assessment in african languages achieved well below 300 points, with setswana learners achieving the highest scores, while isindebele and isixhosa learners achieved the lowest average scores at 176.80 (9.02) and 189.97 (6.50) respectively. all south african achievement scores were well below the international average of 500 points. 1 se stands for standard error and refers to the extent of deviation of the sampling distribution from the standard. e.g., where se is given as 4.6, the extent of deviation can be interpreted as small relative to the sample size. note that the numbers in brackets that follow also refer to se scores. !e initials se are le& out a&er the "rst instance for convenience sake, in keeping with common practice in statistical reports. 52 reading and writing figure 2: average achievement according to language for grade four teacher characteristics, use of resources and instructional practices in light of the dismally low reading achievement scores for grade four learners, further enquiry is needed into teacher characteristics, use of resources and instructional practices. !e teachers who taught the grade four south african sample students completed the pirls 2006 teacher questionnaire. !ese teachers had on average "&een years of teaching experience, and, more speci"cally, 6 years (0.4) of grade four teaching experience (howie et al., 2007). in terms of gender, grade four learners were taught by a majority of female teachers at 84.19% with the remaining 15.81% of the sample made up of male teachers. of concern is that there was a very small percentage of young, up-and-coming teachers. only 1% (0.6) of learners were taught by teachers who were younger than twenty-"ve years old, with only another 4% (1.4) being between the ages of twenty-"ve to twenty-nine years (see table 1 below). 53surette van staden and sarah howie while the number of students studying to be teachers is fairly substantial at tertiary teacher education institutions across south africa, the high incidence of teacher attrition rates is problematic. some (o&en white) young teachers prefer to leave south africa for more lucrative teaching positions overseas, or merely choose to leave the profession a&er only a short period of teaching. !e average achievements for grade four learners taught by teachers under the age of twenty-"ve years (461, 52.4) and teachers over the age of sixty years (432, 64.7) were higher than the average achievement obtained for any other groups of learners based on their teachers’ ages (howie et al., 2007). !e two groups of youngest and oldest teachers, whose grade four learners achieved the highest average scores, represent the smallest percentages of grade four teachers for this sample, and this can be seen as a matter of concern. larger percentages of teachers in the remaining age groups achieved the lowest average achievement on the pirls 2006 assessment. table 1 provides a breakdown of average achievement by grade four learners on the pirls 2006 reading assessment categorising the age of their teachers: teachers age n % se average pirls 2006 reading achievement under 25 94 0.93 0.56 461.03 25-29 years 291 3.67 1.40 261.32 30-39 years 5537 36.68 2.90 237.11 40-49 years 6792 41.15 2.86 255.09 50-59 years 2420 17.47 2.33 255.75 60-69 years and older 77 0.11 0.09 432.07 table 1: average pirls 2006 achievement for teachers’ age groups teachers’ formal education and training !e highest percentage of south african learners (41%, 3.7) was taught by teachers with a three-year college diploma. of these learners, 60% (3.2) were taught by teachers with a teaching certi"cation from the former teacher training colleges or were in possession of a post-matric certi"cate (howie et al., 2007). a little over 14% of learners had language teachers who reported to have postgraduate degrees – these learners achieved a higher average compared to those learners whose teachers had no postgraduate quali"cations. when asked about knowledge domains or subject areas of specialization, teachers of grade four learners reported exposure to training that focused 54 reading and writing on language, literature, pedagogy, teaching reading, psychology, children’s language development and second language learning. approximately 50% (3.2) of south african learners had teachers who reportedly received training where second-language learning received major emphasis. amongst special education and remedial reading learners, teachers reported to have little to no training in these areas. for 40% (3.2) of the teachers of grade four learners remedial reading was only covered in an introductory fashion during training, while an additional 39% of teachers reported to have had no exposure to remedial reading at all. given the students’ low achievement in reading literacy and the extent of learner variation at classroom level, the dearth of remedial reading training received by teachers is a cause of concern. instructional materials amongst the teachers of grade four learners, 57% (2.6) reported using textbooks everyday or almost everyday. only 12% (1.8) of grade four learners had teachers who reported using a variety of children’s books for reading instruction every day or almost every day (howie et al., 2007). a notable anomaly was the higher average achievement of learners whose teachers reported to never using textbooks (375.32, 45.9) compared to their counterparts who reported monthly (339.16, 37.53) or daily use of textbooks (235, 5.2). !e reliance on textbooks by a large percentage of teachers of grade four learners must be seen within the context of teaching in many schools in south africa. not only are textbooks o&en the only source available to the teacher as an aide to teaching reading, but the quality of these books is sometimes a concern. anecdotal evidence gathered speci"cally during school visits in rural areas points to the fact that many outdated afrikaans and english textbooks have been handed down to rural schools. in some cases, these books can be found unused on shelves, but equally alarmingly, cases exist where these outdated books are being put to use. in addition, teachers o&en rely on preserving limited resources of textbooks to the extent that learners are not permitted to take these books home for fear of damage or loss. !us, learners’ only exposure to books in poorly resourced schools is o&en only in the form of textbooks, and then only for the limited time the learner is present in class. instructional strategies and activities most children in south african schools are reportedly exposed to certain reading skills only, during the foundation phase (grades 1 to 3), such as decoding strategies and understanding vocabulary. according to pretorius (2002), the 55surette van staden and sarah howie intermediate phase (grades four to six) a%ords learners the opportunity to use reading as a languageand information-processing skill, as learners are largely expected to be able to decode text. at grade four, learners should also begin the switch from learning the ‘lower level’ skills involved in learning to read, and to adapting those skills in order to use reading as a tool to learn. twenty "ve per cent (2.4) of grade four learners in the pirls 2006 report have teachers who engage them daily in decoding strategies, compared to 69% (0.5) of teachers of grade four learners internationally. in terms of time allocated to reading activities in the classroom, more than half the grade four learners (61%, 2.9) had teachers who reported reading aloud to the whole class every day or almost every day. for these learners, this reading is the most prominent activity listed by teachers. of concern is the fact that reading aloud to the class is a teacher-centred approach where learners are only involved passively and where the teacher mostly assumes that learners are able to follow and able to understand what is being read. also of concern are the low frequencies at which learners are a%orded the opportunity to read independently. indeed, 7% (1.7) of teachers of grade four learners indicated that the learners never or almost never engaged in independent reading in class, with only 27% (2.7) reporting reading independently as little as once or twice a month (howie et al., 2007). learner achievement was highest (299.3, 12.5) for those learners’ teachers who reportedly a%orded learners the opportunity to read silently everyday or almost everyday. given the lack of opportunity a%orded to grade four learners to read independently, it would be understandable that the format of the pirls 2006 reading assessment (consisting of reading booklets composed of reading passages for each child individually) might have been an intimidating and alien experience for many south african grade four learners. instructional time despite south african grade four learners’ poor performance in the pirls 2006 reading assessment, the majority of teachers of grade four learners (50.37%, 3.06) indicated that they regarded the reading levels of their learners to be average. only 6.04% (1.72) of teachers reported reading levels to be below average. !e pirls 2006 international report indicates that on average internationally teachers allocated 30% of instructional time to language instruction and 20% to reading instruction (mullis et al., 2007). on average, internationally, grade four learners were taught explicit reading instruction for more than 6 hours a week. teachers’ reports in the south african study reveal that 10% (1.9) of 56 reading and writing grade four learners received reading instruction for more than 6 hours per week, 18% (2.7) for between 3 and 6 hours and 72% (2.7) for less than 3 hours per week. from these data, it becomes clear that south african reports fall far below the international averages in terms of time spent on reading instruction. a third of the learners’ teachers reported engaging in reading instruction every day, but little direct relationship can be found between reported time spent on reading instruction and reading achievement. a multitude of variables in#uence learners’ reading achievement and time spent on reading instruction is not necessarily a stand-alone indicator of the quality of the activities in which learners are engaged. class size and instructional activities !e average grade four class size included in the south african pirls 2006 study was 46 (0.12) learners, the highest of the participating countries and higher than the international average class size of 24 learners. table 2 indicates south african class sizes in comparison to overall average reading achievement: class size % se average achievement 1 10 learners 0.14 00 165.57 11-20 learners 2.89 0.86 277.26 21-30 learners 13.68 1.99 351.13 31-40 learners 27.41 2.52 258.92 41-50 learners 32.87 3.13 235.96 51-60 learners 15.26 1.89 219.30 61-70 learners 3.68 1.13 213.96 71-80 learners 1.20 0.62 176.90 81 learners and above 2.89 1.05 186.39 table 2: overall average achievement in comparison to class size as indicated by table 2, the highest overall average achievement was obtained by those grade four learners in classes with between 21 and 30 students. with more than 40 students per class, achievement drops markedly to as low as 186.39 for learners in classes of extreme sizes of 81 or more children. in terms of reading activities in the classroom, teachers of grade four learners reported most commonly reading aloud to the class when teaching reading 57surette van staden and sarah howie instruction or engaging with the learners in reading activities. figure 3 shows the percentages of activities teachers reported to engage with learners every day: figure 3: teacher engagement in everyday reading activities figure 3 supports "ndings discussed below concerning teachers’ instructional strategies and activities, and illustrates that teachers reportedly spent most time in reading aloud to the class themselves (61%, 2.9). alarmingly, silent reading took place least frequently of all the listed everyday reading activities in this sample of south african classrooms. top performing countries in pirls 2006 report much higher frequencies of silent reading activities, with 84% (2.9) of teachers from the russian federation and 85% (3.2) of teachers from canada, alberta, reporting silent reading as a daily activity. conclusions and implications south african grade four learner-achievement in the pirls 2006 study accentuates the need for reading instruction practices aimed at addressing the di$culties south african learners encounter in both the foundation and intermediate phases. as stated in the international reading association’s (2007: 1) synthesis on their research into teacher preparation for reading instruction “putting a quality teacher in every classroom is key to addressing the challenges of reading achievement in schools. knowledgeable, strategic, adaptive, and re#ective teachers make a di%erence in student learning.” 58 reading and writing !e teacher data presented in this paper indicates the need for intermediate phase teachers’ continuous professional development, as grade four learners’ low overall achievement scores, in relation to teacher quali"cations, suggests that these teachers have not been adequately prepared to teach reading literacy. of concern is the high incidence of low achievement among learners who are taught by teachers aged between thirty and "&y-nine years. !e data highlights the need for strategies to retain the younger demographic of up-and-coming teachers, whilst tapping into the knowledge and experience of teachers closer to retirement and exiting from the system. !e data presented here leads to questions concerning the quality and availability of reading materials and how these are used in the intermediate phase. speci"cally, it seems that more investigation is needed into the quality and content of textbooks and the quality of teaching where textbooks are used as only or main source of reading instruction. while the e%ect of class sizes on reading achievement is illustrated by the pirls 2006 data, of concern is also the little time that is reportedly spent on explicit reading instruction. compared internationally, south african grade four teachers spend on average far less time on frequent reading instruction. coupled with this low frequency of time on task is also the relative low quality of associated reading activities. while the majority of teachers report to spending a lot of time reading out aloud to the class as a whole, the nature of this activity is not an e%ective gauge of the levels of understanding of what is being read, nor does it e%ectively allow for learners to become independent readers. while more interrogation into the pirls 2006 achievement data and questionnaire data is required, this paper provides preliminary evidence of teacher reports about aspects such as the use and availability of resources, and the nature of reading activities and instructional practices that most o&en tend to take place in grade four classrooms around south africa. !e inadequacies of intermediate phase teacher preparation and lack of explicit time spent on reading instruction may well re#ect inadequacies at foundation phase and perhaps even at the pre-primary stage, as well as the lack of pre-primary education, in many cases. references bloch, c. 1999. literacy in the early years: teaching and learning in multilingual early childhood classrooms. international journal of early years education, 7(1): 39-51. department of education. 2002. revised national curriculum statement, grades r-9. government gazette, 443, 23406, may. 59surette van staden and sarah howie department of education. 2008. national reading strategy. pretoria: department of education. fleish, b. 2007. primary education in crisis: why south african schoolchildren underachieve in reading and mathematics. cape town: juta and company. howie, s.j. 2001. mathematics and science performance in grade 8 in south africa 1998/1999: timss r. hsrc report: pretoria. howie, s.j. 2006. multi-level factors a%ecting the achievement of south african pupils in mathematics. in: howie, s.j. and plomp, t. (eds). contexts of learning and science. oxon: routledge, 71-9. howie, s.j., venter, e., van staden, s., zimmerman, l., long, c., scherman, v. and archer, e. 2007. pirls 2006 summary report: south african children’s reading literacy achievement. pretoria: centre or evaluation and assessment. international reading association (ira). 2007. teaching reading well. a synthesis of the international reading association’s research on teacher preparation for reading instruction. newark, de: international reading association. downloaded in march 2008 from www.reading.org. johnson, s., monk, m. and hodges, m. 2000. teacher development and change in south africa: a critique of the appropriateness of transfer of northern/western practice. compare: a journal of comparative education, 30(2): 179-192. lessing, a.c. and de witt, m.w. 2005. an investigation into the early literacy skills of grade r second-language (l2) learners in south africa. africa education review, 2(2): 242-257. matjila, d.s. and pretorius, e.j. 2004. bilingual and biliterate? an exploratory study of grade 8 reading skills in setswana and english. per linguam, 20(1): 1-21. moats, l.c. 1999. teaching reading is rocket science. what expert teachers of reading should know and be able to do. report for the american federation of teachers. item no. 39-0372. downloaded in april 2007 from http://www.a&.org/pubs-reports/ downloads/teachers/rocketsci.pdf. mullis, i.v.s., martin, m.o., kennedy, a.m., and foy, p. 2007. pirls 2006 international report: iea’s study of reading literacy achievement in primary schools. chestnut hill: boston college. pretorius, e.j. 2002. reading ability and academic achievement in south africa: are we "ddling while rome is burning? language matters, 33: 169-196. pretorius, e.j. and ribbens, r. 2005. reading in a disadvantaged high school: issues of accomplishment, assessment and accountability. south african journal of education, 25(3): 139-147. sailors, m., ho%man, j.v. and mathee, b. 2007. south african schools that promote literacy learning with students from low-income communities. reading research quarterly, 42(3): 364-387. stoller, f.l. and grabe, w. 2001. action research as re#ective teacher practice in the context of l2 reading classrooms. tydskrif vir taalonderrig, 35(2&3): 97-109. zimmerman, l. 2008. unpublished phd proposal. phd assessment and quality assurance, faculty of education, university of pretoria. 60 reading and writing appendix a article information author: joel m. magogwe1 affiliation: 1university of botswana, gaborone, botswana correspondence to: joel magogwe postal address: po box 402454, gaborone, botswana dates: received: 19 oct. 2012 accepted: 25 jan. 2013 published: 21 feb. 2013 how to cite this article: magogwe, j.m., 2013, ‘metacognitive awareness of reading strategies of university of botswana english as second language students of different academic reading proficiencies’, reading & writing 4(1), art. #29, 8 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v4i1.29 copyright notice: © 2013. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. metacognitive awareness of reading strategies of university of botswana english as second language students of different academic reading proficiencies in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • theoretical framework • justification • methodology    • participants    • data collection    • the instrument    • procedure    • questionnaire analysis    • interviews • results and discussion • implications • limitations • conclusion • acknowledgements    • competing interests • references abstract top ↑ this study explored metacognitive awareness level of university of botswana students in the faculty of social sciences. it also considered the more recent research focusing on the role of metacognitive awareness in reading and how it relates to proficiency. the following questions are addressed: (1) what are the self-reported reading proficiencies of the university of botswana students? (2) are the university of botswana students aware of their metacognitive reading strategies? (3) what kind of metacognitive reading strategies are frequently used? (4) is there a difference in metacognitive awareness of reading strategies used by highand low-proficiency students respectively? the survey of reading strategies questionnaire (sors) developed by mokhtari and sheorey (2002), and the semi-structured interview technique were used to collect data for this study. the findings indicate that university of botswana english as second language (esl) students reported high reading proficiency and high use of metacognitive strategies, but there was no vast difference in terms of proficiency. students who reported their proficiency as high had an edge over low-proficiency ones mainly because their management and monitoring of reading was guided more by the goals they have set themselves than by the tests and assignments they were supposed to write. introduction top ↑ the importance of the reading skill in academic contexts has made it imperative for second language researchers to find out how students can be helped to deal with academic reading and writing tasks. researchers have explored reading strategies that first and second language (l1 and l2) readers used to compensate for their lack of reading proficiency and what they did to increase reading comprehension (carell, pharis & liberto 1989; mokhtari & sheorey 2002). research also shows that there is a positive relationship between students’ metacognitive awareness of reading processes and their ability to read and excel academically (alderson 1984; carrell 1991; chan 2003; mokhtari & sheorey 2002; singhal 2001 ). to that end, this study explores the awareness level of the university of botswana students as to the use of metacognitive reading strategies. furthermore, it familiarises us with the reading proficiencies of the botswana l2 speakers of the english language, and informs us about the relationship between these students’ reading proficiencies and their use of metacognitive reading strategies. according to chan (2003:177): [p]oor readers score lower than good readers in using all reading strategies, and especially in using sophisticated cognitive and metacognitive strategies … the awareness and the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies are closely related to the efficiency of the reading process. theoretical framework top ↑ much of the early esl reading research provided a theoretical background for studies in this area. for example, psycholinguistic models of l2 reading, such as those by clarke and silberstein (1977) and coady (1979), described reading as an active process of text comprehension in which the reader uses background knowledge and appropriate strategies, such as previewing text, using contextual clues or making inferences. more recent models (carrell 1988; pritchard 1990) have theorised that reading is an interactive process in which readers use their prior knowledge and cultural background to interact with the text. this study follows flavell’s (1979) submission that reading is a cognitive enterprise which occurs as a result of interaction among the reader, the text, and the context in which the reading takes place. furthermore, the reader uses metacognitive knowledge and evokes conscious and deliberate strategies to comprehend the text. according to paris and jacobs (1984:2083), ‘skilled readers often engage in deliberate activities that require planful thinking, flexible strategies, and periodic self-monitoring … novice readers often seem oblivious to these strategies and the need to use them.’ metacognitive strategies are defined by singhal (2001:156) as: … behaviors undertaken by the learners to plan, arrange, and evaluate their own learning. such strategies include directed attention and self-evaluation, organization, setting goals and objectives, seeking practice opportunities, and so forth. in the context of reading, self-monitoring and correction of errors are further examples of metacognitive strategies. the definition and classification of reading strategies is also conceptualised in terms of the classification of language learning strategies by oxford (1990) as cognitive, metacognitive, memory, affective, compensation and social strategies. in line with singhal (2001), within the broader context of general reading strategies, the specific reading strategies are defined as: • cognitive reading strategies used to manipulate the language that include note-taking, summarising, paraphrasing, predicting, analysing and using context clues. • memory reading strategies, which are techniques used to assist the learner to recall information, such as word association and semantic mapping. • compensation reading strategies, such as ‘inferencing’, and guessing while reading, which can assist the learner in making up for reading deficiencies. • affective reading strategies, which include self-encouraging behaviour to lower anxiety, such as rewarding oneself for reading efficiently. • social reading strategies, involving collaborating with peers, for example, to ask questions, seek help or correction and to get feedback while reading. justification top ↑ exploring the use of metacognitive reading strategies and their relation to proficiency is of interest in this study because it reduces the dearth of research in this area. according to singhal (2001), empirical investigations into metacognitive reading strategies used by successful and unsuccessful l2 learners are less common than studies on teaching l2 learners to use a variety of language strategies to read better. carrell (1989) suggests that additional studies of metacognitive factors in l2 reading are needed. in the botswana esl context, no studies have investigated the use of reading strategies and their relationship to reading proficiency. the closest is an exploratory study by magogwe (2005) dealing with language learning strategies of botswana students. exploring the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies should have important implications for developing the botswana students’ reading efficiency. that the university of botswana first year students are required to study the communication and academic literacy skills courses, where reading is one of the skills taught, suggests that the students’ reading of academic materials should be improved. according to mokhtari & sheorey (2002:3), interventions that help students to increase awareness of their metacognitive reading strategies increase their level of engagement when reading english texts. they further posit that it is this awareness that distinguishes skilled from unskilled readers. in light of the above, this study asks the following questions:1. what are the self-reported reading proficiencies of the university of botswana students? 2. are the university of botswana students aware of their metacognitive reading strategies? 3. what kind of metacognitive reading strategies are frequently used? 4. is there a difference in metacognitive awareness of reading strategies used by highand low-proficiency students respectively? methodology top ↑ participants participants of this study were 104 first year students from the social sciences faculty in the university of botswana, studying communication and academic literacy skills. these students belong to three communication and academic literacy classes taught by the researcher. seventytwo point eight percent of these were female and 26.2% male. however, it should be noted that gender was not the main focus of this study. the students were selected through convenience sampling. this is a non-probability sampling technique where subjects are selected on basis of their accessibility and proximity to the researcher. the researcher did not consider selecting subjects that were representative of the entire student population. only students who were willing to complete the questionnaire participated in the study. the university of botswana is the oldest and biggest institution of higher learning in botswana in terms of student population. at this institution, like other institutions of learning in botswana, english is the official language of instruction and reading materials are written in english. botswana is located in southern africa, neighboured respectively by south africa to the east and south, namibia to the west, and zimbabwe to the north. the participants came from different socio-cultural backgrounds, but all shared the botswana nationality. also, their reading aptitude could be regarded as similar if we accept the fact that they have all qualified for admission into the university of botswana, where entry requirements for the social sciences are higher than those of other faculties such as humanities and education. data collection triangulation was used to buttress the findings of this study. quantitative data were collected using a questionnaire. qualitative data were collected using the semi-structured interview technique. mcewan and mcewan (2003) define triangulation as the use of various data-gathering methods. according to maree (2008:39), ‘the purpose of triangulation is to obtain complementary quantitative and qualitative data on the same topic and bring together the different strengths of the two methods’. the instrument the survey of reading strategies questionnaire (sors) developed by mokhtari and sheorey (2002) was used to collect data. the sors was used so that the students could indicate the extent to which they used metacognitive reading strategies. according to mokhtari and sheorey (2002), the sors was designed for use with esl students in high schools, colleges and universities; has been field-tested, and has demonstrated reliability and validity. according to mokhtari and sheorey (2002), the internal consistency reliability coefficient (as determined by cronbach’s alpha) was 0.92 for the global reading strategies, 0.79 for the problem solving strategies, and 0.87 for the problem solving strategies. for this reason, the author found it relevant for assessing university of botswana esl students’ awareness of metacognitive reading strategies. the sors is a 30-item questionnaire using a 5-point likert scale. a score of 5 meant that the student always used a strategy; 4 meant it was used most of the time; 3 meant sometimes using the strategy; 2 meant using the strategy occasionally; and 1 meant the student never used the strategy (mokhtari & sheorey 2002:4).the sors comprised three subscales: global reading strategies or glob, problem solving strategies or prob, and support reading strategies or sup, as presented in tables 2, 3 and 4 respectively. according to mokhtari and sheorey (2002), students use global reading strategies to work with text directly or to manage and monitor their reading intentionally and carefully. problem solving strategies are used for solving problems of understanding that arise during the reading of a text. support reading strategies are used as basic mechanisms intended to aid reading comprehension, for example through note-taking, underlining and highlighting textual information (mokhtari & sheorey 2002). procedure the researcher administered the questionnaires to his three classes as indicated earlier. the students were asked to circle the number that applied to them indicating the frequency with which they used the reading strategy described in the statement. the students took a maximum of 20 minutes to complete the questionnaire in class under the researcher’s supervision. clarification of questions were made by the researcher where and when necessary. questionnaire analysis following mokhtari and sheorey’s (2002) analysis of the sors, frequencies were counted and averaged to determine the types of strategies used by the students. the higher the averages the more frequently the student used the strategy concerned. to explain this further, individual scores from each student were added up to obtain a total score for each subscale and for the entire instrument. the scores were interpreted using the interpretation key provided by mokhtari and sheorey (2002). based on oxford and burry-stock (1995) for general learning strategy usage, mokhtari and sheorey identified high strategies as scoring 3.50 or higher, medium 2.5–3.49, and low 2.49 and below. the usage levels provided a convenient standard for interpretation of the score averages. interviews nine students from those who completed the questionnaire were selected for the oral interview. only those students who had rated their reading proficiency as either very good/excellent or poor were interviewed. this particular selection was done for no other reason than to reduce the number of interviewees. according to guilfoyle and hill (2002), the number of interviewees need not be a problem because the sampling is not done in order to get enough people, but to collect sufficient data. in the discussion section, very good or excellent interviewees are referred to as ‘proficient’ and the poor ones as ‘not proficient’. the content of the interviews, as well as the situation in which the strategies were used, were transcribed and analysed. the interviewees were asked to explain the purpose of their reading and to say what they did to improve understanding while reading. they were also asked to explain what they did if the text they were reading was difficult, and to say what they did when they lost concentration. furthermore, the interviewees were asked to explain what they did to decide on the text to read, and to clarify how they decided on the amount of text to read. they were also asked to elucidate on how they decided which information is or is not important when reading. they were also asked to explain what they did if they did not understand the text they were reading. finally, they were asked to explain at what point they checked their understanding of the reading. results and discussion top ↑ the results of this study are presented first for the sors questionnaire and next for the structured interviews. the first research question of this study sought to examine the self-reported reading proficiencies of the university of botswana esl students in the social sciences. the results show that 15% rated their reading as excellent, 44% as good, 39% as moderate, and 2% as poor. it was explained to the students that reading proficiency meant how good or bad they thought they were at reading academic materials. this means that the majority of the students in this study (59%) thought they were proficient in reading while 41% were either average or poor. it is not surprising that almost all the students in this study claimed to be proficient in reading, probably because they had performed well at senior secondary school. for one to be admitted into the social sciences in the university of botswana one has to have passed english with the minimum of a credit pass. social science entry requirements are usually higher than those of faculties such as education and humanities. for that reason, one could conclude that social science students were generally more competent readers of academic materials. the second research question sought to explore the students’ overall use of metacognitive reading strategies. the overall average score for the sors in this study (m = 3.57) is high following mokhtari and sheorey’s (2002) levels of use as described above. as previously stated, these levels are based on oxford and burry-stock’s (1995) averages for measuring general language learning strategies. overall, 90.3% of the students reported high to medium metacognitive reading strategy use (40.8% high strategy use and 49.5% medium), and only 9.7% low use (see table 1). the findings of this study are consistent with those of mokhtari and sheorey. the social science students were generally capable of effectively planning, monitoring and evaluating their own reading. the third research question examined the kind of metacognitive reading strategies frequently used by all the students. this was done by obtaining the averages of the subscales (global, problem solving and support strategies) in the sors. the scores for the respective subscales were added up and divided by the number of items in each. the average for each subscale in the questionnaire represented the mean frequency with which the learners used a given subscale of strategies when reading academic materials. the sors results demonstrated that 29.2% of the students reported high use (m = 3.97) of problem solving reading strategies. as for the global reading strategies, 40.8% reported medium use (m = 3.42), and similarly medium use of support reading strategies was reported by 28.4% of the students. these findings are interesting because they suggest that, although the students reported high use of overall strategies, they still needed to improve their use of specific strategies as shall be seen below. for this reason they could not, therefore, be regarded as being completely effective readers of academic materials. considering the kind of problem solving reading strategies, the students claimed to have no problems with solving reading difficulties. they indicated that when the text is difficult, they re-read it (strategy 25, m = 4.47); paid close attention to it (strategy 14, m = 4.28); slowly and carefully tried to understand the text (strategy 7, m = 4.11), and tried to regain concentration (strategy 9, m = 4.12). they also, interestingly, controlled their reading speed (strategy 11, m = 3.93); and used visual, guessing, and thinking skills to solve reading problems (strategies 19, m = 3.76; 28, m = 3.65; and 16, m = 3.58). see table 2 for the problem solving strategies subscale. all the above problem solving strategies are reported at high use. regarding support reading strategies, the students reported high use of strategy 10 (m = 4.08), strategy 2 m = 3.78), and strategy 18 (m = 3.76). the students used these strategies to underline and circle information, take notes and paraphrase or restate ideas in their own words. see table 3 for more details on the support reading strategies. given the above, these students qualified as proficient readers because proficient readers aid reading through note-taking, underlining and highlighting textual information (mokhtari & sheorey (2002). to further support the argument that the students were very skillful readers, they reported lower medium use of thinking about information in both english and mother tongue, and translating english into their native languages. in botswana, students are generally discouraged by teachers with regard to using their mother tongue in schools across all levels of education, because english is the official language. in addition, these students reported medium use of reference materials, and asking themselves questions. it could be argued that these students were in the process of acquiring research skills, which include use of a variety of resources, because they were still at the beginning stages of academics. > table 1a: overall strategy usage on the sors for botswana students. table 2: problem solving strategies. table 3: support reading strategies. as far as global reading strategies are concerned, these students reported high use of reading with a purpose, using personal experiences and background knowledge, and reading closely to decide what to take and what to ignore. however, it is important to note that these students reported medium use of strategy 24 (m = 3.23) where they guessed the content of the text when they read, and also medium use of strategy 27 (m = 3.39) where they checked to see if their guesses about the text were right or wrong. it is also worth noting that in this subscale, the students also reported medium use of important strategies such as strategy 20 (m = 2.96), strategy 15 (m = 2.82), and strategy 21 (m = 3.14) where they used typographical features such as bold face and italics to identify key information, tables, figures, and pictures in the text to increase understanding; and to critically analyse and evaluate the information presented in the text. they also reported medium use of reviewing text by noting characteristics such as its length and organisation (strategy 8, m = 2.65). see table 4 for more details of the support reading strategies. as already noted, in the problem solving strategy subscale the students reported high use of guessing the meaning of unknown words and phrases, and from time to time thinking about what they were reading. here in the global reading scale, however, at a medium level, the students guessed the content of the text, and also checked to see if their guesses were right or wrong. it could be argued that the students’ guessing and thinking skills were limited to deducing vocabulary meanings rather than digging deep into the gist of the text to infer, interpret and analyse it. in other words, the social science students were still not yet proficient in terms of critically interrogating the subject matter of academic texts. furthermore, they still lacked understanding of the role of length and organisation, especially when summarising academic materials. the fourth research question compared the strategy used by highand low-proficiency students respectively. the highest overall mean score for strategy use is that of excellent students (m = 3.82), ironically followed by poor students (m = 3.68), then good students (m = 3.56), and moderate proficiency students (m = 3.46) (see table 5). these findings show that the students across all proficiency levels recorded high use of metacognitive strategies. in other words, the difference between these students was not that great. despite the small differences, there are equally important differences to note in the results. students across different proficiency levels mostly recorded medium to high use of strategies. excellent students used strategy 4 (i take an overall view of the text to see what it is about before reading it) at a high level compared to students of other proficiencies who used it at a medium level. the same applies to strategy 24 (i try to guess what the content of the text is about when i read), and strategy 26 (i ask myself questions i would like the text to answer). this is consistent with pressley and afflerbach’s (1995:4) findings that: table 4: gobal reading strategies. more proficient readers overview text before reading it; employ context clues such as titles, subheading, and diagrams; look for important information while reading and pay greater attention to it … ; attempt … to understand the text as a whole, activate and use prior knowledge to interpret text, … , attempt to infer information from the text, … , monitor text comprehension, identify or infer main ideas, use strategies to remember text (paraphrasing, repetition, making notes, summarizing, self-questioning, etc), … recognize text structure, change reading strategies when comprehension is perceived not be proceeding smoothly and so forth.interestingly, excellent students recorded low use of strategy 8 (i review the text first by noting its characteristics like length and organization) compared to students from other proficiency levels’ medium recording. excellent students probably felt that they could handle a text no matter how long it was and how it was organised. it is also interesting to note that strategy 29 (when reading, i translate from english into my native language) was recorded as high only by poor students, whereas moderate and good students recorded it as low and excellent students as medium. a thorough content analysis was carried out on all transcripts of the semi-structured interviews. the main objective in conducting the interviews was to identify the situations where the subjects used metacognitive reading strategies. firstly, the students were asked to state their reading purpose. interestingly, low-proficiency students seemed to read academic materials mainly to gain knowledge, pass tests, get a degree and find a better job. of the four, only one said they read’… something that interests me e.g. in the newspaper. otherwise i don’t read things that do not interest me’. on the other hand, high-proficiency students read for more meaningful purposes and managed their reading quite evidently. they set themselves reading goals; felt bad when they were not reading, and were motivated to read and to remember things that were meaningful to them. for example, this is what they said: student c: yes. i read every day practically. even if i don’t have any objectives i just go to the library to read. i feel bad when i am not reading. i am self-motivated. most of the time i read internet, webct and text books. i also read current news on yahoo. > table 5: strategy use by proficiency. student b: yes. for instance when i go into the library with a goal to achieve otherwise i don’t leave until i have reached my goal. student e: yes. to remember in the long run or in future. i don’t read for tests. student f: yes of course. so that what i am reading can be meaningful to me. at the end of the day i achieve something. student g: yes, i do. i enjoy reading a lot. it is my passion. i like to improve my vocabulary. it stimulates my thinking. i try and figure out words from context. secondly, they were asked to describe what they did whilst reading to help their understanding of the academic material they were reading. here, too, both low-and high-proficiency students used techniques that could support their understanding of academic materials. however, high-proficiency students seemed to have an edge over low-proficiency ones because they went beyond taking notes to improve their reading. low-proficiency students read and answered questions; made rough notes without referring to the text, and summarised the notes, whereas high-proficiency students did more by using pictures, graphs, acronyms and so on to enhance their understanding. specifically this is what high-proficiency students say: student b: i take notes. at times i do pictorial representations depending on what i am reading e.g. when i read economics i use graphics to enhance my understanding. student c: i write down on paper whatever i am reading. i read it many times. i read a maximum of 3 hours a day. student e: i read and close the book and rewrite what i was reading to check my understanding. sometimes i spell out what i am reading. sometimes i use acronyms. sometimes i go out to explain to someone what i am reading. student f: i listen to music while reading. i take breaks and watch comedy or movie. student g: i always have a dictionary. also, if i am reading notes i research on the internet. i ask people. i ponder. thirdly, the students were asked to explain what they did when the text they were reading became difficult. low-proficiency students mainly postponed their reading and sometimes asked other students or lecturers for help. on the other hand, high-proficiency students consulted reference materials such as a dictionary; took a break; asked for help; and avoided thinking too much about their failure. fourth, they were asked to explain how they decide on which text to read. here, both lowand high-proficiency students read what they found to be interesting or needed their attention, and they both used the study timetable to organise their reading. fifth, they were asked to say what they did when they lost concentration. both lowand high-proficiency students stopped reading when they couldn’t concentrate. notably, low-proficiency students became intimidated and ‘[s]ometimes i panic and leave and do nothing;’, ‘[s]ometimes i give up. i’ll probably like study tomorrow or something.’ high-proficiency students, on the other hand, looked for alternatives to allow themselves to relax or refresh, and would later tackle the task head on. for instance they say: student b: i try to relax for 10–15 minutes. i leave whatever i am reading and read or do something else. student c: i listen to music. mostly i study listening to music, it doesn’t distract me. student e: i take time out and read later on. student f: i watch a movie or i read something that will motivate me to go back and read what i was reading. sometimes i think of the purpose of the subject and its benefits. student g: that happens a lot. i try to come back and focus on the task at hand. sometimes i lose concentration. when i have over-read i leave it for a while and come back later. sixth, the students were asked how they decided on the amount of text to read. for both lowand high-proficiency students it largely depended on whether they had achieved their reading objectives. both of them also decided on the basis of their concentration span. seventh, the students were asked to explain what they did to decide as to which information is or is not important when reading. in both cases what the students read was determined by the topic they were supposed to read; test and assignment dates; and the timetable. eighth, the students were asked to describe what they did if they did not understand the text they were reading. low-proficiency students seemed to depend more on asking for help when they did not understand the text. only one of them (student d) revisited the text as he said, ‘i revisit the text. i look for definitions of words’. on the contrary, high-proficiency students were more self-reliant. specifically they said: student b: i just leave it and read some other simpler text to understand. student c: i postpone it. i read many times. but eventually i leave it until the following day. student e: sometimes i spell it out, take time out and revisit it. sometimes i consult. student f: if it’s a subject i do with other people i can ask them. i can discuss with others. i can google it etc. just so that i understand. some people have more experience than i do on that particular subject. finally, they were asked to identify the point at which they checked understanding of their reading. they stopped at the end of the reading task. again they checked their understanding either by way of asking questions or by testing themselves. implications top ↑ the majority of social science students reported in this study were quite capable of using global reading strategies to read academic materials such as books and journals, but they need to be assisted to do so substantially. specifically, the students should be helped where they reported medium use of strategies. lecturers should emphasise skills such as guessing and evaluating content; using typographical features; summarising text; using reference materials; and interrogating text. typically, lecturers should analyse the strategies they should teach and find out in which contexts these strategies should be applied. they should also provide students with opportunities to practise these strategies. according to mokhtari and sheorey (2002:3), teachers can use a combination of direct and indirect strategy training. limitations top ↑ this study is limited by the relatively small sample size used for proficiency. a more reliable larger sample should be used in future to make the results more reliable. also, a study like this should be replicated with different learners from different faculties in the university. self-rating of proficiency may also be limiting in that a more reliable proficiency test was not used in this study conclusion top ↑ this study has provided a picture of the strategies preferred by students in the social sciences at the university of botswana. the findings reported high use of the metacognitive reading strategies consistent with mokhtari and sheorey’s (2002) guidelines. however, the communication and academic literacy skills unit and sister departments of the university of botswana should assist students to become more aware of and increase their metacognitive reading strategies. according to davies (1995), metacognitive strategies involve awareness, reasoning and conscious thought processes about the text read and the understanding gained from it. this study has also helped us to compare strategies used by students across all proficiency levels. more proficient students reported strategies that showed more meaningful and purposeful reading than just reading for tests and assignments. however, the proficiency differences were not that important because these students generally belong to the same bracket in terms of academic competence. the findings of this study have contributed to the growth of research in this area by confirming indeed that more proficient students use high metacognitive strategies. this study recommends additional reading strategy research to compare students from different faculties and genders, especially in the esl context. it may be necessary to follow up the cohort of students used in this study at a later stage to gain more insight into the strategies they use as they progress to higher levels of education. this study supports carrell’s (1989) recommendation that additional l2 studies should establish the relationship between students’ reading abilities and reading performance on a wide variety of tasks. finally, metacognitive reading strategies should be regarded as an opportunity to ‘provide students with knowledge and confidence that enables them to manage their own learning and empowers them to be inquisitive and zealous in their pursuits’ (paris & winograd 1990:22). acknowledgements top ↑ i would like to thank my com 151 class of 2012 who agreed to participate in this study. my sincere gratitude goes to dr tsaone mokgwathi who, despite her busy schedule, agreed to edit this article. last but not least, i thank the communication and study skills unit lecturers who attended my seminar in which i presented this article for their useful comments. finally, thank you to my god jehovah. competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationship(s) which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this paper. references top ↑ alderson, j.c., 1984, ‘reading in a foreign language: a reading problem or a language problem?’, in j.c. alderson & a. uruquhart (eds.), reading in a foreign language, pp. 1–227, longman, new york.carrell, p., 1988, ‘interactive text processing: implications for esl/second language reading. classrooms’, in p. carrell, j. devine & d. eskey (eds.), interactive approaches to second language reading, pp. 239–259, cambridge university press, new york. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524513.023 carrell, p.l., 1989, ‘metacognitive awareness and second language reading’, the modern language journal 73(2), summer, 121–134. href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1989.tb02534.x carrell, p. l., 1991, ‘second language reading ability or language proficiency?’, applied linguistics 12, 159–179. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/applin/12.2.159 carrell, p.l., pharis, b. & liberto, j., 1989, ‘metacognitive strategy training for esl reading’, tesol quarterly 23, 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child development 55, 2083–2093. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1129781 paris, s.g. & winograd, p., 1990, ‘how metacognition can promote academic learning and instruction’, in b.f. jones & l. idol (eds.), dimensions of thinking and cognitive instruction, pp. 15–51, erbaum, hillsdale, n.j. pressley, m. & afflerbach, p., 1995, verbal protocols of reading: the nature of constructively responsive reading, erlbaum, hillside, n.j. pritchard, r., 1990, ‘the effects of cultural schemata on reading process strategies’, reading research quarterly 25, 273–295. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/747692 singhal, m., 2001, ‘reading, proficiency, reading strategies, metacognitive awareness and l2 learners’, the reading matrix 1(1), 1–23, available from www.readingmatrix.com. about the author(s) janet l. condy department of education, faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa citation condy, j.l., 2022, ‘from the editors’ desk: reading & writing journal volume 13 (2022)’, reading & writing 13(1), a403. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v13i1.403 editorial from the editors’ desk: reading & writing journal volume 13 (2022) janet l. condy copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. the reading & writing journal proudly presents to you volume 13: 2022, an accredited publication in south africa (dhet, scielo and scopus). this journal is unique in the sense that it explores how literacy is defined, enacted and promoted in a range of institutional, socio-cultural and disciplinary contexts. in this volume is discussed the teaching of literacy in both the foundation phase and intermediate phase in particular: the teaching of comprehension, reading and developing language as an instrument for creative and critical thinking, as well as storytelling and teaching educators about literacy. with regard to the submissions, the following are interesting subjects: ‘the contributions of reading and phonological awareness for spelling in grade three isixhosa learners’. ‘female gender representation in selected south african magazines’. ‘remixing storytelling across modes’. ‘semantic waves and their affordances for teaching scaffolding to pre-service teachers’. ‘factors affecting grade 6 learners’ reading performance in a rural school in maluti, south africa’. ‘literacy matters in sustainable livelihood development among refugee adults in south africa’. ‘pedagogical choices to integrate theory and practice: conceptualisation and insights for literacy teacher education’. ‘five grade 7 learners’ understanding of comprehension skills at a quintile 5 school in south africa’. ‘learners’ reading between the signs in the english second-language classroom’. the editorial group of the reading & writing journal would like to extend their thanks to all the authors and reviewers (national and international) who have worked hard to make this a stimulating and thought-provoking publication. entire issue.pdf sociocultural theory and blind taste-tests james paul gee mary lou fulton presidential professor of literacy studies, arizona state university in his entertaining 1986 book, !e real coke, the real story, !omas oliver tells the story of the now infamous “new coke”, a story retold in malcolm gladwell’s (2005) best-seller blink. in the early 1980s, pepsi began running commercials in which people took a sip from two glasses, not knowing which was coke and which pepsi. !e majority preferred pepsi. !e coca-cola company replicated these blind taste-tests and found the same result. losing market share, coke—long the dominant brand—changed its old formula and came out with “new coke”, a soda made to a new formula, one that in a new round of blind taste-tests came out above pepsi. but new coke was a disaster. consumers hated it. coke not only returned to its old formula, but pepsi never did overtake coke, which remains today the dominant brand world-wide. in a sip test, tasters don’t drink an entire bottle or can of soda—they just take a sip of two or more di"erent brands. it turns out that if you ask people, not just to take a sip, but to take a case or two of each drink home for a few weeks, you o#en get a di"erent result. taking a sip of a drink and drinking a whole bottle or can are di"erent experiences— sometimes, for example, the $rst sip is sweet, but the whole bottle is, by the end, cloying. furthermore, people report their taste preferences di"erently when they are drinking at home, in front of their tv, than they do when they are drinking in a lab under arti$cial conditions. !ere’s also this problem: though we do not usually think of the package something comes in as part of its taste, it turns out that people reliably say things taste better or worse based partly on how they are packaged. gladwell (2005: pp. 160" ) points out that people think yellow margarine tastes better than white margarine, even if they are tasting the same margarine with di"erent colorings. people report that a given brand of brandy tastes better when they see it in a better looking bottle. !is is so because people transfer impressions they have about the packaging of a product—or aspects of the context in which they use the product or with which they associate the product—to the product itself, for example, to its taste. !ere is nothing “unscienti$c” about a sip taste—it’s a nice controlled sort of study of a rather classic sort. but it is misleading, in the case of the new coke 1 *!is opinion piece and other writings on literacy and language studies can be read at the author’s website. see http://jamespaulgee.com rw& opinion 84 reading and writing disastrously so. to truly know people’s preferences you need to know how the product is situated in, placed within, the lived social practices of the person and his or her interpretations of those practices. !at is what the new coke story has to tell us about assessing people’s preferences. a sociocultural view of human language, learning, and mind takes the same view of people’s talents (gee 1992, 2004). to fairly and truly judge what a person can do you need to know how the talent (skill, knowledge) you are assessing is situated in, placed within, the lived social practices of the person and his or her interpretations of those practices. like sip tests, many a standardized test is perfectly “scienti$c” and useless— and, perhaps, worse, disastrous. !e lived practices and interpretations of a person are, of course, social and cultural, but not (just) in the sense that something as big as a “culture” (e.g., “americans”, “africanamericans”, “native-americans”, “russians”, “the chinese”, etc.) has trait “x” or property “y” for which we must adjust and adapt, though, of course, when such things are true, they are well worth adapting for. lived practices and interpretations are social and cultural in the sense that we only understand them if and when we study them in terms of the sorts of thick descriptions of webs of signi$cation that cli"ord geertz called for (geertz 1973). say, for instance, you want to know, not whether someone can decode print, but whether he or she can read school-based (“academic”) language (for instance, 8th grade science). now you do not want to give them a sip test of reading as decoding and the assignment of rather literal meanings to texts. rather, you want to know how such reading is or is not situated in speci$c (“academic”) practices, forms of life, and interpretations for this person (gee 2004). but you need to know, as well—at least if you want to be fair and just— whether this person has ever had the opportunity for such reading to become embedded in a lived practice with which he or she has become “at home”. if such “academic language” is only something the person has sipped out of any real context of use, value, and meaning, but never taken home by the case, then no fair judgment of that individual’s talent in this respect is available. references gee, j. p. 1992. !e social mind: language, ideology, and social practice. new york: bergin & garvey. gee, j. p. 2004. situated language and learning: a critique of traditional schooling. london: routledge. gladwell, m. 2005. blink: !e power of thinking without thinking. new york: little, brown. geertz, c. 1973. !e interpretations of cultures. new york: basic books. oliver, t. 1986. !e real coke, the real story. new york: random house. article information author: lone ketsitlile1,3 michelle commeyras2 affiliations: 1communication and study skills unit, university of botswana, botswana2language and literacy education department, university of georgia, united states of america 3communication and academic literacy, botswana international university of science and technology, botswana correspondence to: lone ketsitlile postal address: private bag 0022, gaborone, botswana dates: received: 16 may 2013 accepted: 31 july 2013 published: 15 dec. 2014 how to cite this article: ketsitlile, l. & commeyras, m., 2014, ‘reviewing published information on reading in botswana secondary schools’, reading & writing 5(1), art. #35, 10 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v5i1.35 copyright notice: © 2014. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. reviewing published information on reading in botswana secondary schools in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction    • the botswana context    • methodology and method    • document collection    • document selection    • document analysis    • reading and secondary schools    • 1977 national commission on education    • 1994 revised national policy on education    • intensive reading    • extensive reading    • reading across the curriculum    • reading in a foreign language and multiculturalism • summary    • recommendations • conclusion • acknowledgements    • competing interests    • authors’ contributions • references abstract top ↑ the main purpose of this review on published information on reading in botswana schools is to seek ways of providing instruction and assessment that result in children becoming proficient readers. botswana has made impressive progress in literacy growth since independence. however, a lot still needs to be done if literacy is to become all that it needs to be in the lives of the youth. one conclusion from this review is that there is an urgent need in botswana to teach reading in ways that meet the needs of all students, especially those from khoesan-speaking backgrounds. there is also a clear mismatch between policy and practice in the teaching of reading and this greatly disadvantages the students. two important recommendations emanating from this review are, firstly, the teaching of reading should be linked more explicitly to that of writing; secondly, the ministry of education and concerned stakeholders need to encourage a marriage of policy and practice in the teaching of reading in botswana. introduction top ↑ in 2007 the authors were awarded a grant to conduct a review of the languages of literacy education in botswana. that review was used, in part, for a case study the co-author completed on san junior secondary students’ understanding of literacy in school and at home. the initial review has made possible this more focused examination of reading education in secondary schools. our interest has been that of educators who seek ways to provide instruction and assessment that result in children who become proficient in reading printed materials to achieve their personal and academic goals. the definition we shared in conducting this review is that reading is constructing meaning through a dynamic process that involves the reader, the text and the context. theoretically this definition represents three influences: (1) anderson and pearson’s (1984) schema-theoretic view of reading, (2) rosenblatt’s (1969) transactional theory of reading and (3) goodman’s (1967) psycholinguistic explanation of reading. we also shared a critical theoretical stance in doing this review of literature because we seek transformations in the teaching of reading in primary and secondary schools that will result in reading education that promotes individual learner needs, diversity, multiple literacies and multiculturalism. we agree with kellner (1989:8) that ‘critical theory is boundary-crossing and mediating, bringing together various dimensions of social life in a comprehensive normative and historical thinking’. the botswana context botswana was once called bechuanaland. it is a landlocked country that shares borders with south africa, namibia, zambia and zimbabwe. bechuanaland became a british protectorate in 1885 and remained so until independence in 1966. the protectorate was established when chief khama iii of the bamangwato, chief gaseitsiwe i of the bangwaketse and chief sechele of the bakwena accepted the 1890 order of council that recognised nine chiefs who would rule their people under the ultimate power of a british high commissioner. this was a means of gaining protection from the aggressions of the boers in south africa. in 1966, when botswana declared independence, it was considered to have one of the lowest literacy rates in the world (youngman 2002). education became a major development priority. the government chose to retain british english as the official language of the country, whilst setswana, the language spoken by eight tswana groups, became the national language. setswana was accepted as the medium of instruction for the first two to three years of primary school; thereafter, english is supposed to be the medium of instruction. educational development in botswana can be attributed to two major educational policies: the 1977 national commission on education report and the 1994 revised national commission on education report. the 1977 report, ‘education for kagisano’, was the brainchild of the first president, sir seretse khama. kagisano was a philosophy of education based on four pillars: 1. democracy 2. development 3. self-reliance and unity 4. social harmony. the policy also focused on increasing access to education. a 9-year basic education system was the goal, with setswana as the medium of instruction for the first two to three years and thereafter english was supposed to be the medium of instruction. in 1994 a revised national policy of education (rnpe) was issued. a 10-year basic education programme became the goal. in that programme, students would develop critical thinking and problem-solving capabilities whilst also developing their awareness of literacy. this included developing speaking and writing proficiencies in english, setswana and a third language. these and other goals were to be pursued whilst also acquiring knowledge and appreciation for the different languages, traditions, songs, ceremonies, customs and social norms in botswana society. the schools of independent botswana are government, government-aided, or privately funded institutions; the government’s goal is that all botswana children should attain the minimum level. children are expected to learn to read and write in setswana and english in the first three years of primary school. at the end of seven years of primary education all students sit for primary school leaving examinations (psle) in mathematics, english, science, social studies, agriculture, religious and moral education (rme) and setswana. those who pass can proceed to junior secondary level and, thereafter, to senior secondary school. junior secondary school is three years (forms 1–3) and students are assumed to be bilingual in english and setswana even if their mother tongue was another language. senior secondary school is two years (form 4–5). botswana has conducted two national surveys of literacy (in 1993 and 2004); yet there is no equivalent term in setswana for the english word ‘literacy’. this presented ketsitlile (2009) with a challenge when she interviewed students in setswana about their literacy practices. to ask the students about literacy ketsitlile said, ‘o tlhaloganya go nna le kitso kana go itse ele eng?’ [what do you mean by knowing or to know?]. there are words for reading and writing in setswana, which is important for those conducting interviews in setswana. to read is ‘go bala’ and to write is ‘go kwala’. the 2003 survey found that 81% of adults over 15 years old could read and write in english and setswana (hanemann 2005). this was a significant increase from the 1993 survey, which found 69% of the same population to be literate (commeyras & chilisa, 2001). most students (99%) make the transition from primary to secondary schooling (lee, zuze & ross 2005). advancement from junior secondary to senior secondary has increased over time. in 2006, 61% of students went from primary to junior secondary school (molowisa 2007). these results are tempered by the increasing awareness of and attention paid to a high rate of failure and school dropouts, especially amongst those known as remote area dwellers. remote area dwellers are socio-economically marginalised people; they lack access to basic services and facilities and live outside recognised villages. the education gap for remote area dwellers is evident in the results of the second national literacy survey jointly conducted in 2003 by the department of non-formal education and the central statistics office. the literacy rates for those living in gaborone, francistown, lobatse, selibe phikwe, orapa, jwaneng and sowa town were between 92% and 98%, whilst those living in kweneng west, ghanzi, ngamiland west, kgalagadi north, kagalagadi south and central boteti had literacy rates below 70%. there are some 64 recognised remote area dweller settlements located in these seven districts: central, ghantsi, kgalagadi, kgatleng, kweneng, northwest and southern. the remote area dwellers are those who speak khoesan and other languages such as wayei, bambukushu, herero, amongst others. they are the educationally disenfranchised citizens of botswana. efforts to understand the san’s experiences with schooling have been made (hays 2002; pridmore 1995). for example, ketsitlile (2009) conducted research with san students in a junior secondary school. at first they told her that literacy was getting good grades in school, but when they knew her better they talked about literacy as being proficient in anything that conveys an important message. for them this meant storytelling, dancing, games, riddles and knowing the medicinal properties of plants. methodology and method the disparities in literacy rates amongst districts in botswana and educational disenfranchisement of the san people and other minorities led us to think about this review from a critical theoretical perspective. critical education theory is rooted in marxist ideology (apple 1996; giroux 1983; maruatona 2002). marxist ideologists believe in a critique and reformation of education. the marxist school of thought offers alternative theories and practices for education. it strongly denounces the established bureaucratic and elite ideologies and pedagogies that perpetuate the status quo and further result in people becoming imprisoned in capitalist ideas and ideals. this is denying people the right to social transformation by forcing curricula, ideologies and pedagogies of those in power. there is some literature in formal schools and non-formal settings to corroborate the latter (bowles & gintis 1976; freire 1972; freire & macedo 1995). gramsci (1971), for example, was against italian education and culture that represented the ideas of the elite as dominant in society. he called for ideologies that would address the oppressive pedagogies in schools and called for pedagogies that promote democratic social transformation and development of individuals in italy. in africa, julius nyerere (1968) came up with ‘education for self-reliance’ in tanzania to localise the curriculum and call for african teaching methodologies to be used in formal schooling. the perception at the time of its formulation in 1967 was that western forms of education had caused much damage to african traditional ways of learning and teaching and therefore needed to be de-emphasised (semali 1999). colonial and post-colonial educational systems, curricula, pedagogies, and specifically the teaching of reading in botswana, were designed for the promotion of functional literacy amongst its citizens. missionaries such as david livingstone taught some people to read and write so that they could read the bible and spread christianity (landau 1995; schapera 1961). with time, batswana (people of botswana) wanted an education that went beyond what the missionaries offered, but what they got was an education that met the needs of colonial administrators (mgadla 2003). after botswana gained independence from britain in 1966, the teaching of reading was constructed to develop a workforce that would gain reading and writing skills almost exclusively for the labour market. in botswana, what is needed is reading pedagogies to meet the needs of diverse students. we agree with dewey (1995) that there is a need to teach for democracy, specifically for this review, the teaching of reading as part of a democratic process in primary and secondary schools in botswana. it is time we do away with the traditional teaching of reading in favour of pedagogies that are suited to the needs and aspirations of the society and age we live in. hence, it is important for the teaching and learning process to educate the educator too. for example, cervero & wilson (1994) note that educational planners should be front runners in representing those disadvantaged in the curriculum development, program planning, teaching and selection of texts. planners need to use their technical and political astuteness to overcome any form of oppression, cultivate an invaluable culture of resistance and counter hegemonic strategies that will thwart our efforts towards democracy in education, specifically meeting the needs of the students in the teaching of reading in botswana (youngman 2000). given the differences in literacy attainment between districts, we are compelled to embrace critical pedagogy because it ‘places the experiences of the oppressed at the centre of the teaching learning universe’ (maruatona 2002:89). consequently, the teaching of reading in botswana should be student-centred and accord them a voice. this agrees with the current communicative language approach syllabi in botswana schools. according to freire (1972), an emancipatory education is called for in schools to raise the consciousness of individuals to enable them to effectively participate in classroom interactions. document collection the literature for this review was collected over a period of years (2007–2010). initially we conducted searches of databases including dissertation abstracts, eric at ebscohost, jstor and web of science. we searched with the terms and limiters (read*, literacy, literate or illitera*) and (botswan* or batswan*). throughout the four years we periodically used google scholar to search for ‘botswana and reading or literacy’. at the university of botswana we made use of the botswana collection, where at least one copy of every document published in botswana is archived. it was here that we could read documents that we had identified whilst mining the bibliographic references in dissertations and published papers. also at the university we met with key informants, including professor herman batibo and professor lydia nyati-ramahobo. the writing of this review was informed by more literature than appears in the final list of references. we sought to learn as much as possible about the status of reading specifically and print literacy development across time. for archival purposes we have created an internet site on botswana literacy to share the full spectrum of documents that informed this review (commeyras n.d.) and will inform our continued interest in the topic. document selection most of the documents of interest to us pertained to the teaching of reading in secondary schools because we were aware that others have done a great deal of scholarly writing on adult literacy in botswana (maruatona 2001, 2002; maruatona & cervero 2004; youngman 2000). notes were taken on the documents that reported empirical studies that were explicitly about reading instruction or students learning to read. information about participants, location, procedures, findings and implications were systematically noted. similar information was taken from empirical studies that addressed related concerns such as code-switching in the classroom (arthur 1996; mokgwathi 2010), public library readers (matenge 1984) or family literacy (mathangwane & arua 2006). we also took notes from non-empirical literature when it provided additional information related to findings from across empirical studies. document analysis the notes for each level of schooling were analysed to find instances of factual congruence or differences. this was an important step in our process of writing about what was disputed or undisputed knowledge in the current literature on reading in botswana. foremost in our minds throughout our document analysis was our intention to provide an account of what could be said about the status of reading education across time if one had read the extant literature.writing from the notes and from the documents themselves was also part of our analytic process. as proposed by commeyras and inyega (2007), writing is a useful method of inquiry and analysis when conducting comprehensive literature reviews. we engaged in a recursive process in which our writing led to rereading or seeking additional information to taking notes to writing anew. this process works well with multiple researchers because we serve as a reliability check on the accuracy and clarity of the information retrieved from the documents. reading and secondary schools student performance on the 2009 examinations sets the stage for our review of what has been written about reading education in junior and senior secondary schools. only fourth quarter of students got a grade of c or better on the english (26%) and setswana (25%) subsections. as for students completing senior secondary school, there was a significant difference in performance on english and setswana. almost half of the students (47%) earned a c or higher on the setswana section whereas not quite one-fifth of students (19%) earned a grade of c in english language usage (botswana examination council 2009). 1977 national commission on education botswana was considered to have one of the lowest literacy rates in the world when it became independent in 1966 (youngman 2002). there were only nine secondary schools at the time (prophet 1990). in 1976 botswana had 32 secondary schools with an enrolment of 13 991 students. at the 10-year anniversary of independence, a major survey was conducted on students’ reading ability as it related to their school textbooks (hamblett 1977). most of the textbooks being used were written for students whose first language was english. the survey, sponsored by the ministry of education, consisted of four sections: inferential reading comprehension, reading speed, textbook readability and personal reading habits. three tests and a questionnaire were administered to a sample of 450 secondary school students from 15 government and grant-aided schools. approximately 90 randomly selected form-1 students were included. to assess inferential reading comprehension, students took a 100-item multiple choice test designed by science research associates. the test had been validated in a pilot study. the batswana students’ results were compared with those of american students because english was the language of instruction in all secondary schools and was to some extent used for instruction in primary school standard 4 – standard 7 [grade 6 – grade 9]. there was an expectation that by form-4 and form-5 the batswana students would be performing more like native speakers of english; however, as seen in table 1, there remained a difference of about 20 points on the mean score between the batswana and american students across the five levels of schooling. table 1: the 1976 results of reading for understanding placement test. hamblett (1977) also tested students’ rate of reading in relation to comprehension. as shown in table 2, the number of words read per minute in relation to their comprehension was poorest in form-1 but with each succeeding school year there was improvement in both reading rate and comprehension. table 2: results of the test of reading speed. the readability of 70 textbooks and other materials used in the schools was analysed by hamblett (1977) using fry’s readability formula and a cloze test. the cloze tests were about 200 words long with every 10th word deleted, excluding numbers and proper names. only exact words filled in were counted as correct and students were given as much time as they needed to finish. the passages were taken from textbooks on a list approved by the ministry of education and other texts frequently used in schools (most published outside botswana). student performance was scored as ‘independent’ with 51% correct responses, ‘instructional’ with 38% – 50% correct and ‘frustration’ with 0% – 37% correct. the results showed that few textbooks were at the students’ independent reading level and over half the books were at their frustration level. hamblett (1977:15) concluded that ‘students’ comprehension levels are low, even for students whose medium of instruction is a second language, and that they lack of familiarity with content registers’. she acknowledged that teachers would have to provide intensive instruction to make up for the fact that students were reading materials that were too advanced given their reading abilities. hamblett (1977) compared the reading levels of students with the levels of the textbooks by superimposing the scores on the inferential comprehension placement test on fry’s graph based on usa grade equivalents. she found that the average reading levels of students in form-1 (grade 8) through form-3 (grade 10) were at the mid-primary level. the average reading level of form-4 (grade 11) and form-5 (grade 12) students were at the upper primary level on fry’s index. the readability of the textbooks was above the upper primary level, which means students were being expected to read materials that were too difficult. this discrepancy is not surprising given that at this time it was typical to find textbooks and curricula being used that were not designed for students for whom english was a second or third language. hamblett’s (1977) overall conclusions were that most students have weak reading skills and most of their textbooks are above their reading abilities. in form-1 to form-3 (grade 8 – grade 10), the difficulty seemed to be one of poor comprehension: the inability to recognise the main ideas and details or even recall enough to draw valid conclusions. in form-4 and form-5 (grade 11 and grade 12), the difficulties were attributed to weak inferential comprehension and slow reading rates. it was recommended that practice and instruction in reading comprehension be intensified, teachers should be given in-service training on teaching reading, students’ oral reading should be limited to the study of poetry and drama, there should be more use of classroom and school libraries for pleasure reading at all levels, and the set books exam paper at the junior certificate level should be re-evaluated. another source of information on the status of reading in schools is the secondary curriculum task force report (republic of botswana, 1977). a nine-member panel chaired by frank jeffery (molefi secondary school) focused on english in the curriculum. the panel concluded that using english as the language of instruction was causing students to need intensive remedial instruction. the report pointed to several shortcomings with regard to reading education in junior and senior secondary schools: • too much oral reading by the class as a group with little attention to comprehension (pp. 5–26). • student dependence on the teacher for reading and explaining content (pp. 5–27). • not enough attention to reading speed to aid comprehension (pp. 5–24). • not enough guidance on how to select books for independent reading from class libraries (pp. 5–24). • school library facilities vary widely from those such as gaborone secondary school that are well stocked and cataloged versus ramotswa private secondary school with no library materials (pp. 5–29). in 1988 the ministry of education initiated the botswana teacher, classroom and achievement study to evaluate efforts to improve teaching practices. a sample was drawn in 1989 that included 350 teachers, 9000 students in 44 junior secondary schools. a team of researchers observed the teacher four times over two years (1989–1990) and the literacy and numeracy skills of students were also assessed four times. fuller’s (1992) analysis of the 1989 data emphasised the following findings: 1. teachers spent lots of time talking to pupils. less than three questions were asked by the average teacher in a ten-minute period. 2. few instructional tools were used although they were available. 3. the range of cognitive demands on students was limited. in just one-fifth of all class periods teachers assigned some writing. 4. teachers mostly spoke in english whereas setswana is the lingua franca of the country. 5. teachers did vary the organisation of lessons and interaction with pupils to some degree, although lecturing, oral recitation, close-ended questions and written work at the end of lessons were the typical modes of instruction. (n.p.) fuller and snyder (1991) also published some findings related to reading and writing from the botswana teacher, classroom and achievement pilot study. observations made of 154 junior secondary school teachers on three occasions for 40 minutes supported the view that pupils spend most of their time listening and little time reading and writing. for example, pupils were observed using a textbook only 11% of the time and reading another book or text 1% of the time. reading and writing is interrelated, so it also of concern that pupils were observed writing essays 1% of the time. the observers found that more than half of the time was taken up with pupils listening to teachers in lecture mode; that accounted for 69% of the time. these findings indicate that in addition to the challenges of learning in english, the students were not given enough time to even engage in reading and writing to become more proficient. 1994 revised national policy on education the only reference to reading specifically in the 1994 revised national policy on education (rnpe) (republic of botswana 1994) appears in rec. 49 [para. 5.10.47]. the recommendation was for the ministry of labour and home affairs to develop a national book policy to promote ‘a culture of reading amongst batswana’ along with promotion of local book production. references to ‘literacy’ appear a number of times in the rnpe but never specifically with regard to how reading and writing will be taught in secondary school, although in the 1995 english syllabus for junior secondary school students reading objectives are included. students were to learn to read a range of literature, including non-fiction for leisure, interest and general knowledge. teachers were directed to teach comprehension strategies, including differentiating explicit from implicit meanings, making predictions, and sharing understandings with others. furthermore, critical reading was included through teaching students to distinguish between fact and opinion, interpret evidence from varied texts, and make informed judgments. these reading objectives were to be achieved through intensive and extensive reading. intensive reading is academic and calls for reading slowly and carefully, paying attention to each word and every idea, whereas extensive reading is about reading widely and longer texts for the reader’s own purposes (carrell & carson 1997). intensive reading mpotokwane (1986) found that what teachers do in the name of reading did not differ much across classrooms in six schools in south-eastern botswana. molosiwa (2007) examined secondary school teachers’ lesson plans for teaching english and setswana and found no indication of the specific tasks students would engage in. the teachers confessed that they are not trained or equipped to identify students’ individual literacy abilities and areas of need. jankie’s (2001:200) analysis of two teachers’ records led her to conclude that there was ‘minimal reflection in terms of specific strategies used, students’ responses, teacher-student interactions’. molelo and cowieson (2003) reported after observing teachers of english for four weeks at one junior secondary school that most often reading instruction focused on how to pronounce words rather than on a variety of reading skills and strategies. ketsitlile (2009) conducted a study in a junior secondary school in the kgatleng district. she observed a teacher call four students to come to the front of the classroom to read aloud from a school text. the other students were instructed to listen or follow along in their copy of the text. meanwhile, the teacher did not comment or offer corrective feedback, but rather sat at her desk marking papers. ketsitlile’s observation was that the students’ oral reading was passionless in that they did not read with any expression.a study of form-4 students’ knowledge of vocabulary by moumakwa (2002) found that teachers only used direct explanation to teach word meanings and sometimes their explanations were partial or incorrect. molosiwa (2007), who studied the perceptions of secondary school teachers who teach reading in english and setswana, found that teachers concentrated more on topics that would be on the examinations than on the curricula objectives provided. as one teacher explained to molosiwa (2007): teaching according to the syllabus did not work for us positively. from then on we realized that it would be more meaningful to concentrate first on those topics that are examined, and teach everything else only if there was time to do so. (p. 130) mokibelo and magogwe (2008), who studied a junior secondary school in the central district, were left with the impression that teachers had a negative attitude and approach to teaching reading. teachers’ lesson plans lacked variety with regard to methods of instruction and they were observed mostly lecturing to students. when mpotokwane (1986) provided in-service training for half the teachers in her study, they did significantly better than the comparison teachers on the survey of reading knowledge and their students improved on post-test of reading achievement. we have not found any other studies that found that in-service intervention on the teaching of reading assists teachers who understand the teaching of literacy through the lens of national examinations. teachers seem well aware that their students struggle with reading on examinations (molosiwa 2007). one teacher interviewed by molosiwa explained: over the years candidates have always found difficulties in responding to comprehension questions and this year’s candidates are no exception. the responses clearly indicate lack of reading skills. for instance, candidates still need a lot of practice on responding to questions that deal with drawing inferences and giving reasons or providing for the statements that they make. (molosiwa 2007:144–145) jankie (2001) also heard from teachers of setswana that the government syllabus was narrowly focused on literary techniques and conventions. one teacher told jankie (2001) that this interfered with: calls for the reader to perceive literature texts as something they can transact with, interpret and make meaning of, based on their knowledge of the literary conventions as well as their personal experiences of the world around them or even that of the author. (p. 145) arua and lederer (2003) surveyed first-year university of botswana students about what they had been taught about reading in secondary school. many students indicated that they were taught summarising, adjusting their reading rate given their purpose for reading and the difficulty of the text, taking notes about important information and recognising that reading is following signs on the printed page (ketsitlile & galegane 2010). similarly, chimbganda (2006) found that first-year science students at the university of botswana were aware of appropriate reading, writing and self-monitoring strategies to use when summarising what they read when they were asked about this on a questionnaire. when chimbganda analysed summaries written by these students he found that those with a history of academic achievement produced summaries that used paraphrasing to recast ideas, thereby writing more accurately than less academically successful students. extensive reading in secondary school, students are expected to engage in extensive reading beyond what is provided in textbooks. by the end of junior secondary school, students are expected to enjoy reading a range of literature that includes both fiction and non-fiction that interests them. there seems no doubt that something needs to be done to improve the reading ability of secondary school students, especially those who will proceed to study at the tertiary level. one area that repeatedly surfaces in the literature that would make a difference is getting students to do more reading both in and outside of school. macheng (1982) reported that nothing much was done in the four school libraries she studied to encourage students’ reading for their own purposes. she made several suggestions that remain unfulfilled to this day, such as organising book clubs for students to discuss and critique what they read. with regard to reading in setswana, macheng recommended clubs where members would read as widely as possible and read aloud to one another. she further suggested introducing poetry and drama clubs. perhaps the lack of action regarding these suggestions is why arua and lederer (2003) found that only 18% of students they surveyed reported reading for pleasure in secondary school. (ketsitlile & galegane 2010) surveyed first-year humanities students at the university of botswana. they found that less than 50% reported reading for leisure on a daily basis, although 24% did report reading daily on the internet for pleasure. the future of reading beyond school assignments may lie in digital sources of text.mmui (2002) surveyed teachers and students at two schools about extensive reading. according to teachers, their students mostly read what was recommended to them by their peers. the teachers found that listening to students talk about what they read was more informative than giving them tests or having them do book reports. the teachers identified numerous advantages for those students who engage in extensive reading, which were all related to improving their english language proficiencies. the responses mmui got from the students showed that girls more than boys engaged in extensive reading. they liked to read magazines, fiction, newspapers and non-fiction in that order. reading comics was not popular in that only one of 83 students selected this as a preference. students said that they sought help with their reading more often from parents or relatives than from their teachers. this was probably because they did most of their extensive reading at home. the responses of teachers and students seem to indicate that extensive reading exists, yet mmui (2002) found that: there was very little proof of students having understood what they read as some students when asked to write a paragraph on one of the books they read on their own directly picked paragraphs from the books. a few students however could relate some stories. (p. 22) extensive reading was pursued in two teacher action research studies (maika & freier 2003; molelo & cowieson 2003). molelo and cowieson (2003) observed teachers of english for four weeks. the observations revealed that the teaching of reading was mostly about identifying words and pronouncing them in a way that makes comprehension possible. interviews were conducted with five teachers, 40 students, and the headmaster and public librarians. the students reported liking to read fiction, magazines and comics. they also reported reading as one of the most enjoyable parts of learning because it was an opportunity to learn about other cultures whilst enabling them to improve the english skills needed to pass examinations. the students preferred group or paired reading because they could help one another. we would add that reading with others is social and may be another reason that students preferred it over independent silent reading. the perspective of teachers is quite a contrast to that presented by students: many of the students were spoken of as being ‘backward readers’. a few were identified who could read but who did not seem to enjoy reading on their own. (molelo & cowieson 2003:121) it seemed to the researchers that school personnel lacked knowledge of students’ interests and preferences. molelo and cowieson (2003:125) concluded that there is a ‘deep-seated conservatism’ amongst teachers that leads them to stick with traditional pedagogical practices. a change in pedagogy to promote extensive reading was undertaken at one school in takatokwane where english was the third language of students after sekgalagadi and setswana (maika & freir 2003). thirty-four form-1 students participated in a group reading programme. they met in groups of five or six based on their scores on the primary school leaving examination. one student was appointed the leader of each group to oversee the distribution of books and activity cards. students read easy and varied material before collaborating in answering the questions on the activity cards. maika and freier’s (2003) analysis of students’ performance on a cloze test of reading, responses to questionnaires and classroom observations led them to conclude that students’ enthusiasm for reading increased along with their reading performance. during the study, teachers departed from the original activity cards in favour of a wider range of activities, such as drawing, summarising, dramatising and vocabulary exercises. the researchers saw a direct relationship between the kind of activities used and students’ enthusiasm for the group reading time. what is evident in both of these case studies is that reading books was at the core of efforts to promote a culture of reading. yet what is available to students in their school libraries is ‘dreary’ (molelo & cowieson 2003:124). arua et al. (2005) also found a shortage of new or recent book titles in the six schools they studied. the teachers and administrators they interviewed insisted that their schools need well-stocked and up-to-date materials and equipment including computers, cd-roms and dvds. reading materials may also be available in students’ homes. in 1987 and 1988 losike conducted interviews in gaborone north and moshupa village with the parents of 52 students. she wanted to learn about the relationship between the use of reading materials in the home and students’ english reading comprehension. losike (1987) was pleasantly surprised to find that all the homes had books and three-quarters of the parents reported reading books and other materials for self-education and personal development. to estimate students’ reading comprehension, losike administered the cloze reading test that davis (1987) used in her needs assessment of english language proficiency. students read a 132-word passage with 25 blanks where their task was to write in the missing words. losike (1987) found that students whose parents reported helping them at home scored higher on the cloze test of reading. it is important to note that these findings were consistent across the various socio-economic statuses of the participants. reading across the curriculum in the three years of junior secondary school (form 1–3) and two years of senior secondary school (form 1–5), instruction on how to read and write in all subjects is primarily the responsibility of those who teach english. there is no evidence that teachers of mathematics, science or history attempt to teach students how to read those disciplines. one study found that 86% of 59 teachers across subject areas in six junior secondary schools thought their most important responsibility was developing conceptual knowledge in their subject area and that developing language, literacy and study skills was less important (arua et al. 2005). yet most of these teachers also thought that form-1 students lacked adequate reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. similarly, adeyemi’s (2010) study of the teaching of writing by three form-1 teachers concluded that a weak reading culture was one of the reasons for students’ poor competence as writers. also, none of the teachers liked teaching composition writing because of the students’ lack of interest. adeyemi recommended that a process or modelling approach that links reading and writing be adopted. such a model could be taken up by subject matter teachers as well. arua et al. found that fewer than half of the teachers indicated having had any pre-service or in-service education on how to teach literacy generally or within their subject areas. reading in a foreign language and multiculturalism those who have studied khoesan students’ experiences with school literacy emphasise that learning to read in english is very difficult for them because it is at least their third language (ketsitlile 2009; mokibelo 2010; mokibelo & magogwe 2008). san students told ketsiltile that they preferred reading in setswana, which is a language they have more oral proficiency in than english. san students were able to find stories, poems and proverbs in their setswana books that they could personally relate to. san students told mokibelo and magogwe that speaking english was difficult, resulting in serious problems comprehending what they were supposed to read in english. the san students talked of being afraid to ask their teachers for help. this is not surprising given that teachers spoke of these students as being un-teachable. san students at mothamo community junior secondary school mostly earn e-grades on tests of literature comprehension (mokibelo 2010). the students attributed their poor performance to difficulties with english and teachers not explaining concepts to them. mokibelo (2010) observed the students reading slowly and barely able to pronounce words. this resulted in teachers reading the texts to the students.ketsitlile (2009) explains that san students’ indigenous literacy practices and ways of reading the world through animals, spirits and rock art are not included in formal education. clearly, the need to support san students along with all students attending government schools depends on markedly improving the development of language and literacy instruction. one such effort has been pursued by jankie (2004a, 2004b). she offers a course for teachers at the university of botswana on multicultural literacy education. jankie’s (2004a:1) goal is to prepare in-service and pre-service teachers to teach students from diverse backgrounds. she wants teachers to guide their students to ‘examine and make connections among issues of identity, knowledge construction, equity, power, representation and education’. jankie’s goals are in keeping with the policy outlined by the ministry of education that in secondary schools students should develop an appreciation for their own culture as well as for other cultures that may be similar or different from their own. jankie (2004a:14) used action research to investigate the views of four junior secondary school teachers and found they were unanimous that multicultural literature could be used to lead students to ‘interrogate cultural practices and sensitize students to issues of diversity’. the teachers varied on whether they would engage students in readings and discussions on issues such as gender, sexuality, and religion. what jankie’s course and research did not do is use literature to engage students in thinking about social justice amongst the various language and ethnic groups in botswana. this may be why jankie concluded that a semester course on multicultural education was not sufficient to engage teachers in self-interrogation of their own beliefs about diversity. summary top ↑ botswana has made impressive progress in literacy growth since independence. however, a lot still needs to be done if literacy is to become a vehicle for self-empowerment, democratic participation and active citizenship amongst the youth. we have arrived at the following conclusions in the review of the literature in reading in botswana secondary schools.in botswana, there is an urgent need to teach reading in ways that meet the needs of all students, especially those who come from khoesan-speaking backgrounds. the status quo with regard to reading instruction in secondary schools is a detriment to students, although the government and policymakers have introduced policies that support more student involvement and an emphasis on authentic communication. the mismatch between policy and practice is a cause for concern. more interaction amongst the reader, the text and the environment is needed. the studies reviewed also point to the fact that teachers in botswana secondary schools lack preparation for teaching reading. this is not surprising as they teach the way they have been taught when they were in secondary school. this is why teachers of subjects other than english do not show secondary students how to learn from reading texts in mathematics, science and the humanities. teachers fail to see the connection that exists between their content subjects and reading. this lack of skills and strategies in the teaching of reading results in teachers compartmentalising reading and not connecting it to writing and diverse literacies. this disadvantages all students, especially those for whom english is a third language and for whom literacy is not only limited to reading and writing, but extends to telling stories, poems and riddles. there is an urgent need to encourage extensive reading of both students and staff in schools. recommendations firstly, we recommend that the teaching of reading be linked more explicitly and specifically to the teaching of writing. we support adeyemi’s (2010) call for taking a multidisciplinary approach to teaching concepts across more than two subjects or disciplines in botswana schools. with regard to reading and writing this means emphasising reading and writing processes and strategies across subject boundaries. in other words, students should learn to be readers and writers in mathematics, science and social studies as well as in their english and setswana courses. this is also referred to as reading and writing across the content areas. secondly, we recommend that local writing and publishing be expanded. we support efforts such as the bessie head heritage trust (n.d.) founded in 2007 because it sponsors an annual writing competition for residents of botswana. efforts such as these encourage the development of a literary culture because the winning novels, short stories poetry and children’s stories are published locally. the expansion of the current culture of reading depends on there being a wider variety of materials that people want to read and in a variety of formats. thirdly, we recommend that a concerted effort be made by all those involved in education to find ways for a culture of reading and writing to complement the oral literacy tradition. the promotion of storytelling and other forms of oral literacy should remain strong and vibrant whilst improving students’ reading and writing abilities. intergenerational and family literacy needs to be a part of this effort to maintain the past whilst embracing the new literacies, including those that are digital. the ubiquity of mobile phones is being used in other african contexts to support literacy development, for example the mobile phones for literacy project in south africa has published novels for youth in english and isixhosa which they access from their mobile phones. teachers will need a lot of support in learning how to use mobile phones and other technologies to meet government curriculum objectives. there is a need to promote a culture of reading for pleasure; teachers should be given instruction on how to encourage recreational reading and students (from early age) should be taught to read not only for academic purposes, but also for pleasure to increase their literacy skills and become lifelong readers. fourthly, there is a need to provide more relevant and better reading (in schools, libraries and homes), especially high-interest, low-level books for students who are speak english as a second or third language. fifthly, the colleges of education and the university of botswana should be at the forefront in the teaching of reading to pre-service and in-service teachers. this will help in equipping teachers with the important skills that they will need to impart reading skills and strategies to students in schools. students will in turn be properly guided in both their academic and extensive reading. we agree with ketsitlile and galegane (2010) that students’ leisure reading influences their academic reading. sixthly, the ministry of education and concerned stakeholders need to encourage a marriage of policy and practice in the teaching of reading in botswana. in addition, teachers need to be sensitised to the fact that reading cannot be isolated from writing (adeyemi 2010). we suggest that this could be done through workshops, seminars and refresher courses during the school holidays so that many teachers can attend. conclusion top ↑ botswana’s ‘vision 2016’ clearly states that all peoples in botswana should be educated and healthy, amongst others, by 2016. the same goals are expressed in the national development plan (10) and most recently in the millennium development goals (mdg), which strive to improve education and literacy in botswana by not only getting more children in schools, but also equipping students with the necessary skills to make them independent and self-reliant citizens who can think critically and engage in other forms of literacy, for example digital and indigenous literacy. this is important for batswana children to allow them to be able to compete and make a mark in the global 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press, new york. youngman, f., 2000, the political economy of adult education and development, zed books, new york. youngman, f., 2002, ‘an overview of adult basic and literacy education in botswana’, paper presented at adult basic and literacy education in sadc conference, university of kwazulu-natal, pietermaritzburg, 03–05 december, viewed 30 november 2010, from http://www.nu.ac.za/cae/caepubs/sadcconf.pdf#page=129 reviewer acknowledgements open accesshttp://www.rw.org.za page 1 of 1 we would like to take this opportunity to thank all reviewers for the reading & writing, volume 3: victor w.a. mbarika hossana twinomurinzi restytuta nalyazi hilary janks jestina mutemeri douglas fisher 27 janet condy jacqui dornbrack lorna dreyer mzwamadoda p. cekiso dan kasule foster kholowa should names have inadvertently been excluded from this list the publisher apologises and undertakes to amend the exclusion in the next issue. in an effort to facilitate the selection of appropriate peer reviewers 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(0)21 975 4635 reading & writing journal of reading association of south africa rw 13-1_2022_contents.indd http://www.rw.org.za open access table of contentspage i of i table of contents editorial from the editors’ desk: reading & writing journal volume 13 (2022) janet l. condy reading & writing | vol 13, no 1 | a403 | 22 december 2022 original research learners’ reading between the signs in the english second language classroom rockie sibanda reading & writing | vol 13, no 1 | a328 | 14 january 2022 original research five grade 7 learners’ understanding of comprehension skills at a quintile 5 school in south africa nomonde ntshikila, janet l. condy, lawrence meda, heather n. phillips reading & writing | vol 13, no 1 | a324 | 24 february 2022 original research pedagogical choices to integrate theory and practice: conceptualisation and insights for literacy teacher education zelda barends reading & writing | vol 13, no 1 | a333 | 10 march 2022 original research literacy matters in sustainable livelihood development among refugee adults in south africa kofi p. quan-baffour, lineo rose johnson reading & writing | vol 13, no 1 | a316 | 29 april 2022 1 2 12 27 36 vol 13, no 1 (2022) issn: 2079-8245 (print) | issn: 2308-1422 (online)reading & writing original research factors affecting grade 6 learners’ reading performance in a rural school in maluti, south africa madoda cekiso, tsielo rabelemane, jay jadezweni, itani p. mandende, marius dieperink reading & writing | vol 13, no 1 | a327 | 31 may 2022 original research semantic waves and their affordances for teaching scaffolding to pre-service teachers zaheera jina asvat reading & writing | vol 13, no 1 | a346 | 29 july 2022 original research remixing storytelling across modes fatima vally essa, belinda mendelowitz reading & writing | vol 13, no 1 | a372 | 25 august 2022 original research female gender representation in selected south african magazines nonkululeko n. shabangu, sandra rossouw, cornelia g. smith reading & writing | vol 13, no 1 | a385 | 21 september 2022 original research the contributions of reading and phonological awareness for spelling in grade three isixhosa learners mikaela a. daries, tracy n. bowles, maxine n. schaefer reading & writing | vol 13, no 1 | a365 | 12 december 2022 reviewer acknowledgement reading & writing | vol 13, no 1 | a407 | 19 december 2022 46 55 65 74 83 97 abstract introduction research methodology presentation and discussion of results implications or recommendations conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) sibhekinkosi a. nkomo foundation studies division, faculty of humanities, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa citation nkomo, s.a., 2021, ‘the benefits of an extensive reading programme implemented in two foundation phase classrooms in the eastern cape, south africa’, reading & writing 12(1), a290. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v12i1.290 original research the benefits of an extensive reading programme implemented in two foundation phase classrooms in the eastern cape, south africa sibhekinkosi a. nkomo received: 13 july 2020; accepted: 20 dec. 2020; published: 06 apr. 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: this article reports on a responsive extensive reading programme (erp), involving grade 3 learners at two primary schools in the eastern cape over a duration of 20 weeks. objectives: the sociocultural perspective of learning guided the implementation of the erp which aimed at providing learners with opportunities to read books for pleasure in their preferred language. method: learners had a choice to talk about their reading in isixhosa, their home language, or english, which is their first additional language. in supporting the long-term goal of being bilingual, learners were encouraged to see themselves as emergent bilinguals who have reasons to use both languages as young scholars and in future. results: data collected through a post-intervention questionnaire, learners’ reading logs and observations illuminated interesting findings which show that learners benefited from the erp. conclusion: the benefits of participating in the erp were observed in the learners’ acquisition of new knowledge (cognitive benefits), transformation in their attitude towards reading (affective benefits), and they began to take agency of their reading (social benefits). contribution: this study demonstrates the cognitive, affective, and social benefits of introducing learners to reading for pleasure as early as in the foundation phase. keywords: literacy; extensive reading; early reading; foundation phase; eastern cape. introduction south africa is a multilingual country and it is expected that, through attending school, learners should reach certain proficiency levels and be able to communicate in more than one language (department of basic education [dobe] 2012). in south africa, many learners are faced with the challenge of the language of learning and teaching (lolt). in the foundation phase (fp) the instruction is in the learner’s home language (hl), although at most schools english is taught as a first additional language (fal). however, spaull et al. (2016) state that by the end of fp, many south african learners lack the ability to read properly in their hl and the understanding of the english language in which they will be taught from grade 4. in grade 4, learners are expected to transition, not only from the use of the hl to english as the lolt but also from learning to read, to reading to learn (dobe 2008). according to le cordeur (2010a), it is important to identify and address reading challenges such as poor reading comprehension, inadequate reading fluency, a lack of vocabulary, and a negative attitude towards reading as early as possible in the early years of schooling. in addition, literature has shown that many fp teachers do not know how to teach reading. they are currently teaching reading in an ad hoc, unsystematic way because of a lack of adequate professional development in effective strategies to address english learners’ literacy development (cekiso 2017; le cordeur 2010b; pretorius & machet 2004; taylor 2015; van staden 2011). particularly in the rural areas of the eastern cape, tshuma and le cordeur (2019) found that teachers had difficulties teaching in english due to their own lack of proficiency in the language. of relevance to this study is the lack of access to appropriate reading resources in terms of language and genre, lack of reading opportunities, and an absence of a reading culture, which continue to disadvantage poor communities. children from disadvantaged backgrounds have limited access to reading material compared to those from higher income families. according to krashen (2004:68), ‘children from high-income families are deluged with books, children from low-income families must aggressively and persistently seek them out’. many underprivileged children in south africa stay with illiterate guardians or parents who might not be able to read for them or who have limited time to read for them. learners from poor communities do not have access or money to buy books written in african languages (howie et al. 2007; janks 2014), resulting in a poor reading culture (pretorius 2002; sisulu 2004). for underprivileged learners, the school library is the only source for accessing reading resources, but some schools do not have a library. sadly, both international (neuman & celano 2001; smith, constantino & krashen 1997) and local (equal education 2011; nassimbeni & desmond 2011) studies show that school libraries are largely dysfunctional and lack appropriate reading resources. for example, of the 5669 schools in the eastern cape, only 167 have functioning libraries (equal education 2011), leaving learners with little or no exposure to meaningful reading material. with little or no exposure to meaningful reading, children tend to refrain from the reading activity because they do not see the pleasure in reading and may not be proficient readers at all. against such a backdrop, this article reports on the benefits of an extensive reading programme (erp) implemented in two primary schools in grahamstown over 20 weeks. the erp aimed at instilling the love of reading by increasing reading time and offering a variety of reading material in both the learners’ hl and fal. a social learning environment was established where learners chose their own books and spoke about their reading in any language that they were comfortable in. in addition, the researcher provided learners with a variety of reading opportunities such as reading with them, reading for them, and allowing for individual reading or shared reading. this article ultimately responds to the research question: what are the benefits of an erp for fp learners? extensive reading bamford and day (2004) define extensive reading (er) as: [a]n approach to language teaching in which learners read a lot of easy material in the new language. they read for general, overall meaning and they read for information and enjoyment. (p. 1) the purpose of er is ‘to develop good reading habits, to build up knowledge of vocabulary and structure, and to encourage a liking for reading’ (richards & schmidt 2002:193–194). in er, readers choose the material they are interested in, they read during their own time, at a pace and place comfortable for them. they read as much interesting material that is slightly below, at, or barely above their level of competence as possible (krashen 2011). despite er being well documented and recognised as an important approach in teaching reading, it is often not given the attention it deserves in many formal educational contexts, and is simply tolerated as an add-on (ramani & joseph 2002). in the south african context, there has been little research conducted with fp learners in particular on the effectiveness of er. research into er has mostly focused on the teacher or university students as the unit of analysis (boakye 2017a, 2017b; pretorius & knoetze 2012; pretorius & machet 2004). the participants of the mentioned studies can read independently, with limited support from the teacher; therefore, findings from these studies cannot be extrapolated to learners participating in the current study. the current study fills this gap by supporting the view of children as active constructors of their own learning. there are a number of studies that have reported positive gains through the implementation of an erp (boakye 2017b; clark & rumbold 2006; jacobs, renandya & bamford 2000; krashen 2004). almost every study conducted to investigate the effect of er on literacy development has reported positively about this approach, despite different methodologies and contexts. in a review of works conducted mostly in well-resourced contexts in the global north, jacobs et al. (2000) and krashen (2004) summarised a number of experimental studies that show significant increase in vocabulary, comprehension, spelling, writing, listening skills, and academic performance as a result of er. simon (2018) and boakye (2017) also reported overall cognitive benefits of er which included increased reading speed in their participants. extensive reading can also have benefits on the affective aspects of reading such as attitude, motivation, and interest. learners become motivated to read because of the rich input they receive when reading their self-selected books (krashen 2004). according to gambrell (2004), when learners are given enough time to read for pleasure they become more creative and critical thinkers. reading for pleasure can contribute to positive attitudes and increase self-confidence. boakye (2017b) included the er component in her reading intervention programme to improve first-year university students’ reading proficiency who were registered for the academic literacy and academic reading modules. her study points out that er impacted on the students’ affective and cognitive reading levels, including reading speed. in summary, the benefits of er are captured by day and bamford (1998) when they state: good things happen to students who read a great deal, they become better and more confident readers, they write better, their listening and speaking abilities improve, and their vocabularies become richer. in addition, they develop positive attitudes toward reading and increased motivation to study the new language. (p. 1) theoretical framework the sociocultural perspective of learning (vygotsky 1978) guided the implementation of the erp. this vygotskian perspective was appropriate for this study because it implies that learning happens in a social and collaborative context where learners interact with other people and objects, and can also get some form of help through scaffolding from peers and teachers (vygotsky 1978). adopting this view, the researcher established an erp in a social learning environment that emphasised collaborative learning and emancipating the participants. i scaffolded and mediated learning using tools (language and books) so that learners could actively participate and eventually be in a position to independently take charge of their learning. within the reading programme, the role of the researcher was fluid. roles such as managing the attendance register and the accession register were shared by the participants and the researcher. in addition, there was co-construction of knowledge, thus acknowledging the participants as equally knowing. since the study is about literacy development, the socio-cultural theory is relevant in that vygotsky (1978) emphasises the importance of language in development and learning. according to krashen (2004), when children read in their hl, they understand the subject matter better. skills learnt in their hl are easily transferable to their fal. therefore, in this study, language was considered as a mediating tool for subjects to encourage reading for pleasure, which was the object of the erp. by mediating tools vygotsky (1978) meant artefacts that can include language and books. the subjects are the individuals engaged in the activity (grade 3 learners) and the object is the goal of the activity. in the informal learning context established in this study, interaction happened at different levels, namely learner-learner and researcher-learner. while working with young bilingual children (isixhosa and english language learners), i found language, in all its forms of use (writing, reading and speaking), to be an important tool in mediating and facilitating interaction, participation, and learning. according to vygotsky (1978), language is a mode of communication that people use to interact with each other to convey information, transfer knowledge, and to support cognitive development. hence, in this study, a reading programme that accommodated the use of learners’ hl and fal was established as a means of facilitating learning, social participation, and interaction. strategies like codeswitching, translation, and translanguaging were encouraged by the researcher in this setup. in addition, i allowed learners to use visual and multimodal forms of communication. as a result, interaction was not merely possible, but was more relaxed and spontaneous, as learners were able to engage in discussions and solve problems among each other or with the researcher. research paradigm the study is located under the interpretivist paradigm, mainly because it allows the researcher to interpret the world through the views and understandings of the participants. the objective of the study was to implement and closely assess the impact of the reading programme. the interpretive methodology allowed me to engage with my participants, listen to their views and perspectives. research methodology the study employed mainly qualitative methods such as observations, reading logs, and a questionnaire. observations involved observing learners in a variety of activity structures such as independent reading, silent reading, reading aloud, book talks, and focus group discussions. indicators such as the number of books read, reading behaviour such as comfort and anxiety in reading, active participation and engagement, expressed interest as well as lack thereof, and attitude, were used to inform the observational judgment. according to clay (1991): [o]bservation of children’s responses to reading and writing is a useful research tool, as it provides one with information concerning their competencies, confusions, strengths and weaknesses, and their use of strategic activities. (p. 70) reading logs were used for data collection. the information recorded by the learners included book titles, name of the author, date when the book was read, and a section where learners commented about what they liked or disliked about the book. according to carlisle (2000), a reading log is a simple tool that can be used to encourage and tap into individual learners’ responses to a text. this encourages them to interact with the text. a reading log provides valuable information which can inform one about what learners read. a post-intervention questionnaire was designed and administered with all the participating learners. the questionnaire was availed to the participants in both languages isixhosa (hl) and english (fal). on realisation that not all learners were proficient readers, each question in the post-intervention questionnaire was read out in both languages and learners were required to write down their responses. learners got a chance to hear the question being read out, they also read the question for themselves, and they were given enough time to process each question and respond. setting the study was conducted in two grahamstown public primary schools. labelled as site a and site b for ethical reasons, both schools are historically disadvantaged and located in the township. they serve children who are from poor socio-economic backgrounds. in both schools, isixhosa, which is the learners’ hl, is used as a medium of instruction until grade 3, after which learners switch to english. site a has a well-resourced functioning library, but learners have limited access to it because the school does not have a librarian. as malespina (2016) puts it: [a] library is not a library without a librarian, as [librarians] will always be the necessary bond between the space, the tools and resources and the students and teachers accessing them. (p. 1) site b had no library facility and, as a result, learners have little or no exposure to meaningful reading material beyond their textbooks and workbooks. study population and sampling strategy the participants in this study were grade 3 learners. two key reasons accounted for choosing the grade of participants for this study. the first is that this group of learners is at a critical juncture where they are shifting from learning to read to reading to learn (dobe 2008). in the fp, learners are developing the skill and art of reading but when they move to grade 4 they are expected to read different content subjects and learn from what they read. reading in the fp is mostly narrative, story-like texts whose language closely approximates ordinary language of everyday social interaction, as compared to reading expository texts with more content-dense vocabulary in grade 4 (chall, jacobs & baldwin 1990). this group of learners may benefit from a reading programme that would expose them to reading and talking about books in both their hl and fal so that they would have a chance to transition from learning to read to reading to learn in grade 4. the second reason relates to them transitioning from mother-tongue instruction to learning through english, their fal. this abrupt switch has a possibility of influencing their attitude towards reading negatively. since the participants were minors (grade 3), consent was sought from their parents or guardians. consent forms and information sheets were availed in english and isixhosa to ensure informed consent. in addition, learners were verbally informed about the purpose of the reading programme, the nature and extent of their involvement. however, only those learners with signed consent forms from their guardians were allowed to be part of the study and participation was voluntary. in site a, all 37 learners (17 girls and 20 boys) had signed consent forms and all 34 learners (16 girls and 18 boys) from site b participated. the intervention: conceptualisation and implementation of an extensive reading programme implementing an erp that stretched over 20 weeks was a form of formative intervention (engestrom 2011). formative intervention methodology is based on the principle of taking the process into account as much as an outcome (daniels 2001). accordingly, the researcher encouraged learners to be active participants rather than passive listeners. the formative intervention implemented created openness for the learners by providing opportunities for learners to read alone, to be read to, and to read for each other in a way that made sense to them. four steps guided the implementation of the erp. step 1: pre-intervention – sourcing of reading resources prior to the implementation of the erp, books were sourced from biblionef, the nal’ibali reading resources, and the researcher’s personal collection. the book stock included different genres, non-fiction, magazines, newspapers, fiction, texts that inform, and texts that entertain which were appropriate for a grade 3 learner. for the most part, the books were about 10 pages and included illustrations and drawings. having a wide selection of reading material managed to cater for many of the learners’ book and language preferences. the study was conducted according to the guidelines of the institution and the department of education. in particular, consent was obtained from the participating schools’ principals, teachers, and the learners’ parents or guardians step 2: setting up the extensive reading programme the setting up of the erp was over the first two school terms and can be summarised as follows: explaining to the teachers and participants the ways in which the reading programme was to become a regular routine throughout the year. ethical clearance was sought. explaining the reasons for er and of the reading programme. highlighting the requirements and principles of an erp. laying down er ground rules. deciding on the appropriate venue and on the convenient times to conduct the reading programme. we agreed that we would meet in the learners’ classroom, once a week, for an hour after school so as not to disturb the normal school teaching programme. i had initial reading sessions with all the learners at both sites to build trust and to prepare them for the actual implementation of the reading programme. i went to the schools during term 2, once a week after school to read for the learners as a whole class activity. thereafter, we had book talks, discussing what they liked and did not like about the story i had read. this stage of the research offered me an opportunity to introduce learners to a variety of genres written in english and isixhosa. step 3: implementation of the extensive reading programme – design and structure learners were encouraged to read any books provided by the researcher or their own books if they had any and either during the reading session or outside of it. those who could not read on their own were encouraged to take books and ask either the researcher, their peers or other people at home to read for them. depending on the weather conditions, each reading session was held in the learners’ classroom or outside (figure 1). i set time for reading for the learners, reading with the learners, and reading by the learners. each week, i expected each learner to have read at least one book so that by the end of the intervention, each learner would have read at least 20 books. having a target number of books per week has proven to be motivating for some learners; however, one should be careful of setting strenuous goals to read, as the real goal of er is to enjoy reading. figure 1: learners reading outside of their classroom (a and b). ideally, in an erp, no post-reading work should be required as the act of reading is its own reward. however, for this study, there were reasons for considering post-reading activities. these include the need to monitor and evaluate learners’ reading in order to determine if the learners were actually reading, understanding, and learning from the reading. another reason for considering post-reading activities, as suggested by day and bamford (2002), is that well-chosen activities can turn the individual solitary act of reading into a community event especially for young children. the erp had carefully planned typical er post-reading activities suggested by day and bamford (1998). these included book talks, reading aloud, paired and shared reading. in addition, learners were required to submit a reading log. participating in these activities was optional and learners were allowed to use whichever language they were comfortable in so as to encourage bilingualism and participation. morrow and schocker (1987) make the point that: [a] personal response to a text in … [a] foreign language is likely to be ‘felt’ in the native language. attempting to mediate the response through a foreign language will merely lead to frustration. (p. 255) indeed, i observed that giving learners an opportunity to express themselves in their hl yields good conversations and inclusive participation. hence, the use of hl became a powerful tool that boosted learners’ desire to speak, read, and write. finally, it was important to provide feedback to the learners throughout the erp. in each reading session, i had an opportunity to observe and interact with the learners to get their perspectives about the reading programme. i also looked at their reading logs, to see what they were reading (figure 2). permission was sought to videorecord each reading session. at the end of each session i would replay the video noting any attitudes to reading and literacy such as anxiety in reading, active participation, engagement, and expressed interest as well as lack thereof. in some instance, i would require the learners to further explain or clarify their actions that i observed on the video recordings. i attended to the learners’ needs individually or as a group. providing feedback in these different setups (individually and in groups) was done for specific reasons and was beneficial to the learners. for example, if i felt the learner needed one-on-one assistance, or if i did not want to put the learner in the spotlight, i would call the learner aside and work with them. in some instances, if i wanted learners to participate in meaningful discussions, or if i noted that they all experienced the same problem, for example writing in their journal, i would model, demonstrate, and provide feedback to the whole group. figure 2: learners’ reading logs: (a and b) example 1 (c) example 2. step 4: evaluation of the extensive reading programme the final phase of the research process was the evaluation of the erp and was conducted during the last week of the intervention. this phase aimed at responding to the research question: what are the overall benefits (if any) of an erp on fp learners? the main tool used for evaluation was the post-intervention questionnaire although i also relied on other methods such as the reading logs and my observations. the purpose of administering this questionnaire was mainly to evaluate the programme, and to see whether the aims of the programme were achieved. in site a, 27 out of 37 learners responded to the questionnaire, while 23 out of 34 learners in site b responded. data collection the data was collected through a reading log, observations, and post-intervention questionnaire. the questionnaire was administered with all the participating learners. questions asked on the questionnaire included: how many times (roughly) have you attended the reading programme sessions this year? why did you attend the reading programme? how many books did you read throughout the programme? which was your favourite book and which one was your least favourite? over these past school terms, do you think that coming to the reading programme sessions has helped you with your reading? please say how? has attending the programme helped you with your other schoolwork? can you say how and in which subjects? what have you enjoyed at the reading programme sessions? data analysis to qualitatively examine the overall benefits of the erp, i used content analysis to analyse data collected through questionnaires, learners’ reading logs, and my observations. in this study, data were broken down and coded into themes that addressed the cognitive benefits of extensive reading (what new information did participants learn?), affective aspects such as attitude (did they change the way they think or feel about reading?), and behaviours (did they change or transform their activity, i.e. take agency with their reading?). presentation and discussion of results data from the questionnaires represent the learners’ voices about how they believe er was beneficial to them. learners reported in their hl, and i translated the excerpts quoted in this article into english. my observations and information on the learners’ reading logs are presented to provide further insight into how er had effects on both the cognitive and affective aspect of reading. the three data sets are provided for triangulation. observations through observation, i noted that learners from both research sites were actively engaged in learning and reading-related activities, an indication that they had positive attitudes towards the reading programme. most of the grade 3 learners who participated in the programme were enthusiastic about reading and looked forward to the next session. learners were interested in reading with their friends, and spending time reading and growing together. this enthusiasm cannot be overlooked in an educational setting. it is important for children to learn that reading is a social activity, which can be done anywhere, not just something that teachers make you do only at school, at a particular time. reinforcing this point, spaull (2014) states that children must be motivated regularly to view reading as a pleasurable activity. i noted an improvement on the affective aspect of reading such as motivation and interest in books in both research sites. i also observed enjoyment, excitement, passion, improved confidence, and engagement because of the increased opportunity to read through the erp. the agency of the learners especially from site b to read and begin their own reading circles was unexpected. over the 20-week reading intervention, learners from both research sites who regularly attended the reading programme developed from being shy, reserved, and uncertain readers into readers who could try to read what was of interest to them. they began to talk about their reading and responding to books they had read, and the characters they liked and did not like. each learner’s views were valued, hence each reading session became a platform of growth. these observations of the development of the participants’ agency as readers were neatly summed up in the researcher’s journal. reading logs research has shown that the number of books read by each learner during a reading programme is important in determining if the reading programme was a success (day & bamford 2002). to track the number of books read by each learner, i relied on the participants’ reading logs. some learners, who prior to implementation had never read and completed a book, reported to have read and enjoyed at least two books. as shown in figure 3, data collected from learners who recorded their reading in their reading logs show that over a duration of 20 weeks of the implementation phase, the highest participants read 20 books and the lowest read 2 books in both sites. based on the increased usage of the books availed, there is evidence that the participants’ reading behaviours changed towards reading for pleasure. the majority of the learners began to read more during each reading session and began to take books home for reading and were able to report back on their reading. by the end of the programme, voluntary reading happened regularly in both research sites. figure 3: number of books read by learners. evidence from the accession register and the reading logs showed an increase in number of learners borrowing books (figure 2). the reading log example 1 in figure 2 shows a learner who read and entered 20 books in her reading log. morrow and weinstein’s (1986) study findings show that children read more when there is more material available for them to read. allowing learners to borrow books from the programme provided opportunities for learners to read beyond the reading programme. for example, in site a, one learner struggled with reading on her own and i encouraged her to take books home, and read with her parents or siblings, a noteworthy factor in the promotion of reading for enjoyment. i believe that the time learners spent reading with parents offered the parents an opportunity to see what their children were interested in reading. one learner reflected in her journal about how much she enjoyed the story and even enjoyed reading to her siblings and parents. this enhanced her self-esteem and gave her an opportunity to enjoy and bond with her family: date: 11 november 2015 title: tsepo author: beate willich who was it about? tsepo. dear beate [addressing the letter to the author], your book was very interesting, it was informative. in the book tsepo you narrate so well and your illustrations talk about a lot of things. tsepo did not have so many things but his brother gave him. your book was very interesting beate, i even read it for my parents and siblings at home every day. every evening before they went to bed they asked me to read for them. thank you. according to chambers (2011), everyone enjoys freedom of choice and: [w]hen we have freedom our set of mind, that is our attitude, tends to be optimistic and positive. we cheerfully become willing readers when following our own instincts and tastes. (p. 31) i would argue that availing a range of reading texts in this erp positively influenced learners’ reading attitudes and motivation to read. as shown in their reading logs (figure 3), learners appreciated that there was a reasonable number of books written in their mother tongue. learners preferred to read the isixhosa version of the books. this is understandable because at this stage they are still using their mother tongue as a language of learning. however, as the session progressed, i had three learners in site a and two in site b who began to read books in english. these included simple and interesting books like i love my father and the red hen. when it came to other forms of communicating, learners were encouraged to communicate using both their hl and fal, but i noted a number of learners opted to read, speak, and write in english even though they were not proficient. in both research sites, learners are aware of the importance of being bilingual and being able to communicate in english. learners’ preference for english in these research sites is consistent with what bloch (2007:50) found: ‘the pressure to opt for the ex-colonial language associated with its economic power and prestige, manifested in teachers’ preferences and parents’ and children’s demands’. post-intervention questionnaire through the post-intervention questionnaire, all learners from both research sites acknowledged that they had benefited from participating in the programme. on a more specific level, question 2 of the questionnaire required learners to provide reasons why they continued attending the voluntary erp. in both research sites, the three most frequent responses were academic gains associated with reading, the need to learn how to read so as to achieve at school, and the social aspects of the erp. with reference to academic gains associated with reading, one student wrote ‘i attended the club because being able to read will allow me to go to university and get a good job’. from site b, three boys mentioned they attended the reading programme because they just wanted to. these three boys would irregularly attend the reading programme as they were aware that they were not obliged to attend. other learners expressed the need to learn how to read. one learner wrote ‘i attended the reading programme because i want to learn to read in english’. another learner wrote ‘i can’t read properly, i wanted you to teach me how to read so i attended every day’. finally, all the learners in both sites agreed that they enjoyed attending the reading programme because it was fun, which is a social aspect of the reading programme and they also highlighted their intrinsic love of reading. the social learning environment established was encouraging for the learners to attend the reading programme. grabe (2004) claims that if implementation conditions are reasonable, er creates positive motivation for reading. in responding to the question about how the programme has helped them with other schoolwork, three learners from site a indicated that the erp improved their reading while four learners indicated that the erp helped them improve in other subject areas. in addition, from this research site, four learners indicated that their isixhosa improved since attending the erp, and two learners mentioned that they had improved reading in english. since learners had a choice of using both their hl and fal, it was interesting to note that two learners from this site indicated that the erp helped them to read in both english and isixhosa. learners from site b also indicated their different gains through attending the erp. nine learners indicated that the erp helped them with reading and writing in isixhosa, while six learners indicated that the erp helped them with reading and writing in english. two learners indicated that the erp helped them improve their life skills but did not elaborate on that. however, these claims are based on the learners’ perceptions of what they gained by participating in the programme and could not be validated through assessment as it was beyond the scope of the research. pretorius and lephalala (2011) state that learners from print-poor backgrounds might improve their language proficiency when exposed to a reading intervention in responding to what they had enjoyed from the reading programme, all learners, including the ones who were initially reluctant, stated that the reading material offered was interesting and they enjoyed reading the books. their interest in reading was seen in the number of books recorded in their reading logs (figure 2). in site b, seven girls who stayed in the same neighbourhood formed a reading circle which was active throughout the duration of the reading programme. individual learners who could not form their own reading circles preferred to borrow more books from our book stock to take home. implementing an erp in the two fp classrooms was a useful experience as i observed that if learners are given the opportunity and encouragement to read they can see the pleasure in reading and want to read more. reduced reading opportunities means that learners’ competence and confidence both suffer. there is enough evidence showing that er done consistently over a long period of time leads to positive reading attitudes and improved abilities in several language areas (grabe 2009). le cordeur (2010b) identifies negative attitude as one of the various types of reading problems. by including a variety of er activities, i observed positive attitudes towards reading. for example, learners looked forward to my reading aloud session ‘because they enjoyed how i read in english’. in addition, they began to volunteer to report about their reading and leading the book talks. all the participating learners from both research sites mentioned that they enjoyed being part of the erp and that they would appreciate another opportunity to participate in the erp. although learners from both research sites felt the need to attend the reading programme for different reasons, overall they all saw the value of the reading programme. this concurs with other findings (elley & mangubhai 1983; krashen 2004) that an erp has a significant effect not only on reading ability but also on other skills and motivation to read. the last question of the questionnaire offered the learners an opportunity for free writing. this could be a message, letter to the researcher or a brief reflection about the erp. these are some of the statements that i gathered which show how the programme was beneficial to the learners. in site a two learners wrote: learner 1: ‘dear ma’am, i enjoyed each time when you read for us. thank you’. learner 2: ‘miss anna, you read well. i appreciate your support. i learnt a lot. thank you very much’. in site b, two learners wrote detailed letters which captured a number of the benefits of the erp: learner 1: ‘thank you for teaching me how to write. now i know how to write and read the stories that i chose and they give me joy when i read them. thank you very much. please go well, thank you very much’. learner 2: ‘beloved diary: (1) i liked your programme. (2) because it’s educative. (3) reading is fun’. an overall analysis of the results indicates that daily exposure to er was beneficial to participants. they highlighted the cognitive and affective benefits of the erp. the benefits of er reported in this study are supported by the literature about the advantages of exposure to a reading intervention. implications or recommendations informed by the findings of this study, the following recommendations can be made: learning to read and reading to learn must happen at the same time across all primary year levels, beginning in the fp. this may actually increase learners’ motivation and interest to read. as asserted by le cordeur (2010), reading should be part of every child’s daily experiences so that parents and teachers can identify a child with reading problems and address these early. in addition, learners should be exposed to a variety of text types at an early age. this may provide teachers with information regarding learners’ attitude towards reading and their engagement with reading so they may offer intervention programmes at an early age. reading for enjoyment needs to be prompted at an early age and positively celebrated both at school and at home. it is evident that for learners to get motivated to read and value any reading activity, they must be immersed in an environment that offers a variety of interesting reading activities. such an environment enables learners to be scaffolded in their learning and, as a result, they develop positive attitudes towards reading and see themselves as readers. a range of text types should be availed for learners of all ages to engage in a variety of reading activities and for the teachers as well to use during shared reading. it is important to find appropriate books in learners’ hl and fal so as to stimulate their interest in reading. lack of access to and availability of interesting reading material might lead to the decline of reading attitudes. therefore, there is a need for functioning school libraries, community libraries, and classroom reading corners. according to guthrie and wigfield (2000), the use of a range of texts in the classroom can stimulate learners’ curiosity and provide the motivation needed by some learners to read. oyegade (2012) states that if reading habits are to be improved, then learners have to be able to access books at any time. the successful implementation and sustainability of a reading intervention would have a lasting impact if there is support from the school management. a mediator or facilitator (agents of change) should be available to stimulate learners to find the joy of reading, thus developing readers. this means that ‘a more knowledgeable other’ has a significant role to play in developing children as readers. they act as role models and value the importance of participating in a culture of reading, thus learners will thrive in an environment that values and encourages reading. conclusion this article has provided insight into how an erp encouraged reading for enjoyment and helped improve grade 3 learners’ cognitive and affective aspect of reading. the small gains in the cognitive aspects of reading in this study may be ascribed to insufficient time for doing er. research indicates the longer the duration of the intervention, the better the chances of success. data collected throughout the study show that learners benefited from the erp. the post-intervention questionnaire shows that the learners believed that they had developed their reading and writing skills which they transferred to other learning areas. the data also show that the erp had an impact on the learners’ motivation, interest, and attitude towards reading, hence they began to take ownership of their reading by forming reading circles and borrowing more books. it is therefore concluded from the findings that erp can instil the love of reading in learners and thus increase the learners’ affective levels in reading as well as behavioural changes. even if the results of this study do not explicitly confirm gains in reading speed and vocabulary, learners’ positive attitude towards reading for pleasure cannot be overlooked. it must be noted that this is a small-scale study and hence the findings are not generalisable. they show what happened in this particular context. nevertheless, they give important and authentic insights into the impact of an erp on the cognitive, affective, and social domains of reading. acknowledgements the author would like to thank the grade 3 learners from the two research sites for their participation in this study and their permission to use data collected throughout the research process. competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. author’s contribution s.a.n. is the sole author of this research article. ethical considerations this article followed all ethical standards for carrying out research, with approval from the faculty of education higher degrees committee, rhodes university. funding information the research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors data availability the author confirms that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position any affiliated agency of the author. references bamford, j. & day, r.r. 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‘initial teacher education research project: an examination of aspects of initial teacher education curricula at five higher education institutions’, summary report, jet education services, johannesburg. tshuma, l. & le cordeur, m., 2019, ‘intermediate phase mathematics teachers’ proficiency in the language of learning and teaching: the eastern cape province’, per linguam 35(3), 106–124. https://doi.org/10.5785/35-3-849 van staden, a., 2011, ‘putting reading first: positive effects of direct instruction and scaffolding for esl learners struggling with reading’, perspectives in education 29(4), 10–21. vygotsky, l.s., 1978, interaction between learning and development. from: mind and society, harvard university press, cambridge, ma. abstract introduction purpose of the study literature review methodology findings discussion conclusion recommendations acknowledgements references about the author(s) tilla olifant department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa madoda cekiso department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa eunice rautenbach department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa citation olifant, t., cekiso, m. & rautenbach, e., 2020, ‘critical reading perceptions and practices of english first additional language learners in gauteng, tshwane south district’, reading & writing 11(1), a281. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v11i1.281 original research critical reading perceptions and practices of english first additional language learners in gauteng, tshwane south district tilla olifant, madoda cekiso, eunice rautenbach received: 25 feb. 2020; accepted: 20 july 2020; published: 10 sept. 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: apart from being a knowledge-gaining commodity, critical literacy is believed to be a practice that exists between people, groups and communities in a sociopolitical and cultural context. it is assumed that without strong literacy skills, post-secondary education and employment options are limited. it is thus against this background that this investigation focused on the critical reading perceptions and practices of grade 8 english first additional language (fal) learners from two high schools in gauteng, tshwane south district. objective: the study investigated grade 8 learners’ critical reading self-perceptions and practices in the english fal classroom. method: a quantitative research approach based on a non-experimental descriptive design was used. the purposively selected research sample consisted of 166 grade 8 english fal learners from two high schools in gauteng, tshwane south district. data were collected through the use of a survey questionnaire, as well as a critical reading comprehension activity measurement and evaluation instrument. the statistical package for the social sciences (spss) version 25 was used to analyse data solicited through the survey questionnaire and reading comprehension activity. specifically, the spearman’s correlation coefficient of variables was used to indicate if there was any relationship between the learners’ reading perceptions and their reading practices. results: the results showed that although learners’ self-perceptions indicated that they could critically analyse texts, the critical reading comprehension activity measurement and evaluation instrument revealed that learners were unable to apply most of the critical reading strategies they claimed to be using. thus, learners’ perception about their critical reading ability was not automatically an accurate indicator of their actual reading practice ability. conclusion: the findings from this study re-emphasise the reading crisis that is prevalent within the south african reading literacy landscape. a devastating conclusion that was arrived at, was that because learners did not engage critically in classroom reading, the grade 8 english fal learners from the participating schools contributed to the existing reading crisis in south africa. keywords: critical reading; critical reading self-perception; critical reading practices; literacy; tshwane. introduction the importance of reading for learners’ academic success, has been emphasised by various authors (ameyaw & anto 2018; bigozzi et al. 2017; ecole globale 2018; pretorius 2010; suacillo et al. 2016). however, there is considerable research supporting the claim that south africa has a reading crisis. the current crisis regarding south african learners’ poor reading proficiency is well documented in academic papers, government reports and the media (howie et al. 2012; olifant, rautenbach & cekiso 2017; rule & land, 2017; spaul 2016; van der berg 2008). subsequently, in south africa, the critical reading development of learners’ levels of critical reading instruction remains a challenge that still needs to be effectively addressed (department of education [doe] 2003, 2005; moloi & strauss 2005; pretorius & mampuru 2007). in addition, the findings of the south african 2006, 2011 and 2016 progress in international reading literacy study (pirls), based on grade 4 and grade 5 intermediate phase learners revealed that learners had challenges with their literacy development in relation to thinking and reasoning abilities needed for reading to learn in their later years of schooling. spaul (2016) asserts that the pirls 2016 results revealed that south african intermediate phase learners could not locate and retrieve explicitly stated information, actions and ideas from text. the above mentioned south african reading crisis indicates that south african learners lack critical reading skills. this idea is supported by kurland (2000) who asserts that a genuine and substantial acquisition of knowledge requires more than the regular reading ability, but rather that of critical reading, which translates into increased critical thinking, deeper reader comprehension and more effective analytical writing. therefore, this study was conducted to respond to the reading crisis already mentioned above. in order to examine the root cause of the problem, we felt it significant to explore learners’ critical reading perceptions and practices. the choice of the two variables (critical reading perceptions and practices) was informed by the authors’ curiosity to understand learners’ beliefs about their knowledge of critical reading. we also felt it appropriate not only to rely on the learners’ beliefs about the critical reading but also to take the study further by examining their practices. in this study, perception means the ability to become aware of, understand and interpret something and practice refers to the actual doing or using of something. in a south african context, the literature we reviewed revealed that there are no studies conducted that sought to compare learners’ critical reading perceptions with their critical reading practices. therefore, the study was guided by the following research questions: what are the learners’ perceptions of critical reading? what are the learners’ critical reading practices? is there any relationship between the learners’ perceptions of critical reading and practices? purpose of the study critical reading practices are of critical importance in school, because they allow the learners to think, read and write critically about themselves, their situations and their environment within the classroom space (norris, lucas & prudhoe 2012:2). however, despite the fact that some studies on topics related to critical reading have been conducted in south africa, literature reveals that few studies have been conducted on critical reading practices in a south african context. it is for this reason that this study sought to explore the critical reading perceptions and practices of grade 8 english first additional language (fal) learners from two high schools in gauteng, tshwane south district. furthermore, the study sought to understand learners’ reading perceptions since they can be more useful in explaining their reading practices than the well-intentioned inferences sometimes made by teachers (nind et al. 2019). having this information is likely to assist teachers to prepare informed critical reading intervention programmes for their learners. literature review critical reading the concept of ‘critical reading’ refers to the process of understanding print material and attaching meaning to it (pretorius & ribbons 2005). vaseghi, gholami and barjestech (2012:406) signify that critical reading is about thinking, that is, cogitating, while reading. similarly, bobkina and stefanova (2016:681) expound that critical reading refers to the ability to interpret a text and make various inferences about it, in a manner that can elicit different conclusions. therefore, to read critically is to engage in the act of reading with a questioning mind which will result in the comprehension, evaluation and decision to accept or reject what was read. it is in this light that graves, juel and graves (1998) allude to the fact that comprehension (that is, critical reading of text) involves the ability to interpret the written word, the ability to conceptualise meaning from the text, the ability to understand the intention of the author, being aware of the theme of the text, and the ability to use language to create special effects. pretorius and machet (2004:129) assert that literacy, specifically reading literacy, forms the backbone of scholastic success at all school levels. in fact, learners need to be equipped with the ability to read and, even more so, to be critically literate. this is necessary, so that they can meet the economic, social, cultural, digital and political demands of a rapid globalisation era (naidoo, dorasamy & reddy 2012:556). this means that reading literacy and critical engagement with texts at school level, specifically at secondary school level, as is applicable in this study, need to keep abreast of the increased demands for critical literacy skills in employment environments. yet, south african learners fail to demonstrate independent learning from reading (pretorius 2002:99). the role of the reader, as lerner (2001:99) argues, ‘is to identify him/herself with the author or to be against him/her [i.e. against the author] taking a position, assuming a critical stance towards the reading’. in other words, it requires a critical mind and a critical eye to understand, interpret, identify, agree with or contradict written material. accordingly, the researchers of this article points out that critical reading is a form of comprehension that enables the reader to identify and recognise their personal and social connotations in the written material, without literally reading them in the text. researchers such as mclaughlin and devoogd (2004) and molden (2007) assert that critical reading, a constituent of critical literacy, thus involves asking questions to analyse the terminology, concepts and purpose of the text, identifying elements of argument introduced by the author, evaluating the evidence and credibility of the content of the text and positioning the reader in relation to the text. ultimately, critical reading is an act that can help to empower learners to be able to distinguish among the various relationships, discriminations, inequalities and injustices in a text and transfer that knowledge to their daily lives. consequently raman, sharma and collins (2013:261) claim that the improvement of reading competency, which constitutes critical reading, is possible, but only through the effective and regular application of reading strategies. özkan gürses and bouvet (2016) are of the view that the recognition of the critical role of reading strategy awareness in the reading process has also prompted several studies to focus on language learners’ perceived use of reading strategies and reading ability. subsequently, studies conducted by alhaqbani and riazi (2012), as well as sheory and mokthari (2001) have found a relationship between learners’ perceived use of reading strategies and self-rated reading ability. however, the results of studies conducted by alsamadani (2009) and mónos (2005) provide contrary findings. they reveal that the perceived use of reading strategies did not significantly correlate with reading ability as measured by a reading comprehension test. the authors of the current study felt that since the results in literature contradict, there is room for a study that investigates the critical reading perceptions and reading practices of english fal learners. learners’ perceptions of critical reading according to the cambridge english dictionary, perception refers to a belief or opinion often held by many people, and is based on how things seem. research has shown that learners’ perceptions influence their behaviour and willingness to learn (nind et al. 2019; portnov-neeman & barak 2013). similarly, karasakaloglu, saracaloglu and yilmaz ozelci (2012) argue that one of the major factors enabling critical reading is reader self-perception. in addition, guthrie, coddington and wigfield (2009), as well as usher and pajares (2008) state that how learners perceive their own ability matters considerably to their academic achievement, to their persistence and motivation in school-related tasks. in support of this view, hall (2009) asserts that negative perceptions of reading ability are destructive as they can discourage the students from reading. on the other hand, guthrie et al. (2009) declare that positive reading perceptions appear to encourage learners to read a variety of material and also establish a wide range of reading purposes. thus, learners’ critical reading perceptions is important in order for them to develop a positive reading perception. the authors in the current study believe that teachers have an important role to play in order to assist learners to develop a positive reading perception. the literature on students’ reading perceptions has revealed that the majority of studies have been conducted at the university level. for example, karasakaloglu, saracaloglu and yilmaz ozelci (2012) conducted a study that sought to determine student teachers’ perceptions they hold of their own critical reading. the results of their study showed that student teachers’ beliefs about their critical reading differed according to gender and graduate programme but did not differ across grade levels. karadag (2014) conducted a similar study whose aim was to explore primary school teachers’ views of their critical reading skills and their perceptions of competence. the results revealed that the primary school teacher candidates did not consider themselves critically literate and they were not aware of how to use critical reading strategies. considering the above accounts regarding learners’ perceptions in terms of critical reading, it is understood that a critical reading ability requires an individual to have a positive perception concerning the task of reading. learners’ critical reading practices critical reading practices and reading comprehension processes are interrelated. mullis et al. (2009) point out that the practice of critical reading, or comprehension activities, employs a repertoire of experience, background knowledge, linguistic and cognitive skills, as well as metacognitive capabilities, to attach meaning to the text. similarly, fleming (2020) points out that learners’ practice of critical reading is the process of analysing and evaluating a text as they read, or as they cogitate about it after reading. consequently, it appears that critical reading practices require learners to read the written word with a questioning approach, which is likely to promote their interpretation, evaluation and acceptance or rejection of the text. succinctly, a learner’s critical reading practice is established by the ability to interpret, evaluate, authenticate and form an opinion about a text. in other words, when learners engage in critical reading practices, they are required to read with a critical mind and a critical eye to understand, interpret, identify, accept or reject written material. apart from learners’ ability to critique, assimilate and challenge texts, critical reading practices are instrumental in real-life situations. janks (2010:21) approaches the reading process from three perspectives: (1) decoding, (2) reading with the text and (3) reading against the text. janks explains that ‘decoding’ signifies linguistic knowledge and the proficiency of the written word. ‘reading with the text’ denotes interpreting the written word by attaching one’s own meaning, ideas and values to the text. ‘reading against the text’ refers to the critiquing of the text that provides a deeper insight into the word, by combining individual and social knowledge and experiences with the possibility of promoting, challenging or disregarding the ideological effects of the text. ultimately, it is this critical engagement with the text that constitutes learners’ critical reading practices, which are essential life tools for academic success and a journey of lifelong learning. to illustrate learners’ critical reading practices, zin, eng and rafik-galea (2014:45–52) conducted research on 295 first-year and second-year english fal learners from various fields of study in a malaysian university. through the formulation of critical reading questions, the study explored learners’ analytical ability by identifying the author’s purpose and the main idea in the text. the study found that 66% of the participating learners failed to identify the author’s intention with the text. only 34% of the learners could identify the main idea correctly in the text. the learners’ inability to determine the author’s purpose with the text accurately, according to zin et al. (2014:49), indicated that they (i.e. the learners) were unable to interpret the text. these results indicated that many of the participating learners lacked analytical and inference skills. overall, the learners demonstrated a critical reading inability. in summary, critical reading is explored as a practice that delves into a text, to recognise and understand the deeper abstract strata that exist within a piece of writing. konza (2010:6) confirms this explanation when she asserts that the culminating goal of critical reading practices is to ‘read between the lines’, but also beyond the lines. the relationship between learners’ critical reading perceptions and practices a learner’s perception of their own critical reading ability could possibly serve as an indicator for their actual critical reading ability. understanding learners’ self-perception of their reading ability and their actual ability has prompted several studies over the years. for example, research by alhaqbani and riazi (2012), mónos (2005), and sheorey and mokhtari (2001) found that there is a correlation between learners’ critical reading practices and their self-perceived ability. furthermore, a relationship is also likely to exist between learners’ self-rated ability (which is based on their self-perception) and their actual critical reading practices as measured and evaluated by a comprehension activity (barnett 1988; madhumathi & ghosh 2012; saeedeh 2013). contrary to the existing relationship between learners’ reading self-perceptions and their actual critical reading practices mentioned above, research findings from studies conducted by alsamadani (2009) and mónos (2005) indicate that learners’ self-perception is not necessarily an accurate indicator of their reading practice ability. this sentiment is supported by research conducted by özkan gürses and bouvet (2016). these researchers measured and evaluated the relationship between university students’ perceived use of reading strategies against their actual critical reading practices by means of a comprehension test. the results of this study established that ‘negative correlations were found between perceived use of reading strategies and reading comprehension for all participants’ (özkan gürses & bouvet 2016:30). furthermore, the results of a study conducted by smit, gilmore and jameson (2012:205) demonstrated that the relationship between self-perception and achievement only accounts for 2% of the variance in achievement. these researchers argue that the reason for this is because learners might not have a good understanding of their own reading ability. thus, the relationship between the self-perception of a learner and their actual critical reading practices is not that straightforward, neither should it be assumed that it is a correspondingly aligned relationship. in other words, when a learner has a positive critical reading self-perception, it is not an automatic indication that the learner will demonstrate positive critical reading practices. the contrasting findings of the relationship between learners’ self-perceptions and their reading practices render further research into the phenomenon as necessary. methodology this section deals with the research approach and design, an outline of the data collection procedure and instrumentation, and presentation of the data analysis process. research approach and design a quantitative approach was used for the analysis of the study. according to maree (2007:145), quantitative research is a process that is systematic and objective in its ways of using numerical data from only a selected subgroup of a universe (or population) to generalise the findings to the universe that is being studied. in addition, leedy (1993) states that a quantitative method deals with data that are principally numerical. in the current study quantitative research was used to answer questions about the relationships between learners’ reading perceptions and their practices. a correlational analysis was also employed within the quantitative method. sousa, driessnack and costa mendes (2007) point out that correlational analysis measures a relationship between two variables without the researcher controlling either of them. as already mentioned above, the two variables that were measured in the current study are learners’ reading perceptions and their practices. participants a total of 166 grade 8 english fal learners were purposively selected from the two chosen schools in gauteng, tshwane south district. foley (2018) defines purposive sampling as a form of non-probability sampling in which researchers rely on their own judgement when choosing members of the population to participate in the study. in other words, researchers go to this community on purpose because they think that these individuals fit the profile of the people they need to reach. regarding the current study, the researchers felt that the grade 8 learners in the two selected schools could provide them with the relevant information with regard to their critical reading perceptions and their actual reading practices. the sample consisted of both boys and girls and their ages ranged from 13 to 15 years. data collection and instrumentation the data collection process was conducted using the survey questionnaire and the critical reading comprehension activity. the survey questionnaire consisted of two sections. section a explored the demographic variables of the learners, whereas section b incorporated 44 items that related to the learners’ critical reading practices. the survey questionnaire instrument was used to obtain data about the learners’ self-perceived ability to use critical reading strategies in the classroom. to assist the researchers to understand the learners’ self-perceived and self-rated critical reading practices, the closed questions listed in table 1 per critical reading strategy were asked. table 1: learners’ self-perceived and self-rated ability to use critical reading strategies. the questionnaire contained opinion statements that were closed questions, which were measured on a four-point likert scale: (1) never, (2) sometimes, (3) most of the time and (4) always. these intensity scales were used to simplify the procedure of data processing and to obtain uniformity. furthermore, the opinion statements were kept simple, relevant and precise so that each learner could understand. the questionnaire was distributed among the 166 learners from the two high schools asking them for self-ratings on their self-perceived critical reading ability. the critical reading comprehension activity was used as a grade-appropriate comprehension activity to explore and understand how grade 8 english fal learners engage with text through a critical reading lens. this activity was used to measure and evaluate the learners’ critical reading performance in the classroom. furthermore, this process enabled the researchers to explore the relationship between the learners’ perceptions of their own critical reading and the actual status of their critical reading practices. the critical reading comprehension activity was used as a systematic way of gathering information about the critical reading practices of the grade 8 learners and expressing this information in numerical form (imenda & muyangwa 2000:148). similarly, white (2005:164) explains that a test is a ‘systematic procedure’ in which the researcher presents the participants with a set of constructed stimuli. the researchers thus allocated a numeral to the participants based on their response to the stimuli. this assigned numeral was then used to make inferences about the ability of the respondents regarding what the test was supposed to assess. the framework of the critical reading comprehension passages was followed by 20 questions that measured and evaluated learners’ application ability of the six critical reading strategies namely: (1) knowledge, (2) comprehension, (3) application, (4) analysis, (5) synthesis and (6) evaluation. the critical reading strategies measured and evaluated by the critical reading comprehension activity were aligned with the critical reading perception questions in the survey questionnaire. the critical reading comprehension activity addressed a contemporary issue, which the learners could relate to. for example, the title of the reading comprehension was ‘emoji invasion’. this comprehension activity was sourced from the national curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) teaching and learning material, to ensure that the south african curriculum guidelines were adhered to. in this way, the scoring of the learners’ critical reading practices was conducted on a justifiable basis. data analysis to meet the objectives outlined in this study, statistical package for the social sciences (spss) version 25 was used for the analysis. specifically, the application of the two-way mixed analysis of variance (anova) was used to statistically analyse the data obtained from: (1) the questionnaire instrument and (2) the critical reading comprehension activity. the survey questionnaire data were analysed by determining the overall means and standard deviations of the learners’ self-rated critical reading perceptions, whereas the critical reading comprehension activity data were analysed based on the percentage scores obtained by the research participants. the data were visually displayed in tables using frequencies and percentage scores, whereafter they were summarised with data descriptions and interpretations. this process was aligned with white’s (2005:98) declaration of a non-experimental, correlation design which qualifies the analysis and accurate description of variables that influence the topic under investigation, such as the critical reading self-perceptions and practices of grade 8 english fal learners. the anova enabled the researchers to compare the survey questionnaire results with the critical reading comprehension activity measurements and evaluation instrument. using anova also aided the researchers to establish whether the comparisons reflected by the results of the survey questionnaire and the comprehension activity measurements and evaluation instrument were significant. findings the findings as reported by the questionnaire and the critical reading measurement and evaluation instruments are presented in the following section. learners’ perceptions of critical reading the findings of the learners’ perceptions of their critical reading ability were established with the survey questionnaire and recorded in table 2, which shows that most learners believed that they could use the knowledge critical reading strategy with a mean score of 2.64. the critical reading strategy application generated a mean rating of 2.59, followed by the analysis strategy with a mean score of 2.53 and the perceived ability to be able to comprehend a text published a mean value 2.51. although the critical reading strategy synthesis produced the second least perceived ability score with a mean of 2.41, the least number of the learners indicated that they could evaluate a text and consequently it reflected the lowest mean value of 2.39. critical reading dialogue produced a mean value of 2.94. table 2: learners’ self-perceived and self-rated ability to use critical reading strategies based on the questionnaire instrument. considering the learners’ self-perceived and self-rated critical reading abilities reflected by the survey questionnaire, it appeared that the critical reading strategy that learners perceive themselves to use best, is the critical reading dialogue strategy. the reason could be that this strategy is normally used by teachers who apply traditional methods in teaching reading. sometimes, even teachers who are not aware of different reading strategies unconsciously make use of this strategy. however, the learners indicated that they were least able to use the evaluation critical reading strategy. through the questionnaire data, which reflected the lowest mean score for the evaluation critical reading strategy, it thus emerged that the learners had little confidence in their ability to evaluate a text, with the intent to improve their lives inside and outside of school. this can be concluded from the lowest recorded mean score of 2.39. in other words, most learners indicated that they were unable to evaluate a text. this situation worried the researchers since evaluating information encourages one to think critically about the reliability, validity, accuracy, point of view or bias of information. according to bloom’s taxonomy, evaluation is the final level where learners make judgements about the value of ideas. despite the importance of this critical reading strategy, learners were found wanting as far as its application is concerned. learners’ critical reading practices the critical reading comprehension activity measurement and evaluation instrument was used to obtain data about learners’ actual critical reading practices (i.e. their measured and evaluated ability) when they critically engage with texts. table 3 reflects the critical reading strategies used as a strategic framework to determine the learners’ actual critical reading ability. considering the data reflected in this table, it was clear that learners mostly knew how to apply the knowledge and comprehension critical reading strategies, which signifies the most basic type of meaning extraction from reading. however, the learners struggled to read beyond the lines. the findings as reported by the comprehension activity measurement and evaluation instrument in table 3 demonstrate that the learners were challenged to apply critical reading strategies that internalise, analyse and evaluate the content of the text in a comprehension activity. from the six critical reading strategies used in the comprehension activity measurement and evaluation instrument, the percentage scores produced by evaluation critical reading strategy were among the lowest results. the evaluation critical reading strategy percentage scores of 34.3% and 29.5% obtained by learners illustrated that learners lacked the ability to judge and critique a text. table 3: comprehension activity measurement and evaluation instruments reflecting the learners’ critical reading practices as scores obtained (n = 166). the comprehension activity critical reading measurement and evaluation instrument presents the classroom critical reading practice performance percentage scores of grade 8 english fal learners. regarding question 1, which assessed whether learners could apply the knowledge critical reading strategy, 76.4% of the learners reflected the ability to select the correct title for a text. that means that most learners could apply the knowledge critical reading strategy when reading texts. the comprehension critical reading strategy was measured by questions 2, 6, 8, 11, 13 and 18. altogether 72.1% of learners demonstrated that they could determine the target audience of a text and 54.8% indicated that they could summarise a text. however, a mere 27.3% said that they could read from a picture what a text was about. learners also performed poorly in describing the main idea in a text (34.3%), as well as determining unknown words within the context of a text (22.5%). some of the comprehension percentage scores clearly revealed that learners experience challenges with critical reading practices in class. although there were learners who could comprehend when reading, there were also those learners who were challenged to read with understanding. from the three questions asked in the comprehension activity to measure and evaluate the application of critical reading strategy, learners could only respond successfully to one of the questions with a percentage score of 64.9%. yet for the other two questions, only 25.0% and 32.1% could record the correct answer to the questions. as with the comprehension critical reading strategy, it appeared that the majority of learners did not know how to apply a critical reading strategy when they critically engaged with the text. to measure and evaluate the analyse critical reading strategy the percentage scores were as follows: about half of the learners (50%) could explain the lesson which they had learnt from a text, while just more than half (53%) could make a prediction when reading a text. however, in contrast, not even one-fifth of the number of learners (16.8%) could identify the difference between a fact and an opinion. most learners (71.4%) demonstrated that they could draw conclusions from the sound of words; likewise 67.8% of learners were able to apply the lesson learnt from a text to their daily lives. although 44.7% of learners, that is less than half of the total number of learners, could not correctly agree or disagree with textual information as part of the synthesis critical reading application process, more than half of the learners (65.7%) were able to create a suitable new title for the text and could also apply the synthesis strategy (64.2%) by providing an alternative title associated with the text. subsequently, many learners recorded an above-average ability to synthesise when reading a text. from a sample group of (n = 166), only a few learners could apply the evaluation critical reading strategy. this was in response to the two questions measuring if learners could: (1) identify the authors’ purpose for writing a text (34.35%) and (2) identify textual evidence while reading (29.5%). most learners seemed to have difficulty evaluating a text when they read. critical reading practices are what the learners acquire as part of their classroom experience, and effective reading literacy practices are what ultimately prepare them for their lives beyond schooling. the relationship between learners’ critical reading self-perceptions and actual critical reading practices a correlation, as leedy and ormrod (2010:183) explain, refers to establishing whether a relationship exists between two or more of the variables in the same sample group or between the same variables in two sample groups. the extent (i.e. the strength or the weakness) to which differences in one variable are related to the differences in one or more other variables can also be determined. in the context of this study, we established whether a relationship existed between the same variables (i.e. the critical reading strategies) in two sample groups (i.e. the survey questionnaire and the comprehension activity). to further augment the reliability of the findings produced by this study, the researchers conducted a correlation analysis to establish whether any relationships were produced by the critical reading strategies as obtained in the learners’ critical reading comprehension activity results, against the learners’ perceptions of their own critical reading abilities, as portrayed by the percentage scores shown from the survey questionnaire. the critical reading strategies: (1) knowledge, (2) comprehension, (3) application, (4) analyses, (5) synthesis and (6) evaluation, were used as structural elements for both these instruments. the results are shown in table 4. table 4: spearman’s correlation coefficient of variables. the spearman correlation coefficient (r) was applied in this study. a spearman correlation ranking of 0 indicates that there is no tendency for y (example: the knowledge strategy practice ability) to either increase or decrease when x (example: the knowledge strategy self-perception ability) increases or decreases. the ranking 0 thus indicates that there is no significant relationship. when x and y are perfectly monotonically related, the spearman correlation coefficient becomes 1, indicating a strong and significant relationship. based on this explanation, the results in table 4 reflect the following three critical reading strategy relationships: the knowledge critical reading strategy as perceived by the learners and reported by the survey questionnaire, compared to the percentage score obtained by the learners in the critical reading comprehension activity measurement instrument, reflected a positive significant correlation of p = 0.00 < 0.05 (significant value criterion) with a small correlation coefficient value of 0.269. there was a statistically significant, but practically small, correlation. the comprehension critical reading strategy as perceived by the learners and reported by the survey questionnaire, compared to the percentage score obtained by the learners in the critical reading comprehension activity measurement instrument, reflected a positive significant correlation of p = 0.014 < 0.05 (significant value criterion) with a small correlation coefficient value of 0.190. the synthesis critical reading strategy as perceived by the learners and reported by the survey questionnaire, compared to the percentage score obtained by the learners in the critical reading comprehension activity measurement instrument, reflected a positive significant correlation of p = 0.037 < 0.05 (significant value criterion) with a small correlation coefficient value of 0.164. the establishment of only three significant value correlations based on the learners’ self-perceived critical reading ability, compared to the scores obtained in the critical reading comprehension instrument which measured and evaluated the learners’ actual critical reading ability, suggested that the learners had little understanding of their own critical reading ability. the other three correlations proved to be insignificant, by reflecting no correlation between learners’ critical reading self-perceptions and their actual critical reading ability. since the results produced by the comprehension activity critical reading measurement and evaluation instrument refuted the self-perceptions results generated by the survey questionnaire, it translated that no relationship existed between the learners’ perceptions about their critical reading ability and their actual critical reading performance. this suggests that the learners had little understanding of their critical reading ability. discussion the findings disclosed by the survey questionnaire indicated that the learners believed that they could apply critical reading strategies when they read in the english fal classroom. however, the actual scores which they (that is, the learners) produced through the comprehension activity critical reading measurement and evaluation instrument indicated that many of the learners could not apply critical reading strategies in the classroom. as an example, in response to the two questions that measured and evaluated the evaluation critical reading strategy, only few learners, that is, 34.35 and 29.5% from a total number of 166 learners, could apply the evaluation critical reading strategy while reading. yet, when they completed the survey questionnaire, the learners gave the impression that they were familiar with classroom critical reading practices. furthermore, although through the survey questionnaire, learners reported that they could analyse whether information is factual or opinionated, less than one-fifth of the learners, that is, 16.8% of learners, could identify the difference between a fact and an opinion in practice. the above result is confirmed by wilson devereux et al. (2004:1) who point out that there are several learners who cannot engage critically with academic texts. comber (2006:51) points out that learners need to connect the content of a text that they read in class to what is happening in their lives. contrary to this statement, learners demonstrated that they were not able to apply critical reading strategies. according to the sociocultural theory of literacy, learners are expected to embrace their own conceptual perspectives, and this enables them to more critically evaluate other aspects of their lives. unfortunately, in the current study, learners did not reflect this ability. considering that knowledge was the critical reading strategy that the majority of learners, that is, 76.4%, knew how to apply best, it confirmed that learners mostly only know how to apply basic reading strategies. furthermore, the knowledge reading strategy reflected a correlation value (r) of 0.269 in the survey questionnaire and the critical reading comprehension activity. this finding is confirmed by burns, roe and ross (1999:219) who relate that literal comprehension signifies the most basic type of comprehension, which refers to the use of a basic reading strategy. in other words, the learners process information at face value, directly as it is stated in the text, by applying only basic reading strategies. the learners did not read beyond the lines. alvermann (2002:198) surmises that since the learners do not know how to position themselves as critical readers of texts, it is possible that they perceive themselves as critical readers of text, yet they are not. for this reason, it seems the learners experience a sense of misconception regarding their own critical reading ability. furthermore, the learners’ self-perceived critical reading ability interpreted with the survey questionnaire compared to the results of the critical reading comprehension activity performance measurement and evaluation instrument contradicted each other. in other words, the learners perceived themselves to be able to apply critical reading strategies to the text, yet they were unable to effectively demonstrate this ability. mokhtari and reichards’s (2002:249) statement that ‘it is critically important that learners should be cognisant and monitor their own reading practices’ is shown to be futile by these findings, because learners had a misconception about their own critical reading abilities. to put it differently, the learners did not monitor their own reading practices. the results of the survey questionnaire indicated that the learners believed that they could apply most critical reading strategies when they read in the english fal classroom. however, the actual scores that they (that is, the learners) produced through the comprehension activity critical reading measurement and evaluation instrument indicated that most of the learners could not apply critical reading strategies when reading in the classroom. through the survey questionnaire responses, the learners gave the impression that they were familiar with critical reading strategies, but the comprehension activity performance measurement and evaluation scores reflected that learners were not able to apply all the critical reading strategies to a text. in sum, the correlation comparisons of the critical reading strategies established by these two instruments revealed only three statistically significant, but practically small, correlations. the correlation coefficient of variables finding is aligned with the impression that learners’ perception about their critical reading ability is not automatically an accurate indicator of their actual reading practice ability (alsamadani 2009; mónos 2005). aligned with the findings of the research conducted by alsamadani (2009) and mónos (2005), the results of this study re-emphasised that learners do indeed have an inaccurate perception about their own reading practices. conclusion the study sought to explore the critical reading perceptions and practices of english fal learners in two schools in gauteng. the results indicated that the learners had high self-perceptions about their reading ability. their claim to be using a wide range of critical reading strategies raises questions about their awareness of critical reading strategies and their function in the process of reading to learn. however, the results further revealed that the learners’ reading perceptions contradicted their actual reading practices in that in their classrooms they were not using the strategies they claimed to be using. thus, this study played an important role in revealing the real position of learners in terms of their perceptions of critical reading. subsequently, the authors felt that this situation calls for the english fal teachers to help the learners to bridge the gap between their critical reading perceptions and their actual reading practices. recommendations although there are many challenges that learners face in the classroom, the findings disclosed that the learners’ perceptions on critical reading practices are important for their sociocultural progress in and outside of the classroom. subsequently, the findings and discussion of this study revealed the following implications for reading instruction, specifically critical reading instruction: teachers should teach critical reading strategies either explicitly or implicitly. in that way learners are likely to be aware of a wider range of critical reading strategies. in addition, learners’ critical reading motivation programme should be introduced by every english fal teacher in collaboration with their learners, and the teacher should commit to support, acknowledge and compliment the learners for their initiation of and participation in classroom activities and discussions that promote critical reading practices. a critical reading motivation programme will possibly enhance the learners’ ability to monitor their own reading and stimulate a feeling of quiet satisfaction, which, in turn, can possibly increase their sense of self-efficacy, ultimately improving not only their self-perception, but their critical reading practices. schools should embark on critical reading awareness campaigns that will sensitise learners to the difference between their perceptions and their critical reading reality. during these campaigns, learners should be exposed to a wide range of reading material. this process might initiate the redress of the critical reading self-perception and practice disparity. teacher-parent critical reading partnerships should be established by schools. such a partnership may possibly amplify parental involvement and awareness in the critical reading practices of their children and, as a result, increase not only the chances of learners cultivating a critical stance and improving their critical reading practices, but also empower the learners to become critically literate citizens of the world. acknowledgements competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interest exists. author’s contributions all authors contributed equally to this work. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. ethical consideration this article followed all ethical standards for carrying out research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references alhaqbani, a. & riazi, m., 2012, ‘metacognitive awareness of reading strategy use in arabic as a second language’, reading in a foreign language 24(2), 231–255. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15548430jlr3402_4 alsamadani, 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2013, educational psychology, 12th edn., pearson education, boston, ma. zin, z., eng, w.b. & rafik-galea, s., 2012, ‘critical reading ability and its relation to l2 proficiency of malaysian esl learners’, the southeast asian journal of english language studies 20(2), 43–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/3l-2014-2002-04 article information author: margaret a. hill1 affiliation: 1education and social sciences, cape peninsula university of technology, south africa correspondence to: margaret hill email: able2readwrite@gmail.com postal address: 72 main road, greyton 7233, south africa dates: received: 17 sept. 2014 accepted: 09 mar. 2015 published: 17 june 2015 how to cite this article: hill, m.a., ‘agency and intermediate phase writing in a farm school’, reading & writing 6(1), art. #59, 8 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v6i1.59 copyright notice: © 2015. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. agency and intermediate phase writing in a farm school in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • background: the language of learning and teaching    • framing the ‘lolt’    • the ‘lolt’: assessment and progression • a sociocultural writing project in a rural school    • the writing project site    • a visual approach to literacy    • professional support    • preparation for book writing    • social construction of ‘word boxes’    • authors and illustrators: the workshop approach    • mediation style    • results • conclusions • acknowledgements    • competing interests    • authors’ contributions • references • footnotes abstract top ↑ against a background that raises problems associated with the classification of languages in current south african curriculum policy, this article describes a programme based on a visual approach to writing, implemented in a farm school. the medium of instruction was english. the home languages of the teachers and learners were afrikaans and isixhosa. sociocultural perspectives congruent with those of new literacy studies influenced the design of the writing programme. the school management had identified a serious deficit in intermediate phase (grades 4–6) learners’ ability to perform beyond typical responses to rote learning. the brief given to the literacy coach by the school management was to develop their ability to use english – the language of learning and teaching (lolt) of the school – expressively, to help them to construct original texts and to improve their mastery of the conventions of text. the management's main aim was to promote the learners’ agency in their use of english, as it had come to see this ability as crucial to academic progress in higher grades and to success in tertiary education. the literacy coach implemented a visual approach to composing original texts. key successes were evident in the variety, volume and literary quality of the learners’ texts, which exceeded expectations specified in the national curriculum statement applicable at the time. introduction top ↑ transnational tests have revealed weaknesses in south african children's performance in literacy, especially in their ability to originate and comprehend meaning in their language of learning and teaching (lolt). this project contributes to discussions on pedagogies that may be effective in addressing these weaknesses. the first part of this article raises problems associated with the classification of languages in south africa in shaping the language curriculum, their effects on identity and agency, and how these effects may constrain or promote learning. the second part describes a writing project in a rural school where children were expected to achieve expressive agency in their use of english, which was not the ‘home language’ of learners or teachers. background: the language of learning and teaching top ↑ framing the ‘lolt’ one of the more curious acronyms in current literacy discourse in south africa is the ‘lolt’. short for ‘language of learning and teaching’, the acronym occupies an ambivalent position between a conception of a hegemonic language, usually english, as imperialistic, and a view of english as an empowering tool of communication because it is particularly susceptible to shifting, hybridising pressures that make it a medium for fluid inter-, transand even supra-cultural discursive exchanges that pose little threat of domination (canagarajah 1999). for those who subscribe to the view that a language inherently carries an imperialist intentionality, the semiotics of the term lolt suggest that such intentionality can be ameliorated by relegating it to particular purposes and contexts, so avoiding the risk of ‘colonising’ the user's mind (ngugi wa thiong'o 1986:9). furthermore, any language that is used as the all-purpose medium of instruction in a school can be called a lolt, which implies that the utility of languages for schooling makes them potentially ‘equal’ in status and effect. the gloss of instrumentality that the term confers on a language implies that it can be deployed or resisted dispassionately, thereby constraining cultural contamination of the user's identity. the limitations of this utilitarian understanding of ‘the lolt’ come to the fore when constructivists consider how children learn. a constructivist orientation sees affective engagement and agency as symptomatic of effective learning, mediated by social interaction and trust (moll & whitmore in foreman et al. 1993:28). emotion and relationships, therefore, drive learning (guthrie & klauda 2013, n.p.). children of bilingual families demonstrate that given conducive social, instructional and affective conditions, they are capable of mastering more than one language simultaneously (akbulut 2007) with scant regard for the proper purposes and status to which each should be attributed in their lives, but firmly rooted in the contexts of their use and the qualities of the interlocutors’ relationships. krashen's (1982:30–32) theory with regard to the affective filter implies that how learners relate to the acquisition of an additional language can constrain agency, or self-efficacy, in engaging with the language expressively. engagement is an effect of intrinsic motivation, which in turn is an effect of an agentic sense of self, or identity. this begs profound questions. is it conceivable that the notion of the lolt as essentially foreign, and as having a limited, instrumental status, could exclude matters of heart and mind for learners, in other words – identity, and that this sense of alienation might inhibit a child's meaning-making capacity in the language of learning? at present, it appears that language policy in south africa is wrestling with tensions generated by a hierarchical view of the statuses of languages that tends to feed the imperialist thesis. for schooling purposes, languages are ranked in a perceived lineal order of their acquisition from which assumptions about learners’ competence are derived: home language, first additional, second additional, and so on. the policy assumes that home language delivers a vital initial generic foundation in vocabulary, basic concepts, thinking tools, aesthetic experience, social and moral values and identity formation that can facilitate acquisition of an additional language at a level of complexity suitable for success in schooling. there is, however, evidence in some south african studies that learners’ literacy in their home language is not a consistent indicator of better academic performance than their literacy in a first additional language (fal)1 (howie et al. 2012:39; 43). a linear hierarchical view of languages ‘for learning’ does not seem helpful in explaining this phenomenon. in questioning the validity of the terms ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ speakers, and ‘mother tongue’ in a multilingual, globalising environment, chimbganda (2005:19–22) subverts the imperialist thesis, and by extension any attempts to assign status to languages based on the perceived culture of users, to open the debate to the notion that ‘the purpose of any language is to act as a tool of thought’ (29), thereby making the agency of the user the arbiter of a language's classification. new literacy studies (nls) offers an alternative view of languages as socially situated practices, and children's texts as traces of literacy practices happening in various sites and drawn from multiple domains of life (pahl 2007). according to this view, language use is fluid, depending on the situated demands of participation in particular places and times, and takes account of out-of-school language experiences that children bring to bear on discursive events in school. in other words, this view lends itself to sociocultural approaches to literacy pedagogy. the lolt then can be seen less as a slightly weakened, default toolkit to the home language, and more as the ‘home language’ of a particular discursive moment. framed in this way, teachers would look for opportunities for learners to deploy and extend a range of perceptual and linguistic abilities drawn from their multilingual experiences in discursive events in and out-of-school, in a number of language codes in their repertoires. academic discourse could develop independently of the home language (collier & thomas 2004:2). it is possible that concepts constructed in the language of a particular event would not have to be filtered through the home language to be understood and used. in this scenario, the culturally bound, hierarchical status of a language as an organising principle in curriculum design would cease to exist, and expectations of performance in any language curriculum in a school would have no limit. for learners, a language's ‘status’ would describe their competence to deploy it at will to communicate meaning in discursive contexts, rather than on the education system's perception of their likely ‘home languages’ tied to ethnicity or cultural allegiances. the ‘lolt’: assessment and progression currently, the management principle of language programmes is determined by hierarchical preconceptions of cultural allegiances tied to language and ethnicity, rather than by unrestricted access determined by a user's agentic choices and competence. this principle imposes a regimen that may disrupt and obscure a learner's authentic language development and consequent learning capacity in school. for example, an isixhosa speaker in an english-as-lolt school environment could find herself being assessed in english as ‘home’ language, afrikaans as ‘first additional language’ (fal) and isixhosa, the learner's home language, as ‘second additional language’. alternatively, a learner in an english-as-lolt, but ‘fal’ environment actually dominated by, for example, learners and teachers who are native isixhosa or afrikaans speakers, may not be exposed to the aesthetic and conceptual challenges in english that learning requires, and could be falsely led to expect success in a tertiary environment that actually requires a level of competence that challenges even native speakers of english. whilst it may suit policy makers to believe that a home language speaker who has mastered concepts necessary for academic success can switch languages and perform to potential within the normal time frames allowed for progression in schooling and tertiary programmes, this rarely happens. in a large scale longitudinal study of english language learners’ (ells’) performance in the united states, collier and thomas (2004:5) are critical of the assumption in federal legislation that e.l.l.s should be on grade level in three years and ‘consistently found that it takes six to eight years, for ells to reach grade level in [second language] l2’. authentic evaluation therefore should assess in which language(s) the learner has actually achieved the competences that indicate potential for progression, and the gap that has to be closed between learners’ performance in their ‘native’ language and the required grade level performance in the lolt. given the length of time it takes for learners to close the gap between native and non-native speakers of the lolt, it seems reasonable to assume that learners should be enabled to aim for parity in performance between languages as early as possible. collier and thomas (2004:2) imply that there simply is not enough time for ‘remedial’ programmes, which they characterise as ‘programs [sic] that offer “watered down” instruction in a “special” curriculum that focussed on one small step at a time’ and describe the characteristic features of an alternative effective pedagogy: teachers in these bilingual classes create the cognitive challenge through thematic units of the core curriculum, focused on real world problem solving, that stimulate students to make more than one year's progress every year, in both languages. with no translation and no repeated lessons in the other language, separation of the languages is a key component of this model. peer teaching and teachers using cooperative learning strategies to capitalize on this effect serve as an important stimulus for the cognitive challenge. (p. 2; author's emphasis) this model of a parallel bilingual curriculum would require differentiated teaching and assessment, and social constructivist practices that rely heavily on formative evaluation and mediation. the provision of sufficient competent teachers for each of the languages offered in a particular region or school would become imperatives of curriculum management. south african policy appears to endorse these practices: ‘[teachers] can provide feedback that enables learners to get a sense of their own strengths and weaknesses and an understanding of how to move forward’ (department of basic education 2011:6). differentiated teaching means using open-ended, multilevel processes, and assessment that is diagnostic rather than norm-referenced. teachers would have to be confident in managing diversity, and in recognising the pedagogical value of peer teaching characteristic of classrooms where communicative interactions between learners is encouraged. the ultimate goal of this approach to language would be to enable learners to operate in an english academic environment with the facility and self-efficacy of ‘home’ language speakers, because that is what is currently necessary to engage in national and global academic and economic discourses. most south african children face the challenge of being educated in a language that is not their mother-tongue and in which they will have to engage in tertiary education and the economy. in order to succeed, learners need to be comfortable using english to originate meaning beyond the duration of specific pedagogic actions. in other words, they need to be agentic, and not merely reactive or passive, in their use of english. bourdieu and passeron (1990:31–33) point out that pedagogic action that results in ‘durable training’ is a long process of internalisation by the learner, so that the language becomes a ‘habitus’2 for the learner. how then, do educators inculcate durable conceptual and creative ability in an acquired language, english, so that it becomes a generative habitus for learners? this means that if agency is truly both method and outcome of a long process of internalisation, then time is a crucial resource required for effective pedagogical action. a sociocultural writing project in a rural school top ↑ the second part of this article describes a writing project featuring social constructivist practices, that i conducted in a rural setting to address the challenge of helping children to achieve agency and fluency, with engagement, in their use of their ‘lolt’, english. the brief given to me as literacy coach was to help the children in the intermediate phase (ip)3 of the general education and training band (get)4 to write expressively and construct original meaning in english. the writing project site the site of the project was a farm school of approximately 200 learners located in the northern karoo on a minor gravel road 35 kilometres from the nearest small town. the school comprised a preschool class from age three to reception year (grade r), and grades 1–9 in monograde classes. the school's priority was to provide quality education for farm and casual workers’ children, some of whom were from migrant karretjie5 families. spare places were taken by children from the town who travelled out to school daily in a 60-seat bus. the number of ‘town children’ admitted to the school was therefore circumscribed by the number of seats available on the bus. a fair proportion of the town children were middle class and bilingual, in afrikaans or isixhosa, and english. none of the teachers in the intermediate phase spoke english as a home language. class sizes in the intermediate phase ranged from 15–20. by the time i introduced the project, the language policy of the school specified english as the medium of instruction in the school, a decision reached after more than a decade of implementing mother-tongue isixhosa (‘home language’) literacy in grades 1–3 before transitioning to english in grade 4. in fact, there were at least three other mother-tongue groups of learners in the school, namely afrikaans, sesotho and setswana speakers. this diversity complicated the school's language policy as it was not possible to accommodate all the home languages in the curriculum. in an interview, the programme director (pers. comm.) gave me an overview of efforts to prepare children for the switch to english in grade 4, using the molteno breakthrough to literacy mother-tongue methodology for grades 1–3, and bridging to english in grade 4 (p. lubbe for the molteno project 2000, 2004). the methodology had worked well for mother-tongue isixhosa literacy in the early grades, except that there was insufficient available reading material. the transition to english in grade 4, however, was a major setback for the children. nevertheless, the molteno approach to mother-tongue literacy continued to be used for five years, supplemented by read materials and workshops, until the school management, with the support of the parents, decided to switch to a molteno breakthrough programme for english mother-tongue children to accelerate acquisition of english. during workshops to train teachers at the school for the revised national curriculum statement (rncs) dr louis benjamin found that the children in grades 1–3 had serious language problems, probably due to gaps in basic concepts that should have been established in grade r. he conducted baseline tests and introduced basic concepts, phonics and thematically based vocabulary programmes in grades r–3 (benjamin 2006). basic concepts were introduced in the home languages (isixhosa and afrikaans) in grade r, and repeated in grades 1–2 in english. a key feature of this programme was that children were encouraged from the beginning of their acquisition process to speak in full sentences. nevertheless, the programme director noted that in spite of the remarkable improvement in mastery of basic concepts in the foundation phase, there were still conceptual gaps in grades 4–6 the intermediate phase – that manifested in the children's inability to put their own thoughts into writing in english. the project in the intermediate phase was intended to build on the basic concepts and vocabulary developed in the foundation phase in order to develop learners’ ability to write original text. the children had not attempted to originate their own text during the foundation phase, but had written sentences related to the planned themes with the teachers’ guidance. a visual approach to literacy during a visit to the united states i attended a presentation of a visual art-based book writing project by prof beth olshansky (2007) and immediately recognised her approach's potential for the farm children. she had developed a two-stream process that combined art making with the more widely practised writers’ workshop approach. children became both ‘artists and writers’ (olshansky 2008) of real books. the teacher supported the writing process by reading selected picture books that modelled art techniques and text features that were discussed by the children in their roles as artists and writers. prewriting visualisation is widely accepted and encouraged as a feature of emergent writing in the foundation phase (wiley, cited in scharer & pinell 2008), but is rare in school past grade 3. prewriting visualisation should not be confused with illustrating a text after it has been written. the advantages for language learners of being given the opportunity to originate meaning visually first are obvious: visual perception does not require prior mastery of a symbolic system to compose a text. the programme i implemented was derived from this picturingwriting (olshansky 2008) process. professional support i worked in the school in week-long sessions three times a year over three years. the mornings were spent in the classrooms with the teachers, demonstrating and coteaching an art-based workshop approach to writing, and assisting in reading aloud, guided reading, art-making and word study. workshops with the teachers were held after school, during which the principles and processes of new methods were explained, discussed and debated. scrutiny of the work produced by the children guided planning successive phases of the writing workshops. differentiated teaching was an inherent feature of the workshop format. the school had an extensive library of approximately 10 000 items. teachers were encouraged to draw selections of books from the library for their classrooms and change the selections regularly. in addition, they had sets of graded readers and at least three different dictionaries or thesauruses available for children to use in the classroom. coaching in the use of ‘reading half-hour’ every day as an essential element of the programme, took various forms in the classrooms with the teachers: reading aloud, silent independent reading, guided reading to assist slower readers, ‘acting out’ stories and word study. children became familiar with narrative structures when stories were read aloud to them and discussed in terms of their settings, characters, problem, how the story ‘worked out’ and the children's affective responses. for example, niki daly's (1999, 2003a) jamela stories were used to model a plot based on a problem or crisis. once upon a time (daly 2003b) modelled a quest for achieving a goal. the children rapidly learned to analyse various genres of fiction in terms of their structures. preparation for book writing during self-selected silent reading children were encouraged to tip-toe to the blackboard and contribute interesting words to a list. towards the end of the session the contributors were asked to read their words to the class, explain their meanings, and why they liked them. the children could write words they found interesting from the list into their personal dictionaries. the lists grew rapidly, and included words like ‘squiggle’ and ‘commotion’. this practice expanded children's vocabularies and sparked interest in words as discrete phenomena. the thesaurus was a popular resource. some of the words the children found most attractive were incorporated into the weekly spelling programme. art-making became important. in afternoon sessions teachers experimented with various media and techniques that the children used later in their illustrations: wax pastels for vivid colour; wax crayon resist and colour washes; frottage; and collage. an example of the impact of the art making on the children's engagement and expression is evident in figure 1, the brave lion, a freely adapted retelling of the lion king: ‘in those days, flamingoes [sic] flew in the african skies that turn into wonderful paints which look as if they were thrown from heaven to earth’ (siyanda, grade 6). figure 1: siyanda's picture. a further noteworthy feature of siyanda's story is the imaginative integration of traces from other curriculum subjects and awareness of global events in the names he attributes to characters: ‘nairobi saved his son from the claws of death while the sun was still blazing with fire. nairobi slipped while saving his son. kampala screamed, ‘no!’ when he saw his father climbing up, his heart was relieved. as he was about to fall, another male lion came to their rescue. it was obama! he saved nairobi and ran’. (siyanda, grade 6) in his biographical note, a feature of the books that was particularly revealing about the quality of the children's engagement, siyanda, writes as follows: ‘… i love to eat macaroni and cheese. i love to play soccer and cricket. my home language is xhosa and i can also speak english and afrikaans. i really enjoyed making this book because i could use my imagination’. (siyanda, grade 6) the child responds holistically to his delight in his creativity, conflating sensory experience and pride in his multilingualism in an affirmation of his agency. social construction of ‘word boxes’ in initial exercises, the children practised the visual approach to finding vocabulary to capture images they produced by going outside, selecting a view using a paper frame and in a group with peers, discussing what they saw in their frame in terms of basic concepts – colours, shapes, scale and distance. they generated similes and metaphors to describe sensory experiences like sounds and textures. they returned to the classroom and drew their pictures from memory. using a tabular template – ‘word box’ – the group took turns to display their pictures to each other and generate words to describe the images. the teacher encouraged them to use figures of speech, which elicited sentences like ‘there were mountains which look [sic] like a tortoise shell and like a table’ (taznia, grade 4), and ‘one windy day in the karoo [sic] the windmill was crying of loneliness’ (sinawe, grade 5). in most cases, the word box exercise generated animated and focussed group interaction in finding words together and elicited a flow of sentence making that went beyond the few lines on the template, spilling on to the other side of the page. the children then displayed their pictures, and read the sentences they had composed, to their peers’ enthusiastic applause. crucial to the success of these exercises was the development of a facilitative intersubjective attitude (palinscar 1998:355) as part of the classroom culture, demonstrated by the recognition and encouragement the children gave each other as they collaborated in constructing the meaning of words and sharing sentences. authors and illustrators: the workshop approach before the book writing process commenced, i explained that we were going to publish books worthy of inclusion in the library, that is, the children were real authors and illustrators and would go through the process of drafting, revising and editing until they produced a perfect manuscript for the publisher, their teacher. each author was given a large envelope for storing drafts and pictures between workshop sessions. drafts were revised in class, whilst the teacher and i circulated, conferencing with individuals and mediating to resolve problems or teach skills (e.g. how to use a dictionary or thesaurus). the teachers would type the final corrected drafts of the grades 4–5 authors into their computers, and the grade 6 authors would enter their drafts themselves. books had to have cover pages, dedications and biographical notes featuring the author–illustrators. these high expectations generated excitement as we looked at these text features in trade books. phase 1 of the drafting process was generating storyboards. the children displayed their storyboards to the class, and told their stories orally. their peers asked the authors questions that helped them to clarify gaps in dialogue, sequence of events and solutions to their plots, after which the drawings could be revised. the evolution of sikelelwa's (grade 4, age 10) book illustrates the process (figure 2). figure 2: thinking visually: frames 1–4 of sikelewa's storyboard. in phase 2, each thumbnail was redrawn to fit an a4 page. parallel to the enlargement of pictures, text was generated for each picture, until the author had produced a first draft of the whole story. further development of the story happened in the redrawing of the pictures. there were three handwritten drafts of the text in sikelelwa's envelope. in the first draft (figure 1), sikelewa's struggle to write down the tragic burden of her thoughts is evident in her use of punctuation. a period traces moments of hesitation in her thinking process. each successive draft is richer in detail as her confidence as a storyteller grows, and with the mediation of her teacher, more refined in its structure and improved in its spelling, syntax, punctuation and handwriting: ‘draft 1 (figure 3): one day there was a father. mother and three childrens and they was poower. one day. they decided to go at. twon. they think they will find a place to stay but they culdent. get a place of some of the old. huis but. they stay in the street and it wat night and sleep and. the next day. when the childrens wake mother. father wake up but mother did not wake up and an woman came and. say wat did happen to your parens and the big girl say the was arizen i tride to wake them up and the woman say your parens die and they craid’. (sikelewa, grade 4) figure 3: sikelelwa's first draft. sikelelwa, who lived on a farm, was described by her teacher as ‘a dreamer’ who tended to underperform. the final version of her story however, has extraordinary depth of insight into the family's poverty, and empathy with the characters who survive the tragedy. literary elements of suspense, foreshadowing and the influence of fairy tale endings emerge in the text: finding a better life by sikelelwa (grade 4, age 10) one day there was a father and mother and three children. they were very poor. the roof of their house was covered with grass and had holes and cracks in it. they didn't have money to buy food or furniture. the only food they had was soup made of green leaves they found in the field. the family decided to look for a better life in town. they walked all along the gravel road. they arrived in town at sunset. they were very tired of walking the whole day and the children were crying because they were hungry. the parents gave their children the last food they had. they had no place to sleep so they slept on the pavement that night. the parents threw their only blanket over the children. they felt weak because they haven't [sic] eaten for a while. they gave all of the food to their children the last few days. the children woke up the next morning. they tried to wake their parents but nothing happened. a woman who walked by asked them what was going on. the eldest daughter told her that her parents wouldn't wake up. when the woman looked closer she found that both the parents had died during the night. the children cried. the woman who found them on the street arranged the parents’ funeral. she gave the children neat clothes to wear that day. they were all crying because they were sad and didn't know what was going to happen to them. but the woman who found them on the street was a kind and rich lady. she didn't have children of her own. she lived in a big house with lots of beautiful furniture. the lady took the children to her house. she told them that they could stay with her. the children got their own room with soft and warm blankets on their beds. they would never be hungry again. the children missed their parents a lot, but they lived happily ever after with the kind lady. the oral dimension of the book writing played a significant part in developing the fluency of the text in the final version. it was in the communication of the text to an audience of peers that the writers experienced their cryptic gaps and syntactical faults. they often corrected these spontaneously during their performances, a practice that spurred self-correction and enhanced self-efficacy. the effect on the children's sense of self when they observed a peer reading their books aloud was inestimable. mediation style sensitive mediation was crucial to the success of the project in establishing the children's agency as writers. it was vital that the teacher refrain from rewriting the text for the authors. teachers were encouraged to use a conferring protocol (calkins, hartman & white 2005) when interacting with writers, which adhered to a sequence of four kinds of actions whilst the children were revising their drafts in class: ask the learner what he or she needs or wants to do (‘research’) select an appropriate teaching strategy (‘decide’) mediate (‘teach’) link the learning to the learner's past experience and future performance. when teachers found that a large proportion of children needed to be taught a particular skill, for example, the punctuation of direct speech, they stopped the process to give a mini-lesson to the whole class, focussed on the target skill. this constructivist practice provided reference points when conferring one-on-one: ‘remember when we …?’ from the evidence of ‘red pen’ in the drafts i deduced that the teachers had used the protocol with varied success. the less the teachers rewrote for the writers in successive drafts, the more successful the mediation by means of conferring was seen to be. sets of stories where there had been denser rewriting tended to be more similar in tone than sets where there had been more conferring and less ‘marking’. the challenge for the teachers was time. it was difficult for them to restrain their inclination to ‘fix’ flaws because the processes of self-correction were slow compared with conventional ‘marking’ and copying of corrections, especially for the grade 6 teacher who was teaching separate subjects across grades, and therefore could not use time as flexibly as the teachers delivering the whole curriculum. results given the brief to develop agency in the learners’ use of english, indications of success would include variety and uniqueness, expressive use of language, and extended text. the children produced 94 texts in a range of narrative genres including fantasy (mainly anthropomorphic stories influenced by elements of fables and folktales) and realism that included memoir, themes of crime, poverty, friendship and cultural symbolism. each story was unique. whilst the learners’ texts conformed to conventional structures of narrative structure – character, setting, problem, plot, resolution and theme – each maintained its personal vision and expressive style. it appears that the opportunity to create and revise characters and settings visually, enabled the writers to play imaginatively with the images, the essence of play being the agent's freedom to initiate ‘something new’, so that ‘all sorts of things seem possible; things can become different from “the way they are”’ (greene 1988:48). visualisation opened the process to expression of the learners’ life-worlds, their primary habitus, which resulted in the uniqueness of each story. the distance between the habitus generated by the child's home, and the habitus of the school, could be reduced (bourdieu & passeron 1990:44). mastery became a tool of expression, rather than an end in itself. this relation of the processes of mastery to the agency of the learner-writer proved to be generative in that the learners were able to originate extended text. the project was expensive in terms of time. during the first year the children worked on the production of their books – albeit intermittently – for six months in available ‘literacy’ time. in the second year, time for writing books was accommodated by clustering some subjects so that the curriculum in natural sciences (ns), economic and management sciences (ems), and social sciences (ss) was completed by the end of the third term. the learners were immersed in the vocabulary and procedures of each discipline intensively for a concentrated period of time so that they could acquire and reflect on disciplinary concepts and knowledge without interruptions and distractions caused by constantly ‘switching gears’. this strategy accelerated progress in these disciplines and freed time in the final term to produce the books, and the learners had more general knowledge and vocabulary for their stories. for example, sinawe, who had written a free adaptation of the fable ‘the lion and the mouse’ in grade 4, chose to use his knowledge of geography to set his story in alaska in grade 5: later they [the family] were given a car to drive around in the thick bottle-green forest. they saw tall trees covered with green leaves and even in summer the mountains were still covered in snow. when they got to a narrow road, they decided to go further by foot. orian said to himself, ‘this is boring! my parents are taking pictures of boring animals like birds and fish in the rivers. i want to see exciting animals like deer, moose and bears. i'm going my own way!’ (sinawe, grade 5) tables 1–2 demonstrate that the word counts of all the grade 4 stories exceeded those stipulated in the curriculum (department of basic education 2011:32). the grades 5–6 results were similar. table 1: text length stipulated in the curriculum (national curriculum statement). table 2: schedule of grade 4 learners’ stories. conclusions top ↑ two significant interdependent elements, namely time and agency, emerge from the farm school writing project as essential to promoting pedagogical actions that promote conceptual and creative ability in an acquired language. agency increased as prescribed limits on pacing decreased. time was managed flexibly, in response to the pace at which the learners acquired the skills they needed to produce their ‘perfect’ manuscripts. agency, expressed in their freedom to choose and illustrate topics, was important in sustaining their motivation to complete the prolonged process. the mediation protocol that required learners to identify their needs and vision for the next step of the process was also an important strategy for affirming agency. the most important feature of the project however, was the competence of the teachers as mediators, their leadership, and their commitment to seeing it through. in one class, not all the children completed their books in the first year of the project. these learners’ drafts showed lack of progress, which indicated lack of mediation and leadership. this disappointing result, fortunately not typical of the outcome of the whole project, confirmed the mckinsey report's assertion that ‘the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers’ and ‘the only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction’ (mourshed, chijioke & barber 2007:15). acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. authors’ contributions the author thanks the teachers for their participation in this project and the school management for providing access. the contents and research results reported in this article have been made available to the school and have been verified as correct. all sources have been fully cited and no plagiarism has been committed. references top ↑ akbulut, y., 2007, ‘bilingual acquisition and cognitive development in early childhood: challenges to the research paradigm’, elementary education online 6(3), 422–429. benjamin, l., 2006, the basic concepts programme: mediator's manual, published and distributed by dr. louis benjamin, cape town. bourdieu, p. & passeron, j.-c., 1990, reproduction in education, society and culture, 2nd edn., sage publications, london. calkins, l., hartman, a. & white, z., 2005, one to one: the art of conferring with young writers, scholastic, portsmouth. canagarajah, a.s., 1999, ‘on efl teachers, awareness, and agency’, elt journal 53(3), 207–214. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/elt/53.3.207 chimbganda, a.b., 2005, ‘profiling the “native speaker” of english: myths and implications for esl learning and teaching’, journal for language teaching 39(1), 18–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/jlt.v39i1.6046 collier, v. & thomas, w., 2004, ‘the astounding effectiveness of dual language education for all’, nabe journal of research and practice 2(1), 1–20. daly, n., 1999, jamela's dress, tafelberg, cape town. daly, n., 2003a, once upon a time, tafelberg, cape town. daly, n., 2003b, yebo, jamela!, tafelberg, cape town. department of basic education, 2011, curriculum and assessment policy statement grades 4–6: english home language, government printer, pretoria. greene, m., 1988, ‘what happened to imagination?’, in k. egan & d. nadener (eds.), imagination & education, open university press, milton keynes. guthrie, j. & klauda, s., 2013, ‘engagement and motivational processes in reading’, in p. afflerbach (ed.), handbook of individual differences in reading, routledge publishers, new york. howie, s., van staden, s., tshele, m., dowse, c. & zimmerman, l., 2012, ‘pirls 2011: south african children's reading literacy achievement report’, centre for evaluation and assessment, university of pretoria. krashen, s., 1982, ‘principles and practice in second language acquisition’, viewed 16 july 2013, from http://www.sdkrashen.com lubbe, p., 2000, bridge to english: grade 4 learners’ book, molteno project, kagiso, johannesburg. lubbe, p., 2004, new bridge to english: teachers’ guide, molteno project, kagiso, johannesburg. moll, l.c. & whitmore, k.f., 1993, ‘vygotsky in classroom practice: moving from individual transmission to social transaction’, in e.a. foreman, n. minick & c.a. stone (eds.), contexts for learning: sociocultural dynamics in children's development, pp. 19–42, oxford university press, new york. mourshed, m., chijioke, c. & barber, m., 2007, ‘how the world's best-performing school systems come out on top: executive summary’, viewed 20 august 2014, from http://www.smhc-cpre.org ngugi wa thiong'o, 1986, decolonizing the mind, east african educational publishers ltd., nairobi. olshansky, b., 2007, picturingwriting, national convention of teachers of english (ncte), new york. olshansky, b., 2008, the power of pictures: creating pathways to literacy through art, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. pahl, k., 2007, ‘creativity in events and practices: a lens for understanding children's multimodal texts’, literacy 41(2), 86–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9345.2007.00462.x palinscar, a.s., 1998, ‘social constructivist perspectives on teaching and learning’, annual review of psychology 49, 345–375. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.49.1.345 scharer, p. & pinnell, g., 2008, guiding k-3 writers to independence: the new essentials, new york ohio state university, literacy collaborative, columbus. footnotes top ↑ 1. ‘fal’ is a term synonymous in south africa with l2. 2. ‘the habitus is therefore a generative rather than a fixed system: a basis from which endless improvisations can derive; a “practical mastery” of skills, routines, aptitudes and assumptions which leave the individual free to make (albeit limited) choices in the encounter with new environments or fields’ (http://faculty.washington.edu/cbehler/glossary/habitus.html). 3. grades 4–6. 4. grades 1–9. 5. karretjie means ‘little cart’ and refers to the donkey carts that migrant families use to move their families and shelters in pursuit of casual work on farms. abstract introduction problem statement ethical issues literature review methodology findings discussion of findings recommendations conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) nonkululeko n. shabangu † department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, soshanguve, south africa sandra rossouw department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, soshanguve, south africa cornelia g. smith department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, soshanguve, south africa citation shabangu, n.n., rossouw, s. & smith, c.g., 2022, ‘female gender representation in selected south african magazines’, reading & writing 13(1), a385. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v13i1.385 note: †, 1995–2021. original research female gender representation in selected south african magazines nonkululeko n. shabangu, sandra rossouw, cornelia g. smith received: 03 may 2022; accepted: 19 july 2022; published: 21 sept. 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: there has been an increase in the number of women’s magazines in south africa, which also contributes to the country’s economic growth and development. objective: magazines serve as a source of entertainment and information and they cater for readers interested in learning more about what features in society and even globally, which underscores the importance of quality and gender-sensitive material. the portrayal of females in magazines surfaced as a source of interest in the light of women’s liberation and gender equity. method/results: the purpose of this study was to explore the language and content of selected south african women’s magazines. the objectives were to determine how language and content are used to represent females in selected south african women’s magazines; and determine the professional editors’, journalists’ and readers’ perceptions of the representation of females in the selected english women’s magazines. conclusion: a qualitative case study design was used, and semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data from the selected participants. the corpus spanned three professional journalists and nine readers, including seven females and five males, purposefully selected, who participated. the data collected through interviews were analysed and thematically discussed. readers’ reception aesthetics were used, in conjunction with feminist literary criticism, as theoretical lenses. contribution: the study found that sexualisation and objectification continue especially in advertisements, but that much progress has been made in magazines to represent women as powerful and significant. keywords: gender; presentation, south african magazines; reception aesthetics; feminism. introduction the media, embracing newspapers and magazines, play a pivotal role in the portrayal of females and report on the way the perceptions of women have changed; they underscore the way views and opinions surface in the realm of reading as a form of entertainment. women mainly feature in magazines as aesthetic decorations, and an incremental patriarchal view of females has been central in the portrayal of females (govender 2015:2). the perception that women are merely decorative in magazines attracted much attention since the modern woman’s role has changed. the etymology of the word magazine can be traced to the arabic word makhzan indicating a storehouse, since originally a magazine was a place where goods were stored. women’s magazines represent a store of women’s views on what happens in real life. readers interpret this depiction and identify with what is presented. they copy the trends communicated in the magazines. magazines have become an inseparable part of mass media, and society enjoys them as a source of entertainment, relaxation, and information on topical issues (gupta 2022:1). women’s magazines embody perspectives of women’s roles in society and are extremely influential; they have shifted from fashion only to include commodities (gupta 2022:1). they cover not only female empowerment but also the traditional function in which they are being engaged in domestic duties, such as child rearing and taking care of the family’s needs. authors focus in much of their work on the domestic role and marketing of products. they create the impression that women can obtain their emancipation from a patriarchal system through buying beauty products and wearing fashionable clothes (dillon & connell 2017:1). problem statement the objectification and sexualisation of females have been a contentious issue since time immemorial as women were first cast in their domestic roles and only gradually as sexual beings who are more interested in beauty and make-up than anything else. as time passed women were no longer recognised as balanced human beings, while their role in society was not acknowledged, even though many females entered the corporate world and became part of the global economy. the one-sided portrayal of females has been a problem, especially in an emancipated society in which females wish to have their voices heard. it is also true that females are more in number than males and not always fairly catered for. the relationship between magazines and society, as well as the magazine’s role as a ‘social barometer’ for that society, have long been recognised (rabe 2019:207). rabe (2019:208) argues that magazines are recognised as active role players in a complicated and forever-changing society, leading debates to take action to promote transformation. ethical issues ethical issues are challenges or events that force a person or organisation to choose between what must be judged as right (ethical) or incorrect (unethical) (fleming & zegwaard 2018:205). the tshwane university of technology (tut) provided ethical clearance. confidentiality was further achieved by storing data at the university who granted ethical clearance for the study. participation was voluntary and personal information is protected as data are only accessible to researchers. the storage of the data was secured and only the researcher and supervisors have access to the data. the data provided by the participants were used only for the purposes of this study. informed consent was sought to conduct the interviews. confidentiality and anonymity were assured. literature review the relevant theories that underpinned the study are discussed next. theoretical background: feminist literary criticism and reception aesthetics feminism women played a significant role in south africa’s history and have lately featured more prominently, as their contributions have been recognised only recently. history has evidenced a phase in the oppression of women and their endeavour for equal rights in society was ignored for quite some time. the focus in the past was not only on rectifying inequalities regarding racial discrimination, since white people were mostly privileged, but there was also a tendency to grant men more privileges than women, particularly with regard to leadership (south african history online [saho] 2017:1). feminism was, therefore, of specific relevance to this study. guo (2018:1) asserts that feminists regard language as an inseparable part of the movement for the liberation of females. women’s lives and their achievements must be recognised and not ignored. women must be released from oppression and sexual exploitation. feminists also focus on how the relationship between males and females can be changed to afford females a fair position in society, liberated from restriction, allowing them to participate in the economy. the sexist use of language is an injustice against females; for example, referring to women in unflattering terms. continual representation of females in offensive words may impact the way members of society think about the use of language and may also affect perceptions of females as the weaker sex. feminists changed the way women were oppressed and focused attention on equal treatment, opportunities, jobs and the right to vote. females are no longer pregnant and only useful in the kitchen, but have jobs, become medical doctors, engineers and mechanics. equality, also in effect, does not mean similarity; that is, the differences between males and females are not denied. moreover, the topic of sensitising society regarding female rights and exploitation as sexual objects has by no means gone out of fashion (loots 2018:26). reception aesthetics reception aesthetics were also part of the study, since studying language and gender stereotyping in magazines also involves reader responses to the text and the phenomenon at hand. iser’s work is of relevance, too, as he is concerned with readers’ response. he claims a text must be experienced by a reader and not just seen as a mere object. iser (1978:4) focuses on the implied reader, literary repertoire, the text-reader relationship and the reading strategies involved. the reader has the task of building consistency and constantly engages in the readjustment of perceptions when reading a text. readers are involved in that they are continually adjusting their expectations as the imagination transforms the text as they read. iser underscores the ideal reader’s contribution to make meaning of a text (mambrol 2016:1). the readers’ historical repertoire is activated through reader engagement with the relevant text. the reading strategies involve the conditions under which the text was created (mambrol 2016:1). another proponent who is of relevance is jauss (1982:7) who identifies the horizon of expectations which is observed through genre, allusion, and poetic language. he focuses on reading against the grain, which implies the interpretation of the text beyond what appears on the page; it involves the implied question, what is the answer, who assumes the shape of the text as norms and how conventions of a community are affected by readers’ criticism (mambrol 2016:2). gender stereotyping gender stereotypes are more unique than the biological characteristics that distinguish men from women. in various cultures, gender stereotypes may be defined by social behaviours, showing women to be different from men and may even affect their opportunities when participating publicly (hakimi le grand 2021:1). gender inequality remains an important factor in affecting the status of men and women in society. men are generally considered leaders, because they are perceived as ambitious, rational and logical, while women are viewed as comfortable and caring at home (biddle 2018:1). for the purposes of this study, the focus was on how women are portrayed in selected women’s magazines in south africa. the syntactic and vocabulary features that characterise female sexism embrace the use of pronouns, expressive vocabulary, irony and exaggeration. the construction of gender awareness in modern magazines, or advertisements, is a sensitive issue observed by many critics. although advertising and the movement towards gender equality are often intertwined, as observed in magazines, the use of women’s sexual excess and gender stereotypes remain prominent in contemporary advertising. children copy parents’ gender norms; therefore, stereotypes have an impact on children’s self-perception. advertising and marketing influence the process of gender socialisation, and has the potential to promote female empowerment (ali haque & laryea-adjei 2021:1). the use of language in magazines using language in magazines embraces vocabulary and visuals. kahane (2015:1) asserts that language is verbal, written and visual, all part of human communicative activity; therefore visuals are included. vocabulary in south african magazines since women’s and consumer magazines generally feature the use of informal words, the lexical units in the colloquial layer may be considered. kozlowski et al. (2022:1) conducted research on word frequency to investigate female portrayal in magazines and found in their study that words linked to family surfaced as obvious vocabulary on topics such as children, fashion and family, which are prevalent. the topic of women as sex objects also emerged in their investigation but the topic seemed to have disappeared recently, as more scientific topics were gradually incorporated. they observed the more frequent use of words like abortion, feminism and horoscope in the magazines that they studied. it emerged from their study that there has been a growing awareness of female representation and female rights. visuals as language in magazines visual language is considered a communication system that includes the recognition, understanding, and generation of visual symbols (semiotics) (kahane 2015:1). charts, maps, photographs and images are all considered visual languages. language and visual communication are parallel and independent ways of human interchange. considering images, it is essential that photographs used in magazines should be chosen in view of a purposeful feminist stance to uplift women and afford them equal status to men. the development of visuals as a parallel realm to literacy is referred to as graphicacy (kahane 2015:2). kress and van leeuwen (2020:3) emphasise that visuals must be interpreted within the parameters of society as the ideational meaning may differ for readers. they also propose that the arrangement and composition of the text influence interpretation, underscoring the fact that the visual mode has been neglected. grammatical signifiers act as resources for ‘acknowledging’ the interpretation of experiences when interacting with the text. understanding visuals derives from cultural change and networks impacted by the global power of the western mass media and technologies (kress & van leeuwen 2020:5). representation, when involving visuals, is about sign-making, influenced by the cultural orientation and psychological history of the designer. framed by the environment and the sign-maker, visuals must signify meaning, and communicate through the representational mode (kress & van leeuwen 2020:6). apart from the visual input, magazines also share cultural ideologies that are interpreted by readers across the globe due to translations (gupta 2022:1). cultural perceptions of language and visuals are thus also important. akestan et al. (2021:64) conducted research on the effects of gender stereotypes on consumers of different genders to investigate how people are portrayed in advertisements. gender roles have been part of advertising since time immemorial and have a long history. there is an increasing awareness of gender roles and femvertsing and dadvertising in the advertising business. readers are aware of the effect that gender stereotypes and portrayals may achieve. it may affect consumers in restricting themselves to perceive themselves as certain stereotypes in the way others see them. akestan et al. (2021:65) also state that there is more research on how females are stereotyped than how men are stereotyped. the reason for that might be the fact that females are more subjected to stereotypes and this phenomenon may draw attention away from men. women are subjected to sexual objectification, but it was found in recent research that sexualised advertising can be experienced as self-objectification by both males and females as well (gupta 2022; karsay, knoll & matthes 2018:10). creating stereotypes may limit people in the process of development, as in the case of limiting people to a particular product, or a particular profession in general identified by other stereotypes; also advertising in magazines can be interpreted as a projection of both masculinity and femininity in society. the communication of positive gender norms in advertising and marketing may assist in the promotion of gender equality which is in the interest of children (ali haque & laryea-adjei 2021:1). methodology design the research design refers to the overall strategy that the researcher chooses to integrate the different components of the study in a coherent and logical way, thereby ensuring that the research problem is addressed effectively. it constitutes the blueprint for the collection, measurement, and analysis of data (tomaszewski, zarestky & gonzalez 2021:2; yazan 2015:134). yazan (2015:135) asserts that in a case study in-depth knowledge is developed to understand a complex phenomenon in a real-life situation. therefore, for the purpose of this study we chose the case study design. we examined the participants’ responses and the use of language and representation of women in the selected magazines viz.: bona, you and truelove. we also focused on issues of transition in which magazines show women in a specific manner within settings. research paradigm an interpretivist research paradigm was used as i was interested in lived experiences and documental analysis of how females are projected in the selected magazines. interpretivists help to understand the interpretation of the world. this is ideal if the researcher needs specific insight into real-world experiences and participants’ perceptions. for the purposes of this study, interpretivism facilitated the understanding of participants’ use of english as a medium of written communication, as clearly stated in many women’s magazines, based on the reader’s experience (al riyami 2015:2349). research approach tomaszewski et al. (2021:1) posit that the research approach is a guideline to make choices about the research methods that must be applied to achieve the intended goal. we opted for the qualitative research approach in this study. the qualitative research approach is an approach for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to social or human problems. tomaszewski et al. (2021:2) maintain that a qualitative approach is used when the researcher intends to understand human behaviour. consequently, since the study aimed to examine the linguistic and content analysis of female gender representation in selected south african women’s magazines, a qualitative approach suited the study well. population and sample a population is a group of people whom the researcher intends to study. according to gentles, charles and ploeg (2015), a population encompasses the total collection of all units of analysis about which the researcher wishes to draw conclusions. the research was conducted in pretoria (gauteng province). the sample population consisted of 12 participants (3 journalists and 9 readers) who were approached to provide information during semi-structured interviews. there were also male readers among the participants, as not only females read magazines. due to covid-19 only three professional journalists and nine readers participated. initially six journalists would participate, but covid-19 caused many challenges in accessing participants, so semi-structured interviews were the most viable. access to the journalists was delayed due to the restrictions of lockdown and social distancing. the data for this project were gathered through semi-structured interviews and participants were tape recorded. according to gentles et al. (2015:1772), the most suitable sampling method for case studies is purposeful sampling, while viewing a study as purposeful must be validated. purposive sampling was used in my study, because the researcher realised the importance of journalists as experts, as well as the role readers play to comment on what is published; therefore, rich information was sought. purposive sampling is also known as judgmental, selective, or subjective sampling, and is a form of non-probability sampling in which researchers rely on their own judgment when choosing members of the population to participate in their surveys. data collection this study used semi-structured face-to-face verbal interviews as suggested by tomaszewski et al. (2020:1). because of covid-19, groups posed too many practical problems. the author(s) did so to gain a detailed picture of the participants’ beliefs about, or perceptions or account of, a particular topic. interviews are useful, especially when the topic is complex, controversial, and/or personal. the other reason for the adoption of semi-structured interviews was to draw motives from participants that would inform their deep-seated honest feelings. data analysis the participants’ responses were analysed and coded as themes surfaced. coding was used and descriptive words were added to segments. segments were underlined in the interviewer’s texts, and coding was done as suggested by tomaszewski et al. (2020:2). themes were then identified by studying the codes which revealed the prominence of female portrayal in terms of language and content. journalists working at media24, and specifically for bona, you and truelove, participated. readers of these magazines were also interviewed since the readers’ perspectives were important. their details are provided in table 1. table 1: participants’ profile. findings below is a discussion of the findings from the study. theme 1: portrayal of women in women’s magazines – content and language magazine readers (r2m1f, r1m2m, r2m2m and r1m3m) expressed their concerns, based on their perception of the presentation of females in women’s magazines. they mentioned that they were of the view that women are not always represented well in magazines covering topics regarding females. female reader 1 magazine 1 (r1m1f) said that women’s articles usually do not focus on the self-development aspect of life in general. it also emerged that the language used by journalists is linked to the perception of females as the nurturing gender. when reporting on the content, the use of vocabulary formed an integral part of the response to women. words such as beauty, body and physical appearance often featured, even in headlines. the following verbal quotes are from the readers to support this: female reader 1 magazine 1 (r1m1f) said: ‘women are depicted as people who focus on materialistic things like fashion, accessories and romance. words that are used are e.g. lifestyle, beauty and sex lives. the vocabulary portrays women as people who are less concerned about their self-advancement and education in their endeavours. words such as beauty and physique are used to depict females as the sex linked with physical beauty. women in this regard are only featured in articles when they have achieved something. for instance, miss south africa only featured after she won the title. however, miss sa’s consistent efforts or the process to enter is not often covered.’ female reader 2 magazine 3 (r2m3f) opined: ‘the magazines portray females as hard workers and people who can conquer anything that comes their way when they are united and focused. for example, the magazine truelove is mainly about celebrating women and supporting them.’ female reader 2 magazine 3 (r2m3f) further elaborated: ‘advertisements do not reflect reality in society. women have been portrayed in stereotypical roles for years. typical stereotypes include the adoptive mother or attractive woman.’ male reader 3 magazine 2 (r1m3m) was of the view that: ‘most south african females nowadays are portrayed as hustlers, successful business personas, protective mothers, romantic partners, fragile and sensitive individuals, strong, caring, kind, and revengeful due to bad experiences, spiteful, housewives, and some celebratory individuals are portrayed as intelligent persons.’ based on the above responses, it can be inferred that some participants were of the view that females were indeed portrayed in a positive light (r1m3m and r2m3m). the responses supporting this view came from two male participants. the way females are depicted also bears testimony to the way their freedom is affected. it was reported that some readers who enjoy female magazines try to defend themselves and to focus on magazines’ positive attributes. in addition, there were those (r1m1f and r2m3f) who, as readers, think that women are not respected in the public space and are being used as objects to sell the products in advertisements. female reader 3 magazine 2 (r3m2f) said: ‘some contents are completely unacceptable as nude women are shown publicly, which makes most people to lose respect for that person. sometimes they dress up as physically decorated women, who are characterised as a woman who symbolises the physical ideal image.’ female reader participant r2m1 said: ‘in my opinion, women magazine content has turned women into objects, or ornaments especially in advertisements, where they wear revealing clothes and are used to sell products. this has not changed much from the previous years.’ female professional journalist of magazine 1 (pjm1f) said: ‘women are depicted in various contexts; if there is a woman that is doing amazing work in the community, she will be in that publication. if there is a woman, for instance, maybe a first black ceo, she will be included in the publication. any women who are breaking barriers will always be included in publications. truelove and bona have always been focusing on black women who are doing amazing things whether in the workplace, as parents or in the community or leadership.’ she continued to say: ‘i do love the fact that we cover positive stories about them, sharing what they do for the community, and what they do for their children at work especially when they are profiled like women who are succeeding to achieve extraordinary milestones, but in the same vein i do sometimes feel like the advice given to women, especially when it deals with their sexual performance, and the need to keep a man happy and how to make him stay or how to make sure he enjoys sex are always about what women must do.’ female professional journalist of magazine 2 (pjm2f) said: ‘at the two magazines that i have worked for, the portrayal of females, and the visuals that they use are fine to me. the two magazines that i was engaged in have always focused on body positivity and the tendency to use skinny models is no longer a requirement. magazines nowadays use big women, skinny women and all types of women, but the magazines with largely white readers always use skinny women and they are perfect. this sends out the wrong message to those who do not manage to imitate these high standards. the magazines with more black readers like truelove and bona portray women of all body types.’ male professional journalist of magazine 3 (pjm3m) said: ‘gender bias is reflected behind the scenes; there is gender bias but also in the actual magazine itself you would see articles about everything on how to please your man, what to do for your man and all those things. most magazines depict women as incomplete without men.’ furthermore, all three the journalists, involved as participants, said the magazines catering for black readers are not so focused on skinny models. they also use larger size models to teach the readers about being balanced and beautiful despite a fuller figure. the professional journalist of magazine 1 (pmj1f) said: ‘we do try to pick formidable females to entertain and serve our readers. we are also aware that equality must be addressed and that males cannot be portrayed as the superior gender. advertising, however, complicates matters because advertisers support the magazines and we are a business who must pay our employees.’ theme 2: gender equality it was reported that basic human rights entail that all human beings are equal and must be treated with respect and dignity. women are in jeopardy because of the gender bias detected in women’s magazines. the focus was to check the imbalance in the treatment of women when comparing their position in relation to that of their male counterparts. the aim was also to hear what the participants thought about the overall view of women’s submissiveness or oppression in magazines. to address this theme, readers were asked to share their views on the inequalities portrayed in magazines. their responses showed their dissatisfaction with the way women are treated and projected in magazines. they pointed out inequalities portrayed by magazines and focused on the way women are held accountable to be nurturers who are mainly responsible for their husbands’ well-being. the following is from male reader 1 of magazine 2 who responded (r1m2m), on gender bias reflected in the selected magazines: ‘my view is that magazines in most cases favour women.’ reader 3 of magazine 1 (r3m1f) said: ‘the magazine simply says commit to and look after your husband or boyfriend so it is not just about you only; there is no statement that says a man should also be fair towards a woman.’ reader 2 of magazine 3 (r2m3f) mentioned: ‘in most cases, men are more likely to be represented in work situations and in senior management positions than women.’ in the development of movements related to raising awareness and reporting on gender stereotypes, discrimination and abuse surfaced, and it was pointed out that women must be viewed as equal to men. the assumption was that negative attitudes towards women and the abuse of power are conducive to a hostile environment for women. reader participant of magazine 1 (r1m1m) said: ‘yes, they are if there is a feature where women are treated as housekeepers whereas men are wearing suits showing progress in life.’ reader participant 2 of magazine 1 (r2m1f) opined: ‘yes, women are depicted as submissive to men, as women are groomed naturally and culturally to be submissive. there are discussions on how to be a good wife or a girlfriend to your husband but there are no discussions with men on how they should be good husbands or boyfriends.’ reader 2 of magazine 2 (r2m2m) said: ‘no, it is just that women are not able to speak up whenever they have problems, unlike men.’ the journalists were a bit defensive as they said that the magazines were aware of equality and portrayal of females as strong and equal to men. professional journalist magazine 2 (pjm2f) said: ‘we feature females in strong positions on our cover pages to put across the message that females are afforded their rightful position. we do focus on equality.’ theme 3: the influence of women’s magazines on readers this theme discusses the influence that magazines have on readers and the focus is on whether they are portrayed as positive or negative. furthermore, the idea was to determine whether magazines influence readers positively, regarding the fair perception of women as an equal gender. the following responses were provided. reader 1 of magazine 1 (r1m1m) opined: ‘women’s magazines use the images of pretty, good-looking females; also, feminine beautiful places can be satisfying to one’s intellect. readers are attracted to these ladies who serve as role models.’ reader 3 of magazine 1 (r3m1f) said: ‘women’s magazines exert a positive influence on women. they are relevant to women’s lives, for instance some articles are inspirational like they feature successful businesswomen. magazines further give tips on healthy living, diets and how to exercise; it also provides guidance on skin care as we know women love their skins.’ reader 3 of magazine 2 (r3m2f) said: ‘magazines have an influence on women because they teach women a lot. i would say women’s magazines are the diary of a woman. even if you do not have friends, magazines will accompany you. as women we learn new trends, fashion, cooking, even motoring, because some women do not have enough knowledge about cars, so magazines play an important role in teaching women.’ professional journalist of magazine 3 (pjm3m) said: ‘we are aware that readers must be respected and entertained as they pay to read our magazines. magazines are purposeless if not read by the readers. buying the magazines is the last part of the communication chain and we must render a service that is up to standard.’ theme 4: the role of advertising advertising may have evolved over time to become a tool for entering the consumer society, but it is also a tool for exchanging meaning in the use of products and services in today’s world. women’s fashion magazines have become a popular advertising tool; advertising is viewed as an extremely sensational way of conducting marketing in modern society involving using the media to persuade the audience to buy products. the focus on the objectification of women has become a crucial aspect in advertising and taboo-smashing marketing has become central to combat this tendency (royle 2020). professional journalist of magazine 1 (pjm1f) opined: ‘advertising is about selling products and making a profit. it is a business. advertisers pay the magazine to publish their advertisements. we do decide on the acceptability of these visuals and concentrate on avoiding nude pictures as the magazines are not pornographic in essence.’ professional journalist of magazine 3 (pjm3m) said: ‘the advertisements used are linked with the topic of our magazine and that is to provide guidance on true love, how to find it and how to be happy. we are careful indeed of what we publish.’ it was found that even though women’s magazines influence the readers in promoting the role of females by sending a message to multitudes of readers, a careful selection of visuals and adverts remains the focal point. promoting women depends on the magazines’ journalists. the magazine plays a great role in the intellectual training of women, and exerts a powerful influence on women because it is progressive and educates women. reader 1 of magazine 1 (r1m1m) was of the opinion that: ‘i love reading magazines and finding out more about new useful products is important. we do that through reading through the advertisements. yet, women are featured as objects and little attention is paid to add words to describe her leadership qualities.’ discussion of findings discussion of theme 1: portrayal of women in women’s magazines – content and language it was revealed that magazines sometimes portray females in an inappropriate way. women’s nudity is displayed publicly, which may cause most people to lose respect for females. this negative way of representing women affects the way readers perceive females. the women in the magazine are seen by readers as inappropriate objects; it affects the readers as audience since readers may follow the examples that they see in magazines. it emerged that there was a gradual and growing coverage of real women in magazines; however, some stereotypical representations may continue to prevail. on the other hand, the content of women’s magazines promotes the realistic personal growth of women and improves their physical confidence, which may lead to irrational assumptions about unrealistic expectations of women to reduce their self-esteem and confidence. broderick (2017:1) comments on the way females are represented and says that even though there has been a slight shift in the way they are exhibited, they are still seen as archetypes of beauty. she asserts that the most damaging part may be traced to visuals appearing in magazines when females are merely used as fillers to appear in the background. they are not characterised as protagonists unless it is for cleaning products. the role of women in magazines is, however, gradually changing to focus on other positive attributes. broderick’s (2017:1) findings correspond to the views as provided by the research participants in this study. the professional journalists (pjm1f and pjm2f) reported that magazines provide a way for women to improve their appearance and transform, or change, and impact the perspective of readers. journalists have recently focused on featuring females as more prominent instead of reflecting the idea of casting them as mere peripheral characters (broderick 2017:1). anjalin (2015:1) on the other hand found in her study that female stereotyping is rife in magazines, and that they are often afforded very limited roles, since they are frequently shown as sex objects. unwomen (2020:1) holds that female stereotypes and the underrepresentation of women in the media impacted the way males behave towards females; disrespect and violence are recognised as ways in which discrimination against females surfaces. the content of magazines is advancing strong businesswomen or women who are doing great jobs as mothers or doing whatever they prefer. the content strives to be positive but touches obviously also on negative experiences. the journalists opined that women are being shown as submissive to men, as well as incomplete without men. female journalists (pjm1f and pjm2f) indicated that there is still a strong influence of older perceptions that men are superior to women and that women cannot be successful on their own. this view of women as subordinate to men was also observed by researchers such as kuipers, van der laan and arfini (2017:1982). it was revealed that the unfair representation of females has not quite changed. even though women do receive credit for achievements and the milestones they reach, they are still portrayed as dependent, sexually available and are lacking the same power as men. this view is also supported by kuipers et al. (2017:1984). even though participants reported a slight change by referring to the acknowledgement of female achievements, they are still less influential than men and in need of men. gender inequality still prevails. conventions are still in place and are less explicit regarding power, but more in the way female desirability surfaces (kuipers et al. 2017:1985). discussion of theme 2: gender equality overall, magazines continue to portray women and men in a stereotypical way that limits the perception of human capabilities. typically, it was reported that men are seen as active, adventurous, strong willed, belligerent, and largely indifferent to human relationships. cultural views about gender focused on the woman as submissive to the man. women are sexualised as objects and the ones featuring in magazines are often young, beautiful, thin, passive, dependent, and sometimes incompetent and boring. it emerged that magazines present female characters that devote their energy to improving their appearance and caring for homes and people. because the media permeate society, their gender-distorting ways may affect how the various genders perceive themselves and predict what is normal and desirable for men. locke (2019:1) asserts that bias in the workplace has been an age-old problem and is still a contentious issue. critics maintain that equality laws have been encouraged and established to address the problem of gender inequality. the perception of men as superior to women is rooted in societal beliefs about gender and leadership role models. the emphasis on physical attractiveness, has been addressed recently as advertising companies have been alerted to the tokenistic ‘femvertising’ as observed by the advertising standards authority and an effort is made to avoid the objectification of females. the focus on the equality of the genders must not only receive annual pink-washing, but must be afforded attention to enjoy equal and respectful representation (royle 2020:1). discussion of theme 3: the influence of women’s magazines on readers it emerged from the responses provided by the participants that magazines do exert a powerful influence on readers since many topics in the magazines are educational, for instance how to be a more effective leader at home and in society. women love to read about physical beauty and health and magazines were reported to fill that gap. readers were able to respond against their horizon of expectations and fill in the gaps in the magazine texts by learning how to be more efficient in their domestic lives and in society. discussion of theme 4: the role of advertising bayazit (2020:429) found in his study that visuals have a more powerful impact than language in advertising. he asserts that the portrayal of women in advertising is extremely powerful and that magazines must guard against objectification of the female body. objectification of females, however, increases effectiveness and has an influence on magazine sales. advertisers were found to deliberately objectify females to preclude them from progressing in life. bayazit (2020:430) criticises magazines for exploiting women to advance their sales. swift and gould (2021:1) report that magazines incorporating advertisements set the gauge for what is acceptable, or not, regarding the sexualisation and objectification of female bodies. portraying women as sexual objects contributes to harmful gender stereotypes that may create the impression that it is normal to become violent against females. a stance that condones the objectification of female bodies encourages violence and sexualisation of the female gender. recommendations it is recommended that: magazine media contribute by building the knowledge base and raising awareness of gender issues. they can inspire readers to become educated consumers who will be able to make well-informed choices that contribute to their identity construction. magazines must provide high-quality content that underscores the achievements of women from all walks of life. this will help to provide appropriate role models for women, as well as add to media transparency, accuracy, and integrity. magazine journalists and professionals must avoid stereotypical representations and focus on modern-day aspects of femininity and masculinity, since it is impossible to have a perfect body. readers may form part of the dialogue on gender equality and contribute by alerting magazines to their influential role and that magazines could make a difference by projecting females realistically and equal to men in magazines. conclusion this study found that magazines have a considerable influence on readers and society, because of their representation, which adds to the perceptions of the world, as well as personal and social identities. magazine content and language may be used as a vehicle to address the challenging inequalities of power and gender-based violence. this study found that stereotypical, patriarchal images of women continue to persist in magazine media, based on a qualitative analysis of how magazines present women and their influence on identity building. this finding supports the concerns raised by feminists that the problem regarding gender equality still needs attention. the reception theory underscores the role the reader plays in giving feedback to magazines and making their voice heard. most of the content in the publications in this study represents women in stereotypical ways, as they are dismissed and limited by underestimating their achievements. women are frequently objectified in magazines by being reduced to incidental characters as sex objects of men’s desire. the subjective treatment of women in the media devalues the women’s remarkable achievements. it was, however, also found that there has been a shift in perceptions and that women are increasingly shown as powerful people who could make a difference in society and their environment. journalists must be alerted to their role in society when publishing content in the media and they must be sensitised regarding the representation of females and gender equality. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions since the student n.n.s. died after having passed her examination, c.g.s. wrote this article from her dissertation. it is allowed by our university to do that when a student passes away. she passed on just before the article could be written, so i, as main supervisor, wrote the article in cooperation with s.r. ethical considerations ethical clearance was granted by tut, faculty committee for research ethics – humanities (fcre-hum). the ethics clearance will be attached, as well as the student’s death certificate. the student did quite well in her exams, and i am very keen to honour her memory, as well as her daughter by putting in an effort to attempt the submission and publication. she passed the exams so well. fcre/apl/std/2018/10. 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booi-ncetani2 affiliations: 1department of applied languages, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa 2mthatha education district, mthatha, south africa correspondence to: chaka chaka email: chakachaka8@gmail.com postal address: private bag x680, pretoria west 0001, south africa dates: received: 28 sept. 2014 accepted: 10 mar. 2015 published: 22 may 2015 how to cite this article: chaka, c., 2015, ‘an investigation into the english reading comprehension of grade 10 english first additional language learners at a senior secondary school’, reading & writing 6(1), art. #62, 7 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v6i1.62 copyright notice: © 2015. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. an investigation into the english reading comprehension of grade 10 english first additional language learners at a senior secondary school in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • framing issues • problem statement • rationale of the study • research methodology • research questions • participants and sampling technique • data elicitation instruments and data elicitation procedures • data analysis • findings and discussion • conclusion and recommendations • acknowledgements    • competing interests    • authors’ contributions • references abstract top ↑ poor levels of english first additional language (efal) reading comprehension amongst school learners at most public schools in south africa are a great concern. in fact, for learning to be successful and effective, learners need to be able to read well in efal. this is more so as efal serves as a language of learning and teaching (lolt) for most learning areas in south africa's public schools. against this background, this study set out in 2012 to investigate the english reading comprehension of grade 10 efal learners at a senior secondary school. using purposive and voluntary sampling techniques, the study had 17 efal learners (m = 10, f–7) as its participants. it employed three reading measures, a recall task, a summary and a comprehension test, which were based on three english extracts, to assess participants’ reading comprehension. it then assessed and scored participants’ responses to the three tasks by using an oral reading rubric and two prepared marking memoranda. one of the findings of this study was that, of the three reading tasks administered, participants did slightly above average in the comprehension test, but performed below average in the two other tasks – the recall and summary tasks. introduction top ↑ poor levels of english first additional language (efal) reading comprehension among school learners at most public schools in south africa are a great concern. to this end, reading interventions are mounted at different intervals not only here in south africa (donald & condy 2003; dotwana 2009; pretorius & matchet 2003), but also in places such as the united states of america (usa) (asimov 2006; baer et al. 2007; grabe 2010) and the united kingdom (uk) (center 2005; chall, jacobs & baldwin 2004; heinz 2004; silliman & wilkinson 2004). there are sentiments expressed by some scholars to the effect that poor levels of english academic literacy, especially poor levels of english reading comprehension, prevalent in schools are a world-wide challenge (see muhammad 2013). for example, asimov (2006) points out that fewer than half of california's students’ reading and numeracy competence is commensurate with that of grade level learners nearly a decade after the state began overhauling its public education. in the same breath, in britain too, the year 2008 was declared a national year of reading because of the poor reading competence of some of the learners in english (rankin 2013). similarly, in south africa, decisions to tackle low levels of literacy afresh were taken before the announcement of the results of the progress in international reading literacy study. in this case, in a major study of literacy skills of grade 4 and 5 learners conducted in forty countries, south africa came out at the bottom, notching a fortieth position (baer et al. 2007). it is worth mentioning that fluent oral reading in efal is an essential skill for learners at any level of their learning career. in fact, most language teaching experts agree that efficient and effective word recognition skills are a sine qua non for becoming a successful reader (chard et al. 2009; grabe 2009, 2010; mikulecky 2008). for learning to be successful and effective, learners need to be able to read well. it becomes clear, therefore, that efal is very important in every respect since it is used as a language of learning and teaching (lolt) for most learning areas at schools in south africa. it also serves as a lingua franca for many learners speaking different languages. thus, it is a tool that enables them to communicate with one another. as a result, efal teachers should teach it bearing in mind the aforesaid factors. of all the aspects pertaining to efal, reading is the most overlooked and under-rated language skill by many teachers in south african schools. most grade 10 efal learners at a senior secondary school in question had reading problems. in order for these learners to master speaking, listening and writing, they first had to possess sufficient reading strategies. reading strategies are traditionally classified according to the three levels at which reading as an activity occurs: pre-reading, during-reading and post-reading strategies (see cekiso & madikiza 2014; ghuma 2011). for example, pre-reading strategies help facilitate an initial understanding of a text. they do this by utilising text signals, formulating initial hypotheses or activating prior knowledge. for their part, during-reading strategies are used for identifying and interpreting the main information in the text. they encompass searching for linguistic cues; skipping unimportant or irrelevant linguistic items; comparing different main ideas; generating questions about the main ideas; and visualising, inferring, and making affective responses to the text. lastly, post-reading strategies, as their name suggests, are employed after the reading process to evaluate a reading text. they entail, among other things: re-reading parts of the text to enhance its comprehension; clarifying hazy parts; evaluating the content of the text or its overall quality; summarising the text; reconstructing the hypothesised macro elements of the text; and making inferences (ghuma 2011; see yukselir 2014). in addition to these three reading strategies, there is the fourth one = reading monitoring strategies = identified by ghuma (2011). they help keep tabs on the reading activity itself. through them, the reader can pace a reading speed according to the complexity of a text; read a text selectively or re-read it to achieve an appropriate comprehension level; and infer the meaning of words in keeping with their structure, or contextual cues. moreover, reading strategies are categorised into two macro areas: general comprehension and local linguistic strategies. the former relate to textual elements. they involve, among others, anticipating and recognising text structure, questioning and integrating information in the text, applying general knowledge, interpreting the text, commenting on behaviour, and reacting to the text. the latter embody linguistic elements and have to do with re-reading and questioning the meaning of words within clauses or sentences, solving vocabulary problems, and paraphrasing (block 1986; taillefer & pugh 1998; see combrinck, van staden & roux 2014). it is worth highlighting, in this case, that reading comprehension is construed as a complex activity that entails the conscious and unconscious use of multiple strategies (cognitive and meta-cognitive) that the reader has to bring to bear to a given text so as to be able to extract the meaning embedded in it (see johnson 1983). above all, the success of reading comprehension is largely determined by the characteristics of the text, the level of difficulty of the text, the context in which the text is embedded, the reader's prior knowledge, the level of the reading ability (see johnson 1983; pardo 2004) and the reader's learning styles. given the points highlighted above, the current study contends that the reading ability of efal learners to comprehend texts written in english is crucial in preparing such learners to be optimally functional in the social, political and economic arenas. therefore, it is important that learners acquire the necessary reading comprehension in efal in order for them to be able to meaningfully interact with their reading texts at school. framing issues top ↑ reading as an activity and as a literacy practice is theorised from different perspectives, depending on the purpose it is meant to achieve, and on the scholarly angle from which it is conceptualised. for example, granville (2001) discusses three views of reading: the text-based view, the interactive view and the critical, socio-cultural view. she argues each of these views resonates with its respective pedagogy or approach to teaching reading. according to the first view, the meaning resides unproblematically in the text and the reader simply has to discover it as it is fixed and determinate. it conceives reading as a unidirectional enterprise in which the reader is passive. in terms of classroom teaching, this view privileges such mechanical reading skills as word recognition, decoding, phonics, and reading aloud. reading comprehension tasks, in keeping with this view, are generally biased towards literal meanings and low-order inferences (granville 2001). informed principally by cognitive psychology, the second view of reading prizes the centrality of the interaction between readers’ prior knowledge (background knowledge) and the text. it conceptualises the reader as an active meaning-maker as for it, the meaning is not unproblematically embedded in the text. in this sense, according to it, reading is a dynamic dual process between the reader and the text. most significantly, this view subscribes to a plurality of meaning in as far as the text is concerned. however, the notion of plural meanings for given text or a given word (see granville 2001; cf. bakhtin 1981) as articulated by this view, can itself lead to semantic confusion, particularly when each reader ascribes his or her own idiosyncratic meaning to a given text or to a given word. the third view of reading contends that textual meanings are not confined to the triad of the text, the writer and the reader. rather, it argues, meanings are implicated in the social, political, cultural and historical contexts in which the text, the writer and the reader are embedded. therefore, any meaning – including unbridled plural meanings attached to any text – is determined by social, political, cultural and historical exigencies. the criticality of this view lies in the ability of readers to be critical readers (granville 2001; also see shihab 2011; talebinejad & matou 2012). added to granville's (2001) three views of reading are a schematic-theoretical view of reading and a model of a thoughtful, expert reader. the two are loosely interrelated (pearson et al. 1990). a schematic-theoretical view of reading has some elements of granville's (2001) second view of reading. contrasting sharply with skills-based view of comprehension, this particular view conceives reading as an active process in which meaning is constructed by aligning old knowledge to new information communicated by the text. it contends that readers construct meaning by participating in a series of recursive interactions. in addition, it posits that new textual data serves as an invitation to confirm, reconsider or revise existing knowledge in line with the information at hand. thus, iteratively, readers get to construct and reconstruct meaning (pearson et al. 1990). aligned to the schema-theoretically based view of reading is a model of a thoughtful, expert reader. according to this model, active and expert readers are capable of: constantly searching for links between what they know and what they encounter as new information in the text. constantly monitoring the adequacy of the models of text meaning that they construct. taking steps to repair faulty comprehension once they realise they have failed to understand something. learning very early on to distinguish less important from important ideas in the text they read. synthesising information within and across texts and reading experiences. making inferences during and after reading to achieve a holistic, integrated understanding of what they read. consciously and unconsciously, asking questions about themselves, about the writers of texts and about the texts they read (pearson et al. 1990). two types of reading, which occur in converse pairs, warrant mentioning in this section. they are serial/non-serial reading and single/repeated reading. serial reading refers to reading a text in a linear manner from start to finish. in contrast, non-serial reading entails reading the text from one section to another in a non-linear or incomplete way. for their part, both single and repeated reading involve reading the text once and repeatedly, respectively (o’hara 1996). a point worth noting here is that the education system in south africa allows learners to study in their mother-tongue during their first year of study, and then to switch to efal as a language of learning and teaching (lolt) at a grade 4 level. learners usually need between six and eight years to learn a second language before they can use it as an lolt at school (heugh 2005). in this instance, a study conducted by cruickshank (2006) supports the idea that efal learners, on average, require at least five years of exposure to academic english to make up for their lack of native speaker norms. in this regard, there are types of poor reading habits that are at the core of poor reading competence for most efal learners. these are: limited eye span; finger-pointing; vocalisation; and slow reading speed. here is what each of these reading habits is about: limited eye span refers to a reader's inability to read enough words in a line or in a sentence without moving the eyes from one end of the line or of the sentence to the other. finger-pointing is when a reader follows words in a passage using his or her finger. vocalisation is about a reader reading words aloud or verbalising what he or she is reading. slow reading speed is reading fewer than the expected number of words per minute (heinz 2004; mikulecky 2008; perfetti 1985; pretorius & matchet, 2003; taguchi, takayasu-maass & gorsuch 2004). all these factors negatively affect efal learners’ development of reading skills. this is supported by heinz (2004) and mikulecky (2008), who state that for an efficient reader to decide on the most appropriate reading strategy, he or she must be sure of the purpose of a reading activity in which he or she is to engage. according to them, the lack of a reading purpose may lead to boredom, distraction and miscomprehension. in this context, algozzine et al. (2009) are of the view that fluent oral reading is one of the essential skills for children from elementary schooling. at the same time, katz and carlisle (2009) maintain that children with a reading disability demonstrate slow progress in their knowledge and application of cognitive strategies during reading, compared to proficient readers of the same age. furthermore, there are, according to pretorius and matchet (2003), three distinct levels of reading comprehension at which readers operate at any given time. these are: the independent, instructional and frustration levels. the first level consists of highly skilled readers who can independently access information from texts through reading, and who can also effectively learn from texts appropriate for that specific maturation level. the second level relates to readers who have minor reading problems but who can comprehend the written information bit by bit. and the third level entails readers who have major reading problems, especially with regard to comprehending written information. in addition, readers at this level can read below their maturation level. as such, they need intensive reading programmes to increase their reading skills level. given all this, the current study sought to find ways through which poor reading performance of grade 10 efal learners could be identified at a given senior secondary school in mthatha. problem statement top ↑ poor reading amongst school learners as a factor inhibiting literacy acquisition has been a great cause for concern for both teachers and education authorities worldwide (see asimov 2006; baer et al. 2007; donald & condy 2003; booi-ncetani 2014; grabe 2009; muhammad 2013; talebinejad & matou 2012), in south africa (see cekiso & madikiza 2014; dotwana 2009; pretorius & matchet 2003; masilo 2008), and beyond (see hartney 2011). in the south african context, the phenomenon of poor reading manifests itself at various levels of the schooling system, especially in relation to learners for whom english is a second language or a first additional language. to this end, studies have been conducted into the reading strategies employed by, or to be taught to, efal learners (see booi-ncetani 2014; cekiso & madikiza 2014; combrinck et al. 2014; dotwana 2009; granville 2001; masilo 2008), and into the reading strategies used by efal teachers (see pretorius & mampuru 2007; zimmerman 2014). against this background, one of the researchers in this study observed during her long teaching stint at the school in question, that grade 10 efal learners lacked the necessary reading skills. this was a problem that tended to affect their overall reading comprehension adversely and persisted unabatedly. and it was particularly pronounced among most grade 10 efal learners who struggled to read and fully comprehend most of the efal reading material meant for them. rationale of the study top ↑ the perennial difficulty grade 10 efal learners encountered in reading efal material meant for their grade prompted the researchers concerned to conduct the current study. for example, when grade 10 efal learners were given comprehension texts to read with a view to answering questions based on them, they tended to transcribe aspects of the texts verbatim. they also took a very long time to finish reading texts. that is, their reading speed was low for their grade. based on the points highlighted here, the purpose of the study was to find ways which would determine the reading comprehension of grade 10 efal learners at the school in question. research methodology top ↑ this study used a case study design. the latter = not to be mistaken for an experimental single-case design = embodies at least two features: a limited but specific focus and an in-depth investigation of a variable or phenomenon (griffee 2012). the research methodology it adopted was grounded in a qualitative research paradigm. the choice of this research methodology was informed by the types of data the study elicited from participants. research questions top ↑ the study addressed the following three research questions: how much content can grade 10 efal learners at a senior secondary school in mthatha recall and summarise from given reading extracts? how do these learners fare in a reading comprehension test? how does these learners’ reading performance compare in each of the reading tasks given to them? participants and sampling technique top ↑ participants in this study were seventeen grade 10 isixhosa-speaking learners doing efal at a senior secondary school in mthatha. their consent was first sought and their voluntary participation was explained before the study was conducted. of these participants, 10 were male learners, and 7 were female learners. these participants were selected from a target population of 181 efal learners through purposive and voluntary sampling techniques. these two sampling techniques were used in order to involve participants known to have had some reading problems. data elicitation instruments and data elicitation procedures top ↑ three instruments were used to elicit data from participants: a reading recall task; a reading summary task; and a reading comprehension test. all the three reading tasks were administered to participants on three days – with each task on each day – within one week in march 2012. for the first task, participants were given an extract adapted from the article from the 2011 sa national geographic traveller magazine to read for 20 minutes. they were then required to orally recall, for five minutes, as many words as they could remember from the extract. for a reading summary task, participants were given an extract, about bees, adapted from the article from the 2011 home and garden magazine, to read for 20 minutes. thereafter, they were asked to spend 15 minutes listing eight main points = in not more than 80 words = of the extract in full sentences. for the last task, participants were required to read an extract adapted from the 2011 march bona magazine article. they had to spend 25 minutes reading the extract and 15 minutes responding to ten reading comprehension items. all the three tasks were marked according to three prepared reading memoranda (an oral recall rubric for the recall task, and two marking memoranda for both the summary task and the reading comprehension test). the reading recall and reading comprehension tasks were assessed out of a total mark of 15 each, while the reading summary task was assessed out of a total mark of 10. data analysis top ↑ participants’ oral and written responses to the three reading tasks were assessed using an oral recall rubric (for the oral recall task) and two prepared marking memoranda (for the other two tasks). thereafter, the responses were graded accordingly using both raw scores and percentages. the raw scores and their corresponding percentages (including overall percentage scores and mean percentage scores) were duly tabulated (see table 1). most importantly, the findings of this study were interpreted narratively and descriptively. table 1: consolidated scores and percentages for the 3 reading tasks. findings and discussion top ↑ the following are the findings and their related discussion integrated into one section. participants’ consolidated scores (raw and mean scores) and percentages (overall and mean percentages) are reflected in table 1. according to this table, of the three reading tasks, participants did slightly above average (53%) in the comprehension test (better than they did in the other two tasks). in contrast, they did far below average in the other two tasks = the recall and summary tasks. for example, their mean percentage scores in these two tasks were 39.05% and 22%, respectively. in relation to the recall task, no participant achieved a pass or an average mark in it. in addition, out of a total mark of 15 in this task, the highest and lowest marks were 7 and 2, each. similarly, but displaying a much lower performance, the summary task (which was assessed out of a total mark of 10) had no participant scoring a pass or an average mark in it, while its highest and lowest marks were 4 and 0, respectively. by contrast, in the reading comprehension test, which was assessed out of a total mark of 15, there were 9 passes. this means that 53% of the participants managed to do well in this task. for all the three reading tasks put together, the highest and lowest percentage scores were 50% and 24%, correspondingly. moreover, the mean percentage score for the three reading tasks was 38%. as pointed out in the preceding paragraphs, of the three reading tasks administered in this study, participants did slightly better in the comprehension test. their mean percentage score in this task was 53% (see table 1), which was better than their mean percentage scores in the other two reading tasks. in addition, of the 17 participants who took part in the reading comprehension test, 9 (53%) of them passed the test, while 6 (35%) of them scored between 40% and 47%, and 2 (12%) of them scored 20% and 27%, respectively. of those that passed the test, 1 participant obtained 73%. looking at the participants’ overall performance in this activity, it becomes clear that more than half of them did well in it while the rest did not. this means that half the participants managed to comprehend the items or questions meant for this activity as opposed to less than half who did not. on this basis, and taking into account that reading can be assessed through a variety of measures, one of which is a reading comprehension test (see bernhardt 2011; gibbons 2002; grabe 2009, 2010; han & anderson 2009; mikulecky 2008), half the participants did perform above average in this measure, albeit in varying degrees (see table 1). it nonetheless needs to be pointed out that participants’ performance in the reading comprehension test tends to indicate that only half the participants operated at the rudimentary level of the text-based view of reading identified by granville (2001). this means that participants barely functioned within the schematic-theoretical view of reading espoused by pearson et al. (1990). however, and also as highlighted earlier, all participants did not do well in the other two reading tasks: a recall and a summary. not only did they not do well in these two tasks, but also none of them managed to score more than 47% in the oral recall task, and again none of them obtained more than 40% in the written summary task (see table 1). in fact, in the former task, 7 participants (41% of the participants) obtained 47%; 1 participant scored 44%; 2 participants (12% of the participants) scored 40%; 6 participants (35% of the participants) obtained 33%; and 1 participant scored 13%. likewise, in the latter task, only 2 participants (12% of the participants) obtained 40%; 8 participants (47% of the participants) scored 30%; 3 participants (18% of the participants) obtained 20%; 1 participant received 10%; and 3 participants (18% of the participants) scored 0% each. now, taking participants’ overall performance in the two tasks into consideration, it became evident that all the participants did not do well in these two tasks. actually, participants’ performance in these two tasks was not only below average in all the items comprising the two tasks, but there was also a zero percent performance in the summary for some participants. so, based on their performance in these two tasks, and taking into consideration that reading can be assessed through various measures, two of which are recalls and summaries of reading texts (see bernhardt 2011; gibbons 2002; grabe 2009, 2010; han & anderson 2009; mikulecky 2008), all the participants scored varyingly well below average in these two measures of reading (see table 1). this means that they hardly exhibited elements of expert readers as theorised by pearson et al. (1990). in keeping with the three reading levels cited earlier (also see pretorius & matchet 2003), participants’ performance in the reading comprehension test indicates that half the participants tended to operate at the second level = the instructional level. readers functioning at this level have minor reading problems but can comprehend the written information piecemeal after engaging in repeated reading, as o’hara (1996) contends. the same seems to be the case with half the participants in the reading comprehension test. however, the other participants (47% of the participants) tended to operate at the third level = the frustration level. that is, these participants had major reading problems and performed below their maturation reading level in this task. thus, they only grappled with the mechanical reading skills typifying the text-based view of reading. by contrast, all the participants tended to function at the frustration level = and by analogy, well below their reading maturation level = in the other two reading tasks: an oral recall and a written summary. most importantly, they did so variedly in both tasks, and far below an average reading performance in the latter task than in the former task (see table 1). in fact, some participants (18% of the participants) seem to have performed well below even the frustration level given that they failed to obtain any score in this task. another point worth noting here is that, apart from one participant, no other participant in the three tasks managed to function at the independent reading level or at the expert reader level. the latter level comprises, according to pretorius and matchet (2003), highly skilled or expert readers who can independently access information from texts through reading, and who can also effectively learn from texts appropriate for this specific maturation level. pearson et al. (1990) regard such readers as thoughtful, expert readers. conclusion and recommendations top ↑ the current study set out to find ways through which poor reading performance of grade 10 efal learners could be identified at a given senior secondary school in mthatha. it did so through employing three reading tasks: a reading recall task, a reading summary task and a reading comprehension test. in this regard, one of its observations is that, of the three reading tasks, participants did slightly above average in the comprehension test. by contrast, it also observed that participants did far below average in the other two tasks = the recall and summary tasks. additionally, it noted that, overall, most participants operated at the frustration level. there are many recommendations that can be proposed in this study on the basis of its findings. however, only a few are shared here. reading lessons need to be incorporated into weekly mainstream grade 10 efal classes at this senior secondary school so as to accustom learners to reading as a practice, and to help improve learners’ reading comprehension. this is necessary as reading cannot be taught as a one-off instructional activity, but has to be taught as an on-going activity into which efal learners have to be immersed. in engaging these efal learners in reading lessons, different reading strategies can be explored, one of which is the sq3r (survey, question, read, recite, and review) strategy (see dube 2011). infused into this reading strategy can be related pre-and post-reading strategies such as scan, skim, speed, and recall reading and summarizing. other essential reading strategies that these efal learners can be exposed to are: automatic decoding – being able to recognise a word instantly visualising – mentally making a picture of what one is reading about paraphrasing – restating the contents of a text using one's own words adjusting reading rate according to purpose = making one's reading speed correspond to the purpose of a reading text drawing conclusions – being able to make conclusions from a reading text inferencing – being able to make inferences from a reading text (mikulecky 2008; cf. harreveld, baker & isdale 2008). another recommendation is that, since the current study involved a small sample, future studies need to incorporate bigger samples. in conclusion, this study investigated the reading comprehension of grade 10 efal learners = whose mother-tongue was isixhosa = by using three reading measures: a recall, a summary and a comprehension test. it recommends, therefore, that future reading studies investigate efal learners’ reading comprehension using other measures such as those highlighted in the preceding paragraph, or combining some of these measures with the three employed in this study. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions data for this article was collected by n.n.b-n. (mthatha education district) from one of the senior secondary schools. c.c. 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matou, z., 2012, ‘teacher–student interaction in efl reading comprehension contexts at university level: a critical thinking perspective’, sage open, 1–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2158244012459335 yukselir, c., 2014, ‘an investigation into the reading strategy use of efl prep-class students’, procedia social and behavioral sciences 158, 65–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.12.034 zimmerman, l., 2014, ‘lessons learnt: observation of grade 4 reading comprehension teaching in south african schools across the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) 2006 achievement spectrum’, reading & writing 5(1). article information authors: madoda cekiso1 nophawu madikiza1 affiliations 1department of english, university of fort hare, south africa correspondence to: madoda cekiso postal address: po box 8 nqamakwe 4990, south africa dates: received: 31 july 2013 accepted: 19 may 2014 published: 10 sept. 2014 how to cite this article: cekiso, m. & madikiza, n., 2014, ‘reading strategies used by grade 9 english second language learners in a selected school’, reading & writing 5(1), art. #42, 7 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v5i1.42 copyright notice: © 2014. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. reading strategies used by grade 9 english second language learners in a selected school in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction    • purpose of the study    • theoretical perspective    • problem statement    • rationale of the study    • research method       • instrumentation       • data analysis • findings and discussion • conclusion and recommendations • acknowledgements    • competing interests    • authors’ contributions • references abstract top ↑ knowledge of the reading strategies used by english second language learners can help teachers to plan appropriate lessons and apply relevant methods of teaching reading in order to enhance learners’ reading comprehension. the main objective of this study was to investigate the reading strategies used by grade 9 english second language (esl) learners and also to establish if there was any significant difference between perceived strategy use and gender. the respondents (192) were all esl learners in grade 9 in 2011 in a selected school. the study employed a quantitative research method. the study used convenience sampling on a group of 192 grade 9 learners. the data collected through questionnaires was analysed by means of the statistical package for social sciences (spss) software. the findings revealed that the learners did not employ a wide range of reading strategies. the results further indicated that there was no significant difference between boys and girls in terms of strategy use. based on the above findings several suggestions were made to help teachers improve their teaching and help learners improve their reading comprehension and also about possible areas for future research. introduction top ↑ the literature has shown that awareness of the reading process and reading strategy use of readers can improve learners’ reading comprehension (porter 2010; wessels 2007). according to tercanlioglu (2004:12), reading strategies are specific actions, behaviours, steps or techniques learners use to improve their progress in comprehending, internalising and using a second language. the literature reveals that in order to improve reading proficiency and design reading skills development programmes in an informed manner, educators’ knowledge of their learners’ knowledge about reading and reading strategies must be increased (sheorey & mokhtari 2001:439). thus, educators’ knowledge about the reading strategies used by their learners is important for planning relevant lessons and also for making an informed decision about whether to teach reading strategies explicitly or implicitly. such a decision could be taken in order to develop the learners’ reading comprehension.many studies conducted in south africa and in other countries reveal that reading with comprehension is difficult for learners (dreyer & nel 2003; porter 2010; sheory & mokhtari 2001; wessels 2007). such studies reveal that this problem manifests itself at primary level and secondary level, as well as at university level. in a south african context, the high failure rate at matric (grade 12) level is partly ascribed to the lack of reading comprehension, which is associated with the use of ineffective and inefficient reading strategies (pretorius 2002). some studies reveal that learners find it difficult to understand the examination questions and end up making wrong guesses that lead to incorrect answers (madikiza 2011:3). in addition, van wyk (2001) points out that learners present low levels of reading strategy knowledge and lack the strategies needed to successfully comprehend expository texts; hence, they often select ineffective and inefficient strategies with little strategic intent. subsequently, the use of a range of reading strategies has been seen as a solution in order to empower learners with the relevant tools to comprehend the printed text. in the literature there is a strong debate about the choice and use of reading strategies according to gender. such studies have produced contradicting results. for example, in a study conducted by monos (2004:149), female learners reported higher usage of reading strategies than male learners in all categories of strategies. however, a study conducted by tercanlioglu (2004:14) found that boys were using more strategies than girls. therefore, the current study seeks to make a contribution by exploring the reading strategies used by both boys and girls amongst the grade 9 learners in a particular school and make recommendations on how the learners’ reading strategy use could be improved or stretched so as to develop their reading comprehension. purpose of the study the purpose of this study was to find out what reading strategies learners in the selected school used, and with what frequency, to approach english second language (esl) texts and whether there were differences in strategy choice between boys and girls. specifically, the study sought to address the following research questions:1. what type and frequency of use of reading strategies do the learners use before, during and after reading? 2. is there any significant difference between the perceived strategy use of girls and boys? theoretical perspective strategic awareness and monitoring of the comprehension process are critically important aspects of skilled reading (sheory & mokhtari 2001). such awareness and monitoring is often referred to in the literature as ‘metacognition’, which entails knowledge of strategies for processing texts, the ability to monitor comprehension and the ability to adjust strategies as needed (euerbach & paxton 1997:239). according to sheory and mokhtari (2001:444), it is the combination of conscious awareness of the strategic reading process and the actual use of reading strategies that distinguishes skilled readers from unskilled readers. the literature reveals that successful reading strategy use is dependent on whether a strategy is employed metacognitively (carrell 1989; jimenez 1996). in addition, (mokhtari & reichard 2004:379) point out that these less successful learners, who are often unaware of their own cognitive process, must be helped to acquire and use the reading strategies that have been identified to be successful. similarly, this study sought to identify the current strategies used by learners and introduce them to a repertoire of reading strategies in order for them to comprehend a wide range of printed texts. sloat, beswick and willms (cited in ad‑heisat 2009) state that failure to learn reading at the primary level may cause a learner to lack the ability to read well. sloat et al. further point out that learners with limited literacy skills may develop poor self-esteem, lack motivation and display behavioural and academic problems, thus causing them to be alienated from the regular curriculum (see ad‑heisat 2009). therefore, reading comprehension is a critical component of effective reading instruction for learners even at an early stage (begeny et al. 2010).according to pretorius (2002:99), a fundamental feature of academic underperformance in south africa is poor reading ability. the results of her study show that the learners who fail are those who obtain low marks on reading tests and attain comprehension levels of less than 4.5%. this study sought to establish the grade 9 learners’ current use of reading strategies in the selected school. this could assist the learners to cope with their reading at higher levels. pretorius (2002:98) states that the skill of reading becomes more demanding as learners go up the education ladder, whilst the gap between skilled and unskilled readers widens. noor (2010:67) concurs with pretorius by stating that in any academic or higher learning context, the ability to read is a crucial skill as it requires learners to interact with and process information from texts. noor further points out that many first-year university students, specifically second language learners, who enter institutions of higher learning are unprepared for the reading demands placed upon them and they encounter difficulties. thus, learners’ awareness and use of reading strategies is important for academic success. this concern is also echoed by dreyer and nel (2003:168), who point out that many south african students who register for undergraduate studies each year are underprepared for university education. therefore, it is important to develop the reading skills of the learners as early as primary level so as to equip them with reading strategies to manage the academic demands of university education. in addition, oxford (1990:2) points out that creating awareness, attention, intentionality and control of reading strategies are amongst the most useful contributions that teachers can make to develop their learners’ comprehension ability. research into reading strategies reveals that there are three classifications of reading strategies. these are pre-reading strategies, during-reading strategies and post-reading strategies. according to al-issa (2006), pre-reading strategies help one to identify the reading demands, activate what one knows about the topic and anticipate what will be read. the pre-reading stage is the crucial stage for building background knowledge. according to saricoban (2002:150), pre-reading strategies attempt to improve learners’ interest in the topic and motivate them, provide some predicting or guessing activities for the passage, prepare the learners for the context of the reading and build a bridge between the reading passage and the learners’ background and interest. the second category of reading strategies, during-reading, helps learners to cope with problematic and greyer areas of the text such as identifying the main areas of the text (ad‑heisat 2009). some examples of the during-reading activities identified by ad-heisat (2009) and flowerdew and peacock (2001) are guessing word meaning by using clues, word information clues or cognates, scanning and skimming for specific pieces of information. the third category, post-reading, helps learners deepen their understanding of their comprehension of the content, build further connections and expand their prior knowledge of the subject matter (ad-heisat 2009). in addition, cekiso (2007) points out that post-reading strategies help learners to draw conclusions and make judgements and generalisations. some examples of post-reading strategies include evaluating text purpose, confirming predictions, summarising, reflecting, questioning and connecting materials to one’s own life (christen & murphy 1991). tercanlioglu (2004:16) states that the consistent results of studies have shown that gender plays an important role in strategy choice. in a study conducted by monos (2004:150) amongst hungarian university students, the findings indicated that female students reported higher usage of reading strategies than male students in all categories and they seemed to be more conscious strategy users than male students. the results of tercanlioglu’s study, conducted on turkish students, were not consistent with those of monos. her study revealed that boys were using more strategies that girls. she further points out that a possible explanation for this result may be that in the male-dominated turkish society female students may have lower self-esteem in reporting the strategies they use. problem statement poor reading comprehension amongst esl learners is well documented in both national and international studies (ad-heisat 2009; cekiso 2012; dreyer & nel 2003; monos 2004; pretorius 2002). research conducted in south africa indicates that many south african students who register for undergraduate studies each year are underprepared for university education. it also shows that many of these students also have low reading ability (dreyer & nel 2003:167). the same sentiment is echoed by van wyk (2001:126), who states that learners present low levels of reading strategy knowledge and lack the strategies needed to successfully comprehend expository texts. this is a cause for concern as reading comprehension forms the pillar of the learning process. learning without comprehending would be a futile exercise and waste of time. this idea is supported by pretorius (2002), who states that research findings in applied linguistics and reading research consistently show a strong correlation between reading proficiency and academic success at all ages, from primary school right through to university level. therefore, knowledge of reading strategies is important for both teachers and learners and interventions based on that knowledge are likely to be meaningful and beneficial for both parties. rationale of the study since reading is considered the most important skill in academic contexts (grabe 1991) and reading strategies are crucial for efficient reading comprehension (carrell 1989), it is therefore important for teachers to prepare their learners to become competent readers by raising their awareness and use of reading strategies. it is assumed that such knowledge can help learners to differentiate between effective and ineffective reading strategies. in addition, teacher knowledge of the reading strategies used by their learners is likely to help them gain insights into effective strategy instruction. applying the findings of this study is likely to help ‘struggling’ readers to become high-ability readers. research method this study used a quantitative research method, which is a process that is systematic and objective in its ways of using numerical data from a selected subgroup of a universe (or population) to generalise the findings to the universe that is studied (maree 2008). the target population comprised grade 9 learners who were all isixhosa speakers studying english as a second language (esl) in the mthatha district of the eastern cape. a convenience sample of 192 learners (all grade 9 learners in a single selected school) was chosen by means of convenience sampling. the sample constituted 80 boys and 112 girls. instrumentation the instrument used to collect data in this study was only a questionnaire. many studies have relied only on questionnaires in order to identify strategy use as well as frequency of strategy use by learners (alhaqbani & riazi 2012; poole 2009; zhang & wu 2009). data on learners’ awareness and use of reading strategies before, during and after reading was collected from one selected school. the researchers used a standardised reading strategies questionnaire inventory developed by oxford (1990) to determine learners’ use of reading strategies. the researchers rearranged the reading strategies in this questionnaire so as to focus on pre-reading, during-reading and post-reading strategies. the subjects identified the reading strategies they employed by rating how well a certain statement described them. the questionnaire had 34 items (7 for pre-reading strategies, 18 for during-reading and 8 for post-reading strategies). taking into consideration the esl proficiency level of the participants, it was decided that the questionnaire be administered in isixhosa, the mother tongue of the participants and thus the language they were most proficient in and comfortable with. a similar technique was used by zhang and wu (2009), who translated the english version of their questionnaire into chinese, which was the native language of their learners. the idea was to guarantee successful data collection and avoiding comprehension difficulties that participants might encounter when given the english version. in the current study, the questionnaire was translated to isixhosa by one of the local university lecturers, who holds a doctoral degree in translation and is highly proficient in both english and isixhosa. her mother tongue is isixhosa, which is also the mother tongue of the participants. the survey questionnaire used a five-point likert scale:1. never true for me 2. usually not true for me 3. somewhat true for me 4. usually true for me 5. always or almost always true for me. data analysis the data from the questionnaire was analysed using the statistical package for social sciences (spss) software. this method of analysis required that data be coded before being captured. the chi-square test was used to examine the relationship or association between girls’ and boys’ strategy choices and also to answer questions on the frequency of reading strategies employed by grade 9 learners whilst reading texts. findings and discussion top ↑ the objective of this study was to investigate the reading strategies employed by the grade 9 learners in a selected school. the study also set out to discover if there was any significant difference between the perceived reading strategy use of boys and girls.the reading strategies were grouped as pre-reading, during-reading and post-reading strategies. the researchers noted that there was a wide range of critical reading strategies for text comprehension that were not employed by the majority of learners. this was shown by the low frequency of some reading strategy use. tsai, ernest and talley (2010:29) argue that strategy use has a positive influence on reading proficiency because skilled readers use more strategies in various categories than less-skilled readers do. this is a cause for concern as learners in the current study seemed not to use some key reading strategies at all. the results of the reading strategies questionnaire shown in table 1 indicate that the grade 9 learners were not using the majority of pre-reading strategies: the learners reported only using two out of seven reading strategies they were supposed to use in this category. the strategies that were used by the majority of learners were ‘i look for important information in the text’ and ‘i try to draw on my knowledge of the subject to generate questions about the text’. the majority of the learners did not know how to skim the text or how to use knowledge of the subject to help them generate questions about the text; they did not know how to set goals and struggled to search out information relevant to the reading goals. yet, the knowledge and application of the pre-reading strategies is important for text comprehension. berrett (2011:69) uses the analogy of sport in order to stress the importance of the pre-reading strategies. she states that before playing a sport or doing other physical activity, it is important to warm up and prepare your body for the upcoming task. she further states that the same thing applies to the reading process as you need to warm up and prepare your mind for reading so that you can perform your best, get the most of it and increase your comprehension. the importance of pre-reading strategies is echoed by williams (cited in al‑issa 2006), who states that the pre-reading phase is the most important phase for building background knowledge and to help one to identify the reading demands. the findings of this study contradict the findings of a study conducted by cekiso (2007:98), whose results indicated that grade 11 learners reported using pre-reading strategies more than other strategies. table 1: pre-reading strategies. table 2 reveals that during reading the learners were not using some important reading strategies that facilitate reading comprehension. amongst such strategies are: summarising or paraphrasing as you read, jumping forward or backwards in the text to find important information, trying to underline when reading in order to remember the text and making notes in order to remember the text. the awareness and use of the during-reading strategies is emphasised by ad-heisat (2009), who points out that these strategies help learners cope with problematic and greyer areas of the text such as identifying the main areas of the text, guessing word meaning by using context clues, word information clues or cognates, scanning and identifying topic sentences that contain the main idea of the paragraph. in addition, cekiso (2007:77) states that during–reading activities help learners to self-monitor reading and also to focus on details or concepts that are relevant to the purpose of reading. the fact that the learners were less frequently using the strategy of summarising the text was a concern for the researchers as they observed that in many examination papers for grade 9 learners there was a question on summarising a text. according to dotwana (2009:65), summarising is an obvious reading habit as it is proper for one to summarise whenever one has read for easy understanding and for the sake of remembering a good fraction of the material read. in the during-reading category, only two reading strategies were used by the majority of learners: ‘i distinguish between information that i already know and new information’ and ‘i note what i am interested in or bored by within the text’. table 2: during-reading strategies. table 3 indicates that during the post-reading stage the majority of the reading strategies were not used at all by the learners. the use of the post-reading strategies is emphasised by ad-heisat (2009) when he points out that post-reading strategies help learners deepen their understanding of the content, build further connections, expand their prior knowledge of the subject matter, select, organise and use relevant information, draw conclusions and make judgements and generalisations. it is clear in the current study that learners cannot summarise the information they have read or review, evaluate and interpret what they have read. these finding contradict the findings of a study conducted by zhang and wu (2009), who found that the majority of learners were conscious of the post-reading strategies they used and were able to utilise a wide range of english foreign language (efl) post-reading strategies to achieve comprehension. table 3: post-reading strategies. table 4 reveals that there was only one perceived reading strategy that proved significantly different when cross-tabulated with gender: ‘when information is critical to my understanding of the text is not directly stated, i try to infer that information from the text’. this item had a chi-square (p-value) of 0.042, which is less than 0.05. therefore, the researchers rejected the hypothesis that reading strategy use differed according to gender, since there was only one reading strategy that proved significantly different out of 34 reading strategies. therefore, the researchers accepted the null hypothesis that girls do not have higher reading strategy use than boys. table 4a: the significant difference between the perceived strategies by learners and gender. (question: when information is critical to my understanding of the text is no directly stated, i try to infer that information from the text.) table 4b: chi-square tests. many studies have indicated that girls use a wider range of reading strategies than boys (green & oxford 1995; monos 2004; young & oxford 1997). such studies have also reported that since girls use a wider range of strategies than boys, they are better readers. for example, the results of a study conducted by tsai et al. (2010) revealed that strategy use has a positive influence on reading proficiency because skilled readers use more strategies in various categories than less-skilled readers do. therefore, the idea of examining gender differences in strategy use in this study was to close the gap, if there was any, in strategy use between girls and boys. with regard to gender versus perceived reading strategy use, the results of the current study indicated that there was only one reading strategy out of 34 that revealed a difference in strategy use between boys and girls. this strategy was most frequently used by girls. therefore, the current study differs from most studies that suggest that girls read better than boys (green & oxford 1995; monos 2004; young & oxford 1997) because there was little evidence that proved that boys used fewer reading strategies than girls. this finding is supported by rutter et al. (2000), who state that girls are over-presented as gifted readers who use a wide range of strategies, although these differences are small. conclusion and recommendations top ↑ the main objective of the study was to investigate the reading strategies employed by learners from the selected school. the study also set out to discover if there was any significant difference between the perceived reading strategy use of boys and girls. by examining the learners’ responses to the questionnaire, the study revealed that the grade 9 learners from the selected school were not aware of and were not using a wide range of reading strategies. there were very few reading strategies that seemed to be popular to the learners in all categories. the study also revealed that there was no particular connection in the perceived strategy use of female and male learners, as only one strategy out of 34 strategies given indicated a significant difference when cross-tabulated with gender.the findings of the study have some practical implications for esl reading strategy instruction in schools in south africa or other educational settings that share similar characteristics. the results indicated that the majority of learners were not using some reading strategies at all. this calls for educators to identify such reading strategies and teach the learners about why and how they are used in the reading process. in addition, teachers should provide strategy training integrated with normal language work to boost linguistic proficiency at the same time. in other words, the incorporation of explicit strategy training into the usual reading instruction procedures is recommended. it is hoped that learners will gradually develop a degree of autonomy in using these reading strategies in different contexts. based on the findings of this study, teachers are strongly advised to administer the reading strategy questionnaires to their learners to identify the problem areas that might need attention in order to improve the reading comprehension of the learners. despite the fact that this study has revealed some interesting findings that might inform esl reading instruction, it has a number of limitations that were highlighted under the explanation of the research method. for example, although in some instances learners claimed to be aware of and using certain reading strategies, it was difficult for the researchers to know whether learners were actually using those reading strategies. for future research it is recommended that reading comprehension tests, think-aloud protocols or interviews are included to further examine learners’ actual strategy use. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions m.c. 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foreign language 21(1), 37–59. reading2.pdf � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �� editorial welcome to the �rst issue of the second volume of reading and writing: journal of the reading association of south africa. !is journal aims to bring together research, �eld reports, discussion pieces and critical commentary that will contribute to our knowledge and understandings of reading and writing and that may help us to better grasp the complex, dynamic and changing nature of literacy practices in education and in contemporary social life. we are delighted to bring out this issue but regret that we did not get a second issue published in 2010, as planned. we are hopeful that the quantity of submitted articles for review and publication will increase rapidly now that the journal has a presence. we expect that our administration and publishing systems will settle down and enable us to bring out the journal as regularly as planned, in future. we are also planning to bring out an online version of the journal soon, including back copies, which will be free and easily available to existing subscribers to the journal. in this issue of reading and writing: journal of the reading association of south africa we start with an article by shelly o’carroll that argues for the importance of letter-sound knowledge in the earliest stages of children learning to read in particular for children who come from poor socio-economic family backgrounds in southern africa. she examines an intervention that focuses on the teaching of letter-sound knowledge to pre-school children in the context of building language skills, emergent literacy and concepts about print. she suggests that there is an urgent need for quality teacher programmes for teachers of pre-school children, with a focus in these programmes on children’s emergent literacy. hilary janks’s article resumes the debate that was started in the �rst issue of reading and writing about the role of literacy tests of early primary schooling children. she examines the south african results in the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) and shows that there is a disjunction between what students are learning in south african classroom and what the tests are testing, she shows that the test’s emphasis on comprehending written material is at odds with the emphasis on coding activities that is common in early primary school. she argues that children need to lean to be certain kinds of text participants, users and analysts, as well as decoders, if they are to read and write successfully in school settings (and pass such benchmark tests). in their article, belinda mendelowitz and harriet davis o"er an account of narrative multilingualism as an approach to language teaching in multilingual settings, where language histories are shared by way of personal narratives. � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # # $ � % & � ' & � � � � � ( ) � * + 6 reading and writing !ey examine the impact of this approach on in-service primary school teachers who attended a course where it was taught and conclude that the practice can open up the classroom for teachers and students alike. daniel kasule’s article examines an intervention where primary school student teachers were taught to use on-line so#ware and a cloze test to determine the readability of text in textbooks. drawing on an interactive view of reading, he argues that such activity is bene�cial for increasing teachers’ awareness of readability issues, particularly as regards their students who might be learning in a second or third language. paula gains and barbara graham report on a collaborative intervention around creative writing in primary schools in two african settings. !e project was developed in tandem by researchers working in literacy organizations in kenya and south africa and aimed to encourage teachers to write creatively and expressively, on the basis that they would be better at developing the quality and quantity of their students’ writing, if their own experiences with expressive writing were enhanced. finally, lone ketsitlile presents a brief snapshot, taken from her phd study on san students in a remote dweller junior secondary school in botswana. while struggling with standardised literacy practices at school, these students reveal their range of interests and their out-of-school knowledge to the researcher. ketsitlile shows a series of photographs which these students took and then described to her. we again strongly urge rasa members and anyone else who is interested to submit papers for review and possible publication. as we described it in our opening issue, we welcome the participation, both as readers and writers, of a broad range of practitioners and academics who are interested in exploring how literacy is de�ned, enacted and promoted in a range of institutional, socio-cultural and disciplinary contexts: from early childhood literacy; early school literacy; middle school literacy; high school literacy; academic literacy in tertiary institutions; workplace literacies; family and community literacies; digital literacies associated with the new communication media, technologies and practices; transnational and translocal literacies associated with migrants and mobile people in african settings and with children of migrants and refugees in schools; reading and writing across various kinds of multilingual settings including schools and workplaces; to the reading and writing practices associated with government, local government and formal as well as informal civil society associations. we welcome papers that present research and provoke debate about literacy interventions of various sorts, whether directed at children, adults or both; in schools, homes, workplaces and elsewhere. we encourage contributions from a range of di"erent disciplines and across disciplinary boundaries. � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ! " # # ' � % & � ' & � � � � � ( ) � * + abstract introduction methodology results discussion conclusion acknowledgements references appendix 1 about the author(s) jessica dean department of health and rehabilitation sciences, faculty of health sciences, university of cape town, cape town, south africa michelle pascoe department of health and rehabilitation sciences, faculty of health sciences, university of cape town, cape town, south africa jane le roux department of health and rehabilitation sciences, faculty of health sciences, university of cape town, cape town, south africa citation dean, j., pascoe, m. & le roux, j., 2021, ‘information and communication technology reading interventions: a scoping review’, reading & writing 12(1), a294. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v12i1.294 original research information and communication technology reading interventions: a scoping review jessica dean, michelle pascoe, jane le roux received: 27 july 2020; accepted: 17 feb. 2021; published: 23 mar. 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: information and communication technology (ict) reading interventions can help children with reading difficulties, especially those in resource-constrained environments who otherwise might not have support. objectives: (1) provide an overview of ict reading interventions used globally with primary school children. (2) provide further information on the subset of studies conducted in majority world countries, describing the interventions used, their impact on reading and challenges faced. method: a scoping review was used with a search strategy that yielded a total of 49 studies for inclusion in the main review (objective 1), and a subset of five studies undertaken in the majority world (objective 2). results: most published studies (93.88%, 46 studies) demonstrated positive outcomes of ict reading interventions on learners’ reading. well-researched programmes with demonstrated effectiveness included graphogame, abracadabra, reading races and chassymo. only five studies (10.2%) were conducted in the majority world, but all reported in this subset described positive literacy gains through abracadabra and graphogame. conclusion: there is a growing evidence base of ict reading interventions that could be helpful in addressing the reading crisis in south africa. programmes such as abracadabra and graphogame demonstrate effectiveness in a variety of contexts and may have a role to play in addressing the reading challenges faced by children in south africa. contribution: the review highlighted evidence supporting the use of ict reading interventions. evidence of such approaches in south africa (and other majority world countries) remains limited and requires further evaluation of both existing and innovative, locally developed interventions. keywords: reading interventions; ict; computer-based; applications; effectiveness. introduction the majority of south african learners are not developing the reading skills expected for each grade when compared to their international peers (department of basic education 2014; mullis et al. 2017). this is a multifaceted problem linked to a complex interplay of educational, political, social and economic factors described by authors such as spaull (2013). factors related to learners’ underperformance include resource constraints, inadequate teacher training, poor instructional practices, low parental literacy levels, learning in a second or additional language, and high rates of absenteeism (howie et al. 2017). multifaceted interventions that focus on a range of aspects such as infrastructure, teacher training and classroom interventions are necessary to address the situation and bring about a more positive outlook. in this article we focus specifically on interventions for learners with reading difficulties, based on our backgrounds as speech-language therapists (slts) working to support learners with literacy and language challenges. speech-language therapists play an important role in promoting the communication and literacy development of children and providing evidence-based intervention to at-risk individuals. however, slts comprise a small professional group in south africa, culturally and linguistically appropriate resources are scarce, and most slts working in the public sector are employed by health rather than education departments. there is thus an urgent need for innovative approaches to help slts increase their reach (nadler-nir & pascoe 2016). large-scale, population-based interventions are required to target reading in south african schools. in their evidence-based profession, it is important for slts to know which interventions have demonstrated effectiveness, as well as to expand the evidence base through ongoing intervention studies. reading intervention research shows that targeting phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension in an explicit, intensive and systematic manner improves reading skills (galuschka et al. 2014; gibson & musti-rao 2017; national reading panel 2000; suggate 2016). despite this knowledge, serving the large population of children requiring reading intervention is a challenge, especially in resource-constrained contexts. one approach to providing reading support is through the use of information and communication technology (ict) programmes. there is a wide range of technology-based tools available to help children develop their reading, spelling and language abilities. these vary in terms of the ages targeted, their specific focus, platforms used, accessibility and cost. although not all studies investigating the impact of ict-based approaches to reading have reported positive outcomes (campuzano et al. 2009), reviews and meta-analyses indicate that many ict programmes produce gains in phonological awareness, phonics, word reading, fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension of school-aged children (cheung & slavin 2011, 2013; jamshidifarsani et al. 2019; moran et al. 2008). information and communication technology-based reading intervention holds potential for improving the reading skills of children by harnessing their motivation to learn through feelings of autonomy (making choices), competence (achieving goals), and relatedness (sharing experiences with another individual), providing immediate feedback and having the capacity to be intensive, individualised, and at the appropriate level of difficulty, and enabling independent use or the presence of non-professionals (mctigue & uppstad 2018). in this scoping review we set out to describe ict interventions for reading and their outcomes as described in the literature. a particular aim of the study was to consider interventions developed for, or investigated in the majority world (developing) contexts which might offer solutions to the challenges faced in south africa. the objectives of the study were to: (1) provide an overview of ict-based reading interventions described in the literature over the last decade (2009–2019) and (2) consider the subset of ict reading interventions conducted in the majority world and their impact on learners’ reading skills and challenges faced, which could lead to recommendations for research conducted in similar contexts, such as south africa. methodology scoping reviews are used to map the main sources and types of evidence available, and are particularly useful when an area is complex or has not been reviewed comprehensively before. arksey and o’malley’s (2005) framework has five steps: (1) identifying the research question or aim. this review set out to describe ict reading interventions for primary school learners undertaken in the last decade. in particular we wanted to know what work has been undertaken in the majority world so that we could investigate programmes reported to be effective in this context and build on them further. (2) identifying and (3) selecting relevant studies. a search strategy, criteria for eligibility and study selection were devised, and are described in the following sections. (4) data are then charted, collated and (5) reported in the results section of the article. the search took place between june 2018 and june 2019, undertaken mainly by the first author with the other two authors in a checking and support role. to ensure a valid and reliable process, measures were put in place such as team briefings on a regular basis to discuss any uncertainties regarding the process and findings to date. search strategy first, a pilot phase was initiated in which one database was searched using a set of core terms. titles, keywords and index terms taken from this initial set of papers were then used to develop the list of search terms further. second, following the pilot phase, researchers then used the complete search term list with the full set of electronic databases. keywords were entered into the electronic databases of psycarticles, psychinfo, eric, computers and applied sciences complete, academic search premier and cinahl. the keywords were: information and communication technology; computer-assisted; computer-based; laptop; smartphone; iphone; tablet; ipad; application; programme; software; reading intervention; reading instruction; reading therapy; reading remedial; primary school; elementary school; middle school; junior school; children and learners. eligibility criteria studies were included in the review based on the following inclusion criteria: published in a peer-reviewed journal between 2009 and 2019. interventions described needed to be delivered by ict, and aimed at improving reading or reading-related skills (one or more of the components of phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge or phonics, word reading, fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension). learners in grades 1 to 7 were the participants. experimental or quasi-experimental designs were used, that is, the included studies all considered the effect of an intervention on particular outcomes; control groups were used, although in the case of a quasi-experimental design assignment into the groups was not random. due to time and resource constraints we were only able to access and review papers in english, and grey literature (e.g. postgraduate student projects, government reports) was not searched. meta-analyses, reviews and editorial or discussion pieces were excluded. we wanted to access original research papers that might have contributed to a meta-analysis or review, or informed a discussion piece. we aimed to access original research where full methodological information and results could be accessed. titles and abstracts of papers generated by the search were reviewed by the team. study selection the first author screened the titles and abstracts of the articles from the electronic search, and then read full texts of all papers that met the eligibility criteria. papers were excluded when the eligibility criteria were not met. if a full-text article could not be accessed, it was automatically excluded from the database. a total of 49 studies met the inclusion criteria and were subsequently included in the review. data collection after identification of relevant papers, full-text articles were read and data extracted from them. detailed information about resources was charted in a spreadsheet including the name of the paper, authors, journal, country in which the study took place, research design, number and nature of participants, the name or description of intervention, devices used, outcomes measured, person supporting the intervention, and summary of outcomes. to ensure reliable reporting, the second and third authors cross-checked a proportion (20%) of all entries into the database. results overview of ict-based reading interventions described in the literature in the 49 papers included in this part of the study, the most commonly used design was an experimental pre-post design with random assignment to groups at the level of schools, classes or learners (23 studies; 46.94%) and experimental multiple baseline design across participants (10 studies; 20.4%). there were 27 (55.1%) studies where ict interventions were compared to a control group receiving no intervention and 16 (32.65%) studies that evaluated ict interventions against other interventions. sample sizes varied widely with most studies (29/49, 59.2%) having fewer than 100 participants. of the studies that described the grade of the participants, most focused on children in grades 1 to 3. most (40/49; 81.6%) had both male and female participants. the studies included learners with different characteristics such as: at risk of having reading difficulties (7; 14.29%), reading difficulties (26; 53.1%), language difficulties (3; 6.12%), and learners from mainstream schools not included based on any identified difficulties (13; 26.53%). five studies included learners with additional difficulties (such as intellectual disability, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorder and learning disability). of the studies that reported the language characteristics of the participants, 29 investigated monolingual children, 9 involved bilingual children and 4 worked with biand monolingual children. many studies did not report on the languages of the participants. a total of 46 different ict reading interventions were described. some studies evaluated one programme while others used two or more, comparing outcomes between groups. programmes used in more than two studies included graphogame/grapholearn (henceforth graphogame) (used in 10 papers), abracadabra (6 papers), reading races (3 papers) and chassymo (3 papers). these ‘big four’ programmes thus dominated the literature for the time period investigated. graphogame targets multiple levels of reading (phonics and letter-sound knowledge, phonological awareness and word reading). it is a theoretically informed intervention that has been well researched over many years and adapted for use in a variety of different languages. the programme is available to all school-aged children in finland, and in many other countries around the world in adapted forms (see ojanen et al. 2015 for further information). abracadabra similarly targets a range of skills including phonics and letter-sound knowledge, word reading, reading and listening comprehension, reading fluency and meta-cognition in reading and writing. it was developed in canada and has been extensively used there as well as in australia. it is based on the recommendations of the national reading panel (2000) and includes a variety of different activities tailored to children’s specific abilities and challenges. reading races focuses on oral reading fluency through a repeated reading strategy using culturally relevant stories for primary school children. chassymo, developed in french, focuses on the syllable as the main processing unit in reading and requires learners to hear or read syllables in a carefully programmed presentation. most of the other interventions targeted two or more skills, such as reading fluency and comprehension (e.g. bennett et al. 2017) while a smaller number focused solely on one particular skill such as sight-word reading (e.g. musti-rao, lo & plati 2015), or reading comprehension (e.g. ponce, lópez & mayer 2012). interventions were delivered in various languages, although english dominated (30 studies, 61.22%). of the studies that described the language background of the learners, there were 30 where the intervention was in the participants’ home language, 6 where the intervention was in the participants’ second language, 2 where the intervention was in the first and second language and 4 where the language of intervention was some participants’ home language but other participants’ second language. a total of 18 different countries were represented. almost half of the papers were from us-based studies (21 papers) and other countries that were well represented included france (4), england (3), sweden (3), and canada (3). the devices used to deliver intervention mainly included computers (35; 71.42%) and ipads or tablets (10; 20.4%). there was a balance between studies that required facilitation (25; 51.02%) and those in which learners worked independently (22; 44.89%). when intervention was facilitated this was most typically done by trained teachers. intervention intensity varied across studies with reported total intervention time ranging from 50 min to 109 h. the mean length of total intervention time was 16 h typically undertaken in half-hour blocks delivered two to three times per week. most studies (29, 59.18%) used standardised outcome measures. some used non-standardised outcome measures (13, 26.5%) and the remainder used a combination of both standardised and non-standardised outcome measures. the number of studies that found intervention effects for their outcome measures was calculated. there were three studies that did not demonstrate effects on any outcome measures, nine that demonstrated effects on 15% – 50% of outcome measures, five that showed effects on 60% – 75% of outcome measures and 27 that showed effects on all outcome measures. there were five studies where the findings could not be categorised into these groups. therefore, of the studies that could be clustered into these groups, the vast majority (41/44; 93.18%) demonstrated some form of positive effect of ict reading intervention on learners’ reading and reading-related skills and most (32/44; 72.73%) showed improvements on 60% – 100% of outcome measures. table 1 shows a mapping of the 49 papers to give an overview of the designs used, sample sizes and participants, intervention and outcomes. further detail for each of the 49 papers is provided in the appendices (tables 1-a1–-3-a1). table 1: design and participant characteristics of studies included in the information and communication technology-based reading intervention scoping review. results from the first part of the study indicated a substantial number of ict interventions for reading that have been researched and published in peer-reviewed journals over the past decade. most of the programmes demonstrated positive effects on children’s literacy and language, despite variation in the nature and duration of the programmes. a small set of programmes (graphogame, abracadabra, reading races, and chassymo) appeared in multiple studies and seem to have been most rigorously investigated in the 10-year period to demonstrate their effectiveness in different contexts. given our specific context and challenges in south africa, the second part of the review focused on a subset of studies from the main scoping review, ict interventions undertaken in majority world countries, which we considered might be especially applicable to children in south africa. ict reading interventions conducted in the majority world and their impact on learners’ reading skills in the main data set we found five studies conducted in the majority world: two in kenya, and one in each of zambia, india and tanzania, constituting 10.2% of the total number of papers found in the review. these five studies used two interventions from the ‘big four’ group introduced in the previous section: abracadabra and graphogame. all studies conducted in the majority world demonstrated improvements in learners’ reading skills as a result of the ict intervention. two of the studies found positive intervention effects on all outcome measures and three noted positive intervention effects on at least half of their outcome measures. table 2 provides an overview of these studies. table 2: information and communication technology studies carried out in the majority world – an overview based on a subset of the main scoping review. lysenko et al. (2019) conducted a study in kenya that examined the effect of english abracadabra intervention (targeting phonological awareness, phonics, word reading, fluency, vocabulary, listening comprehension, reading comprehension and writing) and reads intervention (online stories and books available in english and kiswahili to improve reading fluency and comprehension) on english literacy skills. a quasi-experimental design was used with a large sample (n = 1672) of grade 1–3 children learning english as a second language in mainstream schools. schools were non-randomly assigned to ict intervention or control conditions. trained teachers facilitated intervention for a total of 2 h per week for a total of 16 weeks. standardised assessments of english oral language and reading skills as well as participants’ national examination results (in english, social studies, mathematics and science) were used as outcome measures. the results showed that intervention participants significantly outperformed control participants on all measures. another study using abracadabra was undertaken by abrami et al. (2016) in kenya to investigate the impact of english abracadabra intervention on mainstream grade 2 children (n = 354) learning english as a second language. an experimental pre-test-post-test design with random assignment of classes to conditions (intervention versus no intervention or control) was used. intervention participants made significant gains in reading comprehension and listening comprehension compared to the control group and participants in the intervention group significantly outperformed children in the control group in the national examinations. ngorosho (2018) conducted a study in tanzania that investigated the impact of kiswahili graphogame (targeting phonological awareness, phonics and word reading) on kiswahili literacy skills. an alternating treatment design with random assignment of schools to groups (ict intervention versus non-ict classroom intervention versus no intervention or control) was used. participants were kiswahili home language grade 1 learners (n = 49) with poor reading skills. participants accessed graphogame via smartphones and worked independently (without adults being involved in instruction) for three sessions per day, 10 min per session, 5 days a week (a total of 2–4 h of intervention). non-standardised outcome measures were used. the findings indicated significant improvements for both the ict and non-ict classroom intervention, although the ict intervention led to the greatest improvement. jere-folotiya et al. (2014) conducted a study in zambia to determine the effect of cinyanja graphogame on mainstream grade 1 (n = 573) children’s cinyanja literacy skills. as for the tanzanian study, learners accessed intervention independently on smartphones 3–5 days per week (for six sessions which were 7–9 min long per day) for a total of 1 h and 34 min of intervention. standardised measures of orthographic awareness and spelling acted as outcome measures. the results showed that the intervention improved the spelling (intervention participants significantly outperformed control participants) but not the orthographic awareness of participants. the learners who were exposed to intervention directly (played graphogame) and indirectly (teacher played graphogame) produced significant improvements in spelling compared to control learners. patel et al. (2018) conducted a study in india using an experimental pre-test-post-test design with random assignment to conditions (ict reading intervention versus an ict mathematics intervention control). grade 3 learners (n = 30) with reading difficulties who did not have english as a home language but were attending a school where english was the medium of instruction participated. intervention participants used english graphogame (to improve phonological awareness, phonics and word reading) independently on tablets for 8 weeks (20–30 min per session and six sessions per week). non-standardised (informal in-game assessments) and standardised literacy assessments were used as outcome measures. significant improvements in favour of the intervention group were found for all graphogame in-game measures but there was no difference between the improvements of the intervention and control groups on the standardised measures. these interventions are summarised in table 3. table 3: information and communication technology studies carried out in the majority world – summary of interventions in the scoping review. the five studies conducted in the majority world (abrami et al. 2016; jere-folotiya et al. 2014; lysenko et al. 2019; ngorosho 2018; patel et al. 2018) reported a range of study-related challenges: learners had limited exposure to technology before beginning the intervention, high rates of learner absenteeism, learners arriving at school late, finding time for supplemental ict intervention in a curriculum-determined timetable, lack of linguistically and culturally appropriate assessment measures (and lack of standardisation of assessments on the study population), technological issues, and venue constraints (no quiet venues at schools where intervention and assessments could be conducted). they reported the following contextual challenges: poor infrastructure, shortage of reading and teaching materials, poor working conditions for teachers, teachers inadequately trained for literacy instruction, poor teaching methods (rote learning), learners not being exposed to the language of learning and teaching in the home environment, parents having low literacy levels or being illiterate, and lack of learner exposure to literacy activities in the home environment. discussion research conducted in the last decade suggests that ict approaches to reading intervention can lead to improvements in learners’ reading skills, and thus offers potential for providing support to large numbers of children who require it – especially in places such as south africa which has an acknowledged literacy crisis (spaull 2013). there were only four studies in the scoping review that were conducted in africa and none of these was conducted in south africa. however, the small subset of papers from the majority world tentatively suggest that ict-based approaches to reading intervention may be helpful for improving the reading skills of children in settings with a similar socio-economic status and achievement profile to ours. the review highlights a gap in research that should be addressed due to the potential positive impact ict reading interventions could have in such contexts. speech and language therapy is an evidence-based profession so professionals recommending or facilitating ict literacy interventions will need to know which interventions have been shown to be effective, and the extent of the evidence. some of the interventions in this review have been researched in many studies including other countries in africa. we described the ‘big four’ ict interventions emerging from the review which were graphogame, abracadabra, reading races and chassymo. they are starting to emerge as programmes that could be considered for at-scale intervention in south africa. in particular graphogame and abracadabra have been used in many different contexts, including majority world countries. graphogame has been successfully adapted into many languages and this adaptation would be particularly important for its use in south africa too. here it would be important for the programme to be adapted into learners’ home languages, as well as second or additional languages because in grade 4 there is a shift from mother tongue instruction to english or afrikaans instruction in schools. care would need to be taken to ensure cultural and linguistic appropriateness, but the effective adaptation and use in zambia and tanzania suggests that adaptation would be feasible. home language interventions could be used to scaffold and support the development of english or afrikaans language and literacy skills. the review found only a few studies with bilingual participants, which does not reflect the high international rates of childhood bilingualism (paradis, genesee & crago 2011). there is also a great need for interventions to be developed specifically for bilingual learners and for their efficacy to be determined. although the potential of interventions such as graphogame for south africa is clear, it is not to say that this intervention works better than other interventions. rather it has been researched more and the process of evidence generation is more advanced than for some other programmes. the relative cost effectiveness and efficiency (ease of implementation) of each approach would need to be examined further so that the approaches with the strongest evidence and feasibility for implementation are selected at schools. evidence-based practice refers to interventions and their application in particular contexts with particular individuals. thus, interventions that are designed and tested in a particular setting with a group of children with particular characteristics may not be appropriate or effective for another setting or group of children. the use of established interventions would also not preclude the urgent need to develop and trial our own local interventions that may ultimately prove to be as effective. south africa has one of the highest mobile phone penetrations in the world (ojo 2018) and therefore the use of smartphone-based interventions for improving both health and education is relevant. the two graphogame studies undertaken in africa involved children using smartphones to access the intervention, and this approach may be worth considering further. during the covid-19 pandemic when south africa’s schools were closed many children had no access to learning materials or any sort of educational support. smartphone-based apps such as graphogame could enable children to develop their reading skills anywhere and anytime, especially if the relevant apps were freely available and access to the data was zero-rated. although findings related to intervention intensity and facilitation did not reveal clear patterns related to their relative effectiveness, studies with four to five sessions per week produced more widespread improvements than those with one to three sessions per week. the studies conducted in the majority world reported a number of challenges associated with intervention delivery. information and communication technology-based reading intervention studies conducted in similar contexts should provide training to learners on how to use technological devices and provide opportunities for learners to become familiar with the devices before intervention commences. smartphones are likely to be familiar to many children, but they may not be able to have access to their own device and may not be able to bring it to school. innovative solutions to venue constraints such as having multiple intervention slots where only a few learners attend an intervention at each time, rearranging furniture and using classroom dividers, and dividing learners into groups may need to be considered in schools – highlighting a need for addressing basic infrastructure, which remains problematic in many south african schools. there is an urgent need to develop culturally and linguistically appropriate reading, teaching and assessment materials together with training opportunities related to how resources can be used. workshops for teachers that focus on effective literacy instruction, and for parents who have low literacy levels related to how they can support their children’s literacy learning, will also be valuable and should be seen as part of a broader solution to addressing challenges that an ict intervention alone will not be able to address. the scoping review may present a biased impression of the effectiveness of ict interventions as studies demonstrating no effect are less likely to be published (djulbegovic & guyatt 2017). our review was also limited in that we only focused on a 10-year period and did not consider studies that were published in languages other than english and that used non-experimental methods. a systematic review or meta-analysis that seeks to address more specific questions about ict reading interventions would be helpful, along with further studies that trial and evaluate ict interventions in the majority world where they are most needed. conclusion the scoping review described the characteristics of 49 ict-based reading intervention studies for primary school children, published in the past decade. findings indicate a promising range of different ict-based interventions, most of which demonstrate positive outcomes although wide-ranging outcomes measures and research designs have been used. only a small proportion of the studies were undertaken in the majority world. there is a great need for further work in this context and in particular in south africa where reading outcomes are poor. it is clear that ict-based approaches to reading intervention can lead to improvements in learners’ reading skills, but further research is needed to determine if any of these interventions could be relevant for south african learners or to guide the development of innovative ict-based interventions responsive to the needs of south african children and educators. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions j.d., m.p. and j.l.r. contributed to the design and implementation of the research, to the analysis of the results and to the writing of the article. ethical considerations this article followed all ethical standards for carrying out research. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability the authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references abrami, p.c., wade, c.a., lysenko, l., marsh, j. & gioko, a., 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intervention to a student with autism’, journal of behavioral education 20(1), 44–54. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10864-010-9118-1 appendix 1 table 1-a1: design and participant characteristics of studies included in the information and communication technology-based reading intervention scoping review. table 1-a1 (continues…): design and participant characteristics of studies included in the information and communication technology-based reading intervention scoping review. table 2-a1: characteristics of the interventions included in the information and communication technology-based reading intervention literature review papers. table 2-a1 (continues…): characteristics of the interventions included in the information and communication technology-based reading intervention literature review papers. table 2-a1 (continues…): characteristics of the interventions included in the information and communication technology-based reading intervention literature review papers. table 3-a1: outcome measures and results of the studies included in the information and communication technology-based reading intervention literature review. table 3-a1 (continues…): outcome measures and results of the studies included in the information and communication technology-based reading intervention literature review. abstract introduction literature review methodology findings discussion limitation conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) naomi a.y. boakye unit for academic literacy, faculty of humanities, university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa citation boakye, n.a.y., 2021, ‘using role play and explicit strategy instruction to improve first-year students’ academic reading proficiency’, reading & writing 12(1), a285. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v12i1.285 original research using role play and explicit strategy instruction to improve first-year students’ academic reading proficiency naomi a.y. boakye received: 03 may 2020; accepted: 23 aug. 2020; published: 27 oct. 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: many first-year students find the reading of academic texts to be challenging and overwhelming. in particular, first-year students studying sociology at the south african institution where the study was conducted complain of comprehension challenges. this may be due to the presence of numerous theoretical and abstract concepts in sociology texts, which have to be unpacked in order to gain a greater understanding of social phenomena. a high level of reading proficiency is required in the reading of sociology texts; however, some students are poor readers and find it difficult to cope. objectives: the article reports on a support programme aimed at improving first-year sociology students’ academic reading proficiency. method: in addition to explicit strategy instruction, which has been used by many researchers to improve reading comprehension, role play was introduced to the reading of sociology texts during tutorials in order to promote deep reading and improve comprehension. pre-tests and post-tests, together with closed-ended and open-ended questionnaires, were used to determine the efficacy of the intervention. the tests were analysed using t-tests, and the questionnaires were analysed using descriptive statistics for the closed-ended section and content analysis for the open-ended questions. results: the findings showed that a significant number of students had improved their reading proficiency and reported both cognitive and affective benefits. conclusion: recommendations are made in relation to the use of role play in addition to explicit strategy instruction in order to maximise the improvement of students’ academic reading ability. keywords: role play; strategy instruction; reading proficiency; cognitive and affective reading strategies; first-year sociology students. introduction learning, studying and engaging in academic reading and writing activities at the tertiary level seems to be quite overwhelming for some students. whereas learners at the school level are taught and guided closely, at the tertiary level, students are given more autonomy and are required to study and pursue their academic activities – which are mainly reading and writing – more independently. in addition, the quantity and complexity of the texts they are required to read at the tertiary level and the level of writing required of them can be overwhelming for students at first-year level. this could be due to the fact that the school system did not place such high demands on them (boakye & linden 2018; boakye & mai 2016), and also because they are no longer closely guided and monitored by their teachers and parents. furthermore, students are introduced to highly technical words in their content subjects, which makes reading in these subjects daunting and effortful for some of them. the sociology 110 module offered at the south african institution where the study was conducted, for example, requires students to read texts by authors such as karl marx, max webber and emile durkheim, which may not be easily understood by some first-year students. according to roberts and roberts (2008), some first-year sociology students do not read their assigned texts due to the quantity and complexity of the assigned readings, as well as the difficult vocabulary, much of which consists of technical, subject-specific words that are not familiar to the students (boakye & mai 2016). these high academic reading demands and writing expectations of first-year students mean that they need to be proficient readers in order to be successful in their academic activities. the situation is more complex for students from low socio-economic status backgrounds who have not had adequate exposure to texts at home or at school and are disadvantaged in their reading ability, and consequently in their academic performance (taylor & yu 2009). reading instruction has therefore become an important avenue to improve students’ reading proficiency and academic performance. teaching students reading strategies and making them aware of efficient reading techniques have constituted an important approach to improving their reading ability. the approach of many support programmes has been to teach cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies, considering that the use of appropriate reading strategies results in reading comprehension (aghaie & zhang 2012; anderson 1991; bruen 2017; cohen 2011; graesser 2007; mokhtari & sheorey 2002; oxford 1990, 2011). however, reading efficiency may be limited without high affective levels and the ability to transfer skills. this study extends the teaching of strategies to include role play through which students engage in the discussion of sociology texts to increase motivation and improve strategy use. as explained by eghlidi, abdorrahimzadeh and sorahi (2014), students who engage in problem-solving activities increase their reading comprehension. ilustre (2011) found that of the three subscales of metacognitive reading strategies used in her study (global, support and problem-solving), only problem-solving strategies correlated positively with text comprehension. students who reported to be using problem-solving reading strategies obtained relatively higher scores in the reading tasks (ilustre 2011). thus, she concludes that problem-solving reading strategies contribute to text understanding (ilustre 2011). the role play technique included in the reading programme was to enable students to apply cognitive and metacognitive strategies they had been taught in class to their assigned roles to solve comprehension problems and to increase their affective reading levels. in addition, role play as a teaching technique has been found to increase motivation, interest and engagement (erturk 2015; samsibar & naro 2018; science and engineering research council [serc] 2018). for students from low socio-economic status backgrounds who have had limited exposure to texts and may therefore have low affective levels and poor cognitive and metacognitive strategy use, this cognitive-affective approach is even more important for improving their reading comprehension. such students usually face comprehension challenges. however, the combined approach has not been used in a focused way in reading programmes. the study therefore sought to improve first-year students’ reading proficiency using a combined approach of cognitive strategies and role play discussions. the following questions were therefore posed for the study: to what extent will an intervention of reading comprehension strategy instruction through role play improve students’ reading of academic texts? will the use of role play in reading comprehension strategy instruction influence students’ affective reading levels and strategy use? what are students’ opinions on the use of role play in a reading comprehension strategy instruction? literature review reading strategies and reading comprehension various factors that influence reading proficiency have been identified by researchers, but of the four major factors that need to be considered (the reader, the text, the goal and the strategies), strategies used by learners for comprehension seem to be the single most important (grabe & stoller 2011; mcnamara 2007). reading strategies are defined by brown (2007:119) as the ‘specific methods of approaching a problem or task’. karami (2008) takes this further and defines reading strategies as the conscious, internally variable psychological techniques aimed at improving the effectiveness of, or compensating for the breakdowns in, reading comprehension on specific reading tasks and in specific contexts. he highlights as important the following aspects of reading strategies: conscious, subject to change, used to address problems, context-dependent, used to improve reading performance, and used to address comprehension breakdown. pani (2004), from another perspective, defines reading strategies as ‘the mental operations involved when readers approach a text effectively to make sense of what they read’. he opines that ‘[g]ood readers apply more strategies more frequently … and more effectively than poor readers’ (pani 2004:356). consequently, the use of reading strategies for comprehension differentiates poor readers from good readers (brown 2001; graesser 2007). researchers such as chamot (2005), alderson (2000) and grabe (2008) point out that the distinguishing feature of reading strategies is that they are utilised consciously for comprehension. these cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies are to be used efficiently for comprehension to occur. cognitive strategies involve activation of background knowledge, summarisation, questioning and guessing meaning from context, among others. metacognitive strategies, on the other hand, include comprehension monitoring, repair of comprehension breakdown, and other affective influencing strategies such as matching comprehension output to reader goals and motivation (grabe & stoller 2011). they both involve the specific reading context, monitoring, and evaluating the success of the reading process, and are important for comprehension. as explained by karami (2008) and other reading researchers such as anderson (1991), brown (2007) and oxford (2011), the impact of these strategies on reading is conceived to be of crucial importance in any act of reading. for brown, ‘reading comprehension is a matter of developing 10 appropriate and efficient comprehension strategies’ (brown 2007:306). he identifies these strategies as follows: identifying the purpose in reading; using graphemic rules and patterns to aid in bottom-up reading, using different silent reading techniques for relatively rapid reading, skimming the text for main ideas, scanning the text for specific information, using semantic mapping or clustering, guessing when you are not certain, analysing vocabulary, distinguishing between literal and implied meanings, and capitalising on discourse markers to process relationships. lau (2006), on the other hand, cites five characteristics of poor readers: they do not know how to construct the main ideas and macrostructure of the texts. they are not familiar with the text structure and do not make use of it to organise the main ideas. they have little prior knowledge and do not know how to activate their knowledge to facilitate text comprehension. they have difficulties in drawing inferences to achieve an in-depth understanding of the texts. they lack metacognitive ability, are not aware of the problems that emerge during reading and do not know how to monitor their reading process. these characteristics of poor readers were found in pretorius’ (2000) study of first-year psychology and sociology students. she found that the majority of the students could not draw inferences to obtain an understanding of the texts and that poor readers from low socio-economic status backgrounds lacked the metacognitive ability to evaluate their comprehension and address gaps accordingly. poor readers rated their reading ability as better than it really was, as they lacked the metacognitive ability to identify their lack of knowledge (pretorius 2000). thus, instruction on cognitive and metacognitive strategies would help improve students’ use of strategies and awareness or the lack thereof. various empirical investigations have been conducted on the benefits of reading strategy instruction. wright and brown (2006) investigated the impact of explicit strategy instruction on the reading comprehension of students of spanish or french as a foreign language. the authors concluded that although the results indicated that the participants’ awareness of some strategies and their ability to reflect upon their reading did increase, other strategies seemed more difficult to acquire. they also pointed out that some students faced difficulties in acquiring complex strategies. the fact that some students found some strategies challenging even after strategy instruction indicates that the teaching of strategies alone may not provide optimal benefits. the use of strategies after they have been learned is influenced by various factors. for example, it is claimed that there is a close relationship between strategy use and motivation or the goal of reading. in other words, students’ use of appropriate reading strategies is influenced by their level of motivation (guthrie & wigfield 2000). the higher the motivation and the more important the goal, the more learners utilise appropriate and correct strategies (he 2008; wigfield et al. 2014). he (2008) investigated the effect of the goal of reading and motivation on the students’ utilisation of strategies. the results indicated that the participants with stronger goals generally performed better in the use of strategies and in reading than those with the same proficiency levels but weaker goals and motivation for reading. thus, although the literature indicates enormous benefits to the use of strategies for efficient reading, there are other factors, such as affect operationalised as the goal of reading, reading motivation, engagement and reading self-efficacy, among others, that are of equal importance. reading motivation is an affective stance that refers to an individual’s personal goals, values and beliefs with regard to the topics, processes and outcomes of reading (guthrie & wigfield 2000). reading motivation captures the individual’s thoughts and feelings, whereas reading engagement refers to the individual’s actual involvement in reading, which is reflected in behaviour, affect or cognition (guthrie, wigfield & you 2012). reading self-efficacy refers to students’ expectation about their own achievement of a reading task and the confidence they have in being able to successfully complete a reading task (ferrara 2005; schiefele et al. 2012). research has shown that students with high reading self-efficacy levels are generally active and more successful readers than students with low self-efficacy (schiefele et al. 2012). these affective factors of motivation and self-efficacy are also involved in the application of strategies. motivated students tend to have high self-efficacy and use appropriate strategies to achieve better comprehension of texts (yang et al. 2018). barber and lutz klauda (2020), reflect on reports by oecd (2010), and scheifele et al. (2012) to conclude from their studies that across grade levels as well as ethnic and cultural backgrounds, motivated students show better reading comprehension, higher self-efficacy and general reading achievement. there is therefore a need to extend the teaching of strategies to include techniques such as role-play to increase motivation and self-efficacy in order to maximise the use of strategies to achieve comprehension and improve reading proficiency. role play as a teaching technique role play is the practice of having students take on specific roles and act them out in a case-based scenario for the purpose of learning course content or understanding complex or ambiguous texts (suobere & eniekenemi 2017). this teaching technique allows students to explore realistic situations by interacting with their peers in a managed way in order to gain experience and try different reading strategies in a supportive environment (glover 2014; budden 2006). role play could involve dramatisation, simulation, games or demonstrations of real-life situations on any topic (erturk 2015:1). as a teaching technique, it is perceived as an excellent tool for engaging students and allowing them to interact with their peers as they try to complete the reading task assigned to them in their specific roles. using role play as a teaching technique enables students to become more engaged, as they respond to the text from the perspective of their assigned role. a serc document lists several benefits of role play as a teaching technique (serc 2018). for example, role play allows students to apply content in a relevant, real-world context and enables them to break away from their normal self-imposed limitations or boundaries. in addition, students can think beyond the confines of the classroom setting and see the relevance of the content for handling real-world situations. another advantage of role play is that it enables the instructor and students to receive immediate feedback regarding students’ understanding of the content. furthermore, this teaching technique enables students to engage in higher-order thinking and learning of content in a deeper way (serc 2018). a typical benefit of role play is that students claim to remember their role in these scenarios and the ensuing discussion long after the semester has ended (serc 2018). researchers who study role play such as samsibar and naro (2018), erturk (2015), glover (2014), and chesler and fox (1966) recommend that steps should be followed when engaging students in role play. the serc document provides three basic steps: the instructor should offer relevant scenarios to students, give students time to complete tasks, and find a way to process students’ deliberations (serc 2018). the first step involves what students should do, including informational details relevant to decision-making in the role and a task to complete based on the information. the second involves the actual performing of the task. the document suggests that this could be done individually, in pairs or in groups. the third step is to find a way to assess the students’ output. although there are many benefits to role play as a teaching technique, the facilitator must make sure that all students participate and are truly engaged. solutions such as awarding grades and making students present to the whole class, or even making students aware that the final examination will include questions pertaining to the role play, are given to counteract the challenge of student apathy. budden (2006) provides further benefits of role play and points out that incorporating it into class activities adds variety, a change of pace and provides opportunities for increased language use. he adds that it is a lot of fun and motivating for students. furthermore, it affords the quieter students the chance to express themselves in a more forthright way (budden 2006). according to glover (2014), the world of the classroom is broadened to include the outside world, thus offering a much wider range of language opportunities and providing authentic situations for the students to operate in. the teacher is mainly a facilitator, but can sometimes be a spectator and a participant as the situation demands. the teacher may give students specific instructions or guidance on how to act or what to say (glover 2014). samsibar and naro (2018) used role play to teach students english conversation and to increase their motivation. they found that there was a significant difference in students’ motivation to speak english and concluded that role play was effective in improving students’ motivation in english conversation. the current study used role play together with strategy instruction to provide students with authentic scenarios, to increase their motivation and self-efficacy, and to enable them to engage in reading in a fun way. the study also sought to enable students to actually read their texts and apply deep reading using higher-order thinking and appropriate strategies to achieve comprehension and improve reading proficiency. theoretical framework the study was based on guthrie and wigfield’s (2000) engagement framework, which explains that reading comprehension and improved reading proficiency are based on engaged reading. the framework posits that reading is undertaken not because the reader can undertake the activity but because they are motivated to do so (guthrie & wigfield 2000). thus, if students are motivated to read, they will do so more often and achieve better outcomes. they argue that underlying all reading development is the affective. thus, reading instruction should be undertaken to improve both cognitive and affective reading levels as the two have a bidirectional relationship (guthrie & wigfield 2000). they recommend that teaching of reading strategies should be undertaken in a way that increases affective attributes, such as reading motivation and self-efficacy. by developing these affective attributes in conjunction with explicit reading instruction, such as strategy use and vocabulary instruction, a holistic and more intensive development is achieved. guthrie and wigfield (2000) further argue that the two-pronged reading instruction approach provides students not only with strategies, but also with affective support, such as self-efficacy and motivation to undertake the reading activity. in addition, the affect also promotes engagement in reading, which is important because it promotes deep reading and thus better comprehension. this resonates with roberts and roberts’s (2008) argument that the lack of comprehension of sociology texts by students is due to the fact that most students engage in surface reading. they recommend deep reading to promote comprehension, especially with sociology texts. they lament that students’ inability to engage in deep reading, leads to their experiencing reading comprehension challenges with texts that require critical thinking for comprehension. an important implication of the framework is that reading interventions should focus on enhancing reading motivation along with reading strategies. guthrie and his colleagues use concept-oriented reading instruction (cori) to combine cognitive and affective reading techniques to elicit reading achievement (guthrie, taboada & coddinton 2007). in this study, role play is combined with explicit strategy instruction to provide a similar effect. thus, the use of role play was aimed at motivating the students, enabling them to want to read and to read deeply. for guthrie and wigfield’s (2000) framework, several teaching guidelines were proposed to improve cognitive and affective reading levels: interesting texts, real-world activities, strategy instruction, autonomy, teacher support and collaboration. this study applied strategy instruction and role play, as role play encompasses the majority of the instructional techniques listed in guthrie and wigfield’s framework, such as autonomy, authenticity, teacher support and collaboration. role play activities were envisaged to increase students’ motivation, while strategy instruction provided competence and built self-efficacy. methodology the study used both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies and therefore fits into a mixed methods design. using both quantitative and qualitative methods enabled the researcher to obtain statistical results and verbal data to evaluate the intervention. the verbal data provided more insight into the efficacy of the intervention. according to creswell and garrett (2008:321), a mixed methods approach provides greater insight and leads to a better understanding of the research problem. the study also adopted a one-group pre-test-post-test design, which is a quasi-experimental research design in which the same dependent variable is measured in only one group of participants before and after treatment (axelrod & hayward 2017). participants the participants for the study were first-year sociology students at a south african university. the students were from different faculties and the majority of them were taking sociology as an ancillary subject to fulfil a requirement of their respective programmes. the ages of the students were not specifically elicited, but first-year students used in another study at the same institution were between 17 and 21 years (boakye 2017). the number of students from each faculty were not determined, but the faculties represented are engineering, built environment and information technology (ebit), economic and management sciences (ems) and humanities. there were 593 students registered for the first-year sociology module, but only 366 were involved in the pre-test, 255 in the post-test and 193 in both tests. since the data were collected during tutorials, only students who attended tutorials during the week of data collection participated. thus, poor tutorial attendance, attrition rates (as some students drop out of a module before the end of the semester), and other issues may have contributed to the reduced numbers, especially in the post-test. instruments two main instruments were used to assess the effect of the combined role play and strategy instruction approach to tutorials. these were the test for academic literacy levels (tall) to determine the students’ pre-test and post-test performance, and a closed-ended and open-ended questionnaire to determine the students’ views on the combined approach. the tall comprised six sections (scrambled text or sequencing, academic vocabulary, graphic and visual information, text types or identification of genres, understanding texts or comprehension, and grammar and text relations) (icelda 2017). the tall is compiled by icelda and has been shown to be highly valid and reliable in testing students’ academic literacy (le, du plessis & weideman 2012). although the tall is based on an academic literacy construct, it essentially assesses reading proficiency, as sections such as sequencing, understanding text type, understanding academic vocabulary, understanding texts or comprehension, and grammar and text relations are all reading-oriented. the questionnaire was adapted from boakye (2017) to suit the context of the sociology students. the pre-intervention questionnaire comprised questions on reading self-efficacy (14 questions) and reading strategies (13 questions). the post-intervention questionnaire consisted of 10 self-efficacy questions and nine strategy-use questions in relation to the intervention. because the post-intervention questions related specifically to the intervention, they were not correlated with the pre-intervention questionnaire and are discussed separately. the open-ended question in the post-intervention questionnaire sought to elicit students’ opinions on the intervention. procedures and data collection ethical clearance for the study was obtained from the faculty of humanities of the institution where the study was conducted. the students completed informed consent forms before they wrote the academic reading and literacy test (tall) and answered the questionnaire at the beginning of the first semester. the pre-test was written during their lecture time but the questionnaires were answered during tutorials. after the 12-week intervention of 50 min a week, during their last lecture of the semester, the students wrote the post-intervention test and completed the closed-ended and open-ended questionnaire during the last tutorial. the intervention after the pre-test and pre-intervention questionnaire were completed, an intervention was undertaken, which involved teaching students reading strategies using sq3r (survey, question, read, recall, review). lau’s (2006) characteristics of poor readers, as listed above, were taken into consideration, and strategies taught were aimed at addressing those issues. reading strategies such as pre-reading, skimming, applying background knowledge to understand what was read, inferencing, predicting, monitoring comprehension, and repairing any misunderstandings were explained to students with some practice exercises using excerpts from texts by karl marx, emily durkheim and max webber. students were then put into groups of six and given their individual roles by the group leader. the roles consisted of reading assignments: predicting and surveying information, raising questions, dealing with the difficult vocabulary in the text, clarifying by explaining the information in the text, connecting the information to real-life issues, and summarising and paraphrasing the information (stricklin 2011). students were given a name for each role: paula the predictor, quinn the questioner, clarence the clarifier, connie the connector, and sammy the summariser (stricklin 2011). vonny vocabulary was included to bring the number of roles to six. given the importance of providing students with guidelines during role play activities (erturk 2015; glover 2014; serc 2018), the tutors explained and wrote out the roles for the students. for example, for quinn the questioner guidelines included prompts such as: i don’t understand why … why? how do these two situations compare? what are the text features telling me? what is important in this text? do i agree with this? i wonder what will happen if …? were the initial predictions right? what are the possible problems and what are the possible solutions? students playing the role of quinn the questioner were to raise questions such as those listed above in relation to the text they were asked to read and provide answers in a group discussion during tutorials. as indicated by the serc (2018) document, role play discussions can be done in pairs or in groups. in addition to the tutorials, the students attended 2-h lectures twice a week where the lecturers presented and introduced the texts. in such a big group, many students find it difficult to follow the lecture and understand the texts. reading on their own does not help either, as the majority of students reported in a separate study that they hardly read the texts because they found them difficult and could not understand (boakye & linden 2018; boakye & mai 2016). the tutorials consisted of smaller groups of 25 students each and were managed by postgraduate students as tutors. it is within these tutorials that students are supposed to be assisted and supported for the sociology module. however, students were not reading the texts because they found them difficult to understand. thus, the intervention was aimed at assisting and supporting students in reading and understanding the texts, improving their reading proficiency, and enabling them to be successful in the module, and hopefully transfer the skills to other modules. the post-test and post intervention questionnaire data were to determine the effectiveness of the tutorial support. data analysis the pre-test and post-test results were analysed using paired t-test to determine any differences in the students’ performance and to answer research question 1 (to what extent will an intervention of reading comprehension strategy instruction through role play improve students’ reading of academic texts?). the pre-intervention questionnaire was analysed using descriptive statistics to determine the students’ affective reading levels (motivation and self-efficacy) and strategy use. thereafter, the post-intervention questionnaire was analysed using descriptive statistics with cronbach’s alpha to determine the students’ responses to the intervention and assess its efficacy. the open-ended questions were analysed using content analysis based on emerging themes. the questionnaire responses were used to answer research question 2 (will the use of role play in reading comprehension strategy instruction influence students’ affective reading levels and strategy use?) and research question 3 (what are students’ opinions on the use of role play in a reading comprehension strategy instruction?). findings although there was no control group (to allow all the students to benefit from the intervention), the pre-test and post-test results were analysed using paired t-test to show any differences and determine to what extent role play and strategy use had influenced students’ reading proficiency, if at all. test results the findings of the test results are presented to give an indication of the students’ performance. the results show that, on the whole, the students’ performance in the pre-test was at average level (at risk), and below average (extremely at risk) for some sections of the test, whereas the performance increased for the post-test (low risk). the results are interpreted in line with the tall analysis (ual 2015). the pre-test and post-test results, with means and standard deviations, are given in table 1. table 1: pre-test and post-test descriptive statistics. the means and standard deviations of the pre-test show that students had challenges with academic vocabulary and understanding text types, as the means for those two sections were lower than other sections: 11.54 out of 20 and 25.71 out of 46. this indicates that students may be having problems with reading comprehension, as vocabulary and understanding of texts together enable comprehension. the total mean of the pre-test, which was 55.63, and the wide standard deviation of 19.91 also indicate that some students were at a low competency level and may have been experiencing reading comprehension challenges. the descriptive statistics of the post-test, with means and standard deviations, show that there was some improvement in the students’ reading ability. the total mean was 61.15, which is an improvement on the pre-test mean of 55.63. the means for the different sections also showed that there have been improvements in the students’ reading ability. understanding text types and academic vocabulary, which were low in the pre-test, were now above 50% (12.88 out of 20 and 27.79 out of 46) in the post-test. although the means show improvement, a paired t-test analysis was performed to determine the statistical significance of the improvement. the t-test showed an overall statistically significant improvement at t = 6.85; df = 192; p < 0.05, specifically at p < 0.0001. individually, each section also showed statistically significant improvement, except for section 3, as shown in table 2. to determine the magnitude of the statistically significant difference and the extent of the improvement, a cohen’s d was applied to yield effect sizes. effect size of 0.2 is said to be small, 0.5 medium and 0.8 large (lakens 2013). the effect sizes for the sections were small, as they were around 0.2. however, the effect size for the overall total showed a higher magnitude above 0.4 (t = 6.882, df=192, p < 0.001, effect size = 0.494). cohen’s d effect size for each section is provided in table 2. table 2: paired t-test analysis of sections in the pre-tests and post-tests. the small to medium effect sizes may be due to the short duration of the intervention, as it lasted for only 12 weeks. a longer duration of a year may yield larger effect sizes. a calculation of the correlation coefficient was positive and yielded a large difference (0.836) for the post-test–pre-test total (r = 0.836, p < 0.001). although the means of the pre-tests and post-tests showed improvement, the statistically significant results strengthen the improvement of the students’ reading proficiency. this improvement could be attributed to the positive effect of the tutorial approach. however, this outcome is presented with caution as there was no control group. due to the absence of a control group, the questionnaire was used to corroborate or disprove the test results, and responses from the closed-ended and open-ended questionnaires confirmed the benefits of the intervention and provided insight into students’ improved reading proficiency. questionnaire results on strategy use and affective levels the closed-ended questionnaire consisted of questions on self-efficacy and motivation (affective) and strategy use (cognitive). since the questions in the pre-intervention questionnaire were general, but the questions on the post-intervention questionnaire were specific to the intervention, they were not directly and analytically compared. the pre-intervention questionnaire was undertaken to determine the students’ level of reading self-efficacy and strategy use, and the post-intervention questionnaire was to determine the effectiveness of the intervention. there was a total of 366 students for the pre-intervention questionnaires. for the 17 items under self-efficacy and motivation, the cronbach’s alpha was 0.896, which according to hinton et al. (2004) is considered high reliability. the mean for self-efficacy and motivation was 3.375, which pointed to low reading self-efficacy and motivation, as the likert scale questionnaire had 1 for strongly agree and 2 for agree, and therefore any response above 2 was considered negative. for the section on strategy use, 14 items were analysed. for the 14 items under strategy use, the cronbach’s alpha was 0.746, which was also considered high reliability (hinton et al. 2004). the mean was 2.229, which pointed to borderline strategy use. although not as low as their self-efficacy, students’ strategy use also needed improvement. in other words, students had low reading proficiency and low affective reading levels before the intervention was conducted. however, the focus was more on the post-intervention questionnaire, as questions were on the intervention and the responses were to determine the effectiveness of the intervention. the four-point likert scale was from 1 (strongly agree) to 4 (strongly disagree). a total of 255 students responded to the post-intervention questionnaire. the section on self-efficacy consisted of 10 items with a cronbach’s alpha of 0.787, which was considered high reliability (hinton et al. 2004). the overall mean was 2.092 with a standard deviation of 0.447, indicating a majority agreement. the standard deviation of 0.447 also shows stronger cohesion compared to the standard deviation of the pre-intervention questionnaire, which is 0.645. the fact that there were virtually no negative responses to the self-efficacy questions in the post-intervention questionnaire indicates that students seemingly had higher self-efficacy, most likely emanating from the intervention, as compared to the means above 3 for the self-efficacy questions in the pre-intervention questionnaire on their general reading self-efficacy. in relation to strategy use, there were nine items with a cronbach’s alpha of 0.836. the overall mean was 2.00, which shows that students agreed with statements without any disagreement. this seems to point to many more students using appropriate strategies, after the intervention. table 3 shows the differences in means of the pre-intervention and post-intervention questionnaires. table 3: questionnaire responses. thus, the closed-ended post-intervention questionnaire also showed positive responses from the students in terms of their strategy use and affective reading (i.e. self-efficacy and motivation). the open-ended responses provided more insight into how the students’ reading proficiency improved. students’ opinions on the use of role play to improve comprehension the open-ended questionnaire was to elicit students’ opinions on the use of role play and strategy instruction within a reading intervention to improve their reading proficiency. the responses shed further light on the intervention and how the students perceived it. most of the students reported that the reading intervention improved their reading proficiency. of the 255 students, 11 did not respond to the open-ended question. of the 244 who responded, 91% reported understanding the texts better. only 9% reported still having difficulty. of the 91% who reported benefits, 38% specifically mentioned the benefit of the group discussions, which involved the role play, and 35% specifically mentioned the benefit of the strategy instruction. although the benefits of the role play and strategy instruction are implied in the benefits of the tutorial activities in terms of improving the students’ understanding of the texts and their general reading proficiency, several students directly highlighted the benefits of one or the other. in addition to comments on the role play and strategy use, of the 91% who made positive comments on the intervention, 35% specifically mentioned its benefits regarding either self-efficacy or motivation. in other words, these students mentioned an increase in their affective reading levels. examples of these comments are presented under the following five emerging themes: understanding texts, group discussions (role play), affect (e.g. motivation and self-efficacy), and strategy use. some examples from the 9% of the students who expressed having difficulty are also given. the questionnaires were numbered from 1 to 255 and responses are provided according to the questionnaire number. understanding texts most of the students reported that the reading intervention had improved their understanding of the texts. according to stricklin (2011:621), the four strategies of predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarising highly increase comprehension. the following examples show how the students found it easier to understand the sociology concepts, engage in deep reading, increase their vocabulary, and engage in meaningful reading to gain understanding. for example, respondent 20 reported that she found the concepts easier to understand and could read with more insight and understanding: ‘by relating the text to current situations, i gained a better understanding. the tutorial activities enabled me to understand the authors’ perspectives. i was able to ‘debunk’ the texts and put things in my own perspective.’ (respondent 20) ‘i was able to read in depth and to understand what sociology is all about. i can now relate them [the texts] to what is happening in the world, and my vocabulary has also increased. i now have a better understanding of many more words and concepts.’ (respondent 50) ‘the activities have been a great help. it helped me to get a deep understanding of sociology. it also made me want to read more. i can link the information to everyday life to make it more understandable.’ (respondent 127) ‘i learnt to read in greater detail, identify arguments, as well as contextualise the information.’ (respondent 147) ‘it has improved my vocabulary; now when i read the articles, i read to understand the deeper meaning.’ (respondent 201) strategy use the students’ responses to the explicit teaching of strategies, such as pre-reading, predicting, application of background knowledge and identification of main and supporting ideas are given below. respondent 9 reported that she obtained a better understanding because she was able to form visual images, which helped improve her reading ability: ‘i learnt how to extract main ideas from the texts and i am able to visualize the texts i read and to focus on the main concepts.’ (respondent 9) ‘i now try to find the main ideas in order to understand the texts. i found it easier to summarize the texts because i knew what to look for.’ (respondent 12) ‘the reading strategies we were taught helped break down the article into sections and that helps when studying.’ (respondent 41) ‘i could easily identify main ideas and important concepts and to summarise the texts using the reading strategies.’ (respondent 48) ‘tutorials provided me with tips [strategies] on how to read the texts and this helped me understand the texts better and engage in discussions.’ (respondent 66) group discussions and role play activities although the students’ responses sometimes straddle the various sections, the following excerpts were extracted for role play and the related group discussions. the students reported that the role play activities compelled them to read the texts and participate in discussions: ‘the discussions helped me to understand concepts, because i was forced to look up new words. they helped me understand sociology, because they made me read more.’ (respondent 156) ‘the tutorials had a great impact on my reading of the sociology articles because i could engage in the discussions in my role.’ (respondent 157) ‘the discussions made me to think more critically and not to look at things at face value. the summaries provided by the summariser in the group made it easier when reading the actual text.’ (respondent 177) ‘making contributions to the group helped to make my own ideas when writing. the roles of my peers also helped to explain some of the parts of the article that i did not understand.’ (respondent 189) ‘because i had to contribute in my role, it made me read the texts rather than waiting until tests or exams.’ (respondent 204) affective reading aspects of motivation and self-efficacy students’ responses also reflected increased motivation and self-efficacy levels. these affective aspects influence strategy use and overall reading proficiency. examples of the affective responses are given below to indicate the benefits of the role play strategy instruction. students reported increased motivation and believed in their ability to read successfully as a result of the role play activities. motivation ‘the roles i played motivated me to read and they made me more interested.’ (respondent 31) ‘i was motivated to read because i have to do the assignments and prepare for the discussions.’ (respondent 45) ‘it was interesting to read and relate the information to real life so i read them.’ (respondent 80) ‘the discussions and the activities during tutorials helped me to read better, and made me want to read more.’ (respondent 95) ‘the tutorials were interesting and fun and motivated me to read the sociology articles.’ (respondent 108) ‘the tutorial activities have been a great help. they helped me to get a deep understanding of sociology. it also made me want to read more. i was motivated to read frequently, and not leave reading till exam time.’ (respondent 127) self-efficacy ‘i am able to understand what i read better. and it has increased my ability to understand what sociology is about.’ (respondent 46) ‘i am more confident about my ability to read and to be able to answer questions. i can also relate the information in the article to what is happening in the world. my vocabulary has improved greatly and i understand most of the words and concepts in the articles.’ (respondent 51) ‘i can understand difficult concepts and want to read the prescribed work. i am able to relate whatever i’m reading with my own ideas.’ (respondent 89) ‘i am able to identify the main points in the articles, and explain and give my own examples.’ (respondent 135) despite the positive outcomes of the combined approach to improve reading proficiency within tutorials, a few students (9%) still had challenges with reading their assigned work. some of these students stated: ‘i don’t understand what i read sometimes’, ‘the length of the sociology articles made me struggle to get the main ideas’, ‘the tutorials and the activities did not assist me’ and ‘i still struggle and still need help with my work’. the insights gained from the open-ended questionnaire responses showed that the students, on the whole, were positive about the combined approach of role play and strategy instruction. in other words, not only did the students report that they benefited from the strategy instruction by using appropriate strategies for comprehension, but the role play had also enabled them to learn from their peers, engage in deep reading, improve their affective reading levels (motivation and self-efficacy), develop independent reading and gain better understanding. discussion the three data sets consisting of tests, a closed-ended questionnaire, and an open-ended questionnaire all indicated positive outcomes of the intervention. the descriptive statistics of the pre-test and post-test results showed that the students’ reading proficiency had improved. furthermore, the improvement was statistically significant with small to medium effect sizes. although there was no control, the questionnaire responses confirm the benefits in that only a few students (9%) reported experiencing challenges after the intervention. a majority of the students had positive comments, which indicated improved reading comprehension, vocabulary and strategy use, as well as higher levels of motivation and self-efficacy. according to stricklin (2011), the strategies of predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarising increase comprehension. students had increased their understanding of the articles, which were hitherto challenging for them. in addition, some of the students reported that understanding the texts made them read more frequently, which ultimately increased their motivation and improved their comprehension (grabe & stoller 2011). furthermore, because they had to prepare for the role play discussions, they could not come to class without having read the texts. the roles they had to play, in a sense, compelled them to read. they also found the role play discussions to be fun, confirming budden’s (2006) assertion that role play is fun and motivating for students. a number of students commented on being able to relate the texts to real life, which helped to improve comprehension and make the text more meaningful. according to the serc (2018) document, an advantage of role play is that it allows students to apply content in a relevant and real-world context. for example, the character of connie the connector made connections between the information in the text and real-life situations, and highlighted these connections during the class discussions. glover (2014) explains that by providing students with authentic situations to operate in, role play improves learning. guthrie and wigfield’s (2000) engagement framework explains that the use of authentic texts and authentic situations provides a basis for engagement in reading, which promotes comprehension. students applied reading strategies in authentic ways, as the texts used for the intervention were the same texts on which they would be assessed in the sociology module. glover (2014) points out that if students have a form of evaluation attached to the role play, they gain more from it. because the texts used for the intervention were the same texts used for the sociology module, the students were eager to engage with the texts and perform their assigned roles. the role play also encouraged deep reading: a number of students reported reading deeply in order to perform their roles. this confirms and aligns with the benefits of role play and engaged reading that emanates from the affective and cognitive benefits thereof (glover 2014; guthrie & wigfield 2000; serc 2018). in other words, deep reading, or engaged reading, which can only be attained if appropriate strategies are used in a motivating way (guthrie & wigfield 2000), had been attained by a number of students. guthrie and wigfield (2000) argue that engaged readers are proficient and strategic readers. thus, when students read deeply, they are engaged and use appropriate strategies to obtain meaning, thereby improving their reading comprehension. finally, a number of students reported increased and improved vocabulary use. according to glover (2014) and budden (2006), the world of the classroom is broadened to include the outside world during role play, thus offering a much wider range of language opportunities, increased vocabulary and improved reading proficiency. limitation although the study has reported on the benefits of a combined approach of role play and strategy instruction in improving reading comprehension and reading proficiency, the findings should be considered within the limitations of the study. in addition to the challenges of a quasi-experimental design in educational research, the study had no control group. although this is acceptable in quasi-experimental studies in cases where it is not feasible, it limits the research findings. however, this limitation was counteracted by having three data sets to compare. a similar study with a control group would strengthen the findings of this study. conclusion using three data sets to determine the efficacy of the intervention, this study has shown that an approach of using role play within strategy instruction can help to improve reading comprehension. the pre-test and post-test results showed statistically significant improvement in students’ reading performance, which could be attributed to the intervention. the closed-ended and opened-ended questionnaire data corroborated the results of the post-test, with a majority of the students reporting improvements in their self-efficacy, their strategy use and, most importantly, their understanding of the texts. the approach seems to have contributed to an increase in students’ use of appropriate strategies, which helped to improve their reading comprehension. the role play provided an affective stance that promoted deep reading and independent reading that also contributed to deeper understanding and increased vocabulary. furthermore, the attainment of comprehension cultivated in the students a desire to read more. it also increased their affective reading levels, which is important for engaged and deep reading. the students reported increased motivation to read and higher reading self-efficacy. however, the test results should be interpreted with caution, as the study was a one-group pre-post-test design without a control group. this article contributes to research on reading development at tertiary level and responds to the call to find innovative ways to improve students’ academic reading comprehension for better academic performance. acknowledgements mr andries masenge and dr andre du plessis from the statistics department who helped with the analysis of data. competing interests the author has declared that no competing interest exists. author’s contributions i declare that i am the sole author of this research article. ethical considerations ethical clearance for the study was obtained from the faculty of humanities, university of pretoria. funding information the research was supported by the csur grant from the nrf. data availability data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author 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accepted: 16 july 2021; published: 29 sept. 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: south africa’s long-standing reading crisis is well recognised. at various stages since 2000, national government has presented the inculcation of a culture of reading as a solution to this crisis. objectives: this article critically interrogated the term ‘culture of reading’ as used in national government discourse with reference to basic education. by tracing the patterns of use of the term since 2000, it aimed to show the shifts and continuities in the government’s understanding of the term ‘culture of reading’ and how this has shaped the reading landscape. method: drawn from a corpus of 331 texts, a sample of 58 texts produced by national government was analysed. employing discourse and thematic analysis, key themes were extrapolated and their relation to reading within south africa was explored. results: the government’s call for a culture of reading occurs predominantly in response to poor literacy results and at launches of campaigns and strategies focused on addressing these results. this occurs repeatedly without clear delineation of the term or justification for recycling failed initiatives. instead, the term acts as a rhetorical tool to obfuscate the unsuccessful implementation of reading programmes. conclusion: the government’s failure to clarify what constitutes a culture of reading prohibits a clear picture of its understanding of the term. the frequency with which ‘culture of reading’ is promoted indicates a failure to consider alternative approaches to addressing the reading crisis. contribution: this article highlights the need for government to re-evaluate its response to the reading crisis, taking cognisance of the south african context. keywords: reading; culture of reading; reading practices; reading for pleasure; reading campaigns; department of basic education; materials; literacy myth. introduction it has long been acknowledged at all levels that there is a reading crisis in south africa. in presenting a solution to this crisis, one particular catchphrase that has cachet is ‘culture of reading’. in fact, it has been used at the highest levels of government. the highlights of the 2019 presidential state of the nation address emphasise establishing a culture of reading to enable learners to read and, subsequently, enter tertiary education or gain employment (government communication and information system 2019). such assertions position a culture of reading as both a foundation for improved education within south africa and critical to economic success. the minister of the department of basic education (dbe), angie motshekga (in department of basic education 2017), bluntly asserts, ‘our children are not performing at the level they should merely because they lack a reading culture’. claims such as these disregard the complexity of the deep, entrenched systemic inequalities in the education system (hoadley 2018). over a 20-year period, the government has promoted a culture of reading to improve learners’ reading results. however, their admission that ‘[o]ver the years, the [basic education] sector has come to be characterized by unsatisfactory learner/teacher performance in reading and pedagogy of reading’ (motshekga 2019a), combined with consistently poor results in assessments such as the progress in international reading and literacy study (pirls) of 2006, 2011 and 2016 (howie et al. 2008, 2012, 2017), provide little evidence that their promotion of a culture of reading has resulted in improved reading results. the purpose of this article is to trace how the catchphrase ‘culture of reading’ has functioned in government discourse over the past 20 years, paying specific attention to its use within basic education. to achieve this, i pose three questions: when and by which national government departments and officials has the term ‘culture of reading’ been used over a 20-year period? how is the term used and understood? what does this use of the term say about the national government’s understanding of and approach to the reading landscape? this analysis forms part of a larger study which reviews a corpus of 331 texts (written or spoken) that reference ‘culture of reading’ in the south african context from 1990 to 2019. this article focuses on the 58 texts from the corpus produced at national government level. because it is not only the content of a text that defines its impact, this article recognises that the author or speaker’s position of power, the context in which a text is presented and the author’s selection of words and register affect a text’s reception and influence (fairclough & fairclough 2018; gee 2018). i begin with a brief review of global, african and south african research in order to ascertain how ‘culture of reading’ is defined in the literature. this provides a foundation for analysing the government’s articulation of a culture of reading. thereafter, i detail my methodological approach before presenting the findings. i argue that the government’s failure to provide a contextually appropriate definition of ‘culture of reading’ has resulted in a catchphrase that has no clear function or meaning. the careful historical analysis i undertake of its patterns of usage by government provides insights into policy decisions at key moments over the last two decades, as well as how it is used as a rhetorical tool to obfuscate the unsuccessful implementation of reading programmes across the country. literature review the term ‘culture of reading’ cannot be defined without first outlining what is meant by ‘culture’ and ‘reading’, both complex concepts with numerous definitions. this review begins with a conceptualisation of these terms. drawing on this conceptualisation of ‘culture’ and ‘reading’ combined with an analysis of literature on a culture of reading, i provide a definition of the term ‘culture of reading’ that provides a framework for analysing government discourse. this review applies a primarily critical african lens but incorporates global north research because of its influence on literature in all regions (perry 2008). as much of the emphasis on creating a culture of reading is centred on its contribution to socio-economic advancement, i conclude this section with a critique of this positioning. reading reading is a contested term. here, i define reading as a complex cognitive skill and a set of sociocultural practices. reading has to be explicitly taught and learnt and requires the ability to decode and comprehend texts. decoding enables the fluent processing of texts but this must be accompanied by simultaneous meaningful comprehension of texts for reading to occur (adams 1990). reading comprehension necessitates drawing on external and internal knowledge sources (snow & matthews 2016). the sociocultural contexts in which reading occurs, how it is valued as a practice and the types of available texts affect one’s engagement with reading and success as a reader (freebody & luke 1990). culture any discussion of a culture of reading must first define ‘culture’. however, this is challenging because the term itself is a multifaceted idea that is universally contested (eagleton 2016; inglis 2016). this is because the way culture is conceptualised is influenced by and reflects an individual or group’s ideologies and ways of thinking (grenfell et al. 2012; spillman 2001). for the purposes of this article, i define culture as one’s practices, perceptions, thoughts, behaviour, habits and set of values (appadurai 2013; bourdieu 1971; geertz 1973). for any culture to be sustained, these practices must be embedded within an individual and group’s ways of thinking and doing. in line with this definition, my approach to interrogating the term ‘culture of reading’ centres on the practices associated with reading. i pay specific attention to the importance of the sociocultural context within which the term ‘culture of reading’ is referenced and, if an explanation about what constitutes a culture of reading is provided in the texts i analyse, i debate its applicability in the south african context. what is a culture of reading? prior to interrogating the government’s usage of the term ‘culture of reading’, it is necessary to establish how the term has been presented in the literature. despite both ‘culture’ and ‘reading’ being individually contested terms a review of the literature reveals that that the term ‘culture of reading’ is frequently used in both academic and popular literature. the term ‘culture of reading’ appears to come to prominence in the early and mid-2000s in both literature from the global north and in south africa (behrman 2004; matjila & pretorius 2004; mbeki 2007; paine 2007; sisulu 2004), and a few years thereafter elsewhere in africa (commeyras & mazile 2011; kachala 2007; tötemeyer 2009). there is no shared, clear definition of what constitutes a culture of reading. (within south africa see for example mbeki 2007; government communication and information system 2019; vally 2015). where there is some explanation, three components appear most frequently: (1) motivating and role modelling children’s reading practices, (2) access to materials and (3) reading for pleasure. although i present these perspectives separately, this does not negate the overlap between them. motivating and role modelling children’s reading practices as the dominant adults in children’s early lives, parents’ and caregivers’ practices serve as a model to their children (bourdieu 1990). therefore, reading practices within the home environment play a critical role in developing children’s reading practices (bridges 2014; kaschula 2014; ruterana 2012). this is highlighted by the author mda’s (2017) statement that ‘[a] culture of reading can be cultivated at any age, though like all habits, good and bad, it is best instilled early in childhood’. the expectation that parents and caregivers will model reading practices is founded in middle-class and western thinking and cannot be assumed in south africa (mda 2017). in reflecting on the uptake of the term within southern africa, perry (2008:66) stressed the importance of identifying ‘“[w]hat might a local reading culture look like?” rather than trying to import western reading culture into the region’. other researchers have also noted factors that affect the ability to promote reading practices: parents and caregivers may lack confidence in their ability to assist children, be unable to source reading materials, place limited value on reading or be overwhelmed by a focus on economic survival (bua-lit collective 2018; kachala 2007; ruterana 2012). furthermore, many african and south african adults are not readers themselves (tns research surveys 2016). in this context, parents and caregivers cannot be expected to model strong reading practices or fully support their children’s reading practices (willenberg 2018). the second significant influence on children’s reading practices is educators (commeyras & mazile 2011; joubert et al. 2014; reeves et al. 2008). matjila and pretorius (2004:18) stress that educators have ‘an important role to play in promoting a culture of reading’, particularly if reading does not occur at home. if educators model the enjoyment of reading and promote strong reading practices, this indicates the importance of reading and can improve children’s reading practices (reeves et al. 2008). access to materials within the global north, access to materials is highlighted as central in promoting a culture of reading (clements 2017; kennedy et al. 2012; national library of new zealand n.d.). this literature places little or no emphasis on the necessity of texts being in readers’ home languages or on the importance of readers relating to content, factors critical to the development of positive reading practices (bloch 2008). this absence is taken up in the african context with a particular emphasis on the absence of texts in indigenous south african languages (kaschula 2014; mda 2017; reeves et al. 2008; sisulu 2004; vally 2015). in his comprehensive analysis of a culture of reading in rwanda, ruterana (2012) contends: the question of which language literacy and a reading culture should be in … is actually the basic and most fundamental factor determining the creation and development of literacy and a reading culture. (p. 54) as culture is influenced by one’s ideologies and values, reading materials should respond to individuals’ ways of being and thinking. hibbert and crouss (2011) stress that it is not only access to materials and the language of a text that promote a culture of reading, but that content has to be relevant. therefore: [a] culture of reading can only be instilled by adhering to the following criteria, i.e. ensuring affective engagement, maximum meaning-making potential, delight, the engagement of the imagination for the purposes of developing the creative mind, and strong identification with the material for the purposes of developing a sense of agency. (p. 99) in addition, hibbert and crouss (2011) underscore the importance of affective engagement in promoting reading for pleasure, the third component widely identified as essential for a culture of reading. reading for pleasure south african texts frequently position reading for pleasure as critical for a culture of reading (bloch 2008; department of basic education 2019b; mda 2017). pleasure is a cultural construct. if one gains pleasure from a practice, motivation to engage in that practice regularly is increased. in delineating requirements for ‘developing a book and reading culture’, reeves et al. (2008) assert that: children are more likely to develop a positive attitude towards reading in school and classroom environments where they are provided with opportunities to experience the joy and the pleasure of reading. (p. 97) when reading is positioned as an enjoyable activity, children’s likelihood of reading is likely to increase. as sisulu (2000) rightly states, children who ‘do not learn to read for pleasure … are less likely to read outside the school curriculum’. towards a tentative definition of a culture of reading much literature, particularly from the global north, assumes children have the ability to read in order for a culture of reading to be sustainable. south african texts, however, refer to the ability to read as critical for a strong culture of reading (alexander 2001; department of arts and culture and the national council for library and information services 2014; joubert et al. 2014). i do not argue that the ability to read is essential for a culture of reading to exist but, rather, that this ability increases opportunities for habitual reading and children developing their expertise as motivated independent readers, both of which contribute to sustaining a culture of reading. it seems almost redundant to claim that the term ‘culture of reading’ needs to be defined in relation to culture. because there are innumerable individual and group ideologies and ways of thinking and being that constitute a culture, a culture of reading then, by its nature, would be fluid and contextually located. however, an effective analysis of the government’s employment of the term ‘culture of reading’ will be best achieved by using a framework that takes this contextual fluidity into account. i thus draw on the above three components in presenting my understanding of the term ‘culture of reading’. a culture of reading then consists of a specific set of beliefs and practices held by a particular group of people about reading. influential role players within the group support children’s reading practices in and outside of school. the materials available to children (and adults) contain content that interests them and draws on their existing knowledge. a sufficient number of materials, written in the appropriate languages and at a reading level accessible to children, is available. there is an awareness of the value of reading and there is pleasure associated with the practice of reading. reading and the literacy myth in both international and south african literature, two overarching themes emerge as motivators for establishing a culture of reading. firstly, it is proffered as critical in improving poor reading levels (government communication and information system 2019; matjila & pretorius 2004; paine 2007). secondly, the contention that a strong culture of reading enables socio-economic development pervades literature on a culture of reading (bridges 2014; motshekga 2015b; ruterana 2012; tns research surveys 2016). the minister of sports, arts and culture, nathi mthethwa (2018), for example, emphasises the role of a culture of reading in enabling ‘the full eradication of unemployment, social inequality, illiteracy and poverty’. elinor sisulu (2004) contends that a culture of reading is critical in the country’s development, stating that ‘[t]he absence of a widespread reading culture acts as an effective barrier to our [south africa’s] development, reconstruction, and international competitiveness’. such contentions exist despite the long-standing research critiquing what graff terms the ‘literacy myth’, that is, that ‘literacy alone is enough to end poverty, elevate human dignity, and ensure a just and democratic world’ (graff & duffy 2008:50). this does not ‘discount the importance of reading and writing or … suggest that these are irrelevant in the contemporary world’, as access to further education and formal employment depends heavily on being literate. however, high literacy levels cannot guarantee this because ‘the presumed “consequences” of literacy – individual, economic, and democratic – will always be conditioned by the particulars of time, situation, and the historical moment’ (graff & duffy 2008:51). consequently, an uncritical perpetuation of this myth within south africa is problematic because systemic inequalities and current socio-economic conditions do not allow for all literate citizens to enter further education or secure employment. methodology in this section, i explain the data set that constituted the corpus. i then describe my approach to data analysis and explain why this approach was elected. data set in researching the usage of the term ‘culture of reading’, i sourced texts through searches for ‘culture of reading’ + ‘south africa’, and ‘reading culture’ + ‘south africa’ on google scholar and google (search conducted on 04 november 2019, supplementary search on 30 january 2020). i selected google scholar in searching for both popular and academic texts, as i wanted to include south african postgraduate research and google scholar enables this to a greater degree than other databases. a total of 331 texts referencing ‘culture of reading’ within south africa constituted the data set. the majority of these texts were either academic (138) or produced by the government (91). thereafter, the most common texts citing ‘culture of reading’ were produced by the non-governmental organisation (ngo) sector and the media. i classify government texts as texts that were produced by or reference a government official or department directly. fifty-eight of the 91 governmental texts were from the national government and form the corpus for this article. i focused on these 58 texts because national government holds more power than any other government body. therefore, its conceptualisation of a culture of reading will influence the field of reading within south africa significantly (gee 2018). as the overall corpus forms part of a larger study on reading within basic education, i pay particular attention to texts produced by the dbe. i do not, however, disregard texts presented by other departments from the analysis. this is because individual departments do not operate independently of one another or the presidency and, thus, policies and decision-making that occur at national level outside of the dbe also influence education within south africa. data analysis for the analysis i began by tracing when and by whom the term ‘culture of reading’ had been used in these government texts since 2000 and within what contexts. i then used a thematic analysis (clarke & braun 2013) to identify what government identified as critical to the development and maintenance of a culture of reading. thereafter, i employed critical discourse analysis (cda). the value of cda is that in critiquing specific actions, the importance of the context in which these actions play out and circumstances that may constrain or promote specific actions and practices are considered (fairclough & fairclough 2018). through this analysis, i interrogate how policies and strategies, and the implementation thereof, reflect the government’s understanding of reading in south africa. because there has been little significant progress in addressing low reading levels within basic education (see howie et al. 2008, 2012, 2017), i was interested to see whether there was an evolution in the way the term ‘culture of reading’ is used over the last 20 years in relation to reading initiatives that have been rolled out. the individual authors i cite within the analysis have all served as cabinet ministers or presidents. this does not ignore the role of other government officials. however, as one’s level of influence affects the reception and power of a text, a cabinet minister or president’s take-up of a culture of reading is likely to affect the positioning of reading within south africa to a greater degree than other government employees (gee 2018). limitations i relied on online sources in conducting data collection. i am therefore limited in drawing conclusions about where and how frequently the term ‘culture of reading’ occurs in texts over the past three decades. this is especially the case with older texts that may not be available online. in particular, content that was posted on the national government website in the early 2000s is no longer accessible online. the use of the term ‘culture of reading’ in government discourse in this section, i trace how the term ‘culture of reading’ has been employed over the last 20 years within the education sector. i first tabulate when and by whom the term ‘culture of reading’ has been used. this is followed by specific examples of the use of the term and the contexts within which it is employed. using these examples as a foundation, the analysis shows how the dbe and individuals within the dbe’s use of the term reflects an understanding of the function of a culture of reading and its role within the education sector. tracing government usage of the term ‘culture of reading’ table 1 tracks the frequency of the term ‘culture of reading’ within national government texts. it provides a breakdown according to government departments with presidents’ and deputy presidents’ use of the term identified separately. for ease of readability, i do not name officials within each department individually. table 1: tracking individual and departmental references to ‘culture of reading’ (1990–2019). i have presented the figures in 5-year cycles in order to identify any significant alterations to the frequency of the term’s usage. this provides a basis for identifying any peaks in the usage of the term within the context of different departments. unsurprisingly it is the dbe that is the government department that has most frequently used the term ‘culture of reading’. the then minister of education, kader asmal, introduced it in 2000, when he launched the masifunde sonke campaign (let us read together) – building a nation of readers, with the aim of ‘promot[ing] and build[ing] a culture of reading and writing among all south africans’ (department of education, 2001). this campaign recognised that the existence of a culture of reading not only depends on the ability to read but needs to be an ongoing community practice. it focused on strengthening the reading practices of children and adults and aimed to ‘engage the whole nation in a dynamic effort to build a sustainable culture of reading and writing that affirms south african languages, history, values and development’ (pandor 2004). therefore, its objective was described as ‘not only about teaching people to read, it’s just as much about getting people who can read to read and go on reading’ (asmal in iol 2000) and creating a nation of ‘lifelong readers’ (pandor 2004). the anticipated benefits of improved literacy results were stressed but there was insufficient articulation as to how the campaign would be implemented. initiatives such as readathons were held without explanation as to how they would ensure a culture of reading. the government continued to reference the campaign as late as 2007 (government communication and information system 2007). these references were not accompanied by adequate reporting on the impact of the campaign although it is widely considered to be unsuccessful (chizwina 2011; sisulu 2004). despite the failure of masifunde sonke to meet its objective of creating a culture of reading, the term re-emerges in 2008 for the launch of the department of educations national reading strategy where a culture of reading is positioned as critical in advancing reading levels: to meet the crisis of reading, one of the practices promoted by the department of education is that all schools (especially primary schools) should arrange an additional half hour per day to ‘drop all and read’. this campaign creates a culture of reading in the classroom and in the school. everyone – from learner to teacher, principal and support staff – can be seen reading for enjoyment for half an hour a day. if learners enjoy reading, this will raise literacy levels and improve the ability of learners to learn. (doe 2008:16) as with masifunde sonke, reporting on the national reading strategy was insufficient and there was no evidence of improvements in reading within primary schools. despite the failure of two significant investments in promoting a culture of reading as a basis for improving literacy levels, the term ‘culture of reading’ re-emerges again in government rhetoric in 2014 when it is presented a third time as a solution to poor reading levels. in 2014, motshekga (2014) contended that ‘[d]eveloping a culture of reading amongst our learners remains a key driver in improving literacy skills such and [sic] reading and writing proficiency’. in explaining this decision to refocus on a culture of reading, motshekga (2015b) stated: after the release of the national education and evaluation unit (needu) report on the state of literacy teaching in the foundation phase, the ministerial reading audit report and the 2011 progress in international reading and literacy study (pirls), i was convinced that the sector needed to rejuvenate its reading initiatives. subsequently, the read to lead campaign was launched in 2015 with the aim to ‘improve the reading abilities of all south african children’. after 15 years of national campaigns to create a culture of reading, motshekga noted at a launch of a drop all and read campaign within read to lead that ‘south africa does not have a reading culture’. in launching the campaign, motshekga (2015a) stated: we are gathered here to launch the most important operation in the basic education sector aptly named, drop all and read campaign. … we hope drop all and read campaign will help children and adults to rediscover the joys of reading while raising awareness for those without access to education. motshekga’s (2015a) description of drop all and read as the ‘most important operation in the basic education sector’ is unwarranted as there is insufficient evidence of a definitive positive correlation between the voluntary reading that constitutes drop all and read and reading achievement (national reading panel 2000). i do not suggest drop all and read be disbanded, but query the introduction of a practice emanating from the global north that presupposes (1) learners’ ability to read, (2) access to materials within learners’ home language and at an appropriate reading level and (3) that providing opportunities for reading will result in enjoyment of reading, unfounded presuppositions in south africa (national reading panel 2000; bua-lit collective 2018; willenberg 2018). although the term ‘culture of reading’ has circulated within the dbe since 2000, it was only in 2015 that a high-ranking government official explicitly outlined what constitutes a culture of reading (motshekga 2015b). in introducing read to lead and the justification for the promotion of a culture of reading as central to the campaign’s objective of improving reading levels, motshekga (2015b) referred to seven studies drawn from the ‘huge body of research that concludes that the main thrust of literacy development is the promotion of a school-wide reading culture’. it is concerning that these studies were all conducted within the global north and motshekga ignored the vast contextual differences between the global north and south africa. the expectation that findings from these studies could be uncritically applied within south africa was highlighted when motshekga (2015b) stated: to create a reading culture the principal and staff need to: understand the impact of reading on learner achievement; have a shared vision of the school’s reading culture; know what an engaged reader looks like; fully support the library and its resources, services and programmes; and value the impact of reading for pleasure. this list is drawn verbatim from the national library of new zealand’s website (n.d.), without acknowledging the source and the significant differences in socio-economic and linguistic contexts. expecting south african schools to meet these requirements is unrealistic. for example, a functioning library depends on sufficient budget to establish and stock the library, updating of resources and the employment of a library assistant or school librarian (department of basic education 2012; department of arts and culture and the national council for library and information services 2018), responsibilities that the dbe has failed to meet. by simply stating these expectations, the government abdicates responsibility for creating the conditions necessary for schools to meet such expectations. the presentation of global north research as a solution to learners’ poor reading results indicates a disregard of the realities of the south african reading landscape and of the many complexities that need to be addressed in overcoming the south african reading crisis. it is deeply problematic that for 15 years, the government claimed that a culture of reading is fundamental to improving education and socio-economic conditions without stipulating how they conceptualise the term. the long-standing absence of a delineation of its meaning suggests either a failure to interrogate the basis for the implementation of time and cost-intensive campaigns and strategies or an assumption that a shared understanding of a complex concept is possible. the latter is a useful discursive strategy in gaining surface-level buy-in as readers and listeners assign their own meaning to the term with an implicit assumption that everyone has a similar understanding of the term. but the reality is that the term ‘culture of reading’ is denuded of meaning, resulting in an empty signifier that holds limited value in the field of education. under the current government, masifunde sonke, the national reading strategy and read to lead have been the three most widely promoted reading campaigns or strategies. all three refer to a culture of reading as critical to addressing the south african reading crisis. it is only within masifunde sonke that the government referred to the importance of supporting south africans of all ages to develop a culture of reading which speaks to the intergenerational nature of cultural practices. in contrast, the national reading strategy and read to lead focus on a culture of reading at school level. references to adults’ reading practices were framed within their responsibility for supporting children’s reading practices, without delineating how adults were being capacitated to fulfil this role or in their development as readers. usage and function of a culture of reading i have identified when the term ‘culture of reading’ was employed and the context of this usage. i now consider how this reflects government’s understanding of reading and how its focus on a culture of reading has affected the reading landscape in south africa over the last two decades. the value of family and community support in encouraging reading is a consistent theme in government texts (asmal 2003; department of education 2008; motshekga 2015b). at the launch of a pilot community programme for the ‘promotion of a culture of reading’, mthethwa (2019) stated that ‘[c]ommunity and parents will have a responsibility to develop their children’s reading skills’. addressing soweto community members, educators and learners, motshekga (in department of basic education 2017) raised the importance of encouraging reading within the home. she referred to a poor culture of reading as a ‘binding constraint’ within society and stated: we have to stand up and promote reading in our homes to help our children to read books daily. it is critical that our children read for pleasure and for information to improve their literacy skills. however, as our actions are ‘conditioned and constrained by social practices, institutions and structures’ (fairclough & fairclough 2018:169), such expectations can only be imposed on communities and households who, themselves, value literacy and have been empowered with the necessary education and resources to develop their own reading practices. because many south africans have been denied such opportunities, this first requires extensive efforts from government to assist all south africans in improving their reading practices and abilities. if children receive little support for reading within their communities and homes, this responsibility falls on schools (matjila & pretorius 2004). although, globally, schools play a critical role in promoting reading, this is often in collaboration with parents and caregivers and schools are better equipped to promote reading practices. if similar expectations are placed on south african schools, the historical inequalities that have existed for many decades and continue to exist within basic and tertiary education have to be acknowledged (hoadley 2018). these include the negative impact of poor pre-service and in-service teacher education, educators’ insufficient opportunities for developing their own reading practices, and having to overcome daily challenges such as overcrowded classrooms and inadequate access to appropriate reading materials (joubert et al. 2014; reeves et al. 2008; willenberg 2018). the dbe’s current reliance on international research in its call for schools to create a culture of reading (motshekga 2015b) is at odds with the south african reading landscape. if the dbe continues to promote a culture of reading as central to improving reading results, educators and schools need to receive greater support in working towards this goal and effective structures that address the failures of the education system have to be in place. in advocating for a culture of reading, government stresses the importance of children having access to books, particularly in their home languages (asmal 2003; department of education 2008; government communication and information system 2018). in response to this the dbe introduced learner workbooks and, since 2015, these resources have been published in all 11 home languages and english first additional language for grade r–6 learners’ resources (hoadley & galant 2016). these provide learners with access to reading materials. however, they function within the confines of the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) curriculum and cannot address the widespread shortage of materials, particularly with regard to reading for pleasure. in this, there is much to be achieved. the dbe acknowledges the shortage of materials and calls on schools to source donations from ngos, publishers or individuals and recommends that both schools and homes make use of public libraries (motshekga 2015b). many south africans do not have access to a public library within safe, walking distance. furthermore, while some schools succeed in sourcing materials from external partners, this is not possible for all schools. no strategy or campaign to improve reading practices can succeed without appropriate materials. it is also the government’s responsibility to provide such materials. their ongoing failure to fulfil this responsibility suggests a lack of political will to meet this fundamental requirement for strong reading practices. in february 2019, the national reading coalition (nrc) was launched by the national education collaboration trust (nect) in conjunction with the read to lead campaign. here, too, a culture of reading was referred to in that the coalition responds to ‘the president of the country’s call to inculcate a culture of reading in the country’ (department of basic education 2019a). the nect is composed of community members, government, civil society and academics within the education field. the nrc’s impact cannot yet be established. however, if the nrc draws on the extensive knowledge held within the nect, there is potential for conceptualising new and alternative approaches that may assist in improving reading results within south africa. despite linking the promotion of a culture of reading to improved reading results over a 20-year period, the government has failed to produce evidence thereof. although ‘a course of action worthy of being adopted is one that has withstood criticism’ (fairclough & fairclough 2018:171), the government continues to re-implement failed programmes. the extent of this failure to critique past strategies and implement innovative strategies is reflected in the level of desperation evident in motshekga (2017) describing read to lead as part of a ‘last ditch effort to achieve the desired outcomes on literacy’. presenting a campaign that repackages strategies that have previously failed as ‘last ditch’ portrays a government ill equipped to address poor literacy levels. such an approach is indicative of the government’s unwillingness ‘to subject its own standpoints to critical questioning, rather than defending a predetermined normative standpoint, even in the face of evidence that it may be unreasonable’ (fairclough & fairclough 2018:181). furthermore, their insufficient articulation about how to maintain a culture of reading is concerning as, without this, promoting a culture of reading holds no value. conclusion over the previous 20 years, the national government and dbe have stressed the promotion of a culture of reading in improving learners’ reading levels. any analysis of whether their understanding of a culture of reading has evolved is impeded by their lack of explanation about what constitutes a culture of reading, particularly over the period 2000–2015. their repetition of past strategies has not been accompanied by sufficient, observable impact or significant improvements in large-scale reading assessments such as pirls that justify this repetition. this indicates little alteration to their understanding of a culture of reading or insight into the south african reading landscape and is indicative of the adoption of a catchphrase that dominates education discourse despite holding no clear purpose or function. it is unclear why the government has continued to rely on the same systems and practices that have, for over two decades, denied many south african learners and adults the necessary opportunities to develop strong reading skills and practices. in light of this, their persistent faith in a culture of reading as essential for socio-economic development within the country and to improve learners’ reading and academic abilities is unjustified. although catchy, the term ‘culture of reading’ appears to be empty rhetoric. acknowledgements the author acknowledges the advice of prof. kerryn dixon in developing ideas in earlier drafts. competing interests the author has declared that no competing interest exists. author’s contributions i declare that i am the sole author of this research article. ethical considerations this article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information the financial assistance of the national institute for the humanities and social sciences, in collaboration with the south african humanities deans association towards this research is hereby acknowledged. opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the nihss and sahuda. the financial assistance provided by the university of the witwatersrand faculty of humanities post graduate studies and research committees is acknowledged. data availability all documents are available in the public domain. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references adams, m., 1990, beginning to read: thinking and learning about print, massachusetts institute of technology, cambridge, ma. alexander, n., 2001, ‘majority and minority languages in south africa’, in g. extra & d. gorter (eds.), the other languages of europe. demographic, sociolinguistic and 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the root cause, not the peripherals, the conversation, viewed 04 november 2019, from http://theconversation.com/south-africas-reading-crisis-focus-on-the-root-cause-not-the-peripherals-96129. article information authors: eleni griva1 dora chostelidou2 affiliations: 1department of primary education, university of western macedonia, greece2department of english language and literature, aristotle university of thessaloniki, greece correspondence to: eleni griva postal address: 16-18 karaoli-dimitriou street, 55131-thessaloniki, greece dates: received: 19 jan. 2013 accepted: 08 july 2013 published: 03 sept. 2013 how to cite this article: griva, e. & chostelidou, d., 2013, ‘writing skills and strategies of bilingual immigrant students learning greek as a second language and english as a foreign language’, reading & writing 4(1), art. #31, 9 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v4i1.31 copyright notice: © 2013. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. writing skills and strategies of bilingual immigrant students learning greek as a second language and english as a foreign language in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • the study    • method       • participants       • procedure and instruments       • data analysis • results    • pre-writing stage: processes and strategies       • prewriting processes and strategies in the greek language       • prewriting processes and strategies in english as a foreign language       • whilst-writing processes and strategies in the greek language       • whilst-writing processes and strategies in english as a foreign language       • metacognitive strategies in learning a second language       • metacognitive strategies in english as a foreign language       • total number of strategies employed in the greek language and english as a foreign language       • writing difficulties in the greek language       • writing difficulties in english as a foreign language • discussion and concluding remarks • acknowledgements    • competing interest    • authors’ contributions • references abstract top ↑ the present study was concerned with eliciting information about the problems that bilingual or immigrant students’ encounter and the strategies that they employ whilst writing in greek as a second language (gl2) and in english as a foreign language (efl). the sample consisted of a total of 32 bilingual students, aged between 10 and 12 from albanian, russian and georgian families. the study followed a qualitative and quantitative method of data collection and analysis: (1) a screening writing test was used for student selection and their categorisation into skilled and less skilled writers; (2) student think-aloud reports and retrospective interviews were used to collect data whilst students were writing in gl2 and efl. the findings indicated that the skilled bilingual writers held a much broader and complex view of their own writing process and showed more strategic knowledge compared to less-skilled writers. in particular, they were more flexible in using both cognitive and metacognitive strategies and employed a wider range of more ‘elaborated’ strategies. in contrast, the less-skilled writers had a more limited knowledge of the writing task, and they adopted lower-level processes and strategies. however, they had adequate awareness of their own writing problems related to word level, and they employed certain compensation strategies to overcome writing weaknesses. some suggestions are made about the creation of educational and teaching conditions for developing bilingual students’ linguistic cognitive and metacognitive skills and expanding opportunities for them to become autonomous writers. introduction top ↑ the reason for conducting this study stems from the growing number of second-language students in greek primary schools since greece has been an immigrant-receiving country for the last two decades. given the fact that immigrant children are subject to assimilation processes in greek primary education, they are expected to learn the greek language once they enter school, receiving no instruction in their home language. in the greek educational context, immigrant students should acquire a functional command of the greek language (gl2) which is at the same level as students with greek as a mother tongue. in addition, in primary education, these students have to learn english as a first foreign language (fl1) and french or german as a second foreign language (fl2). these students are bilingual in the sense that they either have ‘native-like control of two languages’ (bloomfield 1933:56) or they ‘can produce complete meaningful utterances in the other language’ (haugen 1953:7). in addition, they are trilingual, as they have to acquire two non-native languages (cenoz & genesee 1998), namely greek and english, as part of their schooling.in such a context, language teachers are expected to meet the varied needs of the immigrant students and support them. however, they often express their anxiety about teaching immigrant students (tressou & mitakidou 1997:332), and they appear to share certain misconceptions related to the following: 1. the maximum exposure to the target language (l3), as the home language of the students is perceived as an obstacle (mehmedbegovic 2008; sutton 2006) 2. the fact that bilingualism leads to cognitive and linguistic delay due to the burden on the part of the learners of handling two languages (griva, geladari &tsakiridou 2011) 3. the need for support in the so-called ‘theoretical’ school subjects such as history and language activities. (griva, dinas & stamou 2013) on the contrary, research has indicated that balanced bilingual students develop metalinguistic awareness and use a wider range of language-learning strategies compared to monolingual students (cenoz &valencia 1994; griva, chostelidou & tsakididou 2011; lasagabaster 1998). also, learning a third language (l3) is not the same as learning a second language (l2) (cook 2001; jessner 1999). third-language learning shows some special characteristics, which distinguish it from l2 acquisition, as the students: 1. have more language experience at their disposal as l2 learners 2. are influenced by the general effects of bilingualism on cognition 3. have access to two linguistic systems when acquiring l3. (cenoz & valencia 1994; cook 2001; herdina & jessner 2002; jessner 1999) throughout school, equality of access to learning should be promoted, irrespective of students’ cultural or linguistic background and abilities, and every opportunity should be provided to develop their language skills. of these language skills, the skill of writing is regarded as an important part of literacy development. writing is multidimensional and should therefore be treated as such whilst an understanding of the various elements that writing entails, the microand macro-components of writing and their interrelationship in attempting writing activities in the target language should also be considered (raimes 1998). in acknowledgement of the fact that the process of writing in l1 depends on the mastery of a variety of processes and sub-skills such as generating and drafting ideas, producing, revising and editing a text (griva, tsakididou & nihoritou 2009; ascención 2004), l2 and especially l3 writing are considered to involve all of these processes, including l1 and l2 competence issues (bereiter & scardimalia 1987, in griva & chostelidou 2011). research on writing (ascención 2008; cumming 2001; grant & ginther 2000; stein 2000) indicates that the use of strategies and the knowledge which students bring to the text influence their writing process in a significant way. furthermore, it has been indicated that problems in the students’ approach to writing ultimately reflect a deficiency or lack of awareness of the processes involved in performing a writing task (e.g. victori 1997, 1999). studies have also shown that skilled writers tend to view planning and composing as a continual process which includes developing an initial set of goals or plans to guide the writing process (see ascención 2004; goddard & sendi 2008; plakans 2009). in contrast, less skilled writers seldom set writing goals, seldom monitor their final product as regards the writing goal and rarely revise a text (goddard & sendi 2008; graham, harris & reid 1992). also, less skilled writers are believed to have weaknesses in the following areas of language: 1. size of vocabulary 2. correctness of language 3. unconscious processing of language 4. language creation 5. mastery of the functions of language. (victori 1997) having briefly examined the literature and given the findings of the studies outlined above, the attention now shifts to the present study, which was aimed at: • mapping the range of cognitive and metacognitive writing strategies employed when immigrant bilingual students write a task in greek (gl2). • mapping the range of cognitive and metacognitive writing strategies employed when immigrant bilingual students write a task in english (efl). • identifying the potential difficulties encountered by students whilst composing a text in gl2. • identifying the potential difficulties encountered by students whilst composing a text in efl. • identifying the possible differences between more and less-skilled bilingual writers in their use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies. the study top ↑ method participants a total of thirty-two bilingual students, aged between 10 and 12 (m = 11.4 years, sd = 0.45), from immigrant families of albanian, russian and georgian origin, participated in the study. sixteen students were born in greece or had moved to greece before the age of five, and 16 students entered the greek school at a later age. all students can read and write in l1. also, all of them (100%) declared that they almost always speak their l1 at home, and most of the participants (65.6%) stated that they also speak greek at home in some cases. the participants were selected from 13 classrooms in seven greek primary schools, with a total of 58 bilingual students, according to the following criteria: 1. their higher (standard score: 13 or above) or lower writing ability in gl2 (standard score: 7 or less) based on the scores of a group administered screening writing test. 2. their language competence based on the classroom teachers’ judgements. procedure and instruments the study followed a qualitative and quantitative approach of data collection and analysis. the following standardised tests were used to identify the level of students’ writing skills: 1. a standardised writing test for their writing strengths and weaknesses in greek as a second language (gl2). (porpodas, diakogiorgi, dimakou & karantzi 2004) 2. the kgp writing test for efl level a1/2 on the scale set by the council of europe. student think-aloud reports and retrospective interviews were the basic instruments for collecting data. cognition and metacognition can easily be assessed amongst young children through think-aloud and retrospective interviews as well through observing young children in the process of doing their own writing. verbal report data were collected individually; every student was requested to produce a piece of writing between 200 and 250 words in gl2. whilst writing a text, the students were asked to think aloud about all the techniques and procedures they used as well as about the difficulties they encounter. they had to say aloud ‘everything they think and everything that occurs to them while performing the task’ (garner 1987). in this way, writers’ strategic processes during text production were revealed (morrison 1996). after the think-aloud sessions, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the students in order to gain further insight into their usual approach to writing, the strategies they employ and their perceptions on their abilities and weaknesses. after the completion of the whole procedure, exactly the same procedure was repeated a few days later, and the same instruments were used to collect data for students’ writing processes and strategies in efl. the students were asked to compose a piece of writing in english of between 100 and 150 words whilst verbalising their thoughts. data analysis all ‘think aloud’ sessions were tape-recorded and later transcribed. the verbal data underwent both qualitative and quantitative analysis:1. through the qualitative analysis, which involved first and second-level coding, groups of sub-categories resulted, ‘labelled’ by a specific name (codes) (miles & huberman 1994), which were grouped into categories and then classified into basic thematic strands. 2. furthermore, quantitative analyses of the verbal data were used. in order to assess efficiency of the writers’ strategy, each strategy was rated on a scale ranging from 0 to 2. in each case, 0 corresponds to inadequate strategy use, 1 corresponds to partially adequate strategy use and 2 corresponds to efficient strategy employment. in order to record writers’ difficulties whilst composing, each subcategory was rated on a scale ranging from 0 to 2. in each case, 0 corresponds to ‘no difficulty’, 1 corresponds to ‘mediocre difficulty’ and 2 corresponds to ‘great difficulty’. frequencies and percentages for all categories and subcategories were obtained. the techniques of the chi-square-test (χ2), t-test and one-way anova were performed in order to identify differences in writing weaknesses and strategy use between less-skilled and skilled writers. results top ↑ after being analysed qualitatively, the verbal data from the task in gl2 and the task in efl, resulted in 34 codes for gl2 and 35 codes for efl, which were grouped into four basic thematic strands: 1. prewriting processes and strategies 2. whilst-writing processes and strategies 3. metacognitive processes and strategies 4. writing difficulties (see tables 1, 2, 3, 5). pre-writing stage: processes and strategies prewriting processes and strategies in the greek language before starting with their task, most of the students reported that they relied on external resources for generating content and that they thought about organising the content of the task in gl2. they showed a preference for drawing on prior knowledge to make sense of the topic they were writing about and to generate ideas. moreover, they suggested that they generated new ideas as their composing process went on. some participants stated that they generated alternative ideas at paragraph and sentence boundaries, which were constantly evaluated, checked against the context and often re-structured. in contrast, the less-skilled writers did not devise an initial plan when writing as they preferred to ‘write sentence by sentence’ (see table 1). table 1: categories and codes of the thematic strand ‘prewriting stage’. the cross-tabulation indicated statistically significant differences between the two sub-groups in the following processes and strategies:1. generating ideas (χ2 = 18.462; df = 2; p = 0.000), since 68.8% of the skilled writers used this strategy efficiently whilst none of the less-skilled writers was found to use it in an effective way 2. organising ideas (χ2 = 27.246; df = 2; p = 0.000), since 100% of the less-skilled writers used it inefficiently, but only 6.3% of the skilled writers underused it and 50% of them employed it in an efficient manner 3. activating background knowledge (χ2 = 8.533; df = 2; p < 0.005), since 87.5% of the skilled writers followed it, but 37.5% of the less-skilled writers showed a preference for this strategy 4. recalling vocabulary (χ2 = 15.676; df = 2; p < 0.001), since this strategy was used more by less-skilled writers (75%) compared to more competent writers (6.3%). prewriting processes and strategies in english as a foreign language before start writing in english, most of the competent students drew upon previous experience to generate ideas. they reported that they relied on external resources for generating content and that they thought about organising the content. in addition, the majority of the students, irrespective of their language level, (1) used the title to produce ideas and (2) were concerned about recalling and selecting the appropriate vocabulary for their piece of writing (table 1).the cross tabulation indicated statistically significant differences between the two sub-groups in the following processes and strategies: 1. ‘generating ideas’ (χ2 = 22.044; df = 2; p = 0.000), since 93.8% of the skilled writers used this strategy efficiently whilst 12.5% of the less-skilled writers were found to use it in an effective way. 2. ‘organising ideas’ (χ2 = 12.522; df = 2; p < 0.005), since 56.3% of the less-skilled writers used it efficiently whilst nobody from the group of less-skilled writers employed it in an efficient manner. 3. activating background knowledge (χ2 = 9.309; df = 2; p < 0.005), since 56.3% of the skilled writers employed it whilst only 6.3% of the less-skilled writers showed preference for this strategy. however, no statistical differences were revealed in relation to (1) ‘recalling vocabulary’ (χ2 = 0.650; df = 2; p > 0.05), which was preferred by both groups, and (2) ‘using the title’ (χ2 = 0.155; df = 2; p > 0.05), since both skilled (68.8%) and less-skilled writers (75%) used this strategy. whilst-writing processes and strategies in the greek language whilst composing the text, most of the students followed certain sub-processes and employed a number of cognitive strategies such as drafting, redrafting, composing without drafting of redrafting, rereading what they have written, writing sentence by sentence, translating or using resources (see table 2). table 2: categories and codes of the thematic strand ‘whilst-writing stage’. the comparison between the two groups indicated statistically significant differences between skilled and less-skilled writers in relation to two sub-processes whilst composing a piece of writing:1. drafting and redrafting (χ2=12.857; df = 2; p < 0.005) were employed mostly by skilled writers either efficiently (26.7%) or partially efficiently (33.3%). however, 100% of the less-skilled writers were not engaged in drafting and redrafting during text construction. 2. composing sentence by sentence (χ2 = 9.309; df = 2; p < 0.005) was followed by the great majority of the less competent writers (93.8%) in contrast to more competent writers (43.8%). it is interesting to note that, whilst the students were composing the text, they employed some compensation strategies in order to overcome their limitations in writing (see table 2). amongst these were adjusting the message, switching to l1, using a synonym or circumlocution, getting help and partially avoiding communication. in some cases, less-skilled writers avoided using some expressions, or they abandoned writing midway because they were not able to use a wide range of vocabulary and grammatical items. in other cases, when the skilled writers could not come up with the right or desirable expression, they were able to adjust the message by making the ideas simpler or less precise and by using a synonym. the cross tabulation indicated statistically significant differences between the two sub-groups in the following compensation strategies. the skilled writers were more willing to be engaged in ‘adjusting the message’ (χ2 = 9.890; df = 2; p < 0.05) and to ‘use a synonym’ (χ2 = 11.768; df = 2; p < 0.005) (56.3% and 56.3%, respectively) in order to overcome some knowledge limitations. however, only 6.3% of the less-skilled writers used ‘adjusting the message’, and 0% could use a synonym or a circumlocution effectively. in contrast, less-skilled writers showed greater preference (93.8%) for ‘avoiding communication’ (χ2=18.286; df = 2; p = 0.000) and for ‘getting help’ (χ2 = 12.698; df = 2; p = 0.000) compared to more competent writers (18.8% and 25%, respectively). whilst-writing processes and strategies in english as a foreign language whilst writing in efl, most of the students reported to re-read their text to assess its correctness, and they pinpointed some weak points which they changed or some words and sentence structures which they revised (see table 2). only a very small number of students wrote non-stop about the topic for a given time, not pausing to edit for appropriateness or correctness. the more competent writers indicated their preference for re-reading and revising paragraph by paragraph. also, the children’s writing was reportedly interrupted mid-sentence by language concerns such as spelling, grammar, word choice or struggling with putting ideas into coherent english and doubt about the meaning conveyed. whilst the skilled bilingual writers’ composing process involved a sentence by sentence approach in english, the less-skilled writers’ composing process was interrupted as they struggled with vocabulary, grammar and spelling. during the writing process, most of the competent students re-read their text to assess correctness, and they changed or corrected some words and revised the sentence structure.the participants admitted that they thought in either l1 or in l2 and then translated into english and wrote down the ideas in fl. a smaller number of the students declared that they apply knowledge of words and structures from l1 to efl in order to produce an expression in the new language. some students relied on the strategy of ‘recombining’ in order to produce a sentence. the selection of the appropriate vocabulary was viewed of highest importance for the majority of both the more competent and the less-skilled young writers. it is worth mentioning that most of the less skilled writers referred to more local processes dealing with ‘spelling words’ and ‘sentence structure’ since their concern, whilst writing a draft, was to produce grammatically and syntactically correct sentences. the comparison between the two groups indicated statistically significant differences between the skilled and less-skilled writers in relation to three sub-processes whilst composing a piece of writing: 1. ‘composing word by word’ (χ2 = 18.286; df = 2; p = 0.000) was employed mostly by the less skilled writers (81.3%) as only 6.3% of the skilled writers were engaged in it whilst writing the text. 2. ‘composing sentence by sentence’ (χ2 = 18.000; df = 2; p = 0.000) was preferred by the vast majority of skilled writers (81.3%) writing in english. 3. ‘reading back’ (χ2 = 3.882; df = 2; p < 0.05) over what they have written was utilised by all skilled writers (100%) whilst a lower percentage of the less-skilled writers (68.8%) followed this technique. however, no statistical differences emerged regarding the following cognitive strategies: 1. ‘using resources’ (χ2 = 2.540, df = 2, p > 0.05): both groups showed little preference for consulting a bilingual dictionary as 75% of the less-skilled writers and 56.3% of the skilled writers did not use a dictionary. 2. ‘translating in l1’ (χ2 = 1.247, df = 2, p > 0.05): both the less-skilled (56.3%) and skilled writers (75%) translated words, phrases and patterns from l1 whilst writing in l3. 3. ‘translating in l2’ (χ2 = 0.667; df = 2, p > 0.05): the great majority of skilled writers (81.3%) and a significant percentage of less-skilled writers (68.8%) translated from l2 whilst writing in l3. whilst the students were composing the text, they employed some compensation strategies in order to overcome limitations in writing. about half of the students used code mixing by adding word endings from l2 into words from l1. in addition, most of the less-skilled writers asked the researcher for either a missing expression (‘i cannot remember this word … how could you say …?’) or for the spelling of a word (‘how do we spell it? … i am not sure … is it ok?’). in some cases, they avoided using some expressions, or they abandoned writing midway as they were not able to use a wide range of vocabulary and grammatical items. in contrast, when the skilled writers could not come up with the right or desirable expression, they were able to adjust their message by making the ideas simpler or less precise or by using a synonym. more precisely, the students employed the following compensation strategies: 1. ‘using a synonym’, where the writers occasionally crossed out words or looked for substitutes. 2. ‘adjusting or approximating the message’, where most of the skilled writers declared that they wrote some slightly different expressions, which meant almost the same thing whenever they could not come up with the right expression. 3. switching to l1 or l2. 4. abandon writing midway. 5. ‘asking for help’, where some of the less-skilled writers asked the researcher for help in translating a word or in word choice (see table 2). the cross tabulation indicated statistically significant differences between the two sub-groups. the skilled writers were more willing to be engaged in ‘adjusting the message’ (χ2 = 3.882; df = 2; p < 0.05) and in ‘using a synonym’ (χ2 = 15.768; df = 2; p = 0.000) (43.6% and 75% respectively) in order to overcome certain or some knowledge limitations. however, only 6.3% of the less-skilled writers used ‘adjusting the message’, and 6.3% could ‘use a synonym or circumlocution’ effectively. at the same time, the less-skilled writers showed greater preference (62.5%) for ‘getting help’ (χ2 = 6.348; df = 2; p < 0.05) compared to the more competent writers (18.8%). metacognitive strategies in learning a second language the majority of the participants showed a positive attitude towards evaluating their own writing and became involved in the processes of identifying difficulties and problems and of self-correcting. they reviewed and commented on their drafts, focusing on the style, content, spelling and punctuation (see table 3). table 3: categories and codes of the thematic strand ‘metacognitive processes and strategies’. cross tabulation revealed statistically significant differences between skilled and less-skilled writers in the range of metacognitive strategies. as far as ‘planning for the writing task’ is concerned (χ2 = 7.385; df = 2; p < 0.05), none of the less-skilled writers was found to do so whilst 37.6% of the skilled writers indicated that they plan for their writing before starting to compose. similarly, the less-skilled writers showed no ‘selective attention’ (χ2 = 21.895; df = 2; p = 0.000) whilst a large proportion of the skilled writers (81.3%) paid attention to certain language elements whilst composing. in addition, ‘reviewing’ (χ2 = 13.714; df =2; p < 0.005) was a strategy favoured more by skilled writers (87.5%) than by less-skilled ones (25%). regarding ‘self-evaluation’, the more competent learners evaluated themselves more highly than the less competent ones (χ2 = 19.444; df = 2; p = 0.000). more precisely, 68.8% of the skilled writers ranked themselves as ‘very skilled’, and 25% ranked themselves as ‘skilled enough’. in contrast, 68.8% of the less-skilled writers ranked themselves as ‘weak’, and 31.3% ranked themselves as ‘skilled’. in addition, in the retrospective interviews, they declared that they had to improve some aspects of their writing. concerning ‘organising ideas’ (χ2 = 0.821; df = 2; p > 0.05), 25% of the skilled writers expressed their desire to improve this skill whilst only 12.5% of the less-skilled writers focused on developing this process. in contrast, less-skilled writers referred to more local processes dealing with: 1. ‘spelling words’ (χ2 = 8.127; df = 2; p < 0.005) since a large proportion of them (81.3%) would like to be better at spelling (for skilled writers, the comparative figure was 31.3%). 2. less-skilled writers also referred to ‘accuracy’ (χ2= 5.236; df = 2; p < 0.05) with half of the less-skilled writers (50%) expressing their desire to be better at ‘accuracy’ and only 12.5% of the more competent students focussing on this skill. the one-way anova test indicated that there were statistically significant differences between the two subgroups in using both cognitive (f (30) = 4.821; p < 0.05) and metacognitive strategies (f (30) = 7.846; p < 0.001) when performing the task in gl2. metacognitive strategies in english as a foreign language it was recorded that the better of the writers preferred re-reading and revising paragraph by paragraph. they reorganised some sentences and deleted or changed some words, and they were more capable of evaluating and revising their work. these sentences were constantly evaluated, checked against the context and often re-structured by the skilled writers (see table 3). however, what the less-skilled writers did was to revise their work at the surface level. they focused on vocabulary and grammatical aspects such as the right words, right tenses and prepositions since their primary concern was to translate their thoughts into words and sentences. most of them became distracted by punctuation and spelling, and they were often overwhelmed by the demands of writing. in addition, their writing process was sometimes accompanied by comments such as ‘i don’t know what else to write’ or ‘let’s see if something else comes up’. furthermore, it is worth mentioning that the majority of the participants showed an overall positive attitude towards evaluating their own writing and became involved in the processes of identifying difficulties and problems, and they attempted self-correcting. they planned for the task – what they wanted to write, the vocabulary that was adequate and the appropriate language functions and structures. they reviewed and commented on their drafts, focusing on the style and content or spelling and punctuation. only the skilled writers showed interest in ‘paying selective attention’, focusing on specific aspects of language such as ‘how to use specific expressions and how to use tenses’. the vast majority of students, irrespective of their language level, reported that their concern, whilst writing a draft, was to write grammatically and syntactically correct sentences. however, ‘spelling words’ was the preference of less-skilled writers. cross tabulation revealed statistically significant differences between the skilled and less-skilled writers in relation to: 1. ‘selective attention’ (χ2 = 12.522; df = 2; p < 0.005). although 56.3% of the skilled writers plan for their writing before starting composing, none of the less-skilled writers was found to use it. 2. another difference, ‘reviewing’ (χ2 = 18.333; df=2; p = 0.000), was a strategy favoured more by the skilled writers (87.5%) than by the less-skilled writers (12.5%). furthermore, there were statistically significant differences between the competent and less-competent learners in the way they corrected their mistakes by either changing (χ2 = 13.333; df = 2; p = 0.000) or deleting (χ2 = 9.309; df = 2; p < 0.05) some items whilst composing the text, as well as by ‘checking grammar’ (χ2 = 5.926; df = 2; p <0.05). also, both the less-skilled (62.5%) and skilled writers (87.5%) placed emphasis on ‘checking spelling’ (χ2 = 2.667; df = 2; p > 0.5). regarding ‘self-evaluation’, the more competent learners evaluated themselves higher than the less competent learners (χ2 = 18.667; df = 2; p = 0.000). more precisely, 50% of the skilled writers ranked themselves as ‘very skilled’ and 31.3% as ‘skilled enough’. in contrast, the vast majority of the less-skilled writers (93.8%) ranked themselves as ‘weak’ writers. in addition, in the retrospective interviews, the less-skilled writers declared that they need some improvements in writing. no significant differences were revealed between skilled and less-skilled writers since most of the students, irrespective their language level, referred to more local processes dealing with: 1. ‘vocabulary development’ (χ2 = 2.133; df = 2; p > 0.05) where (93.8%) of the less-skilled and 75% of the skilled writers would like to acquire a wider range and variety of vocabulary. 2. ‘spelling words’ (χ2 = 0.155; df = 2; p > 0.05) where a large portion of both the less-skilled (68.8%) and the skilled writers (75%) would like to improve at spelling. 3. ‘accuracy’ (χ2 = 3.233; df= 2; p > 0.05) as 62.6% of the less-skilled writers and 25% of the more competent students expressed their desire to be better at this skill. total number of strategies employed in the greek language and english as a foreign language the one-way anova test indicated that there were statistically significant differences between the two subgroups in using both cognitive (f (30) = 4.821; p < 0.050) and metacognitive strategies (f (30) = 7.846; p < 0.001) when performing the gl2 (see table 4). table 4: differences between skilled and less-skilled writers in cognitive, compensation and metacognitive strategies. furthermore, the one-way anova test indicated that there were statistically significant differences between the two subgroups in using metacognitive strategies (f (30) = 11.865; p < 0.005) whilst performing the efl. however, no significant differences were produced between the two subgroups in using both cognitive (f (30) = 1.418; p > 0.05) and compensation strategies (f (30) = 1.336; p > 0.05) (see table 4). writing difficulties in the greek language most students, irrespective of their language level, declared that they encountered certain difficulties whilst writing the task. however, the skilled writers had problems with gaining control of the ‘basics’ of writing (spelling, vocabulary and grammar) and organising the content of the text whilst the less-skilled writers’ major concern was to recall and use the appropriate vocabulary and the correct spelling (see table 5). table 5: categories and codes of the thematic strand ‘writing difficulties’. specifically, a statistically significant difference was identified for encountering difficulties at the vocabulary level (χ2 = 12.374; df = 2; p < 0.005). the less-skilled writers (68.8%) encountered greater difficulties than the skilled writers (12.5%) in recalling and using the appropriate words. in addition, statistical differences were indicated (χ2 = 8.583; df = 2; p < 0.05) between skilled and less-skilled writers as the latter were revealed to encounter greater problems with ‘word spelling’ (62.5%) than the former (12.5%). moreover, for less-skilled writers, writing correct and effective sentences was a significant problem (χ2 = 7.770; df = 2; p < 0.05), and they found it more difficult (56.3%) to structure a sentence than did the skilled writers (12.5%). writing difficulties in english as a foreign language most students, irrespective of their language level, declared that they encountered certain difficulties whilst writing. however, the less-skilled writers encountered problems with gaining control of the ‘basics’ of writing (spelling, vocabulary and grammar), and their major concern was to recall and use the appropriate vocabulary and to use the correct spelling (see table 5).specifically, ‘finding and using the appropriate words’ was very difficult for the majority of both the less-skilled (93.8%) and the skilled writers (68.8%). however, the less-skilled writers declared that they encountered greater difficulty in ‘structuring a sentence’ (χ2 = 10.400; df = 2; p < 0.001) as well as in ‘grammar’ (χ2 = 4.571; df = 2; p < 0.05) than did the skilled writers. the majority of the less-skilled writers had problems with: (1) subject-verb agreement and with the order of words within a sentence (75%), compared to the skilled writers (25%), and (2) verb-tense consistency and plural form of nouns (37.5%) in contrast to the skilled writers (6.3%). furthermore, ‘spelling’ (χ2 =13.250; df = 2; p = 0.000) was a part of writing which made it harder for the less-skilled writers (81.3%). in contrast, only 18.8% of the skilled writers declared that they had problems with spelling. discussion and concluding remarks top ↑ the study, although limited in scope, revealed some interesting insights into the writing skills of bilingual immigrant students included in mainstream classes. significant differences were revealed between skilled and less-skilled writers in employing both cognitive and metacognitive strategies. specifically, the skilled bilingual writers held a much broader and complex view of their own writing process and showed more strategic knowledge since they were more flexible in using both cognitive and metacognitive strategies and employed a wider range of more ‘elaborated’ strategies such as ‘drafting or redrafting’, ‘activating background knowledge’, ‘adjusting the message’, ‘using synonyms’, ‘organising content’ and ‘reviewing’ (stein 2000). in contrast, the less-skilled writers adopted lower-level processes and strategies, did not display a wide range of organisational strategies and did not revise ideas (goddard & sendi 2008; zimmerman & risemberg 1997). however, they had adequate awareness of their own writing problems related to the word level, and they were engaged in using certain compensation strategies to overcome language problems.another important finding emerging from this study is related to writing in a third language (efl writing). the results suggest that learning a third language does not have a negative effect on the skilled writers’ composition-related metacognitive strategies since a certain metacognitive procedural knowledge and control was revealed. competence in l1 and l2 proved to be another factor that affected success in the third-language writing (efl writing) (see cenoz 2003). for example, the ‘less skilled’ efl writers, who were also found to be ‘less skilled’ in writing in greek (gl2) (griva & chostelidou 2011), showed a limited awareness of the writing task and adopted lower-level processes and strategies (see goddard & sendi 2008; griva et al. 2009; zimmerman & risemberg 1997). in addition, some of the strategies acquired in l1 and l2 were transferred to efl writing (ricciardelli 1992). it is noteworthy that the strategic flexibility of both groups (less-skilled and skilled writers) and their ability to monitor their language production in the third language (efl) were ‘weaker’ than that found in gl2. they generally employed a smaller number of strategies and faced greater difficulties in efl writing related to lower-level text processing skills (accuracy, spelling, vocabulary use). skilled writers were indicated to be concerned with macro aspects of writing whilst less-skilled writers were more concerned with forms and language difficulties at micro level. this pattern of findings could be attributed to the fact that both groups of the students did not have a competent language level in efl. although the study is limited in scope, some important data have been revealed, which provide accounts for practices to develop bilingual students’ literacy skills. the implementation of more effective literacy practices to strengthen students’ development in gl2 and efl should be examined. it is also suggested that additional intervention programmes should be implemented that address the inclusion of newcomer immigrant children and support their literacy development (suarez-orozco & suarez-orozco 2001). specifically, schools should: 1. expand opportunities for bilingual students to become autonomous readers and writers. 2. provide a strategy training programme, which helps less-competent students become critical readers and strategic writers. (n.p.) both l2 and efl instruction should promote bilingual students’ linguistic and cognitive development as well as encourage the growth of their metacognitive skills by training them into a variety of strategies and informing them explicitly about what is expected of them in terms of successfully performing in a writing task. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interest the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced them when they wrote this article. authors’ contributions both authors e.g. (university of western macedonia) and d.c. 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1997, becoming a self-regulated writer: a social cognitive perspective’, contemporary educational psychology 22, 73–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1997.0921 article information author: uju c. ukwuoma1 affiliation: 1paris & drina consultancy, houston, united states of america correspondence to: uju ukwuoma email: ujucukwuoma@aol.com postal address: paris & drina educational consultancy, post office box 820256, houston 77282, united states of america dates: received: 26 jan. 2015 accepted: 16 june 2015 published: 09 dec. 2015 how to cite this article: ukwuoma, u.c., 2015, ‘nigerian creole as language of instruction: will nigerian lecturers use nigerian creole?’, reading & writing 6(1), art. #75, 8 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v6i1.75 copyright notice: © 2015. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. nigerian creole as language of instruction: will nigerian lecturers use nigerian creole? in this original research... open access • abstract • background • theoretical framework • review of literature • method    • research design and instrument    • participants and setting    • analysis • results • discussion    • orthography of nigerian creole    • nigerian creole and english language learning    • nigerian creole and emotional connection in familiar language • conclusion • acknowledgements    • competing interests • references • appendixes    • appendix a abstract top ↑ this mixed questionnaire survey sought to determine if lecturers who learned to speak and understand nigerian creole before english are willing to use the language as medium of instruction. the respondents were comprised of 560 lecturers and graduate students (i.e. master's, doctoral) selected through a purposeful random sampling frame from 15 public institutions of higher learning in nigeria. lecturers declined to use nigerian creole as medium of instruction because they feared that its use might negatively affect their students’ learning of english. graduate students indicated willingness to receive instruction through a combination of english and nigerian creole because they perceived the use of nigerian creole as fun and representative of the voice of a new generation of nigerians. the sample reported that prior knowledge of nigerian creole does not facilitate the learning of english because both languages are too different to facilitate a transfer of learning. background top ↑ language of instruction is an indispensable part of teaching and learning. spoken and written language influences thought patterns and helps teachers and learners vocalise their ideas and assume any role of their choice during instruction (cazden 2001; freire & macedo 1987; gee 2011; vygotsky 1978). conversely, students in classrooms in multilingual societies represent a divergence of languages, which creates room for competition (hoffman, sailors, makalela & matthee 2009). as a result, some teachers align with policy makers and use standard languages over other languages that represent students’ experiences (freire 1978). be that as it may, the best teachers are those who envision themselves as engineers of the learning environment and employ any language that promotes student learning (bain 2004). in nigeria, english is the language of instruction at all levels of education in spite of the 527 languages spoken in the country because fluency in english is erroneously perceived as a hallmark of being educated (adegbija 2004; fakeye & ogunsiji 2009; igboanusi 2008; lewis 2009). also prevalent is nigerian creole, the sapele and warri variant of what is often called nigerian pidgin language (ukwuoma 2013), described as the most extensively used pidgin in the world (faraclas 1996). as such, effort is made to replace nigerian pidgin, naija or nigerian pidgin english with nigerian creole in previous studies cited in this article in fact, nigerian creole is spoken by ‘over 75 million people as a second language and [the] number of first language speakers [is] put roughly at between 3 and 5 million’ (ihemere 2006:297). yet it does not have any official recognition as a nigerian language, and lecturers at institutions of higher learning are not using it as a medium of instruction. consequently, scholars have advocated for official recognition of the language and its use in the nigerian education system as a subject for students to learn or a language of classroom instruction (awonusi 1990; dada 2007; deuber 2005; elugbe & omamor 1991; gani-ikilama 1990; igboanusi & peter 2005; ndolo 1989; oladejo 1991; oloruntoba 1992). such advocacy is particularly important because findings from several studies have confirmed that ‘creole languages can be used as an integral tool for improving educational achievement’ (migge, leglise & bartens 2010:16). however, no study has determined if nigerian lecturers who learned to speak and understand nigerian creole before english are willing to use the language as medium of instruction, or explored the beliefs of such lecturers regarding the instructional utility of nigerian creole in formal classroom settings. thus, it is important to understand their beliefs because teacher-beliefs birth teacher philosophy which largely determine teacher instructional attitude (lin 2013; sercu, méndez garcía, & castro prieto 2005). therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine if lecturers who learned to speak and understand nigerian creole before english are willing to use the language as medium of instruction. three research questions guided the study: will lecturers who learned to speak and understand nigerian creole before english indicate willingness to teach using nigerian creole along with english language? are graduate students interested in receiving instruction in their content areas through a combination of the english language and nigerian creole? do lecturers and graduate students report that prior knowledge of nigerian creole facilitates the learning of english? theoretical framework top ↑ the theoretical framework of this study links theories regarding second language acquisition to those within the realm of critical literacy. according to freire and macedo (1987), language represents the realities of individuals and should constitute the foundation upon which learning is built. consequently, a teacher who ignores a learner's own language in preference for a standard language is silencing the most powerful voice a learner has to make sense of what is being taught. other researchers have emphasised the importance of using a more familiar language as a starting-point for learning, so that an emotional connection to the subject matter can be created before moving to languages originating from unfamiliar social contexts (e.g. au 1997; carrington 2001; cummins 2009; migge et al. 2010; omamor 1983; siegel 2002). by drawing from prior knowledge of their first language, learners may more easily come to understand new languages. critical literacy also opens avenues for discussion on existing conditions with regard to permitting language choice. this notion is particularly relevant, because english should not be the sole language for making meaning when an individual's first language is not english. review of literature top ↑ nigeria is a product of the 1914 unsolicited amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates by fredrick lugard under the direction of the queen of england (ukwuoma 2013). the country has an estimated population of about 170 million, and languages that are quoted to range between 400 and 527 representing about 20% of all languages spoken in africa (adegbija 1997; lewis 2009; simpson & oyetade 2008; central intelligence agency 2011). portuguese was the earliest european language to be used in nigeria, but at the attainment of political independence in 1960 from britain, nigerian officials continued with the english language. french and three other nigerian languages, namely hausa, igbo and yoruba were later added as co-official languages of the country (igboanusi 2008; omoniyi 2003). nevertheless, english has remained the language of instruction at all levels of education in the country. the narrow colonial definition of literacy as the ability to read, write and understand english language is also perceived as the goal of education in nigeria. thus, students make every possible effort to grapple with english language amidst competing local languages (crowther, 1962; ekpe, 2005; spencer, 1971). nigeria has a mother-tongue language of instruction policy, which stipulates that every child should be taught in a mother-tongue medium or language of the immediate environment at pre-primary level and during the first three years of primary school (igboanusi 2008; oluwole, 2008). although not officially a nigerian language, nigerian creole qualifies as language of immediate environment in the country as it is spoken by a majority of nigerians. pidgin and creole languages are increasingly used around the world in the media, public health awareness, vocational training and political campaigns because they are capable of facilitating the expression of thoughts as in languages such as arabic, chinese, english, french, russian and spanish (bloomfield 1933; holm 2000; jespersen 1922; migge & leglise 2007). however, pidgin and creole languages are largely rejected as methods of formal classroom instruction for children who speak them as first languages. this view may be considered to be a human rights violation of such children (hamel 1995; skutnabb-kangas, phillipson & rannut 1994; unesco 1968). several research findings indicate that initial literacy in pidgin and creole languages has a positive effect on future learning, hence the recommendation that learning should begin with languages learners are familiar with instead of alien languages that are from different social contexts (au 1993; carrington 2001; cummins 2009; migge et al. 2010; siegel 2002). consequently, educators can spur change towards pidgin and creole languages if they accommodate them in formal classroom instruction as a way of engaging in culturally responsive teaching that allows learners to make language choices (au 1993; erickson 1987; hornberger 1998; kephart 1999; siegel 1992). in a landmark work that featured how pidgin and creole languages were being used in education, migge, leglise and bartens (2010) gave a description of programmes at the global level to integrate pidgin languages in education. the researchers highlighted three such programmes: accommodation, instrumental, and awareness-raising programmes. although the researchers did not deal specifically with nigerian creole, they found evidence to support the contention that pidgin and creole languages are capable of facilitating teaching and learning. as noted by the authors, there are various ongoing pidgin and creole language programmes in educational institutions in pidgin-speaking communities such as bislama in vanuatu and papiamento in curacao bonaire among others. thus, it may be of educational importance to expect a similar development in nigeria, a country that has pidgin and creole languages existing alongside over 500 languages (lewis 2009; online nigeria n.d.; simpson & oyetade 2008). method top ↑ research design and instrument this study was a descriptive research that applied a purposeful random sampling frame (kemper, stringfield & teddlie 2003). the survey was conducted utilising a researcher-developed mixed questionnaire entitled nigerian pidgin as language of instruction questionnaire (npli-q), attached as appendix a. the npli-q was hand-delivered to allow respondents to indicate their preferences on closed questions and to respond to open-ended questions (bryman 2006). prior to this study, the npli-q was piloted twice with faculty members and graduate students at a regionally accredited university in southern united states. participants and setting a total of 560 lecturers and graduate students that comprised of 98.75% nigerians (n = 553) and 1.25% (n = 7) non-nigerians from 15 public institutions of higher learning participated in the survey. the institutions included one college of education, one polytechnic, 13 universities located in abuja, nigeria's capital city, and pidgin-speaking communities in southern nigeria. lecturers made up 38.57% (n = 216) of the survey, whereas graduate students made up 61.25% (n = 343). the respondents, who were speakers of 61 nigerian languages, resided in 48 cities from various nigerian ethnic nationalities as indicated in table 1. with 48.75% females (n = 273) and 51.25% males (n = 287), the respondents qualified as ‘information-rich sources’ capable of providing answers to the research questions (patton 1987:58). additionally, the respondents had an identical sample relationship because they completed one questionnaire that contained quantitative and qualitative questions (onwuegbuzie & collins 2007). however, respondents who indicated an ethnolinguistic affiliation to igbo, a nigerian ethnic group whose first language is also known as igbo, appeared to have been over-sampled because they featured in all of the surveyed 15 schools. as such, their numerical strength constituted an uncontrollable limitation to this study. table 1: ethnic composition of respondents. analysis simple frequency count and percentile distribution were used to analyse structured survey responses to npli-q, whereas responses to open-ended items were coded and categorised using the framework proposed by bogdan and biklen (2007). data from qualitative and quantitative components of npli-q were compared and contrasted to check how they complemented each other in addressing the purpose of the study. results top ↑ tables 2a–2b display results that answer the first research question from the quantitative component of npli-q. the second and third research questions are addressed in tables 3, 4a and 4b respectively. both quantitative and qualitative data indicate that most lecturers who learned to speak and understand nigerian creole before english did not indicate a willingness to use nigerian creole as a medium of instruction. their reasons ranged from a lack of a generally accepted orthography for nigerian creole to personal fears regarding how its use might negatively affect students’ learning of english. they also cited their concerns over the limited technical vocabulary of nigerian creole. graduate students indicated their preference in receiving instruction through a combination of nigerian creole and english language. graduate students did so because they see the use of nigerian creole as fun. they also believe that its use allows wider communication in nigeria. graduate students are convinced that nigerian creole represents their voice, the voice of a new generation of nigerians. some graduate students blame the abuse of power by policy makers on the non-use of nigerian creole as a medium of instruction. half of the graduate students, and most lecturers, did not believe that prior knowledge of nigerian creole facilitates the learning of english. both graduate students and lecturers regard the two languages as being too different to facilitate transfer of learning. some expressed fear that knowledge of nigerian creole may negatively influence the learning of english because of certain grammatical similarities shared by both languages. table 2a: order of language learning of lecturers. table 2b: willingness of lecturers who learned nc before english to teach using nc. table 3: will graduate students receive instruction using nc? table 4a: does knowledge of nc facilitate the learning of english? table 4b: does knowledge of nc facilitate the learning of english? discussion top ↑ orthography of nigerian creole the purpose of this study was to determine if lecturers who learned to speak and understand nigerian creole before english are willing to use nigerian creole as a medium of instruction. admittedly, nigerian creole is a tonal language that has given linguists many problems with representation in writing (elugbe & omamor 1991; mafeni 1971; oyebade 1983). however, linguists such as elugbe and omamor (1991) and faraclas (1996) have developed phonemic orthographies for the language. in 2009, the naijá langwej akedemi, a committee for harmonising nigerian pidgin language, proposed a harmonised orthography for writing the language (esizimetor & egbokhare n.d.). sowunmi and hankey (2003) is a primer on nigerian pidgin. in addition, okonkwo et al.'s (2007) mek wi rid naijiria pijin is another primer for teaching how to read and write the language. interestingly, naijiria pijin lanwej baibul (2011) published by mercy christian ministry international is a translation of the bible into the variants now known as nigerian creole. considering the degree of orthographic consistency maintained in some of the above works, the issue of a lack of orthography appears to have been addressed. nigerian creole and english language learning although this study did not set out to measure the effect of nigerian creole on the learning of english, a lecturer within the age bracket of 55–60, who had taught for over 23 years in one of the surveyed schools in southern nigeria, indicated that ‘nigerian creole will negatively affect my students’ efforts to learn english language’. however, available literature on nigerian creole does not portray the language in such light. aina (1991), who administered a standard english test of oral reading, essay composition, and silent reading comprehension to 10 students in a public secondary school in southern nigeria, found that knowledge of nigerian creole enhances reading comprehension of english. however, she discovered that the language inhibits the writing of english because the sampled students were prone to errors such as mistaking meet for meat, a problem the researcher inferred can be solved by developing the morphology of nigerian creole. to teach nigerian creole, igboanusi (2008:6) suggested that teachers should point out the ‘differences and similarities between the language and english’. igboanusi is of the opinion that teaching nigerian creole as a subject in schools the way english is being taught will enable users of both languages to understand inherent differences. nevertheless, the congruence in opinion of graduate students and lecturers that english and nigerian creole are different from each other is consistent with research findings that nigerian creole is not english or a dialect of english (akande 2010; ihemere 2006). on the grammar of nigerian creole, mensah (2012:167) has shown that it is ‘not contact induced from english but rather a language – internal phenomenon’. the problem of absence or limited technical vocabulary in nigerian creole can be tackled through status planning, which should begin with the nigerian government duly recognising nigerian creole as a nigerian language (igboanusi 2008). faraclas (1996) described nigerian creole as the most widely spoken language in nigeria. other scholars have identified the language as being systematic and rule governed, thus capable of fulfilling human linguistic needs as one would expect from languages such as arabic, chinese, english, french, russian and spanish (bloomfield 1933; holm 2000; ihemere 2006; jespersen 1922; migge & leglise 2007). nigerian creole and emotional connection in familiar language in her remarks, a female graduate student asked: ‘can you imagine how awesome it will be to teach my students mathematics in nigerian creole when i graduate? it will truly be fun’. research findings have consistently shown that students stand a better chance of meeting instructional objectives when teachers begin with familiar languages (au 1997; cummins 2009). one must concede that ‘knowledge is constructed based on social interactions and experience’ (woolfolk 1999:279), and nigerian creole is the preferred language of social interaction amongst nigerian youths in institutions of higher learning (ajibade, adeyemi & awopetu, 2012). it follows that nigerian creole should not be seen as less suitable for a medium of instruction. furthermore, lecturers should consider the fact that nigerian creole is the language their students use to make sense of their experiences and generate new knowledge (freire & macedo 1987). such a language that forms part of students’ everyday social contexts may facilitate learning if it is included in school instruction. similarly, graduate students consider nigerian creole as belonging to a new generation of nigerians who have understood the linguistic and ethnic diversity of nigeria. they now prefer nigerian creole because it is neutral and enjoys cross ethnic acceptance in nigeria. a graduate student pointed out that ‘nigerian creole is our own, it does not represent any ethnic group in nigeria but policy makers will not allow us use the language in school because it will unite us, i think it has to do with power and corruption’. conclusion top ↑ the literacy rate of nigeria is put at 61.3% (cia 2011). perhaps literacy is still being measured for africa's most populous country as the ability to read and write the english language (adetugbo 1984; awonusi 2004; bamgbose 1995; ekpe 2005). such perception calls for repositioning another nigerian language alongside english. the performance of nigerian students in english contrasts with popular perceptions in nigeria regarding the dominant role of english (aduwa-ogiegbaen 2006; akeredolu-ale 2007; omo-ojugo 2004), hence the need to incorporate nigerian students’ first language in instructional practices. this study reveals that university lecturers, who might themselves be able to employ nigerian creole as a medium of instruction, have negative attitudes towards the language because of societal prejudice or fear that students will not learn english. at the same time, the younger generation is more open to its use because they feel it better represents their voice. clearly, there is misunderstanding and prejudice surrounding nigerian creole since it is often seen amongst the nigerian people as merely an ungrammatical form of english, spoken by those who they deem less educated. in fact, most pidgin varieties in nigeria have become creolised. policy shift is needed to educate the populace about the value of vernacular languages. there is a role for universities and, more specifically, teacher education programmes for such an educational campaign. future research on incorporating nigerian creole into formal education as a medium of instruction should take several steps. first and foremost, this study should be replicated in secondary schools and other institutions of higher learning in southern nigeria, particularly in colleges of education. secondly, research should use poor performance in english and fluency in nigerian creole as outcome variables to determine the effect of the use of nigerian creole on students’ performance in english and language arts. such studies may provide the necessary empirical base that can prompt an evidence-based assertion on whether nigerian creole can be a standalone language of instruction or be used along with english as a medium of instruction. nevertheless, in answer to the question posed in the title of this work, statistical evidence from this study suggests that nigerian lecturers may not use nigerian creole as a language of instruction. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. references top ↑ adegbija, e., 1997, ‘the language factor in achievement of better 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bandura 1986; liem, lau & nie 2008; loo & choy 2013; pajares 2000; schunk 1991; williams & takaku 2011). pajares (2000) asserts that a learner's self-efficacy influences his or her academic performance. studies by researchers such as amil (2000), hutchison-green, follman and bodner (2008), liem et al. (2008), jones, paretti, hein, and knot (2010), mizumoto (2012) and usher and pajares (2006), have also shown a positive and significant correlation between self-efficacy and academic achievement. a number of researchers (e.g. margolis & mccabe 2004, 2006; pajares 2006) have pointed out that without sufficiently high beliefs that they have the ability to succeed, many struggling leaners will not put in the effort necessary to attain success in academic tasks. although various research studies have emphasised the role of self-efficacy in learning, its role in relation to reading development has not been widely investigated. this could be due to the fact that reading researchers and instructors are more concerned about the explicit, cognitive aspects of reading, such as the use of strategies for comprehension. although the use of strategies and other cognitive aspects of reading are acknowledged as important, other underlying factors such as self-efficacy may be equally important in reading development. as learning is largely dependent on reading, the relationship between self-efficacy and reading proficiency should be a high point of focus in education. yet this is not the case, as the influence of self-efficacy in reading development has been largely ignored. in order to shed more light on students’ reading self-efficacy, especially at tertiary level where reading research is lacking, a study was undertaken with first year university students to examine the relationship between reading self-efficacy and reading proficiency. the article reports on this study and argues for the inclusion of self-efficacy development in reading instruction. first, the concept of self-efficacy is clearly defined, followed by a discussion of its role in learning and the role it may play in reading development. the study is then presented and recommendations are made based on the findings. self-efficacy top ↑ bandura (1997:3) defines self-efficacy as the ‘beliefs in one's capabilities to organise and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments’. according to him, the level of self-efficacy will determine whether a task will be initiated and completed. a learner with high self-efficacy will be motivated to put in more effort, persist longer and complete a given task. as a result, self-efficacy and motivation are perceived to have a bidirectional relationship. according to reading researchers (e.g. grabe & stoller 2002; guthrie & wigfield 2000) self-efficacy influences motivation, promotes strategy use and increases learner autonomy. similarly, reading motivation promotes frequent reading, which contributes to the use of appropriate reading strategies and high self-efficacy (guthrie & wigfield 2000). appropriate and well-orchestrated strategy use in reading and learning increases self-efficacy and motivation, and also contributes to a high level of comprehension in reading, which may lead to better academic performance. self-efficacy has been perceived to emanate from several sources. sources of self-efficacy self-efficacy is said to develop from four main sources: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion and emotional arousal (bandura 1997; usher & pajares 2006): mastery experience refers to the judgement of competence based on one's own previous attainment in a related task. as bandura (1997:192) explains, success raises mastery expectations, whereas repeated failures lower them, particularly if the mishap occurs early in the course of the events. vicarious experience refers to observations of someone else's attainment in a related task (usher & pajares 2006). bandura (1977) explains that, although this source of self-efficacy is weaker than mastery experience, in certain contexts, it may play a crucial role. for example, when a learner is placed in an unfamiliar environment, seeing others perform could raise his or her efficacy levels. social persuasion is the feedback, judgements, and appraisals from significant others about one's participation in a related task (usher & pajares 2006). bandura (1997) points out that this source of self-efficacy is not strong enough to make a significant impact on efficacy beliefs because it does not provide an authentic experiential base. however, in conjunction with other sources, such as mastery and vicarious experiences, it can have a greater impact. bandura (1997:79) explains that ‘it is easier to sustain a sense of efficacy, especially when struggling with difficulties, if significant others express faith in one's capabilities than if they convey doubts’. emotional arousal, which is the emotion or physical sensation (anxiety, fatigue, and composure) that one experiences whilst performing a particular task, could also contribute to self-efficacy levels (usher & pajares 2006). high emotional arousal such as anxiety can impede performance. a learning environment with less anxiety and stress is more likely to promote learning than one with high anxiety and stress. quantitative and qualitative studies in several sources of self-efficacy have shown mastery experiences to have the greatest influence on self-efficacy (bandura 1997; hutchison-green et al. 2008; hutchison, follman, sumpter & bodner 2006; lent, lopez, & bieschke 1991; lent, lopez, brown, & gore 1996; phan 2012; usher & pajares 2006). the explanation given by bandura (1997) is that mastery experience is the most authentic evidence of one's ability to succeed. according to bandura (1997) and loo and choy (2013), an important source of low self-efficacy is previous negative experiences in learning. thus, students who have had a poor reading background and poor reading experiences will display low self-efficacy. self-efficacy in learning in the academic setting, many studies have shown a positive and significant correlation between self-efficacy and academic achievement. vogt (2008) conducted a study involving undergraduate engineering students and found that self-efficacy is a strong predictor of academic achievement. loo and choy (2013) found that self-efficacy sources correlated with maths achievement, and that mastery experience was found to be the main predictor of academic achievement in maths. louise and mistele (2011) concluded from their study that self-efficacy is a good predictor of achievement scores in science and maths. amil (2000) used ‘a’ level economics students and found positive correlations between self-efficacy and academic performance. liem et al. (2008) using high school english scores found that self-efficacy predicted learners’ english test scores. the influence of self-efficacy on general academic achievement as well as in specific subject fields has been well-documented. however, research on self-efficacy in reading is limited. self-efficacy in reading in relation to the definition of self-efficacy, reading self-efficacy could be defined as the beliefs students have in their ability to read successfully. the few studies conducted on reading self-efficacy have documented positive correlations between self-efficacy and reading achievement. waleff (2010), using intermediate (grades 4–6) learners in america, found a positive correlation between students’ self-efficacy for reading and reading achievement. he found that students’ self-efficacy corresponded with their grade level reading. in addition, schunk and rice (1991) found that using self-efficacy strategies such as providing students with clear goals for reading tasks and giving feedback on students’ progress in reading increased reading self-efficacy. templin's (2011) study with english second language (esl) learners at the trident university international (tui) showed that self-efficacy sources predicted students’ self-efficacy levels and their english second language (esl) proficiency. mills, pajares, and herron (2007) also found that university students’ self-efficacy in french was positively related to their reading proficiency. in an earlier study, shell, murphy, and bruning (1989) examined undergraduate students in an american university and found that self-efficacy and outcome expectancy beliefs jointly accounted for significant variance in students’ reading achievement, with self-efficacy being the stronger predictor in reading achievement and accounting for significant variance in writing. in asia, similar correlations were found. mizumoto (2012) found that students with high self-efficacy were active users of strategies, employed deep strategies and were meta-cognitively superior to those without it. those who had average self-efficacy used shallow strategies and those with low self-efficacy were passive or non-users of reading strategies. thus, he concludes that self-efficacy could promote the use of reading strategies. in addition, learners’ low self-efficacy can be linked to low reading proficiency, which in turn has a strong relationship with low socio-economic status (ses) by virtue of ses providing or not providing adequate and rich reading experiences. according to pretorius (2000, 2007) and taylor and yu (2009) the majority of learners from low ses families are likely to attend poorly resourced public schools, receive poor reading instruction, have negative reading experiences and are thus likely to perform poorly in reading assessment. given the relationship between self-efficacy and academic achievement, and self-efficacy and reading performance documented by various researchers internationally, a study was conducted on the relationship between self-efficacy and reading achievement at a south african university. the study set out to determine if such a relationship can be confirmed with tertiary students in an african context. in addition, the results could be used in designing reading programmes and arguing for the inclusion of self-efficacy development in reading instructional programmes. to the best of my knowledge, the relationship between self-efficacy and reading achievement has not been extensively researched within the african context in order to persuade educators to seriously consider self-efficacy in reading instruction. besides, this kind of study is required in the african context, where a number of students come from poor social and educational backgrounds, a factor that contributes to low self-efficacy levels. the findings of this study will indicate the extent to which educators should incorporate this affective factor in reading instruction. the study top ↑ the aim of the study was to determine the relationship between reading self-efficacy and students’ reading proficiency. the following questions were used for the study: what is the relationship between reading self-efficacy and the reading proficiency of firstyear university students? is reading self-efficacy the best predictor of students’ reading proficiency? what is the relationship between self-efficacy and the home language of this cohort of first-year students? the third question was included because a number of indigenous south african language (isal) speakers attend poorly resourced public schools and are from impoverished reading backgrounds, both at home and at school. as a result, these students may be experiencing low self-efficacy in reading and in learning. methodology top ↑ the main focus of the study was on students’ self-efficacy in relation to their reading proficiency. the independent variable of students’ home language was included to gain a better understanding of the students’ needs, for the purpose of instruction. in addition, given the south african context where a number of students from certain language groups are predominantly from low socio-economic status (ses) families, this aspect was necessary to give more insight, as reading proficiency at school level is associated with ses factors and inappropriate reading instruction (taylor & yu 2009; pretorius 2002, 2007; pretorius & lephalala 2011; van staden & howie 2010). a two-way anova test was performed on the dependent variable (reading proficiency levels) and the independent variables of self-efficacy and students’ home language. instrument a questionnaire consisting of a 5-point-likert scale (positive to negative) and the test of academic literacy levels (tall) were used as instruments for data collection. whereas students’ reading proficiency was determined by tall, their self-efficacy levels were determined by the questionnaire. the tall, a reliable test (weideman 2006), which essentially assesses reading proficiency, was used to determine students’ risk group. according to weideman (2006) the tall has shown a remarkable degree of reliability with an average cronbach alpha of .93 across three institutions, between 2004 and 2006. the tall is a placement test intended to channel students, if so required, into appropriate academic literacy support courses. it determines students’ risk of failure, academically. the self-efficacy questions were extracted from a longer questionnaire comprising other affective factors such as motivation, attitude and interest. the questions for the questionnaire were compiled using questions from grabe and stoller (2002), guthrie, wigfield and von secker (2000), and other questions specific to the context. the questionnaire on self-efficacy elicited responses on students’ beliefs in their reading capabilities. in other words, it measured their awareness of the challenges they face as readers and the confidence they have in themselves to undertake reading tasks successfully. the longer questionnaire was first piloted, and questions that were not valid were removed. the reliability of the self-efficacy questions was 0.87, which is acceptable. at the end of the questionnaire students had to select their home language from the options: english, afrikaans, indigenous south african language (isal) or other (other languages outside south africa). participants two groups of first year students (‘low risk’ and ‘high risk’ as determined by the tall) participated in the study. the ‘high risk’ group consisted of students who were deemed to be at extremely high risk or at high risk of failure, academically. students in this ‘high risk’ group register for a compulsory generic academic literacy module, whereas students in the ‘low risk’ group, who are deemed to be at low or negligible risk of failure, register for a language-related module, usually academic reading or academic writing. the number of students who answered the questionnaire on self-efficacy from the two groups was 1816 in total. there were 659 students in the ‘low risk’ group and 1009 in the ‘high risk’ group. there were 148 students in the borderline group, but these students had to rewrite the test to be placed in either the ‘high or low risk’ group. they were therefore not included in the discussion. procedure/data collection the questionnaire was administered to all first-year students in the unit for academic literacy registered for either the compulsory academic literacy module or the elective academic reading module. the two modules were chosen in order to involve both ‘high and low risk’ students. students in the ‘high risk’ group answered the questionnaire during one class period in the last lecture week of the first semester. students who were not in class on the day were excluded. students in the ‘low risk’ group answered the questionnaire at the end of their first semester examination in the academic reading module. as participation was voluntary some students chose not to participate. data analyses descriptive statistics and cronbach's coefficients were obtained for the self-efficacy questions. cronbach's alpha was 0.87, which was considered adequate for reliability. an anova test was conducted to determine the relationship between the variables (i.e., students’ reading self-efficacy and their reading proficiency as determined by the tall). in addition, a cumulative logit (regression) analysis was performed using the responses to the full questionnaire on motivation, attitude, interest and self-efficacy on one hand, and students’ performance in the tall on the other, to determine the extent to which self-efficacy predicts students reading ability amongst other affective factors. findings top ↑ as indicated in table 1, students who spoke english and afrikaans as a home language were in the majority in the ‘low risk’ group. in total these students were 779, which is 77% of the students in the ‘low risk’ group. the isal students were in the majority in the ‘high risk’ group with a total of 412, which is 63% of the population in the ‘high risk’ group. the distribution of students’ home language and their reading proficiency as determined by the tall is given in table 1. table 1: distribution of students’ reading proficiency levels in relation to their home language. research question 1 top ↑ research question 1 relates to the relationship between reading self-efficacy and reading proficiency of this cohort of first-year university students. as shown in table 2, the mean figures and standard deviations for self-efficacy and students’ reading proficiency indicate a relationship between the two. students in the ‘high risk’ group who are perceived to have poor reading proficiency indicated low self-efficacy (m 2.44 and 2.38), according to questionnaire responses. on the other hand, students in the ‘low risk’ group who are perceived to have relatively better reading proficiency, indicated relatively higher self-efficacy (m 2.09 and 1.75), according to the questionnaire responses. table 2: means and standard deviations for students’ self-efficacy levels in relation to their reading proficiency. as shown in table 2, mean figures decreased from 2.44 to 1.75, as proficiency levels increased. this means that self-efficacy aligned with students’ reading proficiency: the lower their reported self-efficacy, the poorer their performance in the tall and vice versa. the anova analysis showed a statistically significant relationship between literacy groups and students’ self-efficacy (f(4) = 8.84; p<.0001). students who were deemed by the tall as having ‘negligible risk’ showed highly favourable levels of self-efficacy. on the other hand, students who were deemed to be at ‘high risk’ of failure academically, according to the tall, indicated a lower level of self-efficacy. the ‘extremely high risk’ students reported the lowest levels of self-efficacy, and were followed by those who were deemed to be at ‘high risk’. finally, students deemed to have ‘negligible risk’ of failure indicated the highest self-efficacy amongst this cohort of students. table 3 shows the hierarchical progression. the scheffe test for multiple progression shows the differences between the groups. table 3: scheffe groupings and mean scores for literacy levels in relation to self-efficacy. regarding the research question as to whether there is a relationship between self-efficacy and reading proficiency, the anova test showed a robust relationship (p<.0001) between the two variables. self-efficacy corresponded either positively or negatively with reading proficiency. responses from the questionnaire aligned with students’ performance in the tall as shown in table 3. the means with similar letters are not statistically different. thus ‘extremely high risk’ and ‘high risk’ students were not statistically different from each other, which is shown by the same letter, a. however, both ‘extremely high risk’ and ‘high risk’ students were statistically different from the ‘low risk’ students, as shown in the different letter, c. the ‘low risk’ students were also statistically different from the ‘negligible risk’ students as shown in a different letter, d. thus students’ performance in the tall aligned with their reported self-efficacy levels. the data analyses show that there is a significant relationship between students’ self-efficacy levels and their reading. students who reported low self-efficacy beliefs were also poor readers or had low reading ability, as indicated by the tall. thus, as much as these students were poor or struggling readers, they also had low self-efficacy levels. research question 2 top ↑ research question 2: is reading self-efficacy the best predictor of students’ reading proficiency? in addition to the anova test, self-efficacy was also placed in a pool with other affective factors (i.e. attitude, motivation and interest) in a regression analysis to determine how best it predicts reading proficiency. self-efficacy emerged as the strongest predictor of students’ reading proficiency at a statistical significance of p<0.0001. in other words, the analysis showed that students’ self-efficacy strongly indicated their proficiency levels in reading. when students’ self-efficacy beliefs are high, their reading proficiency is also high. this relationship points to the need to improve students’ self-efficacy concomitantly with cognitive reading instruction in order to achieve maximum results in developing students’ reading proficiency. there was an interaction amongst the three factors of home language, reading proficiency and self-efficacy levels at (f(12) = 1.77; p = 0.0473). in other words, the relationship between students’ self-efficacy levels and their reading proficiency was determined by their home language. students who spoke isal as a home language were mostly in the ‘high risk’ group. this group indicated lower self-efficacy levels compared to the ‘low risk’ group. although on the whole the ‘high risk’ group responded negatively to questions on self-efficacy, english and afrikaans home language speakers who were placed in this group according to the tall, were less negative in their responses than the isal speakers. it is interesting to note that amongst ‘negligible risk’ students, the isal speakers were the most positive in their responses to self-efficacy, compared to their afrikaans and english counterparts. the interactions relating to students’ responses to their self-efficacy levels are shown in figure 1. figure 1: interaction between literacy levels and students’ home language in relation to their self-efficacy. research question 3 top ↑ research question 3 relates to the relationship between self-efficacy and the home language of this cohort of first-year students. table 4 shows that students who spoke english and afrikaans as home language indicated relatively better self-efficacy (english m, 1.99; afrikaans m, 2.18) than the isal home language students (m, 2.28). table 4: means and standard deviations for students’ self-efficacy levels in relation to their home language. whereas the english home language group indicated the highest self-efficacy levels, concomitant with their good performance in the tall and indicative of better reading proficiency, the isal home language speakers reported relatively lower self-efficacy levels, which also aligned with their poor performance in the tall (cf. table 1). most of the isal home language speakers were in the ‘high risk’ group and reported low self-efficacy levels. self-efficacy, therefore, has a direct relationship with students’ reading proficiency and an indirect relationship through home language. this seems to be a ‘double-edged sword’ (low self-efficacy; poor reading proficiency) and calls for serious consideration of the relationship between students’ self-efficacy and their reading proficiency when improving students’ reading proficiency, especially the isal group. discussion top ↑ students who were deemed to have negligible risk had high self-efficacy, which confirms the positive relationship between self-efficacy and reading proficiency. isal home language students who are deemed to be at extremely high risk or at high risk of failure academically, as indicated by the tall, were consistently negative in the rating of their reading self-efficacy. thus reading instruction for such students should also focus on improving their self-efficacy. explicit strategy instruction is said to improve self-efficacy (pajares 2006), and therefore explicit instruction of various reading strategies (both processing and monitoring strategies) should be provided to these students on a continuous basis. self-efficacy, which is the affective variant of metacognition (monitoring strategies), is known to be crucial for success in academic reading at tertiary level (mills et al. 2007). thus instruction on metacognition should be undertaken concurrently with the improvement of self-efficacy levels. a robust relationship exists between self-efficacy and the reading proficiency of this cohort of students. the relation, determined by anova tests on the responses to the self-efficacy questionnaire, showed that self-efficacy has both a direct relationship and an indirect relationship with reading proficiency. in addition, regression analysis showed self-efficacy as the strongest predictor of students’ reading proficiency amongst other affective factors. self-efficacy seems to occupy a significant role in determining reading proficiency and thus should not be ignored in programmes aimed at improving students’ reading proficiency. it is suggested that, at both school and tertiary levels, there should be a focus on addressing strategy use and self-efficacy levels in order to improve both cognitive and affective dimensions involved in reading development. another important factor that emerged from the survey was the relationship between students’ self-efficacy and their home language. the relationship between students’ home language and their self-efficacy levels was statistically significant. worthy of note is the significant interaction between home language, proficiency or literacy levels and self-efficacy. isal home language students who were deemed to have negligible risk and are therefore proficient readers, indicated high self-efficacy (the highest of all the groups), whereas isal students identified as being at extremely high risk indicated the lowest self-efficacy of all the home language groups. also, english home language students indicated high levels of self-efficacy. what needs to be pointed out here is that it is not the home language per se that influences students’ self-efficacy and reading proficiency, but there seems to be a combination of factors that include ses, educational background, reading experience, and other socio-cultural factors associated with certain home language groups that influence reading proficiency. given the low self-efficacy and poor reading proficiency of the majority of isal students, these students would need instruction that adequately and directly addresses their affective needs, whilst developing their cognitive reading abilities. as pajares (2006) and guthrie and wigfield (2000) point out, self-efficacy enhancement is an important component of reading motivation. various techniques, such as learning goal orientation, feedback on progress, explicit strategy instruction, building mastery experience, using discipline-specific texts, and providing praise and rewards have been shown to improve self-efficacy. according to guthrie and klauda (2013) assuring students of success increases their self-efficacy. one way to do this is to provide competence support in the form of providing feedback on progress. feedback on progress should be frequent and positive. positive does not mean grading students highly when they do not deserve it, but rather that comments and suggestions should be encouraging and specific (dörnyei 2001). in addition, an educator can emphasise learning goals by encouraging learners to focus on learning, understanding and achievement instead of focusing solely on grades (guthrie & wigfield 2000; margolis & mccabe 2004). using discipline-specific texts also provides opportunities for self-efficacy improvement (guthrie & klauda 2013). although generic texts have their place in reading instruction, using discipline-specific texts, especially at tertiary level will provide background knowledge and relevance that will give students confidence of success. explicit strategy instruction also increases self-efficacy. furthermore, students can only be confident about their capabilities when they are given clear directions and guidance on the task they are required to perform (graham & macaro 2008; guthrie & wigfield 2000). according to mizumoto and takeuchi (2009), teaching students strategies may increase their self-efficacy. moreover, positive mastery experience, which refers to one's judgement of competence or one's own previous attainment in a related task (usher & pajares 2006) should be encouraged. according to bandura (1977:193) ‘successes raise mastery expectations; repeated failures lower them’. finally, praise and rewards may seem ordinary and simple, but according to researchers such as dörnyei (2001) and kumaravadivelu (2003), they provide opportunities for students to receive acknowledgement of success, which increase self-efficacy. in an interview with firstyear students after a reading intervention programme in 2011, a number of the students reported on how motivating and confidence-building praises and rewards were to them (boakye 2012). this was especially true of the ‘high risk’ students who reported that ‘it makes you feel that you are good, especially in front of other students, and you put in more effort’ (boakye 2012:215). although pre-school learners are usually given stars for achievement, this practice is not carried on in the senior grades. the suggestion is for educators to include this practice, even if it is only acknowledging achievement and praising the student in the presence of other students. if tertiary students found the technique beneficial, learners in school would definitely benefit from it. however, since the ‘low’ risk group was not as enthusiastic as the ‘high risk’ group, it should be noted that not all students may perceive it positively. nevertheless praise and rewards may assist in building the confidence and self-efficacy of low achievers. conclusion top ↑ the article has reported on the relationship between first-year tertiary students’ self-efficacy levels and their reading proficiency as shown in their reading performance in the tall. using the anova test a robust relationship was found between self-efficacy and reading proficiency directly, and indirectly through the students’ home language. isal students reported low self-efficacy levels, whereas english and afrikaans home language groups reported higher self-efficacy levels. also, ‘high risk’ students reported low self-efficacy and ‘low risk’ students reported high self-efficacy levels. given the important role that self-efficacy plays in reading and in learning in general, it is recommended that reading instruction programmes should include the development of self-efficacy by focusing on learning goals, providing feedback on progress, developing explicit strategy instruction, giving praise and rewards and using discipline-specific texts where possible. the results suggest that self-efficacy exerts a potentially important affective influence on students’ reading proficiency. consideration of this possible influence is necessary for the creation of effective reading instruction. however, although self-efficacy relates to reading proficiency, shell et al. (1989) point out that self-efficacy beliefs by themselves cannot directly cause reading achievement. further research is therefore needed to investigate how self-efficacy beliefs affect the cognitive processes that are causally related to reading achievement. as a start to this investigation, schunk and swartz (1993) have reported from their studies that self-efficacy is associated with the use of specific reading strategies. earlier researchers have pointed out that self-efficacy, presumably, may exert its influence by affecting motivation (bandura 1986; schunk 1991). there is a need to investigate how self-efficacy relates to measures of motivation and how the motivational measures affect, and are themselves affected by the strategies used during reading. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the author declares that she has had no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references top ↑ amil, m.b.m., 2000, 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language matters 37(1), 81–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10228190608566253 williams, j.d. & takaku, s., 2011, ‘help seeking, self-efficacy, and writing performance among college students’, journal of writing research 3(1), 1–18. appendix top ↑ questionnaire on self-efficacy. article information authors: karin murris1 vursha ranchod2 affiliations: 1school of education, university of cape town, cape town, south africa 2shree bharat sharda mandir school, johannesburg, south africa correspondence to: karin murris email: karin.murris@uct.ac.za postal address: private bag x3, rondebosch 7701, south africa dates: received: 07 nov. 2014 accepted: 24 mar. 2015 published: 14 july 2015 how to cite this article: murris, k. & ranchod, v., 2015, ‘opening up a philosophical space in early literacy with little beauty by anthony browne and the movie king kong’, reading & writing 6(1), art. #69, 10 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v6i1.69 copyright notice: © 2015. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. opening up a philosophical space in early literacy with little beauty by anthony browne and the movie king kong in this original research... open access • abstract • early literacy in south africa • false dilemma • philosophy with children • the action research project    • little beauty • justified anger? • why is the page red? • conclusion • acknowledgements    • competing interests    • authors’ contributions • references • footnotes abstract top ↑ the article begins with setting the south african educational context for a postgraduate early literacy research project in the foundation phase (ages 4–9). the research examines how philosophy with children (p4c) might be part of a solution to current problems in reading comprehension. the second author reports on her p4c action research with her own children as well as her observations of a grade 2 classroom in a school near johannesburg. the research shows how the picturebook little beauty by anthony browne opens up a philosophical space within which children are allowed to draw on their own life experiences and prior knowledge. the project reveals the depth of their thinking when making intra-textual connections between little beauty and the movie king kong. the facilitated philosophical space also makes it possible for the children to make complex philosophical links between the emotion anger, destructive behaviour and the ethico-political dimensions of punishment. central to this article are the second author's critical reflections on how her literacy practices as a mother and foundation phase teacher have fundamentally changed as a result of this project. the article concludes with some implications for the teaching of early literacy in south africa. early literacy in south africa top ↑ the complex reasons for learners’ underachievement in literacy in south african government primary schools are well documented (fleisch 2008, 2012; national education evaluation and development unit 2013). however, what is new is the observation that even south african middle class children are falling behind in literacy proficiency in comparison with their peers elsewhere, and that this overall underachievement picture is unlikely to change soon (fleisch 2012:1). south africa's learners were assessed in 2006 and 2011 by the progress in international reading literacy studies (pirls), an international comparative study of learners’ performance in reading achievements at their fourth year of schooling. in 2006, the basis of the written test was reading comprehension, with approximately 215 000 learners taking part across 40 countries (45 educational systems) who were expected ‘to engage in a full repertoire of reading strategies, including retrieving and focusing on specific ideas, making simple and more complex inferences and examining and evaluating text features’ (howie et al. 2007:13). as the performance of the south african grade 4–5 learners was so low in comparison with similar learners from other participating education systems, the test for south africa in 2011 was redesigned and presented as a new baseline measure. prepirls is a shorter, easier test for grade 4 learners; it has less emphasis on higher-order reading skills and is administered in all 11 official languages (howie et al. 2012:7). of particular concern with the pirls 2006 findings was the fact that in south africa none of the african language learners was able to reach the high international benchmark1 either at grade 4 or at grade 5 level, and that at most 17%–18% of south african learners in only two languages (afrikaans and english) could be considered competent readers (howie et al. 2007:28). therefore, african language groups were not tested in pirls 2011, but only learners who were tested in afrikaans or english2 (also only in grade 5) (howie et al. 2012). despite the easier assessment in prepirls 2011, only a few (6%) were able to read at an advanced level (howie et al. 2012:112). it is significant that teachers, reportedly, spend most of their time on basic reading skills instead of on ‘more inferential types of skills’. more complex reading skills are introduced ‘at a much later stage for south african learners than internationally’ (howie et al. 2012:112). moreover, ‘[l]earners exposed at an earlier grade tended to achieve higher scores in reading’ (howie et al. 2012:114). although there are some exceptions, few teachers were found to use children's literature. instead, textbooks, workbooks and worksheets have become very popular (howie et al. 2012). why is this? the assessment criteria of pirls 2006 were directly aligned with national curriculum policy standards (howie et al. 2007) and its ‘much-worse-than-predicted’ results (howie et al. 2012:15) have influenced teacher education, national and regional policies as well as reading intervention strategies. in the struggle to ensure that the poor in south africa enjoy quality basic education, two significant national interventions have been introduced since pirls 2006, which still serves as a critical external baseline for reading literacy achievement at grades 4–5. these interventions include a new revised national curriculum, namely the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps). caps has been introduced with standardised national workbooks for grades 1–6 aimed at improving classroom practices in combination with the annual national assessments (anas), with a focus on learning in grades 1–6 (department of basic education 2011:5). since then, the department of education claims that the anas 2013 and 2014 show improved results, but extreme caution is required: although monitored by the department, anecdotal evidence suggests that teachers can interfere with the process (e.g. by helping the children when doing the tests), teachers tend to teach for the test and each year new tests are designed, thus undermining the possibility of reliable, direct comparisons between schools and years (department of basic education 2014). the content and the level of the anas have been widely criticised (howie et al. 2012:4), partly because of the low expectations of the children as critical readers. the authors of the pirls report claim that ‘[t]hrough classroom and independent reading, learners should become critical and creative thinkers’ (howie et al. 2012:17). the action research project discussed in this article shows how an approach to teaching and learning called philosophy with children (p4c) offers unique opportunities for the teaching of critical and creative thinking in south african early literacy contexts (murris 2014a, 2014b). this is important research because the international test results and the latest department of basic education's anas (dbe 2011) suggest that grade 4 learners (especially but not exclusively) in under-resourced south african schools struggle with thinking and reasoning tasks such as comprehension and problem-solving (zimmerman 2014). fleisch (2012) observes that teachers rely heavily on recitation and repetition with little scope for meaning-making and understanding. as part of the solution to this monumental problem of reading underachievement, he suggests that teachers should focus on the second common ‘instructional practice’ – teaching reading with graded or level reading schemes (so-called basic readers) (fleisch 2012). false dilemma top ↑ what fleisch presents is a so-called ‘false dilemma’ (law 2007:203). this is when an argument is presented that suggests that there are two mutually exclusive choices, when in fact there might be another possible alternative. in britain, other possible alternatives have come to the fore. for example, in the cambridge primary review – the uk's most comprehensive review of primary education for decades – a case is made for pedagogical changes to include more creativity, imagination and dialogical relationships between learners and teachers (alexander, hofkins & northen 2009:24). the report emphasises classroom speaking skills to promote thinking, reasoning and learning, and states that ‘a radical re-think of … language, oracy and literacy’ (alexander et al. 2009:24) is urgent. one approach in particular is mentioned in the context of ‘exploring, knowing, understanding and making sense’, namely philosophy with children (p4c) (alexander et al. 2009:23). in this article we focus on a philosophy with children action research project and interpret children's philosophical responses to a picturebook by award-winning author and illustrator anthony browne. joanna haynes (2003) argues how p4c's emphasis on philosophical responses to texts is helpful for literacy because it helps children develop a sense of power as readers. the critical approach makes space for learners to ask their own open-ended questions and to ‘challenge as well as … admire and celebrate the printed word’ (haynes 2003:29). in p4c sessions also very young children are encouraged to interact with texts at a deep level and the ‘contemplative and learner-led nature of the approach makes an excellent counterbalance to the rapid-pace and focused learning’ (haynes 2003:30) in skills-based approaches to literacy. long before the cambridge primary review, mroz, smith and hardman (2000) concluded that in the context of the highly prescriptive literacy approach in the uk, a focus on subject knowledge and content in the curriculum had been at the expense of good quality communication and cognitive demanding activities rendering students mere passive learners and respondents to teachers’ rapidly paced rhetorical questions (mroz et al. 2000:387). they suggest that teachers should instead incorporate pupils’ answers into subsequent questions, a process they call ‘uptake’, that is, teachers’ ‘questions should be shaped by what immediately precedes them so that they are genuine questions’ (mroz et al. 2000:387) – as is, for example, the case in p4c. they contrast this with recitation. this is when teachers use prepared lists with set questions that they use to check children's correct understanding. their solution (and p4c) is in line with the now widely accepted social constructivist theories of learning (green & murris 2014). pollard (2008) provides a useful overview of the differences and similarities between behaviourist, constructivist and social constructivist theories of learning. in a social constructivist model, teachers and children work interdependently and (as in the constructivist model) ‘knowledge and skills are constructed through experience, interaction and adult support’ (pollard 2008:182). philosophy with children top ↑ stanley (2006) recommends that a typical p4c session, which usually takes at least 1 hour, should be timetabled in the schools’ curriculum on a regular weekly basis. she suggests that the first session of the day would yield the best results as this is the time of the day when the children are ‘bright and fresh’ (stanley 2006:30). a typical p4c session includes certain sequential ‘steps’ (figure 1). figure 1: structure of a philosophy with children (p4c) session. this basic structure is a helpful guide for the novice and can vary according to the learning context and the pace of the lesson and can be adapted when following the enquiry wherever the children take it. the way in which many student teachers are taught to teach literacy in south africa is very different from the pace and sequence of a p4c session as outlined below. firstly, the duration of a typical story telling lesson would be no longer than 15–30 minutes. the teacher decides in advance what the theme and learning content will be. a typical structured lesson procedure would include a short introduction, presentation of the learning content by the teacher, application of the learning content by the learners and direct observation by the teacher to assess the children. in this approach, limited time and emphasis is placed on assisting young children to develop their thinking and reasoning skills. what sets p4c apart from other oracy or literacy approaches is that children themselves are allowed to ask their own questions as starting points for the lessons. it is this feature of p4c's practice that teachers struggle with the most, and that often provokes censorship (see haynes & murris 2011, 2012). ironically it is also what learners often report as one of the most stimulating aspects of the literacy lessons (murris 2014b). in summary, the argument so far has been that national research and international literacy tests clearly suggest that (relative to other countries) south african grade 4s’ lack of comprehension skills is substantial. other research suggests that learners’ cognitive framework can be developed through ‘talk, particularly where pupils are given the opportunity to assume greater control over their own learning by initiating ideas and responses which consequently promote articulate thinking’ (mroz et al. 2000:386). therefore, it follows logically that comprehension should be strengthened through literacy approaches that emphasise meaning-making, critical thinking and communication. another necessary condition, however, is to do this in contexts children find exciting and rewarding. as luke, dooley and woods (2011) point out, the argument sometimes put forward that children need to learn to decode first before engaging in more complex higher-order thinking does not hold. or, put differently, that they need to ‘learn to read’ before they can ‘read to learn’ (see e.g. pretorius 2014). these competencies cannot be separated as cognitive tasks from ‘lived and institutionally situated social and intellectual’ practices (luke et al. 2011:158). following dewey, reading and writing are regarded as pragmatic social actions that need to connect with children's own experiences (haynes & murris 2012). narratives provide good contexts for children to ask their own questions and to initiate classroom activities that demand that they think and reason about texts. carefully selected picturebooks are now popular resources for philosophical enquiries with children (ed. costello 2011; haynes & murris 2012; murris 1992; wartenberg 2009). but using picturebooks for comprehension from a socio-cultural perspective is far from straightforward, and we report back on a research project to draw out some interesting conclusions about the challenge of ‘allowing’ learners to read their ‘multiple worlds’ (luke et al. 2011:158). the action research project top ↑ in 2011, vursha ranchod started a small-scale qualitative action research project. she decided to focus on young children's philosophical responses to a few carefully selected picturebooks. 3 the major theme of her research project was to implement the pedagogy of philosophy with children (p4c) to explore, identify and understand young children's cognitive and emotional responses to a picturebook, in particular by focusing specifically on the ‘turning point’ (a sudden reversal of circumstances). action research proved to be the most suitable methodology for her purposes as it embodies the values and principles of practitioner-based research and self-reflective practice. the crux of this method of research underpins ‘an enquiry of the self into the self’ (mcniff 2002:3). an important outcome is to show how one's own understanding of practice has shifted, by showing one's changed thinking over time. crucial in this cyclical process is to explain how these changes are a direct result of one's investigations into one's own actions (mcniff, lomax & whitehead 1996:18). therefore, keeping a reflective journal systematically was a salient research instrument. according to ken winograd (2003), a journal of this nature maximises the use of emotions in assisting data analysis. winograd suggests that ‘teachers engage in both functional and dysfunctional uses of emotion in their work in schools’ (winograd 2003:1642). he explains: the functional uses of emotion tend to alert teachers to problems, so they can effectively take action to address those problems. the dysfunctional uses of emotion reflect situations in teachers’ emotions (especially dark emotions, like anger and disgust) that do not lead to positive action, but, instead lead to the blaming of either self, students, parents, or the system. (winograd 2003:1642) ranchod became an active participant in the research whereby she was encouraged to be critical of her own work and focus on her own functional and dysfunctional emotions. data were gathered from various sources, namely formal observation of a p4c session using a picturebook conducted by herself with her own daughters; informal observation of two p4c sessions using two picturebooks by a practicing teacher in a grade 2 class; and informal observation of a publicly available video-recording of a p4c session in a uk primary school (http://www.gallions.newham.sch.uk). the dialogues at home were all transcribed and published (ranchod 2012:e1–e25). the entire action research cycle was also published (ranchod 2012:77). in this article, we report back only on ranchod's research with one of the picturebooks, namely anthony browne's little beauty (2008). little beauty in his memoir, playing the shape game (browne & browne 2011), the author and illustrator writes movingly about the life events that had inspired his artwork. a detailed exploration of what the author himself says about little beauty illuminates its complex meanings. this in turn will help readers of this article appreciate the depth of the children's thoughts and ideas when responding to this text in the research we report on. little beauty is a powerfully illustrated story about a lonely gorilla who has almost everything except a friend. he is sad and lonely. he uses sign language to communicate to his zoo keepers that he would like a friend and they decide to give him a little kitten called little beauty, with whom he spends many happy hours. his keepers remind him not to eat little beauty, but gorilla would not want to as he loves her (see figure 2). figure 2: but the gorilla loved beauty. when the two friends view king kong on television, a movie darkly at odds with the soft-hearted gorilla's nature, the gorilla impulsively smashes the set. the keepers suspect that gorilla is responsible for this act of violence and threaten to remove little beauty. concerned about the fate of their friendship, gorilla and little beauty exchange fearful glances. at this particular moment in the story, the ‘turning point’ or perapateia (after aristotle), little beauty falsely confesses that she was the culprit. the story reaches a quick unexpected resolution: the violent act is forgiven and their friendship is saved! thereafter, in good fairy-tale tradition, little beauty and gorilla live happily ever after. of course, the story is reminiscent of the fairy-tale beauty and the beast. the allusion is substantiated by the recurrence of roses in the book (browne & browne 2011:224). much information that helps readers make sense of the story is omitted in words and only included in the drawings. in a profound sense little beauty cannot really be ‘summarised’ as such, because of the gap between its words and pictures. browne sees art as a form of communication. his pictures, he says, ‘tell as much of the story, and communicate things that the words do not. …i like to include differences and gaps … imagination’ (browne & browne 2011:45). for example, browne's king kong ([1994] 2005) was inspired by the movie with the same name that the gorilla was watching in little beauty when he got really angry, but there is nothing in the words that explains why he is so angry (see figure 3). readers have to figure that out for themselves. figure 3: the gorilla became very angry. browne's subtle use of two different semiotic sign systems – the written and the visual – make his work cognitively ‘stretching’4 as well as emotionally engaging, as the research data below exemplify. but in order to fully appreciate the artwork's complexity and to help interpret some of the research data collected, it is rewarding to reconsider how this particular picturebook is related to other texts. in browne's book king kong, 5 his artistic depiction of the hollywood death scene of kong is profoundly influenced by having witnessed the death of his own father when he was 17 years old. in his memoir, browne describes how for 20 minutes his dad made ‘absurd noises’ and his ‘exaggerated thrashing continued to give the episode an incongruously comic, theatrical quality’ (browne & browne 2011:38). he refers to the horrific event as ‘dad's final pantomime’ (browne & browne 2011:38) and explains how the way his father fell off his chair ‘as if in slow motion’ resembles kong's fall from the empire state building (browne & browne 2011:38, 96). after this life-changing event, browne became fascinated with the human body and obsessed with death, disease and morbidity, which finally lead him to work as a medical illustrator at manchester royal infirmary in the uk for 3 years. for medical educational purposes, he had to draw the minutest details of dissected corpses and grotesque operations (browne & browne 2011:32-45. browne evaluates this period of his life as having had an invaluable influence on becoming a competent illustrator. the gorilla in little beauty is only one example of his magnificent ability to draw bodies accurately, delicately and without sentimentality. browne elaborates on his love of gorillas and how it is related to his father: ‘i think of dad when i look at gorillas. gorillas are immensely powerful creatures and can be terrifyingly aggressive when they want to be, but they also have a gentle side which they express by grooming each other, showing affection and caring for their families’ (browne & browne 2011:78). these different sides to the same gorilla gradually emerge when watching the movie king kong (and we also see this with little beauty's gorilla). the political message is obvious; the real monsters, browne insists, are the humans who keep animals in captivity (browne & browne 2011:92). justified anger? top ↑ ranchod reports in her research project how her own two children responded to gorilla's violent episode. trained as a foundation phase teacher at a south african university, ranchod had learned to use storybooks in a didactic manner. like many teachers she would carefully prepare her lessons with a series of set questions to ensure the children would comprehend the text – with her as teacher in control of what counts as the meaning of the book. introduced to p4c, she wanted to test the p4c pedagogy with her own two young daughters and compare her questioning skills by observing those of a fellow student in p4c in grade 2 literacy lessons. in this class, the children wrote down the following questions and comments about little beauty: ‘why didn’t the gorilla switch off the tv?’ ‘the gorilla did not have friends because nobody understood him.’ ‘why didn’t the gorilla tell the trueth in the first place?’ [sic] ‘why did they go to the toilet together?’ ‘he got spoilt, but he just wanted a friend.’ ‘the movies buged him and brok the tv.’ [sic] ‘why did he break the t.v. of king kong?’ [sic] ‘how can you give a cat honey?’ ‘why did the gorilla break the zoo tv?’ ‘why wasn’t the cat afraid of the monkey?’ ‘how can a cat brak a tv?’ [sic] ‘why did the gorilla smash the tv?’ ‘maybe he was angry because he saw planes fighting a grela so that's why he broke the tv.’ [sic] ranchod herself experimented with what we have referred to earlier as ‘uptake’, that is, she was committed to open up a philosophical space by asking genuine questions. these are questions that are shaped by directly responding to what the children are saying – verbally as well as with their bodies. at home, after reading the story to her two daughters, the youngest asks the following question: riya6 (aged 6): ‘can i ask why did he break the tv, because when you are angry you just want to run into your room? can i ask what film was they watching?’ then the following dialogue emerges: vr: ‘yes, you can ask that, well, i can tell you what film they are watching. they are watching king kong. there's a film called king kong.’ riya: ‘how do you know?’ vr: ‘yes, because i’ve seen it and i can let you watch it one day. it's a film about king kong where this gorilla has this lady in his hands there. can you see? and then he actually makes friends with her and he looks after her and everybody wants to kill the gorilla, but he's actually a nice gorilla.’ nikita (aged 8): ‘i think he broke the tv, because in the film all the humans wanted to kill the gorilla.’ vr: ‘yes, yes.’ riya: ‘he was a gorilla, so he was feeling very sad, that everybody wanted to kill the gorilla. so then he straight away got up and he got cross and he broke the tv.’ vr: ‘oh, so he was, you’re saying he is angry with the humans?’ nikita: ‘yes, because he thinks it's in real life and that's why the whole … it also gives an answer for the other page, because the whole page is red, because that is showing anger.’ vr: ‘is it showing anger? you think the red is showing the anger?’ riya: ‘i don’t … i disagree, because, when you angry you don’t want to break it, you can just change the channel.’ nikita: ‘i don’t know, i think i disagree and agree with her.’ vr: ‘why?’ nikita: ‘but sometimes it's a lot of anger, when you have a lot of, lot of anger, you really want to break the thing and you never want to see it again.’ the transcript shows how ranchod has moved away from the more common ire (initiation, response, evaluation) interaction so typical of comprehension exercises in class. 7 teacher asks the questions about a text (initiation), one child responds and the adult evaluates the response (e.g. ‘well done’ or ‘have a look again in the picture’) to check children's ‘correct’ understanding of the text. in the transcript, we can see how different the adult's role is. both adult and children are problem-posers as well as problem-solvers. the adult gives information, but tentatively, and the questions she asks are open and inviting to enquire further: is he indeed angry? does the red signify anger? in this different ‘deep reading’ approach to literacy, children not only ask or answer the questions that matter, but also learn to ‘question the questions’ (short 2011:50) and ask second-order questions, as we will see below. drawing on her own experiences of anger, nikita is puzzled about gorilla's actions and initiates the conversation by asking a question, ‘because when you are angry you just want to run into your room’. subsequently she makes a tentative link with the movie gorilla is watching. arguably, it is the artwork that strongly communicates here and riya, who had no prior knowledge of the story of king kong, picked up on gorilla's emotions. rather than condemning gorilla's violent outburst, she ‘listens’ to what gorilla is actually saying with his actions. nikita in turn listens carefully to her sister and responds directly to her. she understands gorilla's anger because king kong is not being treated rightly (‘he was feeling very sad, that everybody wanted to kill the gorilla. so then he straight away got up and he got cross and he broke the tv’). she argues that it is morally wrong what is happening to gorilla and empathises with him. she also sympathises with him and justifies his anger by putting the idea forward that ‘sometimes it's a lot of anger, when you have a lot of, lot of anger, you really want to break the thing and you never want to see it again’. contemporary philosopher solomon (1993:132–134) argues that there is a clear link between emotions and the moral dimension of a situation. emotions, he claims, are not only ‘evaluative judgements, but also constitutive judgements: emotions do not just find interpretations and evaluations of the world, but they construct them’. riya clearly felt something for gorilla and when he became angry the emotion gave her information about the moral dimension of the situation. therefore, while she is thinking about gorilla, she reasons that gorilla is right and justified to be angry and as a result to break the television set. nikita comprehends the injustice of gorilla being blamed, thus her thinking and emotions express moral and political awareness. she clearly made a judgement: an evaluative and constructive judgement about why he is so angry. the children are comfortably disagreeing with each other, testing and building on each other's ideas. the conversation between mother and daughters here could be regarded as a good example of how haynes (2008) describes ‘caring thinking’. 8 she explains that caring thinking ‘involves caring enough to make the effort to hear what others are saying and developing the capacity to see each point of view’ (haynes 2008:46) as well as ‘caring for the paths to truth and justice and this includes caring for the imagination as well as for logic’ (haynes 2008:46). here, haynes challenges the idea that emotions are ‘just’ feelings, and would probably agree with solomon that they can be important sources of information in the pursuit of truth, which is clearly evident in the transcript. both adult and children are asking genuine, probing and open-ended second-order questions, as we will explain below through a further analysis of the example. why is the page red? top ↑ riya challenges her mother by asking her a second-order question: how does she know about the movie? the children are pursuing the significance of the colour red in the picturebook and do not accept easy answers when ranchod supports a deep reading of this text when encouraging them to answer why the page is red. it is a good example of responsive listening, or what stanley calls ‘listening with the brain’9 – she responds to their expression of wonder about the use of this particular colour:10 vr: ‘why is the page red, why can’t we use another colour. why?’ nikita: ‘other colours don’t show anger.’ vr: ‘is it?’ nikita: ‘because when i get angry my face sometimes go a bit red.’ vr: ‘your face goes red.’ nikita: ‘sometimes.’ vr: ‘and you riya?’ riya: ‘but in real life when you do s … when you getting anger your whole room doesn’t just go red.’ vr: ‘are you agreeing or disagreeing with her?’ riya: ‘disagreeing with her because, because when you get angry the whole room, when you go like this, the whole room just doesn’t all go red.’ vr: ‘it doesn’t all go red? so where does it go red?’ nikita: ‘on you.’ in this part of the transcript, ranchod clearly supported her children to read the pictures in a sophisticated open-ended manner and as such did justice to the text's intricate complexity. however, the facilitating role of adults in p4c is far from straightforward, and it profoundly challenges deep-seated assumptions about what is involved in comprehension (haynes & murris 2011). this is evident in the following transcript: nikita: ‘because it also … she also sometimes right. but sometimes it's a lot of anger. when you have a lot of, lot of anger, you really want to break the thing and you never want to see it again.’ vr: ‘you want to break it forever so that you don’t ever get to use it again?’ nikita: ‘yes, because you don’t want people killing you in always … that wanting to kill you. that's not a nice thing also.’ vr: ‘but riya is suggesting, what riya is saying, isn’t what you’re saying maybe a better way is to rather just change the channel, why just break the tv?’ nikita: ‘but what if it wasn’t on a channel?’ vr: ‘but what if it is a … (riya interrupts her mother). yes, riya.’ riya: ‘could just switch off.’ vr: ‘switch off the tv? riya is suggesting that you can rather just switch off the tv, why break it? because now you won’t be able to watch anything else on that tv.’ riya: ‘and the zookeepers won’t buy you another one.’ vr: ‘so what do you think of that?’ nikita: ‘i think i agree with riya.’ vr: ‘now you agree; are you changing your mind? and are you saying that it is … he should rather have changed the tv, instead of breaking it so you don’t watch tv at all?’ nikita: ‘yes.’ vr: 'so which one would you say that you …’ nikita: ‘i would say switch off the tv rather.’ vr: ‘rather switch off the tv, like riya had said. oh okay’. (ranchod 2012:50) ranchod (2012:49–52) critically reflects on her own role as educator in the above episode. riya clearly felt that the gorilla should not have broken the tv. she felt that a better way of controlling his anger would have been rather to switch off the tv or leave the room. nikita, on the other hand, proposed that gorilla was justified in breaking the tv because he was experiencing a lot of anger. when analysing the dialogue, she realised that her line of questioning closed off a learning opportunity to explore this issue further. nikita had picked up from her mother's tone, body, facial expression, or possibly even the way she had structured her sentence, the moral message that it is wrong to break things when angry. nikita challenges this when she gives a reason that justifies the gorilla's anger and his violent outburst when she states, ‘because you don’t want people killing you in always … that wanting to kill you. that's not a nice thing also’. however, ranchod steered the discussion to riya's suggestion on how we could instead control or manage this anger. a further alternative provided by riya and further prompting by her mother leaves nikita with little option (considering the power differences between mother and daughter) but to change her mind and agree that controlling one's anger is better than expressing it in destructive ways. ranchod comments that although she does not believe that destruction is necessarily an acceptable action, she does now believe that she was too quick to conclude that an alternative way of managing one's anger is suppressing or controlling it. what she had learnt from the project was that emotions can be seen as providing information about the moral dimensions of a situation (solomon 1993). as a result, an emotion such as anger needs to be explored first, before it should be managed or controlled. she comments: ‘i could have asked the children to draw anger, to talk about what really angers them. how do they express themselves when they are really angry?’: instead of using this as an opportune moment to discuss, ‘what does it mean to be really angry?’, or ‘when is anger justifiable?’, i had failed to problematise the concept of anger. through my questioning, body or facial expression i had unconsciously swayed nikita to change her mind about breaking things when you are really angry and through persuasion she eventually provided the ‘right answer’, i.e. ‘i would switch off the tv rather’. (ranchod 2012:51) she also comments: facilitating this p4c session was not easy. this evidence was proof to me that although i yearn to be a ‘risk-taker’, my practice suggests otherwise. in other words, i was not being honest about my practice. a ‘risk-taker’ would have helped children to open up an enquiry about the meaning of this concept of anger, what it means to their lives and whether it is ever justified. i found it very challenging to keep the discussion flowing between the three of us in a meaningful way. while i tried to encourage my children to discuss how they felt about this enquiry, i found myself facilitating the discussion in the direction that favoured my own beliefs about anger and how it should be controlled or managed. (ranchod 2012:50–51) the research project has profoundly influenced not only how ranchod teaches, but also the way in which she theorises about practice. she has noted a substantial shift in her thinking as a result of the cyclical and reflective nature of the research process. she found herself constantly ‘at odds’ with the non-linear character of the process and describes how she felt lost in a chaotic sense of uncertainty and insecurity as she struggled to make sense of her own emotions and those of others when she was being exposed to a very different and new pedagogy. winograd's (2003:1642) distinction between ‘functional’ and ‘dysfunctional’ uses of emotion mentioned earlier proved helpful. the uncertainty she had felt helped her to improve her own teaching practice and critically, but also constructively, she started to reflect on areas that needed improvement and how awareness of the power emotions can have in obstructing or making the most of a teaching and learning situation. her daughter had empathised and sympathised with gorilla's anger and taught her mother that at the age of eight she had understood and comprehended the injustice of the situation and had managed to communicate this in argument form to her mother and sister. the anecdote is a good example of a ‘blurring’ of the emotion-cognition binary: emotions and cognition are often indistinguishable (sharp 2007), and in fact are ‘constructive, moral indicators and intelligent responses to situations’ (haynes & murris 2012:87); ‘emotion is a kind of thought’ (nussbaum as cited in lipman 2003:266); emotions are judgments (nussbaum as cited in lipman 2003; solomon 1993) and emotions are a ‘way of knowing’ (zembylas 2007:297). these cognitive theories of emotion have far reaching implications for education, because instead of regarding emotions as a barrier to learning that should be managed and controlled, emotions are part and parcel of the process of truthseeking – a truth that includes the moral and political dimensions of a situation (of which emotions are good indicators). of course, understanding the reasonableness of gorilla's anger does not justify his destruction of the television. but children are capable of making such distinctions and of being involved in thinking processes that explore different, more constructive responses to the emotions, and finding solutions that take gorilla's anger more seriously. conclusion top ↑ in p4c, children are allowed to ask the questions about a story. listening and speaking are not driven by the questions formulated by the adult in isolation (without ‘uptake’). in p4c, teachers have to listen to and respect children's own ideas about stories, initially through the questions they ask and subsequently in the discussions about their own ideas. policies that insist on learners answering, rather than also asking questions, are responsible for the entrenched ire practices in class (brodie 2007), whereby teachers’ questions are mainly closed and rhetorical. in south africa, the national curriculum statement grades r–12 ‘aims to produce learners who are able to: identify and solve problems and make decisions using critical and creative thinking’ (dbe 2011:5). although thinking and reasoning needs to be taught in the foundation phase, the documents do not mention the place of emotions in thinking and the texts are silent about the use of picturebooks for teaching thinking and reasoning. we conclude that this action research project shows how very young children can express deep understanding of a complex narrative when an educational environment is created that allows a philosophical and imaginative play with ideas and emotions that is taken seriously as adding to the pool of knowledge about a text. classroom contexts are governed, more or less explicitly, by institutional power structures. the schools system and the curriculum are imbued with certain values about the creation and dissemination of knowledge. literacy in the curriculum is framed within a context where teachers not only teach but also control the behaviour of learners. who asks the questions in class and what kind of questions are important factors in who decides which meanings count in literacy. on the whole, the closed and rhetorical questions that educators tend to use create a learning environment in which children's astute and insightful ideas remain invisible. in contrast, when children are free to ask their own questions about a story, their profound and often imaginative representations of their understanding provoke burning questions for educators and policy-makers about comprehension; what it is, the contexts in which we teach it and how we should test it. acknowledgements top ↑ we would like to express our gratitude to robyn thompson and all her grade 2s for making it possible for vursha ranchod to observe her inspiring teaching. we would also like to thank vursha ranchod's children for assisting their mother in conducting an action research project, for which she received a distinction. we are grateful to the school of education at the university of the witwatersrand for partly sponsoring the presentation of this paper by both of us on 20 september 2012 at the 5th conference on south african children's and youth literature, north-west university, potchefstroom campus. finally, we would also like to thank walker books ltd for their generous permission to reproduce the images from anthony browne's little beauty. this publication is based on research that has been supported in part by the university of cape town's research committee (urc). competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions k.m. 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routledge, london. solomon, r.c., 1993, the passions: emotions and the meaning of life, hackett, indianapolis. stanley, s., 2006, creating enquiring minds, continuum books, london. timms & pirls international study center, 2011, ‘performance at the pirls 2011 international benchmarks’, viewed 03 june 2015, from http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/pirls2011/downloads/p11_ir_chapter2.pdf wartenberg, t., 2009, big ideas for little kids: teaching philosophy through children's literature, rowman & littlefield, lanham. winograd, k., 2003, ‘the functions of teacher emotions: the good, the bad and the ugly’, teachers college record 105(9), 1641–1673. http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1467-9620.2003.00304.x zembylas, m., 2007, ‘the power and politics of emotions in teaching’, in g.d. phye & r. pekrun (eds), emotion in education, pp. 293–312, academic press, london. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/b978-012372545-5/50018-6 zimmerman, l., 2014, ‘lessons learnt: observation of grade 4 reading comprehension teaching in south african schools across the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) 2006 achievement spectrum’, reading and writing 5(1), art. #48, 9 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v5i1.48 footnotes top ↑ 1. see international benchmarks for reading (timms & pirls international study center 2011). 2. of course it does not follow that therefore african language speakers were not included, because parents in the foundation phase often prefer their children to be taught through the medium of english, rather than through their home language. more than half of grade 5 learners were tested in their second language (howie et al. 2012:115), which makes assessment complicated for teachers who are often not fully competent in english. 3. the criteria for this selection were mainly as set out by haynes and murris (2012:102–121). 4. lewis talks about the gap between word and image as a ‘cognitive stretch’ (2001:xiii) or a ‘miniature ecosystem’ (2001:48, 54). 5. this book browne calls ‘something between a picturebook and a novel’ (browne & browne 2011:91–92) and its main inspiration was the movie king kong (2005). it features an overly ambitious new york movie producer, who decides to include kong, a giant gorilla who lives on a remote island, in his next movie. kong is immediately smitten with the lead actress, ann darrow. the american film crew capture kong and take him to new york city, where he is exhibited as the ‘eighth wonder of the world’. kong escapes and climbs the empire state building, where he is eventually shot and killed by an aircraft. note that it is this particular scene which is illustrated on the television screen in browne's picturebook little beauty which infuriates the gorilla and leads him to smash the television. this intratextual reference has proven to be important for our analysis of the data. when planning to use little beauty for storytelling and p4c, it is a good idea to also include the story of king kong. 6. pseudonyms have been used. 7. even when authors and researchers claim to advocate a more open-ended and critical approach to literacy. for some examples and an elaborate discussion, see haynes and murris (2012:102–123). 8. caring thinking is one of the four kinds of thinking p4c is claimed to promote (lipman 2003). 9. personal conversation, 11 november 2013. 10. in a resource specially written for supporting p4c with picturebooks (murris & haynes 2002), explicit guidance is offered for exploring the concept ‘colour’ in class. article information author: rajendra chetty1 affiliation: 1department of research, cape peninsula university of technology, south africa correspondence to: rajendra chetty email: chettyr@cput.ac.za postal address: 7 howard drive, pinelands 7405, south africa dates: received: 28 nov. 2014 accepted: 04 may 2015 published: 10 july 2015 how to cite this article: chetty, r., 2015, ‘freirean principles and critical literacy to counter retrograde impulses in the curriculum and assessment policy statement’, reading & writing 6(1), art. #71, 7 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v6i1.71 copyright notice: © 2015. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. freirean principles and critical literacy to counter retrograde impulses in the curriculum and assessment policy statement in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • literacy and constructivism • critical literacy • conclusion • acknowledgements    • competing interests • references abstract top ↑ inherent in the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) document are inferences of transmission and reproduction that run counter to the emancipatory imperatives of core educational policy documents enacted after democracy in 1994. some structural inadequacies in implementation of the first curricular changes to outcomes-based education have opened the way to reactionary and retrograde pedagogy which appears to privilege the teacher and textbook as sole authorities in the classroom. the purpose of this article, therefore, is to warn against teacher-centred pedagogy and restate the significance of freirean principles in the establishment of a student-centred educational environment, specifically in the field of critical literacy. in defence of freirean thought, a re-consideration of literacy and critical literacy grant legitimacy to the learner and demonstrate that individual experience is foundational to knowledge construction in a participatory manner which accords with the vision and original principles of education in the new south africa. introduction top ↑ [t]he curricula of schools are other people's knowledge, imposed on students. not surprisingly, some students do not bother to make personal sense of this knowledge but merely play the school ‘game’ of rote learning and reproducing the curriculum knowledge. (habermas 1984:220) the people's education movement of the 1980s provided a recognisably alternative and radically transformative departure point for literacy development in south africa. fundamentally, people's education addressed the loss of agency in its emancipatory rhetoric and espousal of freire's principles of pedagogy of the oppressed (nekhwevha 2002). during the liberation struggle, literacy reformists embraced the ideals of freirean critical pedagogy that seemed to speak directly to the need for transformation of education in south africa. traces of freirean rhetoric became embedded in the rationales for the three curriculum reconstruction initiatives after 1994. it is ironical and worrying, therefore, to note the liberation rhetoric in the 2011 curriculum assessment policy statement (caps), which espouses the principles of social transformation but fails to enact them. it promises to ensure that the educational imbalances of the past are redressed, that equal educational opportunities are provided for all sections of the population: it encourages an active and critical approach to learning rather than the rote and uncritical learning of given truths (department of basic education 2011:4). but, despite the espousal of liberal prerogatives, there are some indications that retrograde impulses are drawing national education back towards a pre-1994 programme of memorisation: ‘learning’ the contents of a single textbook for each subject. the council for quality assurance in general and further education and training notes that: the move from obe [outcomes-based education] has also resulted in a shift from a cooperative, discovery-based learning, where the learner is a participant in the learning process, as a negotiator of meaning, to content-driven learning, where the learner is a recipient of a body of pre-determined knowledge. (umalusi 2014:25) the purpose of this article, therefore, is to warn against teacher-centred pedagogy and restate the significance of freirean principles in the establishment of a student-centred educational environment, specifically in the field of critical literacy. any retrogressive steps at this time would deny the demonstrable value of recognising the learner as the centre of knowledge construction and return us to the teacher as central dispenser of facts to be learnt by heart without reflection, questioning or growth of the individual. the opposition to more democratic modes of pedagogy is marked and active not only in south africa but also in the usa: the los angeles times reported that a conservative ucla alumni association offered students up to $100 per class for taping lectures of certain ucla professors identified with left-wing or liberal causes, naming them ‘the dirty 30’. (katz & ryan 2010) in spite of these daunting attacks in a time of change, there are still professors willing to persevere and ‘speak against injustice, exclusion and silencing wherever they occur’ (katz & ryan 2010:128). since 1997, there has been a steady shift away from freirean principles in implementation of obe across the country. this movement is more marked with each revision of the post-1994 school curriculum. the iterations of the curriculum were obe (c2005), national curriculum statement, the revised national curriculum statement and recently, caps. constructivist practice explicitly espoused in the first round of curriculum reform in c2005 affirms the agency of learners as constructors, rather than passive receivers or acquirers of knowledge. it must be conceded, however, that some difficulties in implementing constructivism have been experienced in the usa and several other countries: ‘classroom teachers are finding the implementation of constructivist instruction far more difficult than the reform community acknowledges’ (windschitl 2002:131). in south africa, there were numerous obstacles inherited from the apartheid system which hindered effective implementation of obe. the size of classes was a major difficulty to start with. obe requires small classes so that attention can be paid to individual needs of students. in south africa, classes are commonly made up of sixty students: almost double the limit for obe pedagogy. obe assumes the existence of such infrastructure as libraries at every school. in new zealand or scotland, where obe is successfully implemented, such infrastructure does exist. libraries assist as resource centres which allow learners to investigate and explore topics raised in class. without this support structure, obe can hardly be used. another critical factor was the assumption that parents would be able to impart skills and knowledge from home. again, as a result of the inequities of apartheid, parents were unable to assist their children to the desired extent. parents themselves had been the victims of a system of segregated schooling in which far less money was spent on black, mixed-race or indian students than was allowed for white pupils. as a result of class size, lack of libraries and parental support, obe failed to raise the level of literacy and knowledge acquisition generally, as originally envisaged. pass rates fell dramatically as the dream of a learner-centred system collapsed under the strain of repairing the damage from the past and adjusting to the future. teachers attempted to instil the ideals of obe but cuts in teachers’ training colleges meant that there was a lack of facilities from which to train the teachers themselves and create a form of consistent constructivist pedagogy adapted to the peculiar challenges of post-1994 south africa. spady (2008), the chief architect of obe, had a vision of equitable and effective schooling for all in the new south africa. but he too was caught in the morass of inherited structural difficulties of a broken system. his comments recently evidence a profound disillusionment: it is regrettable that the message i carried to south african educators in 1997 about obe as i had come to know it had little, if any, influence on south african educational reform policy. had there been stronger conceptual understanding and agreement regarding the issues described above, i believe the country's educational leaders would have been able to make a more constructive choice about the reforms they sought to implement during the first mandela government. equally regrettable was my inability to engage the country's academic community in a serious consideration of obe beyond curriculum 2005 itself. the outspoken curriculum 2005 critics of the day – like jonathan jansen and linda chisholm – were attributing many of the weaknesses, dangers, and failures that they saw in curriculum 2005 and the national department of education's policies, curriculum focus, and implementation strategies to obe in the larger sense. and i had no platform, beyond the original lecture tour, for addressing these misunderstandings. (spady 2008:10) so now, with a decade of confusion about obe behind us, i would encourage my south african colleagues to stop referring to obe in any form. it never existed in 1997, and has only faded farther from the scene since. the real issue facing the country is to mobilize behind educational practice that is sound and makes a significant difference in the lives of all south african learners. empty labels and flowery rhetoric are no longer needed; but principled thinking and constructive action are. (spady 2008:11) it is fortuitous that spady ends with the term ‘constructive’. although obe may have encountered difficulties in the south african context, a knee-jerk return to the apparently safe ground of pre-1994 textbook-based education will do little to solve the fundamental and inherently political issues of good education for all. visible pedagogy is assumed to be free of a political agenda: educators are presumed to convey knowledge in a secure way that equips learners to gain foundational knowledge which will ultimately allow them to gain skills needed to join the job market. this seemingly innocent model is in fact identifiably capitalist in nature – contrary to the egalitarian vision of a mandelan landscape which makes up for the inequalities of the past. re-installation of textbook education is a re-appropriation of the very capitalist, exclusionary thinking that caused so many of the colonial and apartheid wrongs of the country. freirean inclusiveness is more politically appropriate in the reconstitution of democratic thought and practice in south africa than a relapse to teacher-centred authority models. in constructivist practice, differentiated teaching is inevitable; sequencing and pacing depend on what the learner brings to the process. constructivist practice falls within the ambit of ‘invisible pedagogy’ (bernstein 1990). the antithesis of invisible, that is, visible pedagogy, is characterised by transmission modalities, explicit sequencing and pacing rules. bernstein points out that visible pedagogy produces stratification of learners. if learners fall behind, a repair system has to be in place or the rules have to be relaxed. visible pedagogy privileges teacher dominance, which in turn suggests prescriptive pedagogical models of the pre-1994 era. this reactionary trend against freirean pedagogical initiatives is observed in many countries: in search of sustainable systemic success, school reform programs are evolving into a distinctly different form of school reform that has been described as the ‘third age’ of school reform. (rafferty 2010:15) although constructivist thought was prominent in the liberal intimations of the new education system that emerged after 1994 and although it was subsequently embedded in the new system's foundational articulation, emancipatory and participatory emphases have been steadily eroded after each revision of the original document for democratic education in the new south africa. within the discipline of english, but not exclusive to it, the crucial task of establishing literacy for all is linked to the development of critical literacy, which is in turn predicated upon a constructivist learning environment of open debate and a culture of questioning. literacy and constructivism top ↑ literacy may be enhanced by various reading improvement strategies at a technical level yet often in the short-term only, if ‘literacy’ is defined as control of language. but, the term ‘literacy’ denotes a more significant developmental aspect of education through the open recognition of participant learner experience in the classroom, the sharing of such experience and construction of a democratic type of knowledge which is built on the foundation of mutual respect for a variety of histories, gender identities and religious or political convictions. in discovering the self and articulating identity socially, in stimulating the growth of responsible adults, diverse cultural experiences and knowledge are revealed and shared in a classroom. no culture is, or can be, neutral. education is the unmasking of apparent neutrality just as literacy in its profound sense is the ability to read society, relations within it and texts or structures of signification which reflect the individual and relations between individual and society in all the multiplicity of meanings which those complex inter-relations produce. critical literacy mandates the individual reader as independent critical thinker, in contrast to transmission pedagogy, which privileges the teacher as expert, sole controller or conveyor of the text's meaning. this unilateral process is perilously close to inferences extant in the new caps document. marxist, feminist and queer theory oppose such replication of conformist capitalist ideology and propose the classroom not as a site for memorisation of a teacher's utterances, but as a secure arena for exposing and debating the underlying tensions, conflict and discord that mark individual experience (zozakiewicz & rodriguez 2007:404). elsasser and john-steiner (1987:45) maintain that only programmes that build upon cognitive processes can help individuals meet the long-term objective of using their literacy as a tool of personal growth and social transformation. short-term improvement in literacy skills can be achieved by motivating students and by reinforcing their written work but the experiences of students should be given pre-eminence in an emancipatory curriculum, therefore critical educators must learn how to understand, affirm and analyse such meaning (freire 1985:xxi; giroux & mclaren 1991:167). freire emphasises that all knowing begins with experience: in his terminology, ‘knowledge is made from experience’ (freire & macedo 1987:87). critical educational studies include the development of forms of knowledge and social practices that validate the experiences students bring to their respective institutions. such experiences should form the basis of the teaching programme to ensure that students have an active voice in the content taught instead of the traditional approach of silencing them by ignoring cultural capital. critical teaching creates a process of learning and knowing that invariably involves theorising about the experiences shared in the dialogue process (freire & macedo 1995:381). freire views the students’ experiences as central to the construction of authentic knowledge: ‘they bring with them opinions about the world, and about life’ (freire & horton 1991:57). education starts with the experiences of students and either reinforces or challenges existing social forces that attempt to keep them passive. students’ experiences or ‘hidden voices’ (wallerstein 1987:35) need to be revealed; otherwise they can block learning. such blocks can be emotional (e.g. low self-esteem), structural (e.g. lack of contact with english speakers) or socio-economic (e.g. prejudice). the emotional power behind these experiences can inspire learning. by helping students articulate their concerns in the classroom, teachers help them understand the blocks and move forward. an appropriate curriculum should be based on, and derived from, the cultural capital of the students to be educated. during the pre-1994 era, the culture of the oppressor was imposed on the oppressed (both students and teachers), it invalidated their own culture and led to self-depreciation resulting from their internalisation of the opinion the oppressors held of them (freire 1971:122). reid (1982:14) found that the uncritical acceptance of many black teachers of the educational system in the eighties corroborated freire's diagnosis that they were unwilling to consider reform of the system, were least interested in changing the curriculum or the examination system and strongly favoured some of the more traditional and inappropriate aspects of the old curriculum. the structure of their thought, therefore, had been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped (freire 1971:22). critical interpretation during reading presupposes involvement and experience. rosenblatt (1985), within the freirean discourse, insists on student involvement in the literary event and the treatment of the text more as an experience than a lesson or object to be studied. she identifies two stances that readers can take during literary study – an efferent stance that focuses a reader's attention on information to be retained after reading and an aesthetic stance that occurs when the reader's attention is on the lived-through experience of the text and thoughts, feelings, images and associations which are evoked as the text is read. the latter fosters the development of a reader's understanding of a work's personal significance. an efferent approach, on the other hand, assumes that students’ personal opinions are not valued and that there exists a correct answer which they are expected to reach. an aesthetic stance ensures that students truly live the literary experience and are not encouraged to distance themselves from the text. the efferent approach has been exacerbated by the undue stress placed on new criticism and formalism, theories which encouraged an authoritarian academic environment and canonical cultural expressions. an anglo-american dominance emerged in the 1950s which created a degree of paternalism over educational structures in developing societies. the paternalism evident in these authoritarian concepts rendered students spectators in the academic conversation rather than intellectual participants. the dominance of developed societies reinforced the top-down authority of apartheid education and effectively silenced the majority of learners and thinkers. the task of the teacher was that of ‘filling’ students with ‘hollow, alienated verbosity’ (hill 1990:38). the student mechanically recorded, memorised and repeated the imposed content. freire counters this situation by insisting that there be a determined effort by the lecturer or teacher to relinquish the role of expert and provide the critical, reconstructive space for learners to sort out their contradictions or conflicts, confirm themselves and gain understanding about the richness of other cultures or voices. the teacher's direction of education should include helping learners to become involved in planning education, stimulating them to create the critical capacity to consider and participate in the direction and dream of education, rather than following blindly (freire & macedo 1995:379). this paradigm increases the awareness of the contradictions hidden or distorted by everyday understandings: it creates a critical community in the classroom, empowering learners to rethink their world and reinterpret their experiences. factors such as social convention, class, historical positioning, gender and individual experience result in a multiplicity of readings and meaning construction. there cannot be one ‘real’ meaning because a variety of interpretations place emphasis differently during each stage of the reading process. any student's response to literary texts is naturally conditioned to a certain extent, by the student's own reading experience, cultural background and biases, the more impersonal factors of culture and society, and certain levels of literary competence. the teacher's attempt at constructing the meaning of a text is naturally influenced by subjective bias as well. it is therefore logical that all interpretations of meaning and all meaning construction in literature, because of the subjective nature of the exercise, result in an indefiniteness or infinity of meanings as subjective bias and cultural conditioning deny a single objective or finite truth. the notion of experience and meaning are historically integral to south african writers and readers as the construction of new meaning based on the experiences of the oppressed was more a social and political task than an aesthetic one in the pre-1994 years of struggle. coupled with this social manifesto was a growing determination not to be hampered by the literary conventions or critical and aesthetic demands of the white establishment under apartheid. many african poets realised how irrelevant developed society's literary language was to their experiences. they reflected instead the experiences of the township, adopting an admixture of african grammar, local idiom and jazz rhythm. their works were forged from a collocation of words from afrikaans, english and african languages. these ‘generative words’ are keys to areas of marginalised knowledge or life that the poet wants to open up (finlay & faith 1987:30): they reflect a phonetic richness and contain social, political, economic or cultural implications. this enabled the township reader to identify with the poetry. as a black consciousness strategy, it overtly alienated the conservative academe and by that very alienation was often able to shock readers into a new awareness of the poet's message. perhaps this is why such works are still marginalised from the curriculum. this writing conflicts with the individualistic production model and the capitalist distribution model of developed society's tradition. what is oral, directed at or part of an african community is the ‘other’ and does not fit onto the literary ‘high culture’ tradition. the reconstruction process must of course be guarded against: simply replacing ‘high culture’ content with local content. more appropriately, the process of reconstruction should include the need to engage critically the experiences that learners bring to the classroom. this means that such experiences, in their varied cultural forms, have to be interrogated to uncover their strengths and weaknesses (aronowitz & giroux 1986:156). students should be provided with the skills and knowledge they need in order to transform the world according to their own vision. a major precondition for such an exercise is that students learn how to appropriate the codes and vocabularies of different cultural experiences. diversity was reflected as a foundational criterion in the obe curriculum documents, yet it has been tellingly neglected in the later revisions. provision for critical educational studies in curriculum reconstruction enables learners to see that their understanding of all cultures’ texts (from philosophical treatises to popular television shows) is a result of situatedness in a complex network of gender, class and race relations that provide each subject with a unique set of certain concepts (zavarzadeh & morton 1994:19). students should take into account that reading and meaning change depending on different factors such as background, race, subjectivity, access to knowledge or economic limits. no culture is neutral (apple 1990:1): both freire and foucault remind educators of their task to unmask the assumed neutrality of cultural institutions. the interaction of teacher and student does not take place in a vacuum: education starts from the experiences of people. it either reinforces or challenges existing social forces that keep them passive (wallerstein 1987:33). door (2014) agrees: education practice in action cannot be divorced from the essential nature of the practitioner, who is a psycho-physical unity. change of practice, in the service of humanisation, is possible, but involves not only an intelligent critique of self and world, but awareness of how action is manifesting. (p. 88) similarly, literature is political and serves somebody's interest as it is ‘someone's selection, someone's vision of legitimate knowledge, one that in the process of enfranchising one group's cultural capital disenfranchises another's’ (apple & christian-smith 1991:4). the separation of art from the base of society was evident at the universities which did not acknowledge african writings. this was a deliberate attempt to neglect such artistic expression because of its social and political commitment; not so much because of the constraints of traditional forms and literary conventions. critical literacy top ↑ as a form of social redress, meaning construction, an essential principle of freirean pedagogy, enhances the quality of student readership and critical literacy, whilst critical dialogue and cognition help re-conceptualise the functions of literary studies and didactics. most importantly, it is in keeping with the aim of the curriculum reconstruction programme for the enhancement of critical literacy: as a means of liberating the creative and critical potential of students. caps appears to discount this creative engagement of the learner as individual interpreter in a worrying emphasis on teacher-centred tuition. ennis (1987:10) defines critical thinking, the heart of critical literacy, as a practical reflective activity that has reasonable belief or action as its goal. critical thinking skills that help transform the classroom into a community of inquiry include reasoning skills, inquiry skills, concept-analysis skills and translation skills (lipman 1987:154). cognitive process instruction is more than a shift of emphasis from basic skills; it implies a radical change in our current conception of learning. students can learn only when they are actively involved in piecing together their own ideas, when they have a will to doubt and when their interpretation is respected. the origins of the constructivist approach to cognition are ancient; galileo said: ‘you cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself’ (eds lockhead & clement 1979:2). young (1992:23) maintains that if new knowledge is learnt in a shallow way, it is difficult for the knowledge to be made into the students’ own or form part of their reality. habermas (1984:220) also contends that genuine conceptual learning occurs only when learners make their own sense of knowledge: [t]the curricula of schools are other people's knowledge, imposed on students. not surprisingly, some students do not bother to make personal sense of this knowledge but merely play the school ‘game’ of rote learning and reproducing the curriculum knowledge. a cognitive approach emphasises the role of the student as active participant and not, as habermas warned, a passive recipient. giroux (1991:171), in outlining the cognitive approach, distinguishes between knowledge about learning (univocality, precision, logic) experienced in school as opposed to knowledge of, or the analogic dimension (equivocation, ambiguity, description) experienced by students in the street. if knowledge is a given, it is of a linear or relatively unproblematic nature and does not engage student experience within critical educational studies: it is characteristic of transmission education. the teaching of literature using the traditional didactical approach of transmission education was described by freire as banking education: authoritarian teachers ‘deposit’ knowledge in the students’ minds. this is a process that ‘anaesthetizes and inhibits creative power’ (freire 1971:58). banking education assumes that students’ viewpoints and voices are of secondary importance to the authoritative knowledge passed on by the teacher (freire 1971:58). the paternalism of this approach is essential to the maintenance of an oppressive political and social order (and of the neo-liberalism of the current dispensation): it ensures that students who complete the courses remain passive and unquestioning, stripped of critical literacy. according to hill (1990:70), banking education may be beneficial for the students in particular situations, for example, when motivated learners wish to obtain specific bodies of knowledge within a paradigm with which they are already familiar and knowledgeable. a negative result of banking education is what freire refers to as marginalisation: by promoting myths about reality and maintaining the dominant ideology of the institution, educators oblige learners to be marginalised, on the fringe of, or outside reality. in the usa there have been several productive and informative projects into freirean pedagogy which are pertinent to conditions in south africa. one such study is maxima, a longitudinal study ‘into how teachers translate their multicultural, gender inclusive and socio-constructivist understanding into their own policies’ (zozakiewicz & rodriguez 2007:404). such research marks the direction in which liberal education in the new south africa could be advancing. both schools and universities were guilty of the conspiracy with apartheid prior to 1994 by engaging in the process of marginalisation, exclusion and transmission education. the timely use of a critical educational studies approach might have awakened serious discussion of political principles hidden in the curricula of those educational institutions which endeavoured to stifle vibrant interaction between free thinking and political life. academics and teachers feared that the dominant institutional discourse, the curriculum and their positions might be at risk if the status quo was not maintained. the national commission for higher education (1996:2) reiterated that historically black universities were considered teaching universities and not research universities like their white counterparts. thinking was considered irrelevant to their curriculum as their primary role was to impart knowledge to the unenlightened who came from disadvantaged schools and communities. such a stratified and authoritarian structure – privilege for a minority and deprivation for the majority – could be the result, again, if the country returned to visible pedagogy, which is inferred in much of the caps documentation. some failure in the implementation of obe and constructivist initiatives has led to an over-reaction against freirean thinking in the formulation of caps. the chief relay of visible pedagogy that has overtaken curriculum development in its 2011 iteration, i.e. caps, is textbook production. for example, caps language statements include work schedules for each grade elaborated in fine detail and within strict parameters. publishers, who need to have their books prescribed, respect such minute prerogatives. assessment tasks are designed that are in essence external examinations, divorced from genuine formative assessment practices for learners as early as in grade 4. the ‘critical’ element in the rationales for caps is vitiated in the process of writing by the work schedules for the review panellists. stratification, which was a feature of apartheid education, may thus be re-introduced by means of this unforeseen dominance of publishers’ mercantilist prerogatives. such layering of achievement groups runs counter to the democratic initiatives of critical literacy in the classroom. textbooks are produced for learners with perceived deficits in performance and are class referenced. for example, there are first-additional language (fal) textbooks for ‘rural’ or ‘township’ learners in which the text reflects the ‘lexical pedagogic code’ that bernstein (1990) describes and other fal books for those judged likely to manage a more ‘syntactic’ code. when the books are distributed to broad categories of learners, the reproductive effects of these practices are self-explanatory. learners are provided with material pegged according to their perceived socio-economic status, not marked ‘beginner, elementary or advanced’, which would give them some purchase in evaluating their own progress. by pre-determining the likely competence of learners in this way, identities are inscribed on them. during the apartheid era, the political elite engineered identities to suit the desired distribution of power. at present, commercial interests perpetuate the trajectories of marginalisation by shrinking from the risk that authentic change demands. griffith, a critic of freire's theories, argues that his impassioned preaching on critical pedagogy, cognition and the notions about the necessity for making the student an active, questioning, thinking participant in the formal education process are neither new nor revolutionary (griffith 1972:67). for griffith, freire simply repeats the philosophy of education proposed by dewey (1940). freire acknowledges his indebtedness to dewey (collins 1977:84), but develops dewey's ideas on human experience and proposes that knowledge, as with experience, is historically founded yet continuously changing. this concept regards knowledge as dynamic: it is influenced by power relations and is important in the curriculum reconstruction process. to facilitate such a process, beyer and apple (1988:5) provide a valuable framework that requires us to think about education critically and cognitively by asking a range of questions: epistemological. what should count as knowledge? should we take a behavioural position, one that divides knowledge and knowing into cognitive, affective, and psycho-motor areas, or do we need a less reductive and more integrated picture of knowledge and the mind, one that stresses knowledge as process? political. who shall control the selection and distribution of knowledge and through what institutions? economic. how is the control of knowledge linked to the existing unequal distribution of power, goods and services in society? ideology. what knowledge is of most worth? whose knowledge is it? technical. how shall curricular knowledge be made accessible to students? aesthetic. how do we link curriculum knowledge to the biography and personal meaning of the student? ethical. how shall we treat others responsibly and justly in education? what ideas of moral conduct and community serve as the underpinnings of the ways learners and teachers are treated? historical. what traditions in the field already exist to help us answer these questions? what other resources do we need to go further? by taking these questions into consideration in the process of curriculum reconstruction, we create an educative environment in which cognitive development is central: we begin to understand the reconstruction process as an inherently political and moral one (apple 1979:111). freire's keen understanding that hope ‘is the very matrix for any dialectic between hope itself, anger or indignation, and love’ (freire 2004:xxvii) makes his political project timelier today in view of the dehumanising policies the world is now facing through neo-liberalism and ‘hot-button cowboy militarism’ (macedo 2013:90). unfortunately, within the south african context, there was a tacit inculcation of the belief in the value of literary craftsmanship and liberal culture of the arts resulting in educators, as custodians of knowledge, interpreting texts on behalf of readers. teachers using a cognitive approach will encourage conscientisation in the classroom. behardien (1989:ii) views it as a process of re-interpreting dominant perceptions and denouncing those which do not adequately explain society. conscientisation has to do with the development of a new mode of expression: a critical discourse. students are guided through dialogue to explore and interpret in their own way. the process, similar to dewey’s (1940) problem-solving approach, involves critical questioning, forming opinions, testing hypotheses and making decisions. students are encouraged to see reality clearly and critically, resulting in a positive teaching and learning environment, a sincere appreciation of the value of learning and a development of cognitive skills to solve practical problems. conclusion top ↑ given the current threat of a relapse into rote learning, it was necessary and salutary in the first part of this article to recall the significance of literacy as it represents the myriad of reasons for initially basing the new educational structure upon freirean principles. the second part of the article highlights the role of critical literacy in the recognition of difference and otherness. literacy in its profound sense and critical literacy as exemplar of agentic maturity are essential field-markers in the recuperation of south africa's intellectual and social landscape. south african education needs to take note of such boundaries, re-commit itself and re-embrace a cognitive approach as it is conducive to the development of autonomous, rational young south african citizens. the curriculum 2005 document, which heralded a new era in education, although contentious in some academic circles that felt obe is doomed to fail (jansen 1998:321), correctly shifted priorities in education from learning to thinking and required a redefinition of the function of the classroom. alternative curriculum strategies are necessary to counter the pedagogy of oppression and ensure the intervention of critical educational studies. now there is a danger that education is slipping back to models of visible pedagogy that replicate, in significant ways, pre-1994 practice. critical literacy ensures that we succeed in presenting knowledge as a potentially emancipatory force in learners’ lives. the relation between analysis in the classroom and critical thought in general has to be illuminated so that learners leave the institution with minds of their own and a critical awareness that generates social change. when we develop in learners some of the expertise necessary for decoding structures of signification, we equip them intellectually to read our own practices, our institutions and the world as a text. when this happens, any authoritarian, hierarchical or exclusionary qualities that we reflect in our choice of texts, courses and reading lists, our relations to learners or our teaching strategies, can be identified. such a goal demands curriculum restructuring that encourages learners to see connections between the text and the[ir] world, increasing their perceptions concerning the link between power and truth and exposing them to excluded images of otherness. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. references top ↑ apple, m.w., 1979, ideology and curriculum, routledge, london. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203241219 apple, m.w., 1990, ideology and curriculum, routledge, new york. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203241219 apple, m.w. & christian-smith, l.k., 1991, ‘the politics of the 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cooper (ed.), researching response to literature and the teaching of literature, pp. 33–53, ablex, norwood. spady, w.g., 2008, ‘it's time to end the decade of confusion about obe in south africa’, suid-afrikaanse tydskrif vir natuurwetenskap en tegnologie 27(1), 17–29. umalusi, 2014, what is the caps package? business, commerce and management, umalusi, pretoria. wallerstein, n., 1987, ‘problem-posing education: freire's method for transformation’, in i. shor (ed.), freire for the classroom: a sourcebook for liberatory teaching, pp. 33–44, boynton/cook, portsmouth. windschitl, m., 2002, ‘framing constructivism in practice as the negotiation of dilemmas: an analysis of the conceptual, pedagogical, cultural and political challenges facing teachers’, review of educational research 72(2), 131–175. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/00346543072002131 young, r., 1992, critical theory and classroom talk, multilingual matters, bristol. zavarzadeh, m. & morton, d., 1994, theory as resistance, politics and culture after (post) structuralism, guildford press, london. zozakiewicz, c. & rodriguez, a., 2007, ‘using socio-transformative constructivism to create multicultural and gender-inclusive classrooms: an intervention project for teacher professional development’, educational policy 21, 397–414. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0895904806290126 article information author: lisa zimmerman1 affiliation: 1department of psychology of education, university of south africa, south africa correspondence to: lisa zimmerman postal address: room 6–52, ajh van der walt building, unisa, muckleneuk 0002, south africa dates: received: 29 jan. 2014 accepted: 25 aug. 2014 published: 01 dec. 2014 how to cite this article: zimmerman, l., 2014, ‘lessons learnt: observation of grade 4 reading comprehension teaching in south african schools across the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) 2006 achievement spectrum’, reading & writing  5(1), art. #48, 9 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v5i1.48 copyright notice: © 2014. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. lessons learnt: observation of grade 4 reading comprehension teaching in south african schools across the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) 2006 achievement spectrum in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • the value of lesson observations • quality teaching practices for reading literacy development • research design and methods    • case study design    • case study sampling    • data collection and analysis strategies for the classroom observations • findings    • suitability of text choice and comprehension questions    • lesson exposition: pre-reading activities    • lesson exposition: reading activities    • post-reading activities for the lesson    • teacher-learner interaction • discussion and conclusions • acknowledgements    • competing interests • references • footnotes abstract top ↑ the evidence of the huge challenges of literacy development faced by south african learners is primarily gleaned from the results of learners’ external assessments. there is little research which explores, in-depth, the strategies used by teachers to teach reading literacy and reading comprehension specifically. questions remain about what is going wrong and, most importantly, what can be changed to rectify the poor outcomes of learners. to gain insight into the poor achievement of grade 4 learners, in south africa in the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) 2006, six case studies were undertaken. each school case had a different class average achievement profile ranging from low to high on the pirls achievement scale. this article presents findings from the observation of grade 4 reading comprehension lessons in six schools. the comparison of observations of teaching practices aligned to higher achieving schools, against those of lower performing schools, indicates the discrepancies in the quality of teaching reading comprehension across the schools, and reveals potential foci for teacher development. the value of comparative lesson observation for these purposes is highlighted. introduction top ↑ the majority of the evidence of south african learners’ poor development in reading literacy comes from learners’ results in primary level national (department of education [doe] 2005), regional (moloi & chetty 2010) and international tests of reading literacy. the international association for the evaluation of educational achievement (iea) undertakes one such test, the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls). the pirls is undertaken every five years, and measures grade 4 learners’ reading literacy across many countries and education systems. the sampled learners are assessed using grade 4 level texts with items targeted at literal comprehension or retrieval, simple and complex inference, and examination and evaluation of text features (howie et al. 2012). the achievement of south african grade 4 and grade 5 learners, in pirls 2006, was the lowest of all participating countries and education systems (howie et al. 2008). south african learners participated for a second time in 2011. on this occasion the sampled grade 4 learners completed a shorter, easier test at a lower level of cognitive demand called prepirls, which is a bridge to the more demanding pirls. nevertheless, the learners still performed at a low level in comparison to other participating countries for the prepirls. as with the results for pirls 2006, the learners’ achievement for higher-order comprehension items was particularly problematic (howie et al. 2012).the value of large-scale international assessments such as the pirls cannot be denied. the results and background questionnaire data allow for ‘benchmarking, monitoring, enlightenment, understanding and cross-national research’ (howie & plomp 2006). nevertheless, for the pirls 2006 in south africa, it was difficult to discern any major patterns of response distribution or teaching practices that stood out from the others in the secondary analysis of teacher questionnaire data (zimmerman 2011). in south africa, ‘there have been few published studies that describe and explain the patterns of classroom life that lead to academic achievement or failure’ (fleisch 2008). indeed, as also attested to by pretorius and machet (2004), in the south african research literature there is very little empirical evidence of in-depth research attempts to understand why teachers may experience problems with the teaching of reading literacy, or even thorough descriptions of what they are doing in their classroom practices. this may mean that current interventions may be based on less than solid foundational understandings of what is happening and what is needed to address the difficulties experienced by teachers and schools. in a mixed methods study, emanating from the pirls 2006 (zimmerman 2011), such patterns of classroom life, linked to the implementation of the curriculum for grade 4 learners’ reading literacy development, were investigated. this article specifically presents in-depth findings from the grade 4 reading comprehension lesson observations conducted in six case study schools. it starts with an examination of the potential value of comparative lesson observations to understand classroom processes and then gives brief consideration to what good teachers practice to encourage reading literacy development. thereafter, the research design and methodology, linked to the lesson observations in the six case schools, are outlined and the findings presented. in conclusion, the implications of these findings for teacher development, are discussed. the value of lesson observations top ↑ whilst the rhetoric of improving educational quality stands, in developing countries translation of this rhetoric into practice has not yet occurred (o’sullivan 2006). to better understand and improve learning, examination of what happens in the classroom is needed. albeit the relationships between classroom teaching and learning are complex and many factors inside and outside the school environment affect learners’ achievements, teaching can make a difference to learners’ learning (hiebert et al. 2003). when problems occur with the quality of primary education in developing countries, too often those tasked with addressing the problems do not start by examining the source of the problem: namely teaching and learning processes. officials focus on a political-economic perspective for educational reform, which relies on input indicators linked to resource provision, and output indicators such as achievement to measure educational quality (o’sullivan 2006). o’sullivan (2006) suggests that it is time to use qualitative process indicators such as classroom-based methods, which reflect what is happening in the classroom and provide access to otherwise inaccessible insights for improving quality, when taking context into account. the selected class observation data from the purposively selected qualitative cases, which are reported in this article, were aimed at providing insights into the south african low achievement profile for pirls 2006. this is particularly pertinent given that the teacher questionnaire data yielded limited insight into classroom practices (zimmerman 2011). a comparison of teaching methods is useful as it can shed light on everyday routines and practices, which can be very common and embedded in a context, to the extent that they become invisible as people continue the same practices in the same way. viewing one’s own practices is also the first step to re-examining and then improving them. moreover, looking at the practices of others can help to suggest new practices (hiebert et al. 2003). quality teaching practices for reading literacy development top ↑ teachers in south africa may have an under-developed understanding of teaching literacy, especially reading and writing (doe 2008). schools with high average learner achievement have good teachers. the teachers know their subject matter, have high expectations of their learners, know how to structure the material to be learned and keep good order in the classroom (postlethwaite & ross 1992). they also obtain systematic feedback from learners on which objective types the learners have mastered and help those learners who require improvement in these types. these teachers have a superior grasp of the education system’s aims and a better knowledge of which strategies address them (postethwaite & ross 1992). blair, rupley & nichols (2007) explain the characteristics of these teachers: 1. they understand reading and writing development, and believe all children can learn to read and write. 2. they continually assess children’s individual progress and relate reading instruction to children’s previous experiences. 3. they know a variety of ways to teach reading, when to use each method, and how to combine the methods into an effective instructional program. 4. they offer a variety of materials and texts for children to read. 5. they use flexible grouping strategies to tailor instruction to individual students. 6. they are good reading coaches (that is, they provide help strategically) (p. 433). effective reading teachers also undertake activities at the word, sentence and text level, assisting learners to make connections between these elements. they are able to undertake a wider range of activities which emphasise the use of whole texts to learn about literacy and are less reliant on decontextualized exercises. their lessons follow a brisk pace with the teachers setting time-limits for sub-tasks and refocusing their learners’ attention to the task regularly. they use modelling and demonstration to teach both purposes and processes of literacy. these teachers also use a wide range of questions including open-ended questions about decisions and strategies more frequently than less effective teachers (wray et al. 2000). they emphasise higher-order thinking skills more than lower order skills (taylor et al. 2002). research design and methods top ↑ case study design for the overall mixed methods study (zimmerman 2011), from which the research reported here stems, the use of case studies was aimed at addressing the pirls 2006 teacher survey questionnaire data’s restricted ability to investigate teaching practices and the contexts in which teachers address reading literacy instruction using qualitative research strategies. multiple or collective case studies were used, because looking at a range of similar and contrasting cases can aid the understanding of a single case. this is accomplished by grounding it by specifying how, where and why it occurs (merriam 1998). case study sampling the reclassified pirls 2006 school sample (n = 429) was used for secondary analysis of teacher questionnaire data and purposive school case selections. the reclassification took place on the basis of the mean pirls 2006 achievement performance of the sampled grade 4 class learners of each school (n = 14 299). this was aligned to the pirls international benchmarks and school language profiles1 (english first language [efl]2 or english additional language [eal]3) (zimmerman 2011).for the pirls 2006, learners’ performance ranges were aligned with four set benchmarks along the scoring scale, namely the: low (400); intermediate (475); high (550); and advanced (625) benchmarks. the learners who reached the higher benchmarks had also achieved the knowledge and skills for the lower benchmarks (howie et al. 2012). table 1 outlines the international benchmarks for pirls 2006. the international achievement median for each benchmark is given alongside the median achievement of grade 4 learners from south africa, from the overall pirls 2006 (howie et al. 2008; zimmerman et al. 2011). table 1: south african learners at the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) 2006 international benchmarks. for the reclassified sample for the mixed methods study partly described here, 70% (5.3) of learners tested in english were in efl classes where the class average was below the pirls international benchmarks and all learners tested in an african language were in english as an additional language (eal) classes with an average below this benchmark. for the pirls international benchmarks, only 11% (4.3) of learners were in efl classes where the class average was at the low international benchmark (400), 13% (5.0) of efl learners in classes where their mean class performance reached the intermediate international benchmark (475), and 6% (3.9) in efl classes at the high international benchmark (550). there were no efl learners in classes with a mean performance aligned with the advanced international benchmark (525) (zimmerman 2011). given the learners’ lack of class average representation at the international benchmarks, new benchmarks had to be created to allow for greater insight into group variations between classes, especially those with eal learner cohorts. using additional south african benchmarks, of 175 and 325 and the pirls 2006 low (400), intermediate (475) and high (550) international benchmarks, seven educational profiles were identified for the first phase secondary analysis, and defined by average class performance on the benchmarks and class language (i.e. efl and eal 175, efl and eal 325, efl 400, efl 475 and efl 550) (zimmerman 2011). each of these seven profile samples, for the first phase, provided the sampling frame for case selections in the second phase. for the cases, schools were approached for participation which had mean class performances aligned with each of the pirls 2006 international and south african benchmarks from the school sub-samples in the gauteng province. the efl schools with performance of 550, 475, 400 and 325, as well as an eal school with a performance level at 175, were sampled from gauteng (see table 2 for sample characteristics and pseudonyms). no school at efl 175 was available to participate, in the time allocated for data collection. as the only school in gauteng which had a class average aligned to the efl 475 benchmark declined to participate, a school in kwazulu-natal meeting this criterion was approached and agreed to participate (zimmerman 2011; zimmerman et al. 2011). table 2: school, class and teacher case characteristics. teachers participating in the case studies were qualified and, judging by their age ranges and reported years of teaching, each had much experience. the case teachers, thus, shared characteristics of most teachers for the pirls 2006. the learner profiles at the case study schools were also reflective of the overall profiles of learners for pirls 2006. with the exception of learners from the highest performing schools, most learners for the overall study were in schooling environments which had much learner diversity, in terms of socio economic status (ses) and language. in low-performing schools, the majority of learners were from economically disadvantaged homes. even for the highest percentages of efl, learners in schools with a class average at the pirls low international benchmark (efl 400), more than half of the learners were from disadvantaged homes. in comparison, at high-performing schools, there were only negligible numbers of learners from a disadvantaged background. this ses variation between high and low-performing schools was additionally evidenced for the case study schools (howie et al. 2008; zimmerman 2011). regarding the average class size, for the pirls main study, the international average was 24 learners, whereas south africa had a mean class size of 42 learners, which was also the highest mean of all the participating countries (mullis et al. 2007). as reflected in table 2 above, with the exception of the efl 550 case study school, the rest of the case study schools had class sizes above the international mean class size for pirls 2006. data collection and analysis strategies for the classroom observations for each case, six data sources were collected. these included:• teacher and head of department interviews • learner workbook reviews • photographs of classroom environments • questionnaires • lesson observations there were complementary findings across the analyses of the six data sources, each of which added to the overall explanation of differences in the quality of teaching for reading comprehension for each case and added to the trustworthiness of the findings (zimmerman 2011). however, here the focus is on the lesson observation findings only. one reading comprehension lesson was undertaken by each teacher. this was based on the postulation that giving the teacher the choice of lesson could result in the teacher delivering a lesson based on her ideas of best practice, in teaching reading comprehension. the teacher was also interviewed about the lesson. the analysis of each lesson focused on the suitability of the text and questions chosen for the lesson. the teachers’ lesson expositions were compared and the nature of teacher-learner interactions were scrutinised. findings top ↑ suitability of text choice and comprehension questions the storyline and cognitive level of the texts chosen for the lesson at schools a (efl 550), b (efl 475), c (efl 400) and d (efl 325) were grade appropriate. the school d text had the most words (932), whereas the school f text (eal 175) had the least at 175 words. school a had a 449–word text, whilst those used at schools b, c and e (efl 325) were between 217 words and 311 words. the school b and c texts were more challenging in vocabulary, language and cognitive depth than the school a and d texts. the school c teacher admitted that the text was too difficult for her learners but qualified this by stating that:… sometimes i think it’s important for them to see there is more than just the basics and it’s always good to introduce them to new vocabulary even if it is not totally age-appropriate … the text at the lowest performing school, according to class average, school f, was simplistic with high frequency english words and a storyline offering no higher order thinking opportunities. the text was appropriate for the learners in the class, given their limited exposure to english, but this was not grade appropriate. although the school e text was suitable for the learners’ interests, there was no opportunity for cognitive challenge. the school a, b, c, d and e texts each had a supporting illustration, however, it was only the school a teacher who used this illustration in her lesson for visual literacy. whereas the school f learners were reportedly still concrete-bound in their reading, needing pictures to support their understanding, no illustration was linked to the text that was read. with the exception of school e, the texts read at the other schools each had comprehension questions which were used as part of the lessons. although available in the learners’ reader, no questions were used as part of the lesson at school e. at school d most of the 10 questions required information retrieval. the school f text had only five questions, each of which required straightforward information retrieval. for example: • how old is seipati? • what sickness did seipati have? • where did she get the sickness? at the schools with class averages that met the pirls international benchmarks, each text had 10 questions with a balance of information retrieval, inference and application questions. for example: • what would be the advantages of having miss matthews for a teacher? what would be the disadvantages? (school a) • the writer says scientists like to know about animal behaviour. do you think this is useful to us? give reasons for your answer (school b) • explain why: jim sat still, not daring to move? (school c) a further 10 questions, mostly requiring inference or application, were included in the comprehension lesson for the school c learners. this revealed attempts at differentiation of content according to ability. concerning this the teacher explained: there’s a selection of comprehension questions. for my average learners they will answer the questions we asked in class in full sentences in their workbooks, then i’ve got an extension exercise, which are more challenging questions, i think there’s about ten [for] my faster, sharper workers. lesson exposition: pre-reading activities the school b teacher did not provide any introduction to the lesson, whereas the school f teacher merely pointed out that she would read a story and ask the learners to listen carefully. in this way, both the school b and f teachers missed opportunities to extend the learners’ experiences beyond the content of the text, particularly as both indicated that the lessons fed into cross-curricular themes, from other subject areas at the time. the school c and d teachers did indicate the title of the story that the learners were about to read and this was briefly discussed. whilst the school c teacher then explained the story in relation to its title, the school d teacher did not. rather, the school d teacher’s discussion centred on facts about the two animals named in the title of the text to be read. the school e teacher attempted a general discussion with the learners at the beginning of the lesson, which presumably was meant to link to the text’s topic. however, the teacher did not expressly make these links during her introduction, making the discussion redundant, especially as the learners could not relate to her approach. after the lesson the teacher did acknowledge that the approach had not worked. in contrast, the school a teacher discussed a general event taking place at the time of the lesson and skilfully led this discussion onto the topic of the text to be read. two other pre-reading activities were then undertaken. firstly, the teacher undertook a vocabulary extension activity using three words from the text to be read. she placed each of these words on the board, discussing them one-by-one. for one word, the teacher asked for a synonym, and for another word pointed out that it was a homonym. the teacher also asked the learners to identify the parts of speech of each word, who did not hesitate to respond. language structure and use was not integrated into any comprehension lesson observed at the other schools. secondly, the teacher included a visual literacy activity using a picture from the text to be read. the learners were asked about the two characters depicted and how they could tell that they were not the same age. in this way, the learners’ interest in the story was piqued and they were already using higher order thinking skills to engage with the comprehension text. the school c teacher also went through a list of eight new vocabulary words at the beginning of the lesson. perhaps indicating the time it takes to support second language learners’ understanding of new vocabulary, the process took at least a quarter of the lesson to complete prior to the reading of the story. the teacher explained that: there are times when we do the vocabulary lesson a day before and then we do the comprehension a day later and sometimes i introduce dictionary work with new vocabulary, so they have a vocabulary exercise, learning how to use a dictionary and then we go on to the comprehension exercise so they are familiar the dictionary meaning, the general use meaning of it and then contextually. lesson exposition: reading activities the school b, c and f teachers read the text aloud to their learners. the school b and c teachers paused during the reading to explain words, summarise the text, emphasise a point or discuss content. the school c learners were also asked for their opinions. the school f teacher read the text aloud a second time but no discussions or explanations occurred during either reading. one learner read the first sentence and another read the last sentence after the teacher had helped him to find it. the school f teacher did later acknowledge that she should have allowed more learners to read aloud. at schools d and e a few learners read the story aloud individually. at school d, three learners read the first segment of text. as with the school b and c teachers, the school d teacher interjected during the learners’ reading to ask questions or explain words. as the entire text was split into three segments, with questions after each, the teacher would also discuss the questions orally after each segment. at school e, the teacher then did a vocabulary extension activity which required the learners to read and underline words in the text that they did not understand. eight of these were written on the board and discussed in class. thereafter, the teacher encouraged her learners to read the text aloud together. it was only at school a that multiple reading activities were undertaken. prior to handing out the text, the teacher placed a paragraph from the text on the overhead projector and asked the learners to read it silently on their own and then together aloud as a class. the teacher then asked questions about the paragraph before reading the whole text to the learners, and asked them to predict what would happen next at the end of the story, before getting them to apply the story to a scenario in their own life. post-reading activities for the lesson post-reading activities involved either discussion or the answering of comprehension questions, or both of these activities, for each of the lessons observed. although undertaken differently in each class, reading through the questions was a strategy at schools a, b, c, d and f.at school b the teacher first asked one inference question after reading the text and facilitated the class to respond orally to the first three comprehension questions about the text. thereafter, the teacher read through the other questions with the learners without discussing the answers. she did, however, point out what some questions would require from the learners. the learners then took out their books and spent the rest of the lesson answering the questions. at schools c, d and f, comprehension questions were discussed orally after which the learners answered them in their books. when initiating discussions of the questions, the school c and d teachers undertook further probing with their learners, for meaning around the issue under consideration. although minimal, the school d and f teachers also discussed factual content for cross-curricular integration with other subject areas. the teachers did not make any cross-curricular links explicit. at school a, the post-reading phase was much more strategically organised than for the other lessons observed. the school a teacher read through each question with her learners. although she did not discuss the answers, as the comprehension was to be used as an assessment task, she did discuss the answering requirements for some of the questions. learners were required to circle those which required only a one, two or three-word response, and they had to highlight the keywords in each of the questions provided. at this point the teacher first handed out the full text to the learners, then re-read the story to them, requesting them to find the answers to the comprehension whilst she read. as the teacher explained: normally some people … give them … [the text] first … and then they would give them the questions, but i work differently from this because i feel if you are reading the questions you must know what you’re going to be finding out. it is no use just reading this and then saying, ‘oh well, these are the questions’ … so … i always give both but i always start with my questions … what was also quite a good idea, was to bring out a part of the story and say, ‘okay, what do you think?’ with the predictions, okay, predicting the outcome, that i think is also very important. at school e the teacher used the post-reading phase to continue the vocabulary extension exercise started during the reading phase. she explained that the learners should write a sentence including all of the words that they did not understand from the text. it was only at this point that the teacher briefly asked learners about what happened in the story. only facts were described and the teacher did not probe for any further meaning from the learners. the learners then continued with the vocabulary extension activities in their books for the rest of the period. teacher-learner interaction the school a teacher asked questions which required learners to think and reason throughout the lesson, encouraging multiple learner perspectives. the following teacher (t) and learner (l) dialogue is an example of interactions in the class:t: ‘first of all, tell me how many characters do you see here?’ l: ‘two’. t: ‘two. okay, what do you notice about the character on the left?’ l: ‘it’s a robot.’ t: ‘how do you know she’s a robot?’ l: ‘because they’re plugging her in.’ t: ‘they’re plugging her in. right … if you compare the ages do you think they’re similar or different in age?’ l: ‘different.’ t: ‘how do you know that?’ l: ‘because the one is older and the other one is younger.’ t: ‘what makes her look older?’ l: ‘her skin.’ t: ‘her skin. yes?’ l: ‘it looks like she’s worn out.’ t: ‘okay. yes?’ l: ‘she looks frail.’ t: ‘she looks rather frail, well done.’ l: ‘she’s wearing glasses.’ t: ‘so you think older people wear glasses?’ l: ‘yes’ t: ‘okay, that’s when we start losing the sight. yes, you?’ l: ‘the dress that she’s wearing, we don’t normally wear that sort of dress.’ t: ‘excellent. okay, the fashion is different, well done.’ the school a learners remained engaged throughout the lesson and had no difficulties in responding to questions and discussions. the answers and reasons provided by learners revealed their above-average thinking and reasoning skills and advanced vocabularies. nor were the learners afraid to question further when they wanted clarification of a task. they responded very quickly to prompts to use certain comprehension techniques, perhaps suggesting that these skills had been inculcated in the learners to a point of automaticity. the school b learners freely engaged in the lesson by stating their opinions, which were acknowledged and accepted by the teacher. the learners did not seem to have any difficulties with the vocabulary in the text or the comprehension questions. no detailed discussions were held around the content of or questions for the story. the school c learners eagerly participated in the lesson, answering questions posed by the teacher and stating their opinions. the teacher asked questions whilst reading the story and discussed issues around the content of the text with the learners. the teacher encouraged multiple perspectives by seeking multiple answers to questions. the learners struggled with the vocabulary of the story but the teacher was able to scaffold their understanding through discussion. the school d learners were interested in the lesson and participated in answering questions posed by the teacher. however, when questioned directly by the teacher it was obvious that a few learners were largely unaware of what was going on in the lesson, due either to incomprehension or distraction. the teacher sometimes code-switched to explain a concept and allowed the learners to do so when answering questions. sometimes a child answered a question and the teacher repeated the answer and summarised or elaborated it. the teacher did listen to different opinions expressed and did attempt to probe for meaning, although sometimes she failed to follow through with these attempts. in one instance, the teacher’s discussion moved off-task from the content of the text revolving around the discussion of facts. the school e learners were not always able to answer the teacher’s questions. the teacher did attempt to probe for meaning during the introduction to the story but the learners could not relate to this, probably as a result of a lack of prior knowledge upon which to draw. other questions that the teacher asked tended to be closed or required retrieval of information only. the teacher only asked the learners to explain their answers further in a few instances. at school f, the learners were passive and non-responsive to the closed questions that the teacher posed. in some instances, when a learner did respond, it was clear that he or she had not understood the story at all. question and discussion by the teacher was simplistic, involving no thinking or reasoning by the learners, as evidenced by the following teacher-learner dialogue: t: ‘did seipati have tb? what kind of sickness did she have?’ l: ‘hiv.’ t: ‘so do you think so?’ l: ‘no.’ t: ‘he is saying hiv.’ l: ‘aids.’ t: ‘aids, very good.’ later during the analysis of a learner’s workbooks it was discovered that the learners had already completed a comprehension exercise with the same passage the week prior to the classroom observation. thus, even with repetition the learners were not able to comprehend the text or answer the questions. the teacher did code-switch briefly to sepedi at stages during the lesson. discussion and conclusions top ↑ a strength of this study was the sampling strategy, which allowed for the scrutiny of teaching practices in a range of schools, both high and low-performing, on the pirls 2006 achievement scale. in particular, the lesson observation comparisons, linked to achievement differences, led to examination of the quality of teaching practices for reading comprehension. there were differences in the quality of the text and comprehension questions used, as well as in the nature of the presentations of the lessons, their content and the teacher and learner interactions. the discrepancies in the quality of texts used, and comprehension questions generated, suggest that teachers may not know how to select developmentally appropriate texts and, particularly in low-performing schools, may not know how to generate questions for comprehension purposes. teachers may not actively engage the text, and the questions they choose, to ensure that the text has enough content to support the balanced use of lower order retrieval as well as higher order questions. there is a risk that teachers may blindly follow the suggested questions provided with a text in a textbook, without questioning the educational value thereof for their particular group of learners. teachers may ask retrieval questions only during oral questioning too and may not attempt to elicit the learners’ higher-order thinking and reasoning. this creates a situation wherein learners may not have enough exposure to the type of questions needed for further development of higher order thinking and reasoning skills. coupled with this, it may be difficult for teachers to work at a grade appropriate level and pace with their learners. this may result from reading and comprehension backlogs dating back to the foundation phase, and which may also result from the majority of the learners’ english being at additional language status in grade 4. as attested to by the results of south african learners in the pirls 2006 and prepirls 2011, a lack of development of comprehension skills places learners at a serious disadvantage in later schooling. moreover, teachers in the intermediate phase may not focus enough on higher order comprehension development either, resulting from a lack of understanding of its importance. in terms of teaching expertise apparent in the lesson expositions, it was only the teacher at the highest performing school, a, (efl 550), who clearly displayed the teaching skills apparent in the literature on effective reading teachers (blair et al. 2007; taylor et al. 2002; wray et al. 2000). in the pre-reading phase, which displayed the use of a wide range of activities, the teacher was able to integrate vocabulary extension, and the purposes and processes of literacy, by integrating language elements and visual literacy in the form of evaluative comprehension. the other teachers focused on vocabulary exposition, briefly discussed the title or jumped straight into the reading of the text, and missed key teaching and learning opportunities for reading comprehension development in the process. during the reading phase of the lesson, the school a teacher was also the only teacher to use multiple reading and comprehension strategies in the lesson. as an effective reading teacher, she knew a variety of ways to teach reading and provided help strategically (blair et al. 2007). the school a teacher was also the only teacher who modelled multiple comprehension strategies to the learners in the post-reading phase. the post-reading comprehension-answering stages in the classrooms at the other schools were far less dynamic and one-dimensional, involving only oral questioning and written comprehension exercises. the differences in the quality of the teacher-learner interactions, between those schools with class averages above the pirls international benchmarks (a, b, c) and those with very low class average performance, below the international benchmarks, (d, e, f), were also marked. whereas learners in school a, b and c openly engaged with the teacher and were at ease, stating opinions and answering questions at a high level, the learners in the low-performing schools, however, were not at ease with responses of this sort. taken together, these findings from the lesson observations suggest that south african teachers may need opportunities to develop their abilities to successfully undertake classroom reading comprehension development. it would seem that teachers may not know how to teach reading comprehension effectively, utilising multiple reading and comprehension strategies. moreover, they may not be aware of the fundamental importance of ensuring that learners have repeated exposure to opportunities for the development of higher order thinking and reasoning processes. subsequent to this study, a new curriculum has been implemented in the form of curriculum and assessment policy statements (caps) in 2011. alongside the introduction of learner workbooks which are prescriptive for curriculum implementation, there are many guidelines for teachers regarding what to teach in terms of language. nonetheless, as pudi (2006) points out, the teacher is the filter through which the intended curriculum must pass. simply instituting new policies will not necessarily enhance learning. rather, effective policies require implementation by teachers, with their learners, in the classroom. of course, factors such as sufficient funding for adequate schools, classrooms and textbooks and qualified teachers and catering for learners, according to socioeconomic needs, do impact classroom learning, but once these are satisfied, the actions of teachers, learners and their parents matter most in learning outcomes. it is unlikely that the learners’ social status or quality of educational infrastructure will change drastically in the short-term, thus, teachers should implement classroom factors that enhance learning (todd & mason 2005). regardless of the language of instruction in the foundation phase and in the further phases of schooling, reading literacy teaching and learning needs to focus not only on decoding and basic, literal understanding, but also on exposure to higher order comprehension development. both pre-service and in-service teacher development initiatives, for reading literacy, need to be focused on ensuring that teachers have an in-depth understanding of several things. these include how to teach learners to comprehend, how to select developmentally appropriate teaching and learning materials for these purposes, differentiated instruction to cater for diverse learning needs and how to maximise opportunities for comprehension. teachers should know how to model comprehension strategies for learners and they need to know how to ensure learners are actively engaged in classroom dialogue for comprehension purposes. without opportunities provided by their teachers, to develop these skills, learners will struggle to progress in their further education and the quality of educational outcomes needed in the country will remain elusive. acknowledgements top ↑ the author is grateful to the centre for evaluation and assessment at the university of pretoria (south africa) for supporting this research. competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references top ↑ blair, t.r., rupley, w.h. & nichols, w.d., 2007, ‘the effective teacher of reading: considering the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of 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howie, s.j., & smit, b., 2011, ‘time to go back to the drawing board: organisation of primary school reading development in south africa’, educational research and evaluation 4, 215–232. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13803611.2011.620339 footnotes top ↑ 1.learner performance data for schools with learners tested in afrikaans were removed from the sample. 2.the schools where the language of instruction had not changed at grade 4 were referred to as efl schools. it is recognised that learners who learn in english from school entrance, at the foundation phase, are taught via the english home language (ehl) curriculum (department of basic education [dbe] 2011). however, this terminology (i.e. ehl) was not used to identify learners for this study, as these learners are not necessarily from english home language backgrounds and were rather considered to be learning in english as a first or main language of instruction. 3.schools where the language medium had changed at grade 4 were referred to as eal medium schools. although these eal learners learn in english, as the main language of instruction from grade 4, the learners were assessed in the language of instruction from grade 1 to grade 3, which was an african language, for pirls 2006. abstract introduction theoretical framework rural education in south africa factors affecting the reading performance of learners in south africa research methodology presentation of findings discussion of findings conclusion recommendations acknowledgements references about the author(s) madoda cekiso department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa tsielo rabelemane department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa jay jadezweni department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa itani p. mandende department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa marius dieperink department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa citation cekiso, m., rabelemane, t., jadezweni, j., mandende, i.p. & dieperink, m., 2022, ‘factors affecting grade 6 learners’ reading performance in a rural school in maluti, south africa’, reading & writing 13(1), a327. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v13i1.327 original research factors affecting grade 6 learners’ reading performance in a rural school in maluti, south africa madoda cekiso, tsielo rabelemane, jay jadezweni, itani p. mandende, marius dieperink received: 02 july 2021; accepted: 14 feb. 2022; published: 31 may 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: rural learners face severe reading challenges that are unique to their environment. the challenges include parents’ low level of education, little or no parental support, lack of reading material, and parents’ low socio-economic status. it is therefore important that rural education research highlights these challenges in order to help in addressing them. objectives: the study sought to explore the factors affecting the reading performance of grade 6 learners from the maluti district in the eastern cape. methods: the study was qualitative in nature and a case study design was followed. semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 purposively selected learners. vygotsky’s sociocultural theory was used as a theoretical framework to anchor the study. content analysis was used to analyse the data. results: the findings showed that the reading performance of learners from rural areas such as the maluti district was affected by several factors, specifically, the low level of education of their parents, a home environment that is not conducive for after-school reading, the parents’ socio-economic status, and non-availability of reading material at school and at home. conclusion: recommendations are made for appropriate interventions that seek to overcome the identified factors that hinder rural learners’ reading performance. the study identified a number of contributing factors that are likely to serve as barriers to rural learners’ reading performance. knowing these factors is likely to assist teachers in making educated judgements regarding the teaching methods and the appropriate strategies to employ to help learners overcome the identified barriers to reading. keywords: illiteracy; reading performance; maluti district; sociocultural theory; quantile schools. introduction reading is an important skill that helps learners find and communicate information, and its performance is governed by a variety of factors. the level of performance that learners demonstrate in this skill has implications for teaching and learning. subsequently, the current study aims to identify factors that are associated with the reading performance of grade 6 learners in a rural context. according to the program for international student assessment (pisa 2021), reading performance measures the capacity to understand, use and reflect on written texts in order to achieve goals, develop knowledge and potential, and participate in society. it entails decoding skills that enable children to read a text, as well as meaning-making or comprehension skills that enable children to understand, engage and get involved with a piece of text. however, the status of south african learners’ reading performance is far from those outlined by pisa. south african learners’ reading levels have been under scrutiny due to their poor performance in comparison with their counterparts in other countries (rule & land 2017; spaull 2016, 2017; willenberg 2018). howie et al. (2017) reported on the factors specifically related to grade 4 learners’ poor reading performance in the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls 2016). these factors include economically disadvantaged backgrounds of the majority of the learners, resource shortages in schools, teacher absenteeism, teachers’ failure to complete the curriculum, teachers without the minimum formal qualification, parents’ low level of education, parents’ lack of involvement with the school, and parents’ lack of participation in their children’s education. the reading performance of grade 6 learners in south africa, manifests in national as well as international reading comprehension evaluation tests. for example, the scores attained by south african grade 6 learners in the 2017 southern and eastern africa consortium for monitoring educational quality (sacmeq iii) evaluation paint a gloomy picture of the reading performance of the south african grade 6 learners. in this regard, spaull (2017) used the 2017 sacmed iii data set for south africa to identify those factors that had a significant effect on learners’ reading performance in grade 6. based on the findings of his study, he concluded that the ‘socio-economic status of the school is important when understanding learner success or failure’ (spaull 2017:1). the results of the study conducted by spaull further showed that the sacmed iii data set confirmed disparities regarding the reading performance of grade 6 learners. specifically, the disparity was between the learners from wealthy and poor schools, which reflects inequalities in south africa. further accounting for the disparities in south african education, du plessis and mestry (2019) observed that learners falling in the lowest wealth quintile, especially those in the rural context, ‘face severe challenges that are unique to their environment’. in addition, du plessis and mestry are of the view that among the challenges are counted the lack of parental interest in children’s education, insufficient funding from the state, lack of resources, underqualified teachers, and multi-grade teaching. du plessis and mestry argue that these factors serve as barriers to effective education, specifically reading with comprehension, whereas the factors that affect the reading performance of learners in the highest wealth quintile has a facilitative effect on the learners’ reading performance. the inequality that manifests itself in the school system in south africa is a concern that has drawn the attention of many scholars who draw a distinction between equality and equity in education (mcmillan 2019; mcneel 2019; peetz 2019; wilson 2019). agreeing with this, gunn (2018) states that while equality is often associated with access and outcomes, equity recognises that different learners need different resources to achieve the same goals as their peers. as mentioned in the previous paragraph, rural learners face severe learning challenges that are unique to their environment. lester (2012) furthermore points out that researchers on rural issues emphasise several characteristics of rural education that make the context unique. supporting this view, balfour, de lange and khau (2012) assert that rural education research should address the challenges peculiar to rural schools. they moreover lament the fact that rural research is under-researched and underdeveloped in south africa. therefore, rurality as an area of study forms the context of the current study as its aim is to focus on the factors affecting the reading performance of grade 6 rural learners. consequently, identifying the contributing factors to the learners’ reading performance is likely to help teachers find ways to overcome the reading barriers. in other words, knowing the risks that hinder the reading process is likely to help teachers make informed decisions about the teaching methods and strategies to use to help overcome the barriers to reading in the rural context. therefore, informed by the above-discussed literature, the current study sought to address the following research question: what are the perceptions of the grade 6 learners in the selected rural primary school of the factors affecting their reading performance? theoretical framework the study was underpinned by vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. vygotsky (1978) strongly believes that community and the environment play an important role in the process of making meaning by the learners. the main point of this theory is that individual development cannot be understood without reference to the social and cultural context within which it is embedded. vygotsky believes that learning occurs through the social interaction with a skilful tutor or individuals with more knowledge or experience. this could be a parent, teacher or the child’s peers. in the context of the reading process, the support provided by those individuals with more knowledge and experience is likely to facilitate the learners’ comprehension of the text, thereby improving their reading performance. vygotsky’s theory also emphasises the role of culture in learning. mirenoko and sorokin (2018) argue that culture includes material objects like artefacts, ranging from a planetary scale to jewellery. culture also includes non-material components like languages, literature, art, science, and external processes ranging from individual to collective modes of behaviour and internal processes like individual psyche. the relationship between culture and reading is acknowledged by yousef, karimi and janfeshan (2014), who conducted research on the relationship between cultural background and reading comprehension. the results of their study revealed that the means of all the groups regarding culturally familiar reading texts were higher than their means on unfamiliar context reading texts. therefore, the way learners make sense of the reading material is determined by their cultural beliefs about the content of their reading. in the context of this study, the social and cultural beliefs of the rural learners could be different from those of the urban learners. this could serve as a determinant of the differences in their reading performance. rural education in south africa although south africa is a signatory to international protocols like the sustainable development goals (sdgs), the education system in south africa is still regarded as ‘a tale of two systems’ (spaull 2012:1). the literature reveals that there is a huge gap between urban and rural schools and this gap manifests itself in the academic performance of the learners, especially their reading performance (blease & condy 2014; du plessis & mestry 2019; spaull 2017). chakanika et al. (2012) view the disparity between urban and rural schools as a challenge that affects the whole african continent. in their study they identified factors such as lack of qualified teaching staff in rural areas, and factors that make it difficult for learners and teachers to attend rural schools, as contributing factors to the disparity between rural and urban schools. in a south african context, dube (2020) conducted a study that sought to determine the challenges faced by rural learners in the context of covid-19. the results of her study indicated that, while the south african government was promoting online learning as the only alternative in the context of covid-19, this mode excluded many rural learners from teaching and learning due to a lack of resources to connect to the internet, the system that governs learning, and low-tech software. another similar study that focused on the learning challenges in the rural context was conducted by du plessis and mestry (2019). the results of this study produced findings that were similar to previous studies. specifically, du plessis and mestry observed that poor infrastructure and facilities, lack of qualified teachers, poor teachers’ status, the unattractiveness of rural areas and curriculum challenges were the factors that posed barriers to the reading proficiency of the rural learners. the research shows that these factors put rural learners at a disadvantage with regard to learning. the main concern here is that the rural learners are exposed to the same curriculum and are expected to achieve the same learning outcomes as the urban learners, yet the learning support provided to the two groups is not the same. thus, our focus in this study is on equity, which is defined by gunn (2018) as the recognition that different learners need different resources to achieve the same goals as their peers. in the context of the current study, the authors are investigating the reading support that is likely to elevate or improve the reading performance of rural learners so that it is on par with that of urban learners. factors affecting the reading performance of learners in south africa various researchers have looked into the factors that influence learners’ reading proficiency. van staden and bosker (2014), for example, conducted a study in south africa to discover factors that predict reading literacy proficiency among grade 4 learners. the findings of their study speak to the importance of encouraging engaged reading and instilling a love of reading in children from an early age, particularly through parental participation. as previously stated, du plessis and mestry (2019) conducted a study in which they investigated the perceptions and experiences of teachers at rural schools in the town of white river in mpumalanga. the investigation found that most of the schools lacked water, sanitation, or electricity and that classrooms were in poor condition. they concluded that these challenges have significant ramifications for successful teaching and learning, which holds true for reading instruction. mulford and johns (2004) conducted a similar investigation. they found that many rural schools lacked the minimum physical resources and basic infrastructure. they went on to mention that learners in rural regions are at a disadvantage when it comes to reading to learn, because of their parents’ low socio-economic position. this is because most parents in rural areas work part time, have low levels of education and do not place high importance on education (du plessis & mestry 2019:1). based on the factors identified by du plessis and mestry, it is apparent that parents who are illiterate and unemployed are likely to face challenges in purchasing reading materials for their children and supporting and motivating them to read. a study by naidoo, reddy and dorasamy (2012, 2014) furthermore attempted to understand teacher opinions on factors impacting reading literacy and solutions for improvement. the use of english as a medium of teaching, socio-economic obstacles especially little or no parental support, and high classroom size were highlighted as impediments to learners’ mastery of reading in their study. in other contexts outside south africa, the factors inhibiting rural learners’ reading development are similar. in the context of nigeria, olakunle and christiana (2018) conducted a study that sought to examine learners’ interest in reading and the availability of reading materials as they relate to and predict learners’ achievement in english reading comprehension. the findings of their study revealed that learners’ interest in reading and the availability of reading material were strongly related to their english reading comprehension, although only reading material could significantly predict learners’ reading comprehension accomplishment. dolean et al. (2019) conducted a study in romania on the factors affecting learners’ reading proficiency in multi-grade courses in rural elementary schools. the results showed that the teachers’ scope of experience in teaching had a substantial impact on reading performance. thus, the need to investigate rural learners’ reading performance factors is crucial. the study seeks to determine the factors that influence the reading performance of a grade 6 class in a rural context in south africa. research methodology research design a case study design was used in this qualitative investigation. qualitative approaches, according to hammerberg, kirkman and lacey (2016) are used to answer questions regarding experience, meaning, and perspective, most commonly from the participant’s perspective. because the focus of the current study was on the factors affecting learners’ reading performance, this method was deemed appropriate as the selected learners were better positioned to share their reading experiences. specifically, an explanatory case study was used to do a causal investigation of the factors affecting the reading performance of grade 6 rural learners. in this study, 10 grade 6 rural learners represented the case to be investigated, regarding their reading performance. participants the school where the research was conducted is located in the maluti district in the eastern cape. ten grade 6 learners were voluntarily selected for the purpose of the study. sharma (2017:752) describes a voluntary or self-selection sampling technique as being appropriate ‘when we want to allow units or cases, whether individuals or organisations to choose to take part in research on their own accord’. the mother tongue of the 10 volunteered learners is sesotho and they chose to be interviewed in sesotho. this did not present a problem as one of the researchers is a sesotho speaker. the school was selected because it was close to one of the researchers. all the participating learners were doing english first additional language (efal). they were between the ages of 11 and 15 years and the sample consisted of five girls and five boys. data collection methods semi-structured interviews of 40–50 min each were conducted at their school with 10 efal rural learners. semi-structured interviews allowed the researchers to ask follow-up questions to get deeper detail of explanations from the participants (maree, 2007). therefore, the aim of qualitative interviews is to see the world through the eyes of the participant. in this study, the researcher who conducted interviews asked questions related to the factors affecting participants’ reading performance. the following are some examples of the questions: are your parents able to read? do your parents show interest in your schoolwork? do your parents assist with your reading activity at home? do you have books to read at home? are your parents employed? do your parents buy you reading material like magazines and newspapers? as the researcher could not capture everything in his memory, he decided to take notes so that these notes could assist him in the data analysis. this technique helped the researcher to capture the exact phrases made by respondents. in addition, the researcher recorded the interviews with the permission of the participants. data analysis thematic analysis was used to analyse the collected data. braun and clarke (2006) define thematic analysis as a method for analysing qualitative data that entails searching across a data set to identify, analyse and report repeated patterns. following this method, the transcribed data from the interviews were coded. a deductive approach to data analysis was implemented. we created broad topical categories of interest-based on the research question and interview questions. after that, we sorted the data into those categories. four themes emerged from the coding. these are (1) the education level of parents, (2) learner’s home environment, (3) the economic status of parents, and (4) availability or non-availability of reading resources. to answer the study questions, these themes were analysed and presented in writing. ethical considerations as the ages of the learners ranged between 11 and 15 years, their parents and guardians were requested to fill in the consent forms. learners were also asked to complete the assent forms to show their willingness to participate in the study. the researcher assured the participants of anonymity and confidentiality. ethical clearance was obtained from the department of basic education and permission was requested and attained from the school principal. presentation of findings in order to address the research question posed in the introduction, the themes that sought to provide answers are presented in the following discussion. learners were assigned codes to hide their identities; the codes ranged from l1 to l10, where l indicates learner. the order of the learners was determined by the order in which they were interviewed. for example, the learner who was interviewed first is l1. as already indicated above, four themes emanated from the data. each theme and its effect on the reading performance of the rural learners is discussed below. theme 1: the education level of parents based on the collected data, 6 learners out of 10 indicated that their mothers could not read, while 8 learners indicated the same regarding their fathers. only four learners indicated that their mothers could write, and two learners indicated that their fathers could write. it was clear that the majority of the selected learners were parented by people who were not able to read and write, and who were illiterate. in addition, the majority of learners declared that their parents had never been to school and as such showed no interest in their schoolwork. the following verbatim quotes support the above narrative: ‘no sir, my parents cannot read nor write. my parents never went to school. they cannot read; they cannot write. both of them told me the first time i asked them to assist me for reading and writing that they are not teachers. they believe that teachers should do their work at school that is why they send me to school.’ (l1, female, 13 years old) ‘yes, it is only my mother who is able to read though she passed grade 2. my father never went to school. he cannot read and cannot write. my mother always tell me that i am in an advanced grade than her. she, therefore, cannot assist me. my father gets angry when i ask him for any help. i understand him because he has never been to school. they both told me what the job of the teachers was if they were to teach me again.’ (l6, male, 15 years old) ‘yes sir, both of my parents are able to read. my father passed grade 8. my mother passed grade 10. my mother is the one who is always keen to assist me. although i think my father is in a position to assist me, he is lazy. he does not like schoolwork and he always tell me that the work he is doing at home keeps him busy and he is always tired.’ (3, male, 14 years old) ‘my parents said they never attended any formal schooling and as such are illiterate. they told me to understand that they could not assist me with any reading and writing. to them, for that matter, i was more educated than them. this worries me because sometimes i ask them to assist me with the general knowledge like isixhosa idioms but they do not want to assist at all.’ (l7, female, 14 years old) ‘it is only my mother who attended up to grade 9 while my father attended up to grade 2 level of education. my father who could be assisting me is always away on duty. he is a truckdriver. some days he is away for weeks and come home for a short time and always claims to be tired.’ (l10, male, 13 years old) ‘my mother passed grade 1 only. she claims to be busy to do a teacher’s work as she was not trained to be a teacher.’ (l5, female, 13 years old) based on the above quotes, the majority of the parents of the sampled grade 6 learners were not in a position to assist their children with their schoolwork, owing to their low level of education, or no schooling at all in some instances. this is unfortunate given the important role parents are supposed to play in the education of their children, especially in motivating and helping their children to read. in this context illiteracy is a barrier for the parents providing educational support to their children. more specifically, if the majority of the parents cannot read, it is unlikely they will teach their children to read. this is unfortunate given the reading challenges that south african learners experience. asked if the parents showed any interest in the learners’ schoolwork, 6 learners out of 10 indicated that their parents did not show an interest in their studies. the learners also doubted if their parents were aware of their responsibility regarding the role they were supposed to play in their child’s education. the followings were learners’ responses: ‘my parents do not show any interest in my studies and they do not even ask what we did at school. my mother works as a cleaner and my father is a security guard. when i ask them to help me with reading and writing my homework they tell me that their duty is to feed me and my role is to do school work as a learner.’ (l9, male 13 years old) ‘my parents are very passionate about my studies. their passion is only shown in the form of a conversation and nothing beyond that. when i invite them to assist me they tell me that they are adults and cannot find themselves to be learners again.’ (l4, female, 12 years old) ‘my parents occupy me with household chores not the school activities. to my parents, i have a lot of time at school from monday to friday starting from morning up to the afternoon. at least when i come home i should relieve them with house chores. they give me no time for doing homework reading and writing.’ (l1, female, 13 years old) ‘no, my parents do not seem to know their responsibilities concerning my studies because every time after school all i am instructed to do is to herd cattle rather than doing my home works or study.’ (l7, female, 14 years old) ‘no, my parents do not know their responsibilities because i am always left at home to look after my younger siblings after school and they do not attend any school meetings. they do not even assist me with reading and writing whatsoever.’ (l4, female, 12 years old) ‘no, sir, my parents never assisted me not even for a single day as they are always busy with household chores. both parents told me that their duty is to feed me and buy clothes for me and not to bother them with school work when they are busy. my parents passed grade 1.’ (l2, male, 15 years old) ‘no, sir, my parents do not assist me at all as they always claim there were also never assisted by their parent during their times. they told me that i should tell my teachers to resign if they are tired of working or i should stop going to school if i do not want to learn. they both passed grade 4.’ (l9, male, 13 years old) ‘sometimes my mother assists me when she is available as she works far away from home and is not always there and she sometimes comes home exhausted. she admits though that she cannot understand other tasks as they belong to an upper grade than the one that she passed which is grade 3.’ (l10, male, 13 years old) the above quotes point towards the education level of the parents and show that parents’ ignorance as far as reading is concerned is a barrier to improving their children’s reading performance. the parents’ lack of education and motivation towards their children’s schoolwork might furthermore be depriving their children of the opportunity to do their schoolwork at home. instead of encouraging their children to study at home, they are only concerned about household chores. theme 2: the home environment the second prominent theme is the home environment. nine learners out of 10 declared that they did not have reading material at home. they did not have books at home as their parents could not afford books. they further stated that even if they somehow managed to get hold of books, they got easily misplaced in their homes as there were only a few rooms shared by everyone. the participants further pointed out that their parents did not allow them time to read at home for they had a strong belief that schoolwork was done at school only and not at home. the participants responded as follows: ‘there are no reading books at home. my parents claim to have lost their books because they were not being used by anyone. they feel that i have enough time and books at school. for those that i do not have, i can always borrow from friends or classmates.’ (l2, male, 15 years old) ‘no, there are no reading books at home because my parents did not attend school and there was no reason to buy them. to them, keeping books did not mean anything. upon finding me reading i got into trouble as they feel i am trying to avoid working or assisting them with house chores. i have to be careful with my school books because one day i stopped my mother when she was pulling out a paper from my school textbook to make fire.’ (l9, male, 13 years old) ‘my parents do not allow me time to read my books at home instead they always occupy me with household chores. they keep on telling me that i have enough time at school to read and get books there because home is not a place to keep books.’ (l10, male, 13 years old) ‘my parents do not allow me altogether as they believe schoolwork must be done at school only. they keep telling that i am not the first one to go to school by referring to other relatives that went to school before me and did not have books but passed.’ (l5, female, 13 years old) the above quotes serve as testimony that the home environment is not conducive for the learners to practise reading. apart from the absence of the reading material, the parents do not provide space for the learners to read because they believe that schoolwork is supposed to be done only at school. as far as the parents are concerned, any time after school is supposed to be utilised for household activities. theme 3: socio-economic status of the parents the third theme focused on the socio-economic status of the parents. eight learners out of 10 indicated that their parents were not employed, and they only depended on the children’s grants. two learners mentioned that their parents were working as intermittent domestic workers. the following are quotes from the participants: ‘no, my parents are not employed and therefore cannot afford to buy me books. they tell me that i should choose between getting school uniform, getting fees paid and buying books. for them they cannot afford to pay for these school requirements or needs.’ (l8, female, 13 years old) ‘my parents do not give me money to visit the local library. in any case we do not have one in our area. whenever i ask for permission from my parents to visit other learners to get assistance because they have books they always think that i am tricking them to go and play with my friends.’ (l1, female, 13 years old) ‘no, my parents do not buy me books or magazines because they are not working. whatever little money they have is reserved for food. they will always claim not to have money when i ask for money for books. my father once told me that one cannot eat books therefore food is more important than books.’ (l6, male, 15 years old) ‘no, my parents do not buy books because they have no interest in reading magazines and newspapers, they prefer listening to the radio. if i ask for money for books they tell me that when they were going to school they shared books with other learners and relatives. i should learn to do the same.’ (l9, male, 13 years old) ‘maybe my mother reads at work because she spends most of her time there and she seems interested in listening to the news and reading. she would tell me that i am spoiltwhy should i buy books. her salary is little.’ (l3, male, 14 years old) the implication of the above-mentioned quotes is that the social standing or class of the parents is a barrier to the reading performance of the selected learners. the majority of parents had no formal education, no income, and were unemployed. all these elements play a key role in the parent’s ability to provide the necessary support to develop the reading performance of their children. theme 4: the availability of the reading material in the learners’ home environments the fourth theme focused on the availability of the reading material in the participants’ home environments. to this end, all the learners indicated that there was no library in their school or community. the participants reported that their school at least had a corner library, which had a limited number of books. what caught our attention was that they were neither visiting it frequently nor borrowing books. only 3 learners out of 10 indicated that they sometimes visit the corner library. the following are quotes from the participants: ‘no, my community does not have a library. even the school does not have the library.’ (l10, male, 13 years old) ‘yes, we do have corner library in my school but there is none in the community.’ (l5, female, 13 years old) ‘i do not visit the corner library for we are only allowed to go after school. after school my parents expect me to quickly assist them with home chores. our community does not have a library either.’ (l1, female, 13 years old) ‘yes, though it is insufficient to cater to all the learners. books are so few in the corner library and, sometimes, are irrelevant to the tasks of my grade.’ (l3, male, 14 years old) ‘i seldom visit it for there is a huge shortage of reading material. the books in the corner library are old and very few. my community does not have a library.’ (l7, female, 14 years old) the implication of the above quotes is that there is insufficient reading material in the school corner library. there was no evidence to show that even the few books that were available were utilised by the learners. even those who claimed to be visiting the corner library infrequently had no clear purpose for their visit. in addition, it was clear that teachers did not assign learners tasks that would force them to visit the corner library. discussion of findings this article sought to identify the factors that affect the grade 6 learners’ reading performance in one school in the maluti district of the eastern cape with a view to creating awareness and devising strategies to address the identified factors. the concept of rural education and its uniqueness has been flagged in this study to make the study distinct from many studies that have reported on the reading performance of urban learners. it was mentioned in the introduction that few studies have been conducted on the factors affecting the reading performance of rural learners. therefore, the current study is an attempt to add to the limited literature on the topic. the manner in which rural parents perceive their role and the support they are supposed to give their children is a reflection of their low literacy levels. in addition, the authors of this article believe that by understanding and nurturing the factors facing the reading performance of rural learners, parents and teachers could better encourage successful reading performance. the results of the study showed that the majority of parents were unable to assist their children with their schoolwork due to their low level of education or lack of any schooling at all in some cases. this is an undesirable state of affairs given the critical role parents are expected to play in their children’s education, particularly in inspiring them to read. according to vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, which serves as the theoretical framework of the current article, the support provided by the individuals with more knowledge and experience is likely to facilitate the learners’ comprehension of the text and as such improve their reading performance. according to this theory, the individuals with more knowledge and experience could be a teacher or a parent. however, in the context of the current study the parents could not play this important role due to their low level of education. the results of the study revealed that illiteracy has become an obstacle for the parents in providing reading support to their children. if the majority of the parents are illiterate, it is doubtful that they can teach their children to read. this is disastrous given the reading difficulties that south african learners face. moreover, the sociocultural theory stipulates that community and environment play an important role in the process of making meaning from what learners read. therefore, it becomes a problem when the community members fail to execute their role in the reading development of their children. this finding is in line with the mulford and johns (2004) study that revealed that learners in rural areas are disadvantaged when it comes to reading for learning, because of their parents’ low socio-economic status. the findings also concurs with du plessis and mestry (2019), whose study revealed that the poor socio-economic status of the rural parents can be attributed to the fact that most parents in rural areas work part time, have a low level of education, and do not place high importance on education. the results of this study further showed that the learners’ home environment was not conducive to reading practice. apart from the lack of reading materials, parents did not provide a reading space for their children as they believed that schoolwork should be completed at school. according to the parents, any time after school was expected to be utilised for domestic activities. these findings concur with the findings of a study conducted by dida, obae and mungai (2014) on the effect of domestic gender roles on learners’ academic performance. the results of the study showed that there was a relationship between learners’ involvement in domestic roles and academic performance. specifically, the findings revealed that the more learners were involved in the domestic chores, the more they were late for school, and the more they were not able to complete assignments and therefore, the more their education was affected. with regard to the socio-economic status of the parents, the findings of the study showed that the socio-economic status of the parents acted as a barrier to the selected learners’ reading performance. this is due to the bulk of the parents’ lacking a formal education, not having a source of income, and being unemployed. these factors all play a part in parents’ capacity to give the required assistance for their children’s reading development. this finding supports the finding obtained by du plessis and mestry (2019). the results of their study revealed the low socio-economic status of parents to be a serious barrier preventing children from receiving a high standard of education and good quality of life. the results of the study further revealed that the learners were not exposed to appropriate reading material in their homes or at school. even those learners who claimed to visit the corner library on a regular basis had no apparent reasons for doing so. teachers clearly did not offer learners assignments that would compel them to visit the corner library. this finding concurs with the finding of a study conducted by olakunle and christiana (2018) on students’ reading-related factors as predictors of achievement in english reading comprehension. the results of their study revealed that the availability of reading material was significantly related to learners’ achievement in english reading comprehension. although several interesting findings emerged in this study, there are limitations that need to be acknowledged. the sample size was very small; specifically, only one school and 10 learners were involved. the authors recommend a bigger sample for future studies. however, through the implementation of a case study design, the current study managed to provide insights into the factors affecting the rural learners’ reading performance. therefore, the limitations of this study are not significant enough to render the benefits of this study’s findings worthy. the authors believe that the findings of this study are transferable to other rural settings because the results presented could serve as directions to be followed. conclusion this article provided a review of the factors affecting the reading performance of grade 6 efal learners. the results indicated four factors that played a negative role in the reading performance of the learners. first, the education level of the parents was seen as a barrier as illiterate parents could not provide parental modelling and encouragement. also linked to the illiteracy of the parents was the fact that reading at home was not a priority, which adversely affected the learners’ reading performance. the socio-economic status of the parents is also linked to the education level of parents. a parent’s socio-economic status appears to be a powerful determinant of learner literacy attainment. the study, unfortunately, shows that the low socio-economic status of the parents is a barrier to the development of reading performance. another pertinent factor is the parents’ economic status. in this regard, the results indicated that the majority of parents were not employed and therefore could not afford to buy appropriate reading material for their children to study after school. in fact, the majority of parents did not view reading as a priority in their homes. the non-availability of books at home as well as at school was also viewed as significant. as having books at home cultivates a positive reading attitude, the researchers identified the absence of appropriate reading material as a barrier. the following recommendations are made in relation to the factors that emerged as negatively influencing learners’ reading performance. recommendations in the context of the study, the authors believe that literacy is a strategy for improving rural life and a weapon to fight poverty. the results of this study identified factors that may be regarded as barriers to learners’ reading performance. having this information is likely to assist the key stakeholders who are responsible for the reading performance of learners in rural schools. the stakeholders are parents, teachers, and the department of basic education. the authors argue that the reading performance of rural learners requires a strong parent-teacher interaction. teachers as professional partners are expected to play a major role in establishing this relationship. teachers are encouraged to discover creative ways to involve parents in their children’s reading. it seems this can be accomplished by keeping parents informed about their children’s reading struggles and successes. as a result, frequent communication between the teacher and the parent is likely to keep parents informed about what is going on at school with regard to the child’s reading performance. teachers should not just communicate bad information about learners’ reading performance with parents; good information about learners’ progress should also be shared with parents so that parents can celebrate their children’s accomplishments. the authors believe that discussing a learner’s accomplishment in reading can help to establish a positive connection, so that for example when a teacher has to disclose something unpleasant it is less damaging to the parent-teacher-learner relationship. teachers are more likely to stay in touch with parents if they share progress reports about their children’s reading achievement. according to the study’s findings, some parents are illiterate. as a result, the authors believe that collaboration should be encouraged not only between parents and teachers, but also among parents. teachers, for example, could help foster the link between illiterate and literate parents so that the literate parents can assist the illiterate parents’ children. this could be useful for parents who are neighbours. a strong relationship between the department of basic education and rural schools is also important. teachers should be assisted through training by the department of basic education on how to teach and assess reading. this could be accomplished by offering an early grade reading assessment tool to aid teachers in assessing learners’ reading development at various intervals. in addition, there are literacy intervention programmes sponsored by the department of basic education at public schools across south africa, like masifunde sonke. programmes like this should be introduced to the rural communities to support the rural schools. a strong relationship between the school and parents is recommended. as the results of the study revealed that the majority of parents are not educated, the schools should organise parents’ meetings where the importance of reading at home is emphasised. this could be achieved by emphasising the role of the community versus the individual family. there should be a reading community service that assists learners after school. this community mini-library should hire local people who could assist as librarians and should allow local learners to borrow reading material. acknowledgements we acknowledge the learners who voluntarily participated in the project. competing interests the authors declare that no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions m.c. contributed the conceptualisation of the project and also helped with formal analysis. t.r. contributed with the original draft and data curation; j.j. helped with the methodology section, i.p.m. helped with projection administration, validation and resources, and m.d. helped 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university, nigeria2department of science and technology education, lagos state university, nigeria 3teacher education department, st. augustine’s college of education, nigeria correspondence to: beatrice onafowokan postal address: po box 1254, ikorodu, lagos state, nigeria dates: received: 25 feb. 2013 accepted: 18 july 2013 published: 03 sept. 2013 how to cite this article: okebukola, f., owolabi, t. & onafowokan, b.o.a., 2013, ‘an assessment of the reading motivation skills of nigerian primary school teachers: implications for language and science education’, reading & writing 4(1), art. #33, 12 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v4i1.33 copyright notice: © 2013. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. an assessment of the reading motivation skills of nigerian primary school teachers: implications for language and science education in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction    • categories of schools in nigeria    • language provisions in the national policy on education    • methodology    • research design       • project participants    • data collection    • data analysis • findings    • reading aloud to children    • guiding children to read    • identifying children’s attitude to reading    • book talks    • using questions    • storytelling    • reading picture books    • motivating reading • discussion    • implications for language and science education    • recommendation • conclusion • acknowledgments    • competing interest    • authors’ contributions • references • appendix a    • frequency of activities for promoting reading interest abstract top ↑ recent studies and frequent news reports have expressed concerns about african children’s decreasing reading habits and dwindling achievement in language and primary science examinations. african children are not reading because they have reading difficulties or because they have no interest in books. this article focuses on the elementary schooling years, when the ability to read and comprehend and the love of reading are developed, using nigeria as a case study. the article begins with a review of the literature on reading that underscores the importance of nurturing and supporting good reading habits amongst african children. following a cursory exposition of the categories of schools in nigeria and the place of reading and science in the national policy on education, the remainder of the article presents the findings of a study conducted to assess the reading motivation skills of primary school teachers and illustrates pedagogical ways of developing good reading habits amongst african children. implications for language and science education are discussed. introduction top ↑ there is little debate amongst researchers, policymakers and educational stakeholders that reading achievement amongst african students is an important issue. there is also no contending the fact that improvement of literacy levels in schools throughout africa poses a serious challenge requiring urgent intervention (abel 2003; bamhare 1999; okebukola 2007; warwick 1999). onukaogu (2001) provides an excellent overview of the poor state of literacy in african schools. he identifies the following hindrances to the reading empowerment of the average african primary school child:• minimal experience of print immersion compared with children in the developed world. • lack of collaboration between the home, the community and the school in the provision of reading empowerment of the child. • the current trend of having untrained and incompetent teachers in the teaching of reading in our schools. okebukola (2008) notes that most african elementary schools have no formalised reading programmes. reading is subsumed in the english language lesson and taught by the language teacher. thus, largely, reading is taught as a tool to reinforce other language skills rather than as a discipline. warwick (1999), berating the worrisome situation, notes that african children lack opportunities for catching up to the rest of the world in terms of satisfying employment and political choices as a result of their low literacy levels and limited horizons. this situation may persist well into the 21st century, unless there are massive changes. several scholars have contributed greatly to the research literature on matters pertaining to african students and reading. their recommendations are for better teachers, better textbooks, smaller classes, reformed curricula, better teacher remuneration, new political visions or changed attitudes (abel 2003; okebukola 2008; warwick, 1999). as noted by warwick (1999), all of these solutions have their place but most are impractical in the short run. they cost too much or they depend on social or political change, which will take generations to bring out. africans need practical solutions and research continues to play a contributory role. the discussion of the motivation skills of african primary school teachers and reading problems of students has also focused on the development of the english language as the national and educational language in most cases. this has been attributed to the lack of development of indigenous languages, which hardly ever have official or national functions. thus, misgivings about students’ level of proficiency in a medium of education other than their mother tongue have been internationally acknowledged (mesthrie 2009). as noted by okebukola (2012), this problem is carried over and persists even in higher education. consequently, higher institutions across africa prescribe courses in the medium of instruction for all students. for instance, in nairobi and addis ababa, students are required to attend english proficiency classes. there is a communication skills centre at the university of zimbabwe, a language and study skills unit at nairobi university and a communication skills unit at the university of dar es salaam (rugemalira 2007). in nigeria, all higher institutions offer a general english course, a remedial programme to take care of deficiencies carried over from the lower levels of education. researchers have established links between the attitudes that children hold towards reading and the scores they obtain on reading tests (gambrell, hughes, calvert, malloy & igo 2011; twist et al. 2007, cited in okebukola 2012). they have long recognised that motivation is at the heart of many of the pervasive problems we face in teaching young children to read (guthrie 1996; okebukola 2005). highly motivated readers are self-determining and generate their own reading opportunities. they want to read and choose to read for a wide range of personal reasons such as curiosity, involvement, social interchange and emotional satisfaction. according to gambrell et al. (2011), students who are highly motivated to read will choose to read and continue to read over time. as noted by bryne (2007), teachers are influential in motivating and improving attitudes towards reading. children need support by their teachers to negotiate them away from potential points of discouragement in learning to read. the international reading association (2000) reports that the teacher’s knowledge makes a difference in student achievement. the teacher’s role in the reading process is to create experiences and environments that introduce, nurture or extend students’ abilities to engage with text. recent studies on reading achievement show that children in the middle and upper primary schools hold less positive attitudes than previously towards reading. also, fewer african children read for pleasure as a leisure activity outside of school (arden 1999; bamhare 1999; warwick, 1999). many researchers consider these developments alarming not only because of links between the attitudes that children in these levels of the primary school hold towards reading and the scores they obtain on reading tests, but also because the amount of time that teachers spend teaching reading at these levels at the primary school tends to drop off (bruzo & flint 2007; mckenna & kear 1990). whether this decline in positive attitude towards reading found amongst african primary school children is caused by the lack of school time available to explore reading pleasure (bruzo & flint 2007), lack of development of indigenous languages (rugemalira 2007), poor knowledge of english from home (okebukola 2012) or the effect of socio-economic status or incompetence of teachers (onakaogu 2001) is worthy of consideration by educators. what can be said with certainty is that a multifarious layer of issues impinges on students’ reading achievement and attitudes to reading in the middle and later years of primary school. we concur with lamont’s (2007) call for further research in the middle and upper years of schooling so that we can better understand how to improve reading outcomes. hence, to better understand the interweaving issues that could be the cause of this lack of progress, this study investigated the early literacy teachers’ classrooms practices in nigerian elementary schools to determine the extent to which they motivated their students to engage in reading and foster their students’ attitudes towards improved achievement in reading. we have focused on reading and primary science for several reasons. there is a meeting point between the medium of communication (english) and science (achor 2003, cited in owolabi & okebukola 2009). in all cases in which science is taught, teachers need to explain science concepts. as with any other subject, comprehension of science depends on the integration of appropriate ways of thinking, use of language and the appropriate degree of scaffolding by the teachers to support students’ attainment of intended outcomes. all these have not been achieved with the traditional method (lecture) preponderantly employed by science teachers in nigeria (ajeyalemi 2002; owolabi 2006). the state of primary science teaching has consistently been of concern because of the teachers’ feelings of inadequacy in teaching science (okebukola, owolabi & okebukola 2013). many elementary teachers have poor attitudes and beliefs about science and their capacity to be effective teachers of science; hence, teachers doubt their ability to teach science effectively in classroom settings (yore, hildebrand, osborne, treagust & wallace 2004). the elementary school years are of considerable consequence for shaping mathematical, scientific and reading motivation and achievement (okebukola & owolabi 2008). children at this level experience learning far more with printed books for reading. it is within the formative years that children can be easily motivated to learn. gomrell, palmer, codling and mazzoni (1996) assert that children who are motivated and spend more time reading are better readers. let us think back to our own elementary days and the changes in both reading ability and reading instruction as our grade level increased; if we look at how much we learned through reading in each grade, we realise that most reading instruction takes place in the early school years. at the secondary school level, instruction specifically related to reading tapers off, and more emphasis is placed on learning content in academic subject areas. it is therefore imperative to develop both the skill and the will to read for students to develop into mature and effective readers to be able to cope with advanced reading and scientific skills required at the secondary school level. we consider that the qualitative research presented in this article is of particular relevance for the reflective professional in the classroom. we also note that the study reported here is part of a wider research project that is investigating the teaching of reading and reading achievement in nigerian schools. as part of this main study, the researchers identified public schools as the ones not exhibiting an effective, regular and sustained approach to reading in english in the upper levels of the primary schools, against the dictates of the national policy on education (makinde 2003; okebukola 2005). any discussion on reading in nigeria must of course take recourse to the categories of schools and language provisions in the national policy on education. these are discussed in the following sections. categories of schools in nigeria there are generally two categories of schools in nigeria: private schools and public schools. the basis for the difference is their types of ownership. privately owned schools, according to okebukola (2012), are those schools that are run and financed by individuals. they are completely autonomous and responsible for the day-to-day running of the schools’ affairs, such as recruiting and laying off of staff, planning of the school’s timetable, promotion of staff and studies, planning and conducting of examinations and admission of students. private schools can also be owned by companies, churches, mosques, foreign embassies and universities. on the other hand, public schools are owned and financed by the state and federal government. the schools are run by agencies of the ministry of education, either at the state or federal government levels. these two categories of schools differ with respect to their governance and finance, formal structures, openness to change, quality of teaching staff and social relationships within them. these differences obviously have consequences on the output of the teachers and students. language provisions in the national policy on education the policy on the use of language in nigeria promotes multilingualism. english occupies a dominant position as the official language and in certification, since its imposition upon nigerians by the colonial administration ordinances (onukaogu 2006). in addition to english, hausa, igbo and yoruba constitute the major nigerian languages recognised by the national policy on education. added to these is the french language’s ascendancy as the official language for smooth interaction with neighbours. the policy stipulates that in the first three years in the primary school (primaries 1–3), local languages are used as the language of instruction (loi) whilst english is taught as a subject (elt). in the remaining years of the child’s education, that is from primary 4, english becomes the loi and the local languages are taught as subjects (federal government of nigeria 2004). however, as noted by okebukola (2012), literacy implementation reports indicate flagrant deviation from the policy statements as many private primary schools adopt english as the loi from pre-primary classes, in line with parents’ preferences, whilst many public schools continue with local languages as loi until the end of primary education as a result of pupils’ poor backgrounds in english.comparative studies on reading performance of pupils in public and private schools reveal significant differences in favour of private schools and that reading achievement in public schools is very low (federal ministry of education [fme] 2008; okebukola 2007; torahi 2000). the language provisions for each level of education can be seen in table 1. table 1: language provisions in the national policy on education. table 2: profiles of the participants. the magnitude of this problem causes not only innumerable personal tragedies but also significantly draws instruction down and jeopardises the future of our public schools. this is evident in the huge failure recorded by candidates who sat for the november/december 2009 national examinations council (neco) examination (a national examination conducted at the end of senior secondary school) in which only 1.8% passed (west african examination council 2010).nigerian youths fail examinations not only because they do not read their schoolbooks, but also because they lack mastery in reading as a result of the deficiency carried over from primary school. this is more pronounced in the sciences, largely due to the strong correlation between sound reading skills and the learning of science concepts. researchers note that science texts are often more challenging for students because of the peculiar nature of science, which is not narrative. worse still, science teachers often lack the expertise and interest in teaching reading (talanquer, tomanek & novodvorsky 2013). it is desirable to expose science teachers to intricacies of reading in order to equip them with skills that will foster students’ understanding of science and help them to become more proficient readers. what is frustrating is that most reading failure can be prevented if teachers apply what is known about early reading instruction, reading improvement and remediation (okebukola 2007). for example, researchers and reading experts have sensitised us to the fact that reading instruction is not limited to teaching important skills. it is not just a cognitive process; it is also an affective process (madden 1988; oldfather 1993). affective aspects of the reading process include a reader’s general attitude towards and interest in reading. these play an important role in the way readers approach reading experiences and in the way they respond to them. for example, a child who views reading as a boring activity is not likely to respond very well to an opportunity to read. moreover, this child will not comprehend or respond to a passage as well as someone who views reading as an exciting activity and becomes engaged in almost any reading experience. all readers comprehend and respond better when they are interested in reading. in the light of this, mclaughlin (2012) proposes that the affective aspects of reading be advocated and promoted as a reformed framework for the teaching and reading in africa, especially in light of an acceptance of reading as an interaction between the teacher, text and the reader. the interactive explanation of how a person reads and develops interest in reading presents a holistic approach to the teaching of reading. it integrates the engagement perspective with cognitive, affective and other social aspects of reading. engaged learners achieve because they want to understand. they possess intrinsic motivation for interacting with text. they use cognitive skills to understand and they have positive attitudes about reading (mclaughlin 2012). it assumes that: 1. meaning is located both within the text and in the meaning that readers bring to the text. 2. reading consists of both translation and expectation. 3. reading proceeds as each knowledge source interacts simultaneously with the print on the page and with other knowledge sources: vocabulary, syntax, discourse and metacognition within a socio-cultural environment. this is represented as a venn diagram in figure 1. figure 1: interactive model of the reading process. it is against this background that the case study that follows assesses the frequency with which elementary school teachers engage their pupils in activities that are supported by research as being capable of developing interest and attitudes that increase motivation and facilitate comprehension and response (fletcher, grimley, greenwood & parkhill 2012; madden 1988; okebukola 2007; oldfather 1993). methodology our research methodology was underpinned by ford’s (1992) motivation systems theory, which maintains that people will attempt to attain goals they value and perceive as achievable. bryne (2007) identifies the environment and the information available to the learner through the teacher as the major pillars of success in learning to read. thus, our present study focuses on what teachers are doing in the classroom to develop and motivate reading. we were intent, throughout our data collection and analysis, on exploring the extent to which teachers’ practices could impact on pupils’ reading interest. research design the study employed a descriptive survey design to unveil the frequency with which teachers incorporate activities that have been found to influence reading interest and achievement positively (fletcher et al. 2012; madden 1988; palinscar & ransom 1988). a self-developed questionnaire titled ‘activities for promoting reading interest achievement’ (apria) was used to collect data. the apria consisted of eight items designed to elicit indices of reading interest, such as: reading to children, guiding children to read, storytelling, identifying children’s attitude to reading, picture reading, book talks, using questions and reading remediation. the indices were measured on a four-point scale of very often, often, rarely and never.this instrument was validated by subjecting the items to critical review by two experts in language education with specialisation in reading and two experts in primary science. the instrument was further subjected to a pilot study in order to identify items that might be misconstrued by the teachers. a cronbach alpha method of establishing reliability was used and a value of 0.81 was obtained. project participants we developed a set of guiding principles developed keeping in mind sociocultural theory as set out in work by vygotsky (1978), which emphasises the socially constructed nature of learning. students learn through experiences that have authenticity and meaning for them, especially with respect to their social, economic and cultural backgrounds and through interactions with others (cullen 2002). the selection criteria include the following:• all the schools were public in ownership. • all the teachers were professionally trained. they demonstrated low expectations of students but believed that teachers can improve achievement in reading. • pupils were from low socio-economic backgrounds and speak the local language at home. our conclusions were confirmed by research reports (fme 2008; makinde 2003; okebukola 2012; okebukola & apari 2012). also, the assessment records and classroom observations provided evidence of the overall poor reading achievement of the pupils in the schools. a self-developed observation protocol titled ‘primary science observation schedule’ (psos) was used to gather data on classroom interaction. the psos is divided into three components: teaching initiated by the teacher, teaching initiated by students and teacher and student involvement in experimental work. each component is sub-divided into questioning, inquiry, discussion and activities. these components are distributed across the 30-minute duration of a science class. teacher-student interactions were recorded by observers with a tick in the appropriate cell to indicate an occurrence of a behaviour. no behaviour was recorded more than once within a minute. the four schools selected are situated in urban and rural areas in four educational districts of lagos state. a sample of 12 teachers was drawn from this population. these consisted of one teacher from primaries 4, 5 and 6 from each school. they are generalist teachers (teach all subjects) and have taught for at least 20 years. all the teachers were professionally trained and possess a bachelor of education (b.a. ed. or b.ed.) and national certificate in education, which is the minimum qualification for teaching at the primary school level. they have regular reading programmes as prescribed by the primary english language curriculum. their ages range between 21 and 60. classes varied in size. at the time of the study, the smallest class had 61 pupils; the largest had 119. each class was managed by one teacher. the ethnic composition within the classes differed, with yoruba pupils as the dominant ethnicity. the proportions of yoruba pupils across the four schools ranged from 60% to 96%. the other two main ethnic groups were igbo and hausa: 2%–29% and 0%–10% respectively. all the pupils speak yoruba, the language of the environment. data collection data collection and analysis were done using the case study method. this allowed us to explore the interweaving and complex aspects and conditions involved in improving reading literacy pedagogy (fletcher et al. 2012). at each school, the head teacher identified and asked exemplary teachers of english language in years 4–6 to participate in the study. 12 teachers participated and we interviewed each of them individually. each semi-structured interview took approximately 45 minutes. the questions we asked included the following:• how important do you consider motivating children to read at this level? • what is your perception of your pupils’ attitude to reading? • how do you measure this? • what methods do you use in teaching reading? • what are the barriers to the teaching of reading at this level and in this type of school? • how do you use book talks to promote reading? • what remediation strategies do you use for ineffective readers? • how do you use picture books to promote reading? • apart from the items listed in the questionnaire, what other activities do you use in promoting reading? we also carried out classroom observations of each teacher teaching reading. each observed lesson was approximately 40 minutes in duration. we viewed the interview data as data reflecting a reality jointly constructed by interviewer and participant and acknowledged by both as being contextually situated (rapley 2007). the classroom observations helped us to form an even deeper understanding of individual contexts. the items on the questionnaires were then discussed in depth with the teachers to control any confounding variables that could interfere with the actual outcome of the study. frequency of occurrence of each variable was obtained using a 4-point likert scale: very often, often, rarely and never, converted to points 3, 2, 1 and 0. parametric statistics of mean and mean-rank were computed. data analysis the triangulation method was employed to establish the general order of rating teachers’ frequency of use of the reading interest-promoting activities. interview and observation data were subjected to open coding to draw out the themes as they relate to our primary research question (what the teachers were doing to promote reading interest in their children). this is to establish connections and differences between both data sets (gambrell et al. 2011; strauss & sawyer 1986).table 3 shows the ordinal rating of the frequency of teachers’ use of activities that promote reading interest amongst primary 4 students. reading aloud to children had the highest ranking (mean = 3.40), closely followed by identifying children’s attitude to reading (3.20) and using questions (3.20). storytelling ranked fourth with a mean of 3.0, whilst talking about books ranked fifth (mean = 2.20). reading picture books and reading remediation did not enjoy the teachers’ patronage (mean = 0). table 3: mean and mean rank of primary 4 teachers’ frequency of use of reading interest activities. table 4 shows the ordinal rating of the frequency of teachers’ use of activities that promote reading interest amongst primary 5 students. reading aloud to children had the highest ranking (mean = 3.20), closely followed by identifying children’s attitude to reading and using questions (3.00). storytelling ranked fourth with a mean of 2.88, whilst talking about books ranked fifth (mean = 2.20). reading picture books and reading remediation did not enjoy the teachers’ patronage (mean = 0). table 4: mean and mean rank of primary 5 teachers’ frequency of use of reading interest activities. table 5 shows the ordinal rating of the frequency of teachers’ use of activities that promote reading interest amongst primary 6 students. reading aloud to children had the highest ranking (mean = 3.60), closely followed by identifying children’s attitude to reading and using questions (3.50). storytelling ranked fourth with a mean of 3.0, whilst talking about books ranked fifth (mean = 2.20). reading picture books and reading remediation did not enjoy the teachers’ patronage (mean = 0). table 5: mean and mean rank of primary 6 teachers’ frequency of use of reading interest activities. findings top ↑ the findings of the study across the four schools and the 12 teachers sampled are hereby presented in line with the item statements. reading aloud to children the teachers rated reading aloud to children highest of the activities used in promoting reading interest (primary 4 mean = 3.40; primary 5 mean = 3.20 and primary 6 mean = 3.60). classroom observations and the scheduled interviews revealed that a popular and consistent part of the daily reading programme in the case study schools was for the teacher to read aloud to the whole class (model reading). then the children read aloud, after which the teacher asks questions on the selection from the graded basal reader. guiding children to read none of the teachers used guided reading in their classrooms. in fact, they were ignorant of this as a separate reading strategy, equating it with reading aloud. the researchers educated them and sought their views on their adoption of its use. their only concern was practicability given the largeness of the classes. identifying children’s attitude to reading the teachers rated their frequency of identifying children’s attitude to reading high (mean = 3.20), second in ranking in all three grades along with the use of questions. they berated children’s poor attitude to reading and preference for television, soccer and video and noted that this has culminated in their poor performances in examinations. they were, however, unaware of techniques that can be used in measuring attitude to reading. book talks some of the teachers in the study engaged the children in book talks, but this was limited to the basal readers used in class. they only talked about the stories in the passages read in class. using questions questioning occurs frequently during the teachers’ classroom reading lessons. this was rated high (means = 3.20 across grades), second in the ranking. the basal readers used by the sampled teachers have questions that follow the reading material, with the result that the children have to re-read the material before being able to answer the questions. classroom observations reveal that the teachers use questions largely to test, not teach reading comprehension. in such reading tests we find unsatisfactory instructions, such as ‘read the following passage and answer the questions below’. often the child’s approach to this task is to read the questions first. the validity of such reading comprehension tests is very questionable. storytelling storytelling ranks fourth (means of 3.0 in primary 4; 2.88 in primary 5 and 3.0 in primary 6). the interview sessions revealed that the stories were limited to those in the basal reader passages during reading lessons. according to the teachers, storytelling only features in the english language curriculum of the lower primary classes (1–3). reading picture books none of the teachers used picture books to encourage and motivate their pupils to read. even though the basal readers contained illustrations of the stories in the reading passages, teachers did not spend time exploring the pictures and relating them to the text. the teachers, upon further probe into why they did not read and discuss the pictures with their pupils, noted that they thought the pictures were for aesthetic purposes. motivating reading all the sampled teachers agreed that motivating children to read is their primary responsibility, but conceded that they were less prepared to teach reading beyond the use of basal readers. discussion top ↑ the concern of this study was to assess the motivation skills of nigerian public primary school teachers. how frequently do they use the tried and tested activities for promoting interest in and positive attitudes towards reading? what difficulties do they encounter in teaching the children to read? the findings reveal some consistency in teachers’ practices across the grades studied (primary grades 4–6). they appear to indicate that nigerian primary school teachers adopt the basal reader approach through graded series, as earlier observed by abel (2003) and onukaogu (2001). in the process, they use reading aloud to children as the major activity that guides instruction. this focuses on oral decoding and the development of comprehension through assessment practice. previous research supports the notion that teachers can motivate interest in reading amongst primary school children if they read aloud to them (fletcher et al. 2012; lynch-brown & tomlinson 2010). however, reading aloud using the basal reader approach as practised by the teachers follows the pattern of teacher ‘reading’ and students ‘chorusing’ from the prescribed textbook. they are thus made to learn reading by rote memorisation. the resultant effect is their inability to recognise or read unfamiliar words. although a few brilliant students pick up reading by this laborious method, the majority of them end up as non-readers. teachers focus attention on the negligibly few readers in reading classes whilst the non-readers, who form the bulk of the class, are left in limbo (okebukola 2005). these teachers based their success in increasing motivation through the reading aloud on the fact that some of the students can read. teachers displayed ignorance of the use of guided reading even though research is replete with evidence of the benefits of guided reading in promoting reading and enhancing comprehension (mclaughlin 2012). in guided reading, the teacher divides the class into small groups and provides support as they learn to use various reading strategies (context clues, letter and sound relationships, word structure and so on). the teacher observes the students as they read the text silently to themselves. the teacher provides guidance and coaching to individuals based on their observations, providing prompts, asking questions and encouraging attempts at reading strategy application. guided reading models are available on youtube. the finding that teachers are unaware of techniques to measure attitude to reading is supported by elley (1989), who notes that children’s attitude to reading has been ignored because the affective aspects of reading tend to be ill-defined and to involve shadowy variables difficult to conceptualise, measure and address instructionally. the importance of attitude in reading efficiency is widely recognised. anderson, hiebert, scott and wilkinson (1985) note that becoming a skilled reader requires learning that written material can be interesting. the emotional response to reading is the primary reason most readers read and probably the primary reason most non-readers do not read (smith 1988). this underscores the important role played by children’s attitudes in the process of becoming literate and the need for teachers to provide adequate motivation on the part of the learner. book talks are limited to stories in the passages read in class as result of the low socio-economic status of the parents, which prevents them from buying books, including the prescribed basal readers. evans (2009) notes that it is not enough to just read a book; one must talk about it as well. children’s experience needs to be mediated by sensitive talk with more experienced readers. this may require that teachers periodically introduce new books to the children. as they do this, they talk about the book being introduced as if trying to ‘sell’ it to the children. they can talk about the title, the author, the general plot of the story and mention something special about the book or author that will interest the students to read the book. children should also talk about the books they have read. fletcher et al. (2012) report that book talks fostered interest and promoted motivation to read for enjoyment amongst primary school students. the use of questions to test rather than teach reading, as observed in this study, renders the validity of such reading tests questionable; they fail to recognise that we read differently for different purposes, they do not promote reflective thinking and they place the teacher in a director’s role. this diminishes the conversational nature of interaction. research supports that questioning aids comprehension, but it has to be used prudently to serve the various purposes. kleuseus and griffith (1996) suggest the following question types, which have been tried and tested in their own studies: 1. metacognitive process questions, which help children get in touch with their own abilities to construct meaning. an example is: ‘why do you think eggs might hatch?’’ 2. conversational questions, which are used to draw children into a conversation about a concept. an example is: ‘mary, what do you see in the picture?’ 3. discussion questions, which help to expand meaning through explanation, demonstration and sharing of related experiences and enable assessment of the children’s knowledge. an example is: ‘how does one snore?’ 4. prediction questions help to generate conversation and to model how readers use information from past experiences to make inferences about a new topic. an example is: ‘what would have happened if alice in her experience in wonderland could not get smaller after entering the garden?’ the fact that the sampled teachers do not engage in storytelling, because it features in the curriculum only in lower classes, attests to the fact that public school teachers use the curriculum rigidly as a recipient rather than using it as a launch pad to teaching and learning (okebukola 2012). research indicates that storytelling has a positive impact on students’ attitude to reading and develops and improves their thought processes and social interactions (ryan 2012). enjoying stories gives a shape to listening to stories read, and to reading and writing your own stories (clay 1991). storytelling is a great passion for children. in fact, it is universal for all human beings, regardless of culture. as noted by evans (1998) and gambrell (2011), its origins stretch back tens of thousands of years to when human beings were hunters and told stories to explain the mysteries of life in the world around them: where we go, when we die, why the sun rises and falls, when there is winter, the wisdom of animals, and so on. storytelling has served the human race for the preservation of knowledge, wisdom and entertainment from the moonlight tales to the printing press, cinema, television and the internet – all means of sharing and enjoying stories. all of us have fond memories of stories as told by parents and guardians ‘around the fire’ or teachers in the elementary classes who have harnessed the benefits within the structure of their everyday teaching roles. teachers’ ignorance of the use of picture reading as a motivating strategy is a reflection of deficient training. research provides evidence that picture reading plays an important role in the development of reading for all children (fletcher et al. 2012; morrow 1988). picture books provide a powerful and reflective way of arousing and maintaining the children’s interest in reading when they are selected with care to capture their interest and imagination. the books should be sophisticated in terms of narrative, illustration and design and should have storylines of high interest to children (fletcher et al. 2012). different scenarios in the children’s environment can provide hints for picture reading, such as illustrations of farmers harvesting crops, market scenes, motor parks, voting during elections, mountains, village life and so on. probing questions (who? how? why? where? who are these people? where are they going? why do you think that woman is sitting down? etc.) can provide a useful guide for the reader’s perceptions of the written story as the teacher encourages the students to engage in critical discussions and debate and to listen to and respect others’ views. arizpe and styles (2003) note that sometimes just reading and talking about a picture book can be enough. but teachers always look for sympathetic ways of extending children’s responses. activities preceding, accompanying or following reading should help children to explore the themes and meanings in pictures. reading remediation poses another challenge to the sampled reading teachers. the teachers’ responses to the question of remediation strategies to help ineffective and reluctant readers reveal that they realise that the majority of their students are non-readers, but are ignorant of the remediation strategies to use. the basal reader approach has come to be accepted as the norm rather than the exception. many of these teachers rely on this approach, being the avenue through which they were taught themselves, even though they are not oblivious to the fact the that majority of their classmates dropped out of school as a result of their inability to rise above reading mediocrity due to the ineffectiveness of their teachers and their methods. in their synthesis of research in early reading, simmons and kame’enui (1998) identified foundational concepts on big ideas that were common to all theoretical models of reading acquisition and were consistent across the architecture of effective reading interventions that every teacher must know. they serve as the framework for emergent reading instruction (okebukola 2005). these concepts are: phonological awareness, alphabetic understanding and automaticity with code. teachers must also be equipped with the modalities and basic steps in reading development and remediation. these steps are: note the problem, teach the basic techniques, practise, verify your success and build on your success. children come to school from different language groups, different cultures, different socio-economic status and different backdrops that affect their learning. one of these is the home. some children grow up in homes where cuddles and storybooks are a nightly ritual, reading for them starts at home as parents or siblings share the joy of reading with them. for those who come from a non-reading culture home, as is the case with many african children, it is the teachers who bear the responsibility of luring them into the wonderful world of the written word. schools have to teach children, whether they come from literate homes or not. unfortunately, in many cases, as was the case in the rural and urban public schools in this study, these two groups of children are thrust into a literacy curriculum that is more appropriate for children from literate homes. the curriculum mismatch may prove detrimental for many children because it places them at risk of not learning to read and to write. this calls for professional resourcefulness on the part of the teacher to provide the necessary scaffolding to bridge the gap between the two groups. many literate parents take advantage of the school-parent partnership programmes that feature guidelines to conducting formal, school-like activities in the home, such as storybooks, reading and homework assignments. research supports a strong link between parents’ reading to and with the children and children’s literacy learning (morrow 1993). however, non-literate parents may not know how to involve their children in these functional literacy activities. this further jeopardises the reading efficiency of their children. the teachers then need to provide remediation support for such children. teachers in this study were not prepared to teach reading beyond the use of basal readers. to them, reading instruction is synonymous with the application of the pre-packaged commercial graded reading books. they are unable to question the prescribed textbooks they are required to use or to maintain any autonomy in what and how to teach the children in order to ensure positive outcomes because of their limited exposure and training. of more serious concern to the teachers is their inability to deal with the appalling poverty level of children enrolled in public schools compared with their counterparts in private schools, with the attendant benefits of adequate care, good food and rich literacy practices (okebukola 2012). without exception, teachers felt that poverty was the source of most of the children’s problems: ‘many of them come to school on empty stomachs’; ‘many of them sleep during classes;. the majority of them do not have textbooks or writing materials: ‘they hawk different types of things after school hours so they cannot afford to attend remedial classes even if provided free by teachers’. many have health challenges resulting from malnutrition. one teacher lamented: ‘we have a difficult task in our hands: how do we teach an hungry and angry child to read?’ to the teachers, therefore, motivation to read is least on the list of many of the children’s problems. there is a substantial body of research that suggests that poverty and low academic achievement are causally related (okebukola 2012; simmons & kame’enui 1998). cunningham zibulsky and callan (2009) found that poverty is the largest correlate of reading achievement. implications for language and science education a decline in motivation to read can have deleterious effects on the acquisition of reading achievement and comprehension, not only in language in classrooms but also in content area instruction, especially the sciences. most elementary science teachers would agree that a central purpose of their instruction is to help students to understand significant science concepts. even though science teachers may not be language teachers, reading specialists or librarians, every science teacher knows that their subject is different from any other and requires particular kinds of literary skills. hence, every science teacher must carefully consider how to use reading in their subject area because understanding subject matter involves more than ‘doing’ or ‘knowing’ something. mastery of content is demonstrated not only through experimentation but also through reading (owolabi & okebukola 2009).research has provided evidence that reading informational science texts can help to support content learning (mantzicopoulos & patrick 2010; okebukola & onafowokan 2003). exposure to informational texts in the early years presents a vital means of expression of thought, especially in this modern world of science and technology which demands that one should be able to take an intelligent and informed interest in happenings within one’s environment and the world at large (okebukola 2005). every field of specialisation has its own appropriate technical vocabulary. science is no exception; informational science textbooks contain technical vocabulary, which children must learn and use for discourse in science. several observations and studies regarding the nigerian educational system and language problems have revealed that the linguistic discontinuity that exists between the language of the home and the language of the school is a great handicap in the use of english, as noted by okebukola & owolabi (2008). the vocabularies of most school certificate candidates are not rich. this is inescapable because of the danger of loss in vocabulary concomitant with change from one language to another, especially with the shift from the mother tongue to english at the upper primary level (fme 2008). the following examples from students’ scripts illustrate this point: 1. ‘the changes are that during the windy or dry season, all the leaves will dry away from the tree and in the raining season, the new beautiful leaves will grow.’ 2. ‘when male and female toad make love …’ (waec 2004) in sentence (1) the student probably had in mind the trees shedding their leaves whilst in sentence (2) the word copulate was intended. reading informational science texts aloud to children exposes students to specialised vocabulary (duke & kays 1998), prompts discussion on science topics and promotes scientific thinking (okebukola & onafowokan 2003; smolkin & donovan 2002). despite compelling reasons for sharing informational text with young children, considerable evidence has accrued over the past decade that children have limited exposure to this type of text (yopp & yopp 2012). the importance of language within science education has been demonstrated by okebukola and owolabi (2008), who found that classroom activities that promote the use of ‘analogies’ improve children’s ability to use language as a tool for both individual and collective reasoning. classroom discussion using reading aloud has also been found to foster achievement in science (okebukola 1999). by the same token, engaging students in question-and-answer relationships activates their prior knowledge, prompts them to connect ideas and encourages them to restructure their thinking (okebukola & owolabi 2007). a growing number of educators recognise the key role of language in science learning. science vocabulary can be daunting for students, particularly for those with low literacy. such words as ‘metamorphosis’, ‘esterification’ and ‘effervescence’ are often difficult for students to comprehend. there is increasing awareness of and moves to enhance the interaction between the literacy and science educators (yore et al. 2004). every science teacher should therefore also be a teacher of literacy. researchers and educationists acknowledge that the students’ attitude towards reading is a central factor affecting reading performance in the languages and in the sciences. these conclusions are based on a long history of research in which attitude and achievement have consistently linked (mckenna & kear 1990). recommendation the affective aspects of the reading process – interest, attitude and motivation – are at the very heart of reading. they undoubtedly have some correlation with reading efficiency. as noted earlier, the teachers in this study were actively aware of the critical role they should play in supporting deficient readers, but they lacked the ability. this provides further evidence that teachers need help urgently in the understanding of what reading is, how children learn how to read and what they need when learning to read.african governments should begin to think of ways to integrate new literacies into the literacy programmes of schools. they should focus on the professional development of teachers and plan the teacher education curriculum around the classroom needs of the teachers. the reading curriculum must help teachers to develop an informed understanding of the relationship between policy, research and practice. teacher education programmes should include the procedure for using reading aloud and the selection of information texts. the school libraries should be stocked with science informational books in addition to the recommended textbooks. these include periodicals, internet-based texts, newspapers and magazines. these should be shared aloud with children with explanation of content, text structures and language. students’ engagement in discussions, making connections between content of the selection and children’s lives, classroom experiences and the curriculum will make the text more meaningful (yopp & yopp 2012). any government intervention should also aim at closing the achievement gap between public and private primary school children, improving the quality of the teachers, cushioning the impact of poverty amongst the children in the short term and eradicating poverty amongst the citizenry in the long term. the means to this end should include a complete overhaul of the teacher education programmes at all levels to include competency-based reading curricula with the recognition of reading as a subject on the timetable. one way by which these teachers can promote independent reading is through classroom lending libraries. they can establish this through the support of the parent-teacher association (pta) by educating and raising the awareness of parents on the benefits of giving their children access to a variety of books that they can read at home. this also serves to foster home-school connections. this idea was suggested by the researchers, but teachers informed us that such associations only thrive in private schools, attended by children from rich homes. government and non-governmental organisations (ngos) can organise television shows that promote the love of reading. since the youths show interest in television, soccer, music, videos, movies, clubbing, fashion and internet social networks, reading programmes should incorporate all of these to sustain their interest. local councils, ngos and corporate bodies, especially reading associations, can organise book clubs where children can engage in interest-generating activities such as discussions on similarities between books and movies, read aloud sessions, gift of books, literacy fairs, incentives and rewards, scholarships, sharing reading experiences, visits to the library, awards for children writers and exposure to children’s literature. conclusion top ↑ the analysis presented in this article demonstrates that the basal reader alone is not enough for teaching reading. a new type of intervention is needed: one taking a multi-sectional approach. the activities discussed could prove to be innovative and successful initiatives in early and developmental reading. the variety of interventions develops practical activities in the effective domain, which have been found to improve reading competence in mainstream classrooms internationally. it makes no sense to force children to read. it is better to attract them, arouse their interest and make them see that real success comes from reading and that reading can be fun. definitely, there must be a way to change future of our children. they must read because the secrets to survival are hidden in books. acknowledgments top ↑ competing interest the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions f.o. (lagos state university) was the lead researcher and the main writer. t.o. (lagos state university) was researcher and responsible for computation of the data, whilst b.o.a.o. 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l.h., hildebrand, b., osborne, j., treagust, d. & wallace, c., 2004, ‘new directions in language and science education research’, reading research quarterly 39(3), 347–352. appendix a top ↑ frequency of activities for promoting reading interest this questionnaire (by the department of language, arts and social science education, lagos state university, nigeria) is designed to look into the frequency of use of activities for promoting reading interest. please endeavour to answer all the questions as truthfully as possible. information provided will be for the purpose of research. your responses will be given the confidentiality deserved (see table 1). article information authors: bernita blease1 janet condy1 affiliations: 1faculty of education and social sciences, cape peninsula university of technology, south africa correspondence to: janet condy email: condyj@cput.ac.za postal address: po box 652, cape town 7800, south africa dates: received: 16 sept. 2014 accepted: 20 july 2015 published: 10 sept. 2015 how to cite this article: blease, b. & condy, j., 2015, ‘teaching of writing in two rural multigrade classes in the western cape’, reading & writing 6(1), art. #58, 9 pages.http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v6i1.58 copyright notice: © 2015. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. teaching of writing in two rural multigrade classes in the western cape in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • theoretical framework • writing • methodology • findings    • explicit teaching versus implicit teaching    • systematically planned teaching versus unsystematic, unplanned, unstructured teaching    • mindful teaching versus mindless teaching    • contextualised teaching versus de-contextualised teaching • discussion • conclusion • acknowledgements    • competing interests    • authors’ contributions • references abstract top ↑ the purpose of this research project was to understand how cambourne’s theory of social constructivism, particularly his four instructional principles, was applied to the teaching of writing in two rural multigrade foundation phase classrooms in the western cape. multigrade schools account for 30% of all primary schools in south africa, but in most cases teachers are not able to provide quality education to learners. writing in rural multigrade foundation phase schools is a largely neglected area for teacher development and research. even those teaching multigrade classes are not sure how to approach it. the national curriculum, as well as our south african constitution, encourages teachers to inspire children with values based on respect, democracy, equality, human dignity and social justice. however, the two rural multigrade classes in this research project faced many challenges that hindered their ability to reach these goals. the main theoretical framework underpinning this study was based on cambourne’s social constructivist theory, particularly his instructional principles including explicit, systematic, mindful and contextual teaching principles. this research was a qualitative study embedded within an interpretive case study. two foundation phase teachers working in multigrade classrooms were purposively selected for this research. in conclusion, there is evidence that these two teachers used some of cambourne’s instructional principles, in varying degrees, when teaching writing in their multigrade classes. introduction top ↑ to improve social cohesiveness of all south africans in a non-discriminating society, the south african manifesto on values, education and democracy (south africa, department of education 2001a) was drafted. this document and the white paper 6 (south africa, department of education 2001b) sketch democratic values for youthful south africans in the learning environment to eradicate oppression and social injustices. from both these documents, social justice, equity, and equality emerge as three of the most important values that teachers, learners, and families strive to realise. johnston (2010:20) states that we live in a multi-cultural society with laws that promise equal rights to all: the right to be as free as possible of biases based on ethnic group, gender, nationality, religion, socio-economic condition, sexual orientation, or disability. although multigrade schools account for approximately 30% of all primary schools in south africa, many multigrade rural children do not receive equal access to quality education (bloch 2009, 2010; taylor 2008). the reality is that many south africans living in poverty, which is widespread, are vulnerable, powerless, and isolated (pretorius & mampuru 2007; prinsloo 2005). multigrade teaching is often established as a result of necessity; often the result of political or educational rationalisation (brunswic & valerien 2004), population density resulting from rural-urban migration, excessive numbers of learners in certain grades, and competition for schools that are seen by parents as being more desirable. according to potgieter (2010), they found that teachers in multigrade classes are neither qualified nor able to provide quality education to learners. it is particularly difficult to educate rural children: they come to school hungry despite the feeding schemes in many south african schools; lack of physical resources and learning materials as well as overcrowded classrooms further block the road to literacy. taylor (2008) states that, despite some criticism from the public, teachers are dedicated and work hard. multigrade teachers face severe challenges and difficulties unlike monograde classrooms (beukes 2006). they need to plan and prepare for more than one grade per lesson. in namibia, beukes (2006) shared the challenges multigrade schools face such as: little or no guidance for the teaching of combination grades, inconsistent learner attendance, teachers’ lack of classroom management skills, mother-tongue influences, grouping, and time management. hlalele (2012:269) attempts to define the concept ‘rural’ but states that the true meaning of the word eludes us due to its ambiguous connotations and the obvious comparison with ‘urban’ contexts. she suggests that rural dwellers work in agriculture, often for meagre rates of compensation, face barriers to learning, and operate in less than favourable policy environments. czerniewicz and brown (2014) concur with hlalele by explaining that rural schools continue to experience poor learning conditions. when endeavouring to describe ‘multigrade’ schools, little (2007) highlights the most common terms such as combination class, composite class, mixed or multi-age teaching, and mixed-year or grade classes. despite the many challenges found in multigrade classrooms, little (2005:6) found that friendship patterns, self-concept, self-esteem, cognitive and social development were more favourable in multigrade schools. therefore, a constructivist ethos is ideal in multigrade classrooms where teachers guide children, and children guide their peers towards their own independent learning and writing. the aim of this research project was to contribute to the limited national information about writing practices in a south african rural multigrade context. the researcher attempted to understand how cambourne’s theory of social constructivism, particularly his four instructional principles, were applied to the teaching of writing in two rural multigrade foundation phase classrooms in the western cape. theoretical framework top ↑ this research was conducted in a rural area where poverty and illiteracy prevailed. to respond to this situation of socio-economic deprivation it was necessary to select an appropriate theoretical paradigm with great care. hence, cambourne’s social constructivist theory was selected as applicable. cambourne (2004:26) defines social constructivism ‘as a set of assumptions about learners and the learning process’. it is the process used to socially construct knowledge continuously. he states that learning to write should engage children in authentic, real and contextual writing activities that are inherently interesting and meaningful to the learner. constructivism in a writing class, according to cambourne (2004:26), juxtaposes four instructional principles as described in table 1 below. in multi-grade classrooms, where writing knowledge and meaning are socially constructed, strategies such as explicit, systematic, mindful and contextual teaching principles can be employed. he is aware of this oversimplification of a complex subject such as writing, but suggests this could create a platform from which to begin unpacking the multiple layers of meaning. table 1: four instructional principles of teaching and learning. the explicit dimension refers to the practice of deliberately demonstrating and developing conscious awareness of visible writing processes, understandings, knowledge, and skills. implicit teaching refers to the practice of deliberately leaving learners to discover and work out things for themselves (cambourne 2004:32). teaching systematically implies that teachers plan formally, logically, think ahead, and develop future lessons, activities, resources, and assessments that are needed and will be used. unplanned instruction indicates little evidence of planning and is therefore unsystematic (cambourne 2004:33). mindful learning can be equated with metacognitive awareness: the state of being consciously aware of what is happening about you. according to cambourne (2004:34), mindful learning is aligned with the discourse employed by teachers as opposed to ‘mindless’ teaching and learning. teachers need to take account of children’s interests when planning writing activities (estyn 2011:13). they should provide numerous opportunities for children to be independent in their learning including writing skills. according to cambourne (2004:37) contextualised learning makes sense to learners; it is uncomplicated and more likely to result in robust, transferable, useful and mindful learning. in contrast, decontextualised learning does not make sense to learners and leads to automatic, rigid, rote memorising. true learning is connected to the learner’s environment. it is linked to what learners know about writing and their own personal experiences. in order for learners to benefit from these constructivist instructional principles, cambourne (2004:28) suggests that learners need to engage with the teaching and learning process. engagement includes a variety of distinctive behaviours; learning can take place only if the learners are convinced that they are capable of learning or doing what is being demonstrated, that there is a purpose or value in the learning, learners are free from anxiety, and if they admire, respect, like or have hope in the teaching and learning writing process. writing top ↑ this study portrayed writing as a means of communication to gain or share understanding by using print, to contribute ideas, to apply knowledge and skills, as well as to record important information (blease 2014). although complex, writing remains the most common form of communication and requires knowledgeable others to help develop these skills. for most rural multigrade teachers and learners, writing is a process and an opportunity to learn to become independent. chetty (2010) posits that multigrade teaching can be used effectively to both foster independent, individualised learning, and ensure that marginalised learners regain their voice. learners need to gain writing skills in order to break free from the stigma and stranglehold of poverty and illiteracy. three questions have guided the analysis of writing in rural multigrade foundation phase classrooms: how do three authors describe and express what they mean by ‘writing’? how is ‘writing’ interpreted in the rncs foundation phase document, which was the document in use at the time of data collection? how is ‘writing’ taught in rural multigrade foundation phase classrooms? how do three authors describe and express what they mean by ‘writing’? according to the unesco (2004:13) report, literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society. they further define ‘writing’ as the ‘… ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts.’ similarly the needu report (2013) states that writing shapes the way we think, reason, and learn. the degree to which information is manipulated through writing dictates how well the information is integrated, learned, and retained. this report indicates that children in the foundation phase should be writing four times a week including one extended piece of writing. their criterion for the development of writing skills per grade is highlighted as the following: grade 1: writing sentences; grade 2: paragraphs; grade 3: extended passages. hamston and resnick (2009:7) describe writing as a powerful way for people to develop an understanding of themselves and their world. writing is a craft and an art. it requires people to have something to say and to say it well with words that capture the fine distinction of meaning. it is a concentrated act of making feeling, perceptions, and thinking visible, permanent, and important. many writers believe that writing clarifies thinking. how is ‘writing’ interpreted in the rncs foundation phase document? at the time of data collection for this research project, the rncs document (south africa, department of education 2002) was the curriculum in practice; therefore it will be the rncs curriculum that will be referred to in this paper. this curriculum only makes provision for monograde educators, which is the norm in south african schools. although adjustments can be made to suit individual multigrade teachers, it leaves the teacher with a great deal of extra planning and lesson preparation, since separate lessons for each grade need to be arranged. the rncs document (south africa, department of education 2002) offers content such as outlining writing skills and elements to be taught and acquired, and it provides teachers with practical examples of how to teach these skills and elements. the rncs (south africa, department of education 2002:2) language learning area six learning outcomes (lo’s) are listed according to a clear line of progression regarding language development, where skills are ranked in the following order: (1) listening, (2) speaking, (3) reading and viewing, (4) writing, (5) thinking and reasoning, and (6) language structures. in this study, the discussion focuses on learning areas, lo (4) writing, and lo (6) languages. the rncs (lo 4), the writing curriculum for grades r to 3 is based on developmental theories. the curriculum develops and builds on skills from previous years and sets out more complex writing skills within each grade. writing skills explained in the rncs (south africa, department of education 2002:11) include: handwriting skills; to be able to record learners’ thoughts and ideas so that others can read them; writing conventions, such as spelling and punctuation, to make their writing understandable to others. finally, learners discover that writing is a process that includes pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, illustrating, and publishing. the lo 6 language curriculum has been set out in accordance with the way cambourne (2000) views learning language. hsu (2009) highlights that we use speaking, reading and writing for different purposes, which entail different skills. how is ‘writing’ taught in rural multigrade foundation phase classrooms? teachers should teach and not assign writing (scott et al. 2009:338). to write an essay children require demonstration, stimulation, and motivation. they should become self-directed and independent writers. they should be able to write in a way that is comprehensible and engages the reader in a desirable way. children should be taught to re-think their writing. davis and mcgrail (2009:522) suggest that, by actively comparing and adjusting their writing according to readers’ reaction, learners develop metacognitive skills of monitoring, diagnosing, revising, and editing. these skills are essential in improving the quality of writing (dednam 2008). hamston and resnick (2009:7) believe that writing is as valuable as reading. writing is increasingly important for success in school and beyond where communicating effectively in writing is essential. they argue that children should write for pleasure and become effective writers, not only because they are expected to write. writers develop several processes with practice rather than a single fixed process for writing. writing partners is a useful practice, particularly in a multigrade class (hsu 2009). children are paired in order to increase opportunities for student interaction. student conferencing, critiquing each other’s writing and recommending improvements are useful examples. vygotsky (1986) reiterates that ‘what the child can do in cooperation today, he can do alone tomorrow’. this allows the teacher to facilitate pairs of learners as opposed to being the only source of support. this in turn saves time and encourages learners to be independent. hsu (2009) comments that mixed gender pairs work adequately, and considers strengths, challenges, organisational habits, personality, and learning support needs are involved with these activities. in order to accommodate learners in rural multigrade settings, change is required. in order for change to be successful, elevated demands for teachers should be met (johnston 2010:13), especially for teaching writing skills. these demands mean teachers have to: develop considerable expertise. plan systematic routines. provide high quality instruction. possess knowledge of writing skills. plan strategies. possess content knowledge. be acquainted with assessment techniques. acquire knowledge of remediation. be able to know learners and their needs. teaching skills needed for writing should not be taught in isolation. teachers should familiarise themselves with the curriculum and identify areas where they can integrate skills. methodology top ↑ the research was a qualitative study observing the writing methodology of two rural multigrade foundation phase teachers. based on situational and contextual analysis (henning, van rensburg & smit 2007:71), purposive sampling was selected in a non-random manner, based on member characteristics and specific criteria relevant to the research problem (wiersma & jurs 2005:491). as a result of the literacy rates in rural multigrade schools, two foundation phase teachers working in multigrade classrooms were deliberately selected. the learners, per se, were not part of the study but their responses and work provided further in-depth data to this qualitative study. an important criterion was that the schools had to be multigrade schools or have a multigrade foundation phase class. the northern district education office was approached to help identify schools that met these requirements. an additional criterion was identified by the western cape education department (wced) officials. these two schools did not obtain good results in the wced 2011 systemic results for grades 3. their literacy as well as numeracy levels were very low. both schools were rural and had a multigrade class in foundation phase at the time of the study. the reason for this choice of school therefore depended heavily on convenience and low literacy levels. teacher a (50 years old) taught an afrikaans grade 2 and 3 multigrade class and was afrikaans-speaking. in 2010, this class was visited once and observed four times over four weeks, from mid-july to end of august. the visits were on alternate mondays. data collection began at 08.30, and lasted until 10:00 for the four visits. this was the time period that the teacher used to teach writing. in 2010, the teacher in the second school, who had been part of the sample, died during the early stages of the research. as a result of this, the principal and the wced gave the researcher permission to begin data collection with another teacher from mid-july to the end of august 2011. teacher b (23 years old), who was afrikaans-speaking, became part of this research project in 2011. she taught afrikaans to the grade 2 and 3 multigrade class. the researcher paid one initial visit to the class at this school, and conducted four observations over four weeks from 08:30 until 10:00. henning et al. (2007) as well as mcmillan and schumacher (2006) encourage the use of data from a variety of sources. in 2011, within the boundaries of this qualitative case study, data was collected from a repertoire of observations, which were video recorded, and in-depth individual face-to-face interviews. english translations were made of the afrikaans observations and interviews. both afrikaans transcripts and english translations were returned to the teachers to check the accuracy of translation. correlations between each method of data collection were noted (creswell 2012). each interview and observation was transcribed exactly in order to understand how the data was to be collated, coded, and categorised (creswell 2012). transcripts were read and examined repeatedly to determine how these two teachers incorporated cambourne’s social constructivist instructional principles in their teaching and learning. all four of cambourne’ s (2004:33) social constructivist teaching and learning instructional principles were employed to deductively analyse the data. these principles were: explicit, systematic, mindful and contextual teaching. these four principles have their diametric opposites and include: implicit, unsystematic, mindless and decontextualised teaching and learning. cambourne (2004:33) explains that, although each of these dimensions is on a continuum, there may be at extremes of the field. written consent was obtained from the wced for permission to conduct the study in both schools. a copy of this letter, as well as a letter requesting permission, was submitted to each principal and teacher and permission was granted by all. in order for teacher a to be more comfortable, all communication and correspondence was conducted in afrikaans. it was important to iterate that participants would remain anonymous, and where required pseudonyms were used, (creswell 2012) thus maintaining confidentiality (henning et al. 2007:73). the names of the participating schools and teachers were not disclosed in this study. instead, they are referred to as teacher a (ta) and teacher b (tb) as well as school a and school b. findings top ↑ to answer the research question ‘how has cambourne’s theory of social constructivism furthered the understanding of the teaching of writing in two rural multigrade classrooms in the western cape?’ the researcher referred to cambourne’s four instructional principles and has provided evidence from teaching and learning episodes undertaken by both teacher a and teacher b. explicit teaching versus implicit teaching teacher a: the following extract from the observations shows how teacher a used a poem to teach punctuation in preparation for a writing task. ta: let’s look at this poem again. what is at the end of line two? l1: an exclamation mark. ta: when do we use an exclamation mark? wc: (there is silence). ta: will i use an exclamation mark when i ask a question? l23: no. ta: why not? l36: because you use a question mark at the end of a question. ta: so when will i use an exclamation mark? wc: (again there is silence). ta: will i use a question mark or an exclamation mark at the end of the following sentence? i said no! l20: an exclamation mark. ta: yes, but why? wc: (again there is silence). ta: i use an exclamation mark to show expression or emotion. why did the poet use an exclamation mark at the end of line 2? l18: he is cross. ta: is the poet cross? l18: no, i mean the person in the poem. ta: good. let’s look at line 4. what is at the end of line 4? l13: a full stop because it’s the end of a sentence. this lesson was taught verbally through the medium of a poem. teacher a did not explicitly demonstrate punctuation on the board, but she did verbally engage the learners by asking the meaning of using different punctuation marks, and why. in this way she was explicitly attempting to teach punctuation. when looking through the learners’ exercise books, the researcher did not observe previous opportunities to engage with these skills. she concluded that in this case it may have been the first time that a lesson including question and exclamation marks was taught. a lack of deep engagement would negatively affect the way learners use exclamation marks and punctuation in the future (cambourne 2004; woolfolk, hughes & walkup 2008). implicit teaching was identified as the preferred method of teaching punctuation in this lesson. teacher b: teacher b expected her learners to produce their own written work, but she was explicitly conscious of the writing skills they needed. during her interview the researcher asked teacher b how she supported learners experiencing writing difficulties. teacher b explained that time was spent developing and demonstrating various writing skills: spelling, sentence construction, and punctuation. she marked her books after school, listed errors, and pointed them out the following day as learning moments. the first twenty minutes of the next lesson were spent explaining and demonstrating these skills. at the start of every lesson that was observed she would begin by saying: ‘yesterday when i marked your books, i noticed … so today we are quickly going to look at how we do …’ the explicit method by which teacher b taught writing skills to her learners was well received by her learners. during observations, when learners had to write news, the teacher demonstrated punctuation and sentence construction to her learners. after the demonstration, she gave learners the opportunity to apply, transform, and reflect on these skills. her learners were engaged (cambourne 2004; woolfolk et al. 2008) in these activities. they began writing quickly; the majority of the learners completed their news writing within the allotted time. grade 2 learners, however, struggled to begin or complete their writing tasks. it was noticed by the researcher that grade 3 learners, who had completed their work, approached specific grade 2 learners to assist them. upon further investigation, it was again observed by the researcher that grade 3 learners were scaffolding and mentoring grade 2 learners and encouraging them to write their news. it was evident that there was already an element of social constructivism in place in teacher b’s class. systematically planned teaching versus unsystematic, unplanned, unstructured teaching teacher a: teacher a had over 30 years of teaching experience in foundation phase, but did not wish to share her planning books or files. she did not volunteer to have them perused for research. she explicitly stated that every week, staff and grade teachers planned together but she was unwilling to share her planning with the researcher. during one of the writing lessons observed, unproductive time was observed for 28 minutes before teacher a began engaging learners in this particular activity. she wanted to hear the students’ weekend news but implicitly and incidentally introduced other concepts such as ‘months of the year’, ‘days of the week’ and the ‘weather’. after discussing these concepts, she asked them to tell her their news. she had not prepared them, however, to focus on a particular aspect of what had happened to them over the weekend. the duration of this lesson, in which the teacher sat on a chair and learners sat on a mat, was 1 hour 19 minutes. learners had not yet begun to engage in a writing activity after all this time. this indicated that she had not systematically planned this particular writing lesson. teacher b: despite teacher b’s lack of teaching experience, she willingly showed the researcher her weekly and daily planning. a line of progression of the development of the writing skills (word-building, vocabulary, sentence construction, and writing for different purposes) was easily identified. an example of this was presented in the learners’ books where teacher b used a word-building activity as the basis for a sentence construction lesson. depending on how learners reacted on that day, she continued the following day either by reteaching word-building and vocabulary skills or extending their known knowledge. personal extension notes were evident in her planning file and this was a clear indication of her systematic planning. during the interview, teacher b highlighted that she used word-building activities to assist learners develop a wider vocabulary. by increasing their vocabulary, she assisted her learners in constructing more complex sentences. developing writing skills, word-building, vocabulary, and sentence construction (south africa, department of education 2002) was made possible by experimenting with words they had learnt the previous day. from the learners’ books it was evident that the continuation and consolidation of relevant writing skills were considered when learners wrote for different purposes. mindful teaching versus mindless teaching teacher a: during an observation, teacher a deliberately and mindfully addressed specific writing elements (dednam 2008:127). teacher a achieved this by using previous test papers to practise writing skills required by the wced. she used the examples to assist learners in developing their reading comprehension skills. she took the opportunity to assist them in writing the answers in full sentences using correct punctuation. it could be identified as an integrated writing lesson based on comprehension. as a whole class, including grade 2’s and 3’s, each learner received a copy of the reading text entitled ‘history of mandela’, which was three paragraphs long. they all read the passage together on the mat with the teacher. the teacher probed the learners’ thinking by asking them questions about the passage. at first, she asked the learners questions that were obvious, ‘what did the mom have to do?’ some questions the learners had to infer from the passage, ‘write the sentence that tells us that it was a hot day.’ other questions required learners to think beyond the passage and be critical, ‘do you think that the mom was happy that the sun was shining? why?’ learners returned to their desks to complete this written activity on the page provided. there were five different writing activities that the learners were required to complete. they included: spelling of words, dictionary skills, tenses, punctuation, and sentence construction. the learners had to find the correct spelling of words in the text. there were words that needed to be arranged in alphabetical order. sentences needed to be changed from the past tense to the present tense. there were sentences that needed to be rewritten with correct punctuation. finally, they had to write a paragraph to describe mandela. although the teacher guided this process, she did not prescribe the actual written answers. each learner was given the opportunity to read from the passage and the questions in order to write answers in full sentences on the board. she encouraged learners who found writing challenging to participate. by using this method of teaching, she was revising and extending vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, dictionary skills, and sentence construction. evidence shows that teacher a was mindfully and explicitly attempting to improve her grade 2 and 3 learners’ reading and writing skills. teacher b: teacher b introduced her lessons by mindfully and explicitly demonstrating writing skills she had identified as lacking in the previous day’s work. she consciously provided an activity that consolidated necessary writing skills. for example, she demonstrated what a good sentence should consist of before learners wrote their news. below is a detailed transcript of how teacher b taught her learners to construct sentences using capital letters, full-stops, and adjectives. she made her learners aware of spacing between words: tb: we are going to write our news today. before we write it, can anyone provide me with an example of a good sentence? l25: i played. tb: what do i start my sentence with? l16: a capital letter. tb: (writes the statement on the board) i played. what do i end my sentence with? l36: a full stop. tb: how can i improve my sentence? what can i add to my sentence that will tell me more about what i did? l41: i played yesterday. l6: i played on sunday. tb: good, we say when i played. what did i play with? who did i play with? l12: yesterday i played with my brothers. l26: yesterday my brothers and i played with the dog. tb: good, now we have when, who and what. what comes at the end of my sentence? l15: a full stop. tb: (writes the sentence on the board). well done, now when you write your news, i want you to tell me everything. don’t forget finger spaces between your words. i want 2 paragraphs with 10 sentences altogether from the grade 3’s and 1 paragraph with 5 sentences from the grade 2’s. l22: can we write more sentences if we want to? tb: yes, but read what you have written first. in this excerpt, teacher b demonstrated analytical writing skills (sentence construction, use of correct grammar, and editing skills) needed for her learners to be independent and to develop a culture of correct sentence structure. these skills are explained in the rncs (south africa, department of education 2002) and the foundations for learning and assessment framework policy document (south africa, department of education 2008). they provide a detailed, clear line of progression in the development of sentence structure. dednam (2008:127) believes essay writing is the most difficult form of writing. cambourne (2004:35) argues that when the necessary writing behaviours are mindfully demonstrated to learners, they will have a better grounding for writing essays independently. contextualised teaching versus de-contextualised teaching teacher a: teacher a presented a lesson in which she chose a poem about a street sweeper sweeping leaves on a windy day, and the learners needed to write the answers to the comprehension questions. learners related to this; some of their parents were ‘gardeners’, ‘labourers’ as well as ‘nannies’ on nearby farms. they knew about windy days. since her learners could easily relate to this topic, it could be deduced that this lesson was a contextually relevant lesson. they could relate to how frustrating it was to work when the wind was so strong. two examples provided by learners were: attempting to hang up washing when the wind kept blowing it down repeatedly; and the frustration of trying to keep a cap on in the wind. during a later visit, when observing the written responses to the comprehension questions, it appeared that the learners had engaged with this text and answered many questions correctly. during another observation, teacher a read a passage for comprehension about a washing machine. after reading the story to the class she noticed that the learners were silent. she asked which learners had a washing machine. nobody responded. learners were not exposed to the use of washing machines. teacher a continued by asking if any of the learners had seen a washing machine. again nobody responded. she tried to explain that it was a machine that had a part inside that spun in order to wash the clothes. she told them that she would bring a picture to show them what a washing machine looked like. when she asked the learners how their parents did the washing, they answered: ‘in the bath (ten responses) …in a bucket (seventeen responses) … in a basin (twelve responses) …’ these were the three most common answers and the learners were content with the information of their peers as they too shared the same experiences. the researcher observed the teacher’s facial expressions during this lesson and came to the conclusion that she was surprised that her learners had no prior knowledge of ‘washing machines’. this indicated to the researcher that this teaching moment was not intentional, yet it led to the text being decontextualised. the final result of this lesson was that the teacher chose not to ask her learners to complete the comprehension passage as she could see that the content made no sense to them. teacher b: teacher b asked her learners to pretend they were ‘crayons’. they had to decide what colour they wanted to be and where they wanted to go. she asked them to describe what they would do by writing their responses in their exercise books. the results of the learners’ written work indicated that they understood the use of colours. the learners’ interpretation of the concepts ‘what’ and ‘where’ was short, yet clear. for example, one learner wrote that she wanted to be a ‘red crayon’ in her teacher’s pencil bag because she would feel safe there. although it was a short sentence, it indicated that the learner felt safe with her teacher. it was clear ‘what’ she wanted to be and ‘where’ she wanted to go. this is a good example of cambourne’ s (2004:35) contextual learning because ‘it made sense to the learners. because it makes sense it is not only less complicated, but it is also more likely to result in robust, transferable, useful, and mindful learning.’ discussion top ↑ the goal of this paper was to use cambourne’s social constructivist theory of instructional principles to comprehend the complexity of the teaching of writing in two rural multigrade classes. although the south african manifesto on values, education and democracy (south africa, department of education 2001a) aimed to promote social justice, equity and equality, this research project found that rural multigrade learners can receive quality education but that this depends on the teachers. cambourne and many literacy experts (dednam 2008; hamston & resnick 2009; johnston 2010) agree that writing is a multifaceted subject, but suggest that using the four instructional principles, congruent with constructivism, may be a useful framework for understanding teaching and learning in a writing classroom. there is evidence, both from theory and practice that some aspects of cambourne’s instructional principles did emerge in both teachers’ writing classrooms, to varying degrees along the teaching and learning continuum. although teacher a was a more experienced teacher, based on the few lessons observed, she created an environment in which her grade 2 and 3 learners were not encouraged to construct knowledge from others (cambourne 2004) but were encouraged to write independently with little support. there were many examples of where she did not know how to engage with learners and support them with their writing skills. this uncertainty restricted their level of engagement with their writing tasks. although teacher a demonstrated some lessons, which included some writing skills and strategies, these lessons were mostly taught implicitly (cambourne 2004). teacher a deliberately and mindfully practised the writing skills (dednam 2008) required by the wced by using previous tests and examination papers. however, there were many examples where she had not systematically planned her writing lessons; too much time was wasted. it appeared that teacher a was not aware of the need to provide authentic, contextually relevant texts to her learners. on the other hand, teacher b provided integrative writing lessons, where the learners in her class were co-constructors of their own knowledge in an environment that was similar to where they would apply that knowledge (cambourne 2004). she created an environment in which social negotiations of meaning were encouraged as a significant part of her learning culture. the sharing of writing experiences amongst her grade 2 and 3 learners, and discussions about the processes and understandings of how to improve their writing skills was promoted. learners were encouraged to think critically and examine their own understanding at a metacognitive level. conclusion top ↑ there is international growing evidence that well-supported multigrade schools can provide positive educational outcomes. india is an example of innovative multigrade teaching methodology that is cost-effective and highly successful, both in rural and urban primary schools (padmanabha rao & rama 2010). therefore, multigrade environments are not the real issue. as in this study, the issue was the teachers’ understanding of cambourne’s theory of social constructivism and how it impacted on foundation phase learners’ writing practices in multigrade classes. both teachers created an environment that was conducive to effective learning. however, teacher b, using cambourne’s four instructional principles, created a more constructivist classroom environment for developing writing skills for both her grade 2 and 3 learners. both teachers attempted to develop independent writing skills with their learners (vygotsky 1986). because both these schools were in rural areas where the parents were illiterate, attempting writing skills was a difficult task for both teachers. together with the curriculum, resources proved to be a challenge for both teachers. the lack of basic resources such as books, stationery, learning materials, warm clothes, and food hampered both teachers’ ability to teach writing, and for the learners to learn effectively. having the right resources is important and influences the quality of teaching and learning (hoadley & jansen 2010:105). this study was limited to researching only writing skills in two rural multigrade (grade 2 and 3 classes) foundation phase classrooms. at all times, the researcher was mindful of the close link between reading and writing. the learners in these classes were between the ages of seven and 10 years old. it was believed that even though this study is limited to these grade groups, it does not make the study less significant. a recommendation is that teacher-training institutions and in-service workshops should provide modules on teaching in rural multigrade environments. in these modules, discussions on how poverty and illiteracy may impact on the development of writing skills need to be included. strategies should be offered on how teachers can use the more advanced learners, not necessarily the older learners, in the class to assist the slower learners. a final recommendation is that these two rural multigrade teachers would like more professional development on writing skills provided by knowledgeable others in ngo’s and the wced. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions both b.b. 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hughes, m. & walkup, v., 2008, psychology in education, pearson, london. article information authors: chaka chaka1 mampa l. mphahlele1 charles c. mann1 affiliations: 1department of applied languages, tshwane university of technology, south africa correspondence to: chaka chaka email: chakachaka8@gmail.com postal address: private bag x680, pretoria west 0001, south africa dates: received: 16 mar. 2015 accepted: 17 aug. 2015 published: 04 nov. 2015 how to cite this article: chaka, c., mphahlele, m.l. & mann, c.c., 2015, ‘the structure and features of the sms language used in the written work of communication english i students at a university in south africa’, reading & writing 6(1), art. #83, 9 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v6i1.83 copyright notice: © 2015. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. the structure and features of the sms language used in the written work of communication english i students at a university in south africa in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • relevant studies • research methodology • research questions • participants and sampling technique • materials and data collection process • data analytic procedure – morphosyntactic analysis • findings • morphological processes at play in participants’ text messages    • tma    • tmb • syntactic processes at play in participants’ text messages • type of sms language features in participants’ writing samples • discussion • participants’ text messages, and their morphological structures • participants’ text messages and their syntactic structures • participants’ writing samples and types of sms language features • conclusions and recommendations for further studies • acknowledgements    • competing interests    • authors’ contributions • references abstract top ↑ employing an explanatory design, this study set out to investigate the morphosyntactic structures of the sms language of communication english i students, and the types of sms language features used in their written work at a university of technology in south africa. the study randomly sampled 90 undergraduate students (m = 40; f = 50) enrolled for a national diploma programme during the first academic semester in 2013. their ages ranged from 19–22 years; they all spoke english as a second language, whilst having one of the five black south african languages as their home language. the study had two types of data: participants’ mobile phone text messages (in two sets), and their writing samples. two of the findings of the study are: the morphological structure of the textisms used in the participants’ text messages deviated from that applicable to formal, standard english, whereas much of their syntactic structure did not; and, the frequency and proportion of textisms in participants’ writing samples were lower than that reported in studies by freudenberg (2009) and rosen et al. (2010). introduction top ↑ short message service (sms) language – also known as text messaging – has become a subject of a number of studies in recent times. one of the focal areas of these studies has been on features of sms language, especially of young or teenage users, and how such features may affect these users’ writing or literacy skills, or their spelling proficiency. amongst the studies that have investigated how sms language affects young users’ writing or literacy skills are: aziz et al. (2013); dansieh (2011); deumert and masinyana (2008); drouin and davis (2009); durkin, conti-ramsden and walker (2011); freudenberg (2009); geertsema, hyman and van deventer (2011); njemanze (2012); plester and wood (2009); rosen et al. (2010); shafie, azida and osman (2010); and vosloo (2009). in a similar vein, some of the studies that have examined the relationship between young users’ sms language and spelling are: bushnell, kemp and martin (2011); farina and lyddy (2011); lyddy et al. (2013); powell and dixon (2011); and varnhagen et al. (2010). in addition, there are emerging studies that are investigating the relationship between young users’ use of sms language and some aspects of grammar: adebileje (2014); kahari, mutonga and ndlovu (2013); nweze (2013); oladoye (2011); ong’onda, matu and oloo (2011); wood, kemp and waldron (2014); and wood et al. (2014). the current study set out to examine the morphological and syntactic (morphosyntactic) structures and features of sms language evident in the written work of undergraduate students enrolled in a national diploma course, communication english i, at a university of technology in gauteng, south africa. its overriding contention was that, overall, students including the ones whose texting was investigated in this study do not use as much texting in their formal writing, or do not transfer as much texting to their formal writing, as is often reported (see, for example, dansieh 2011; geertsema et al. 2011; yousaf & ahmed 2013). in this instance, its four major goals were to: establish whether the morphosyntactic structures used by students in their text messages conformed to, or deviated from, the standard english syntactic elements. identify the morphosyntactic structures of the sms language used by these students in their written work. identify the types of sms language features these students used in their written work. determine the frequency of textisms present in these students’ writing samples. these goals also constituted the purpose of the study. this purpose was informed by the fact that many studies on sms language, in general, and sms language features in student written samples, in particular, have focussed mainly on the sms language, or the types of sms language features present in student writing, without also focussing on the morphosyntactic structures of such sms language. the current study attempts to examine both the morphosyntactic structures of the sms language used in the written samples of communication english i students, and the types of sms language features present in such written samples. when this study was conceptualised, it was felt that, in the south african context in particular, not much concurrent research work had been conducted into the twin areas of sms language features in students’ text messages, and the morphosyntactic structures of the sms language observed in students’ written work. the present study is of the view that there is a dearth of research in these twin areas of texting. as such, it is intended as a contribution to these two areas of students’ texting and formal writing. relevant studies top ↑ four of the studies that have investigated sms language, or sms language features, in students’ written work, and whose findings are worth highlighting are: aziz et al. (2013), freudenberg (2009), mahmoud (2013), and odey, essoh and endong (2014). for example, the study by aziz et al. (2013) involved 50 undergraduate students at an institute of information technology in pakistan who were enrolled in two degree programmes (bachelor of computer engineering and bachelor of telecommunication engineering). forty-two of these students were males, whilst eight of them were females, and their overall ages ranged from 19–25 years. a major finding of this study pertaining to student essays is that there was no significant prevalence of sms features (e.g., abbreviations, emoticons, and omissions of punctuation marks) in these essays – which suggests that students were able to switch to an appropriate register or style when writing formally (aziz et al. 2013). in a different, but related, context freudenberg’s (2009) study set out to investigate the impact of sms speak on the written school work of english first language (l1) and english second language (l2) high school learners. undertaken at an english-afrikaans dual-medium school in the western cape, south africa, the study involved 88 learners – 43 from grade 8 and 45 from grade 11; 51 were english l1 speakers and 37 afrikaans l1 speakers. two instruments, questionnaires and a written english task, were used to collect the data. questionnaires were administered to determine the frequency and volume of participants’ use of sms speak as well as the features of their sms speak. similarly, participants’ written english samples were intended to assess specific features of the learners’ sms speak. two of the findings of this study are worth mentioning. all participants reported using features of sms speak in their smses, and many reported using sms speak in their written school work. but in contrast, samples of their written work did not contain a great number of instances of sms speak features (freudenberg 2009). for its part, mahmoud’s (2013) study examined the effect of english sms language on the development of 40 foundation year students’ speaking and writing skills at a university in saudi arabia. the study took place over six weeks in the academic year 2012–2013. a research question the study set out to answer was: does the frequent use of sms affect students’ spoken and written communication skills? the 40 participants were randomly assigned to two groups: a control group and an experimental group, each consisting of 20 students. the control group was taught using conventional strategies, whilst the experimental group was taught using both conventional strategies and sms messages as an additional communication means. three instruments were employed to collect data: sms messages written in full english words and which were free of short forms and abbreviations; an oral test consisting of two tasks; and, a written test in which participants were asked to write a well-organised paragraph about one of the two topics related to a foundation module they were being taught. one of the findings of this study was that students who used sms had their writing and speaking performance noticeably improved (mahmoud 2013). in another context, the study by odey et al. (2014) explored the influence of sms texting on the writing skills of students at a college of education in nigeria. these students, who served as the participants for the study, were 50 third year students. using both quantitative and qualitative approaches, the study collected its data through 250 sample sms texts produced by the students, 50 student essay scripts, and observation. with reference to the 250 sms messages, students were requested to forward five of the most recent sms texts they had sent to their friends, to the researchers who undertook this study. these sms texts were analysed by identifying the sms language features they displayed. the 50 essay responses were written by students as part of their examination and were content-analysed to establish the extent to which the sms language features observed in the sms texts occurred in them. the five most dominant features of the sms language identified in student essay responses, in an exponential order, were: vowel deletion; graphemes (letter homophones); alphanumeric homophones; punctuation errors; and, initialisation (odey et al. 2014). in relation to the morphosyntactic structure of student sms language, adebileje’s (2014) study explored the use of various registers in the syntax of text messaging amongst young undergraduate students at a university in nigeria. specifically, the study investigated the internal structures of words (morphology) and how words were put together to form text messages (syntax). its corpus consisted of 120 text messages produced by students whose ages ranged from 16–24 years. the frequency and distribution of these text messages were analysed to establish how they differed in terms of register. the study discovered that students’ use of morphemes to construct syntax was mainly based on logograms, symbols (figures), phonics, nigerian pidgin english, and respective mother tongues. in one more scenario, the study by kahari et al. (2013) explored the syntactic structures of text messages in the english language used by 50 students in zimbabwe. these students comprised 30 females and 20 males. they were requested to forward two messages each to the researcher. in the end, 90 text messages were isolated, and their sentences were analysed for aspects such as omissions of pronouns, auxiliary verbs, and contractions. in addition, the study analysed the impact of sociolinguistic variables on the english sentence structure of text messages. moreover, unstructured interviews were conducted to find out what factors triggered the syntactic elements identified in the students’ text messages. the researchers point out that text messages showed that cell phone texting was affected by factors such as: channel constraints; time; linguistic pragmatic interference; common knowledge background; and, gender; and that these factors triggered the syntactic features identified in the students’ text messages (kahari et al. 2013). finally, nweze’s (2013) study explored the morphosyntactic aspects of sms texting amongst global system of mobile (gsm) communication users, all of whom were students at a university in nigeria. in all, there were 50 such users (males and females), and 75 text messages were sourced from them. mostly, these messages comprised educational, seasonal, love, religious, and other messages that expressed good wishes. the study employed transformational and meta-pragmatic theories to mount its data analysis. it then discovered that there were morphosyntactic variations amongst texters which violated formal english. it also found that texters employed some word order (which deviated from formal english), and that morphological processes such as contractions, abbreviations, acronyms, compounding, and blends featured in varying degrees in the texters’ messages (nweze 2013). research methodology top ↑ the study adopted a qualitative research paradigm. accordingly, it employed an interpretivist approach. the choice of both the research paradigm and the research approach was informed by the data types collected: text-based sms messages and short written paragraph responses. in line with this research paradigm, the research design deemed appropriate for this study was an explanatory and case study research design (creswell 2013; henning, van rensburg & smit 2004; yin 2003). this is more so, since the study focused on participants at a case study level and analysed its data through a descriptive framework. research questions top ↑ there were four research questions for this study: what are the morphosyntactic structures of the sms language used by communication english i students? do the syntactic structures used by the students in their text messages conform to, or deviate from, standard english syntactic structures? what are the types of sms language features these students use in their written work? what is the frequency of textisms in these students’ writing samples? participants and sampling technique top ↑ utilising an explanatory design (creswell 2013; yin 2003), this study had 90 undergraduate students enrolled in a national diploma module, communication english i, at a university of technology in gauteng as its participants. communication english i is a one-year undergraduate module spanning two semesters and is offered to first year national diploma students at this particular university of technology in gauteng. the 90 participants were randomly selected during the first academic semester in 2013. they consisted of 50 females and 40 males with ages ranging from 19–22 years (mean age = 20.7 years). they all spoke english as a second language, whilst having one of the five black south african languages as their home language. materials and data collection process top ↑ two types of data were used for this study. the first type of data was sourced from participants’ mobile phone text messages. participants were asked to forward two text messages they had sent to their friends in the two previous days to two research assistants’ mobile phone handsets (the authors understand that this procedure could constitute a possible limitation to the conclusions to be drawn from the study findings, since the participants may have selected their most grammatically-correct smses, in spite of the fact they were advised beforehand that this was not an exercise in good grammar). they were requested to transcribe one text message verbatim and to electronically transfer the other one in its original form to the two assistant researchers’ mobile phone handsets. in all, 180 text messages were collected from the participants. the first set of transcribed text messages had a total word count of 7100 words (average word count = 79 words). in contrast, the second set of electronically transferred text messages had a total word count of 5420 words (average word count = 60 words). the second type of data were writing samples sourced from the students’ short written essay task. for this essay task, they were requested to write a short essay on the following topic: what made you choose to study for a diploma in office management? participants were informed, prior to writing this essay task, that their (hand-) written essays would be marked and graded following the conventions of standard english. no dictionaries or spell-checkers were made available to them. they were also informed that they needed to spend only 20 minutes writing this task (a time limit was imposed to reduce the inconvenience to the participants, whilst ensuring that the authors had enough data to analyse). the total word count for the combined short written essay tasks was 8038 words (average word count = 89 words). data analytic procedure – morphosyntactic analysis top ↑ the analytic procedure used to analyse the two data types for this study was a morphosyntactic analysis informed by content analysis (see odey et al. 2014). this analytic procedure entailed analysing each data type at both morphological and syntactic levels. in relation to participants’ text messages especially, the analysis focused on the morphological processes at play at the lexical level within the text messages and how words were structured at the syntactic level to communicate text messages at the sentence level (see adebileje 2014; nweze 2013; odey et al. 2014). the morphological processes that served as units of analysis were: contractions; shortenings and abbreviations; initialisms and alphabetisms; aphaeresis; phonetic approximations; g-clippings; rebus, letter and number or number and letter homophones; accent stylisations and respellings; misspellings and typos; omissions; upper and lower cases; logographs and emoticons; and, combined two words. these morphological processes are referred to here as textisms, following powell and dixon (2011), varnhagen et al. (2010), and wood, kemp and waldron (2014). at the syntactic level, units of analysis were: word order (e.g., the subject-verb-object [svo] word order); full sentences; sentence fragments; run-on sentences; subject-verb agreement (sva); punctuation marks; unconventional punctuation marks; no punctuation marks; and, colloquialisms. all of these syntactic structures of the participants’ text messages were analysed in terms of whether they conformed to, or deviated from, standard english syntactic structures. in respect of the participants’ writing samples, the analytic procedure examined which text message forms or features, if any, were incorporated into their written work (adebileje 2014; kahari et al. 2013; nweze 2013; oladoye 2011). no t-test was administered. however, two coders content-analysed each piece of data type for the presence of the units of analysis indicated above. their intercoder percentage agreement was .90 and .92 for the morphological features (textisms) found in the two sets of text messages (see tables 1 and 2), respectively, and .88 for the syntactic structures found in both text message types (see table 3). with regard to textisms identified in participants’ writing samples, the inter-coder percentage agreement was .92 (in this case an inter-coder agreement of 1.00 represents total agreement, whilst an inter-coder agreement of .00 represents zero agreement on the part of coders). where necessary, different sms language features were categorised, represented in their occurrence frequency percentages, and tabulated accordingly. findings top ↑ this section presents the findings related to the two data types cited above. as such, these findings are largely specific and responsive to the nature of the data types as sourced from the participants’ text messages and writing samples. morphological processes at play in participants’ text messages top ↑ participants contributed two text messages each in response to a request to do so. these text messages were grouped into two sets: the first set consisted of text messages transcribed by the participants, whilst the second set comprised text messages electronically transferred by them and recorded on the two mobile phone handsets used in the study. two of the transcribed instances of the first set of text messages (tm) are represented here as tma and tmb. tma um havin da best i thanx u 2 hv a very gudnyt! thinking of u. hop u’r suprb, hv a gr 8 1! baby i hope u hv a gud nyte. lv u 4eva baby i hope u’l b wel. thanx my dear luving sister 4 this msg. phone u 2moro 4 visit mi am da last person 2 wish u happy birthdayhappy belated birthday. tmb hi ma day was gr8 l went 2 church n after i went loftus 2 watch soccer, in da campus hey i hope u had a grt day, ern nw hav a grt nyt gudnyt bby i just got home!come! frm 1yrz to 15yrz i hv a heart 4 childrens, im doing local government it ws so nyc, it ws jc a visit dat we usual pay 2 da kidz by showing luv 2 them hud it sakhile da guy hu took u number ma number r 073 847 3893 karabo cn u plz sign 4 me ko apl, i wont manage 2 cum 2 skul 2day 4frm dimakatso. my sweet pumkin, how r u my love? i miss u so… much and i angry coz u forgot my bday on da 11th …. take care, have mad love 4u. i great week ahead. i at the gate plz open it hi u, i miss u & so hw ws ur week. i wl like 2 sy i luv u table 1 displays participants’ transcribed sms language features and a typology reflecting the corresponding textism categories into which these features have been divided. these textism categories represent morphological processes at play within participants’ text messages. table 1: participants’ transcribed sms language features and corresponding full versions. as shown in table 1, the students’ text messages contained twelve textism categories; the top five (with their corresponding occurrence frequency percentages), in a descending order of occurrence, being: initialisms and alphabetisms; rebus, letter and number or number and letter homophones; accent stylisations and respellings; phonetic approximations; and, misspellings and typos. likewise, instances of text messages electronically transferred by participants and recorded on the two mobile phone handsets used in the study are depicted in figures 1 and figure 2. figure 1: sample of participants’ electronically transmitted sms language features and corresponding full versions. figure 2: sample of 2nd set of participants’ sms language features and corresponding full versions. table 2 (on electronically transferred smses) indicates 13 textism categories; the first eight in the following descending order of frequency occurrence being: initialisms and alphabetisms; phonetic approximations; misspellings and typos; accent stylisations and respellings; shortenings and abbreviations; rebus, letter and number or number and letter homophones; combining two words; and, upper and lower cases. table 2: participants’ electronically transmitted sms language features and corresponding full versions. syntactic processes at play in participants’ text messages top ↑ table 3 features syntactic processes found to have been at play in participants’ text messages. in particular, it displays the respective categories into which these processes were divided and whether or not participants’ text messages conformed to, or deviated from, these syntactic categories. for instance, in respect of the word order a majority of text messages displayed the conventional svo word order. similarly, in relation to full sentences, a majority of text messages were full sentences. in contrast, fewer text messages were sentence fragments. table 3: syntactic categories and instances of participants’ text messages that fit into these categories. with reference to run-on sentences, too, there were fewer text messages that were run-on sentences. concerning the subject-verb agreement (sva) structure, all text messages conformed to this structure. as regards punctuation marks, some text messages employed punctuation marks, such as periods (full stops) and commas properly, whilst others did not. furthermore, a majority of text messages did not have unconventional punctuation marks, except a few that used an ampersand, &, in the place of and, whilst few used emoticons such as ;) and ({}) at their sentence endings. finally, one third of text messages did not have periods at sentence endings. on this score, seven text messages utilised the colloquialism, wana or wanna, for want to. type of sms language features in participants’ writing samples top ↑ as mentioned earlier on, with regard to participants’ writing samples the analysis determined which text message forms or features, if any, they incorporated into their written work. table 4 represents a typology of sms language features (including their corresponding occurrence frequency percentages in brackets) and the accompanying examples of such features from participants’ short essay writing samples. in this case, the four sms language features that occurred mostly in participants’ writing samples were, in a descending order: phonetic approximations (1.68%); misspellings and typos (1.30%); shortenings and abbreviations (1.22%); and rebus, letter and number or number and letter homophones (1.1%). table 4: a typology of sms language features and corresponding examples of such features in participants’ writing samples. the eight sms language features that appeared less in participants’ writing samples were, in a descending order: accent stylisations and respellings (0.92%); initialisms and alphabetisms (0.84%); upper and lower cases (0.84%); contractions (0.46%); aphaeresis (0.38%); apostrophe omissions (0.30%); combined two words (0.15%); and colloquialisms (0.1%). two categories, g-clippings and logograms and emoticons, were not detected. discussion top ↑ this study set out to explore the morphosyntactic structures of the sms language of communication english i students, and the types of sms language features these students used in their written work at a university of technology in south africa. below is a discussion of its findings as they relate to the three areas analysed in the preceding section. participants’ text messages, and their morphological structures top ↑ as mentioned earlier on under the findings section, the morphological structures detected in the participants’ text messages in the first set of data were categorised into thirteen textisms. as depicted in table 1, the morphological structures of the textisms used in this set of participants’ text messages, had, as is the case with most sms textisms (powell & dixon 2011; varnhagen et al. 2010; wood et al. 2014) their own distinctive features which deviated from those used in formal english. pathan (2012) makes a similar observation in his study of 200 text messages generated by bachelor of arts (english) students at a university in libya. in this regard, the two textisms with the highest occurrence frequency percentages were rebus, letter and number or number and letter homophones, and initialisms and alphabetisms. these occurrence frequency percentages seem to be slightly lower than the highest occurrence frequency percentages of textisms reported in other studies on text message features, such as those studied by lyddy et al. (2013) and thurlow and brown (2003). in addition, the occurrence frequency percentages for the individual textisms, as depicted in table 1, are lower than those reported by both lyddy et al. (2013) and thurlow and brown (2003). for instance, in the study by lyddy et al. (2013), textisms such as missed capital letters, accent stylisations, and omitted mid-message punctuation (mainly apostrophes) were scored as 22%, 19%, and 11%, apiece. moreover, the proportion of non-standard spelling in their study was 19%. in contrast, as reflected in table 1, the apostrophe omissions in the first set of text messages was 2.53%, as compared with 11% of that by lyddy et al. (2013) for this textism category. furthermore, the average textism occurrence frequency percentage (5.3%) in the first data set compares quite unfavourably with plester, wood and joshi’s (2009) study, in which textisms accounted for 34% of the total text message content. on the other hand, in thurlow and brown’s (2003) study, textisms accounted for 20% of the total text message content. however, here too the morphological structures of the textisms detected in participants’ text messages in the first data set deviated from those applicable to formal english – a point that pathan (2012) notes in his study as well. again, as illustrated in table 2, the morphological structures analysed in the participants’ text messages in the second data set were also categorised into thirteen textisms. as is the case with textisms used in the first data set, the morphological structures of the textisms used in this set of the participants’ text messages deviated from those applicable to formal english. nonetheless, in this data set, the two textisms with the highest occurrence frequency percentages, initialisms and alphabetisms and phonetic approximations, recorded higher occurrence frequency percentages than those in the first data set. these occurrence frequency percentages seem to be higher than those reported in other studies on text message features, such as the studies by lyddy et al. (2013) and thurlow and brown (2003). they are also marginally higher than the textism of 34% in plester et al. (2009). however, the apostrophe omissions for this data set are, at 2%, lower than 11% of lyddy et al. (2013) for the same textism category. above all, as is the case with the first data set, the average textism occurrence frequency percentage (13.5%) in the second data set compares quite unfavourably with the study by plester et al. (2009), in which textisms accounted for 34% of the total text message content. participants’ text messages and their syntactic structures top ↑ there were nine syntactic categories (table 3) that were employed to analyse the participants’ text messages with a view to establishing whether such text messages conformed to, or deviated from, the syntactic categories in question. for example, as regards the svo word order, a majority of text messages displayed conventional english svo word order. this observation is inconsistent with nweze’s (2013) study that notes that texters’ word-ordering in his study deviated from formal english. it is also incongruent with pathan’s (2012) study that found texters’ messages to have been characterised by sentence subject omissions (see chiad 2008). with reference to full sentences, a majority of text messages were full sentences. in contrast, fewer text messages were sentence fragments. similarly, in respect of run-on sentences, there were a few text messages that were run-on sentences. again, this observation contrasts with pathan’s (2012) study that found texters’ messages to have been typified by, for example, run-on sentences. pertaining to the subject-verb agreement (sva) structure, all text messages conformed to this structure. as regards punctuation marks, some text messages utilised punctuation marks, such as periods (full stops) and commas, at appropriate sentence slots, whilst others did not. moreover, a majority of text messages did not employ unconventional punctuation marks, except a few that used an ampersand, &, for and, whilst a few used emoticons such as ;) and ({}) at their sentence endings. finally, seven text messages made use of the colloquialism, wana or wanna, in lieu of want to. participants’ writing samples and types of sms language features top ↑ as shown in table 4, the four sms language features that had a high occurrence frequency in participants’ writing samples were: phonetic approximations; misspellings and typos; shortenings and abbreviations; and rebus, letter and number or number and letter homophones. with the exception of misspellings and typos, this finding differs with freudenberg’s (2009) study of sms language features in student writing samples. that is, in freudenberg's study, spelling errors, over-punctuation, lack of punctuation, and omission of function words had a higher occurrence frequency. again, as depicted in table 4, the other sms language features such as accent stylisations and respellings, initialisms and alphabetisms, upper and lower cases, contractions, aphaeresis, apostrophe omissions, and colloquialisms occurred less frequently. this observation, save for upper and lower cases, aphaeresis, and apostrophe omissions is in line with freudenberg’s (2009) study, in which abbreviations and acronyms, shortened words, and colloquialisms occurred less frequently in student writing samples. however, the frequency and proportion of textisms in participants’ writing samples, as illustrated in table 4, is lower than that reported in studies such as freudenberg (2009), and in rosen et al. (2010). this is consistent with the finding of aziz et al. (2013) in their participants’ written work. whilst it would be interesting to attempt explanations of why these data differ from those in the literature reviewed earlier, and how the findings could be applied to the teaching and learning of writing (english additional language), this study was, first and foremost, descriptive and exploratory in nature. in addition, the findings of the study satisfy the research questions the authors set out to explore. conclusions and recommendations for further studies top ↑ this study set out to investigate the morphosyntactic structures of the sms language of english communication i students and the types of sms language features these students used in their written work at a university of technology in south africa. with reference to the morphological structures of sms language, it was discovered that, in one instance, the occurrence frequency percentages of certain textisms (e.g., rebus, letter and number or number and letter homophones, and initialisms and alphabetisms) in the participants’ text messages, were slightly lower than the highest occurrence frequency percentages of textisms reported in other studies on text message features, such as lyddy et al. (2013) and thurlow and brown (2003). in another instance, it was found that two textisms (e.g., initialisms and alphabetisms, and phonetic approximations) with the highest occurrence frequency percentages in the second data set, yielded higher occurrence frequency percentages than those in the first data set. it also emerged that the occurrence frequency percentages of these two textisms seemed to be higher than those reported in other studies on text message features, such as in lyddy et al. (2013) and thurlow and brown (2003), and marginally higher than in plester et al. (2009) textism of 34%. however, it was noted that the apostrophe omissions for this data set were, at 2%, lower than that of lyddy et al. (2013) of 11% for this textism category. it also emerged that the participants’ sms language features – like those reported by pathan (2012) – deviated from those used in standard english. in respect of the syntactic structures of the participants’ sms language, it was observed that a majority of participants’ text messages employed the conventional english svo word order and the accepted sva structure. the same was the case with participants’ text messages in relation to full sentences: a majority of their text messages were full sentences, with only a few of such text messages being fragments, or run-on sentences. furthermore, it was observed that the participants employed punctuation marks such as periods and commas varyingly, with some employing them appropriately, whilst others did not. moreover, it was noted that few participants used an ampersand, &, for and, whilst a few others used emoticons such as ;) and ({}). with regard to the participants’ writing samples, four sms language features occurred frequently: phonetic approximations; misspellings and typos; shortenings and abbreviations; and, rebus, letter and number or number and letter homophones. in contrast, sms language features, such as accent stylisations and respellings, initialisms and alphabetisms, upper and lower cases, contractions, aphaeresis, apostrophe omissions, and colloquialisms occurred less frequently. most importantly, the frequency and proportion of textisms in the participants’ writing samples were lower than those reported in studies, such as freudenberg’s (2009) and that by rosen et al. (2010). finally, the findings of this study are largely specific and responsive to the nature of the data types, as sourced from the participants’ text messages and writing samples. as such, there are studies that may replicate these findings, and those that may not. moreover, cross-sectional studies involving students across study levels and involving a lot more triangulated data types are needed to better understand the morphosyntactic forms employed by students in their sms language. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions data for this article were collected by m.l.m. (tshwane university of technology) from a university of technology. c.c. (tshwane university of technology) wrote the first draft, and c.c.m. 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promotion as a social activity reading promotion in south africa conducting the study the location of the reading promotion project research population conceptualisation of the reading promotion project research approach the research design data collection analysis of the data discussion of qualitative data analysis of the quantitative data merging of data discussion of the effects of the reading promotion project conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) maritha e. snyman department of information science, university of south africa, south africa citation snyman, m.e., 2016, ‘a longitudinal study of a reading project in the northern cape, south africa’, reading & writing 7(1), a85. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i1.85 original research a longitudinal study of a reading project in the northern cape, south africa maritha e. snyman received: 20 may 2015; accepted: 30 sept. 2015; published: 02 june 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract the topic of this longitudinal study was reading promotion and its perceived benefits. the aim was to determine if reading promotion can lead to reader development and if reader development can lead to self-development, as is often claimed in the literature. a reading promotion project in the northern cape, south africa, was monitored over a period of five years by using a selection of qualitative and quantitative data collection methods. the outcome of the study indicates that the reading promotion project was responsible for positive changes in the lives of the beneficiaries of the intervention. it especially points to the positive role access to appropriate reading material and prolonged and enthusiastic reading motivation can play in the lives of a developing community with little means. introduction ‘reading in decline in south africa’; ‘sa schools at rock bottom in international assessments’; ‘south africa is a nation of dunces, international comparisons show’; ‘too late to fix for next generation?’ shout the media headlines every time the results of the international benchmarking test, pirls1, are announced. journalists and educationists comment about and lament the dangerously low levels of south african learners’ reading skills. and dangerously low they are. in 2012 the national average for literacy at grade 4 was 34% and at grade 6, 28% [department of basic education (dbe) 2012:22]. spaull (2013) indicates that sacmeq2, which evaluated grade 6 literacy from 2000 to 2007, found that 27% of south african grade 6 pupils were illiterate, because they could not read a short and simple text and extract meaning from it. the south african book development council (sbdc) (2007:4–135) paints a similarly bleak picture of the reading habits of adult south africans. more than half of south africa’s population do not have any books in the home (sbdc 2007:66). only 26% read daily in their leisure time, and newspapers are their favourite reading material. books amount to only 38% of reading matter. these figures are responsible for the classification of south african adults as ‘infrequent readers’ (sbdc 2007:53). usually the flutter in the media about declining literacy figures quickly dies away in the wake of more important news, until the results of the next test are announced. ‘silently reading and writing skills are declining in south africa’ (spaull 2013). in any society dominated by the written word, reading is a fundamental requirement for participation in community life. literacy skills are crucial to parenting, employment seeking, consuming, and so on (eu high level group of experts on literacy 2012:12). reading not only impacts everyday life, but it is also at the heart of self-education and lifelong learning (cox & guthrie 2001:129). it is also needed to take advantage of digital developments. a literate individual can ‘develop capacities of reflection, critique and empathy’ (eu high level group of experts on literacy 2012:12) that consequently lead to a sense of self-efficacy and identity. most south africans do not have easy access to books (mulgrew 2012:14). only 46% can access books from libraries (sbdc 2007:74). thirty libraries per million people are not sufficient for a population of more than 40 million people (kpmg 2008:5). the skewed distribution of libraries from the apartheid era remains. the library and information services transformation charter [department of arts and culture (dac) 2014] acknowledges that there is no ‘national strategy to guide the development of the lis sector as a whole [and that there is a] big disparity between sub sectors’ (dac 2014:13). school libraries are also in a dismal state. less than 10% of south african schools have a functional library (equal education 2009:4). according to hart and nassimbeni (2013:16) ‘[t]he stark reality is that the south african school library sub-system is close to extinction’. apart from the global negative impact of television and the internet on reading (gallagher 2009; mokhtari, reichard & gardner 2009), other barriers to reading in south africa include systemic weaknesses in the basic education system and multilingualism (machet & tiemensma 2009; pretorius & currin 2010). to create a love of reading should become a priority in south africa. it has often been stated that people only engage in reading regularly if they have developed a love of reading and are ‘[e]nthusiastic and habitual’ readers (bayless 2010:9). it is believed that reading for leisure develops critical perception and conceptual thinking, which lead to self-development (cox & guthrie 2001:129). according to phasha, mclure and magano (2012:322), leisure reading facilitates communication, expands general knowledge and impacts on academic success. it is clearly important to promote leisure reading in the south african context. reading should be advocated as a pleasurable activity and as a valuable skill. there is, furthermore, no evidence that the south african government is actively trying to reverse the decline in reading skills through methods such as providing access to books and advocating a love of reading. to counteract the dbe and dac’s general inability to turn around the declining literacy levels, various non-governmental organisations and private institutions and enterprises, often in collaboration with the government, try to help build the reading capacity of south africa’s future generations by initiating reading promotion projects of various types in various areas (chizwina 2011). this article reports on a reading promotion project that was established in 2009. the project was closely monitored over a period of five years to determine how it benefited the beneficiaries of the project, if at all. determining whether the promotion of leisure reading can lead to a reading culture also came under scrutiny in this project. reading promotion it is universally believed that reading promotion projects can create an appetite for reading (doiron & asselin 2011:113). there is, for instance, a lengthy tradition of reading promotion in the united kingdom, where enterprising and imaginative methods are used to promote reading (elkin, train & denham 2003). in essence reading promotion refers to any campaign, event, programme, initiative or library service that has the aim to promote reading. reading promotion ‘seeks to provide conducive reading environments and copious reading activities’ (olaofe 2003:97). reading promotion not only wants to motivate people to read, it also wants to help them to develop pleasure in reading and to increase their reading enjoyment. a reading promotion campaign can focus on any segment of the population. its aim is to create an environment that permits access to books, regardless of location, educational level, economic status, race or religion. ultimately, it wants to develop a reading culture by introducing non-traditional readers to books and helping them find the joy of reading (elkin et al. 2003:2). reading promotion: a two-step approach all reading promotion projects entail a two-step approach. easy access to books at any time is the first step if reading habits are to be improved (oyegade 2012:59). often the lack of a reading culture in a community is caused by ‘the lack of conducive reading environments supported with relevant resource materials’ (oyegade 2012:61). access to books must be the first outcome of reading promotion; therefore reading promotion is also the promotion of access to reading material (rosi 2005:13). books alone, however, are not enough. a second step must be taken. once books are available, a mediator or facilitator must help the reader to find the joy of reading. this is referred to as reader development. a triangular relationship between ‘the reader, the text and the interaction between the two’ must take place (elkin et al. 2003:59) and this interaction must benefit the reader. strategies exist on how to develop reading fluency and comprehension. ‘agents of change’ (leadbeater 2003) are needed ‘to promote the skills, and even more importantly, the appetite for reading’ (department of culture, media and sport 2003:24). apart from providing books, reading promotion should also aim to develop readers by improving their reading experience. reader development, ipso facto, needs enthusiastic intermediaries or facilitators who can unlock the pleasure of reading to establish a lifelong reading habit (benevides & peterson 2010:291). reading promotion as a social activity pleasurable reading sometimes occurs in social settings. social activity around books enhances the reading experience. reading clubs have proven to be very successful reading promotion tools. membership in a popular reading club can have a positive impact on its members’ self-esteem and behaviour. reading promotion in south africa reading promotion projects can help to counteract the decline of readership in south africa. the project for the study of alternative education in south africa (praesa)3 and others showed that ‘when relevant and exciting literature is made accessible, differences can be made’ (mulgrew 2012:14). chizwina (2011) identified 77 reading promotion projects in south africa that aim to make a difference. conducting the study aim of the study the establishment of a direct link between a reading promotion project and reader development is needed to motivate more players to engage in reading promotion projects. the aim of this article is therefore to report on a reading promotion project by investigating the perceived value of reading promotion and, if possible, determine whether reader development can be linked to self-development. to be able to do this, a reading promotion project was conceptualised and established. it had to be carefully monitored to trace the effects of this intervention on beneficiaries over a period of time. the location of the reading promotion project the researcher had access to small developing communities in and around upington, south africa. a children’s book author and inhabitant of this area, anzil kulsen, eagerly offered her services as coordinator of the proposed project. the government of antwerp province in belgium was willing to fund a reading promotion project in this area. these factors decided the location of the reading promotion project, namely the small settlements in and around upington. upington is one of the bigger towns in the northern cape region and the main town of the //khara hais municipality, which incorporates seven small rural settlements, namely karos, leerkrans, leseding, raaswater, sesbrugge, klippunt and kalksloot (the local government handbook 2015:1). only 2.2% of the south african population resides in the arid northern cape (southafrica.info 2015). the majority of the people of //kara hais are poor. nearly half of the population (42.8%) have an income below the poverty breadline of r800.00 (its & sanral 2007:7). only 26.9% of the inhabitants are economically active (//khara hais municipality 2014:6). a downward spiral of poverty is indicated by a decrease in the number of formal dwellings and a constant unemployment rate of 34% (//khara hais municipality 2014:6). these settlements have no access to books. they are situated between 20 and 50 kilometres from upington and keimoes, where libraries are located, but the inhabitants have neither transport nor means to reach these libraries. walking is their main form of transport.4 at the time of the establishment of this project there was no other reading promotion in this area. research population most of the population (65.2%) is of mixed race and 85.2% speak afrikaans as their first language. female households dominate (34.1%) (its & sanral 2007:6) and women are the main caregivers and providers for children (//khara hais municipality 2014:8). yet the status and self-image of women are low. although most reading promotion projects in south africa are focused on children (chizwina 2011:100), meeting the women in the small isolated settlements exposed their vulnerability and the need for a positive intervention in their lives. women, and specifically afrikaans-speaking women of mixed race who live in the small settlements in and around upington, were identified as the beneficiaries for the reading promotion project. they were informed at the beginning of the project that the reading project would also be a research project and they consented to becoming part of the project. conceptualisation of the reading promotion project since the aim of this reading promotion project was to investigate the value of reading in a community, the conceptualisation, establishment and management of the project had to be carefully structured and regulated to enable the researcher to collect reliable data. the research aim required a long-term reading promotion project. short-term projects seem to have fewer permanent effects (malmgren & leone 2000:246), because behaviour change takes time. the project plan was conceptualised as follows: the coordinator, anzil kulsen, would establish reading clubs in as many rural settlements as funding allowed. each club would receive 50 new romances5 as a start-up pack. at each club a facilitator would be selected and trained to organize the monthly club meetings. during monthly meetings the coordinator would be present, oversee the meeting, distribute the books and keep record of the books, attendance of members and noticeable events on a specially designed form. the researcher would source enough funds to pay, at a minimum, the salary of the coordinator. the coordinator also had to collaborate with the wider community in order to find more funds and support. the coordinator had to write monthly and yearly reports about what she considered milestones in the project, according to prescribed guidelines. the researcher would visit the project at least once a year to do field observations. research approach a mixed method research approach involves collecting, analysing and integrating quantitative and qualitative data in a single study (cresswell & plano clark 2011). this approach was used in the investigation of the project. since this study leant more towards the interpretive paradigm, the researcher acknowledges her ‘on-going, subjective, and interpretive role’ as researcher (packer 2011: 125). the research design longitudinal research provides a useful platform for ‘the development of a methodological mix where neither of the two aspects alone is sufficient to produce an accurate picture of the social dynamics of the target population’ (mingione 1999:1). using a longitudinal design can, however, be challenging because of the differences of opinion about the exact nature of a longitudinal study (plano clark et al. 2014). the main rationale for using a longitudinal design was that the study’s aim was to examine possible behaviour change caused by an intervention in a community over time. longitudinal research allows the researcher to detect developments or changes within a delineated population who experience the same significant life events within a given period of time. this can happen at both the group and individual levels (ruspini 1999:222). the essence of longitudinal studies is that they extend ‘beyond a single moment in time. as a result, they can establish sequences of events’ (institute for work and health 2009:2). ployhart and vandenberg (2010:97) emphasise that a longitudinal study should contain a minimum of three repeated observations over a period of time. purposive sampling was deemed suitable for this study. because of the transient nature of the research population, it was not possible to sustain a stable sample over a long period of time. menard (1991:67) advises that where respondents are not rigidly replicated for each wave of data, the study should take place over a longer period of time and a consistent number of data collection waves should be applied to permit an in-depth, long-term analysis of social change. this study consequently stretched over five years and data was collected every month, at the end of every year and at the end of five years. the nature of the study also played a role in this decision to extend the study over time, because reading promotion projects take time to effect changes. data collection mainly qualitative data collection methods were used, namely document analysis of the monthly and yearly reports submitted by the coordinator to the researcher as well as observations by the researcher. the researcher visited the project at least once a year, when extensive field visits were conducted, and held informal discussions with the beneficiaries. quantitative data were collected by means of a questionnaire that was completed voluntarily by the beneficiaries of the project at the end of five years. the questionnaire also provided an opportunity to triangulate the qualitative findings to ensure reliability. analysis of the data in the analysis of the qualitative data, time was treated as an ordinal variable. data were analysed at the end of every year and arranged thematically according to predetermined themes decided on by the researcher and the coordinator as basic indicators of change. the yearly data collected under each theme were then merged and interpreted. the quantitative data were manually analysed and quantified into percentages. both sets of data were consequently merged to determine the similarity and/or differences in the themes. this allowed the researcher to determine the validity of the research. the thematic coding of the data collected over the five years is presented in an extended table, allowing the reader to track the unfolding of the process. after the categorisation of data into themes, they were interpreted by both the coordinator and the researcher to gain a deeper understanding of the data. two dominant themes emerged from the data analysis that were not foreseen by either the researcher or the coordinator. these themes are discussed in tables 1–8. table 1: themes identified from monthly and yearly reports and field notes: number of readers attending club meetings. the number of readers attending club meetings grew from 80 in 2009 to 720 in 2013. this constitutes a growth of 80%. the number of reading clubs grew from 8–18. this significant upward trend, both in relation to the number of book clubs as well as the number of readers, is a positive indicator that the intervention was perceived in a positive light (table 2). table 2: themes identified from monthly and yearly reports and field notes: management of the book clubs and books. many of the club members revealed a natural aptitude to become reliable and effective facilitators. as custodians of the books, they gained status among other community members. books became valuable items and some readers were even expelled from the book clubs because they did not take good care of the books. when a club facilitator had to vacate her position, there was always another one, equally capable, to take over. although a core group of members attended club meetings, the number varied because of factors such as seasonal work, personal problems and relocation (table 3). table 3: themes identified from monthly and yearly reports and field notes: access to books. the urgency of the women to read was unexpected. it was clear that access to books was the major barrier keeping people from reading. once this barrier was removed, it was relatively easy to convince the women that reading is enjoyable (table 4). table 4: themes identified from monthly and yearly reports and field notes: collaboration and partners. strong collaborations with other organisations developed. apart from the main funders, who funded the project for five years, local businesses, farming associations and individuals remained solid allies. after the researcher left the project, it was taken over by the afrikaanse taal-en-kultuurvereniging (atkv), a social enterprise and cultural organisation. the coordinator still manages the project. the only difference is that there are now no financial constraints. the coordinator receives a salary as well as an allowance to buy books monthly. the rest of the collaborators, with the exception of the puk-kanselierstrust, are still on board. this situation provides the possibility of long-term sustainability (table 5). table 5: themes identified from monthly and yearly reports and field notes: reader development. over the course of five years the women who attended the reading clubs developed from shy, uncertain readers into readers who could voice their views about contexts and characters and what they liked and didn’t like. they developed a personal reading taste and applied the experiences of fictional characters to their personal worlds. they saw their society’s and their own personal problems reflected in the books they read and found solutions there. a relationship of trust developed between the coordinator and the women (table 6). table 6: themes identified from monthly and yearly reports and field notes: changing lives: self-development. after a period of five years a reading culture was established in these communities. this statement is supported by the results of the questionnaire. reading motivated the women to believe in themselves. their self-confidence grew and they realized that there are ways to improve their lives. characters in books became role models. the women also started to insist on reading projects for their children. the zoë reading project for children was identified as a suitable project for these communities. funds were sourced and found and the zoë reading project was offered to children in some of the settlements during 2013 and 2014 (snyman 2014). the following two developments were added as themes to the analysis of the source documents (table 7). table 7: themes identified from monthly and yearly reports and field notes: readers came forward who did not attend club meetings. it was observed that many readers did not need or want the social activity of club meetings, but only wanted books to read. this might be an indication that a reading culture existed before the establishment of the project, but that access to books was, for many people, the only obstacle in not maintaining their reading habit. these women used the locations of the book club’s books as a mini-library. the facilitators managed this process and controlled the books (table 8). table 8: themes identified from monthly and yearly reports and field notes: writing development. the most surprising development in this project was how eager some women were to write. they first wrote their own tentative interpretations of the stories they had read and later their own stories. to see their names in print was, for most of them, the highlight of their lives. writing became a way to express pain and deal with hardships, as well as to gain recognition and status among family and friends. discussion of qualitative data in the documented field notes the number of book club members who improved their lives is too high to be accidental. women who were seasonal workers started looking for more work and engaged in voluntary community work. some found employment at their local clinics, at local cleaning projects and at road works. one of the club members, a girl in grade 12, started her own book club in leseding. andrea, a grade 3 learner, began to read to children in her community. some women started studying. eight women in kalksloot finished their high school education after they became members of the book clubs and found employment. three women completed (and one enrolled for) a diploma in early childhood development. a severely traumatised woman who was in prison for murder attended the reading club meetings in prison. after her release she joined the reading club in her community. their support helped her to gain enough self-confidence to find employment. she has now been working for two years. in another reading club a member finished her matric (grade 12) and started her own business. analysis of the quantitative data the questionnaires were made available to all the women: those who attended reading clubs and those who only borrowed books from club facilitators. they had to return the completed forms to their club facilitator. of a possible 720 respondents, 152 completed and returned the forms (21.1%). the data were analysed manually. the findings of the analysis based on the quantitative data are presented in the pie charts (figure 1). figure 1: the distribution of the research participants’ ages. most readers (66%) were between 21 and 40 years of age. it is assumed that they were women who cared for children and who existed on government grants. the rest of the readers mainly fell into older age groups. they had mostly never worked and were housewives (figure 2). figure 2: the number of readers who attended the book club meetings in 2013. only 25% of the readers attended book club meetings; the rest used the book clubs as a kind of ‘library’. those readers who were not members of the book clubs were partly responsible for improving the reading culture in the community (figure 3). figure 3: number of books that were read per month. more than 80% of the women read more than ten books per month. reading increased dramatically; it seems as if the women could not get enough. these findings recall sisulu’s phrase, ‘book hunger’ (2004) (figure 4). figure 4: reasons why the women read. almost 80% read to escape, mostly from unsatisfactory living conditions and broken relationships. the other 20% were women who lived comfortably and read to while away the time (figure 5). figure 5: reading preferences of the research participants. conforming to global statistics the preferred genre (70%) was the romance. murder mysteries (16%) were in second place. the indication that 8% of the readers liked teenage novels is a positive sign of an improved reading culture. it means that younger readers are also starting to read (figure 6). figure 6: responses to the question, ‘how will you feel if the reading project is terminated?’ thirty-four per cent indicated that they would be idle because they would have nothing to do; 30% described themselves as lovers of reading and 24% read to escape. reading is obviously an important factor in their lives. merging of data the findings of the questionnaire supported and validated the findings of the qualitative data and no incongruences were found. discussion of the effects of the reading promotion project there can be little doubt that reader development was an outcome of this reading promotion project and that in some cases reader development, indeed, led to self-development. the reading promotion project had an overall positive effect in the community. women started reading, working, studying and inspiring their children to read. in more than half of the reading clubs the development of a greater sense of self-value was visible. this change can be inferred from the activities the women became involved in. not all women displayed a positive change, however. in some clubs few women showed independence and expected the coordinator to keep nurturing them. yet reading in a social setting, even if it was just getting books from a familiar face, had a positive impact on the readers’ self-esteem and behaviour. the development of this reading project indicated that the lack of a reading culture was mostly caused by the lack of a conducive reading environment (oyegade 2012:61). the lack of access to appropriate reading material was the most important barrier to a reading culture. it was an easy matter for the enthusiastic coordinator to unlock the pleasure of reading for the beneficiaries. the fact that the beneficiaries were mostly literate played a decisive role in the positive outcome of the project. illiterate or semi-literate research participants would probably have yielded different results. this fact implies that more research is needed. it would also be interesting to compare the impact of reading clubs currently being established in developing communities in south africa with the impact of south african reading english clubs in the previous century. this research also revealed the lack of existing indicators to evaluate reading promotion projects. this is another area of further research. a content analysis of the stories written by these women could expose the effects of abuse and poverty in their existence. conclusion this study revealed that poverty means hours of empty days and nights with nothing to do and that books can fill these hours and change people’s lives. although snyman (2006) in her study of the reading habits of afrikaans children also found that boredom was the best motivator for reading, this study’s finding that reading has an overall positive effect on disadvantaged readers must be noted. well-stocked libraries and mobile libraries within reach of south africa’s people can contribute to strengthening the human fabric of south africans and should become a primary objective of government. the negligence of government to provide access to books should be addressed. interestingly, the success of this project has motivated the dac to investigate the possible establishment of libraries at some of the locations where the reading clubs are. kulsen told the researcher on 07 april 2015 that the dac is talking about appointing the facilitators of the reading clubs to work in the proposed libraries. whether this turn of events is good or bad remains to be seen. libraries need librarians, and the role of the coordinator in the success of the project should not be underestimated. sustained enthusiasm and passion are needed in reading promotion (rimmensberger 2014:3). the message is evident: it is possible to create a reading culture where none exists, but creating a reading promotion project that continues to foster a reading culture needs time, money and mostly enthusiasm. this research has further shown that south africa has the human capital and that good leadership can unlock it. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references //khara hais municipality, 2014, integrated development plan 2012–2017. draft review for 2014/2015. financial review, viewed 2 march 2105, from 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79% have to walk to educational facilities and 42% walk to work. 5. romance is the top fiction genre that women would likely read (sbdc 2007:69). article information authors: jacqui dornbrack1 kerryn dixon2 affiliations: 1schools development unit, university of cape town, south africa2foundation studies, university of the witwatersrand, south africa correspondence to: jacqui dornbrack postal address: 19 paterson street, newlands, cape town 7700, south africa dates: received: 30 june 2013 accepted: 10 feb. 2014 published: 17 apr. 2014 how to cite this article: dornbrack, j. & dixon, k., 2014, ‘towards a more explicit writing pedagogy: the complexity of teaching argumentative writing’, reading & writing 5(1), art. #40, 8 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ rw.v5i1.40 copyright notice: © 2014. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. towards a more explicit writing pedagogy: the complexity of teaching argumentative writing in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction    • literature review       • caps process and genre approaches to writing       • brainstorming       • argumentative writing • research methods    • analysis       • planning and brainstorming    • implications for pedagogy • acknowledgments    • competing interests    • authors’ contributions • footnote abstract top ↑ advances in technology, changes in communication practices, and the imperatives of the workplace have led to the repositioning of the role of writing in the global context. this has implications for the teaching of writing in schools. this article focuses on the argumentative essay, which is a high-stakes genre. a sample of work from one grade 10 student identified as high performing in a township school in cape town (south africa) is analysed. drawing on the work of ormerod and ivanic, who argue that writing practices can be inferred from material artifacts, as well as critical discourse analysis, we show that the argumentative genre is complex, especially for novice first additional language english writers. this complexity is confounded by the conflation of the process and genre approaches in the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) document. based on the analysis we discuss the implications of planning, particularly in relation to thinking and reasoning, the need to read in order to write argument and how social and school capital are insufficient without explicit instruction of the conventions of this complex genre. these findings present some insights into particular input needed to improve writing pedagogy for specific genres. introduction top ↑ advances in technology, changes in communication practices and the imperatives of the workplace point to a repositioning of the role of writing in the global context. brandt (2009:54) notes that ‘more and more people around the world are spending more and more time in the posture of a writer’. writing has become both the key mode and product of production, ‘engaging millions of workers at various levels in composing, processing, distributing, and organizing written symbols for large parts of the work day often in high-stakes contexts’ (brandt 2009:57). this reality has major implications for mass literacy education (brandt 2009). this raises a number of questions for the teaching of writing in the south african context, particularly its effectiveness in preparing students for the world of work. as is the case in many countries, the teaching of writing has not had the same attention paid to it as reading instruction; many teachers are less skilled in the teaching of writing and time requirements and fair assessment remain contentious issues. writing is a complicated activity. successful writers need to master a range of skills. these skills include knowing the complex requirements of genres. writers need to know the social practices in which genres are embedded and the meaning and function they have in communities. an implicit or explicit knowledge of the numerous cognitive skills and processes required to produce a piece of writing is also required. writing relies on careful thought that draws on but is different from the processes required for reading. thus, with the importance of writing increasing globally, and schools a key institution in which writing is taught, it is necessary to understand the effects of writing pedagogy. the range of writing tasks and genres required across schooling as envisaged in the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) documents (department of basic education [dbe] 2011) is beyond the scope of this article; therefore, the focus here is on the argumentative essay. argument manifests itself in numerous ways in our daily lives. the rules of engagement, discourse structures and topics that result in differences of opinion vary across communities, within and between age groups and professions. the importance of being able to present and evaluate argument is captured globally in many curriculum documents; caps claims that students who can construct and evaluate arguments demonstrate an ability to be thoughtful and reasonable (dbe 2011:8–9, 11). but, as newell et al. (2011:297) argue, the view that argumentative reading and writing lead to ‘reasonableness and thoughtful consideration of a topic’ is a false assumption. in fact, little is known about how these skills develop over time. they argue that whilst argumentative reasoning is emphasised, there is little work that addresses the methods teachers use to develop students’ argumentative writing. this gap is the starting point for this article. there is also little research on writing in schools in the south african context. research that has been conducted draws attention to the paucity and poor quality of writing and writing pedagogy in english as a first additional language (fal) (hendricks 2008) and as a home language in primary school classrooms (gains & graham 2011). using a vygotskian perspective mendelowitz (in press) argues that caps’s overemphasis of a ‘back to basics’ discourse undermines creative writing. her examination of grade 7 teachers reveals how their conceptualisations and enactment of creativity and imagination enable and constrain children’s ability to harness the higher order skill of creativity in their writing. in her consideration of current writing research in south africa, dornbrack (n.d.) has called for a more explicit focus on writing pedagogy. although much writing research focuses on the processes of writing or classroom practices, our focus is not on what the teacher has done in the class but rather on student take-up. an analysis of a grade 10 student’s material products provides us with insights into her level of genre mastery and the constitution of writing practices (ormerod & ivanic 2000). this approach, we argue, enables us to identify specific pedagogic practices and oversights. we show how the conflation of the process and genre approaches in the caps document increases the challenge of teaching writing in fal contexts. the analysis also highlights the complexity of the genre. before we present the sample text, we discuss and problematise the approaches to the teaching of writing presented in the caps document for english first additional language for grades 10–12. this is followed by a discussion on argumentative writing. the article then outlines the methods used for this research. literature review caps process and genre approaches to writing the terminology of ‘drafting’, ‘rough first drafts’, ‘proofreading’ ‘revising’ and the more explicit direction for teachers ‘to work through the writing process’ as well as the presentation of ‘steps in process writing’ (dbe 2011:35) point to a process discourse (ivanic 2004). these steps are clearly marked as: planning/pre-writing, drafting and revising/editing/presenting (dbe 2011:35). the process steps originate from flower and hayes’s (1981) concepts of planning, translating and reviewing. process pedagogy foregrounds writing as a cognitive process, that is, it assumes that writers engage in particular kinds of thinking whilst composing their texts. this thinking is recursive, ‘goal-directed and hierarchical’, meaning that ‘in the act of writing, people regenerate or recreate their own goals in light of what they learn’ (flower & hayes 1981:381). whilst process pedagogy has traditionally been used in home language writing, it is not without its critics, particularly for first and second additional language contexts. one of the primary criticisms is the ‘resolutely asocial’ and ‘wholly individualistic’ nature of the pedagogy (atkinson 2003:4). process pedagogy views writing as an ‘abstract internal process’ (atkinson 2003:5) that underplays the complex social and ideological powers that shape (and are shaped by) dominant writing conventions. hyland (2003) argues that: because process approaches have little to say about the ways meanings are socially constructed, they fail to consider the forces outside the individual which help guide purposes, establish relationships, and ultimately shape writing. (p. 18) it is critical to consider, in a country with an oppressive history such as south africa, what these forces might entail, and how they play themselves out in the educational arena. we would do well to consider delpit’s (1988) concern, writing from the context of an african american teacher’s experience: that adherents to process approaches to writing create situations in which students ultimately find themselves held accountable for knowing a set of rules about which no one has ever directly informed them. teachers do students no service to suggest, even implicitly, that ‘product’ is not important. students will be judged on their product regardless of the process they utilised to achieve it. (p. 287) the inclusion of the notion of ‘text types’ in the caps curriculum provides one way to teach ‘the rules’. learners are required to ‘learn and apply knowledge of the structure and features of different text types’ (dbe 2011:35). specifying text types with their accompanying linguistic features and structures goes some way to offer explicit instruction of the ways language works in social contexts (hyland 2003). this is in keeping with genre pedagogy, which argues that teachers should explore ‘ways of scaffolding students’ learning and using knowledge of language to guide them towards a conscious understanding of target genres and the ways language creates meanings in context’ (hyland 2003:21). in the sample of writing discussed here, it is clear that little explicit knowledge of the argumentative genre or of how grammatical choices shape meaning have been provided to this student writer; thus, the process approach operates at a superficial level. the genre and process approaches traditionally set specific stages or processes to follow. by conflating the two in the caps documents the specificity of each approach has been lost. this conflation requires teachers who can read between the lines by drawing on prior knowledge of both approaches, as well as understand the significance of each (missing) step in both approaches. this is a challenge for any teacher but more so for teachers who have had little access to these approaches in their own education and training. the steps for planning/prewriting are as follows: 1. analyse the structure, language features and register of the text type that has been selected. 2. decide on its purpose, audience and context. 3. brainstorm ideas for the topic, using, for example, mind maps. 4. discuss the criteria that will be used to evaluate the piece of writing. 5. research the topic, for example, in a library and select relevant information. 6. identify main ideas and supporting detail. the steps for drafting are as follows: 7. choose appropriate words, for example, in a narrative use evocative words and phrases to make the writing vivid. 8. organise ideas in a logical sequence so that the argument flows smoothly in an essay. 9. organise ideas and/or images so that a story makes sense 10. establish an individual voice and style. 11. read drafts critically and get feedback from teacher and classmates (dbe 2011:35). step 1, step 2 and step 4 for planning/prewriting contain a genre element. but the first two steps alone require intensive intervention to make the genre rules explicit. this is crucial in a fal context. the process of planning is embedded in the steps for brainstorming, research and identification of ideas (where organisation of said ideas is implied). the drafting steps require a rough draft in which genre and language are foregrounded. oddly, the step 8 refers specifically to argumentative writing: ‘organise ideas in a logical sequence so that the argument flows smoothly’ despite the fact that not all texts have arguments. this is followed by ‘organise ideas and/or images so that a story makes sense’ (dbe 2011:35). it is not clear why logical organisation is linked to argument and narrative and not to other text types since all texts require logical coherence. step 7 flags individual voice, which is inappropriate for some text types such as agendas and minutes. the final step, step 11, that requires peer feedback is problematic in a fal context where social and linguistic capital may not always be in place to offer ‘critical’ (dbe 2011:35) feedback. the final process step, revision/editing/proofreading, gives a list of language and structural features that should be revised but does not mention revising content or ideas1. the consequences of conflating each approach can be further illustrated if one examines flower and hayes’s (1981) notion of planning. planning requires goal setting, content generation and the organisation of content in terms of the developing text (mccutchen 2008). when one examines this meaning against the writing steps in the caps document, these elements of planning are implicit rather than explicit. this raises a potential problem for teachers. if the purposes of planning (a process step) are not well understood, then discussions about purpose or audience (a genre step) will remain at a superficial or decontextualised level. this impacts on goal setting and content generation. also of concern is the linear way in which the sub-steps are laid out in caps. planning is a recursive process (hyland 2003). merely following the steps in caps raises the possibility that what is most important, the process of thinking through ideas and revisiting them, is left out. whilst it is not the job of a curriculum document to outline the underpinnings of theoretical positions or approaches, the disjuncture between policy and reality, where many teachers lack the pedagogical knowledge to implement these requirements, ultimately sets students up for failure. brainstorming the complexity that arises from this conflation can also be illustrated by the reference to brainstorming. brainstorming originated from osborn’s work in advertising in the 1950s where he believed idea generation in groups was more productive (gallupe et al. 1992). brainstorming has been taken up in a variety of contexts. research on brainstorming has considered the optimal number of members of a group (between 3 and 12) (gallupe et al. 1992), group behaviour that mitigates idea generation, the incorporation of technology and recent work that questions the efficacy of group brainstorming in favour of individuals working alone (cain 2012). there is little work on the impact of brainstorming for writing (rao 2011). rather, brainstorming is often related to creative writing, or included as a taken-for-granted planning step. sometimes it is represented as a list of strategies. however, the successful implementation of brainstorming in education is not without its problems. students’ own knowledge can be flawed, inaccurate, limited or overgeneralised (buehl 2011). if this is the case, then individual brainstorming will have a limited effect and group brainstorming, where students can pool their knowledge, is more advantageous. this requires teacher knowledge of students’ abilities to make connections about particular topics (buehl 2011). in addition to this is the linguistic load for fal speakers. whilst recent research debunks group brainstorming, the context is usually the workplace comprising competent workers. rao’s (2011) work with english fal students in china reveals how the quality of student writing improves when the lesson is carefully structured so that students have time to think of ideas, brainstorm in pairs and can follow up with a class brainstorm. what this means is that teachers need to teach brainstorming explicitly. to do this they have to understand their students’ needs, provide a range of brainstorming strategies that are appropriate to the genre (buehl 2009, 2011) and mediate the process of brainstorming to manage the interrelationship between content and form. argumentative writing the value of being able to present considered arguments in the form of an argumentative essay, a high-stakes genre, is considered an important skill for both school and university contexts. but, as applebee and langer (2006) note, students do not write enough interpretative or analytic essays to sufficiently master the complex requirements for argumentative writing. in their review of research on argumentative reading and writing newell et al. (2011) present a number of claims why students find this genre challenging: students’ reading skills are not at a level to comprehend disciplinary texts, they do not always recognise or apply argumentative text structures and they struggle to generate evidence, offer reasons and counter arguments. furthermore, teachers’ own knowledge and practices can undermine their teaching of argument. because the genre is complex ‘teachers may not have content and the procedural knowledge’ to teach argument (newell et al. 2011:277). many teachers perceive argument as akin to conflict and avoid teaching it. the concept of audience is often dealt with inadequately, resulting in students writing for their primary audience, the teacher. furthermore, teachers cannot always articulate ‘rules of evidence – causality and proof, evidence or warrant for claims, assumptions that can be taken for granted, and premises that can be defended’ (newell et al. 2011:277) and thus provide appropriate support for students. newell et al. (2011) argue that reading and writing are dual processes necessary for argumentation. this recognition, we argue, is crucial because it acknowledges the importance of extending and generating content, vocabulary, grammatical and structural knowledge. a lack of integration can result in poorly conceptualised arguments. in a fal context, the benefits of reading for writing need to be brokered by oral-language opportunities in order to support complex language demands (hadaway & young 2006). in considering academic writing in tertiary institutions janks (2012) argues that the teaching of writing focuses mostly on left-brain skills but that writing requires both the right-brain operations for generating ideas and left-brain operations for organisation, structure and crafting. creativity and logic both have a role to play in writing (janks 2012:8; mendelowitz in press). considering the ways in which planning is a creative act for which the brain needs time to think (and rethink) reinforces the importance of thorough planning and brainstorming. it is also the launching pad for crafting the essay where logic and order come to play. research methods top ↑ the data for this research emerged from a larger project whose aim was to improve teaching in five disadvantaged high schools in the cape metropolitan area over a period of four years. the data for this article are drawn from a grade 10 english fal classroom in a township school. it was the first year caps was implemented (2011). classes were observed twice weekly and feedback was provided by members of the research team after each observation. teachers were also interviewed. the two strongest learners’ books from this class were copied. from these we have selected busi’s (a pseudonym) argumentative essay. the essay, whose topic was ritual slaughter is not a form of animal cruelty, was completed in the third term. we also consulted the learner book and teacher guide provided by the provincial department of education. despite a rich data set, our reason for focusing on one exemplar text is underpinned by delpit’s (1988) argument that product is important, because it is from this that students are judged. although cognisant of other writing samples in the data set, choosing a ‘high-performing’ student’s text is useful because such students are most likely to demonstrate a take-up of teachers’ input. in addition, ormerod & ivanic’s (2000) work with young children’s literacy, located in a sociocultural paradigm, reveals how literacy practices can be inferred from the materiality of completed texts. drawing on their work, we analyse how this student’s use of semiotic resources provides insight to the writing practices that (dis)enable the production of this specific text. critical discourse analysis further enables us to disassemble the ideational, interpersonal and textual (halliday 2006) meanings of this essay as we work to understand what the text tells us about the construction of argument as a writing practice. analysis planning and brainstorming in this section we begin with a description of the semiotic resources available in the grade 10 textbook. we follow this with a description of the student’s writing, which we then analyse in terms of presences and absences in the caps document and distinctive characteristics of the argumentative genre. the topic for the argumentative essay is taken directly from a third term unit in the textbook. in line with the caps document, the outcome of the unit is not an argumentative essay per se. rather it provides a range of tasks to scaffold the eventual writing of an argumentative essay in grade 12. evidence from all the project schools’ observations suggests that this would have been the first time students engaged with argumentative writing. the textbook tasks include a listening comprehension on ritual slaughter in which students are required to take notes listing the arguments for and against the topic. students are then required to construct an argument list, taking one side of an argument and listing two points for six different topics (the ritual slaughter essay was one topic). in the following unit students are required to structure a paragraph for a formal debate. in contrast, it appears the teacher chose the ritual slaughter topic to focus on essay writing. there is no evidence that learners had completed the listening comprehension. rather than constructing an argument list, as was suggested in the textbook, busi’s prewriting task is an ‘argumentative’ paragraph: ritual slaughter is not a form of animal cruelty it is not a form of animal cruelty because it is the culture of black south africans. the people who say it is animal cruelty, they are simply undermining our culture. for the fact that they say ritual slaughter means that they don’t see anything wrong when animals are slaughtered in a butchery. this was followed by a mind map the next day (see figure 1). on the surface, the pre-writing paragraph appears to meet the requirements of the first step of the process approach, planning/pre-writing. pre-writing tasks for an argumentative text can have several functions. they can unpack the topic, generate ideas, provide evidence for claims, examine both sides of an argument and consider how the argument will be structured. all of these functions are an important part of planning and do not necessarily require separate writing tasks. but this paragraph does none of these things sufficiently. rather it presents two claims why ritual slaughter is not cruel: it is the ‘culture of black south africans’ and ‘they’ (white south africans perhaps?) undermine black culture because, if ‘they’ were really concerned about animal cruelty, all forms of animal slaughter would be considered cruel. the number of claims is insufficient for an essay. this pre-writing paragraph is a puzzling starting point for helping students to plan an argumentative essay. this possibly indicates the teacher’s limited engagement with the curriculum documents, the textbook, or her understanding of the role of planning for this genre. a more obvious starting point would be to unpack the topic and the parameters of the debate. an understanding of the terms ‘ritual’ and ‘cruelty’, which is taken for granted in busi’s paragraph, is essential. for teachers who resist conflict situations in classrooms (newell et al. 2011), working with semantics may be a way for students to engage critically without heightened emotions. if the genre approach had been used, the class would possibly have begun by first analysing the ‘structure, language features and register’ of arguments (dbe 2011:35). explicit attention to grammatical structures such as modality and tense can deepen understandings of structure and register. as puzzling is the brainstorm, completed the next day, that follows the paragraph, which appears to have a similar function of generating ideas (figure 1). possibly the bullet point in caps, ‘brainstorm ideas for the topic, for example, mind maps’ (dbe 2011:35) has been reduced to a formula in this classroom: brainstorm = mind map. the visual nature of the mind map, which should be a generative tool, appears to be reduced to a meaningless task as is evident from the generic cloud bubble with four or five words attached. the same reduced visual appears in students’ english books across the project schools. the paragraph and the brainstorm do not show evidence of right-brain thinking. a range of brainstorming techniques could have been utilised when planning for argumentative writing (see buehl 2009), including the example presented in the teacher guide (listing arguments for and against in a table). figure 1: busi’s brainstorm for the argumentative essay. caps recommends that ‘research’ is required to ‘select relevant information’ (dbe 2011:35). positioning ‘research’ in the planning/prewriting stage implies that reading and discussion are necessary. researching topics enables content generation for both sides of an argument and provides evidence for claims. there is no evidence that busi has had the opportunity to do this – even in a school with a paucity of resources, texts on this topic were provided in the teacher guide. research would enable students to see knowledge gaps, partial understandings or flawed thinking and potentially adjust their own position in the argument. but this is a sophisticated epistemological move where ‘a side-by-side analysis of [students’] prior knowledge’ with new information enables a view of ‘knowledge as mutable, as incomplete, and open to revision’ (buehl 2011:135). had busi had access to other texts, or had the brainstorm been collaborative, she may have had the opportunity to see the limitations of her thinking in the first sentence of her paragraph (‘it is not a form of animal cruelty because it is the culture of black south africans’). discussion questions such as ‘can cultures be cruel?’, ‘if ritual slaughter is not a cruel practice, what prevents it from being cruel?’, ‘how does one know this?’, ‘what evidence is there to support this claim?’, ‘where does this evidence come from (experiential or text-based evidence)?’ and ‘how reliable is this evidence?’ would have extended her thinking. this highlights another shortcoming in the caps documents. the generic requirements of an argumentative essay hinge on the validity of claims made; otherwise, the strength of an argument is diminished. the outline of the process approach steps does not provide any space for critical engagement or evaluation of content to consider claims. in addition, the definition of the argumentative genre in caps does not specify evidence as a requirement for this essay, only that ‘elaboration’ be present (dbe 2011:37). ‘elaboration’ is substantively different from ‘evidence’. one may argue that questions of validity and evidence would be covered in a class discussion of assessment criteria, but this presupposes a discussion, a reliable rubric and that teachers understand the rules of evidence themselves (newell et al. 2011). additionally, access to relevant research texts provide not only content knowledge but also register and discourse markers that identify arguments. for fal speakers, access to texts that model both content and form (e.g. structure, grammar) is essential to their development as writers. when students come from communities that do not necessarily engage in this form of argumentation, and may not have access to people with academic knowledge (buehl 2011), reading for writing is essential. when one examines busi’s ideas in the essay below they are not without merit. this is a capable student. however, the ideas require development which reading would provide. we argue that writing pedagogy needs to include careful, sustained planning that integrates reading and discussion in order to develop thinking and reasoning. successful planning should provide a smooth transition into the essay. the final planning step in caps asks that main and supporting ideas be identified (dbe 2011). there are no textual traces (e.g. numbering, highlighting, etc.) in busi’s brainstorm or paragraph to show these connections. busi adds the words ‘differences’ and ‘respect’ to the brainstorm, which it could be argued develop the idea of culture but the visual does not indicate how. a new idea, ‘the law’ is also inserted. these are not substantively developed in the essay: busi’s essay ritual slaughter is whereby animals are slaughtered during a ritual. it is not cruelty to animals because animals are slaughtered in a butary [butchery]. people are fighting towards the fact that people slaughter the animal on their own. this is done because we respect our culture. we slaughter animals because it is our culture and we have to understand that we are not the same and we do different things. when people report animal slaughter to the law, they are simply undermining our culture. i don’t see anything wrong when people slaughter on their own because it is not cruel because animals are slaughtered in a butery [butchery]. i don’t think that people that report animal slaughter are vegetarians they also eat meat. some people may slaughter on their own because they feel the meat from the buttery is not tasty enough. for example chickens are grown from the buttery [butchery] un-naturally, they use machines and clone the chicken. they chlone [clone] it inorder [sic] to make the chicken fat and look tasty when it is not even close to being tasty. so people decide to take the matter to their own hands. what i’m trying to say is that animals are not only slaughtered for rituals but also for people’s well being, because the chicken from the shop is not healthy enough and many people get heart diseases dew [sic] to the meat from the buttery [butchery]. so it is better to slaughter the animal on your own. the essay comprises five paragraphs. the first paragraph consists of one sentence: ‘ritual slaughter is whereby animals are slaughtered during a ritual’. busi has recognised the genre convention of providing a definition to start the essay. but she has not used the definitions to set up the parameters of the debate. she has only taken one aspect of the topic, ritual slaughter, and not considered it in relation to animal cruelty in the essay. in addition to this, her definition has a circular logic. had the planning stage entailed a careful unpacking of the topic it would have better supported her needs as a fal learner. she would have had the time to work out the meanings of the two abstract concepts and their interrelatedness. the advantage of setting out the parameters of the argument at the outset is that it can work as a writing frame. for a novice fal writer such framing can lessen the cognitive load. busi’s planning texts do not develop the question of culture. this alerts us to assumptions that underpin topic choice. from a socio-cultural perspective, the topic of ritual slaughter would seem to be appropriate for xhosa students. the knowledge of how ritual slaughter is practised would be shared cultural knowledge within the classroom. but shared knowledge can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. we posit that topics that refer to shared practices may be especially challenging because of the implicit (invisible) nature of these practices. it is unlikely that busi would ever have had to explain and justify the practice of ritual slaughter to people in her predominantly xhosa community. additionally, thinking through actual practices and translating them meaningfully in english may have little relevance in her real life. ideologically, this topic sets up an african/western binary with animal slaughter being positioned against a western belief of animal rights. we are not arguing that topics with connections to students’ lives should be avoided. rather, teachers may need to help students make the familiar unfamiliar, and be aware of how discourses might interpellate students, thus narrowing the possibilities of what they can write. pedagogically, addressing the notion of audience draws attention to possible pitfalls in topics. but this means that students have to be clear that the audience is not the teacher (newell et al. 2011), otherwise there is no need to explain shared or tacit knowledge. we contend that this is what busi might have done because in a community space there is no need to explain shared knowledge. on a first read of busi’s essay, her argument seems illogical, repetitive and one-sided. in order to unpack these entangled ideas we analysed the text using a theme and rheme analysis, which reveals some interesting trends in the way she constructs this essay (see table 1 and table 2). table 1: theme and rheme analysis. table 2: thematic prominence of people and related pronoun use. thematic prominence is achieved with the first position in a clause (halliday 2002:206); the remaining words constitute the rheme. in an argumentative essay one would expect to find prominence given to the key claims and concepts (animal cruelty, the law, culture) as well as discourse markers of argument (‘but’, ‘on the other hand’, ‘in addition’). what is striking in this theme and rheme analysis is the lack of prominence busi gives to the key elements of her topic (see table 1). rather, she gives prominence to people (8), animals (5) and pronouns (14). when one examines who the pronouns signify (see table 2), a binary emerges between the people who slaughter the animals versus the people who report the slaughter. busi’s use of ‘we’ and ‘i’ aligns her to those who slaughter animals and hints at a racialised discourse of ‘us and them’ with busi being on the ‘side’ of ritual slaughter. busi uses ‘we’ three times to refer to a more universalised notion of people where she strongly states, ‘we have to understand that we are not the same and that we do different things’. here she draws on a human rights discourse to argue her point. the excessive use of pronouns draws attention to the challenges of writing argumentative essays. the written genre requires a level of rationality and objectivity that distances the writer from her subject. applebee and langer (2006) argue that students write more narrative than analytic texts. the consequence of this is that students have stronger narrative repertoires. in order to meet the requirements of this essay, we posit that busi draws on her narrative repertoire that allows for greater pronoun usage in order to make her arguments. busi is also likely drawing on a social practice of oral arguments where people who strongly identify with a cause use pronouns to reference their group solidarity. busi’s school knowledge and cultural practices are insufficient to meet the requirements of this genre. had a genre approach been used, where a nuanced discussion of purpose, audience and register was a core feature of pedagogy, it would have given her footholds into academic writing. the final process stage in the caps documents requires students to do substantive linguistic editing. busi did not complete this step, so her final product is in fact a rough draft. this stage implies that students are linguistically attuned to the requirements of the genre. it is unlikely, judging from the absence of the genre approach in her other texts, that even if busi had been given the opportunity to redraft, she had the linguistic resources required for editing. this is evident in her overuse of ‘because’ (5) in theme position. it does indicate her realisation of the need to provide reasons or causes. but, only using ‘because’ does not allow for the incremental development of an argument, nor does it allow for counterarguments. the result is an underdeveloped text which raises questions about how the rules of evidence were explained (newell et al. 2011). we would argue though that there is evidence of reasoning in busi’s essay. she has keyed into a range of current discourses. these include a racialised discourse (‘when people report animal slaughter to the law they are simply undermining our culture’), human rights discourse (‘we slaughter animals because it is our culture and we have to understand we are not the same and we do different things’), dietary and health discourse (‘i don’t think that people that report animal slaughter are vegetarians, they also eat meat’; ‘the chicken from the shop is not healthy enough and many people get heart diseases’) and discourses of science and genetic modification (‘chickens are grown un-naturally, they use machines and clone the chicken … to make the chicken look fat and tasty’). the problem is that she makes implicit claims within an overly ‘pronouned’ text. for example, she conflates butcheries with abattoirs and cloning laboratories. these ideas need to be interrogated and the rules of evidence applied. access to reading texts would have assisted busi to refine her thinking, increase her content knowledge, see how other discourse markers can be used and thus extend her language of argument. this again illustrates the importance of a planning process. implications for pedagogy delpit (1988) argues that the final product of students’ writing is open to judgment, despite the fact that students may not have had access to explicit writing pedagogy. her argument prompted us to work backwards from the product in order to provide a lens on student take-up. material artifacts contain traces of what students can and cannot do. the analysis shows how important grammar is in shaping meaning, structuring ideas and managing registers to meet the requirements of a specific genre. working with final texts can be a useful reflective tool for teachers to consider specific areas where students need help, thereby enabling a more nuanced reconsideration of their pedagogy. in order to analyse these texts, it was also necessary to examine the curriculum requirements. what became evident was the conflation of the process and genre approaches which raises questions about curriculum assumptions of teachers’ knowledge. this points to a need for teachers to be encouraged to engage critically with the curriculum. given that anecdotal evidence shows that teachers avoid reading documents, the responsibility falls on teacher training institutions and the department of basic education to find alternative ways to get teachers to critically engage with policies and resources. often in-service workshops are generic in nature, glossing over specific genre requirements. the data shows areas where busi needed more support. we contend that this is a result of her teacher not fully understanding the importance of both process and genre steps for argumentative writing. one area is planning and its role in supporting and developing thinking and reasoning. this connection emphasises what a cognitively complex act writing is and the need to provide explicit support at each stage. this makes a case for professional writing workshops that focus on specific genres and, more importantly, develop the ‘pedagogical confidence of the teacher not just in command of linguistic understanding, but also how that linguistic understanding might be applicable … to the development of writing ability’ (myhill 2005:80). teaching complex genres also requires detailed planning of more than two lessons in order to meet the needs of fal students. this means addressing the perception that teaching writing involves standalone lessons. to meet student needs an integration of all the literacy skills is necessary. students need time to think, discuss ideas and read. this requires challenging teacher expectations of the forms of capital students have and their ability to think and reason. it also points to the need for teacher trainers to re-examine their assumptions and practices. acknowledgments top ↑ we would like to acknowledge funding from the royal dutch embassy who funded the mathematics and science education project (msep). in addition, we would like to thank dr carolyn mckinney for her valuable feedback and prof. janet condy for providing a wonderful space to write. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions data for this article comes from the mathematics and science education project (msep) project for which j.d. (university of cape town) was the senior researcher. j.d. and k.d. (university of the witwatersrand) made equal contributions in the writing of this article. references top ↑ applebee, a. & langer, j., 2006, the state of writing instruction in america’s schools: what existing data tell us, centre on english learning and achievement, university at albany, albany.atkinson, d., 2003, ‘writing in the post-process era: introduction’, journal of second language writing 12, 3–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s1060-3743(02)00123-6 brandt, d., 2009, ‘writing over reading: new directions in mass literacy’, in m. baynam & m. prinsloo (eds.), the future of literacy studies, pp. 54–74, palgrave macmillan, houndmills. buehl, d., 2009, classroom strategies for interactive learning, 3rd edn., international reading association, newark. buehl, d., 2011, developing readers in the academic disciplines, international reading association, newark. cain, s., 2012, ‘the rise of the new groupthink’, the new york times, viewed 22 june 2013, from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/theriseofthenewgroupthink.html?pagewanted=all delpit, l., 1998, ‘the silenced dialogue: power and pedagogy in teaching other people’s children’, harvard educational review 58, 280–298. department of basic education (dbe), 2011, curriculum and assessment policy statement further education and training phase grades 10–12, pretoria, south africa. dornbrack, j. n.d., ‘writing pedagogy and caps: a south african case study’. (unpublished article.) flower, l. & hayes, j., 1981 ‘a cognitive process theory of writing’, college composition and communication 32(4), 365–387. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/356600 gains, p. & graham, b., 2011, ‘making space for expressive and creative writing in african primary schools: a two site action research study in kenya and south africa’, reading and writing 2(1), 77–94. gallupe, r., dennis, a., cooper, w., valacich, j., bastirnutti, l. & nunamaker, j., 1992, ‘electronic brainstorming and group size’, academy of management journal 35(2), 350–369. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/256377 hadaway, n. & young, t., 2006, ‘negotiating meaning through writing’, in t. young & n. hadaway (eds.), supporting the literacy development of english learners, pp. 15–167, international reading association, newark. halliday, m., 2002, on grammar, continuum, london. hendricks. m., 2008, ‘capitalising on the dullness of the data: a linguistic analysis of a grade 7 learner’s writing’, southern african linguistics and applied language studies 26(1), 27–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/salals.2008.26.1.3.418 hyland, k., 2003, ‘genre-based pedagogies: a social response to process’, journal of second language writing 12, 17–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s1060-3743(02)00124-8 ivanic, r., 2004, ‘discourses of writing and learning to write’, language and education 18(3), 220–245. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500780408666877 janks, h., 2012, ‘the discipline and craft of academic writing: building writing capacity in institutions of higher education’, reading & writing 3(1), art. #25, 9 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v3i1.25 mccutchen, d., 2008, ‘cognitive factors in the development of children’s writing’, in c. macarthur, s. graham & j. fitzgerald (eds.), handbook of writing research, pp. 115–130, guilford press, new york. mendelowitz, b., (in press), ‘permission to fly: creating classroom environments of imaginative (im)possibilities’, english in education. myhill, d., 2005. ‘ways of knowing: writing with grammar in mind’, english teaching: practice and critique 4(3), 77–96 newell, g., beach, r., smith, j. & van der heide, j., 2011, ‘teaching and learning argumentative reading writing: a review of research’, reading research quarterly 46(3), 273–304. ormerod, f. & ivanic, r., 2000, ‘texts in practices: interpreting the physical characteristics of children’s project work’, in d. barton, m. hamilton & r. ivanic (eds.), situated literacies: theorising reading and writing in context, pp. 91–107, routledge, new york. rao, z., 2007, ‘training in brainstorming and developing writing skills’, elt journal 61(2), 100–106. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccm002 footnote: top ↑ 1. this step was not discussed because it is not evident in the data. abstract introduction theoretical framework methodology data analysis and findings conclusion and recommendations acknowledgements references about the author(s) fatima vally essa department of languages, literacies and literatures, school of education, faculty of humanities, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa belinda mendelowitz department of languages, literacies and literatures, school of education, faculty of humanities, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa citation vally essa, f. & mendelowitz, b., 2022, ‘remixing storytelling across modes’, reading & writing 13(1), a372. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v13i1.372 original research remixing storytelling across modes fatima vally essa, belinda mendelowitz received: 09 mar. 2022; accepted: 08 june 2022; published: 25 aug. 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: using storytelling in a classroom context can be a powerful tool, but how can english language educators use storytelling in ways that are beneficial to their learners? objectives: in this paper, we simultaneously engage with the concept of storytelling, multimodality and creativity to show how these three concepts can work in tandem theoretically and in practice. the research is based on a collaborative multimodal storytelling intervention in a grade 7 english home language classroom which entailed transducing the same story from a print-based mode to a performative mode. we work with the concept of storytelling across modes, rather than multimodal composition to highlight the fluid possibilities that our cross-pollination approach offers. methodology: the study is qualitative, and we thematically analyse data produced by one group of five learners. the research questions are as follows: (1) what are the different affordances of print-based and performative storytelling? (2) how do these two modes enable students to collaboratively draw on their linguistic, creative and social resources and repertoires? results: collaborative storytelling created multiple access points in the english classroom which enabled the learners to draw on a wide range of modes, realities and resources in accessible and meaningful ways. the intervention created a space for the learners to reflect on past experiences, re-imagine their sense of self and future, and use their stories as a form of social action. conclusion: each mode offered different pathways and distinct affordances to crafting and producing stories. keywords: print-based storytelling; performative storytelling; multimodality; transduction; cross-pollination; creativity; imagination; collaboration. introduction each of us has a story to tell, but how can english language educators engage with storytelling in ways that are beneficial to their learners? storytelling in schools in south africa and parts of the world remain predominantly associated with print-based linguistic modes even though learners often engage with storytelling outside school that extends to a range of different modes such as verbal stories, drama performances in theatre and on television. we argue that in the 21st century, language learning needs to include diverse and creative possibilities for storytelling that learners can relate to (paris & alim 2014). this includes topics, modes and language practices that learners are familiar with. expanding on language teaching to include diverse possibilities, offers ‘a complex, democratic space, founded on the productive integration of diverse histories, modes, genres, epistemologies, feelings, languages and discourses’ (stein 2008:1). we illustrate our attempt to do so by engaging in a collaborative and multimodal storytelling intervention as a tool that enables learners to access their rich range of social, creative and linguistic resources. in this article, we build on the work of stein (2008) and other scholars (beneke 2018; enciso 2017; newfield 2009, 2011) who have engaged with multimodal storytelling by theoretically and practically integrating aspects of storytelling, multimodality and creativity simultaneously through cross-pollinating the same story from print-based to performative modes. we drew on theory and practice from stein (2008) who dealt with multimodal writing in a similar context, and we were able to build on her findings 14 years later and gain new insights due to some differences in the pedagogy. stein’s study was conducted by implementing a multimodal intervention in which she began with the performative mode, followed by a linguistic/print-based mode in which the learners individually explored personal histories and representations of their lives through storytelling. in contrast to stein (2008), our multimodal intervention began with the collaborative construction of a print-based story with a group of grade 7 learners, followed by transducing the same story into a performance as a way of scaffolding ideas. we offer a fine-grained analysis of this process by analysing the stories produced across both modes and identifying the affordances and limitations of each mode. we work with the concept of storytelling across modes, rather than multimodal composition to signal the fluid possibilities of our approach, and to escape the trap of valorising written stories. theoretical framework there is substantial literature available on storytelling, multimodality and creativity (chadwick 2017; enciso 2017; mendelowitz 2016; newfield 2009, 2011, 2014; stein 2008; vygotsky 2004), but there are few studies that deal with all three of these concepts explicitly and simultaneously. we build on the existing scholarship by explicitly theorising these concepts and exploring the connections between them. multimodality research often draws on creativity in practice (newfield 2011), but creativity and imagination are seldom conceptualised explicitly. therefore, we used storytelling as a tool to facilitate a multimodal pedagogy which enabled learners to access elements of creativity and imagination in their writing. storytelling we work with print-based and performative storytelling which we define and conceptualise differently due to differences in the characteristics of each mode. we define print-based storytelling as: [a] process where the teller uses a narrative structure, vocalization, and/or dramatic and mental imagery to communicate with an audience, who also uses mental imagery to provide the teller with verbal and non-verbal feedback. (dyson & genishi 1994 in lucarevschi 2016:26) as cited in lucarevschi (2016), multimodal storytelling is defined as ‘the use of voice, facial expressions, gestures, eye contact, and interaction to connect a tale with listeners’ (hsu 2010:7). we conceptualise storytelling as: ‘a fundamental marker of being human that has always been an integral part of human activities across time, space and cultures. we make sense of our lives through stories and construct our identities through the stories we tell ourselves and others, as well as the stories we hear from others’. (mendelowitz, ferreira & dixon in press) hence, storytelling is an important aspect of identity construction which enables us to explore both our inner and outer landscapes (bruner 1986). in this paper, we argue that storytelling is a means to powerfully capitalise on learners linguistic, creative and social resources and repertoires (enciso 2017:35). this is because storytelling foregrounds the personal, affective and provisional ways of knowing (bruner 1986), valuing the resources learners bring to the classrooms. it is regarded as a personal and authentic form of learning (anderson & macleroy 2017). a number of scholars have emphasised the importance of locating stories in specific socio-cultural contexts, without which stories can simply become too individualised and narrow (chadwick 2017; goodson & gill 2014; mendelowitz et al. [forthcoming]). this argument is well articulated by chadwick (2017:12) who argues that ‘stories are constructed in the cracks between multiple and at times contradictory collective voices, and identity/ narrative is thus radically dialogical’. chadwick (2017) highlights the multiplicity of stories. the writer/teller draws on different voices from past and present experiences across different contexts. this applies even more strongly to the intervention discussed in this paper due to the activities being collaborative and drawing on a socio-cultural context. it was dialogic at various levels and required the learners to draw on multiple identities, multiple voices and multiple experiences in creative and imaginative ways as they remixed across modes. creativity we used a vygotskian approach to theorise our understanding of creativity in which imagination and creativity are commonly used interchangeably. imagination is defined as a mental function that synthesises creativity, cognition and affect (vygotsky 2004). from this perspective, imagination can be conceptualised as the act of mind that generates creativity. vygotsky (2004) provided a model for understanding imagination and creative activity. one of the components of this model is called creative reworking, which is taking something that exists, such as a memory, and changing it by combining it with other ideas to create new ideas and experiences, producing something new out of what already exists. by drawing on this idea, we understand that creativity, especially in storytelling, is grounded in reality and involves drawing on lived experiences and resources as a source of inspiration (greene 1995). the relationship between imagination and reality is complex. enciso (2017) builds on vygotsky’s theory and her definition of imagination grounds it as a critical social practice in the material reality of learners’ lives. enciso (2017) is particularly interested in the relationship between past, present and future selves and how storytelling may enable learners to re-imagine their futures by reflecting on their past experiences. vygotsky (2004) ‘banishes the popular image of the lonely genius imagining brilliant new ideas in isolation’ (mendelowitz et al. [in press]). he illustrates how imagination is developed through social interactions and engagement within society. enciso (2017) argues that a fundamental aspect of this writing process is mobilising learners’ resources. in relation to this, enciso (2017:35) raises the following question: ‘with what linguistic, semiotic, and material resources might it be possible to speak and be heard?’ we believe that a multimodal storytelling intervention can help to answer this question because the social and collaborative aspect of the intervention provided learners with opportunities to employ an extended range of shared resources, particularly their ‘collaborative imagination’ (mendelowitz 2016:6) to tell their stories. multimodality we draw on the multimodal theory of kress (2010) and transduction theorised by newfield (2011) when discussing key concepts in this paper. kress (2010) states that the affordances of multimodality which are physical, material and social, generate a specific logic by providing different representational and communicative potentials of expressing and understanding information. the shift from a monomodal pedagogy to a multimodal pedagogy moves away from the focus on language as a primary mode of teaching and learning, and includes the role of sensory and bodily practices (newfield 2011). language is still present and by no means does multimodality exclude the use of language. however, other modes are foregrounded and are sometimes used in conjunction with language. we conceptualise our understanding of multimodality and multimodal storytelling as something that is fluid and may take many different shapes and forms. by doing so, we decided to term our intervention ‘storytelling across different modes’ as this best represents the infinite possibilities of transmodal meaning making. the intervention required transduction from a print-based story to the performance mode. transduction is a process of translation in which meaning is translated from one mode to another (kress 2010). it can also be called ‘the transmodal moment’ or ‘transmodal semiosis’ (newfield 2009, 2014), which involves designing texts to convey meanings and ideas across different modes that are linked in some way, either in theme or topic. transduction involves internal semiosis which is based on meanings conceived in the brain, and external semiosis which deals with meaning conveyed through signs and texts (kress 2010; newfield 2014). newfield (2011) and stein (2008) imply that even if the same story is represented using different modes, no two modes of storytelling are the same and, therefore, they produce different meanings and distinctive outcomes. multimodal storytelling, particularly the performance mode, invites the body and full range of senses into the classroom which in turn facilitates different kinds of learning in comparison to monomodal storytelling. engaging in print-based and performative storytelling in a classroom context draws on home literacy practices and mimics modes and language practices that the learners encounter outside the classroom space (bomer 2017). according to newfield (2011:14), multimodal storytelling improves ‘cognitive, social and affective engagement in learning activities’ by expanding the semiotic space of the classroom. this means that multimodal language teaching has the potential to extend the learning process to capitalise on the use of space, bodies and signs to develop understanding, knowledge and meaning making. this makes language learning exciting and offers new access points as it integrates school knowledge with real life, making use of linguistic resources such as multilingualism and a social collaborative approach. these resources are often ignored in language classrooms due to anglonormative ideologies (mckinney 2016) and the dominance of print-based modes. we have framed the relationship between storytelling, creativity and multimodality and linked these concepts by engaging in multimodal storytelling to generate creativity. methodology the main focus of this paper is on the different modes of storytelling, namely print-based and performative and the affordances that each of these modes offers. hence, our research questions are: what are the different affordances of print-based and performative storytelling? how do these two modes enable students to collaboratively draw on their linguistic, creative and social resources and repertoires? we used a qualitative case study to conduct this research and fatima took on the role of being a teacher-researcher. the study was conducted with 20 grade 7 learners who were 12–13 years old. the learners were instructed to form groups, and for the purpose of this paper we will focus on data produced by one of the groups that consists of five participants. the participants attended a co-educational, independent/private school that offers boarding facilities. the racial demographic of the school consisted of predominantly black learners. it is located in the city of johannesburg and is classified as a quintile 3 institution which indicates that it is a low-income school. during the data collection period, the school was in an unstable state due to the grade 7 class not having an english educator. the school was under-resourced in terms of equipment and teaching tools, having only furniture, a chalkboard and a limited number of textbooks to use as learning resources. due to a lower middle-income background, many learners had limited access to technology and basic stationery which restricted their choice when selecting modes for the transduction of their print-based stories. none of the participants was from the suburb that the school is situated in, but rather from nearby townships. the participants attended an english-medium school and an english home language class, but they did not speak english as a home language. the learners spoke a range of languages and language varieties at home and in social contexts which include isizulu, isixhosa, and tsotsitaal, but they were encouraged to only speak english in the english classroom. this indicated a mismatch between the school language of learning and teaching (lolt) and the languages spoken in their home/social contexts. unlike isizulu and isixhosa, tsotsitaal is not an official south african language. tsotsitaal is a township variety of street speech that draws on urban vernaculars from african languages and afrikaans. it is associated with the expression of youth identities, particularly among young males. intervention programme part 1: print-based storytelling – the intervention began by reading to the class two stories from the fundza website. these stories were used to model local short stories for a young audience, as they align with the type of stories that the learners were expected to produce. fundza stories have meaningful content that draws on the lives and experiences of the south african youths and include topics such as love, money, crime, abuse, school and success/goals. the stories make use of writing elements that focus on plot, developing identifiable characters and character voices, diverse language repertoires, consisting of chapters each ending on a cliff-hanger which encourages the reader to continue reading. using the fundza stories as a model prepared the learners to write in ways that defy the boundaries of traditional language practices of school writing and imagine and establish their peers as audience. thereafter, in a group of five, the learners were instructed to write a collaborative short story of approximately 500 words. the brief included writing about any event or issue that they experienced in their lives or communities. they were encouraged to make use of code-switching, colloquial language or write parts of the story in any language of their choosing with translations to incorporate language practices that occur outside the classroom or school context. part 2: performative storytelling – in the second part of the intervention, the learners were instructed to transduce their print-based story into any mode of their choosing. the group selected the kinaesthetic mode, specifically a drama performance, and they performed their story to the class. this could have been due to their interest in television soap operas which they expressed, as it is a major part of youth culture and multimodal home literacy practices (anderson & macleroy 2017; paris & alim 2014). fatima engaged in a focus group discussion which gave the participants an opportunity to reflect on their participation as a group and their writing/performative process and choices. the study consisted of a multimodal writing intervention in which the group of learners had to transduce the same story across two different modes – print-based and performative. the stories that they produced in both modes, were closely analysed using thematic content analysis, and the most striking themes and issues that emerged were utilised as categories for the discussion of our findings. we then did a second close reading, focusing on the emerging themes in relation to our key theoretical frames. the issues that the group explored and the ways in which they used language to tell the stories were of interest to us. key ideas that emerged from the focus group discussion were linked to the analysis of the stories. ethical clearance was obtained to conduct this study from the university of the witwatersrand human research ethics committee (non-medical). this study was voluntary, and the participants and their parents were provided with information and consent forms. in accordance with ethical protocols, anonymity and confidentiality of the participants and the research site is guaranteed as no names and identifying information were revealed in this paper. data analysis and findings creative affordances of print-based storytelling the print-based storytelling component of this intervention challenged some of the commonly held assumptions about school writing due to the unconventional brief such as allowing multilingualism in academic writing and the collaborative nature of the intervention. this section (box 1) contains the original print-based story crafted by the group which is titled bullying and love. the spelling and grammar have not been changed to capture the authenticity of the writers and illustrate development of the story and language usage as it shifts across modes. this is followed by a fine-grained analysis of the story in relation to three categories that emerged: category 1 – collaborative creative reworking and linguistic play category 2 – collaborative re-imagining category 3 – collaborative versatility box 1: the print-based story. in the discussion that follows we use the print-based story produced by the group and their experience of this activity to identify affordances and limitations of collaborative print-based storytelling. category 1 – collaborative creative reworking and linguistic play bullying is the central theme of this story. during the focus group discussion, lungile, a female learner from the group said: ‘we wrote about bullying because it’s not right. they beat up other children and they end up with bruises on their face so that’s why we wrote about it. we have seen it in [our] class.’ (participant 2, female, grade 7 learner) this is evidence that the learners drew on their personal lives and experience of bullying as inspiration for this story. we identified that this story was a creative reworking of their lived experience (vygotsky 2004) as bullying is an issue that they experienced in their class. they wrote about the topic in a very authentic, yet creative way as they captured the reality of their experience of the bullying dynamic that exists in their class without directly approaching the bully. despite being encouraged to make use of multilingualism, colloquial language and slang which was modelled in the fundza stories, the learners did not make use of a range of language repertoires when writing their story. evidence of limited linguistic repertoires is based on working with multilingual learners who possess diverse african language repertoires, yet they chose to write the entire story in standard english. this limited the richness of their writing voices and meant there was minimal remixing of diverse out-of-school resources with the school resources and language practices (beneke 2018). given the dominance of anglonormative ideologies (mckinney 2016) in south african schools, it is not surprising that they associate print-based writing with standard english. this does not mean that multilingualism is not an affordance of print-based stories, but rather that much work would need to be done in classrooms to cultivate a valuing of multilingual repertoires in order for learners to feel comfortable to play with languages. language has the potential to create vivid, imagined worlds, particularly in their use of dialogue. palesa asks her mother what work she does and her mother refuses to tell her because she is ashamed. ‘no i can’t tell you because you will be disappointed in me.’ this dialogue gives the reader a sense of the mother’s shame without explicitly describing it. the learners use dialogue here simply but powerfully to capture the mother’s voice and her sense of vulnerability. despite this successful example of using language to capture emotion, linguistic play in the story is constrained by a reliance on literal language and a tendency to use narration to tell the reader what is happening, rather than ‘showing’ through creative linguistic expression. however, despite these limitations, the learners do successfully capture the perspective, voice, emotions and ‘inner landscape’ (bruner 1986) of the main character, palesa, and the secondary character, jackie – to a lesser extent. category 2 – collaborative re-imagining the theme of bullying is developed in realistic and powerful ways which was aided by a collaborative reflection and re-imagination of their experience of being or witnessing bullying when writing the story. palesa is depicted as a stereotypical victim. the writers capture her overriding emotion of fear through dialogue, small details, and the repetition of certain adjectives/ word choices – the word afraid is used three times in chapter one, paragraph two. in keeping with the typical bullying scenario, palesa is afraid to tell her teachers or her mother (adult authority figure) ‘because she knows she will get beaten after school’. we also learn about gontse’s typical bullying tactics – ‘she always takes her money or sometimes her lunch box’. the writers describe gontse’s physical appearance and use dialogue to create a convincingly threatening character, almost like a stereotypical definition of a bully which could have been intentional to draw attention away from the bully in their class. gontse is tall and uses threatening language to intimidate her classmates – ‘if you dare write me i will kill you with my bare hands’. hence, what is most powerful in chapter one is the development of the theme of victimhood and silencing of palesa. however, towards the end of the paragraph there are signs of the transition from a creative reworking towards a more critical approach as palesa realises that ‘if she didn’t tell her mother she will be bullied for the rest of her [life]’. the transition is an important step in challenging the power dynamics of the bullying narrative and an assertion of palesa’s voice while simultaneously enabling the writers to envisage new possibilities (greene 1995). chapter two introduces the reader to a new character, jackie. this chapter is not as rich and developed as the first as it consists of ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’ through writing elements. however, what is interesting thematically is the open dialogue he has with his mother about his fears and how she is able to engage with his fears and provide soothing advice. ‘his mother said just be yourself and get some new friends and be cool.’ this contrasts with palesa’s relationship with her mother who perpetuates silence and doesn’t provide palesa with strategies to deal with the bullying. category 3 – collaborative versatility beneke (2018) defines versatility as a crafting process that entails risk taking, adaptability/ flexibility and experimentation. the learners displayed versatility in this regard (beneke 2018), while crafting their stories as they are inspired by having a bully in their class which they expressed during the focus group discussion as mentioned in category 1. this means that the group did not just write this story as an academic requirement, but also as a form of risk and social action against the bullying dynamic. they chose to express the events that took place by creatively reworking (vygotsky 2004) it to suit the context of the story and write for their peers as the audience. collaboration played a huge role in enabling social action, because telling the story as a group provided a united stance against the bully. the storytelling intervention shielded them by offering a space to explore themes and issues that are important to the learners as they previously were not able to take action or address the issue in a social context. the unity and courage that collaboration offers is also highlighted in the story as palesa is not able to address the issue and stand up to gontse until jackie is introduced. telling a realistic story but masking it as a fairy tale was an interesting approach to explore events within the confines of this genre. it served as a safe environment to unpack and retell events which can be regarded as taking action or confronting the bully in a safe way through elements of storytelling without being explicit in their approach. collective risk taken to challenge the class bully led to re-imagining a counter-narrative (morrell 2008). storytelling created a space in which learners could challenge power relations and social inequalities within their classroom. it produced a collective and symbolic notion of resilience through storytelling and generated a story of multiple voices in which learners felt heard, which was empowering for this group of writers. the group had the emotional and creative freedom to explore this experience and creatively rework the story so that it has an intended effect on the audience and the bully. the final chapter of the story reverts fully to the language and ideology of fairy tales. not only does jackie save palesa, but she also leans on him literally and symbolically, a stereotypically gendered resolution of the problem, portraying palesa as having little agency. this is an interesting shift to the fairy tale genre despite the authentic nature of events within this story. it is believable and realistic until the final four lines of the story as it creates a shift from storytelling of real life experiences to a typically fictitious ending. the move to the fairy tale frame restricts the writers’ collective imaginations (mendelowitz 2016) and prevents them from engaging with more challenging and substantial solutions to the problem. it indicates their perception and understanding of the storytelling genre. it is almost as if they perceive it to not be a story if it does not consist of the typical fairy tale phrases like ‘once upon a time’ and ‘they lived happily ever after’. they demonstrated creative versatility by ‘remixing’ realistic storytelling with a fairy tale genre. although this remix ultimately lessens the power and impact of the story, it does indicate a willingness to experiment and play with genre conventions. creative affordances of performative storytelling transducing the same story into another mode was a requirement of the intervention, but the choice of transducing it into the performative mode was made by the group of learners. the extracts in box 2 is a recollection of scenes from the performed story which are based on fatima’s field notes. the multilingual aspects and details of the performance could not be captured precisely, as we did not apply for ethics permission to video record the data. in this section, we critically explore the affordances and limitations of using a performative and collaborative approach to storytelling in relation to the following categories: category 1 – the language of performance category 2 – storytelling as an embodied practice category 3 – collaborative performance and audience box 2: extracts from the performance. category 1 – the language of performance one of the most striking aspects of the performance was the learners’ use of isizulu, isixhosa, tsotsitaal and only the minimal use of english. woodard, vaughan and machado (2017) states that educators and learners should acknowledge that language is not neutral. we need to critique and explore the power dynamics and language ideals that exist; for example, the print-based mode was associated with standard english and the learners did not deviate from this despite having the freedom to do so, whereas the performance genre created a space for the learners to showcase their rich range of linguistic repertoires due to the affordance of using verbal language. it could also be due to a shift in audience to include the class, indicating the need to make their story accessible to their audience and provide real life contexts for their story to be relatable. using a fluid mode such as performance and their home languages provided the learners with a space to develop their story differently. for example, the characters in the story spoke in isizulu on the playground but spoke in english in the classroom scenes to depict the realistic nature of social communication and language usage in different settings and amongst different groups of people. the use of familiar languages assisted them to develop not only their characters, but also the plot of their story which progressed with a faster pace than the written story and ‘showed’ development of the story in a way that was not reliant on standard forms of language, but rather on body language and verbal expression. encouraging familiar language practices and multilingualism created a hospitable space for identity and voice to be explored and negotiated as the participants were able to produce and express characters convincingly by using languages and language varieties to capture the essence of characters with strong voices in their story (canagarajah 2015). encouraging multilingual storytelling was a way of drawing on cultural and social communicative practices that occur outside the classroom and in real life contexts. this created awareness of the limitations of what is considered as ‘correct’ or ‘acceptable’ writing in institutional contexts which is almost always print-based english texts (stein 2008). nolwazi, a female learner who is confident in speaking english said: ‘it’s actually good and i enjoyed it because we don’t speak our languages in class, only when its break time but during class we only speak english’ (participant 1, female, grade 7 learner). this indicates that the resource of language that learners bring into the classroom is often ignored, rendering their linguistic identities and repertoires invisible in the english classroom due to the power that the english language holds in academic contexts within south african schools (mckinney 2016; vally essa 2019). category 2 – storytelling as an embodied practice performance ‘involves the blending of gesture and word, of dance (body movements) and song, so that they become so closely interwoven that it is impossible to speak of one without treating the other’. (scheub 1975:15) a body in action, during performance is aided by language, but not completely reliant on it as the body is foregrounded (mallozzi 2011). in performative storytelling, it is impossible to speak about language without embodiment as multimodal storytelling is a full-body experience that includes the body, voice, facial expression, movement/space, gesture and language. the performative mode enabled them to move beyond the boundaries of language and to draw on modes, genres and languages that they were familiar with in real life contexts such as soap operas. this resulted in linking in-school and out-of-school knowledge and literacy practices. multimodal pedagogy can express creativity in unexpected ways (stein 2008). by moving from what stein (2008) regards as a disembodied mode (print-based) to an embodied mode (performance) of storytelling, the performance genre allowed the story to unfold in a way that was not evident in the written story. the written story served as a source for preliminary ideas that were ‘remixed’ (beneke 2018) and ‘brought to life’ through expressive voice, body action and dramatisation which captivated the audience as the characters and plot were actualised. ‘writing produces compactness and permanence. but what writing gains in permanence, it loses in comprehensiveness’ (stein 2008:62). in this instance, a shift from written mode to performance mode resulted in the story being told more comprehensively. it encouraged the learners to take control of their available resources and tell the story in a way that is accessible. resources that were capitalised on during this performance were inclusive of the learner’s personal experience, languages, body, voice and classroom space. a shift in mode from print-based to performative enabled learners to capture the bully’s aggression more convincingly. one of the most impactful gestures was when gontse pulled palesa down by her blazer and threatened her. the pull metaphorically symbolised strength and the ability to overpower palesa as she was pulled down forcefully with just one hand. threats that gontse made in the written story remained verbal, whereas in the performance mode the threats progressed to acts that were more physical, such as a gesture of gontse slitting her throat to symbolise that she would kill palesa. tears ran down palesa’s face to show her fear and a feeling of defeat. their use of body language was powerful in the performance because meaning in this scene was conveyed without relying on the use of words or language. category 3 – collaborative performance and audience the learners responded significantly differently to the performance task brief, compared to the print-based story briefing. as soon as fatima gave the brief, many learners stood up and began moving around, shouting out ideas and dialogue. some began to argue about which character they wanted to be, and the classroom was instantly filled with vibrant chatter and movement which was limited in the first part of the intervention. each learner was eager to contribute in some way and they drew on aspects of their home lives during discussion that took place in various languages. this could be because the performance story genre allowed a sense of ‘control’ in which they could tell this meaningful story in a way that they wanted to and in the languages that they could best express themselves in (stein 2008). the learners’ used their bodies and minds to plan and produce their stories, which foregrounds the affordance of embodiment that is generated by multimodal storytelling (stein 2008). due to the observations made and the development of stories produced, we concluded that the learners worked better collaboratively and creatively in the construction of their performative stories. for the written stories, we cannot confidently confirm if each learner took on an equal role and responsibility in writing the story, but for the performed story, each learner took on the role of a character. this means that each learner needed to take responsibility and their collaboration as a group was vital for the success of the story. for example, the relationship between gontse and palesa was crucial because they needed to produce distinctive character voices and work together to express the experiences of these characters in a convincing way to illustrate tension between the characters. thus, we created a space for learners to engage with practical storytelling skills, creativity and collaboration throughout this intervention. during the performance, there were whispers among the audience, giggles, gasps of shock, raised eyebrows and glares of disbelief shared across the classroom, and sounds of disapproval towards violent characters. the story became a shared experience between the performers and the audience, making the audience feel part of the story. the exploration of realities and identification of their role in this story drew the audience into this world of palesa and gontse which was an epitome of the reality that they encountered in their daily lives of having a bully in their class. this indicates the power of the pen, and in this case, the power of multimodal storytelling. conclusion and recommendations modes materialise, realise and externalise meaning in different ways, enabling the expression of meanings in some modes which are inexpressible in others. (newfield 2011:5) overall, this study looks at the affordances and limitations of collaborative print-based and performative storytelling in an english home language classroom. it does so through a multimodal storytelling intervention during which learners were expected to work in groups to produce a print-based story about their lives and experiences and transduce the same story into the performative mode. working with the same group and same story across different modes illustrated that each mode offered distinct affordances and limitations, and different pathways to construct and tell their story. we call this cross-pollination as it is an approach that extracts the benefits of both modes and diversifies the concept of transmodal meaning making (newfield 2009) by remixing the same story and developing ideas from one mode to another as an ongoing process of semiosis (newfield 2011). what stood out for us was the way in which language was used differently across the two modes to tell the same story. the print-based story was associated with standard english. however, the performative mode enabled the learners to draw on a wider range of multilingual repertoires. this does not mean that print-based stories cannot offer multilingual potential, but rather that learners associate print-based storytelling with standard english in an anglonormative context as these ideologies are so ingrained, and that is what needs to change. this has implications for the possibilities of multilingual stories as we need to create classroom environments that value learners’ multilingual repertoires and encourage it as a creative storytelling tool. the performative story offered scope to draw on out of school resources and practices that are commonly used in home and social contexts and link them to curricular content. drawing on multiple resources created a space to tell the stories in ways that best represented the learners and their experiences so that they could claim the stories as their own. both activities drew on linguistic, social and creative resources when crafting the stories, but the performative task drew on a broader range of resources and linguistic repertoires. increased engagement with existing resources facilitated creativity development which is the reason that the performative story came across as being more vivid and nuanced (vally essa 2019). therefore, we recommend further study with collaborative print-based storytelling in ways that enable learners to engage with their existing resources and repertoires in non-restrictive ways. across both modes, collaboration played a significant role in enabling creative reworking (vygotsky 2004), re-imagining and counter-storytelling of the bullying dynamic. a multimodal approach to storytelling resulted in making the classroom a more ‘participatory’ and ‘agentive’ space (newfield 2011:16). in doing so, the learners were able to draw on their personal experience of being bullied and rework it into a new creative story. we identified that there was power in using collaboration as a social resource as the stories were used as a form of social action. the group took a collective risk to address the issue which may not have been possible as individuals. this paper encapsulates the possibilities and potential of using collaborative storytelling as a tool in the english classroom for enabling learners and educators to draw on a wide range of modes, realities, resources and repertoires in ways that make learning accessible. acknowledgements we thank liesel beneke for valuable feedback provided on an early draft of this article. competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions f.v.e. was the main author. b.m. was the second author. ethical considerations ethical clearance was obatained from the university of the witwatersrand: human research ethics committee (non-medical) 2017ece025m. funding information the financial assistance of the national research foundation (nrf) towards this research is hereby acknowledged. opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the authors and are not necessarily to be attributed to the nrf. data availability the data that support the findings of this study are openly available in wits institutional repository environment on dspace (wired space) at https://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/28020 disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors. references anderson, j. & macleroy, v., 2017, ‘connecting worlds: interculturality, identity and multilingual digital stories in the making’, in language and intercultural communication, routledge, london. 17(4), pp. 494–517. beneke, l., 2018, ‘from silence to voice: exploring the affordances of a multimodal approach to creative writing and its assessment in a writing group of grade 8 english first additional language learners’, unpublished doctoral thesis, university of the witwatersrand. 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215–231. https://doi.org/10.1177/2381336917719440 abstract introduction theoretical framework methodology and data collection data analysis presentation and discussion of data conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) glynis lloyd school of education, university of cape town, south africa citation lloyd, g., 2016, ‘are we teaching critical literacy? reading practices in a township classroom’, reading & writing 7(1), a97. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i1.97 original research are we teaching critical literacy? reading practices in a township classroom glynis lloyd received: 27 aug. 2015; accepted: 15 feb. 2016; published: 26 sept. 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract despite improvements in educational provision in south africa since 1994, the opportunities for learners from historically under-resourced schools to gain access to powerful english resources remain limited and unequal (prinsloo 2012). in this article i will provide a detailed description of literacy practices in a township high school in cape town, specifically of the orientations to text that are made available to learners. i will draw on feminist poststructuralist theory, in which the subject is theorised as constructed and contested in language to construct difference. the analysis of classroom discourse and text-based tasks shows that the orientations to reading that were offered were characterised by a focus on the surface meaning of the texts and by an absence of critical engagement, despite the latter being required in the new curriculum and assessment policy statement. the analysis reveals how the power dynamics of our racialised past and dominant ideologies about gender, class and race continue to define teaching in our classrooms in ways that limit access to the english resources that learners in under-resourced schools need for academic success. introduction the access to and acquisition of english are complex and uneven endeavours. prinsloo’s research (2012) in three different school contexts in south africa shows that teachers and learners have access to different types of english, depending on the socio-economic profile of the school. learners in privileged contexts generally have access, via their teachers, to the varieties of english most valued for educational and economic success. this is not generally the case in schools historically disadvantaged by the inequity of apartheid education policies. thus despite poor learners’ desire to learn the english they need for upward mobility, in other words the english of the elite and of the academy, social and historical factors are complicating their efforts. this ongoing marked inequity requires researchers interested in language and learning to ask why that inequity persists and to develop a detailed description of how english is being taught and learnt. research on classroom literacy practices in these contexts has, however, been limited, as kapp (2004) has shown, limiting our understanding of the ways in which these practices impact on the possibility for success in higher education (moore et al. 1998). to contribute towards the building of a detailed description of the teaching and learning of english, a case study of the reading and writing practices in a grade 11 classroom in a township high school in cape town was undertaken, to describe and analyse the orientations to text that are constructed for english first additional language learners. the theoretical framework and concepts drawn on to understand how classroom discourse and chosen texts construct and position learners as particular kinds of readers, are presented in the first part of this article. extracts of classroom discourse from observed lessons on the reading of and writing about a prescribed short story, and an analysis of the orientations to text that are offered, are presented in the second part of the article. the article focuses on the racialised and gendered subjectivities that prevail in the positioning observed. finally, evidence is provided of learner profiles that suggests that the literacy resources that learners bring to the classroom are not being valued or accessed. recent classroom research in south africa (kapp 2004; makoe 2007; mckinney 2007, 2011) has located school literacy practices within a social context and viewed the classroom as a site where two things happen: firstly, social relations that occur outside of the classroom are reflected in the classroom; secondly, teachers and learners act in ways that reproduce broader social inequality. these relations are marked by the complicated and racialised ways in which black learners are positioned and position themselves as speakers of english. in school contexts where learners study english as a home language, mckinney (2007, 2011) and makoe (2007) have shown how hegemonic assimilationist ideologies filter through classroom discourse to position black learners in ways that reinforce the power of middle-class english speakers and deny black learners an opportunity to occupy positions that relate to their practices as speakers of different varieties of english and other languages. in the context of township schools, where learners study english as a first additional language, dynamics and divisions within the social fabric of the township inform and construct the ways in which learners position themselves in relation to english, as kapp (2004) has shown, and this positioning interferes with learner aspiration for upward social mobility. learners position themselves in multiple and contradictory ways as township dwellers, young men or women, english learners and so on. kapp’s research points to the complex and uneven ways in which english learning is practised and to the ways in which social conditions impact on learning outcomes. the focus of the research presented below is an investigation of the way in which learners in a historically disadvantaged school are oriented to text in their english lessons. the question that guided the study is: what orientations to text are learners afforded in a typical urban township grade 11 class and how do those orientations construct the subject positions that learners take up? for a more detailed account of the research, see lloyd (2014). theoretical framework subjectivity and language poststructuralist theorists such as stuart hall challenge the humanist conception of the fixed, unitary subject, positing instead a subject that is non-unitary and fluid. this subject, according to hall (1996), is located in the material conditions of a particular historical context. firstly, this idea has implications for understandings of the learner as the subject because subjectivity can shift and change across a range of positions. secondly, the conditions that determine those shifts are social: it is in the relationships in the classroom, in the community and in the broader society that subject positions are constructed and in which the possibilities and limitations for subject construction are located. those relationships are formed by and in turn form discourse, practices (in this case reading and writing) and positions. thirdly, subjectivity is in flux and in conflict, as a result of the power struggles that take shape in discourse, because, as the feminist poststructuralist theorist chris weedon (1987:41) argues, ‘…discourses represent political interests and in consequence are constantly vying for status and power’. finally, what is most hopeful about this definition is the possibility of change: where subjectivity is fluid and constructed in practices that are socially determined and determining, change is possible. central to this understanding of how subjectivity is constructed and how change might come about, is the role of language in defining who we are and who we could be. language, according to weedon (1987:33), gives ‘voice’ and ‘meaning’ to our experience. we are ‘… reconstituted in discourse each time we think or speak’. it is through language that our conscious and unconscious thoughts and desires gain expression. language in this framework is understood as a social construct, rather than a neutral, cognitive skill that can be acquired unproblematically. if language and subjectivity are located within particular social and historical contexts, analysing those contexts and in particular their discursive features enables us to uncover the way power works to create or deny opportunities for learners to engage in a range of readings and in so doing, for their meaning making to be heard in the classroom. discourse and subject positioning fairclough (1992:8) defines discourse as constituting the social and as ‘invested with ideologies’. in this definition, discourse becomes the way in which language works in our social relationships. by emphasising the social aspect, fairclough shows that language is a social construct and that it is linked with power. this understanding of discourse enables an identification of the ways that discourse works to entrench unequal power relations, or to challenge those power relations. secondly, language in the classroom is structured as discourse and, as hicks (1996:52) has shown, is both ‘textual products’ and ‘constitutive discursive practices’ – both what is said and produced, and how what is said affects those participating in the specific social interaction. classroom discourse – the form that the teaching takes, the amount of talking the teacher does, the opportunities for speech afforded the learner, the types of texts chosen for reading and the types of tasks set – is the outcome of a set of choices that are made by teachers who are, themselves, subjects of ideological and historical forces. those forces are the products of conflict and this conflict is reflected in the contradictory and shifting nature of classroom discourse. discourse, as used here, is understood to provide us with subject positions. through discourse we come to be ‘constituted’ as female, black, a reader, and so on and, as weedon (1987: 119) says, we become ‘…subjected to the power and regulation of the discourse’. the concept of positioning rests firmly on the idea that ‘…acts of positioning may be multi-layered and ambiguous…’ (deppermann 2013:3). that ambiguity, that multiplicity of positioning and position taking, stems from the power struggles taking place in the broader social context. as explained by davies and harré (1990), a subject position has two aspects: it constructs our thinking about ourselves – who and what we are and it locates us within a hierarchy in relation to others. each subject position defines our place in a social structure. this enables an understanding of how learners make sense of text, by looking at their responses and analysing the stories they tell about themselves, in relation to the text. it is their lived experience that adds up and contributes to the subject positions they take up, and it is their relative power or powerlessness that makes those subject positions available in the first place. orientations to text the reading of and writing about text are discursive practices in which learners are apprenticed as readers. through these practices, teachers model different kinds of readings and authorise what they deem a ‘successful’ reading. the curriculum (department of basic education 2011), the official national choices of set texts and the final grade 12 examinations all impact on the selections teachers make of the kinds of readings they will model in their classrooms. how then do classroom discursive practices construct learners through the reading of text? how are learners positioned to read and which of the multiple ways of reading a text are made available to them? janks (2010:21) has defined the reading process as having three different aspects: ‘decoding’, ‘reading with the text’ and ‘reading against the text’. decoding necessitates ‘language competence’, in other words a knowledge of the written code. reading with the text requires comprehension. when learners read with the text, they bring their own ideas and values to the text as they make sense of what the author is saying. reading against the text involves critical engagement and an interrogation of the impact the text has and the opportunities for writing the text differently. reading against the text requires an understanding that texts construct the social world in particular ways that are value laden and selective. it is in this critical engagement that the possibility exists for learners to resist and challenge the ideological effects of texts. critical engagement, then, holds the possibility of empowerment because learners come to ask questions about whose view is being privileged, whose interests the texts and text choices protect and promote, or disregard. the central concern of this research is with the way in which orientations to text produce particular kinds of learning, gendered and racialised subjectivities. the analysis of the orientations to text observed during the course of the study draws on the view that texts are ‘constructions rather than reflections of meaning’ (weedon 1987:167), and that as constructions they impact on the reader by positioning her and/or him in different ways and making different subject positions available. this understanding of texts has particular implications for the reading of literature: does the orientation to text made available in the classroom enable an acceptance of those positions, or is resistance possible? weedon (1987:171) has identified the potential productive power of reading fiction, as a way for learners to take up or resist subjectivities that the text ‘offers’ in ways that can challenge inequality: fiction has long been seen as a powerful form of education in social meanings and values, as an effective purveyor of beliefs about gender, race and class. yet if it is this, then it is also a powerful resource for those interests which to date had been marginalised, excluded or silenced by the dominant culture. the effectivity of fiction lies in the reading process itself. methodology and data collection in this study, a single case, namely, a grade 11 english class, was used to explore the orientations to reading constructed for learners. the case study design enabled observation in one class over a period of 5 weeks and facilitated a focus on the ‘particularity and complexity’ (stake 1995:xi) of the case while locating it in a specific context. this design was used to develop an understanding of how learners are situated in relation to texts, what resources they bring to their reading and how specific orientations might create an engagement with text that prepares learners for academic success. this focus on a specific situation is ‘… particularly suited to understanding complex, contemporary phenomena that other methodologies (e.g. quantitative survey) cannot provide’ (knobel & lankshear 1999:96). the heuristic potential of the case study identified by knobel and lankshear (1999) and bassey (1999) allows for conclusions about educational practice to be drawn beyond the boundaries of the single case. the case study research design was situated within a qualitative, critical ethnographic framework, in order to ‘… analyse the words [of the informants] in relation to the larger historical processes and social contradictions, searching for hidden forces that structure life’ (canagarajah 1999:48). data were collected employing a number of tools: participant observation and audio recording of 15 lessons; field notes taken during the lessons; a semi-structured interview with four learners; informal discussions with the teacher; and artefact collection, in the form of learners’ written work. data analysis in analysing the data, critical discourse analysis (cda) and poststructuralist discourse analysis (pda) were drawn on. critical discourse analysis (janks 1997:329) provides theoretical tools to analyse classroom discourse and to focus on both the spoken discourse of classroom teaching – ‘classroom talk’ – and the texts that are selected for reading and writing. pda (baxter 2008) helps to make some sense of the way in which the speaking subject is constructed, and this understanding comes from the conception of discourse as drawing on a combination of competing, sometimes antagonistic ideologies. pda is an ‘effective methodology’ (baxter 2008:69) for analysing the ‘… highly complex and ambiguous nature of classroom discourse as it unfolds moment-by-moment’ (mckinney 2011:7). pda provides us with a method of detailed analysis of how classroom subjects, both teachers and learners come to speak, what their ‘utterances’ might mean and to identify moments of resistance. pda is a tool that helps uncover the subtle shifts that learners make as they read and are subjected to discourse as well as to identify ‘… the ways in which speakers … constantly shift between positions of powerfulness or powerlessness within competing cultural and educational discourses’ (baxter 2008:69). these two approaches to discourse analysis, cda and pda, are complementary. both foreground issues of power, while pda provides specific tools for the analysis of subjectivity and subject positioning in spoken discourse. in the next section of this article, data from observed literature lessons are presented, and the reading process, as it unfolded in a classroom while reading a short story, is analysed. presentation and discussion of data during two of the observed lessons, the grade 11 class read a short story the toilet, by gcina mhlophe. at the time of the research, the story was officially prescribed for grade 12 literature study. the teacher read the story aloud to the class, adding her own commentary as she read. this was followed by a writing task, in which learners had to write answers to a set of 16 ‘contextual’ questions. the story, set during the height of apartheid, is about a young black woman who is secretly and illegally staying in her sister’s domestic quarters in white suburban johannesburg. the young woman has rejected the idea of becoming a nurse or teacher – the only two professions open to black women at the time – and is trying to find a way to become a writer. ‘people thought that these professions were respectable, but i knew i wanted to do something different…’ (mhlophe 1987) and later she is determined to keep writing. the story focuses on the exclusion and loneliness of the young woman, who finds warmth and privacy in a public toilet where she is able to read and write poetry and stories. reading apartheid in a short story the teacher introduced the story with a long commentary about literary features: the setting, the plot, the themes and the characters. she described the impact of the pass laws on black women, how this creates the backdrop to the themes of isolation and separateness in the story, yet how the main character ‘makes the best of her situation’ and the story ends on a positive note. as part of her commentary before she read the story, the teacher constructed a reading that privileged a particular idea of black subjectivity: 46 teacher: ‘because during apartheid, when you were addressing a person who employed you a white person, you called them “madam”.’ 47 learner: ‘yes, miss.’ 48 teacher: ‘they were not calling them by their first names or by their surnames. they called them “madam”.’ 49 male learner: ‘they respect them.’ 50 teacher: ‘this shows the way they were respecting the people that employed them…’. in this reading, all black people are characterised as respectful, a reading that serves to limit how the actions of the main character, who challenges dominant ideas of ‘good black women’, can be read. in line 49, the learner accepts this positioning in this limited reading, as do the rest of the class, who remain quiet and attentive throughout the lesson: 50 teacher: … [reading] ‘sometimes i wanted to give up and be a good girl who listened to her elders’. [teacher commenting]: ‘you know mos, we black people, we’ve got respect. we respect our elder people. you must always show respect no matter what. not like people of these days who question everything. but that time, they were just obeying the rules.’ both the story ‘… a good girl…’ and the teacher’s commentary set up an idea of goodness that means obeying elders. the teacher extends this idea to mean accepting rules and showing respect, ‘no matter what’. yet by choosing to focus on the main character’s choices: staying illegally in her sister’s quarters and exploring alternative careers, the story can be read as a celebration of resistance to the constructions of black women subjects during apartheid. the teacher’s commentary, though, does not allow for an exploration of the way in which black women challenged their limited career options. rather, the teacher emphasises the main character’s loneliness and isolation. in her repeated use of the pronoun ‘we’, for example, in ‘… we black people’, she positions the learners as respectful black people and instructs them ‘you’ to be respectful, ‘no matter what’. this injunction denies the learners an opportunity to explore ideas of resistance – both on the part of women to their very constricted lives and on the part of black people in general to apartheid. there is also evidence here of a confusion between subservience and respect that reveals a strong ideological orientation of acceptance of unequal power relations, and a reluctance to interrogate the ways in which the character’s experiences as a young woman challenged power relations between powerful privileged white people and their black servants. neither the teacher’s commentary nor the questions that were set afforded the learners an opportunity to explore these power relations. the 16 questions showed little variety in the cognitive demands that were made of the learners and privileged an orientation to the text characterised by limited engagement with its possible meanings: nine of the questions required factual recall from the text (e.g. ‘where does the story take place?’). one of them, question 3, asked, ‘which two professions were regarded as respectable by people?’ which underlines the idea that ‘respectable’ women were nurses or teachers, professions that extend the work of women as carers and nurturers. three of the questions tested vocabulary and punctuation knowledge (e.g. ‘give the opposite of the word temporary’); three of the questions required a level of inference (e.g. ‘how did she feel about staying with her sister?’); and just one question, question 6, ‘what do you think would have happened if the “madam” had seen her?’, opened the possibility for an engagement with the relationship between the white madam and her employee’s sister, and an investigation of how power worked (and still works) between black and white women in domestic contexts. reading gender in a short story in the short story, the main character manages to get a job in a factory and in the extract below, she recounts a conversation she has with another worker, about going out with a ‘lunch boy’ – a city boy who could buy her lunch: 54 teacher: [reading] ‘she told me it was wise not to sleep with him because then i could dump him any time i wanted to. i was very nervous about such things.’ [teacher commenting]: ‘why she was nervous? it’s because she was coming from upcountry.’ [teacher reading]: ‘in city life i thought it was better to be a bari than to be stabbed by a city boy for his money.’ 55 learners: ‘yes!’ 56 female learner: ‘unyanisile.’ [she’s right.] here the girls identify with the narrator’s resistance to the sexual demands made of them by city boys, retreating into the relative safety of the unsophisticated position of country girls. the learners understand the sexual threat from powerful city boys, even though the teacher has (mis)directed them in turn 54, choosing to focus on the narrator’s rural background (she had explained earlier in the turn that a bari was a label used by city people to derogate people from the rural areas), rather than on the sexual implications of befriending a ‘lunch boy’. this section of the story has touched the girls directly. the past is with them; the experiences of black women are their experiences. in turn 56, the learner’s use of the present tense creates a sense of immediacy and identification with the young woman in the story, who, like many of them, has come from the rural areas to the city, where she has to negotiate the risks of sexual violence. learner responses a few days after this lesson, i interviewed four of the learners in the class. in the interview, one of the female students showed a thoughtful and considered response to the story, in which she explored in a more nuanced way than had been possible during the reading or in the classwork, what the story meant for her: 198 y: ‘i felt the pain that the people were in, in that time because the lady couldn’t stay with her sister at that moment because her sister was employed. so i felt the pain she had to go through. early in the morning, she had to wake, go and stay in the toilet, wait there for her time for her to go to work. so it was very painful but it showed that black people are very strong. what she believed in, she do what she believed in. she wanted to help her family, she went to find work. even though she had to wake up early, she did wake up early.’ 199 interviewer: ‘and does it make you think about your life?’ 200 y: ‘yes. it shows us that we as young children take things easily. the stories tell us that if you believe in something you have to work for it. we as young children give up easily. if we want something and we don’t get it we just quit. it shows us that there are people who do things that they believe in. they are our mentors. we look to them.’ in her response, what is significant is her use in turn 198, of the word ‘pain’, which she uses three times, an indication of the strong identification she felt with the character. she also identifies with the character’s strength and emphasised that the character did what she believed in, that she showed discipline. she identifies here with someone who has overcome tremendous adversity and when she says ‘black people are very strong’, her use of the present tense signals her membership in that collective. yet there is a shift in her response in turn 200, where she distances her peer group from the oppressed of the past. in making an explicit connection with her life, she elevates the character in the story and describes herself and her peers as those who ‘take things easily’. ‘we as young people give up easily’. her use of first person plural pronouns: ‘they are our mentors. we look to them’ suggests at once a separation from the heroes of the past and a sense of a collective agency. the youth of today are different from their predecessors and are bound together in the here and now and need to act together. what she says here in turn 200 echoes the moralistic overtones in the discourse and the orientation to reading that requires that learners find a message in the text. once again the authority of the text is paramount and y in her reading is shifting in and out of the position of obedient and respectful black person. while she can feel the character’s pain, the dominant ideology that paints young people as spoilt and ‘giving up easily’ has overtaken and disrupted her identification and ruptured her attempt to link the character’s struggles as a black woman, with her own. the classroom discourse has constituted her as a particular kind of reader, who can find surface meaning in the story. but it has not given her the language to talk about the underlying power relations that the story is all about. during the teacher’s reading of this story in class, the learners were very attentive. they clearly enjoyed and were gripped by it. the issues it raised about professions and identities available to black women, sexual exploitation by sophisticated urban men and the complexity of racial relations all afford great potential for learners to connect with their lives. but neither the reading and discussion of the text nor the questions in the writing task afforded the learners the opportunity to explore those aspects of the text that could have been meaningful for them, especially in ways that could develop them as critical readers who are learning how to challenge dominant power relations. in the lesson observations and in the interview with four of the learners in the class, this researcher encountered young people who were able to draw on a range of resources to complete the tasks set for them in their english lessons. the class were in the commerce stream, studying accounting, business economics and economics, and in a group of lessons on advertising, a number of learners were able to draw on their understanding of commercial practices, in creative ways, to realise the production of an advertisement. yet those resources were not explicitly recognised by the teacher. in the interview, the four learners (two men and two women), when asked about their future career hopes, said, ‘my goal is to become an economist, like in statistics…’, , ‘… after grade 12 i will go into university where i will do sales marketing or accounting’; ‘i also want to be an entrepreneur. there are so many things, but that is one of my biggest goals’; ‘i want to be a sound engineer. so that’s my career field’. in the expression of these desires, we see learners who are looking way beyond the constraints of their gender (in the case of the two women) and class positions towards a future that holds a wide range of potential for them and they tell a story about themselves that challenges and contradicts the subject positions made available in the classroom discourse and reading orientations, of knowing their place. these learners are drawing on political narratives of freedom and equality, in which black youth are told they can strive for and achieve the academic success previously denied to their parents. in telling the story of their career ambitions, these learners have drawn on multiple sources, including their positions as commerce students, as members of ‘a new generation’ and on their imagined future selves. these future selves contradict the positions of ‘respectful’ young people afforded them by the classroom discourse in their lessons in the previous week. conclusion the literacy practices and discursive positions described and analysed in this study can be situated in a long history of unequal access to resources, including access that has been denied to generations of teachers in their schooling and teacher training. how then can the resources afforded by critical orientations be made available to all schools? one focus has to be on teacher training and within that attention needs to be paid to the curriculum – to developing understandings of what it means to do critical literacy and of why it is important. secondly, teacher training needs to take into consideration the way in which our apartheid past continues to speak through teachers in the present: how their discursive practices are contingent upon their own subject positioning during apartheid as non-critical consumers of text. petersen (2014) has argued further that in-service teachers, too, need support to shift their practices towards a critical pedagogy. thirdly, teacher training must address issues of the gendered positions of female teachers working in a society where women have equal rights legally but where patriarchal practices are normative. a second focus requires a shift in the way in which learners are constructed, about the subject positions they are able to take up, or desire to take up, and about the resources those positions afford them, so that much more can be made of those resources in the classroom. alternative models of teaching and learning, in which learners’ knowledge, history and experience of the world are centrally placed in their engagement with texts, must be developed. in this case study, learners displayed a strong investment in their future, drawn from their desire for an improvement in their personal and social circumstances. what they and all learners need are opportunities for engaging with texts that position them as critical thinkers who can understand and challenge the way texts work to reproduce or undo relations of domination, and in doing so can acquire the resources they need for academic success. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references bassey, m.m., 1999, case study research in educational settings, open university press, buckingham. baxter, j., 2008, ‘poststructuralist analysis of classroom discourse’, in m. martin-jones, a.m. de mejia, & n.h. hornberger (eds.), encyclopaedia of language and education, 2nd edn., vol. 3, pp. 69–80, springer science and business media, llc, new york. canagarajah, a.s., 1999, resisting english imperialism in english teaching, oxford university press, oxford. davies, b. & harré, r., 1990, ‘positioning: the discursive production of selves’, journal for the theory of social behaviour 20(1), 43–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5914.1990.tb00174.x department of basic education, 2011, curriculum and assessment policy statement grades 10–12. english first additional language, department of basic education, pretoria. deppermann, a., 2013, ‘positioning in narrative interaction’, narrative inquiry 23(1), 1–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ni.23.1.01dep fairclough, n., 1992, ‘introduction’ in critical language awareness, longman, london. hall, s., 1996, ‘introduction: who needs ‘identity’?’ in s. hall & p. du gay (eds.), questions of cultural identity, pp. 1–17, sage publications ltd., london. hicks, d., 1996, ‘discourse, teaching and learning’, in m. apple (ed.), review of research in education, pp. 49–72, american research association, washington. janks, h., 1997, ‘critical discourse analysis as a research tool’, discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education 18(3), 329–342. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0159630970180302 janks, h., 2010, literacy and power, routledge, london. kapp, r., 2004, ‘“reading on the line”: an analysis of literacy practices in esl classes in a south african township school’, language and education 18(3), 246–263. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500780408666878 knobel, m. & lankshear, c., 1999, ways of knowing. researching literacy, primary english teaching association, newtown, pa. lloyd, g., 2014, ‘orientations to text: how classroom discourse affords or denies the enactment of critical literacy and learner agency in an english first additional language classroom’, mphil, unpublished minor dissertation, uct. makoe, p., 2007, ‘language discourses and identity construction in a multilingual south african primary school’, english academy review 24(2), 55–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10131750701452303 mckinney, c., 2007, “‘if i speak english, does it make me less black, anyway?” ‘race’ and english in south african desegregated schools’, english academy review 24(2), 6–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10131750701452253 mckinney, c., 2011, ‘asymmetrical relations of knowing: pedagogy, discourse and identity in a de(re)segregated girls’ school’, journal of education 51, 1–23. mhlophe, g., 1987, ‘the toilet’, in a. oosthuizen (ed.) sometimes when it rains: writing by south african women. pandora press, london. 1–7. moore, r., paxton, m., scott, i. & thesen, l., 1998, ‘retrospective. language development initiatives and their policy contexts’, in s. angelil-carter (ed.), access to success. academic literacy in higher education, pp. 8–20, university of cape town press, cape town. petersen, l., 2014, ‘teachers’ understanding of critical language awareness and their enactment of this understanding in the classroom’, master’s thesis, university of cape town. prinsloo, m., 2012, ‘what counts as english?’ in c. leaung & b. street (eds.), english a changing medium for education, multilingual matters, bristol, tn. stake, r.e., 1995, the art of case study research, sage, thousand oaks, ca. weedon, c., 1987, feminist practice & poststructuralist theory, blackwell, oxford. abstract introduction methodology ethical considerations discussion limitations conclusion acknowledgements references appendix 1 about the author(s) louise olivier centre for academic and professional language practice, school of languages, north-west university, south africa jako olivier school of human and social sciences for education, north-west university, south africa citation olivier, l. & olivier, j., 2016, ‘exploring writing apprehension amongst afrikaans-speaking first-year students’, reading & writing 7(1), a89. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i1.89 original research exploring writing apprehension amongst afrikaans-speaking first-year students louise olivier, jako olivier received: 22 july 2015; accepted: 19 july 2016; published: 26 oct. 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract writing apprehension relates to a reluctance to write or even fear of writing and little research has been done on this phenomenon in the south african context, especially in terms of compulsory academic literacy and academic linguistic modules. this article aimed at determining the nature of writing apprehension in these two modules in terms of the daly and miller’s writing apprehension test (dm-wat), essay marks and gender at a south african university. the dm-wat was conducted with two groups of first-year students. an exploratory factor analysis was administered and this led to the identification of four distinct factors which are also associated with related aspects in the literature: positivity towards writing, negativity towards writing, evaluation apprehension and self-efficacy and writing. it is evident that in the context of this study, the chosen instrument could not be used to measure writing apprehension, rather the four identified factors. no linear relationships between essay marks and the identified constructs were clear. also a practical significant difference between genders was found in terms of the identified constructs. significantly, students in the compulsory academic literacy module showed a greater tendency towards apprehension in terms of the four identified factors than students from the linguistics module. the chosen instrument could be used to gauge the identified factors. writing in compulsory academic literacy modules should be taught through individualised student-centred methods, affective support and reflective instruction, positive personal feedback, with additional support through counselling as well as effective modelled writing behaviour from lecturers. introduction this article explores writing apprehension amongst first-year students in a compulsory academic literacy module and a student-selected afrikaans linguistics module at a south african university. daly and miller (1975a:244), in reference to a specific point in time, note that ‘[o]ur age demands competence in writing’. writing is an important aspect of higher education and success in higher education depends on the ability to write (atkinson 2011:1; pajares 2003:141). as attitudes towards writing vary amongst individuals (daly & wilson 1983:327), it is important to consider writing apprehension as a variable in learning, teaching and assessment of written work. apart from daly and miller’s initial work (daly 1978; daly & miller 1975a, 1975b) on writing apprehension, many other related studies have been conducted using the daly and miller’s writing apprehension test (dm-wat) in different contexts and with different instruments and in combination with various other testing instruments (cf. atkinson 2011:3–4; cornwell & mckay 2000; daly & wilson 1983; faigley, daly & witte 1981; pappalardo 2010:36–38; todd 2003:20–22). however, research in this regard is lacking in the south african context. this article aims at exploring the use of the dm-wat with two south african afrikaans-speaking groups of first-year students in order to determine the nature of writing apprehension in an academic linguistics module versus an academic literacy module in terms of the dm-wat, essay marks and gender in a selected south african university. the concept of writing apprehension is explored in this article, followed by some study background in terms of the research population, ethical considerations and the instrument, the dm-wat, used in this study. the final section of this article relates to the data analysis with the focus on collection and statistical analysis, construct validity and reliability of the measuring instrument, as well as a discussion on the main findings and some recommendations. literature review some individuals experience writing as a very challenging task. furthermore, the act of writing is often viewed as a very daunting experience (brennan 1995:352). according to teichman and poris (1989:94), some ‘students find writing an uncomfortable, punishing, and even fearful experience’. bothma and cloete (1964:23) state that most students experience writing essays as an artificial and not very pleasant activity. lecturers need to be able to make writing desirable for students; however, bothma and cloete (1964:5) are of the opinion that the methods used to teach writing can cause some students to get an aversion to writing, which could result in writing apprehension. furthermore, daly (1978:10) states that ‘[t]he apprehension construct is concerned with a person’s general tendencies to approach or avoid situations perceived to demand writing accompanied by some amount of evaluation’ (cf. daly & wilson 1983:327; faigley et al. 1981:16; fox 1980:39). this study falls within the theoretical framework of the affective model (cf. hayes 1996:11–12). it is important to note that the concept of affect encompasses various ‘constructs and processes’ (mcleod 1991:97) and as such emotion is but an example of an affective state. in this regard, mcleod (1991:99) refers to writing anxiety as ‘[o]ne of the most studied affective states’ whilst emphasising that in such instances the individuals with writing anxiety display ‘state anxiety’, where they are anxious only in specific writing circumstances. martinez, kock and cass (2011:358) emphasise that writing anxiety is a multidimensional construct. as such, writing apprehension has often been examined in terms of the affective model or domain and is seen as one of the many affective factors that might influence academic writing performance (gustilo 2010; mcleod 1987, 1991, 1997:11; rose 2009:2). apart from avoidance of writing altogether, some typical characteristics of the nature of writing by writing apprehensives have been identified. the writing of highly apprehensive individuals is shorter, syntactically restricted, has fewer qualifications, shows lower levels of language intensity and is of poorer quality (cf. cornwell & mckay 2000:119; daly and wilson 1983:328; faigley et al. 1981:19). an important factor influencing writing apprehension is writing self-efficacy (cf. martinez et al. 2011:352–353). bandura (1997:3) defines self-efficacy as ‘beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments’. this self-efficacy contributes to a student’s degree of motivation. martinez et al. (2011:357) found that ‘[s]tudents with higher levels of writing anxiety reported lower levels of writing self-efficacy than those students with low anxiety’. the relationship between writing apprehension and performance is evident from the literature. daly (1978:13) found that individuals with low writing apprehension perform better than those with high apprehension on a test of writing skills, whilst individuals with moderate apprehension perform in between – forming a continuum of apprehension. furthermore, he notes that ‘[h]igh apprehensives not only write differently and with lower quality than low apprehensives, but, in addition, fail to demonstrate as strong a working knowledge of writing skills as low apprehensives’ (cf. pappalardo 2010:37). however, pajares and johnson (1994:321, 325) did not observe a relationship between apprehension and performance in their study. earlier work on the phenomenon of writing apprehension included observational interviews by phillips as well as the measuring of physiological measures (e.g. galvanic skin response and heartbeat measures) by researchers such as porter (cf. daly & miller 1975a:243). in the recent literature, the prominence of the work of john a. daly and michael d. miller, as creators of the dm-wat, is evident. however, daly and miller were not the first individuals to use self-report instruments to assess writing apprehension. in this regard, daly and miller (1975a:243) also note the work of friedrich, mccroskey, heston and paterline, as well as wheeless in the 1970s. drawing from the background provided by these authors in terms of communication, speaking and receiver apprehension, they compiled the dm-wat (cornwell & mckay 2000:118). research that followed these initial works focussed on the inclusion of additional variables such as field of study and writing audience (atkinson 2011:3–4). recent studies on writing apprehension even included a focus on the role of technology and related computer apprehension (cf. harris & grandgenett 1992; todd 2003:70–73). it is also important to note that writing apprehension may be associated with other, more general language-related fears. writing apprehension is, for example, also related to communication apprehension (cf. atkinson 2011:2; daly & miller 1975a:243–244). in this regard, daly and miller (1975a:243) state that ‘[t]he highly apprehensive individual will avoid communication situations or react in some anxious manner if forced into them because he foresees primarily negative consequences from such engagements’. despite this reaction towards writing, language teaching requires various interactions in written and spoken communication. it is, however, important to determine the origin of writing apprehension and, by implication, communication apprehension. gender differences have been reported in previous studies, with boys having higher levels of ‘negative writing satisfaction’ as well as ‘less writing enjoyment’ (hansen 2001:2, 14, 15). similarly, in a study with 246 university students, daly and miller (1975b:255) found that ‘females had significantly lower scores than males on the writing apprehension measure’. pajares (2003:148–151) also noted stronger confidence in writing amongst females. in contrast to the aforementioned studies, reeves (1997:42) and martinez et al. (2011:356) related how higher writing apprehension was identified amongst females. in terms of gender as a variable, it is also important to note that this aspect is socially constructed and might imply additional influences and associations depending on the context. writing apprehension is not necessarily established at university. students’ confidence in terms of writing is already formed at school level (pajares & johnson 1994:328). in this regard faigley et al. (1981:16) state: ‘negative teacher responses to early writing attempts affect later levels of writing anxiety. positive skill development and reinforcement leads to less apprehension’. hence, writing apprehension needs to be addressed at an early stage. fox (1980:39) agrees and notes that writing apprehension needs to be reduced before students can ‘overcome their inhibitions about writing and its subsequent evaluation’. however, once students reach university, it is important to look at how writing apprehension can firstly be determined and then recognised in language and academic literacy classrooms. this article is an attempt at exploring this issue in the south african context. based on the literature review, the following hypothesis is set: there is a significant relationship between writing apprehension levels and writing performance of afrikaans-speaking first-year students at a south african university. the article also poses the following research questions: what is the nature of writing apprehension in an academic linguistics module versus an academic literacy module, offered at a south african university, as measured by the dm-wat? is there a relationship between writing apprehension and essay marks obtained by first-year students in an academic linguistics module and in an academic literacy module? does gender influence writing apprehension levels in a selected group of south african students? methodology research population two groups of first-year students (n = 545) were used in this study. the research population consisted of a convenience sample of students enrolled in an afrikaans linguistics module (n1 = 245) as well as an academic literacy compulsory module (n2 = 300). the afrikaans linguistics module consisted of 67 male (27%) and 178 female (73%) students, whilst the academic literacy module had 100 male (33%) and 200 female (67%) students. these modules were relevant as both had a strong emphasis on writing within an academic context. ethical considerations participation in the study was entirely voluntary and informed consent was obtained from all the participants. furthermore, participants were allowed to withdraw from the study at any point. as the authors of this article are also lecturers of the selected participants, a student assistant conducted the data collection outside the official class times. ethical clearance for this research was granted (ethics number nwu-00330-14-a7) by the north-west university research ethics regulatory committee (nwu-rerc) as part of a project on academic literacy. instrument: daly and miller’s writing apprehension test the phenomenon of writing apprehension has been measured by means of observational interview approaches, physiological measures as well as factor-based self-report instruments (daly & miller 1975a:243). in this study, a self-report instrument was chosen, because, as daly and miller (1975a:244) state, with these instruments ‘[t]he expense is small, the administration simple and quick, and the measurement more general and oriented towards the trait anxiety’. daly and miller developed the dm-wat to measure writing apprehension amongst students (daly & miller 1975a). the instrument involves 26 statements with a likert-type scale containing the following values: (1) strongly agree, (2) agree, (3) are uncertain, (4) disagree and (5) strongly disagree. daly and miller (1975a:246) propose the following formula for the instrument: writing apprehension = 78 − positive scores + negative scores. in this regard, cornwell and mckay (2000:123) note the misprint with the plus and minus signs in swapped positions in the original daly and miller article; hence, the corrected formula is provided above. the positive scores relate to items that indicate a positive tendency towards writing apprehension (such as ‘i avoid writing’ and ‘i’m nervous about writing’), whilst the negative scores relate to a negative tendency (such as ‘i have no fear of my writing being evaluated’ and ‘writing is a lot of fun’). it is clear from the literature that the dm-wat has shown validity and reliability for specific research populations (cornwell & mckay 2000; daly 1978; daly & miller 1975a, 1975b; fox 1980; todd 2003:84). although not the focus of this study, it is important to note that dm-wat has also been used in second language (l2) learning contexts (cf. cornwell & mckay 2000:115, 119–121). in the south african context, this poses interesting possibilities in terms of the exploration of writing apprehension in multilingual environments. for the purposes of this study, the dm-wat (cf. appendix 1) was translated into afrikaans as the respondents were all afrikaans-speaking students. hence, the validity and reliability (cf. ‘construct validity and reliability of the measuring instrument’ section) of this specific test also had to be determined. data collection and analysis collection and analysis the dm-wat was completed by students at the beginning of the semester before any intervention or feedback on writing assignments by lecturers. the writing assignments involved essays completed by the students as part of the continuous assessment of both modules. for the sake of comparison, both sets of assessment criteria were similar and the raters compared and discussed ratings of the first 10 randomly selected essays from both groups in order to ensure that the assessment was done in a similar manner. the data were captured in microsoft excel and the incomplete questionnaires (two in total) were removed. statistical analysis system (sas) software (2011) was used for the data analysis. a factor analysis as well as reliability testing was conducted. as no random sampling was done, p-values cannot be used to interpret the data; however, for the sake of completeness, they are reported. because of the nature of the sampling, cohen’s d-values were used to draw conclusions. construct validity and reliability of the measuring instrument an exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the 26 items of the dm-wat. for the sake of statistical analysis, the directions of the questionnaire items were adapted so that they were all negative statements. in contrast to the dm-wat (daly & miller 1975a, 1975b), where only one construct is used, this study identified four distinct factors from the factor analysis (tables 1 and 2). table 1: factor loadings. table 2: exploratory factor analysis and kaiser’s measure of sample adequacy. the above-mentioned four factors were identified and named according to the questionnaire contents and the related literature (cf. cornwell & mckay 2000:129) and are summarised in table 2 in terms of kaiser’s measure of sample adequacy (msa). the value of msa in table 2 is very satisfactory at 0.94 and can be described as ‘meritorious’ as it is above 0.8 (cf. hair et al. 2014:102). the four factors explain a variance of 56.1% in contrast to only 38% when the questions are considered as one factor: writing apprehension (daly & miller 1975a, 1975b). furthermore, the reliability of the results of the four different factors was also determined. table 3 shows the cronbach’s alpha for each of the factors. table 3: cronbach’s alpha for the four identified factors. in all four instances, the value has been satisfactory with cronbach’s alpha higher than 0.60, which is acceptable for exploratory research (cf. hair et al. 2014:123). comparison in terms of essay marks, gender and the type of module in this study, essay marks and gender were also considered in the statistical analysis. according to pearson’s correlation coefficient, no linear relationships between essay marks and any of the constructs could be identified. furthermore, the data grouped together under the four factors were also compared in terms of gender and module. however, no practical significance was determined. the respondents came from two distinct modules: an afrikaans language module and an afrikaans-medium compulsory academic literacy module. the results obtained from the two groups of students are shown in table 4. table 4: comparison by module. because the research population was drawn from two distinct modules (an afrikaans language module and an afrikaans-medium compulsory academic literacy module), the groups were therefore compared. it is evident from table 4 that there is a statistically significant difference between the responses from the respondents in the afrikaans language module and those in the afrikaans-medium compulsory academic literacy module. considering that, for the sake of statistical analysis, the statements were all changed to the same direction (in this case negative), a higher score would mean less agreement with the group of statements and a lower score would mean greater agreement (cf. appendix 1). the respondents of the afrikaans linguistics module tended to have less agreement with negative statements regarding positivity towards writing, negativity towards writing, evaluation apprehension and self-efficacy and writing compared to those of the compulsory academic literacy module. however, only positivity towards writing and negativity towards writing displayed practical as well as statistical significance in differences between the two groups. hence, the respondents from the academic literacy module showed a greater tendency towards apprehension in terms of the four identified factors. this finding supports the literature (atkinson 2011:3–4; todd 2003:141) in that writing apprehension is especially found amongst students in writing intensive curriculums. discussion an important result of this study is the fact that, in this context and with this specific research population, the dm-wat cannot be interpreted as a single factor (writing apprehension). rather, the results obtained in this study suggest that four distinct factors are measured with this instrument. hence, for this specific population, the dm-wat seems to be (especially in its current format) an outdated research instrument; however, the responses of the test could still be meaningful if a factor analysis is conducted. importantly, the identified factors do relate to the four factors singled out by cornwell and mckay (2000:129). in table 5, the factors identified, using the dm-wat, in this study are listed first, followed by the factors of cornwell and mckay (2000) in italics. table 5: factors comparison of the dm-wat and cornwell and mckay. although the descriptions from the two studies do not correspond exactly in all statements from the dm-wat, the similarity of the factors is clear. cornwell and mckay (2000:130–131) ascribe the multiple factors to the following reasons: (1) writing apprehension manifesting in a different manner because of cultural differences, (2) writing in the l2, (3) the test being developed in the 1970s, (4) the move from a rhetoric-based approach to writing with the emphasis on the product to a process approach and (5) the emphasis in the dm-wat on evaluation. the four identified factors are briefly discussed in terms of the relevant literature, followed by an overview of the implications of this study in terms of essay marks, gender and the type of module. factor 1: positivity towards writing this factor relates to not only lower (or even the absence of) writing apprehension, but also a tendency to enjoy writing and being content in having others read what has been written. in this regard, brunton (2009:29) notes that ‘having a positive attitude is vital to successful learning’ (cf. pajares 2003:146–148, 154). this aspect also relates to the fact that, in terms of language learning, krashen (1981:5) believes that attitudinal and motivational factors are of greater importance than aptitude. in contrast to this factor, negative attitudes towards writing were also evident from the dm-wat. factor 2: negativity towards writing the negativity towards writing factor relates to anxiety when writing, inability to write, experiences of poor evaluations as well as doubts in writing abilities and standards. as with the previous factor, attitudinal and motivational issues are also very relevant for this factor. despite the fact that poor evaluation is envisaged under this factor, a distinct factor relating to fear of evaluation was also evident. hence, evaluation apprehension was also considered. factor 3: evaluation apprehension the statements grouped together under this factor focus on four fairly similar issues: fear of being assessed, not feeling good when handing in written work, not liking essays being assessed and fear of writing essays when they are intended for assessment. these statements do not relate to fear of writing, rather to a fear activated by the possibility of being evaluated or assessed. in terms of evaluation apprehension, daly and miller (1975a:244) state that ‘[i]ndividuals with high apprehension of writing would fear evaluation of their writing, for example, feeling that they will be negatively rated on it’. as stated earlier (see ‘literature review’ section), writing apprehension often occurs based on teachers’ responses to writing, for example. especially, the evaluation associated with writing would influence self-esteem. according to daly and wilson (1983:329), ‘[a] person’s apprehension about writing develops, and is maintained, at least in part, from others’ evaluations of his or her writing’. in this regard, pajares and johnson (1994:326) state that students might perceive themselves as competent writers and that criticism of writing might be interpreted as criticism of the students themselves. this factor can also potentially lead to certain attitudinal and motivational issues concerning writing (cf. factors 1 and 2) as well as influence self-efficacy and writing as discussed in the next section. factor 4: self-efficacy and writing the final factor involves having self-confidence in being able to express ideas in writing, liking it when friends are reading one’s written work and enjoying discussing one’s writing with others. these issues also relate to students’ self-efficacy (cf. martinez et al. 2011). daly and wilson (1983:329) make the link between self-esteem and writing apprehension and indicate that students with high writing apprehension tend to feel less positive about themselves. moreover, they also state that, because self-esteem is related to an individual’s portrayal of the self, writing ‘with its highly intentional nature and required effort, is sometimes directly, and almost always indirectly, an exposure of self to others’. people’s behaviour is influenced by their self-efficacy or beliefs that are maintained about their capabilities (cf. pajares 2003:140). pajares (2003:141) notes that ‘students’ confidence in their writing capabilities influence[s] their writing motivation as well as various writing outcomes in school’. bandura (1977:129) states that, in the process of self-regulated writing, ‘some people are such critical self-editors that they essentially paralyze their own writing efforts’. however, pajares and johnson (1994:326) found no relationship between writing apprehension and writing self-efficacy (cf. pappalardo 2010:24). bandura (1977:80) notes that ‘[p]erceived self-efficacy not only reduces anticipatory fears and inhibitions but, through expectations of eventual success, it affects coping efforts once they are initiated’; therefore, the role of self-efficacy cannot be ignored. moreover, pappalardo (2010:114) notes that students with low writing apprehension sometimes overestimate their own writing skills. in this study, self-efficacy or at least an aspect thereof, especially in relation to the perceptions of writing by others, could possibly be assessed by means of the dm-wat. apart from the four factors mentioned above, essay marks, gender and the type of module were also regarded as important variables in this study as they are associated with the concept of writing apprehension in the literature. essay marks despite the fact that daly and miller (1975a:248) noted that ‘the instrument would be predictive of classroom variables such as success in compositions’, as stated before (cf. ‘comparison in terms of essay marks, gender and the type of module’ section), this result was not confirmed in this study. according to the literature (pajares & johnson 1994:315), previous studies noted correlations between essay marks and writing apprehension. however, pajares and johnson (1994:325) also found in their study that, despite an increase in confidence and competence in completing writing tasks amongst their research subjects, writing apprehension remained. faigley et al. (1981:20) concluded: ‘writing apprehension is not assumed causally to lead to poorer writing nor is poorer writing assumed causally to result in apprehension. most likely the relationship is bi-directional; apprehension and performance probably reinforce one another’. despite this fact, the presence of writing apprehension or even negativity towards writing and evaluation apprehension may still influence general attitudes towards language classes and cause anxiety that does not necessarily translate into poor marks. gender the literature tends to show higher writing apprehension amongst either females (martinez et al. 2011; reeves 1997) or males (daly & miller 1975b; hansen 2001; pajares 2003). however, in this study, no practical significant difference was noted when the genders were compared in terms of the four identified factors. modules: compulsory versus selected this study involved students from a compulsory academic literacy module and a student-selected afrikaans linguistics module. the fact that the respondents from the academic literacy module showed a greater tendency towards apprehension in terms of the four identified factors links up with the literature. in this regard, daly (1978:10) states that ‘[t]hose with high apprehension about writing select academic subjects and jobs which they perceive as having significantly lower writing requirements’ (cf. daly & miller 1975b:250; daly & wilson 1983:328; faigley et al. 1981:16; pappalardo 2010:37, 42; reeves 1997:38). clearly, compulsory academic literacy courses that were designed to support students with their writing may end up alienating many students. powers, cook and meyer (1979:228) support this view as they found that compulsory academic writing could increase writing apprehension. interventions, such as compulsory academic literacy courses, often include additional writing tasks which may contribute to negativity. according to daly and miller (1975b:255), ‘[n]ot only do high apprehensives report an unwillingness to take more course work in writing, but indeed they seem to indicate this in their behaviors’. the result of this study emphasises the importance of sensitivity towards writing apprehension (and, by implication, attitude towards writing, evaluation apprehension and self-efficacy and writing) in compulsory academic literacy modules. furthermore, a subject-specific approach to writing seems to be a better alternative for writing instruction, at least in terms of writing apprehension. however, this aspect needs to be researched further in other fields and contexts. limitations it is crucial to acknowledge some limitations in terms of the research conducted. firstly, the conclusions derived from this study cannot be generalised as the research population used in this study is but a selection from a larger population at a selected south african university. in addition, the population is limited to a specific university and to afrikaans language speakers. furthermore, the conclusions are limited in terms of the methodology where writing apprehension was only investigated in terms of the dm-wat. in this regard, future research and follow-up studies should include qualitative data to further examine the reasons behind writing apprehension. however, despite the limitations of the research population and the methodology used, this study has led to more insights into the phenomenon of writing apprehension amongst afrikaans-speaking university students. recommendations based on the aforementioned exploration of writing apprehension, and specifically attitude towards writing, evaluation apprehension and self-efficacy and writing, a few practical recommendations are made for language classrooms. firstly, the way in which writing is integrated in teaching and learning needs to be addressed. fox (1980:48–49) concludes that ‘structured, student-centered methods of teaching writing’ can reduce writing apprehension. furthermore, pappalardo (2010:148) states that ‘[t]eaching strategies such as modeling, affective support, and reflective instruction seemed to have a larger impact on student attitudes concerning writing than did teaching style’. pajares (2003:153) emphasises the importance of nurturing students’ self-beliefs. similarly, reeves (1997) suggests a number of ways in which writing apprehension could be countered. he notes the importance of letting apprehensives write more, letting apprehensives take ownership of their writing, listening to fearful writers and talking about experiences, finding patterns in errors and contextualizing and customizing grammar teaching (1997:39–40). furthermore, he also mentions collaboration with the drafting of writing as well as evaluation, coaching of peers for adequate responses, encouraging positive self-talk, being aware of gender differences, varying writing modes, monitoring attitudes, introducing discourse communities, talking about writers, giving and attending lectures, and sharing writing (1997:40–44). apart from teaching strategies, specific individualised instructional materials can be useful, as faigley et al. (1981:20) state that ‘different instructional materials and methods may need to be used for highly apprehensive writers given their differential performance in writing’. despite the fact that daly and miller (1975a:248) assert that forcing students to write can reinforce the ‘punishing nature of the writing act’, fox (1980:48) contends that the manner in which students are compelled to write is also important. the nature of feedback on writing seems to be a very important aspect. in a study on how students cope with writing apprehension, atkinson (2011:17) stated that ‘[a] more effective learning and writing process may be attainable by revisiting the application of communication theory to remedial writing situations in higher education’ and by employing ‘positive personal feedback’ (atkinson 2011:16). pajares and johnson (1994:327) also emphasise the importance of lecturers and their feedback in developing students’ self-efficacy. furthermore, atkinson (2011:16) makes the following comment in this regard: in this case, the instructor’s message would be centered on their belief in the student’s abilities and respect for the work ethic and academic maturity displayed. the constructive criticism dealing with writing as the practice of a craft could be sandwiched in a message to focus the need for improvement from a skills perspective. despite the merits of positive feedback, fox (1980:48) warns against ‘indoctrinating students with false or sugar-coated notions about their own abilities’ and to ‘avoid leading students to believe they were better writers than they actually were’. fox (1980:48) does, however, emphasise that students must be made aware of the positive qualities in their writing. additional support for writing apprehensives can also be beneficial. according to daly and miller (1975a:248), ‘effective treatments’ of writing apprehension include ‘counseling programs where the apprehensive writer would be allowed to view writing as a successful experience’, behaviour therapies and systematic desensitisation. the writing of lecturers or teachers themselves (as well as their own approaches and apprehensions towards writing) may also prove instrumental in classroom contexts (cf. reeves 1997:44). to increase self-efficacy, pappalardo (2010:115–116) suggests modelling behaviour through teachers writing with students, facilitating a mastery experience by letting students redo writing based on teachers’ comments, social persuasion through praise by teachers and students, as well as keeping psychological conditions such as apprehension and fear in mind. conclusion writing apprehension relates to a reluctance to write or even fear of writing. the dm-wat has been successfully used in the past to investigate this construct. in this study, involving two groups of south african afrikaans-speaking students enrolled in an afrikaans linguistics module as well as an academic literacy compulsory module, four distinct factors were determined from the factor analysis of the collected data. these factors were positivity towards writing, negativity towards writing, evaluation apprehension and self-efficacy and writing. furthermore, students’ essay marks, gender and the type of module were explored in terms of the four identified factors. in the context of this study, and with this specific research population, it was determined that the dm-wat can be used to gauge specific aspects (e.g. positivity towards writing, negativity towards writing, evaluation apprehension and self-efficacy and writing). however, there were no linear relationships between essay marks and the identified constructs in this study. a comparison between writing apprehension and module marks, as well as scores from standardised academic literacy tests, could possibly show different results. furthermore, no practical significant difference in genders was determined in terms of the identified constructs. however, a significant amount of students in the compulsory academic literacy module showed a greater tendency towards writing apprehension in terms of the four identified factors. in terms of instruction, writing apprehension must be considered by lecturers. it is therefore important for writing, especially in compulsory academic literacy modules, to be taught through individualised student-centred methods, with affective support and reflective instruction, positive personal feedback, additional support through counselling as well as effective modelled writing behaviour from lecturers. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions l.o. and j.o. were both equally responsible for the collection and analysis of data as well as the writing of this article. references atkinson, p.b., 2011, ‘exploring correlations between writing apprehension, academic rational beliefs, and stress and coping behaviors 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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10573560308222 pajares, f. & johnson, m.j., 1994, ‘confidence and competence in writing: the role of self-efficacy, outcome expectancy, and apprehension’, research in the teaching of english 28(3), 313–331. pappalardo, p., 2010, ‘teacher behavior and attitude and student writing apprehension’, phd thesis, school of graduate studies and research, indiana university of pennsylvania. powers, w.g., cook, j.a. & meyer, r., 1979, ‘the effect of compulsory writing on writing apprehension’, research in the teaching of english 13(3), 225–230. reeves, l.l., 1997, ‘minimizing writing apprehension in the learner-centered classroom’, english journal 86(6), 38–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/820367 rose, m., 2009, writer’s block: the cognitive dimension, southern illinois university press, carbondale, il. sas institute inc., 2011, ‘the sas system for windows release 9.3’, ts level 1m0 copyright© by sas institute inc., cary, nc. teichman, m. & poris, m., 1989, ‘initial effects of word processing on writing quality and writing anxiety of freshman writers’, computers and the humanities 23(2), 93–103. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf00144729 todd, v., 2003, ‘writing and computer apprehension among mass communication majors’, phd dissertation, texas tech university. appendix 1 appendix 1: entire issue.pdf �e culture of the sharp pencil: can a literacy intervention lever school change? sally currin independent school consultant elizabeth j pretorius department of linguistics, university of south africa abstract: !is article reports on a reading intervention project undertaken in a high poverty primary school in gauteng where reading levels in both the home language, northern sotho, and in english were very low. some of the factors associated with school e"ectiveness (se) are #rst examined and therea$er the nature of the reading intervention programme is described. !e project outcomes are presented and discussed against established se factors and the high poverty ecological system within which the school operates. although some of these outcomes are presented quantitatively, the article also considers some of the qualitative aspects of the intervention and its outcomes. despite obstacles which lessen impact, it is concluded that a reading intervention in high poverty schools can simultaneously improve learner performance and the functioning of an ine"ective school, but that such an intervention needs to adopt a multi-level ecological approach. introduction “many children use very short and blunt pencils. some children have no pencils at all. can they become literate if they don’t have proper pencils?” !ese comments were made by the facilitator of a reading intervention project that was implemented in a high poverty primary school 1. when this matter was raised at a feedback meeting with teachers at the school, considerable time was spent discussing the ‘pencil problem’. some teachers shrugged it o" resignedly as a small detail, and some attributed the problem to the high levels of poverty in the school. others pointed out the altruistic reason for the short pencils and explained that although learners o$en came to school with new pencils, they broke them in half or quarters to share with learners who did not have pencils. towards the end of the discussion, the principal declared, “yes, we’re 1 !e project facilitator is also #rst author of this article. a similar observation was made in case studies of the reading practices of tertiary students who performed poorly (pretorius 2005:801). rw& article 24 reading and writing a poor school, but we can’t just leave this. children must come to school with pencils!” !e following week she visited several classrooms and tightened up general discipline in the school. !is incident is reminiscent in a small way of the ‘broken window’ phenomenon which refers to an approach adopted during former new york mayor rudy giuliani’s term of o&ce in the 1990s, to immediately replace broken windows on train carriages in an e"ort to bring down the crime rate. it was argued that if a place looked run down, then crime would be more likely to occur (gladwell, 2001). although the reasons for crime are more complex than the broken window theory suggests, it is instructive to re*ect on the e"ect that small changes may bring about within a community. short, blunt pencils may be pedagogical metaphors of educational dysfunction in the same way that broken carriage windows are seen to re*ect urban dysfunction. !e national systemic evaluations that have been undertaken since 2001 have revealed severe dysfunction within our education system. for instance, the #rst round of grade !ree evaluations showed that learners achieved a national mean of 38% for reading and writing in their home language (department of education, 2003). !ree years later, only 36% of grade six learners passed the literacy test in the language of learning and teaching (lolt). in all, 63% fell into the ‘not achieved’ band, while only 28% were functioning at or above grade level (department of education, 2005). results such as these suggest a ‘broken window’ phenomenon within education. in order to address these educational challenges we need to be cognizant of the factors that underlie e"ective schools and identify those factors that help to make schools resilient despite the obstacles they face. in this article we describe a reading intervention project in a high poverty school and re*ect on the e"ect it had on a low functioning school community a$er three years of implementation. we also suggest modi#cations to the original intervention model to strengthen its potential impact on both reading outcomes and school e"ectiveness. although the focus of the intervention project is on reading, being literate involves more than mastery of the mechanical aspects of reading, important as these are; it requires the ability to perform a range of literate behaviours related to written language. !ese literate behaviours comprise a set of cognitive and linguistic accomplishments which develop within a speci#c sociocultural context which ascribes value to speci#c literacy behaviours and practices. literacy is thus embedded within an ecological system that includes the family, the community and the broader culture, and it functions as an aspect of human activity rather than simply as a set of mechanical skills. 25sally currin and elizabeth j pretorius !e impact that the intervention project had on the reading skills of the learners has been documented from a more quantitative perspective elsewhere (e.g. pretorius and mampuru, 2007, pretorius and currin, 2010). in this article we report instead on the impact of the reading project from a more qualitative perspective, as an aspect of human activity within a high poverty ecology of schooling. our data are sourced from #eld notes, classroom observations and interactions with educators and we re*ect on processes as much as on products and outcomes. in order to situate the project within the broader socioeconomic and socioeducational contexts within which literacy is typically embedded, we #rst brie*y look at the relationship between literacy and poverty and then provide a brief sketch of studies of school e"ectiveness. !erea$er we describe the project school and the nature of the intervention, and we sketch the reading situation prior to and during the implementation of the intervention programme. poverty, literacy and school performance poverty and poor schooling tend to go hand in hand. poverty per se does not cause poor school performance. instead, factors associated with poverty create barriers to learning in homes, schools and classrooms (e.g. allington, 2000, bradley and corwin, 2002). for example, schools in poor areas tend to be under-resourced, so children do not have easy access to books that form the backbone of literacy development and academic performance. poor schools tend to be poorly managed and have fewer quali#ed teachers. in addition, children in high poverty schools tend to come from homes where adult literacy levels are low and where expectations about children’s progress may not be high. as a result, poor children o$en perform under par or drop out of school. generally, learners who fare poorly on the educational ladder also fare poorly on the occupational ladder, which in turn has socioeconomic implications. since current disparities in school accomplishment presage future socioeconomic disparities, it is important to provide good quality education for all. given that about 80% of schools in south africa are disadvantaged (gustafsson, 2005), it is imperative to understand the nature and dynamics of school e"ectiveness and the relationship between poverty and school accomplishment. barriers to learning associated with poverty can be overcome if schools create conditions conducive to learning. a range of conditions, or school e"ectiveness (se) factors, have emerged from over forty years of research into school e"ectiveness in both rich and poor countries around the world (e.g. harris, 1998, gustafsson, 2005, scheerens, 2000, silins and mulford, 2002). identifying these factors is an important #rst step; knowing how to bring about 26 reading and writing concomitant changes in ine"ective schools is the next demanding step, and knowing how to sustain the changes so that educational e&cacy becomes the norm in schools is the #nal challenge. !e outcomes of this reading project suggest an ecological approach which may hold some answers for school improvers faced with these challenges. e!ective schools an e"ective school is generally accepted as one which achieves its education goals. for the purposes of this article ‘educational goals’ are taken to be attainment of academic performance at a standard accepted within the school’s educational system. most se studies have identi#ed multiple, multi-level measures of school e"ectiveness. a review of the se literature from a/uent countries conducted by harris (1998) revealed the following factors to be consistently associated with e"ective schools: purposeful, #rm leadership with shared decision-making; e"ective management of people; co-operative and collaborative practices, with attendant responsibility of both teachers and pupils; balance between support and challenge; a learning climate; academic emphasis; parental involvement; and continual planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating, with support. as instructive as these factors are, it is argued that e"ectiveness indices in more a/uent countries do not necessarily denote e"ectiveness in transitional or poorer contexts (scheerens, 2000, 2001, harber and muthukrishna, 2000, levin and lockheed, 1993, christie and potterton, 1999). se factors identi#ed from a review of the literature relevant to transitional or poorer countries point to a range of factors such as basic organizational functionality; strong but democratic leadership and management; good governance; appropriate authority relations and discipline; safety and security; resources (these include basic needs, instructional materials, time for instruction and reading, teacher quali#cation and language competence, facilitating conditions); centrality of teaching and learning; focus on academic achievement; focus on learner needs; teacher professionalism, commitment, accountability, collegiality, the will to act, mutual respect, concern for all, a positive climate and high expectations; leadership density with vision; quali#ed, competent, motivated, hard-working, well-prepared teachers who manage their classrooms e"ectively; healthy social dynamics; small class sizes; e"ective monitoring and evaluation (homework and testing) and e"ective diagnostic analysis of results; integrated planning and co-ordination; an involved, helping relationship with the wider community including the parent body; and pro#ciency in the ‘language of learning and teaching’ (lolt) (christie, 1998, christie and potterton 1999, muller and roberts, 2000, harber and muthukrishna, 2000, scheerens, 2001, howie, 27sally currin and elizabeth j pretorius 2002, jordaan, 2004, department of education, 2005). taylor’s overview (2007) of recent south african se research studies reveals factors common to less a/uent countries. it is instructive to note that frequent, adequate reading and writing homework emerges as an additional, crucial e"ectiveness factor. �e intervention project rationale and aims of the intervention model in 2005 a multi-level, longitudinal reading project, ‘reading is fundamental’, was introduced into batho pele primary school2. !e overall aim of the project was to optimise the conditions that promote the development of sound reading so that reading could become – as the name indicates – an integral part of the daily activity of the school as well as a fun activity. it was hoped that by developing a culture of reading the school would improve the overall language and academic development of the learners. to this end a multi-level approach was adopted that emphasised the building up of resources as well as capacity and involved the participation of the learners, teachers and parents. !e focus during the #rst year was primarily on reading in the entry and exit phases, i.e., grades one and seven. during the second and third year the focus fanned out to include all the grades. !e school context batho pele primary school is one of the poorer performing primary schools in a township west of pretoria. !ere are just over 600 learners, 16 teachers and 2 administrative personnel. until the end of 2006, school fees were r120 per annum but only 40-50% of the parents actually paid the full school fees. in 2007, the school was assigned the status of a non-fee paying quintile 1 school.3 !e school has a feeding scheme, where 400 children ranging from grades r to seven are fed once a day. !ere is one grade r class but two classes at each subsequent grade level. northern (n) sotho is the language of learning and teaching from grade r to grade !ree, a$er which english becomes the lolt, with n sotho a subject 2 not the real name of the school. 3 state funding for schools is now based on a quintile system (there are #ve quintiles) according to socioeconomic indicators; quintile 1 schools are the poorest and are supposed to get the biggest slice of the funding pie. 28 reading and writing from grades four to seven. about 70-80% of the learners come from primarily n sotho speaking homes.4 at the start of the project there was fairly strong, democratic leadership by the principal, basic organisational functionality, a supportive governing body, a sense of safety and security, congenial relationships amongst sta" and a keen desire to improve the school. reading context prior to intervention on initial visits to the school by the project team, several teachers stated that many learners “couldn’t read”, although the nature of their reading problems were not speci#ed. none of the classrooms were print-rich environments and were rather drab and tatty. although older learners were issued with textbooks (for classroom use only), additional access to other books and material of an educational or recreational nature was non-existent. it appeared that literacy was primarily taught from the blackboard, homework was uncommon, and reading homework virtually nonexistent. large classes were usual, for example, it was not uncommon for #$y-#ve grade seven learners to be packed into standard size rooms with undersized furniture. mobility within the classroom was restricted and getting access to cupboards at the back of the classrooms was almost impossible. although a small room had been designated ‘the library’ it did not function as such. instead, it was used as a storeroom-cum-o&ce. it contained mainly old textbooks and some storybooks; there was no lending system. !e library committee, appointed the previous year, had tried to “sort out” the library, but they felt overwhelmed by the task as none of them had any library expertise. of the sixteen teachers, thirteen have a post-grade twelve two-year primary school teacher’s certi#cate quali#cation, and three have a postgraduate honours degree (the principal, vice-principal and one of the n sotho teachers). at the start of the project, none of the teachers was a member of a community library and eleven of the teachers (i.e. over 69%) indicated that they had ten or fewer books in the home. in order to determine existing entry and exit reading levels at the school and use these as a baseline for measuring reading progress, the literacy levels of grade one students were assessed (n sotho) and the language and reading comprehension levels of all the grade seven learners were assessed in n sotho and english. literacy assessments were extended to grade six learners in the 4 !ese #gures vary from year to year and from class to class. 29sally currin and elizabeth j pretorius second year. due to space constraints only the grade seven assessments are presented here. it su&ces at this point to state that initially, grade seven reading comprehension levels did not exceed 30% in either n sotho or english. in terms of reading accomplishment, this was not an e"ective school. building up resources school library: !e #rst step in building up the school library was to reclaim the library space (i.e. remove the storeroom and o&ce functions), weed the library (i.e. sort through and discard old and inappropriate books), clean out the room, paint the walls and shelves a bright colour and install security bars on the windows. teachers volunteered in the a$ernoons to help in the reclaiming process, which stretched over several weeks. because the teachers had heavy teaching schedules, a young man from the community was appointed as librarian and paid a monthly stipend from the project budget. a computer, printer, scanner and a library so$ware programme were installed, and the librarian was trained on how to use the programme. new books in both english and n sotho were purchased. all the books were catalogued, computerised, and arranged according to the dewey system. small plastic reading tables, chairs and a mat were also installed. !e school’s library committee was rekindled. classroom book corners: besides the library, the school’s resources were also enhanced by way of increasing print based materials in the classrooms. teachers were made aware of the need to create print rich classroom environments. to this end, the grade one teachers were encouraged to develop reading corners in their classrooms and were given a small library of 120 easy books in n sotho (the read sunshine series, comprising twenty titles with six copies per title), a bookshelf and a small, child-size ‘pouf ’ armchair. !e teachers were encouraged to display more print material on the walls. because much of the funding was allocated to purchasing books for the school library, reading books could not be purchased for all the classrooms. however, all the teachers were encouraged to create stimulating print environments for their classes. building capacity literacy resources have no value if not used properly. teachers – and parents – need to be shown what to do with books. !e intervention thus also focused on developing the instructional capacity of the teachers and the supportive capacity of the parents. 30 reading and writing teacher capacity: workshops of approximately 1½ hours were held fortnightly with the teachers a$er school. all the teachers were expected to attend and an attendance register was kept. !e teachers were all issued with lever-arch #les at the start of the project, handouts were given at the workshops, and the teachers were expected to ‘build up’ their reading #les so that they could serve as a source of information on reading and library related matters. !e presence of the principal at most of the workshops helped to ensure that management was conversant with the project and also conveyed the message that the project was being taken seriously. !e focus of the workshops was speci#cally on reading and information literacy (e.g. how the dewey system works, how to #nd things in a library, how to do searches on the internet, etc.). !e aim was to increase teachers’ understanding of the reading process, familiarise them with reading strategies, draw attention to the obe assessment standards for reading and di"erent ways of assessing reading at the various grade levels, and integrating the library into their classroom practices. arrangements were also made for teachers to take turns, by prior appointment, to spend a morning observing good reading practice in a grade equivalent classroom in a highly e"ective school where reading is a priority. in addition, two teachers per year were sponsored by the project to register for the unisa certi#cate course in parent involvement. two teachers graduated from the course each year and while they were doing the course they were expected to promote parent involvement in the school and equip parents for e"ective support of their children’s education. parent capacity: !e family literacy component: !e teachers o$en commented that many parents regarded the school as being responsible for their children’s schooling, and consequently did not get involved in their children’s school activities. parents with low literacy levels may also be disinclined to help their children in an area in which they perceive themselves to lack skills. a family literacy component was thus included in the project to involve parents more actively in the literacy development of their children. a series of family literacy workshops were held for foundation phase and intersen (i.e. grades four to seven) parents respectively. !ese workshops were held on sunday mornings at the school (the only day available for parents to attend school related activities), and refreshments served a$erwards. !e principal and teachers at the relevant grade levels also attended the workshops. !e aim of these workshops was to draw parents’ attention to the importance of reading and to encourage them to read to their children and/or to listen 31sally currin and elizabeth j pretorius to their children reading. a twenty-minute video in n sotho on how to read storybooks to children was also shown. other topics were also covered, such as taking an interest in children’s school activities, making time and space available in the home for homework, encouraging membership of the local community library, monitoring what and how much tv children watch, and ensuring that children go to bed at appropriate hours. !e head librarian at the local community library was also invited to address the parents. handouts were given in both english and n sotho, summarising the main points of the workshop. !e refreshments a$er each workshop gave the parents an opportunity to talk to the teachers about their children in an informal context. figure 1 below provides a sketch of the project model. in such a model, the intervention programme does not deal directly with the learners, but it is assumed that the learners will ultimately bene#t, via the resource and capacity development components. reading is fundamental resource development capacity development school library classrooms teachers parents l e a r n e r s figure 1: model of multi-level reading intervention programme aligning the project with school management to ensure that the project was kept central to the life of the school the project facilitator met with the principal once a week to gain and give feedback about implemented project activities, discuss outcomes, plan and organise scheduled activities, problem-solve around obstacles, and sustain commitment to and enthusiasm for the project. in addition, the project facilitator aimed to promote ownership of the changes and tried to ensure management responses 32 reading and writing that could lead to the institutionalisation of new, bene#cial practices such as target-setting and monitoring, scheduling of more time for reading, time management, and ongoing in-service development. feedback and discussion sessions feedback/discussion sessions involving sta" and the research team were a regular feature of the project. !e principal and sta" talked about what they had done with regard to reading in the past term, problems they encountered and how they dealt with them. at end-of-term meetings, written reports from the librarian, hod for the foundation and intersen phases, the principal, the project facilitator and research co-ordinator were presented. monitoring the e"ects of the project to gain insight into the way in which the project impacted on the learners, the teachers, the parents, the classrooms and the general functioning of the school, various assessment tools, both quantitative and qualitative, were employed. besides preand post-test literacy assessments of learners which track learner performance, weekly classroom observations by the project facilitator helped to reveal school practices. !is procedure was discussed at the start of the project and all sta" members agreed to it. during the #rst year, classroom literacy observations were undertaken primarily in grade one and grade seven. during the second year of the project these classroom observations were extended to all the grades. an observation schedule was used to document various observable literacy aspects of classroom life pertaining to the physical features of the classroom, the resources available, the literacy activities that the teachers and learners engaged in, the way in which and the extent to which storybook reading was used in class and the extent to which learners seemed engaged in literacy tasks. less visible aspects of literacy practices were also considered, for example, the attitudes and values that teachers appeared to attach to reading and other literacy activities. teachers were given copies of the observation schedules and were encouraged to discuss any aspect thereof with the project facilitator. !e observation schedules provided a framework for documenting changes in literacy behaviours over time, and for providing teachers with feedback (see, e.g., the ‘pencil’ discussion above). teachers could also use the schedules to start evaluating their own classrooms and re*ect on their own literacy instructional practices. school resources and practices were further documented through photographs which were taken regularly by the project facilitator, through informal 33sally currin and elizabeth j pretorius discussions held with teachers which were recorded in the facilitator’s #eld notes and through written reports presented by project participants. project outcomes since reading skills form the basis on which all subsequent school-based learning is built, reading levels are o$en used as an index of how well schools are functioning (salinger and campbell, 1998). in this article we #rst look at whether the intervention had an impact on the reading levels of learners. since changes in learner performance are not the primary focus of this article, these results are only brie*y covered. we then examine other non-academic outcomes of the intervention in the light of these outcomes. from these insights we draw conclusions regarding the impact of the intervention on the school’s functioning and e"ectiveness. reading outcomes !e grade seven learners were assessed twice every year, at the beginning of the year and then again towards the end of the year. to allow for valid comparisons across languages, the same tests were given in english and in n sotho, with the n sotho tests administered at least four weeks a$er the english tests to minimise memory e"ects. because the tests are the same in both languages, di"erent sets of preand post-tests were designed. !e reading test included a variety of test tasks, including multiple choice questions based on an expository text, a cloze activity, the resolution of anaphors in paragraphs, and questions based on maps/graphs. further methodological details and analyses of the impact of the project on learner performance can be found in pretorius and mampuru (2007) and pretorius and currin (2010). !e results of di"erences between preand post-test reading performances for both english and n sotho are shown in figure 2. as can be seen from the graphs, the results show a slow but steady increase in english reading scores. surprisingly, in all three years the learners’ n sotho reading comprehension lagged behind english and never rose above 40%. 34 reading and writing figure 2: n sotho and english reading comprehension – pre and post-test results 2005-2007 even though the reading mean in both languages remained low, more learners were starting to show stronger reading abilities. post-test results showed a gradual shi$ to slightly higher levels of performance across the board at both ends of the performance spectrum. for example, by november 2005, the number of very weak readers in english (below 20% comprehension) had dropped from thirty-one to six, and whereas only one student scored above 60% in english reading comprehension in the pre-test, in november 2005 there were eighteen students who scored above 60%. in 2006 there were again at least thirty ‘nonreading’ learners who scored less than 20% in the english reading test and only two learners who obtained above 60% in the pre-tests; the nonreaders dropped to #ve in the post-test while at the other end of the spectrum thirteen learners obtained more than 60% in english reading by the end of that year. despite these modest achievements, the low mean reading score of 47.8% for english and 38.7% for n sotho a$er the third year point to the challenges that still lie ahead for schools like this one. school outcomes if the grade seven reading skills improved slowly and modestly during three years of intervention, what was happening elsewhere in the school? an analysis of the other data collected over the three years suggested that some changes in areas such as resources, teacher capacity, teacher understanding and attitudes, as well as school functioning and management were being made. 35sally currin and elizabeth j pretorius resources changes in school resources can be tracked relatively easily since print resources are observable and quanti#able. !is was an area which yielded some encouraging changes: from a poor print environment the school slowly created a more visible and richer literacy environment. resources can also be evaluated in terms of qualitative factors such as accessibility, appropriateness and relevance. !ese are all issues which will be touched on in the sections below. !e school library: from an initial motley collection of 200 books a$er the weeding process, the school library boasted a modest collection of over 3,500 books by the third year, and the school set itself the goal of doubling this number in the years ahead. most of the books in the collection were children’s #ction; the non-#ction collection still needed to be built up considerably. only about 180 books in the collection were in n sotho (of which there were about 129 titles), and nearly all these were storybooks for children under the age of about ten. !ere were very few storybooks in n sotho for teenage readers. despite an active policy to buy as many books in n sotho as possible, the availability of these books was limited. it was also very di&cult to #nd non#ction books in n sotho. by the second year the lending system was fully functioning and learners could take out books during break times and a$er school. !e library had a regular stream of users on a daily basis. learners at the school had easy access to books in a way that they never had before. many of the books were interesting, age appropriate and relevant to primary school children. volunteer grade six and seven learners served as library monitors and had ‘library monitor’ badges. !ey became familiar with the general organisation of the library, and helped the librarian during break and in the a$ernoon. !ey were also expected to serve as reading role models, and to this end were issued with ‘book journals’ in which they recorded the books they read and provided brief summaries of them. even though learners were using the library regularly, teachers were doing so to a far lesser degree. it became clear that information literacy was an unfamiliar terrain for many teachers. print resources in the classrooms: initially, classrooms were poor print environments. during the #rst year of the project literacy resources for the grade one classrooms were built up (e.g. books, puzzles, games, charts, bookshelves, book corners). !erea$er other grades followed suit. !e teachers, especially in the foundation phase, started making and displaying alphabet and weekly/ 36 reading and writing monthly charts, *ashcards and labels for objects in the classroom. !e foundation phase classes had very small, modestly stocked book corners and physical manifestations of literate activities became more visible, such as storybooks, charts, *ashcards, labels, and examples of learners’ drawings and writing on the wall. one of the grade seven teachers started a small classroom library with books in both english and n sotho ‘rescued’ from the library weeding process, and magazines borrowed from friends and family. she encouraged her learners to read from this collection once their work was completed. she also arranged for the grade seven learners to arrive at school early on a voluntary basis to read books before school started. some classrooms were ‘freshened-up’ and, where possible, rearranged to promote an awareness of books and reading. on the whole, there was a greater e"ort to display print in classrooms and motivational slogans about reading appeared in each classroom. however, the collection and display of print resources in classrooms depended to a large extent on the initiative taken by individual teachers. some teachers showed enthusiasm and ingenuity in building up their modest resources and in the management and control thereof while others seemed indi"erent or reticent. capacity one of the factors that contributes to the continued normalisation of literacy underperformance in poor schools is that of teacher knowledge, skill and expectations. although some aspects of changes in teacher capacity are observable (e.g. changes in classroom management and activities), there are also aspects that are not directly observable, such as the sense-making and valuing that go on inside teachers’ heads. in this section we describe some of the changes that were observed. teachers: it was clear at the start of the project that teachers lacked serviceable knowledge of what reading entails, how it develops and factors that impact on its development. teachers also lacked a wider frame of reference to assess learner performance and their own instructional activities. although the teachers were aware, in a general way, of obe assessment standards, there seemed to be a large gap between policy and classroom practice. !ere was also no monitoring of learners’ reading progress at the school. teachers’ limited knowledge led to low expectations. !is was tellingly demonstrated when, at the start of the project, one of the grade one teachers 37sally currin and elizabeth j pretorius expressed the hope that by the end of the year “some” of her learners “would be able to read some words”. when it was suggested that many should already be reading short simple texts earlier in the year, she expressed polite disbelief. a$er spending a morning at a high functioning school where she observed grade one students reading storybooks in the second term already, she was inspired to aspire to the same level of performance. by raising her expectations of what her learners could achieve, she worked to that goal. assessments of her grade one learners in november that year testi#ed that some of her learners could read aloud quite *uently in n sotho from little storybooks. !e department head of the foundation phase remarked that this was not something that they would have expected from grade one students in previous years. !e general impression was that the teachers were, a$er three years, certainly far more aware of reading and its role in academic performance than at the start of the project. in turn, they talked about the importance of reading to their learners and exhorted them to read more. !ere was now a dialogue about reading that had moved into the domain of public discourse at the school in quite a noticeable way. it is more di&cult to determine the extent to which teachers became better reading teachers themselves. it was observed that teachers attempted to apply some of the techniques aimed at developing reading competence which had been covered in the workshops. initially, literacy activities seemed to take the form of communal activities, with choral chanting of syllable lists from the chalkboard or the whole class reading aloud in unison from textbooks with little attention paid to meaning or enjoyment. attention to the development of reading as an enjoyable individual meaning-making accomplishment seemed to play a minor role in the classrooms. !e teachers also seemed overwhelmed by the magnitude of some of the learners’ reading problems and tended to adopt a strategy of ignoring the weak learners and teaching to the class as a homogenous group instead. given the large classes and cramped classroom conditions, both these approaches were clearly coping strategies. !ese approaches may also re*ect social attitudes to literacy, where reading is perceived primarily as a shared social activity. sitting alone to read a book for entertainment is not common practice among all communities, even where there are other kinds of engagements with literacy (heath, 1983) and so classroom activities that speci#cally promote individual development of this skill may not be given high priority. some teachers started treating their classes as comprising heterogeneous groups of readers and they started to monitor (albeit in an unsystematic way) the individual reading progress of their learners. some also provided more opportunities for individual learners to read aloud in class. calling on good 38 reading and writing readers to read excerpts aloud from a storybook also became a regular feature of school assembly, thereby a&rming individuals with good reading abilities. one aspect of classroom life that changed was that teachers regularly started incorporating storybook reading into their classroom routines with questionanswer routines that tapped into the meaning of the story, and the children clearly loved these sessions. !is was particularly evident in the foundation phase. even though the teachers were tentatively extending their repertoire of teaching methods and materials it was clear that there was still much ground to cover. here, too, some individuals responded to change more positively and proactively than others. grade one classrooms: both grade one teachers were determined to enable all their learners to read and now worked collaboratively towards achieving this outcome. in addition, reading instructional methods changed as a result of the workshops and collaboration with the two e"ective schools who served as reading role models. emphasis was placed on getting ‘the basics’ right, so a sound phonics approach was encouraged, but this was complemented with storybook reading. even though much of the phonics work was taught and practised from the chalkboard, more opportunities were created to get learners to read extended discourse (e.g. short little stories) for the purposes of consolidation and practice. teachers initially commented that they perceived storybook reading to be frivolous, to be engaged in only a$er the ‘proper work’ was done. during the #rst year it was observed that these teachers were persuaded that the reading of storybooks could be e"ective when combined with phonics. as the year progressed it was clear that learners had become acquainted with books and handled them with greater familiarity. secondly, fun became associated with books as these teachers integrated storybook reading into their daily routines. by the third year storybook reading became a more intricate and productive engagement with the learners. !e teachers also arranged for the foundation phase learners to take storybooks home in special bags on a designated day each week for someone at home to read to them or to listen to them read. in this way parents were encouraged to support the development of their children’s reading. however, reading homework on an everyday basis was still not implemented. grade seven classrooms: during the course of the #rst year, both grade seven language teachers reported that they had become convinced that the reading abilities of their learners impacted on their academic performance. one teacher introduced a system of learners completing ‘reading records’ which 39sally currin and elizabeth j pretorius had been encouraged by the project. she herself joined a community library, and became a ‘reading granny’ at home. she began to read stories for fun to her learners. during the third term a visiting researcher commented on the ‘habit’ the class had of taking books from the display unit when they were waiting for others to complete tasks. !is was not something that had occurred when she had #rst visited the class at the start of the project. school-parent relationships it is di&cult to assess the impact of the family literacy workshops on parents or on learners’ subsequent literacy accomplishments since there were no follow-up case studies of speci#c parent-child dyads. !is is clearly an area that merits further research. attendance of parents at workshops did not show any relationship to learner performance – parents of weak readers as well as good readers attended the workshops. however, the family literacy workshops did seem to be having an impact in some ways. firstly, the parent workshops provided an ideal opportunity to showcase the teachers and to a&rm the positive things that they were doing at the school. it is assumed that, if parents become aware of the teachers’ commitment to their children, they may feel more committed to supporting their children and the school. some teachers indeed reported that more parents, especially in the foundation phase, were playing positive support roles at home. !ere was more help with homework and some learners were given more opportunities to read or develop their literacy skills outside the classroom. some teachers in the foundation phase observed that children whose parents actively assisted with reading at home progressed more rapidly than children who had no exposure to literacy activities in their homes. secondly, some of the issues that emerged at the workshops pointed to parental needs that require attention, for example, the need for parents to have a nonthreatening forum where they can discuss good parenting practices, discipline in the home, and ways of instilling a culture of reading and homework at home that mirrors what the school is trying to achieve. !ere was also freer and more creative participation of the teachers in the family literacy workshops than when the project began. !is suggested that some teachers were taking greater ownership of these workshops, an important development for the long term sustainability of school-parent ties. by the third year four teachers had been sponsored with project funding to complete a certi#cate course on parental involvement. one of the teachers even obtained a distinction in the exams. investment in this kind of ‘in-service training’ will 40 reading and writing hopefully contribute to the sustainability of the family workshops even a$er project completion. school management when the project #rst started, batho pele was not what hopkins et al. (1997) classify as a type 1 school (i.e. dysfunctional schools that are resistant to change); it was functioning, albeit at a modest level, at both school and classroom levels and there was a desire to improve. !is will to improve as well as inherent and enhanced capacity did indeed translate into observable changes which demonstrated some shi$s in school ethos, governance, leadership and management. firstly, there was a sense of a more ‘empowered’ school: some teachers used and adapted teaching resources gained from the workshops or from their ‘twin’ school. !ere was a new awareness of the close association between reading levels and learners’ academic performance which led to more frequent discussions about how the school could overcome its reading problems and some strategies were introduced. for example, teachers, particularly in the foundation phase, reviewed their policy for teaching reading in an e"ort to establish the basics more e"ectively and set more demanding reading targets for their learners. on its own initiative the school celebrated reading week each year at assembly without prompting from the project team. it was also reported that school managers and teachers now used school meetings to encourage parents to assist their children to build their reading skills in the home and the governing body exhorted parents to encourage children to read. expenditure of the school fund was re-prioritised in order to pay for library needs — a further example of the important position reading had assumed in the school. in addition, for the #rst time the recommended 10% of the learner support material budget was allocated by the school to swell the library book collection. in the past it was used for stationery and other expendables. leadership became more ‘dense’ and shared with the introduction of the functioning library committee (teachers), the library monitors (learners) and teacher leadership in the family literacy workshops. a more e"ective system of control in communicating with parents also emerged. return slips were added to letters being sent home. !e principal saw the project as a vehicle for concomitantly addressing other problematic academic and management issues. !e principal also adopted the vision of the school having a reading culture and its learners reading at acceptable levels (if not now, then at least within the next few years) and teachers, on the surface, appeared to have ‘bought into’ this vision and the revised timetable started each day with a half hour reading period. 41sally currin and elizabeth j pretorius !e teacher allocation was changed to allow the grade one classes to be smaller (35 learners) than in the past (40 or more learners), so as to enable the achievement of a good foundation. some of the language educators across the grades started grouping learners according to reading levels and, in this way, tried to provide extra help to weaker readers and extension to the stronger ones. learners with severe reading problems were referred to the district but, sadly, satisfactory responses were not found. some changes were slow to emerge, some were sustained, and some were short lived. not all classrooms became print rich. even though the literacy period visibly appeared on the timetable, the period itself was not always fruitfully utilised for literacy activities to maximum e"ect and teachers were not always in their classrooms for this period. in addition, the library was not integrated by teachers into their delivery of the curriculum. furthermore, despite project e"orts, the systematic and regular assessment of learners’ reading by teachers did not take root. !e early detection of and support for reading problems did not become common practice. lesson presentations were o$en super#cially planned and prepared. although classwork and homework appeared to be more frequently given, the tasks appeared to be undemanding and inconsistently managed. teachers were o$en absent or out of the classroom for one reason or another, and maximum use of time and ‘opportunity to learn’ were o$en lost on a daily basis. re"ecting on changes and school e!ectiveness in this article we have attempted to document the changes that a multi-level reading intervention programme brought about in a high poverty, modestly functional but poor-performing school during the #rst three years of implementation. we have also identi#ed some school practices which were largely una"ected. we now re*ect on change and stasis and the impact of the project on school functioning and e"ectiveness and, in this way, address the question posed in the title of this article: can a literacy intervention lever school change? learners who come from high poverty homes pose special challenges to schools and their teachers. schools and intervention projects can never change the economic and social circumstances of the learners; instead they need to create an optimum environment that fosters a culture of learning and teaching excellence. !is project has focused on trying to improve the school’s ability to build learners’ reading performance which is key to their academic success and potential for improving their future socioeconomic conditions. in the process 42 reading and writing of trying to achieve this it was observed that additional outcomes emerged which impacted on other levels of school functioning and e"ectiveness. !e formal assessments indicated that the reading levels of learners were slowly and modestly improving, and at the grade seven level this correlated signi#cantly with academic performance (see pretorius and mampuru, 2007, pretorius and currin, 2010). since reading levels are considered to be an indicator of school e"ectiveness it can be said that the intervention made an impact on batho pele primary school’s e"ectiveness and will, in time, help the school reach its goals. however, these changes happened slowly, and the overall reading levels of the learners, despite three years of intervention, were still low. !ere were also some learners coming into grade seven each year with ‘non-reading’ status, suggesting that the development of reading in the lower grades was not yet happening e"ectively and that reading problems in the earlier grades were not being addressed. in addition, observed multi-level changes at the school that were identi#ed earlier in this article (e.g. awareness, positive attitudes, ethos, resources, capacity, parent involvement, leadership, school and classroom management, collaborative lesson planning, reading and writing homework ) and which can be directly attributed to the intervention, coincide with many factors identi#ed in se research as contributing towards school e"ectiveness. importantly, changes emerged on both the school and classroom levels which, as harris (1998) points out, are critical to the whole school’s e"ectiveness. hence, it can be said that the project intervention had contributed towards improved e"ectiveness of the project school. changes may appear to be modest and certain key improvements at the school level which are associated with school functionality and e"ectiveness are yet to be realized. !ese include the attainment of su&cient textbooks (resources), increased ‘opportunity to learn’ time (ethos, management), e"ective target setting for reading improvement with regular monitoring and evaluation (leadership and management), excellence in teacher preparation and delivery; regular and quality assessment, diagnostic analysis of results and remediation (teaching). many of these factors were beyond the scope of the intervention. in addition, it became clear that changed attitudes and the adoption of new behaviours focused on raising literacy levels are unevenly implemented by individuals and across grades. !is may relate to di"erent levels of personal empowerment and skills, unhelpful attitudes, inadequate leadership or management. 43sally currin and elizabeth j pretorius lessons learned !ere are no easy solutions to the challenges that high poverty schools face, especially when such schools also have a history of relative ine"ectiveness. during the three years of project implementation at batho pele it became evident that the introduction of the multi-level reading intervention produced planned reading improvement but also induced (and necessitated) unplanned outcomes at other levels of the school. some changes suggested that the school was slowly becoming a more functional and e"ective school. in addition, these changes also showed unequivocally that a reading intervention programme in a high poverty context can never simply be a reading intervention; an intervention permeates all aspects of school life, large and small. for example, the decision by the principal not to tolerate short, blunt pencils lead to a bigger realisation that the general laxity at the school negatively a"ected learning in the long run and this resulted in a campaign to improve discipline in the school. all this was triggered by the project’s aim to improve literacy development. yet a term later, short blunt pencils reappeared in the classrooms again. although attention to small instructional details in the classroom is vital to e"ective teaching and learning, this was not always consistently carried out or sustained over an extended period in the school. !e intervention model did not ‘engender’ or enable certain factors which have been identi#ed in research as key to school e"ectiveness, namely ‘maximum opportunity to learn’ time; enough suitable textbooks and support materials; excellence in teaching; e"ective and informed target-setting, monitoring of quality and standards, and evaluation; changed practice evenly applied throughout the school. !e absence of these factors could explain why signi#cant improvements in reading scores have been slow. multiple reasons for the absence of these factors relate to imperfect or inconsistent implementation of the project model, inherent problems in the school itself, the education system, and some teachers feeling overwhelmed by their workloads or by the learners’ literacy (and other) needs. !ere are a host of important variables that contribute to the e"ective functioning of a school and the successful accomplishment of literacy. !e project is powerless to change many elements within the school and the broader educational system. learners and schools in high poverty contexts require skilled and knowledgeable teachers and extra educational resources to counteract the e"ects of poverty on learning. a small-scale reading intervention project that relies on limited external funding can only attend to some of the ‘broken windows’ on this educational train. in doing so it can, however, adjust its model to try to overcome some of the obstacles and #nd ways to ensure better quality and consistency in project implementation and, in this way, accelerate 44 reading and writing change. for example, capacity development via the workshop model is not always e"ective for teachers who need to change their classroom practice but are unsure of how to do so. in such cases, approaches and strategies suggested in workshops do not readily cascade into the classroom. a stronger emphasis on mentoring and support within the classroom is needed to complement the function of workshops. we propose the inclusion or strengthening of the following: • a greater focus on teacher support and development within the classroom, especially lesson planning and the e"ective utilisation of textbook and support materials; • strategies to greatly improve ‘opportunity to learn’ time (i.e. time on task); • provision of su&cient, suitable textbooks/support materials so that each child has his/her own copy to read and take home to do homework or study from; • building the capacity of hods/middle managers to ful#ll their leadership, management, monitoring and quality management roles e"ectively; • strengthening levels of empowerment, pro-activity, self-belief and resilience of teachers; • attention to the many learners who urgently require remedial assistance. it can be concluded that the multi-level, reading-focused model of the ‘reading is fundamental’ project can be instrumental to some extent in raising a school’s e"ectiveness. !e experience of the project, however, also indicates that for the intervention to increase its impact and potential for sustaining the changes, the model should be adjusted to include additional planned outcomes and strategies to achieve these. acknowlegements !e ‘reading is fundamental’ project, from which this research derives, was funded by the dg murray trust and the national research foundation. !e opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of the funders. sincere thanks to all the learners and sta" at the school for participating so generously and willingly in the project. 45sally currin and elizabeth j pretorius references allington, r.l. 2002. big brother and the national reading curriculum. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. bradley, r.h. and corwyn, r.f. 2002. socioeconomic status and child development. annual review of psychology, 53: 371-399. christie, p. 1998. schools as (dis)organisations: !e ‘breakdown of the culture of learning and teaching’ in south african schools. cambridge journal of education, 28(3): 283–300. christie, p. and potterton, m. 1999. “resilient” schools: a south african study. in creating people centred schools, j. gultig, t. ndhlovu and c. bertram (eds). cape town: oxford university press. department of education, 2003. national report on systemic evaluation: mainstream foundation phase. pretoria: department of education. department of education, 2005. systemic evaluation report: intermediate phase grade six. pretoria: department of education. elley, w.b. 1991. acquiring literacy in a second language: !e e"ect of book-based programmes, language learning, 41: 375-411. gladwell, m. 2001. !e tipping point: how little !ings can make a big di"erence. london: abacus. gustafsson, m. 2005. !e relationship between schooling inputs and outputs in south africa: methodologies and policy recommendations based on the 2000 sacmeq dataset. downloaded in may 2007 from http://www.sacmeq.org/links.htm harber, d. and muthukrishna, n. 2000. school e"ectiveness and school improvement in context: !e case of south africa. school e"ectiveness and school improvement, 11: 421–434. harris, a. 1998. teaching and learning in the e"ective school. gateshead, tyne and wear: athenaeum press. heath, s.b. 1983. ways with words. cambridge: cambridge university press. hopkins, d., harris, a. and jackson, d. 1997. understanding the school’s capacity for development: growth states and strategies. school leadership and management, 17: 401–411. howie, s.j. 2002. english language pro#ciency and contextual factors in*uencing mathematics achievement of secondary school pupils in south africa. unpublished phd thesis. enschede: university of twente. jordaan, c. 2004. exploring the characteristics of e"ective schools: a study conducted in a sample of seconday schools based on their 2002 grade twelve examination results. unpublished paper presented at the 2004 gauteng department of education’s educationally speaking conference, 2004, pretoria. levin, h.m. and lockheed, m.e. 1993. e"ective schools in developing countries. stanford series on education and public policy. washington: falmer press. maden, m. (ed). 2000. success against the odds five years on. london: falmer press. muller, j. and roberts, j.a. 2000. !e sound and the fury of international school reform: a critical review. report prepared for the joint education trust. pretorius e.j. 2005. what do students do when they read to learn? lessons from #ve case studies. south african journal of higher education 19(4):790-812. 46 reading and writing pretorius, e.j. and mampuru, d.m. 2007. playing football without a ball: language, reading and academic performance in a high poverty school. journal of reading research 30(1):38-58. pretorius, e.j. and currin, s. 2010. do the rich get richer and the poor poorer? !e e"ects of an intervention programmes on reading in the home and school language in a high poverty multilingual context. international journal of educational development, 30: 67-76. salinger, t. and campbell, j. 1998. !e national assessment of reading in the usa. in assessing reading: !eory and practice, c. harrison and t. salinger (eds). london: routledge. scheerens, j. 2000. improving school e"ectiveness. unesco: international institute for educational planning. scheerens, j. 2001. monitoring school e"ectiveness in developing countries. school e"ectiveness and school improvement, 12:359–384. taylor, n.c. 2007. equity, e&ciency and the development of south african schools. in international handbook of school e"ectiveness and school improvement, t. townsend (ed.). dordrecht: springer. abstract introduction literature and theoretical underpinning rationale for study research methodology results/findings discussion conclusion and implications acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) emmanuel esambe centre for higher education development, cape peninsula university of technology, south africa cina mosito faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, south africa subethra pather faculty of education, cape peninsula university of technology, south africa citation esambe e., mosito c. & pather s., 2016, ‘first-year students’ essay writing practices: formative feedback and interim literacies’, reading & writing 7(1), art. #87, 11 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i1.87 original research first-year students’ essay writing practices: formative feedback and interim literacies emmanuel esambe, cina mosito, subethra pather received: 24 june 2015; accepted: 30 sept. 2015; published: 02 mar. 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract the varying literacy standards that undergraduate students represent are a reflection of their interim grasp of academic literacy (paxton 2007). the aim of this study is to analyse a small group of undergraduate first-year students’ depiction of their interim grasp of academic writing and to reflect on how lecturers use formative feedback to respond to specific issues regarding students’ academic transitions within their discipline. using an emancipatory methodology, this study was designed as a participatory action research. qualitative data from focus group interviews with lecturers and photovoice presentations by first-year dental technology students were used to explore how students demonstrated their interim grasp of academic essay writing in a health science department at a university of technology. however, this article, which is part of a broader study, analyses a small class of first-year students’ depiction of their interim grasp of essay writing and reflects on how their lecturers use formative feedback to respond to these students’ academic transitions within their discipline. using activity theory and morphogenetic realist theory to analyse essay writing activities during an intervention, the study reveals that images are potent artefacts that students and lecturers use to build meaningful dialogue during essay writing in an uneven terrain. introduction the place of feedback in written assessments cannot be overemphasised. several researchers have examined feedback in assessment practices from different perspectives (clark 2012; dornbrack & dixon 2014; elton 2010; mathew & sternberg 2009). within these research papers is often a call for experts involved in the teaching of academic writing to contextualise their construction and dissemination of formative feedback such that it adequately supports student learning and retention (clark 2012). in the same vein, there is also an urgent call for academic literacy experts to collaborate with discipline-specific lecturers in the construction of and dissemination of formative feedback during essay writing activities (cauley & mcmillan 2010). those who hold this view often argue that a first-year student is at a critical point of transition (in the context of learning how to cope with university education) and therefore needs to be taught the new ways of being and doing things from a contextual perspective (dall’alba & barnacle 2007). paxton (2004) proposes the term interim literacies in an attempt to situate the typical first-year student’s writing competencies within a transitional frame. this article adds to the discussion on supporting first-year students in coping with university education by focusing on the use of formative feedback during essay writing practices in a health science discipline. the article explores undergraduate students’ interactions with the formative feedback they receive from their lecturers during academic essay writing activities. two categories of formative feedback emerged from the findings: one focusing on the students’ writing and the other on the feedback strategies employed by the participants. the research findings suggest that the students’ and lecturers’ engagements with formative feedback reflect different levels of transitions; thus interim literacies is used as a concept to understand their current competencies. literature and theoretical underpinning academic writing in general and the ability of students to write an acceptable academic essay fall within the realm of academic literacies (jacobs 2005; lea & street 2006; paxton 2007). even though writing an academic essay is widely regarded as a ‘high stakes’ activity in tertiary education (dornbrack & dixon 2014:1; jacobs 2007:872), there is often insufficient support provided to students whose literacy competencies do not meet the requirements of the disciplines that they register in (mckenna 2010). other researchers have pointed out that the instructions provided to students during essay writing activities are insufficient (boughey 2008; janks 2012). still others think that there is insufficient integration of literacy courses1 into specialised disciplines (carstens 2013; shay 2008) or that there is insufficient collaboration between academic literacy practitioners and discipline experts (jacobs 2005). an alternative line of argument comes from those who see students’ academic essays in higher education as representing an ontological stance (barnett 2009; dall’alba & barnacle 2007). as mckenna points out, students are expected to ‘write, talk, listen, and read in ways that conform to the dominant discourse of their practices’ (2004:12). different disciplines that these students register for require an awareness and appreciation of the ‘customs and norms’ that they should acquire to understand and communicate the knowledge of their disciplines (mckenna 2010:24). winberg et al. (2010) explain that specialised disciplines such as engineering and health sciences often require students’ essays to meet specific requirements in terms of lexicon, grammar, textual organisations and social practices. they support the integration of literacy into the teaching of disciplinary subjects and the collaboration between literacy experts and discipline-specific subject lecturers as a suitable means of developing the student’s being within a competitive higher education landscape. this paper explores how the use of formative feedback by both students and their lecturers indicate that their current academic writing competencies can be better understood as interim. formative feedback2 has been defined as feedback that is provided to a learner with a clear aim to ‘show the learner where there are gaps and how to improve on the learner’s work’ (bloxham & campbell 2010:291). shute (2008:153) considers formative feedback as ‘information communicated to the learner that is intended to modify his or her thinking or behaviour (in order) to improve learning’. this means that formative feedback should be understood within the discourse of formative assessment, or ‘assessment for learning’ (asghar 2013:19; gardner 2006:2). pryor and crossouard’s broad view of the term formative highlights four key purposes: completing the task at hand, thinking about improvement, making sense of criteria and invoking learner identities (2010:266). therefore, through formative feedback there is active learning interaction between the student and the lecturer with a clear intention to influence cognition (black & wiliam 2009:11). clark adds that this is suitable for a ‘student-centered’ learning activity (2012:205). formative feedback can be either synchronous, asynchronous, external or internal. the above types of feedback are described as formative because in all cases the student engages with a more knowledgeable other (mko) with the desire to influence, change or improve cognition through that engagement (black & wiliam 2009:11). synchronous formative feedback is feedback that is provided simultaneously as the student is actively engaged in the writing activity (brophy 2004). during a writing activity, lecturers should create conducive spaces for synchronous formative feedback by using writing laboratories and providing immediate feedback on students’ drafts while they write. this method creates qualities of spontaneity and dialogue during the writing activity (black & wiliam 2009). the opposite of this method is asynchronous formative feedback. in this case, the lecturer waits for the students to complete a writing task before providing support and guidance (clark 2012). the central difference between synchronous and asynchronous formative feedback is in the time difference between when the feedback is provided and when it is acted on. in the intervention reported in this article, we attempted to use both synchronous and asynchronous formative feedback. by doing this, we broke away from past practice in the department3 whereby only asynchronous formative feedback was provided to students by mainly writing centre staff when the students completed their essay assignments. details of the intervention are provided later in this article. the issue of time in the provision of formative feedback during writing is important. therefore, in addition to synchronous and asynchronous formative feedback, there is ipsatic feedback, also referred to as feed forward. this method involves information of a specific nature being provided to students before they engage in a writing activity (fisher & frey 2009). this sort of information includes writing instructions, rubrics and referrals. the notion of interim literacies was introduced by moragh paxton as a means to understand students’ struggles with undergraduate university writing assignments. interim literacies is an emerging theme from her phd research, which used linguistic and intertextual approaches to determine the connectedness between ‘academic discourses and student voice’ (paxton 2007:45). paxton coined the term interim literacies (2004) to represent an ideological look at first-year student writing competencies. with inspiration from the emerging discourses on academic literacies, paxton (2012) made a contribution to our understanding of the transformations that occur through students’ engagement with writing conventions. it should be noted here that other researchers had highlighted issues around learning and the contestations of meaning between students and lecturers and how this leads to transformation (canagarajah 2002; clark & ivanic 1997). with interim literacies, the student is situated within a period whereby they navigate the gap between pre-university education and their current university expectations. in order to understand how the use of formative feedback during essay writing practices reflects first-year students’ interim literacies, we draw on two theories to interpret our data: activity theory and critical realism. activity theory breaks away from constructivist theories in order to highlight the role of praxis ‘in a material and social world’ (wheelahan 2007:191). we borrow from engeström’s (1999a) depiction of an activity system to explain how students and lecturers interact with different types of formative feedback and observe specific roles and rules within a clearly defined setting, in order to achieve improved essay writing skills. using this theory, we underline some of the inherent challenges or contradictions (tensions) within an activity system and explain how these contradictions can contribute to ‘change and innovation’ (engeström & miettinen 1999:9) or transformation within the system. we also use critical realism [with emphasis on archer’s (1995) morphogenetic realist social theory] to explain the ontological stance that students assume when engaging with formative feedback during essay writing practices and how this stance affects the object of the activity. archer’s morphogenetic realist social theory is framed from the broader philosophy of critical realism, which according to sayer (2000:78) is an ‘umbrella philosophy with a strong focus on ontology, not epistemology’. archer emphasises this distinction when she states that critical realism as a philosophy bears affordances for social theory because it’s ontological strengths ‘[act] as both gatekeepers and bouncers for methodology’ (1995:22). the major premise in archer’s morphogenetic realist theory is her conception of the morphogenetic cycle (archer 1995). in it, archer discusses the differences between agents and the social structures in which agents act. she indicates that the structures refer to previous interactions with agents and that this influences the ways in which new agents adapt to the new settings (archer 2003). in the intervention reported in this study, spaces like the writing centre, the library and the classrooms are existing structures within the department of dental technology. the agents within these structures are the lecturers, the academic support staff (academic literacy lecturers and writing consultants) and the students. the intense collaboration between specific students and their lecturers during the essay writing workshops is analysed using archer’s morphogenetic cycle to represent agents acting on structures. one commentator sees critical realists as people who interpret the social structures in terms of ‘systems of human relations among social positions’ rather than as individual responsibilities that should inform human activities (porpora 1998:339). this view highlights some of the areas where critical realism can complement activity theory. both theories analyse societies in abstract and descriptive terms (wheelahan 2007). they are both opposed to positivism and the desire to isolate variables in order to understand our world (sayer 2000; tolman 1999). both theories have strong roots in marxism. to this regard, critical realism allows for the conceptualisation of the role of the self, whereas activity theory allows for the description of the self (wheelahan 2007). this is how the individual student or lecturer (the self) relates to other staff and students in the department (the community). this shows the mutually explanatory energy of both theories. the students, the lecturers and the writing centre staff individually have different definitions of who they are within the academic set-up in the department of dental sciences. before this intervention, they were interacting with each other in a way that did not adequately improve the students’ learning of essay writing. during the intervention, the individuals through collaboration with each other developed new ways of defining themselves within the community, as well as their individual roles in the teaching and learning of essay writing skills. rationale for study the studies on formative feedback and writing practices cited above have focused mainly on the students’ essay writing skills and how such skills can be adapted to meet the expectations of their academic programme. the majority of these studies have explored different methods of providing feedback and have typically identified the student as a learner in transition, especially within the context of their programmes in particular and their universities in general. this study focuses on the relationship between the student and the writing activity as rules influenced and developmental and explores how the context of the students’ academic programme influences the interaction with formative feedback between the students and the lecturers. the notion of interim literacy is defined as the state of transition in a student’s literacy practices within their context of learning. activity theory and archer’s morphogenetic realist theory are employed to probe how engagement with formative feedback by both students and lecturers lead to certain types of transformations for them. research methodology this study makes use of participatory action research4, which resides within the social constructivism approach in qualitative studies. this approach allows ‘subjective meanings of people’s experiences’ and directs them towards specific objects or things (creswell 1997:8). such meanings are manifested and realised socially and historically (makoelle 2012). galtung (1975:273), for example, encourages this kind of research when he indicates that researchers should consider conducting non-violent social research that abdicates from doing research ‘on people’, in favour of doing research ‘with5’ people. this study is therefore situated within the ‘participatory advocacy’ worldview (creswell 1997:8; neuman 2000:32), whereby the researchers immense themselves in the activities with the participants for the purposes of achieving social or ideological change. the data for this article were sourced from a larger qualitative emancipatory action research project whose aim was to explore the design of academic literacies interventions for first-year students at a science faculty in a university of technology (uot). qualitative action research is supported by researchers who posit that action research is ideal as a ‘critical praxis’ in the field of education (cohen, manion & morrison 2007:301; makoelle 2010:36). it was adopted as a methodological framework in this research because at the heart of the research was the desire to see students who were involved in various collaborative learning projects enhance their use of formative feedback during essay writing. data reported in this article were collected from first-year students in the department of dental sciences at a uot. the class consisted of a small group of students (13) and four lecturers. for this project, three out of the four lecturers were conveniently sampled to participate in the study. all 13 students agreed to participate in the project. participation of lecturers and students for this study was on a voluntary basis. the participants all completed a consent form and attended orientation sessions before participating in the study. cohen et al. (2007) warn that in action research, as employed in this study, ethical issues can arise because of the nature of the problem being reported and the tools used to collect valid data. therefore, it was necessary to conduct an orientation session with all the lecturers and students who participated in the research in order to clarify all the possible ethical issues that this research posed, as well as to adopt an open and democratic approach towards solving those issues. this was in addition to observing the university’s protocol on ethics during research, such as obtaining authorisations, informed consent and the protection of participants’ identities. three instruments were used to collect data: focus group interviews, photovoice6 presentations and document analysis. focus group interviews were used to elicit deep responses from the three lecturers, with the focus of the interview being on the lecturers’ design and use of formative feedback during an essay writing activity. photovoice presentation was used as it was an effective and suitable tool through which the students could articulate their experiences with formative feedback as they engaged with the writing activity. this was a suitable tool for this emancipatory7 research because the power of images allowed the participants to be more articulate about their writing experiences. finally, in order to strike a balance between the often divergent voices of the students and lecturers as participants, we extracted data from selected documents that informed the participants’ engagements with formative feedback. these documents included extracts from the students’ draft essays, extracts from actual feedback that the lecturers provided, extracts from rubrics and assignment instructions. summary of the intervention the three lecturers involved in this project assigned three different essay topics to be completed by the first-year group at different intervals between february and september 2014. we (the authors of this article) were invited by these lecturers to provide writing skills to the first-year students through individual student consultations. because we had provided one-on-one consultations with past students in the writing centre, we requested a planning meeting with these lecturers in order to properly plan this intervention. during our planning discussions with the lecturers, we realised that the lecturers’ proposed strategy of providing formative feedback to the students was framed from the discourse of the autonomous text (i.e. full meaning is contained in the writings provided by the lecturers). we therefore proposed a participatory model to support these first-year students through their essay writing assignments. this model involved the lecturers, the students and the academic literacy staff providing formative feedback collaboratively at various stages of the writing process. we organised a number of workshops in which we collaborated with the three lecturers in the provision of formative feedback to the students. before we started the intervention, we had a focus group interview with the lecturers in order to identify their perceptions of the students’ essay writing and their areas of concern. we also had a focus group interview with the three lecturers after the intervention in order to discuss the impact of the intervention and to plan how to improve support for the students in 2015. the students were each asked to do two photovoice presentations, the first before the intervention and the second after the intervention. in these presentations, we asked the students to explore first their challenges in completing the essay assignments and, later, their experiences during the interventions. pseudonyms were used to ensure confidentiality of the participants; in addition, the participants’ faces were blurred in the photographs used. no marks were allocated during the workshops; rather, we provided writing support (grammar, sentence structure, paragraph development, argument and voice) and the three lecturers provided content support (details, examples, illustrations and relevance). the students were given time to revise their drafts and to discuss their revisions during the workshops. this strategy allowed us to provide formative feedback synchronously and asynchronously. the topics of the essay assignments were set by the lecturers, and we collaborated with them in revising their rubrics for the essays. data analysis we extracted two categories of formative feedback from the data in this study. the first category was the formative feedback provided by us and the three lecturers to the students during the completion of their essay assignments. such feedback was provided at different stages of the draft-revision process. the second category of formative feedback focused on the strategies used during this intervention. it explored the three lecturers’ and the first-year students’ perceptions of the draft–revision process, the dialogue that ensued during the workshops and the use of photovoice to capture their experiences of the intervention. using the basic structure of an activity system, the data were coded in terms of the six categories of an activity system: subject, tool, rules, community, division of labour and object. this coding was aimed at illustrating how the students’ writing, serving as subject, was improved through contact with specific artefacts represented by the different types of formative feedback that was provided. in engeström’s (1999b) model of an activity system, the artefacts represent the tools that the subject engages with in order to achieve a desired goal or object. in this study, the rules refer to those guidelines that students and lecturers work with during an academic engagement, such as essay writing. this includes explicit rules such as assessment guidelines and implicit rules such as those governing the relationship between student and lecturer. the community is made up of the lecturers, the students and literacies support (from the writing centre, library and science laboratories). the roles, also known as division of labour, refers to the tasks assigned to different members of the community during the activity. hassan (2013:202) indicates that there are ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ roles, which are inspired by the marxist heritage that activity theory borrows and which contributes to the power relations within an activity system. an adaptation of engeström’s version of an activity system is presented in figure 1. figure 1: a model of an activity system. adapted from engeström, y., 1999a, ‘activity theory and individual and social transformation’, in y. engeström et al. (eds.), perspectives on activity theory, pp. 19–38, cambridge university press, cambridge. building from activity theory, the data were further scrutinised in terms of archer’s morphogenetic cycle, particularly her rendition of the role of the self in collective activities. we examined how the students negotiated the completion of their essay assignments with the help of formative feedback from several sources, and we attempted to determine how these engagements and experiences impacted on how the students identified themselves. archer (2007:36) refers to this as the ‘subjective ontology’ and explains that it relates to the sharing between a writer and their author as an epistemic outcome. the students’ essay writing needs are therefore interpreted to represent a strong call for society (lecturers, faculty administration and academic support staff) to rethink how they design strategies intended to support first-year students in coping with the rigours of university education. in this case, ‘society is both the condition and outcome of human agency’ (bhaskar 1998:xvi). the deficit approaches previously employed, whereby the students were tasked by their lecturers to undergo essay writing lessons that were out of sync with their disciplinary expectations, are challenged. results/findings the findings section reports on the intervention that was initiated whereby formative feedback was used as a tool through which to achieve the goal of improved essay writing skills. the focus of the analysis, however, is on the tensions that emerged through the research participants’ changing views of themselves and their academic writing practices within their discipline and how this represents their interim literacies. using an activity system, we focus on the interaction between the subjects, tools and object and explore how the changing identities of who the subjects are re-enforces the notion of interim literacies. lost in transition 1: tensions between students’ prior discourses and current institutional expectations according to engeström (1999b) the subject in an activity system is an individual or group of people who are acting on an object. in this section, we explore how the students, acting as subjects within an activity system, arrive at the university with attributes that the lecturers interpret as posing challenges to the system. such attributes include their writing style, reading skills and oral traditions that they learned through high school. these challenges serve as tensions within the activity system. the students’ descriptions of their interaction with the formative feedback being provided by their lecturers during essay writing highlight strong tensions relating to their perceptions of their writing competencies. the students felt that they were already competent enough to cope with the demands of university writing, because of their prior school learning. during the photovoice presentation, ‘diane’8 noted the following: ‘i studied in english in high school; and my grades were great! i really don’t mind being taught in english. i watch a lot of movies in english and it is not a problem. i also speak to a lot of people outside in english even though at home we use afrikaans. when i was working, we used mostly english at work; so i think i’m sorted. but the lecturers don’t think so’. (diane, 2014) another student, pierre, raised similar issues to diane as seen below. pierre’s assumptions were similar to diane’s even though they were from very different backgrounds: ‘at first, i wasn’t scared of studying here even though i’m from france and my first language is french. when we got here, i was the first to make friends with the guys around our house and i hang out with them pretty much. however, in varsity, even though i understand the lecturers when they speak, i still fight with them in my essay assignments. they are always moaning about my style and the words i use in my essay. but these are words we all use all the time! they don’t want me to write and be me when i write [authors’ emphasis]. i can’t just copy and paste stuff; this is now hard to write for me ….’ (pierre 2014) from diane and pierre’s quotes above, the main tension emerging is that of the student transitioning from their high school ways of writing to university expectations of their writing. diane assumed that she was a competent user of english; she was thus worried why the lecturers did not think so. pierre saw the feedback interaction with the lecturers as constituting a ‘fight’, through which the lecturers attempted to deprive him of his identity. he said, ‘they don’t want me to write and be me when i write’. this means that he saw the lecturers’ feedback as texts that represented animosity. borrowing from boughey (2008) we interpret pierre’s and diane’s statements above to represent their challenge of the lecturers’ word as an autonomous text. we shall explain why this is so later in this article. another student, sonwabo, puts this conflict in transition more succinctly when he says: ‘when i first got my essay instructions and brief, i felt lost. it was difficult. i just couldn’t tell what exactly they wanted me to do. then i wrote my first draft which looked funny, it was only my introductions and part of my body, and i gave it to the lecturer. i thought that he would tell me how to make it right, but what he wrote on my draft made me more confuse. i felt so bad i wanted to leave the course, [long pause] almost’. (sonwabo 2014) sonwabo’s confusion above is supported by a picture from his photovoice presentation as seen in figure 2. figure 2: sonwabo’s picture of poor visual conditions on the road. the gap between the students’ prior academic discourse and current university expectations highlights the issue of transitions for first-year students. it is, however, very telling that the students are grappling with these tensions, internalising them and making meaningful reflections around the issues affecting their writing. this view contradicts the assumption often publicised that first year students’ literacy challenges are caused by their inability to appreciate their current academic setting and/or community. in this regard, sonwabo’s picture above reinforces his belief that his current challenges are but temporary and that even though he has not mastered the expected ways of writing in dental sciences, he does bring with him some moral capital needed to negotiate such challenges. he says: ‘i felt so bad that i wanted to leave the course, almost’. he said ‘almost’ after a long pause, in a way showing his ability to persist in this difficult new terrain. this confirms his current writing competencies as interim, situated between his high school writing skills and the projected learning requirements he is being initiated into. lost in transition 2: tensions between students’ definitions of being and disciplinary expectations rules play a major role in regulating the interaction between subjects and their tools within a community (engeström 1999b; hardman 2005). from this perspective, the gap between the students’ prior academic writing skills (learned in high school) and the current academic expectations are heavily influenced by the rules. another student, mbali, used a picture to make this claim very powerful (figure 3). figure 3: mbali’s picture of her father at work in her narrative, she explained: i was attracted to dental technology because i wanted to work with my hands. even though i am a girl, my daddy always told me that i was gifted and i can make anything i want. because he own a small metal workshop, i used to always go there and help. it was easy: you just have to be very careful with the machines; and to be always alert and awake when working with them; and you can make anything you wanted like iron gates and roof plates. anything. he doesn’t use fancy equipment, and he doesn’t really protect himself. i can say that now because in dental technology, the rules are very strict: they watch what you wear from head to toe! it has taken me some time to get used to all these instructions and rules. worst part is when i go home on holidays; i can’t work well with my daddy at his shop because he says i am no longer at his level. (mbali 2014) there is a difference between informal artisanal trade and very established vocational industries. artisanal practices like the small informal shop where mbali acquired her passion for a vocational discipline is different from a formal, rule driven and professionally oriented setting such as a university’s dental technology laboratory as described in her narrative. some of these rules, such as those outlining health and safety within the laboratory, are very explicit, whilst some are only implied. for example, pierre could not understand why his lecturer expected him to use correct referencing and discipline-appropriate vocabulary in figure 4. figure 4: implicit and explicit writing rules highlighted through formative feedback. the picture below from pierre highlights some of the implicit writing rules that his lecturer expects him to be aware of. for purposes of illustration, we quote verbatim some of the comments from the lecturer as contained in figure 4: ‘you may need to define and identify the different muscles of mastication first’ (comment at the top left of the page). ‘format: align all your text to the far left. headings and sub-headings; as well as illustrations should be numbered appropriately’ (top right of page). ‘provide the necessary in-text references’ (middle left of page). the excerpts of the lecturer’s formative feedback quoted above from the student’s (pierre’s) draft are intended to direct pierre to some of the implicit rules of essay writing at the undergraduate level. rules relating to writing style, textual organisation, formatting and choice of words, for example, are implicitly conveyed together with an assignment task. all three lecturers in this case assumed that their students were conscious of these rules. however, the level to which the students were conscious of these rules, whether explicit or implicit, was very different from what the lecturers expected. this raised tensions relating to how the students perceived themselves within their disciplines; as well as how their lecturers perceived them. the absence of oral dialogue between the lecturer and the student during the completion of the essay assignment contributed to the students’ difficulty in understanding the lecturers’ formative feedback. without adequate formative feedback support and appropriate strategies in delivering such feedback, the student were left helpless as captured by this despairing comment from pierre: ‘they don’t want me to write and be me when i write. i can’t just copy and paste stuff; this is now hard to write for me …’ (pierre, 2014). lost in transition 3: tensions between lecturers’ assumptions of students’ learning needs in an academic environment where knowledge is considered as the ability to contest meaning from different points of view, the role of formative feedback is very important in guiding undergraduate students to develop this attribute. the zone of proximal development has been defined as ‘the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through adult guidance’ (vygotsky 1978:86). the ability of a lecturer to spot a learning gap and provide apt formative feedback that propels the student towards knowledge achievement is crucial in bridging the gap in the zone of proximal development. however, findings from this research suggest that some students perceive some lecturers as struggling to provide the right formative feedback through the right medium and at the right time to the students; and that this affects the way the student interprets the formative feedback. diane alleged that: ‘i feel bad that the lecturers were not always there to assist us like they assisted the ecp group of students. they asked us to submit our drafts for feedback, and they wrote the feedback on them, but did not explain what the feedback meant. many times, what they wrote was just to ask us to refer to our notebook or textbook. sometime, it was worse; they will just write a question mark, or say ‘what is this’ on your draft. how does that help me to know what the lecturer wants me to know?’ (diane 2014) the way students enact language competencies during literacies activities should be a valuable means for lecturers to examine their own practices (katiya, mtonjeni & sefalane-nkohla 2015). diane’s narrative above demonstrates that the lecturers might not have given much consideration to the strength of their feedback. diane’s allegation above has been accepted by one of the lecturers who participated in this study. one lecturer commented as follows: i expect them to attend my lectures and to attend the workshops that are organised in conjunction with the writing centre. i also expect them to bring along drafts of their essay during the workshop. those who don’t come with their drafts are sent back home and marked absent. i expect them to contribute during the workshops, and to express themselves in a manner that i can understand. as the year progresses, i expect them to be able to express themselves in a proper academic manner. i penalise them if they don’t use the right dental terminology when writing; and i also penalise them when they don’t express themselves as professionals [our emphasis]. (ms lynnette9 2014) another lecturer, mr frings, asked the following questions: ‘what did these students learn in high school? they can’t write, they can’t read, they can’t communicate. when we were in school, did we have fancy services like the writing centre? why don’t they want to make use of the writing centre? why must i drag them there? do they even know that this is a university?’ (mr frings 2014) the above extracts from the lecturers represent a classic case of lecturers foregrounding the rules to the detriment of learning. these lecturers, in their own words, confirm the students’ allegations that some of their lecturers ‘just assume that the students already know stuff, and we must then write in a particular way already’ (sonwabo 2014). for a discipline like dental sciences, it is necessary for the lecturer, as the mko, to demonstrate awareness that some students might need a longer time to master the discipline’s terminologies and professional ways of expression. this realisation, arrived at by the lecturers during the completion of this project, confirms how they negotiate their own transition, as well as the fact that they are also at an interim state in their use of formative feedback discussion some first-year university students in the post-apartheid south african context, placed as subjects within an activity system, struggle to identify themselves within the institution as a whole and within their chosen discipline in particular. these students are constrained by the new rules of the game, and this often provokes tensions within the system. figure 5a maps the main activity system whilst figure 5b highlights where there is current tension caused by transition. figure 5: (a) the main activity system; (b) section of activity system where transition causes tension. change is often difficult to achieve. enforced transition, caused by the need to apply the explicit and implicit rules of the university; as well as those of the discipline, leads to tension within the activity system. this tension is also reflected in the way the students interact with formative feedback as they seek to negotiate their literacies awareness in their new learning contexts. a realist social theory depicts a socio-ontological stance in which physical things, human beings and their expressions, as well as the settings in which they operate, are seen as social constructs arising out of processes and connections (fairclough 2005; harvey 1996). the subject in the above activity system (figure 5b) is seen as a student in transition. placed within an ideological gaze, such a student is seen to be in a state of flux and exhibits qualities that indicate that they are partially conscious of their identity, as well as not being too sure of the new identities that they will take on as they progress within their discipline. our interest in this article has been twofold: to analyse how a small group of first-year students depict their interim grasp of essay writing, as well as to explore how a collaborative, formative feedback intervention enables students and lecturers to have meaningful dialogue during the completion of essay assignments. one of the lecturers noted as follows: ‘we assume that our students who come here are the same; and that they have the same set of skills and competencies. my reflection during this project has shown me otherwise. some of these students come from very difficult backgrounds, and the way they have managed to persist despite their own challenges is revealing. i now see that i have been a bit lazy to not always go deeper and know my students more. this is a real revelation for me.’ (ms antoinette, 2014) lecturers in a health science discipline such as dental sciences might not be expected to have the skills to teach or assess language (klein & aller 2008), but they are expected to at least mediate in the students’ development of their rhetorical stance (dornbrack & dixon 2014). it is this realisation that puts the students’ (and sometimes, ‘lecturers’) literacies practices within the gaze of interim literacies. conclusion and implications data from this research suggest that both the students and sometimes the lecturers are in a state of flux in terms of their literacies practices and that their engagements with formative feedback during essay writing practices demonstrate their interim literacies. using activity theory as an analytical tool, we identified some of the tensions that emerge when the students and lecturers use formative feedback during writing practices. tensions posed by institutional contexts, disciplinary requirements and lecturers’ assumptions have contributed in constraining the effective use of formative feedback during essay writing practices. there is a gap between students’ current writing competencies and the required competencies from a disciplinary and institutional context. there is also a gap between the lecturers’ perception of their formative feedback provided to the students and the actual interpretation of the feedback by the students. these gaps demonstrate why we see the students and lecturers literacies practices as interim. archer’s morphogenetic cycle was a suitable lens used to probe the roles and actions of the students and lecturers and re-examine the tensions that emerge due to their own assumptions within a system. we noted that within a community like the department of dental sciences, certain structures such as the writing centre exist, and lecturers, students and the formative feedback they use are agents acting on the structures. the relationship between the lecturers and students and the support services such as the writing centre evoke attributes that contribute to defining their identities. as such, their realisations of the challenges that they experience whilst engaging with formative feedback serve as enablers that propel them to seek solutions and improve on their practices. this realisation transforms the way the students and lecturers perceive formative feedback and above all how they define themselves within the system. acknowledgements we would like to acknowledge the pedagogic support provided during the scholarship of teaching and learning project at the cape peninsula university of technology. sincere appreciation is extended to professor christine winberg; associate professors solachan hassan and james garraway. mrs najwa noorodien-fataar’s support as mentor is also acknowledged. a special word of thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for providing some very insightful feedback. their advice and criticism went a long way in shaping this article. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions e.e. 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(eds.), perspective on activity theory, pp. 70–86, cambridge university press, cambridge. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511812774.007 vygotsky, l.s., 1978, mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes, harvard university press, cambridge. wheelehan, l., 2007, ‘blending activity theory and critical realism to theorise the relationship between the individual and the society and the implications for pedagogy’, studies in the education of adults 39(2), 183–196. winberg, c., van der geest, t., lehman, b. & nduna, j., 2010, ‘teaching technical writing in multilingual contexts: a meta-analysis’, southern african linguistics and applied language studies 28(3), 299–308. http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2010.545032 footnotes 1. the term academic literacy courses is used here to cover the wide spectrum of writing, reading, digital and information literacies that are offered in different modules across universities in south africa. 2. i emphasise formative to distinguish it from other types of feedback such as summative. this article refers to the different types of formative feedback. 3. department refers to the department of dental sciences, where the intervention reported in this article took place. 4. participatory action research (par) distinguishes itself from collaborative action research in that in par, the researcher is coparticipant and does not lead the research process. rather, the team (researcher and participants) jointly decide on the way forward for the research (swantz, 2008). 5. italics in original. 6. a photovoice presentation is a visually intensive approach to collect data ‘in which the presenter uses photographs to tell a story’ (esambe 2015:51). the presenter does not always describe what is visually captured in the images, but seeks to evoke ‘deep interpretations’ by narrating the ‘symbolic’ and/or historical significance that the pictures capture (kuratani & lai 2011:13). 7. emancipatory research is defined as any ‘research that seeks to empower the subjects of social inquiry’ (letherby, 2006:89). therefore, par is emancipatory research. 8. all the participants’ names used in this paper are pseudonyms. their real names are not used for purposes of anonymity. 9. lecturers’ real names have been hidden to protect their identities. abstract introduction automaticity in reading attaining automaticity automaticity in different languages and orthographies eye movement and automaticity eye movements indicating established automaticity eye movements indicating absence of automaticity reading and zulu orthography this study instruments sample data collection findings textual features and automaticity word recognition conclusions and implications acknowledgements references appendixes footnotes about the author(s) sandra land adult and community education unit, durban university of technology, south africa citation land, s., 2016, ‘automaticity in reading isizulu’, reading & writing 7(1), a90. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i1.90 original research automaticity in reading isizulu sandra land received: 28 july 2015; accepted: 05 nov. 2015; published: 02 june 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract automaticity, or instant recognition of combinations of letters as units of language, is essential for proficient reading in any language. the article explores automaticity amongst competent adult first-language readers of isizulu, and the factors associated with it or its opposite active decoding. whilst the transparent spelling patterns of isizulu aid learner readers, some of its orthographical features may militate against their gaining automaticity. these features are agglutination; a conjoined writing system; comparatively long, complex words; and a high rate of recurring strings of particular letters. this implies that optimal strategies for teaching reading in orthographically opaque languages such as english should not be assumed to apply to languages with dissimilar orthographies. introduction recent years have seen a surge of policy supporting the use of indigenous languages in africa (trudell 2010), but literature about reading in african languages is sparse. the article reports on indications of automaticity in a study of competent readers of isizulu, the most widely spoken indigenous south african language. automaticity in reading ‘reading is arguably the most complex cognitive activity in which humans routinely engage’ (reichle, warren & mcconnell 2009), and yet it is taken for granted by millions of experienced readers who barely notice the fine combination of elements of perception and cognitive activity that cohere during reading. in brief, these are that as we read, we shift our focus along lines of text, processing symbols and their locations to generate visual representations of letters and words and select some of these to convert to concepts. as we glean information from each point of focus, we use unclear images in the parafoveal view that suggest word boundaries to plan the next focus shift. simultaneously, we integrate lexical information gained with semantic and syntactic information from text already read to construct meaning of the text. this complex combination of skills can become automatically integrated into a relaxed, swift exercise. when this happens, we have developed automaticity and can use brief visual perceptions of symbol clusters to automatically access associated pieces of language and meanings without additional active cognitive decoding (penner-wilger 2008). we can then engage imaginatively with meaning, making inferences, links with remembered information and judgements on what the writer has communicated. without automaticity, it is extremely difficult for readers to construct a growing interpretation of texts as they read, to use context to aid comprehension (marinelli, martelli & zoccolotti 2010), to gain new information from the text (verhoeven, reitsma & siegel 2011), or to perform any higher order skills associated with reading (abadzi 2012). attaining automaticity automaticity is regarded as crucial for reading by helen abadzi whose work in neuroscience has brought new insight to understanding reading processes. abadzi describes automaticity as a ‘vaccine’ and an ‘on-off switch’ for literacy (2011); without it, competent reading is not possible. confirming psycholinguistic evidence, neuroscience indicates that to read effectively, readers must move through text fluently and swiftly because human working memory has a capacity of about 12 seconds (abadzi 2012). to understand messages in text, we must construct them as wholes, and so must read rapidly enough to get from the beginning to the end of each message within 12 seconds. in english, a minimum reading rate of 45–60 words per minute (wpm) appears necessary for reading at a basic level (abadzi 2012). complex tasks, like searching for information, require speeds of about 250 wpm (abadzi 2010). this reading rate can be achieved only through automatic, instantaneous recognition of a significant proportion of words, and to establish automaticity clusters of letters must be perceived as whole words or units rather than groups of characters. this develops only through extensive exposure to text and repeated association of particular clusters with words or units they represent. children who are included in literacy-related practices early and have explicit instruction in developing reading skills and plenty of supported reading practice usually achieve automaticity easily. in contrast, children who have little exposure to literacy practices, mediocre instruction and infrequent reading practice may never achieve it (abadzi 2012). people who learn to read after adolescence rarely achieve automaticity, and adults learning to read a new script report that although they see all the letters, they must consciously work out what words they represent (abadzi 1996). in a new script, a word needs to be decoded approximately 3000 times before it is automatically recognised (abadzi 2012). automaticity in different languages and orthographies learning to read appears to be easier in languages with consistent orthographies, that is where letters always represent the same sounds. inconsistent orthographies compel readers to seek cues in large groupings of letters – in other words, in large–grain size units of text (georgiou, parrila & papadopoulos 2008), which assists in the automatic recognition of whole words. amongst languages used in europe, the ability to read words accurately takes longest to develop in english, which has the most opaque orthography amongst them (georgiou et al. 2008; seymour, aro & erskine 2003). children learning to read languages with consistent, transparent orthographies (e.g. italian, german, greek, spanish and finnish) read words accurately at the end of grade one (ziegler et al. 2010). in comparison, children reading portuguese, french and danish (which are orthographically inconsistent and less transparent) cannot read words as accurately. children learning to read in english, with the least transparent and least consistent orthography in europe, achieve only 34% accuracy at the end of grade one (ziegler et al. 2010) and lag behind german children in accurately reading words even at age 12, suggesting that english is ‘the hardest european orthography to acquire’ (hutzler et al. 2004). comparable information on learning to read in african languages is not available. children who read orthographically consistent languages are better at reading pseudo words (pronounceable non-words) than children who read english (seymour et al. 2003). this suggests that they are decoding graphemes directly to phonemes1, using small grain size orthographic cues (ziegler & goswami 2005). this means that they rapidly reconstruct speech sounds on the basis of letter–sound correlation. in contrast, beginner readers of english must learn letter–sound correlation and develop a mental lexicon based on larger grain size orthographic cues (seymour et al. 2003). also, readers of opaque orthographies may use knowledge of syntax, vocabulary and contextual cues more than readers of transparent orthographies (share 2008). this combination of strategies apparently enables readers to cope with contradictory rules as they learn to read words that are visually similar but phonologically distinct, for example ‘tough’, ‘though’, ‘thought’ and ‘through’. in languages whose orthography features clusters of consonants and graphemes of groups of letters, it is relatively difficult to learn decoding skills (seymour et al. 2003). unsurprisingly, automatic recognition is most easily established where simple visual patterns consistently represent particular word sounds (abadzi 2011). thus, automaticity is likely to develop more easily in orthographies whose printed word forms are obviously dissimilar to one another and with more difficulty in orthographies where unrelated words can look similar. this has particular relevance here because agglutinated isizulu words may be visually complex and similar, yet not semantically related. eye movement and automaticity fixations are strongly related to readers’ direction of attention (miellet, o’donnell & seren 2009; paulson 2005), and cognitive procedures of text comprehension and ease or difficulty in identifying words influence eye movements (paterson, alcock & liversedge 2011). this implies that eye movement records can show which units of text are automatically recognised and which are processed only after refixations, indicating that they are decoded with cognitive effort. eye movements indicating established automaticity word recognition might not always happen exactly in parallel with eye movements (rayner, juhasz & pollatsek 2007). however, in eye movement records of silent reading of continuous alphabetic text, brief fixations separated by wide saccades, plus a reader’s good understanding of text point unequivocally to a high level of automaticity. successive, fleeting fixations without regressions indicate that a reader’s focus has moved steadily along lines of text, and visual stimuli have been smoothly transformed into the ‘flow of phonetic imagery through the mind’ (coulmas 2003) that characterises fluent silent reading. elements recognised could be single words, words in a familiar or predictable string or parts of complex single words. word recognition instant recognition of a word may be an instant response to seeing the printed form [perfetti & ehri, cited in castles and nation (2008)], but in text passages, short, familiar, predictable words are often skipped by efficient readers (paterson et al. 2011; rayner 2009). this suggests that readers use anticipated meaning or word collocations to predict words to the right of their point of focus, and if the indefinite shape perceived matches the prediction, they take the word as read without fixating directly on it (paterson et al. 2011). word recognition is probably also influenced by a reader’s prior knowledge, suppositions activated during reading and construction of meaning of text read so far (rapp & van den broek 2005). within a sentence, complex words are more easily recognised if preceded by semantically related words (paterson et al. 2011). these factors inevitably differ between readers and contexts. eye movements indicating absence of automaticity a high frequency of refixations and regressions implies that a reader is not automatically recognising many words. in english, readers take longer to recognise multisyllabic words than short ones; words incorporating more than nine letters are often read with more than one fixation, and each syllable adds on average 20 milliseconds to recognition time in studies of lexical decision making (new et al. 2006). this reflects paterson’s observation (2011) that visual recognition of english words composed of multiple morphemes (e.g. ‘multisyllabic’) is likely to depend on breakdown into constituent morphemes. regressions show that a reader is referring to areas of difficulty in text read (paulson 2005). causes of regression include syntactic or semantic complexities, low-frequency words, confusion, disconfirmation of an interpretation, difficulties in word identification, overshooting or undershooting the beginning of a line or returning to words skipped on a first reading (paulson 2005). paterson et al. (2011) note readers’ tendency to regress on the second of two related morphologically complex words in a sentence and suggest similar word forms can inhibit recognition. when regressing, readers seem to maintain a sense of the spatial arrangement of words in text understood so far and can return their point of focus to points that were problematic for them (rayner, fischer & pollatsek 1998). because readers redirect their focus to points that caused them difficulty, analysis of eye movement records could reveal features in text that attract regressions most frequently. reading and zulu orthography literature on reading african languages is minimal compared with english (pretorius & mampuru 2007), but comparison of reading skills in isizulu and english is appropriate because they are the most used languages in kwazulu-natal (van der merwe & van der merwe 2006) and isizulu speakers need to learn to read in both of them at school. findings from reading research in english cannot be assumed to apply across languages (share 2008), and readers of english and isizulu may have to develop contrasting skills for each orthography. in terms of psycholinguistic grain size theory, because isizulu orthography is consistent and transparent, its readers probably process relatively small–grain size units of text, as do readers of other orthographically consistent languages (ziegler & goswami 2005). this small grain size processing might be the optimal strategy for reading isizulu not only because of its orthographic consistency but also because of its agglutinative nature and conjoined writing system. these features make many words long and complex, composed of short morphemes clustered round central word sterns. to illustrate, one isizulu word is often the equivalent of four or five words in disjunctive languages such as english, as in the starting sentence of one of the texts used in this study: wawunezindlu ezingamaqhugwana amathathu wakhiwe ngaphansi kwegquma (he had three houses that were [grass] huts built at the base of a hill) (literal translation: he-had-houses that-were-huts three built at-the-base of-a-hill). these six isizulu words translate into 14 english words, but use more line space. because long complex words occur frequently even in fairly simple isizulu text, word length is unlikely to be a salient determining factor of reading difficulty in isizulu (as explained below). in contrast, in the disjunctive languages of europe, it is central to measures of reading difficulty (readability formulas 2013). there are high-frequency, short, unagglutinated isizulu words that have a constant form, for example nouns such as umuntu/abantu (person/people), adverbs such as kahle (well or slowly), and conjunctives such as kodwa (but). proficient isizulu readers are likely to automatically recognise these words instantly. they probably also automatically recognise commonly recurring parts of long agglutinated words as ‘multiletter units’ as suggested by verhoeven et al. (2011). for example, in a word from the sentence above, wawunezindlu, a reader may automatically recognise any or all of the morphemes wa wu ne zi or ndlu. this study based on recordings of eye movements of proficient readers of isizulu, and their recall of reading processes, this study seeks to discover their patterns of automaticity. it asks the following questions: which words were instantly recognised and which needed active decoding by nearly all the most proficient readers? to what extent is their treatment of recurring words consistent? what can their immediate recollection of reading experiences reveal about processes that combine in reading isizulu text? instruments according to shuter & shooter educational publishers, who have published isizulu novels, poetry and textbooks since the 1930s, no official grading system exists for isizulu texts; publishers rely ‘on gut feel to gauge the language level for any grade’ (s. zulu, pers. comm., 12 april 2013). so to select texts for this study, three first-language isizulu lecturers in education at the university of kwazulu-natal were asked to judge the readability of excerpts from novels written in (as opposed to translated into) isizulu (appendix 1). notably, their ‘gut feel’ judgement matched sentence length and complexity. two texts judged to be easy to read consisted of 19 sentences with an average of 1.4 clauses per sentence and 15 sentences with an average of 1.8 clauses per sentence, respectively. one of two texts judged to be more difficult had 10 sentences with an average of 2.7 clauses per sentence, and the other only six sentences with an average of 4.2 clauses per sentence. average word length differs by less than one letter across the four texts, and so it is unlikely to have influenced the perceived reading difficulty. the easy texts were seen to reflect current urban isizulu, whilst the more difficult texts included words and expressions characteristic of ‘deep isizulu’ spoken in remote rural areas and formally studied at academic institutions. the visagraph eye movement recording system used in this study records fixations, regressions, reading rate and intereye coordination (compevo 2012). the system uses infrared differential reflectivity to detect eye movement and samples eye position 60× per second (compevo 2012). some systems sample eye position at higher rates than this. however, competent readers in other languages2 make up to 5.2 fixations per second (hutzler, braun & jacobs 2008), so even at this rate, the visagraph’s recording rate would enable each fixation to be recorded approximately 11.5 times. the advantage of visagraph here is that it operates in natural light, allows free head movement and uses text printed on normal sheets of a4 paper held by readers at reading distances they found comfortable. thus, although readers wore a mask and knew that their eye movements were being recorded, the reading experience was natural at least in that the text read was authentic continuous text printed on normal paper, and readers sat in ordinary chairs in a natural reading posture. sample measures of reading proficiency in isizulu have yet to be standardised (van rooy & pretorius 2013), so selection and screening of participants was necessarily innovative. sampling was purposive and encouraged competent readers of isizulu text to self-select. an invitation to proficient readers of isizulu was inserted in an isizulu newspaper in pietermaritzburg and sent to isizulu-speaking academics, journalists, publishers and high-performing learners at a local high school. approximately 150 respondents underwent a reading test3. on the basis of their speed and accuracy, the most efficient 25% of respondents (38 of them) were selected, and their eye movements recorded as they silently read four texts described above. five participants were excluded because of imperfect recordings. the remaining group of 33 included: 15 women and 18 men 24 professionals, 5 full-time university students and 4 high school students. participants’ ages ranged from 16–61, with 25 of them between the ages of 20 and 49. because the article focuses particularly on automaticity and the orthography of isizulu, the analysis and discussion below is based on the 10 swiftest recordings of each text (i.e. 40 recordings). this selection increased the likelihood that the recorded eye movements demonstrated established automaticity. an analysis of the reading patterns of the whole group is discussed in another article (land 2015). data collection this took approximately one hour for each participant. the mask of the recording system was fitted to the reader’s head, its receptors aligned with the pupils of their eyes and their eye movements recorded as they silently read each text. immediately after reading each text, each reader gave an account of the content to show the extent of their understanding. the visagraph system allows recorded eye movements to be viewed in various forms, one of which allows the replay of the movement of the reader’s point of focus represented by a moving cursor on an electronic copy of the text read. this was possible through an isizulu language package using the selected texts, and designed particularly for this research by reading plus, an organisation that offers computer-based reading improvement programmes. with the reading experience fresh in her mind, each reader joined the researcher in following and discussing the recorded movement of her point of focus on the text. the purpose of this exercise was not to try and recapture the subconscious reading processes. instead, because researchers agree that direction of attention and cognitive procedures in reading influence fixations (paterson et al. 2011; paulson 2005; miellet et al. 2009), it was hoped that readers might recall their thought processes associated with regressions, pauses, refixations and swift progress. many readers did in fact recall thinking at points where their eye movement records reflected these features. for example, on noting his regression on the second word of the phrase ‘isitsha esinezimbali’ (a dish with flowers), a reader said he had first misread ‘esinezimbali’ as ‘esinamazambane’ (with potatoes) because he had associated ‘isitsha’ (dish) with food. findings although all participants had demonstrated their competence, eye movement records showed differences amongst them. in figures 1–3, vertical sections of graph lines show the duration of each fixation and horizontal sections show movement to the left or right within a line of text and return sweeps to the left to begin a new line. figure 1 shows the steady progress of an adept reader through almost three lines of text in approximately 6.5 seconds. the brief vertical line sections show the six or seven fixations he made per line, and the short horizontal line sections show his saccades as his point of focus moved through each line of text. there is one brief regression. observation of his recorded point of focus moving over the text confirmed that he read many words in a single fixation and passed over some others without fixating on them, indicating a high degree of automaticity. figure 1: eye movements of a highly skilled reader. figure 2 and figure 3 show the slower progress of two slightly slower readers. figure 2 shows very small movements of the point of focus to the right, indicating short saccades, suggesting a short span of recognition, with repeated fixations on some words. figure 2: eye movements of a reader with many refixations. figure 3: eye movements of a reader with repeated regressions. figure 3 shows a similar rate of progress, but here the track shows long fixations at line beginnings and frequent regressions, as the reader ‘reversed’ in the text to have a second (or even third) look at words already passed. figure 2 and figure 3 show less instant word recognition than figure 1. textual features and automaticity as shown in table 1, sentence length differed markedly across the texts, and reading speed decreased as sentence length increased. the pearson product moment correlation test showed a moderate, yet significant negative correlation between reading speed and sentence length (r = −0.413, n = 40, p = 0.01). table 1: measures of texts and average reading scores on each. readers’ rate of fixations increased moderately but significantly as sentence length increased (r = 0.399, p < 0.05). their rate of regressions also increased significantly with sentence length (r = 0.440, p < 0.01). sentence length increases across the texts, with an average of 5.3 words per sentence in text 1, 6.6 in text 2, 10 in text 3 and 16.7 in text 4, showing that text 3 and text 4 (judged to be the more difficult of the four texts) were read more slowly, with more fixations and regressions than texts 1 and 2. this could also be influenced by other less measurable differences, such as unfamiliar vocabulary or other complexities such as the need to infer. readers’ comments as they watched the replay of the recorded movement of their focus reveal their perceptions of their own reading process at points where their progress slowed: sl: you see, you slowed down a lot here? nn: yes i remember. sl: what was going on in your head? nn: ‘ezingaphambiyana nokugawula izihlahla, i think it is the same as the other one before this one. i was trying to understand, to read it and understand it at the same time … because it is talking about amadodana and now it’s izihlahla so i am trying to put all of this thing together’. illustrating paulson’s (2005) observation that readers regress to problem areas, in this case unexpected information, one reader spoke of her surprise upon reading of war between whites in south africa (the boer war): tm: i was not sure about the sentence because, really i never heard anything about the impi between amangisi namabhunu. i only know the war between blacks and boers so … mmh? okay then to me it was something new. sl: so that is why you stuck there because you were thinking … tm: what? amangisi nambhunu? yes… i had to re-read the sentence to make sure if i was reading the right thing. similarly, another reader exemplifies the observation of paterson et al. (2011) that readers tend to regress on the second of related words in a sentence, perhaps because their similarity inhibits recognition (here the words are visually similar, though not related): sl: and you also regress there, on kwakuyiloluhlobo. cm: ok there, i am not sure if it was this … ubuhholohholo because when i see that i thought there was something familiar. average word length did not differ much between the texts (text 1: 7.65 letters, text 2: 7.47 letters, text 3: 8.31, text 4: 7.49). unsurprisingly, in view of this small difference, there was no significant correlation between word length and reading speed (r = −0.118). in the 400 words of the combined isizulu texts used here, 62 three-letter strings occur 10 times or more and 11 four-letter strings occur more than 10 times (decrypting text 2013). analysis of 5000 words of text from isolezwe (http://www.iol.co.za/isolezwe), a popular isizulu newspaper, showed that in 400 words of text in this newspaper, 30 three-letter strings are likely to occur 10 times or more and 4 four-letter strings are likely to occur more than 10 times (decrypting text 2013). in comparison, analysis of 5000 words of text from mercury (http://www.iol.co.za/mercury), a popular english newspaper, showed that in 400 words, only 4 three-letter strings (the, and, -ing and -ent) occur 10 times or more, and no four-letter strings occur more than 10 times (decrypting text 2013). this comparison demonstrates frequent repetition of letter strings in isizulu. similarity between word forms hinders easy distinguishability between words in any language (abadzi 2011), and the high recurrence of the same letter strings may hinder the development of automaticity. in the example above where a reader regressed on isitsha esinezimbali (dish with flowers) (text2), after misreading it as isitsha esinamazambane (dish with potatoes) the reader’s mistake showed signs of automaticity because he had predicted a word referring to food, and on sight of a long word containing the prefix esina/efollowed by a stem containing z and mba, assumed the stem to be amazambane, a miscuing error because of the similarity between word forms. almost immediately after this regression, the reader had trouble with the same letter combination again, regressing on ezimbalwa (several) after misreading it as izimbazo (axes). there is a strong, highly significant correlation (r = 0.743, p < 0.01) between saccade length and reading rate. a high reading rate is strongly associated with automaticity, and these figures show that the readers whose saccades are long are those who read swiftly. this is apparent in the graphs of readers’ eye movements as shown above. less strong, but still significant, was the negative correlation (r = −0.348, p < 0.05) between saccade length and longer sentences including unfamiliar vocabulary since texts 3 and 4 included words that readers found obscure: sl: ngezikhadlana is that a construction you are familiar with? ms: yes, izikhala is [means] spaces. so izikhadlana is smaller spaces4 but a lot of the language i am not used to. there was no significant correlation (r = 0.053) between the duration of readers’ fixations and sentence length, indicating that readers did not increase the duration of their gaze when coping with longer sentences or words they found obscure. this indicates that slower reading rates on texts with longer sentences and obscure words were because of the higher number of fixations (including regressions) made by readers, rather than longer fixations. the graph in figure 4 compares sentence length, reading rate, fixations (reduced by a factor of 10 to allow graphic comparison) and regressions across the four texts. the trend line shows how reading rate decreased as sentence length increased and with it the rate of fixations and regressions. figure 4: sentence length of texts and average scores. word recognition word recognition might not always coincide exactly with a reader’s shifts of focus from word to word, but the number of fixations on a word and the duration of fixations are used by researchers to reflect the ease of word recognition (rayner et al. 2007). thus, the average number of fixations on a word by different readers and their average duration of fixation indicate how easily a word is recognised. on this basis, each word in each of the four texts was coded according to the number of readers who skipped it, fixated on it once, refixated on it or regressed to it. these data were summarised to show which words appeared to have been instantly recognised in 80% or more of the recordings and which words appeared to have required cognitive work to decipher in 80% or more of the recordings. instantly recognised (automaticised) words of the words, 24.5% (98 of 400) appear to have been instantly recognised in 80% or more of the recordings. they are listed in appendix 2. average word length across the four texts used is 7.73 – significantly longer than the average word length amongst europe’s languages: 4.6 letters in english, 4.7 in danish, 4.9 in swedish, 5.6 in german and 7 in finnish (björnsson 1983). average length of words processed in a single brief fixation here is 6.5 letters, indicating that, as in other languages (paterson et al. 2011), shorter words are more likely to be instantly recognised. it is predictable that short, unagglutinated, high-frequency words, such as nje (just), khona (there) and futhi (again), will be instantly recognised by readers, and possibly skipped. here, only 3 of the 400 words (< 1%) were skipped in at least half of the recordings. these were uma ‘if’ or ‘when’, indlu ‘house’, and yomuzi ‘of the home’ and were skipped where their predictability was high. this is dramatically less than the 25%–30% of the words skipped by readers of english (rayner 2009; white 2008), suggesting that word recognition differs substantially between isizulu and english. most instantly recognised words consisted of not more than two morphemes. where words with more than two morphemes were instantly recognised, they were high-frequency word forms and/or were highly predictable such as um/fo/wa/bo in the context of ‘… wabonakala ududa umfowabo omncane kankalimba…’ (‘…could be seen duda, nkalimba’s little brother …’), where the capital letter of the first name and the context would have cued expectation of ‘brother’. thus, predictably, words with few morphemes appear to be recognised more easily than words with three or more morphemes. it is possible that familiar combinations of morphemes are instantly recognised, as in this instance: sz-w: … i just discarded the first beginning part ezingamapart and just concentrated on the qhukwana part. i thought what could that be? sl: ok because those e-zi-nga-ma they’re all familiar parts of words? sz-w: yes many of the words that were instantly recognised at some points in the text were actively decoded at other points. this indicates that factors such as position, collocations, context and the process of meaning construction appear to influence recognition. notably, no words at the start of a line of text were instantly recognised, even though some of them (uma, lapho and ukuthi) were instantly recognised elsewhere in the text. these refixations on words at the beginning of lines accords with the observation by rayner et al. (2007) that fixations at line beginnings often involve corrective saccades, presumably made as readers ensure that they have found the right line. a reader’s indefinite perception of this habitual process is clear in the instance below: cm: i think it’s when i am starting the new line and then i don’t know if i was on the third or the second line, i’m not sure … sl: so, how do you make sure that you are on the right line? … cm: like if i was on the third line or fourth line? sl: yes. do you know? cm: it only just happens. words requiring cognitive work to decipher in 80% or more of the recordings, 23.5% (94 of 400) were read with two or more fixations or at least one regression. these words are listed in appendix 3. only a few of them included uncommon vocabulary, so it appears that readers broke familiar words into their constituent parts to decipher them. their average length is 11.1 letters (considerably longer than the overall average word length in these texts of 7.73 letters), and they consist of up to seven agglutinated morphemes, for example: ngi/nga/ka/li/hlangan/is/i, (i had not yet gathered together) kwa/ku/ngo/wo/ku/phatha (it was to take care of) a/yi/si/shiya/galo/lu/nye (‘that were nine’, or literally ‘that which leaves digit of one’). in view of the length and amount of information in these multimorphemic words, it is unsurprising that nearly all the readers required more than one fixation to read them and predictable that readers are likely to develop automaticised recognition of only those complex permutations that occur with unusually high frequency. the excerpt below illustrates the strategy of one of the swiftest readers, which appears to exemplify the reconstruction of the speech sounds and small–grain size processing strategy described by ziegler and goswami (2005) in relation to transparent and consistent orthographies: sl: and how do you manage to unravel this because … there’s one, two, three four, five six ‘bits’ [morphemes] in that word. how do you do it in your head? nn: i think i read it slowly like [mimicking] kwa-ku-ngo-wo-ku-phatha then i understood it … i say the word, but silently. the need to process these complex words implies that this small–grain size processing strategy should be explicitly taught to learner readers of languages with orthographies similar to that of isizulu. readers’ treatment of recurring words interestingly, some words recognised immediately by nearly all skilled readers at some points in the text were read with multiple fixations and/or regressions at other points5. for example, the word khona (there) was instantly recognised in 100% of the recordings at three points in the text, but in only 60% of them at another point, where it refers to a pantry. although the word khona is grammatically predictable at that point, a pantry might be an unexpected concept for some of these readers. ubaba (father) and phela (here, an interjection like ‘well’) recur several times in the text, and were instantly recognised at some points but fixated on more than once or regressed to at others. this suggests that factors other than the distinguishability and familiarity of particular words affect the ease with which they are recognised. position on a line of text is salient, with a moderate but significant correlation (r = 0.399, p < 0.01) between being in the last half of a line of text and the likelihood of being instantly recognised. seventeen of 22 instances of frequently recurring words that were recognised immediately in at least 70% of the recordings were in texts 1 and 2, which had less than two clauses per sentence on average. only 5 frequently recurring words were instantly recognised in the more difficult texts 3 and 4, whose sentences averaged 2.7 and 4.2 clauses respectively. with regard to the position of words within a sentence, it appears that a relatively short high-frequency word is likely to be recognised with a single fixation (but not skipped) at the beginning of a sentence. it seems more likely to require multiple fixations when appearing further into a sentence because the number of readers instantly recognising a word is lower for words appearing near the end of sentences. yet surprisingly, and in spite of the strong correlation found between lower reading rates and longer sentences, the correlation between a word’s position in a sentence and the likelihood of it being instantly recognised does not reach significance (r = −0.083). limitations the enquiry in the article is based on eye movements of the 10 swiftest readers of a sample of 33, recorded as they each read four texts. this narrow selection ensured that only recordings demonstrating established automaticity were used, but more confidence could be placed in data from a larger sample. however, this exploratory study, the first of eye movements of competent readers of isizulu, may be a useful starting point in the particular research question addressed. at 60× per second, the visagraph equipment used has a lower sampling rate than some other systems, but its advantage is that it allows a close simulation of natural silent reading of continuous text, which was the particular focus of this study. the effects of readers’ awareness of being recorded as they read are unavoidable, and a limitation in all reading research involving readers’ cooperation. conclusions and implications the orthography of isizulu is shaped by its agglutination, conjoined writing system, comparatively long, complex words and a high rate of recurring strings of particular letters. this makes it less conducive to automaticity than orthographies with short words and high heterogeneity amongst word forms. data in the study suggest that readers of isizulu rely on small–grain size orthographic units. in languages where readers do this, there may be less of a distinction between reading by phonological decoding and by automatic whole word recognition than there is in languages where readers rely on large–grain size orthographic units such as english. perhaps a continuum starting with slow recognition of the root and morpheme synthesis, progressing towards instant recognition and synthesis is a more plausible model for automaticity in these languages? reading speeds of participants was highest when reading short sentences and familiar vocabulary. when reading longer sentences with less familiar vocabulary their reading rate decreased, whilst their rate of fixations and regressions increased significantly, but the duration of their fixations did not. saccade length increased when reading text with familiar vocabulary, indicating a higher rate of automatic recognition. although it is common across languages for reading rate to slow as textual complexity increases, the data in the study suggest that there are different word recognition processes in isizulu and english. almost 25% of words were recognised instantly, although less than 1% were skipped, suggesting that few isizulu words have enough of a distinctive form to be predicted in the indistinct parafoveal view. words that were instantly recognised tended to be shorter than average, suggesting that, as in other languages, short words are more easily automatically recognised. one implication of this for teaching reading in isizulu is that predictive skills could be enhanced by ensuring that new readers recognise a core list of short words that do not agglutinate, such as conjunctives, and take cognisance of their semantic significance in the sentence. another is that new readers should be given guided practice in spotting common word stems in complex words, as well as common combinations of morphemes. readers fixated more than once on almost a quarter of the words in the texts. predictably, these were longer (often comprising more than 11 letters) and more complex than average, usually comprising three or more morphemes. readers’ clear recall of their thought processes at particular points of their reading suggests that, despite the subliminal nature of many elements of the reading process, the construction of mental representations of meanings are complex and powerful influences on how words are read, and that cognitive processing of words and even sentences sometimes lags behind perception of words in visual focus. learner readers need to be enabled to disaggregate complex words into their constituent morphemes and to integrate their semantic value into their mental representation of the meaning of text as they read. overall implications of the findings of this study are that reading processes that characterise efficient reading in an orthography such as that of english may not be effective in another, such as isizulu. an obvious corollary is that methods for teaching reading and for training teachers to teach reading should take into account orthographical features of each language and ensure that learner readers are equipped with strategies to deal with the particular 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(1992). sengikhulile. durban: new readers publishers. p.1. unomadashimane igama lami. sengikhulile! awu! akukho okudlula lokhu. ikhulu leminyaka akusiyo into encane. phela ngazalwa ngempi yamangisi namabhunu. abanye babewabiza ngokuthi amadashimane amabhunu. igama elithi nomadashi lasukela lapho. ubaba wayesebenza epulazini endaweni yase-bulwer. kwathi ngokusuka kwempi wathi umlungu kubaba, “ngiya empini. hleze ngingabuyi, ngifele khona. uma ngingabuyanga, ungakhathazeki. ngiwenzile onke amalungiselelo okuthi umesisi anibheke nezingane zakho.” umama ngalesosikhathi wayekhulelwe. wazibula ngamawele, umfana nentombazana. bathi kuzelwe amakhosi. bangiqamba igama elithi ngingunomkhosi. kepha ngenxa yokuthi ngazalwa ngempi kwaduma elokuthi ngingunomadashi. ngakhula-ke sihlezi epulazini. sasilima, sisenga izinkomo, kudliwa amasi. kwakujwayelekile ukuthi ingane ekhulele epulazini iwuqale isencane umsebenzi. ngaqala ukusebenza ngingakalihlanganisi ishumi leminyaka. umsebenzi wami kwakungowokuphatha izingane zomlungu. ngaze ngakhula impela ngisebenza kuye lomlungu. 2. nyembezi, s. (1953). ubudoda abukhulelwa. pietermaritzburg.: shuter and shooter pty ltd. p.15. lapha kwamsezane kwakwakhiwe ngempela. kwakungumuzi ovuthiwe. indlu yayakhiwe ngesitini esibomvu, esishisiwe. yayinovulande ezinhlangothini ezimbili. indlu yayinamakamelo ayisishiyagalolunye. kwakukhona indlu yokuphola, neyokudlela, nalapho ayesebenzela khona umsezane nalapho ayegcina khona izincwadi zakhe. phela kwakungumfo owayekuthanda ukufunda. kunamakamelo amathathu okulala. bese-ke kuba yikhishi nendlu lapho kubekwa khona ukudla. uma ungena endlini yokuhlala, wawukhangwa upiyane olukhulu, luzisho nje ukuthi olwemali. kwakukhona futhi endlini izihlalo ezithofozelayo, ayethi umuntu uma ehlala kuzo ashone phansi avele ngezindlebe. phakathi nendawo kukhona itafulana elincane kubekwe phezu kwalo isitsha esinezimbali. phansi lapha amapulangwe ayembozwe ngocansi lwabelungu. kwakuyiloluhlobo othi uma uhamba phezu kwalo nezigi zife, umuntu athashazise okukamangobe. ezindongeni kwakulenga izithombe ezimbalwa. zonke izinto ezazikulomuzi zazikhuluma ngokusobala zithi kukwamnumzane lapha. 3. mkhize, m. t. (1983). amahlaya alala insila. pretoria: de jager-haum publishers. p.1 umuzi wakubo kachithimpi zondi umfo kankalimba wawunezindlu ezimangaqhugwana amathathu wakhiwe ngaphansi kwegquma. iminyango yezindlu yayibheke ngasenyakatho ukugwema iziphepho ezazivamise ukuqhamuka ngaseningizimu. ngasempumalanga yomuzi kwakunomhoshana okwakwehla kuwo umchachazwana wamanzi owawuze uyongenela emfuleni umzimayi. ntambama kwakuye kuheleze umoya obandayo owawuye ungene ngezikhadlana zezicabha kwazondi. lamahelehelana ayeqala ngokuphola kamnandi kodwa agcine esebanda ngokumangalisayo lapho sekuphakathi kwamabili ebusuku ikakhulukazi uma kusebusika. ngalelilanga kungumgqibelo ntambama iwona lamahelehelana ayesiza ekupholiseni kwazondi. phela lapha emzini kankalimba ngalelilanga kwakusindwe ngobethole kutatazela omakoti kunjeyaya. okungamakhehla nezalukazi kwakulokhu kubonakala kuphuma kuthi tshobe ngemva kwezindlu kuchitha lawomanzi ayengasadingeki emizimbeni yawo. kulobuhholohholo bomsindo wabonakala ududa umfowabo omncane kankalimba engena endlini nezimbuzi ezimbili ayezibambe ngezimpondo eyokuma ngasemsamo. esemsamo ududa wabatshela abasendlini ukuthi lezimbuzi kwabe kungezani. 4. zama, j. m. (1967). ingwe idla ngamabala. pietermaritzburg: shuter and shooter. p.1 kwakungenye intambama lapho selibantubahle; kusentwasahlobo iminduze seyiqalile ukuqhakasa, mhla ngiqalayo ukuyizwa inguquko empilweni yami ngoba ngakhanyelwa kusukela ngaleyo ntambama ukuthi akukho lutho oluzenzekelayo nje ngokwalo. yonke into emhlabeni inembangela nenhloso ethile kulowo nalowo muntu. leyontambama engiyisusela kuyo lendaba yami ngayiphawula ngoba ubaba, unqakamatshe, wafikisana kanye nathi esangweni lomuzi wakwethu, kwazise ukuthi sasingaveli ndawonye nobaba. ubaba wayebuya embizweni eyayibizwe ngugazi inkosi yethu thina bathembu. thina sobathathu madodana akhe sasiqhamuka kokumba iziphunzi esikhaleni esasisivule ezinsukwini ezingaphambiyana ngokugawula izihlahla ekupheleni kwehlathi elaligudla insimu kamame omkhulu, umabuthelezi. umame omkhulu wayebike kubaba ukuthi isife ayesilima minyaka yonke sase sinciphile ububanzi baso ngenxa yokucinaniswa yimixhantela yezihlahlana ezazimila ezimpandeni zemithi eyayisephethelweni lalelohlathi. thina sasivela kulowo msebenzi. appendix 2: words that 8 of 10 swift readers recognised automatically appendix 3: words that 8 of 10 swift readers fixated on more than once footnotes 1. a phoneme is a single speech sound. a grapheme is a representation of a single speech sound and can be a single letter (e.g. ‘o’ and ‘m’) or a pair of letters (e.g. ‘th’ and ‘ng’) or a cluster of letters (e.g. ‘ough’). phonemes and graphemes differ between languages. 2. there are no comparable studies in isizulu. 3. for the reading test, see land, s., 2015, ‘zulu orthography and reading’, south african journal of african languages, 35(2). 4. the reference is to a description of gaps in doorways allowing cold wind into houses. 5. for a table showing how words that recurred repeatedly in the texts were read, see land, s., 2015, ‘reading isizulu: reading processes in an agglutinative language with a transparent orthography’, phd thesis, school of arts, university of kwazulu-natal. abstract introduction theoretical framework purpose of the study methodology data analyses results discussion conclusions, recommendations and limitations acknowledgements references about the author(s) linda scott education, vaal university of technology, south africa elaine saaiman education, vaal university of technology, south africa citation scott, l. & saaiman, e., 2016, ‘promoting reading skills or wasting time? students’ perceived benefits of reading in an intermediary programme at the vaal university of technology’, reading & writing 7(1), a82. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i1.82 original research promoting reading skills or wasting time? students’ perceived benefits of reading in an intermediary programme at the vaal university of technology linda scott, elaine saaiman received: 07 mar. 2014; accepted: 20 oct. 2015; published: 20 may 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract notwithstanding the substantial transformation of education in south africa in the last 20 years, specifically to redress the past inequalities, the challenges are ongoing. these challenges include tertiary institutions having to accommodate a culturally and linguistically diverse group of students, often second-language (l2) english speakers, in an english lingua franca classroom. this study investigated the reading attitudes and habits of students in an intermediary programme of a tertiary institution and any perceived changes to these attitudes or habits, as well as their perceptions of the promotion of reading by the programme. on successful completion of the intermediary programme, students register for the compulsory first-year english distance learning course and are required to complete a placement test. results for students who attended the intermediary programme were compared with those of students who did not attend the intermediary programme but registered directly for mainstream. the teaching of reading appeared invaluable at the tertiary level with the indication that students’ attitudes and behaviour changed and that they inter alia realised the academic value thereof, made decisions to take up reading as a hobby and discovered new genres. introduction education in south africa, and more specifically tertiary education, continues to face challenges. sutherland (2009:4) states that the south african government has addressed the inequalities perpetuated during the apartheid era and continues to work on closing the gap that was created. problems in education are widespread, and students enrolling in the university of south africa require additional support to enable them to succeed in their studies (maphosa 2014:11). van rooy and coetzee-van rooy (2015) emphasise the fact that language is regarded as one of the most important issues contributing to the poor academic performance of students at south african universities. many researchers have highlighted the importance of reading in an academic context. palani (2012:91) states that ‘[e]ffective reading is the most important avenue of effective learning’ and the achievement of academic success requires successful reading. abramson (2004) states that ‘[b]eing a good reader is not a luxury in the 21st century. it is a necessary life skill’. he believes that means more than just being able to enjoy the latest biography written by an iconic public figure or reading your favourite authors’ newest murder mystery novel. it means being able to understand the lease agreement of your new house, the terms and conditions of your credit card and instructions for installing new software on your computer (abramson 2004). many definitions have been suggested for reading, including ‘[r]eading is a complex information processing skill in which the readers interact with the text in order to create meaningful discourse’ (akarsu & harputlu 2014:61). tien (2015) posits that extensive reading is essential for the enhancement of readings skills and acquisition of knowledge. therefore, reading is an indispensable skill; it is also fundamentally interrelated to the process of education and to students achieving educational success. sutherland (2009:14) states that because of the lack of skills in students, there has been a need to implement programmes in higher education (he) institutions to bring he to students who otherwise would not have had access to these institutions. these skills include communication, reading, listening, life and numeric skills. a challenge faced by he is that there has been a shift towards a supply-oriented view with a demand for new knowledge and skills (bodendorf & swain 2001). he institutions need to consider this factor when developing their curriculum and ensure they provide education that meets the needs of job markets. this has led to the implementation of programmes that aim to address deficiencies in the skills of students and provide them with the tools for academic success, such as the intermediary programme at the vaal university of technology (vut). according to sutherland (2009:5), the learning area of language literacy and communication comprises the teaching of language, which in turn underscores the skills of reading, listening and observing. the focus of the intermediary programme at vut is two-fold. firstly, it aims to develop skills in students, which they require to perform well in an institution of he and increase their chances of achieving academic success. secondly, to provide students alternative admission to he by giving them the opportunity to increase their academic performance levels, bringing them in line with academic admission requirements to the university (sutherland 2009:14). this study aims to evaluate the students’ attitudes towards the reading module of the language literacy course of the intermediary programme and their perceptions of the benefits in the enhancement of reading skills. it is conducted to answer the research question: do the students who are enrolled in the intermediary programme at vut perceive the reading module as promoting reading skills or wasting time. theoretical framework the activity of reading is demanding for the reader, and in the last 20 years, researchers have investigated the motivations for reading (seitz 2010), which are multidimensional and include the following components: self-efficacy, interest, preference for challenge and social interaction. a central factor affecting reading performance is the attitude of the student. seitz (2010:31) suggests that ‘[r]ecurring failures to succeed and self-concept issues often complicate a student’s ability to learn any of a variety of reading skills’. reading attitude can be altered by rebuilding damaged self-concepts, and the reading module of the intermediary programme at vut focuses on encouraging the student to develop reading skills in an attempt to uplift students’ self-concepts and change their attitudes towards reading. it is important not to underestimate the role of reading in academics and its influence on learning. researchers have highlighted the value of developing reading skills and the benefits of reading, but the studies have moved towards stressing students’ positive attitudes and motivations towards reading (tien 2015). students who have difficulty reading may develop a lifelong aversion towards reading (seitz 2010), and history and experience appear to influence reading attitudes (lukhele 2013). the advantages of reading reading is one of the most important academic tasks for any student. in fact, it can be argued that reading is the essence of all formal education as ‘literacy in academic settings exists within the content of a massive amount of print information’ (grabe 1991:389) and students primarily access this information through reading. literacy is much more than just being able to read or write, it includes being able to make sense of the text and find a purpose in the text. butler (2013:72) states that ‘[o]ne of the critical focuses of students’ under preparedness is their levels of academic literacy (al) in the language of learning at south african universities (mainly english or afrikaans)’. al is more than just reading and writing in the academic context. there is no single all-encompassing definition for al, and this could be because it is difficult to agree upon a single definition when the field of al encompasses so many sub-disciplines ranging from sociolinguistics, text editing, lexicography, writing and language testing (butler 2013). the literature provides generic definitions for al, which many intervention programmes follow, such as weideman (2003) who states that al includes being able to access, process and produce academic literature. literacy programmes should focus on enhancing student understanding of discourse practices within academia and curriculum design for these programmes should focus on developing the abilities of students reading, writing, speaking, listening and research skills (papashane & hlalele 2014). in he institutions, students are exposed to a number of texts and textbooks that require independent reading. students are expected to comprehend what they read in order for them to successfully analyse, evaluate, synthesise and critique on the information from various sources (bharuthram 2012). even though many students will have the ability to decode texts (translating the printed word into a sound) when they reach the tertiary level, they are unable to understand what they have decoded; this means they lack comprehension skills. therefore, the teaching of reading strategies is vital for students to improve their reading comprehension and enhancing their chances of academic success (bharuthram 2012). the ability to read is acknowledged as the most stable and durable of the second-language (l2) modalities (bernhardt 1991), which means that reading plays a vital role in acquiring a l2. south africa has 11 official languages and the majority of universities have opted for english lingua franca classrooms. this usually means that the majority of students have classes in their second or third language. students should at all times be encouraged to read not only prescribed books but also self-selected books that consist of large amounts of meaningful language that will assist in improving their l2. willis, stephens and matthew (1996:8) believe that ‘[r]eading widely is one of the best ways to learn another language’ but this could also include improving the reading skills. one of the key benefits of reading lies in its power to impart new vocabulary to students. this is evident in the numerous studies conducted over the years in schools and universities (pitts, white, & krashen 1989; day, omura & hiramatsu 1991; hulstijn 1992; palani 2012; tien 2015). generally, the studies confirm that learners can and do acquire new word knowledge incidentally through comprehension-focused reading in an l2. in support of this notion, it is safe to assume that by increasing vocabulary knowledge, the level of more accurate spelling and correct grammar utilisation is automatically improved. reading builds knowledge of various kinds (inter alia world knowledge) to use in various forms of writing, and writing merges knowledge in a way that builds schema to read with (bereiter & scardamalia 1987; sternglass 1988; pretorius 2000). the development of good reading habits and skills improve students’ ability to write. in fact, reading within a discipline helps students to write professionally in their field, as carson and leki (1993) posit that scholars of biology should write articles the way biology professors do by reading articles that biology professors have written. reading in a specific field of study will ensure that students become proficient in their subjects. pretorius (2002:189) explains that students with reading problems are caught in a ‘negative cycle of failed reading outcomes and academic underperformances’. this can be avoided if the main objective of the educator is to expand on students’ language skills in order for them to become better communicators in their chosen disciplines. as bamford and day (1997:7) state, ‘until students read in quantity, they will not become fluent readers’. reading and life skills linguists and language educators recognise the four basic literacy skills as listening, speaking, reading and writing (kolawole 2009). these skills are valued as life skills because they enable the people to both receive messages and express themselves. in the present globalised world, where so much depends on the skills of reading and writing, it is essential for reading skills to be developed. a good student requires good reading skills because in order to learn they need to be able to read. pretorius (2000) views reading skills as a ‘powerful learning tool’, and not mastering this skill will lead to the students being hampered in their quest for success. the importance of reading cannot be denied; it is a vital skill for achieving academic success at tertiary-level education (akabuike 2012:247). robatjazi (2008) states that people with different languages and cultures are brought into contact with each other, leading to the development of foreign language education. this globalisation and the challenges presented by the contemporary world lead to a need not only for proficient intercultural interlocutors but also for secondand third-language students to improve on their language skills and reading. however, l2 learners face a number of problems when it comes to reading. reading and l2 learners pretorius (2002:170) believes that the reading situation in south africa has reached a point of crises, and palani (2012) reiterates this by stating that promoting reading habits is essential for the creation of a literate society and the presence of mass media hampers an interest in books, magazines and journals. carter (2010:5) believes the reading problems experienced in south africa could be ascribed to the ‘detrimental effects of the apartheid regime’. many students who are attending first year at university and who are non-native english speakers feel ill at ease when english is the medium of instruction (kannan 2009). in a study of turkish students in the netherlands, droop and verhoeven (2003:78) posit that there is very little attention given to the first language of ethnic minorities and they are ‘totally immersed in a second language (l2) reading curriculum’. a similar situation exists in south african schools where english and afrikaans are the lingua franca of the classroom for the majority of the students’ school years. difficulties with reading comprehension could significantly impact the dropout rate of students in schools and universities. in the usa and europe, there is a higher rate of dropout for l2 learners than for their monolingual first-language counterparts, and a study in 2009 indicated that the united states had a 21% dropout rate for foreign-born students (melby-lervåg & lervåg 2013:409). pretorius (2000) refers to the underperformance of students at all levels in south african schools. the medium of instruction is their l2 and this is a cause for concern. other factors that could contribute to this include disadvantaged students who do not come from sociocultural communities that support reading and a lack of support for reading problems encountered by l2 learners (pretorius 2000). often, a student experiences reading problems at an early age and these problems continue throughout the student’s school career leading to a dislike of reading. this is highlighted as the matthew’s effect where it can be observed that the reading skills of a student who is a slow starter progressively decline and the gap widens between the slow starters and fast starters (stanovich 1986). by the time students reach he, they fall far behind their better reading peers because of a lack of reading skills. university students and reading: reading supports academic achievement there can never be enough emphasis placed on the role and importance of the english reading in the attainment of education through communication abilities, specifically in south african he institutions and the english lingua franca classroom (aina, ogundele & olanipekun 2013:355). he requires students to spend large amounts of time in reading to gain the required information and knowledge from the content of the prescribed reading material. there is a growing call for universities to take note of the importance of reading, to recognise that most learning takes place through reading the written word and to consider realising the need for university-centred reading programmes (pretorius 2000). pretorius (2000:46) opines that even though ‘language proficiency and reading skills both draw on linguistic knowledge and skills, reading develops specific cognitive-linguistic skills that are not necessarily operative in oral forms of discourse’. as reading for the purposes of learning and for the development of knowledge in the academic institution requires students to be able to make links, understand opinions, research and be able apply this to studies, there appears to be a definite correlation between the level of proficiency in the reading ability in english and the academic performance of students (aina et al. 2013). a student who is a good reader will perform better academically than his/her lesser skilled peers. according to pretorius (2000:46), the improvement of reading skills in students will lead to an improvement in the reading levels of the students, leading to better comprehension, understanding and academic achievement. this study takes cognisance that there are immeasurable benefits to reading, specifically academically. there are problems associated with reading skills, and the ones addressed in this research relate to the use of english lingua franca in a he institution where the dominant language in the intermediary classes that were researched indicates that the highest percentage of students are first-language sesotho speakers at 18.55%, followed by isizulu with 15.35%, a number of lesser percentages for other language, and english speakers lagging behind making up a mere 1.28% of the total students. a positive attitude towards reading has been identified as motivation for students to continue reading, and reading has been identified as a tool for academic success. academic success for students should be the foundation of any programme or curriculum development, and this study investigates the impact of the reading module on the students’ attitudes towards reading. this is performed to identify whether there has been a change in the attitudes of students towards reading, their perceptions of the change in reading attitudes and whether they intend to continue reading (see illustration in following paragraph). a reading module leads to positive attitude → increase in reading and improved reading skills → academic success. purpose of the study the purpose of the study was to investigate the perceptions of students, attending the vut intermediary programme, towards the reading module of the programme. this was carried out to determine whether there was a change in their attitudes towards reading. the data were then compared to the results achieved by students for their entrance into the first-year english distance learning (edl) subject to validate the findings. methodology research methodology a literature review on the influence of attitudes towards reading, the advantages of reading, life skills, l2 acquisition and academic achievement was conducted. in addition, both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used to collect data. walliman (2011:73) recommends the examination of both qualitative and quantitative data when humans are being researched. data were collected using a combination of questionnaires from participants, and the results achieved by the students in a placement test for the edlcourse were compared with results of students who had not attended the intermediary programme but were registered directly for the edl course. there is a dearth of research on the perception of the student on the benefits of reading (dreyer & kopper 2004; rimensberger 2014) in an intermediary programme and the current study could contribute to an understanding of the benefits of reading, from the perception of the student, and provide valuable information regarding skills development in he. the intermediary programme at vut continuously addresses problems associated with poor student performance by researching the issues, formulating possible solutions and striving to overcome adversities experienced by the students. the programme aims to: identify academically talented, but under prepared post-secondary domestic and foreign students from educationally and economically disadvantaged communities … develop the skills and resources required to obtain a tertiary qualification necessary to pursue a specific career. (sutherland & brits 2009) the programme is open to all students with a grade 12 national senior certificate or an equivalent qualification and applicants are required to meet the predetermined entrance requirements. the programme is interventionary by nature and provides academic support to prospective students to enable them to meet the admission requirements of the university. one of the problems identified by the programme is that students lack adequate reading skills to achieve academic success, and in addition, there is a lack of positive attitude towards reading. the specific reading module referred to in this study is designed to change the reading attitudes of students by motivating and encouraging them to read, which could lead to the achievement of academic success. students are required to read two novels prescribed by the programme curriculum with the purpose of achieving an in-depth understanding of the novels. research design according to wiid and diggines (2013:54), it is important to implement a well-structured plan in order to ensure that the objectives of a research are addressed. hair, bush and orinau (2008:32) are of the opinion that the objectives of a research study are the factors that serve to guide the researcher on the research design. a self-administered questionnaire comprising both closedand open-ended questions was developed to address the objective of the study and collect data. in addition, data were also collected to compare the results of a placement test for a first-year edl course of students who completed the intermediary course with those of students who did not complete the intermediary course. questionnaire design according to denscombe (2010:157), the design of a questionnaire should be well planned. the questionnaire was designed to identify students’ attitudes and perceptions of reading in the intermediary programme. it contained different sections where participants marked the answers using a 4-point likert-type scale, where 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree and 4 = strongly agree. section a of the questionnaire dealt with biographical details of the participants (four items), section b explored the personal reading habits of participants before attending the intermediary programme at vut (11 items), and section c questioned the participants’ participation in the reading module (11 items). section d delved into the future reading intentions of participants (12 items). lastly, section e required participants to indicate their opinion on a dichotomous scale (1 = yes and 2 = no) on whether they believed the intermediary programme developed their reading skills, and they were then required to follow-up stating why it did or did not play a role (two items). this final open-ended question was designed to provide insight into the opinions of participants regarding the development of reading skills by the intermediary programme. the comments made by the participants were examined for similarities and linked in themes for reporting. procedures the participants were requested to voluntarily stay behind at the end of one of their classes to participate in the study. the researchers handed out the questionnaires to the participants and these questionnaires were handed back to the researchers once completed. a sample size of 565 students was registered for the intermediary programme in various disciplines including information technology, humanities, engineering and management. of the questionnaires that were distributed, 502 questionnaires were returned, of which 33 were deemed unusable because of missing information and 469 were considered suitable for data analysis. ethical considerations ethics in research guide the process of research and refer to the norms or standards (gupta 2011:21). according to walliman (2011:43), there are two important aspects to ethical research issues, namely that of the values of the researcher such as honesty and personal integrity and the way the researcher treats the people involved in the research regarding issues such as anonymity, confidentiality and informed consent. the researchers implemented the following ethical procedures during the data collection process: participation was voluntary confidentiality and anonymity of participants was assured all participants were requested to sign consent forms agreeing to participate in the study participants could withdraw from the study at any time without any repercussions (denscombe 2010:160). data analyses the data were reported using descriptive statistics for analysis, with frequencies and percentages. data were uploaded to the statistical programme for social studies (spss), version 15.0, for windows for analysis. validity and reliability walliman (2011:104) refers to internal and external validity where the generalisation of the results should ‘reflect the situation in the real world’. external validity is the extent to which findings can be generalised to populations or to other settings (walliman 2011:104). the reliability assessment for the study was ascertained by computing the cronbach’s alpha coefficient values, which is known as an internal consistency estimate of the reliability of test scores. according to nunnally (1978), cronbach’s alpha coefficients of less than 0.50 are deemed unacceptable; those between 0.50 and 0.69 are considered adequate; whereas, those above 0.70 are regarded as acceptable in social science enquiry. the standardised cronbach’s alpha values for section b and section d were established at 0.516 and 0.585, respectively, indicating an adequate level of internal consistency amongst the scale items. a question in each of sections b and d needed to be deleted because they had a negative effect on the reliability. the cronbach’s alpha values for section c fell below 0.50 but it was decided to still report on some of the questions in this section, as the results would not have a significant effect on the results of the study. results demographics table 1 provides the demographic profile of the study sample. more male students than female students participated in the study. the highest percentage of participants were over 21 years old (n = 154; 32.8%) followed by 20 years old (n = 144; 30.7%), 19 years old (n = 134; 28.6%), 18 years old (n = 36; 7.7%) and 17 years old (n = 1; 0.2%). table 1: demographic profile of participants. figure 1 indicates the language profiles of the participants. it can be noted that the majority of participants do not have english as their first language. figure 1: language profiles of participants. personal reading habits prior to attending the intermediary programme table 2 indicates that the majority of students (67.6%) strongly agreed that they understood the importance of reading for achievement in academics before attending the intermediary programme, 25.4% agreed, 2.6% disagreed and only 4.3% strongly disagreed. the majority of participants also stated that they understood that developing reading skills would make them better students. table 2: understanding the importance of reading. questions from section b regarding the personal reading habits of participants including the participants’ reading habits from their school attendance rendered the results in table 3. table 3: personal reading habits. it is deduced that the majority of participants, before enrolling in the intermediary programme, considered reading as a hobby, were members of the local or school library and regularly borrowed books, often read for pleasure and read every book prescribed at their high school. only 32.6 agreed to having read more than 10 books, whilst 19.6% strongly agreed, 32.2% disagreed and 15.6% strongly disagreed, and only a small number of students (5.1% agreed and 4.3% strongly agreed) had never read a book before attending the intermediary programme. behaviour of participants during the reading module section c of the questionnaire measured the participants’ behaviour during the reading module of the programme. table 4 sets out the results from the questionnaire of the actions of the students. table 4: participants’ actions regarding reading. it can be observed that the majority of the students read both the novels and only a small percentage did not read both novels. similarly, only a small percentage said they only read one of the novels. regarding their enjoyment of the novels, the majority of the participants agreed that they had enjoyed the novels and only a small percentage disagreed. therefore, it is evident that more participants read the books prescribed in the intermediary programme than those who read their books at school, as depicted in figure 2 and figure 3. figure 2: read every book at school. figure 3: read both books at vaal university of technology (vut). participants’ future intentions section d of the questionnaire was designed to discover whether the reading patterns and skills of participants had in fact been altered since attending the intermediary programme in order to confirm that skills development occurred. the results are indicated in table 5. table 5: future intentions (n = 465). the questions in section d attempted to discover the future intentions of participants regarding reading, in order to establish whether a change in behaviour had occurred. when answering whether they have discovered new genres, the majority agreed on this. as indicated in table 5, the majority of participants agreed or strongly agreed that they would ensure that reading becomes their hobby, understand that good reading skills will improve their academic performance and make them better students, intend to continue reading on a regular basis and want to explore different genres. figure 4 depicts participants who considered reading to be a hobby before attending the intermediary programme, whilst figure 5 depicts the participants who consider reading a hobby since attending the programme. in figure 4, 6.41% strongly disagreed and 17.52% disagreed, whilst in figure 5, 7.46% strong disagreed and 26.4% disagreed. this indicated a change in the behaviour of the participants from before attending the intermediary programme to subsequent to attending the programme. figure 4: participants who considered reading a hobby before attending the intermediary programme. figure 5: participants who consider reading a hobby subsequent to attending the intermediate programme. once the students complete the intermediary programme, they register for first-year courses, one of which is the edl course, which is compulsory for all students. the aims, amongst others, are to assist students in overcoming english language and communication barriers and equip them with writing and communication skills. at the end of the year, one of the prerequisites for completion is a minimum speed of 300 words per minute. after registration, students are required to take a placement test. according to walliman (2011:96), the most reliable representation of a population is through probability sampling techniques and random methods are used to select the sample. the sample should be a reliable representation of the entire population. because of the large number of students who undertook the placement tests for edl (n = 3465), simple random sampling was used to select the results of 40 students who attended the intermediary programme and these were compared with a random sample of 40 students who did not attend the intermediary programme but registered directly for the edl course. the results reflect that the students who completed the intermediary programme did much better than those who did not attend the intermediary programme, as is evident from figure 6 and figure 7. figure 6: placement test results for intermediary programme students. figure 7: placement test results for direct english distance learning (edl) students. when the overall averages of these groups are compared, it is evident that the students who participated in the intermediary programme performed much better (77% mean) than those who did not attend the intermediary programme, but applied directly to the edl programme (66% mean). figure 8 illustrates this comparison. figure 8: comparative results of placement test results for edl. perceptions on the development of reading skills through the intermediary programme section e of the questionnaire was designed to ascertain whether the participants believed that the intermediary programme had developed their reading skills and they were required to answer on a dichotomous scale (1 = yes and 2 = no) followed by the reason for their answer. walliman (2011:71) states that the emotions, feelings, beliefs and judgements, which people have, can only be described in words. the open-ended question in section e was analysed to discover themes and trends in the data. table 6 reflects the results of the question in section e on whether the participants believe that the intermediary programme played a part in developing their reading skills. it can be seen that of the 469 participants, one of the participants declined to answer, 309 participants (84.9%) believed that the intermediary programme developed their reading skills and 70 participants (14.9%) did not believe that there had been a change in their reading skills. table 6: the development of reading skills as perceived by participants. owing to the size of the study, it is not possible to include all the reasons supplied by the participants for their belief in the development of readings skills. however, some of the reasons and emerging themes are included in the next section. improved vocabulary and reading speed and understanding benefits a number of participants indicated that they believed their vocabulary and/or reading speed had increased and that they had gained an understanding of the benefits of reading whilst attending the programme: ‘i have developed a good reading skills and it also improved my vocabulary’. ‘it taught me to use a dictionary regularly’. ‘it does not only improve our reading skill but also teaches us new words and vocabulary’. ‘because for the first time in my life i managed to finish a whole book and learned new words out of the 2 books’. ‘i was slow when it came to reading but after reading every day my speed of reading improved and my vocabulary is expanding’. ‘because it improved my reading skills which means my studying also improved and my marks changed for the better’. general enjoyment was another emerging theme from the study and participants indicated this with the following comments: ‘it helped me cope with the workload so reading was an escape route for me’. ‘by first forcing me to read it gradually introduced me to a state where i wanted to read more’. ‘the language programme “forced” me to read two books, which i really didn’t believe i’d enjoy but found out that reading is fun and enjoyable’. ‘because i used to read only when told to do so by my lecture or teacher, but this days i even read on my own for fun’. ‘i never used to read before, but realised how much i have learned, even when i thought i wouldn’t’. discovering new genres and developing an interest: a surprising number of participants indicated that they had developed an interest in reading because of the programme: ‘because i can now sit and read books in a library’. ‘because i have improved on reading skills and gaining confidence and i enjoyed each and every moment’. ‘i would usually skip chapters of a book to get to know the end of it, but not anymore’. ‘it increased my reading ability, concentration span, improved my vocabulary and i also learned real life lesson’. ‘because having finished the two books in under a month made me realise that finishing a book is possible’. ‘the programme has helped me a lot because reading is the key to success for me to succeed i must read’. these comments generally indicate that the programme fostered a change in the attitude towards reading of many students and that they were motivated to continue reading in the future. the participants who disagreed with whether the intermediary language programme developed their reading skills stated that they either did not fully participate in the programme or believed that their skills did not need improvement, as indicated by the following comments: did not participate fully in the programme: ‘i personally did not do much reading but i think it helped some people’. ‘i was taught how to read from a young age. reading at varsity was a waste of time’. believed skills did not need improvement: ‘because i’ve been reading books from high school and i was always motivated to read more. it is not anything new that i’ve been taught before’. ‘i am a fluent reader’. ‘because before i joined this programme i was always a good reader’. discussion through the research article, the results indicate that of the 469 participants in this study, the majority (84.9%) perceived there had been a change in their reading skills and only a small number (14.9%) believed that there had not been a change in their reading skills. furthermore, many participants plan to make reading their hobby (75.9%) and when asked if they understand that good reading skills will improve their academic performance and make them better students, 96.1% agreed, whilst only 6.4% disagreed. these figures are a clear indication of the substantial benefits from the programme, with students developing an enjoyment and enthusiasm about the reading. this leads to an improved attitude in students towards reading and a change in reading behaviour. lewin (2005) posits that the ability to read complex material is one of the major predictors of success in he. texts at tertiary level are much more complex and require the utilisation of sophisticated reading strategies. moreover, l2 learners have added problems. weak reading levels have serious implications on students’ academic performance self-esteem and their ability to follow written instructions. as stated by bamford and day (1997:7) in order to become good readers, students need to read large quantities of material. the aim of the intermediary programme is to encourage and promote reading in learners and to develop the skills of students that are required to achieve success in a tertiary institution; in doing so, students are provided with the valuable resources and knowledge to excel in their chosen disciplines. conclusions, recommendations and limitations a limitation to the study is that within a diverse south african context the results from this study cannot be generalised to other universities, as there may be immense differences such as socio-economic status and cultural demographics of students. the male to female ratio in this study was fairly balanced but this study did not examine the differences between male and female perceptions or attitudes towards reading; this could be investigated further. it is also recommended that future studies include a benchmark test before the commencement of the programme and a test after completion of the programme. this would be beneficial for future studies because the statistical evidence of a before and after test could be used to compare participants’ perceptions about actual achievements. the researchers recommend the continuation of the reading module in the intermediary programme at the vut. this recommendation is supported by the positive feedback received from the students and motivated by a review of reading research (pretorius 2000; lewin 2005) which indicates that students benefit from the explicit teaching of reading. an additional factor is the comparison of the data obtained from the placement tests for the edl course, which indicates that students who completed the intermediary programme performed better than the students who did not attend the programme. it is hoped that the research article will serve as a catalyst for institutions to seriously consider initiating similar programmes (pretorius 2002) or recognise the value of reading programmes and the benefits gained by students. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions l.s. and e.s. contributed equally to the writing of this article. references abramson, j.e., 2004, ‘reading: essential life skills in 21st century’, u.s, mayor newspaper, 13 september, 2004, viewed 05 january 2015, from http//www.usmayors.ord/usmayornewspaper/documents/09.13.04/abramson.asp aina, j.k., ogundele, a.g. & olanipekun, s.s., 2013, ‘students’ proficiency in english language relationship with academic performance in science and technical education’, american journal of educational research 1(9), 355–358. akabuike, i.g., 2012, ‘reading habits of undergraduates and their academic performances: issues and perspectives’, african 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marketing research, excel books, new delhi. hair, j.f., jr., bush, r. & orinau, d., 2008, marketing research, 2nd edn., mcgraw-hill, new york. hulstijn, j.h., 1992, ‘retention of inferred and given word meanings: experiments in incidental vocabulary learning’, in p.j. arnaud & h. bejoint (eds.), vocabulary and applied linguistics, pp. 113–124, macmillan, london. kannan, r., 2009, ‘difficulties in learning english as a second language’, esp world 5(26), 8, viewed 8 january 2015, from http://wwwl.esp-world.info/articles26/original/difficulties%20in%20learning%20english%20as%20a%20second%20language.pdf kolawole, c.o.o., 2009, ‘the state of reading in selected secondary schools in oyo state, nigeria’, african research review 3(1), 388–398. lewin, t., 2005, ‘many going to college aren’t ready, report finds’, new york times, viewed 19 january 2015, from http://query.nytimes.com/ lukhele, b.b.s., 2013, ‘exploring relationships between reading attitudes, reading ability and academic 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weideman, a.j., 2003, academic literacy: prepare to learn, van schaik, pretoria. wiid, j. & diggines, c., 2013, marketing research, 2nd edn., juta, cape town. willis, j., stephens, e. & matthew, k., 1996, technology, reading and language arts, allyn & bacon, boston. entire issue.pdf attitudes of second language students towards self-editing their own written texts daniel kasule university of botswana violet b. lunga university of botswana abstract: recognizing students’ deliberate e!orts to minimize errors in their written texts is valuable in seeing them as responsible active agents in text creation. "is paper reports on a brief survey of the attitudes towards self-editing of seventy university students using a questionnaire and class discussion. "e context of the study is characterized by its emphasis on evaluating the #nished written product. findings show that students appreciate the role of self-editing in minimizing errors in their texts and that it helps in eventually producing well-written texts. conceptualizing writing as discourse and therefore as social practice leads to an understanding of writers as socially-situated actors; repositions the student writer as an active agent in text creation; and is central to student-centred pedagogy. we recommend the recognition of self-editing as a vital element in the writing process and that additional error detection mechanisms namely peers, the lecturer, and the computer, increase student autonomy. introduction one way of recognizing students’ deliberate e!orts to minimize errors in their academic writing is to understand their attitudes towards self-editing. while we agree that “no learner intentionally writes strings of incoherent text” (yates and kenkel 2002: 43), we suspected that an attitudinal problem existed amongst our students, because of the apparent indi!erence exhibited in the written texts that they submitted on a writing support course we teach. "is rendered their texts very tedious to read. recurrent errors in our students’ work convinced us that students do not self-edit their texts, do not appreciate its value, and deliberately wait for the lecturer to correct their errors for them. in practical terms “self-editing” is the writer’s ability to independently or otherwise identify and act on textual inaccuracies and loss of clarity in content, organization and mechanics. charles (cited in cresswell, 2000: 235) proposed a “self-monitoring” technique where “students write marginal annotations rw& article 62 reading and writing about problems in their evolving compositions, to which the teacher responds”. while we did not dismiss the potential of self-monitoring for improving students’ #nal dra$s, we questioned the second language (l2) writer’s ability to act on errors identi#ed via self-editing and thought that research was required, so that we could better understand the extent to which student writers take responsibility for textual accuracy, and are able to do so. a system of assessment that focuses only on the #nal written product, as is the case at our university, provides unclear feedback on what students are capable of doing as writers. while students might be expected to be able to improve their written texts by way of acting on the lecturers’ feedback, the system requires students to submit, not multiple dra$s, but only one #nal dra$ of the essay. in this way, the formative role of teacher feedback (glover and brown, 2006) seems non-existent. "e expectation of markers is that that single submission is as error-free as possible; and that over the years of their education, students have received su%cient feedback on earlier submissions to have learnt what constitutes correctness, and can therefore produce error-free texts. in this paper, we hypothesize that in a largely product-focused writing context such as ours, students hold speci#c attitudes on self-editing that may detract from the quality of their writing, even though they might want to minimize errors that might occur in their work. "is generated the research question: what are students’ attitudes to self-editing? why self-editing is important we regard self-editing as central to increasing students’ facility in meeting their lecturers’ expectations. only the writer, via dra$ing and redra$ing, reviewing (by self or peers), re-casting, and repeated self-editing, can respond to the entirety of textual detail, ranging from punctuation to word appropriateness to sentence length, cohesiveness, viewpoint, force of argument, pacing, and so on. we also regard self-editing as extremely important in the era of electronic communication because clicking “send” or “print” before attending to possible errors in form, content, and organization can be a source of embarassment for writers or annoyance for their readers. "e promoting of self-editing practices therefore has lasting value for today’s university student. more importantly, enhancing student self-editing capacity eliminates a culture of over-dependency on teachers, enabling the teacher to assume the role of a facilitator, co-learner or collaborator (atkinson, 2003) during the writing process. it may also be important in reducing the teachers’ workload, so that they can focus on providing feedback that is relevant to students’ future work. it is also an important resource for learner-centred pedagogy (vollmer, 2006) 63daniel kasule and violet b. lunga which places the student as an active agent in knowledge creation. using our experience as teachers of a university writing course, we explore students’ attitudes towards self-editing and identify possible reasons for these attitudes before making our recommendations. !eoretical framework when krashen (1985) proposed his monitor hypothesis to explain how l2 users apply their learnt knowledge of l2 rules to monitor (self-edit) their texts, he was of the view that self-editing was sometimes bad practice because of the resultant hesitant speech of l2 users. in contrast, however, we regard self-editing as a vital competency for l2 users in writing, especially, since the academic essay has become an entrenched assessment tool within higher education and must therefore be carefully cra$ed to optimise chances of success in assessment exercises. increasingly, studies in the #eld of l2 writing, especially research on revision and text quality, have come to view the writer as a responsible and active participant in the writing process. focusing on what the student knows about communication and language, yates and kenkel (2002) adopt a learner interlanguage perspective on error correction, which they use to critique error correction procedures in the literature. "ey propose that “learners have principles which, if understood by the writing teacher, provide insights which are more useful than a target deviation perspective” (yates and kenkel, 2002: 31). cresswell (2000) studied learner autonomy resulting from training in using the self-monitoring technique whereby students indicate their doubts by annotating their texts so that the lecturer can give feedback on these doubts and the essay itself. results showed that learners appreciated the degree of independence gained and showed willingness to continue using the technique (cresswell, 2000: 243). similarly, xiang (2004: 245) found self-monitoring particularly bene#cial for high-achievers, although this applied only to the organizational aspect of their compositions. both these #ndings show that students are not passive recipients of feedback but can be active participants in the construction and meaning of that feedback (xiang 2004: 244). charles (1990: 292) also proposed the self-monitoring technique and claimed that the technique “encourages students to look critically and analytically at their writing and to place themselves in the position of the readers”. "e above studies questioned the e!ectiveness of established ways of giving feedback i.e. from the teacher to the student. research in this area of l2 writing (storch 2005, brender 2002, sugita 2006, truscott 1999, ferris 1996, carson and nelson 1996) is on whether and how teachers should correct errors in 64 reading and writing students’ writing, whether teacher feedback improves students’ writing pro#ciency, or whether peer-editing helps. currently, debate rages around the question whether or not teacher’s error feedback makes a di!erence. over the past ten years the debate has featured truscott against ferris. "e former argues that error feedback in l2 writing is counter-productive as it detrimentally a!ects learners’ writing development and that it has not improved students’ writing (truscott 1999); while the latter argues that error feedback can improve language accuracy over a period of time (ferris 1996). williams (2003) suggested using individual conferencing as one way to explain the teacher’s feedback to each student but this strategy is less feasible in large-class settings, such as ours. "e literature reviewed by glover and brown (2006) claimed that in large classes the frequency and quantity of teacher feedback is reduced; consequently, the formative value of such feedback was lacking; and students argued that because written assignments were topic-focused, feedback lacked relevance to future assignments. under these di%culties surrounding the e!ectiveness of feedback, additional techniques such as self-editing are needed. students’ self-editing attitudes have, however, received relatively little attention in l2 research. polio, fleck, and leder (1998) studied esl students’ editing for sentence level errors and francis (2002) investigated the editing and correction strategies of much younger bilingual children. in both studies learners showed remarkable attentiveness with regard to their texts. additionally, there are several writing manuals available that mention self-editing and the internet o!ers access to numerous checklists for self-editing purposes. however, we still do not know clearly why errors that would seem to be author-correctable continue to end up in students’ texts. "e purpose of this paper therefore is to ascertain students’ attitudes that may in*uence their ability to self-edit their written texts. once identi#ed, these attitudes may provide insights for instructional purposes for teachers of academic writing. !e subjects two out of the #ve classes taking an optional post-year one course called ‘advanced writing skills’ responded to a questionnaire and took part in the class discussion therea$er. (both these activities were intended as consciousness-raisers for a self-editing activity that followed but is not reported here). "e course is housed in a ‘study skills’ unit for student academic support programmes at our university, and is underpinned by behavioral psychological approaches characterized by genre writing drills. 65daniel kasule and violet b. lunga altogether there were seventy students (23 males and 47 females) from seven di!erent faculties as follows: the faculty of social sciences (36), humanities (12), education (8), science (7), health sciences (4), business (2), and engineering (1). "ese #gures show the uneven popularity of the advanced writing skills course across faculties and disciplines, which can be attributed to the relative importance that the faculties of social sciences, humanities, and education attach to essay writing, as reported by the students. "e sample included forty-two second-year students, twenty-three third-years, and #ve fourth-years. respondents’ ages varied widely: #$y-two respondents were below twenty-#ve indicating that they le$ senior secondary school less than #ve years ago, which indicates that their familiarity with academic writing was more recent than the few who were over thirty. "ey were also a very complex multilingual group whose home languages included: setswana (37 respondents), kalanga (3), sebirwa (3), hindi (1), ndebele (1), setswapong (1) and herero (1). some spoke a combination of two or more home languages, either english and setswana (14); or kalanga and setswana (6); or english and sekgalagadi (2); or setswana, afrikaans and herero (1). despite this home language diversity, the sample shared similar school experiences of using english as the medium of instruction. methodology using, #rst, a questionnaire and then a class discussion, the study explored university students’ self-editing attitudes in order to see whether students thought that self-editing improves textual quality. "e three-item open-ended questionnaire, initially piloted with a di!erent group of students taking the advanced writing skills course, introduced students to the idea that writers must remain consciously in control of the writing and editing process (cresswell, 2000:237) so as to minimize the errors that slip into the #nal dra$. again, taking hints from cresswell (2000), the class discussion was based on students’ memories of writing experiences. findings "e #rst item on the questionnaire was: “do you think writers are able to selfedit their work themselves?” it sought respondents’ perception of writers as autonomous individuals and as members of a writing community capable of self-editing and acting on the textual errors they spotted. all their responses communicated the attitude that self-editing is di%cult, ine!ective and complex. in the class discussion, they also expressed the view that they had not attained the status of ‘writer’, so as to be able to overcome these di%culties. (indeed many self-editing online manuals convey a similar view.) "ree such 66 reading and writing responses expressed the confounding nature of self-editing as follows: “yes, writers are able to self-edit their work but it is quite di%cult because we tend to believe that we did everything correctly, thus defending our work”; and “because it is your work, you will understand it your own way, and some mistakes you will not identify”; and “they [writers] can [self-edit] and maybe not, because sometimes when you think you are reading what is written, in fact you are saying what you thought you were writing”. we further sought to know respondents’ thoughts regarding the importance of self-editing by asking the question: “what in your opinion is the importance of self-editing to the text writer?” respondents agreed that self-editing was an important part of writing because: “you [the writer] are the one who knows what you want to say and it will be di%cult for another person who does not know what you want to say to do that for you”; “work with lots of mistakes turns o! readers”; “i have realized how much i make mistakes when writing a$er i had my exercise marked”; “bumping into someone’s editing mistakes is irritating”. one respondent lamented the omission of self-editing activities in early education: “it is a bit di%cult for most to grasp this concept [self-editing] because from elementary school we were taught in such a way that the teacher has to be the identi#er of mistakes instead of us communicating through our writing”. another suggested that “time should be made for self-editing in exams and tests like probably a$er the test duration has lapsed”; while yet another suggested “maybe we can write our academic papers via a computer as it easily picks up errors”. we sought to see if students ever thought of alternative assistance with their dra$s in the form of peer editing, by asking the question: “do you ever ask a friend to edit your work before you submit it?”. almost half (34 out of 70) the respondents said they did. while they saw the value in peer editing, many saw it as merely a way to: “see if i have any mistakes”; “#nd each and every mistake’; “see mistakes i overlooked”; “be corrected by somebody”; “identify errors you the writer cannot see”; and “correct construction of words and spelling”. one respondent wanted to “ensure that the work is readable”. evidently, peer-editors mainly focus on the mechanics, and not on content and organization of ideas. however, this help was not sought by many because, as several respondents put it, “there was no time to show your work to a friend”. "e thirty-six respondents who said “no” to peer-editing gave reasons that indicated that they doubted if their peers were any better skilled than they were themselves. peer-editing was also viewed with suspicion re*ecting the competitiveness students attach to texts submitted for assessment and for that reason they were worried that peer-editing might result in “plagiarizing my points”; or “copying from me to improve [their] work and get higher marks”; 67daniel kasule and violet b. lunga or even “friends making fun of your mistakes”; or worse still “missing submission deadlines”. as expected, students’ attitudes to self-editing are divided. on their ability to self-edit, they are unanimous that self-editing is complex, but that despite its complexity, it is important for the writer. however, on the value of asking a friend to assist in the editing, some students say that friends are helpful while others view that help with suspicion. "e hypothesis of the study is therefore con#rmed: that in a largely product-focused writing context such as ours, students’ attitudes towards self-editing are not helping the quality of their writing, even though these students would want to take full responsibility to minimize the errors that occur in their work. discussion of "ndings increasingly, studies in the #eld of l2 writing, especially research on revision, have come to view the writer as a responsible and active participant in the writing process (charles 1990, cresswell 2000, xiang 2004). however, as writers, students do not usually position themselves as co-researchers or as creators of new knowledge (mcintosh, 2001), a situation con#rmed by their responses to the questionnaire. responses also implied a strong need to minimize the sense of competition in the learning process. "is is because developing academic writing skills in l2 can be theorized as a process of apprenticeship, where learning is viewed as a process of social participation rather than simply as acquisition of knowledge. "e teacher’s role, too, di!ers from that of a disseminator of knowledge. within such a learning approach to knowledge acquisition, teacher and/or peer feedback may be viewed as part of the process of apprenticing students into legitimate participation. when student writers position themselves as communicators in a discourse community (consisting of their peers, their lecturer, and themselves), they become their own #rst readers of the texts they produce. however, evidence from the questionnaire and class discussion showed that mainly because writing tasks are competitively understood by students, audience is perceived as either assessors (their lecturer) or plagiarizers (their peers). in the class discussion, students argued that feedback from their faculty lecturers was emphatic around correct use of the conventions of linguistic and textual features. "is reinforces students’ view of self-editing as a complex process shrouded in uncertainties. students also rightly perceive a model of correctness to exist somewhere; a view advanced by the genre approach to academic literacy. unfortunately, that ideal model seemed to remain obscure to them, either because their faculty lecturers do not model the genres for 68 reading and writing them, or the models are not made accessible to students; and also because such ideal models (or “genres”) fail to produce autonomous writers because of an over-emphasis on the technical features of genres, rather than on their expressive resources. additionally, the writing tasks are for purpose of compiling continuous assessment scores, and less because students need to practice and develop their discipline-based writing facility. "us, the function of academic writing in the di!erent faculties is seen to be mainly that of an evaluative tool that determines pass or failure; a view perpetuated by the absence of a real audience beyond the lecturer who chose the topic(s) and by the requirement to submit, not multiple dra$s, but only one #nal product of the essay (wright, 2006:90). as a result, students’ attitudes to their writing tended to imply a process over which they had little control. with regard to involving peers in editing one’s work, one respondent indicated a reluctance to be critiqued by a friend because “friends may not want to disappoint you”. "is comment may be attributed to the tswana cultural philosophy of botho which means compassion and caring. in the students’ view, friends are expected to show their “goodness” in assessing what a friend has written; thus one respondent argued that, out of modesty, friends may not do a thorough job of editing because “they don’t want to disappoint you”, in case they are seen as bad or unsupportive friends. carson and nelson (1996) reported similar results among chinese learners which they attributed to the asian collectivist culture, saying that more successful peer interactions come from students who share a common language and cultural expectations than from students in heterogeneous cultural groupings. "e same study identi#ed additional cultural factors that underlie a reluctance to involve peers. one of these factors is “mutual status inequality” which was exempli#ed in the current study by one respondent who felt much belittled by peer-editing saying, “someone who is not my lecturer reading my work!!! i feel as though they judge me”. "e other factor is “trustworthiness of peers’ language pro#ciency”. for instance one respondent dismissed her peers’ linguistic pro#ciency as “most of their [peers] english is not very good… almost useless to have them do it [peer-edit]”. "ese comments indicate a reluctance to accept guidance that comes from elsewhere other than from the lecturer, a problem attributable to classroom culture and power, where the teacher is perceived as the only source of knowledge. such teacher-fronted perceptions of learning to write are not very helpful in large classes. for instance, at our university, semesterization reduced contact time per week for the advanced writing course from three to two hours, and due to heavy marking loads, student’s work is returned long a$er submission but without any direct contact with the student. o$en students do not even collect the marked scripts. "ose who do are only curious to see their score but make very little use of the feedback. 69daniel kasule and violet b. lunga earlier studies on revision cited in cresswell (2000:236) found that students tended to edit for grammar at the expense of other textual elements such as logic, relevance, and appropriateness of content. similar results are evident in the respondents’ comments, where editing is only associated with their overemphasis on local, surface-level components and ignorance of global structures of texts. in the class discussion there were suggestions that since the computer can edit their work for them, there was little need to worry about errors. however, this is only partly true. for instance, with regard to essay content, the computer cannot supply the description, argumentation, thesis statement, focus, or di!erentiate factual and experiential information. "e writer must also deal with the logical organization of ideas and arguments, the e!ectiveness of the introduction and conclusion, and the sequencing of ideas in order of importance. "us the computer can only be a supplement to detecting textual inaccuracies. more importantly, when the peer’s primary concern is “to see if i have any mistakes” or “to #nd each and every mistake”, the attitude conveyed is that the original purpose of academic writing is not a genuine concern to understand something. instead it is an opportunity for the reader to judge the degree of adherence or divergence to the writing conventions; and for the writer to display awareness of such textual features and; and that the form rather than the message is at the centre of writing. "is view was further con#rmed in the class discussion: among the main areas of writing mentioned by students during the discussion as requiring improvement were those relating to mechanics (referencing, grammar, punctuation, and spelling) and organization (sequencing of ideas, cohesion and coherence). during the class discussion the students also revealed that, based on the feedback they were getting on their assignments, their faculty lecturers perceived the advanced writing skills course as essentially remedial and that taking the course would enable them to write better. such a de#cit view of the students who take the course has implications which might be apparent in their written scripts in the advanced writing skills course. vollmer (2002) argues that a de#cit perspective “sees them [l2 writers] as developmentally weak and their texts as riddled with errors”. for their part the students said they found writing in english easy although they admitted that they needed help. linking these statements to their responses to the questionnaire items, it is possible to suggest that greater autonomy via self-editing skills could enhance students’ textual control better. because these respondents did not position themselves as purposeful communicators, they o$en failed in their attempt to communicate meaning to their readers, probably as a result of the doubts they hold about their capabilities to do so. such doubts are the result of recurrent disappointments from earlier assessed work. according to garcia-sanchez and de caso-fuertes (2005:273) a long history of failure in*uences task perseverance, the level of e!ort, and the degree of success achieved among other things. 70 reading and writing on the basis of the attitudes to self-editing ascertained in this brief study, a strong case can be made regarding the teaching of writing conventions to l2 writers. from an l1 perspective, mcintosh (2001) regarded writing conventions as domesticating and limiting because they discourage subjectivity. however, the important question for l2 writing instruction is “what bene#t do students get, as writers, from a genre approach to literacy”? "e textual inaccuracies in mechanics, organization, and content show that the learning of academic writing conventions is still needed by l2 writers if their sense of being in control is to be realized. omitting the teaching of writing conventions marginalizes students within academia and relegates them to the back row of academic literacy. we are convinced that self-editing, initiated by way of direct instruction, requires a good or growing command of the conventions of writing. without conscious engagement with and exposure to the conventions, students are at risk of failing and of being ever-subject to their lecturers’ corrections, rather than developing their own facility. recommendations ideally, a genre approach to writing suggests that students acquaint themselves with actual examples of a variety of textual types. in this way they get to recognize the di!erent linguistic and textual features. when this is followed by learner training in self-editing, students’ texts have a basis of correctness to follow. learners also need to be alerted to the expectations of the target audience. additional error-detection mechanisms such as peers, the lecturer, and the computer promote a sense of discourse community within which meaning contained in the written text is constructed. because the computer provides impersonal feedback on the mechanics (spelling, punctuation, and grammar) of writing, it protects the l2 writer against embarrassment and feelings of humiliation over the errors committed. it also saves the writers some e!ort, enabling them to focus beyond grammar and spelling on more global textual concerns such as logic, cohesion, word appropriateness, and overall textual organization. future research analyses in this brief survey of student attitudes to self-editing did not factor in the full range of variables involved. for example, it would be interesting for writing instruction to determine how age, gender, home language, and course and level of university study of the respondent impact on the attitudes to self-editing. "ere is also a need to investigate the impact on self-editing of contextual realities, such as large class sizes which reinforce classroom organizational practices that result in product-focused (rather than process-focused) 71daniel kasule and violet b. lunga writing and assessment practices. due to the large number of learners involved, heavy marking loads are a constant burden for the lecturer. hence, the intervening teacher feedback on the dra$s and revisions are o$en impossible to give. under these conditions, students’ actual self-editing practices need to be documented and developed. "e documenting of actual practices serves as indicators of how students are exhibiting control of the text they produce. conclusion overall the study has shown that although l2 writers in the research sample see self-editing as complex, they value it in reducing textual inaccuracies. although a larger study sample would have provided more generalizable results, the #ndings of this brief attitudinal study contribute to the debate over how e!ectiveness within l2 writing can be developed: that, despite students’ attitude that self-editing is complex, self-editing is a vital skill for improving textual quality; and writing instruction that nurtures its development is bene#cial for purposes of developing autonomous l2 writers. references atkinson, d. 2003. l2 writing in the post-process era: introduction. journal of second language writing 12(1): 3-15. brender, a.s. 2002. "e e!ectiveness of teaching articles to esl students in writing classes using consciousness-raising methods. dissertation abstracts international, 63(1): 59a. carson, j. g., and nelson, g. l. 1996. chinese students’ perceptions of esl peer response group interaction. journal of second language writing, 5(1): 1-19. charles, m. 1990. responding to problems in written english using a student self-monitoring technique. elt journal 44(4): 286 – 293. cresswell, a. 2000. self-monitoring in student writing: developing learner responsibility. elt journal 54(3): 235 – 244. ferris, d.r. 1996. "e case for grammar correction in l2 writing classes: a response to truscott. journal of second language writing, 8: 1-10. francis, n. 2002. literacy, second language learning and the development of metalinguistic awareness: a study of bilingual children’s perceptions of focus on form. linguistics and education 13(3): 373 – 404. halasek, k. 1999. a pedagogy of possibility: bakhtinian perspectives on composition studies. southern illinois university press, carbondale, illinois. garcia-sanchez, j.n and de caso-fuertes, a.n. 2005. comparison of the e!ects on writing attitudes and writing self-e%cacy of three di!erent training programs in students with learning disabilities. international journal of educational research 43(4-5): 272-289. glover, c. and brown, e. 2006. written feedback for students: too much, too detailed or too incomprehensible to be e!ective? downloaded in november 2009 from http://www. bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/journal/vol7/beej-7-3.pdf 72 reading and writing gray, r. 2004. grammar correction in esl/efl writing classes may not be e!ective. !e internet tesl journal, 10(11). downloaded in may 2005 from, http://iteslj.org/ krashen, s.d. 1985. !e input hypothesis: issues and implications. london: longman. mcintosh, s. 2001. a critical writing pedagogy: who bene#ts? queensland journal of educational research, 17(2): 152-163. nelson, g. and carson, j. 2006. “cultural issues in peer response: revisiting ‘culture’.” in feedback in second language writing: contexts and issues, k. hyland and f. hyland (eds). new york: cambridge university press, 42-59. polio, c., fleck, c. and leder, n. 1998. “if i only had more time:” esl learners’ changes in linguistic accuracy on essay revisions. journal of second language writing, 7(1): 43 – 68. storch, n. 2005. collaborative writing: product, process, and students’ re*ections. journal of second language writing, 14(3): 153-173. sugita, y. 2006. "e impact of teachers’ comment types on students’ revision. elt journal, 60(1): 34 – 41. truscott, j. 1999. "e case for “the case for grammar correction in l2 writing classes”: a response to ferris. journal of second language writing, 8: 111-122. vollmer, g. 2006. sociocultural perspectives on second language writing. eric/cll news bulletin 25(2): 1-2. williams, j.g. 2003. providing feedback on esl students’ written assignments. !e internet tesl journal vol. ix (10) downloaded in september 2009 from http://iteslj.org/ techniques/williams-feedback.html wright, j. 2006. re*ections on process writing. journal for language teaching 40(2): 88-109. xiang, w. 2004. encouraging self-monitoring in writing by chinese students. elt journal 58(3):238 – 246. yates, r. and kenkel, j. 2002. responding to sentence-level errors in writing. journal of second language writing, 11, 29-47. youngju, h. 2004. "e e!ects of teacher’s feedback on international students’ selfcorrection abilities. m.a. thesis, bringham young university. acknowledgements we would like to acknowledge the students taking the advanced writing skills course. it was their e!orts to become e!ective writers that led to this article. entire issue.pdf �e family literacy project: sharing the pleasure of early literacy snoeks desmond family literacy project abstract: !e family literacy project works with women in rural kwazulu-natal to help them improve their levels of literacy and provides encouragement as they support the literacy development of their children. !ese women have regularly visited neighbouring families to read to and play with children and discuss early childhood development and relevant health messages with adults. in addition community libraries and book boxes provide books for these under resourced areas. !e "ndings of an independent evaluation are used to highlight aspects of the project. background !e family literacy project1 (flp) is a small non government organization working in sites within the southern drakensberg area of kwazulu-natal. !is is a world heritage site, with spectacular scenery and many tourist attractions but daily life is di#cult for the most of people who live there. according to the 2005 kwazulu-natal municipal portfolio, 17% of the population in this area had no schooling and 41% are unemployed. !e area is very under-resourced with the majority of homes having no access to electricity or adequate sanitation. !e family literacy project was initiated in march 2000 as an attempt to improve literacy development in young children in this area and others across south africa. !e low level of literacy development in young children was one of the "ndings of the research into the national early childhood development pilot project that showed that despite three years of support to pre-school teachers the literacy skills of children had not improved. findings of particular concern to me were that there was a decline in the early literacy and early numeracy assessment results over the three-year period for the grade 1 and grade r classes, and that 1 for recent evaluations of the project and contact details of current flp director: www. familyliteracyproject.co.za rw& report 74 reading and writing only a quarter of community-based sites are o$ering ‘high’ quality education (khulisa management services, 2000: iii). one of the recommendations made by the research team was that “grade r quality needs to be improved”. in particular, the team felt that the “low early literacy and somewhat higher early numeracy assessment results show that educators are not spending enough time on literacy and numeracy tasks and, even more importantly, have not mastered the methodologies for passing these skills on to the learners” (khulisa management services 2000: iii). !e team made a number of recommendations on how to improve the quality of grade r service, one of which was that more books and educational equipment should be provided in the classrooms. !e report stated that “the presence of accessible books is highly correlated with improved early literacy assessment results” (khulisa management services, 2000: viii). as a senior member of the research team, i pre-tested the assessment instrument, was in charge of dra&ing the interview instruments, trained the "eldworkers, conducted "eldwork and assisted in the report-writing. i was concerned that by the end of the three-year pilot project, there had not been a more signi"cant improvement in the early literacy assessment scores (desmond, 2001: 2-3). !e family literacy project was established in an attempt to "nd a di$erent way to support the early literacy development of young children. !e approach selected was to support parents in their role as the "rst and most important educators of children. !ere are di$erent expressions of family literacy and the approach of the flp is in line with the following de"nition by the national literacy trust that “family literacy (is) any programme or initiative that aims to work through parents to improve the reading and writing of their children, as well as those that have the improvement of the parent’s literacy as an aim” (national literacy trust, undated). implementing the project during the "rst year of the project, monthly workshops were held for parents and other caregivers of the children attending the nearby pre-school or crèche in "ve sites in kwazulu-natal. one of the questions parents were asked was what they thought children should learn at pre-school. !e answers included the wish for their children to learn respect, to learn to speak zulu well, to be creative, to say rhymes and to write or at least know how to hold a pen. when asked how they could help prepare their children for pre-school or primary 75snoeks desmond school, the adults said they did not think that they could do very much, especially as many of them could not read or write well, or even at all. !is need to build parental con"dence guided the design of the workshops throughout that year. !e understanding that parents are the ‘"rst’ teachers of their own children is one widely held in the early childhood development sector but one which is o&en not put into practice. instead, pre-schools and crèches become seen as the places where children learn. !e flp workshops centred on how early literacy development starts at birth and how parents can help their young children. !e role of the parent at this stage does not require that they be literate as the interactions with the baby will be through spoken language. parents can talk and listen to their children, they can provide an environment rich in language that lays the foundation for early literacy development, without their being able to read or write a word (desmond, 2007). gradually, in that "rst year, parents’ con"dence developed as they realised that through everyday tasks they could help prepare their children to learn to read: exposure to written material is critical to preschool children for their literacy development but while there are one million children living in households with no literate adults, we have to look at other ways of providing developmental support. we should be encouraging everyday opportunities in the home to be used to link words to activities, events, people and objects and clarifying the link between them in the present as well as in the future and the past (richter, 2006). by talking to a child as they went to the river to fetch water and discussing this when they reached home, parents helped develop skills of sequencing, recall, repetition and improved vocabulary. when travelling to the village by taxi they pointed out signs and discussed advertisements. !ey praised their children for bringing all the cattle home safely and for being able to describe the di$erent markings. !ey made links between events and memories of previous events experienced by the children. !ey pointed out colours, shapes and sizes around the home. !e activities encouraged by the flp gave life to the underlying assumption that parent-child conversations have a signi"cant impact on a child’s developing oral language skills (dockrell et al., 2004). by the end of that "rst year of workshops, the women requested help with their own literacy development. !ey selected women in their community and the family literacy project provided training in the participatory re+ect approach, adult literacy and early literacy. !e parents were attracted to the area of literacy development through their interest in helping their own 76 reading and writing children. building on this interest the project then had to meet the expressed needs of the parents and a long-term group has emerged. over the years others have joined and some have le& but many of the original members are still attending as they have moved from basic literacy to learning english as an additional language. !e approach that was developed by the flp is based on the following diagram which shows how it is participatory, has an action point, and how teaching on early literacy support is integrated with adult literacy. !e following provides an explanation of the approach: group sessions for adults are held at least twice a week during school terms. seven or eight sessions form a unit of study and each unit addresses an issue of interest to group members. topics have 77snoeks desmond included child protection, children’s rights and responsibilities, hiv/aids, environment, journey to literacy, caring for our money and sanitation. !e re+ect methodology which promotes participation, discussion and action by group members underpins all sessions. group sessions include information gained from the participants as well as that introduced by the facilitator. literacy learning is linked to the discussion. in every unit, i.e., once every seven or eight sessions, there is a session that focuses on children’s development. !ese sessions are linked to the unit topic and provide a time for discussion of how parents can help develop particular skills in their children. running through all the group sessions is the belief that reading together as a family is important. !e project slogan masifunde njengomndeni translates as ‘families reading together’ and advice is given to parents on how to extend conversations with their children, how to build vocabulary and how to read books with their children in a way that encourages questioning, discussion and interest. reading is always promoted as a way to enjoy time with children and a way of relaxing with one another (desmond, 2004: 7-8). comment by flp facilitator: !is is my mother and my brother’s child. !ey are using nolwazi’s english book from school. nolwazi is not good in english so she asks my mother to read to her. she is 10 years old – an only child. she had no teacher for 6 months in her class at inhlanhleni and then they go to a teacher who was always absent. her spelling is poor. she thinks in zulu. for example she would spell ‘teacher’ ‘tisha’. but she is good at maths. 78 reading and writing home visiting programme !e family literacy project group sessions include information on topics relevant to the members, such as health, sanitation, budgets, children’s rights and child protection as well as aspects of hiv and aids including voluntary counselling and testing and paediatric care. group members have been encouraged to read with and to their children, to talk, play and keep journals with them. group members have re+ected on their own experiences of growing up and discussed how they can support their children to have a better chance in life than they did. !e flp approach and the additional workshops arranged with an early childhood development specialist resulted in a group of women who had learnt a great deal about how to add to conventional ways of supporting children, especially in literacy development. at the end of 2003 they were asked if they would like to share their knowledge and expertise with their neighbours. most of the women volunteered and the home visiting programme began. for the "rst year the women made these visits without an expectation of payment or acknowledgement apart from the enjoyment of sharing the pleasure of reading. from the end of 2003, the flp has secured funding to provide a food voucher for each visit carried out by the group members. !e home visits began with the flp members reading to their neighbour’s children and playing simple games with them. as they exhausted their store of suitable activities, the project once again invited an early childhood development specialist to run a series of workshops. !is helped the home visiting group members with ideas for new activities, always using locally or easily obtained materials. 79snoeks desmond comment by flp facilitator: !is is a home visit. !e learner is reading books to the children. !ey are the donated first words in print books which the children know o$ by heart already, but they love hearing them over again. comment by flp facilitator !ese are some of the children visited by our learners in the home visiting programme. !ey live next door to the library. !ey always come and ask for something to play with. !ey come and call the learner everyday….. asking for her to read to them. !ey are like my friends too. !ey call me “missy missy” if they meet me. in 2005, the project decided to include training on health messages, using the unicef supported imci programme (integrated management of childhood illnesses). !ere are "&een key messages which have been developed to give those at home the information necessary to help children with simple health problems or prevent these from happening. very soon the flp group members were able to include these health messages in their visits. it became apparent, however, that the early childhood development information was delivered in a playful and active way while the delivery of the health messages were delivered in a more didactic way. in keeping with the interactive approach adopted by the project it was important that the visits should be participatory and enjoyed by children and adults. to address this concern, the project has embarked on the development of games and activities to support each health message. 80 reading and writing books for the community at the start of the family literacy project, each group was given a box of books. !e group members began by borrowing books to look at with their children. as the adults learnt to read, they read the books and as they became more con"dent they began to ask for books to read for themselves. once again, seeing the pleasure that the group members were getting from reading, the flp asked if they would like to share this pleasure with others. !ey asked the women to "nd out if their neighbours would like to borrow books. some of the group members took part in a survey to gauge the level of interest in a community library. !e response was positive, although the most stated need for a library was that people wanted to visit a place to improve their knowledge; not as much was said about reading for relaxation (desmond 2005:30). by 2007 the flp had established three community libraries. !e "rst was built with the prize money received as part of a guinness/udv award; the second library was a donation of a 40-foot long refurbished container from the cape town based ngo biblionef; and the third was paid for by the exclusive books trust. !e books and furniture have all been donated to the flp. more recently, a fourth community library has been built with donations from a church group in the united states of america. two books have been developed by the project to help group members run the libraries. !ese contain very basic information and cover simple cataloguing, issuing, shelving and membership information. before these libraries were established, none of the group members had visited or used a library. each library is now run by the local flp facilitator and one or two group members who do everything from cleaning to providing activities for children and putting up displays on interesting topics. !e libraries are well used by adults and primary school children. initially it was di#cult to recruit secondary school members and it was not until sessions on topics speci"cally for that age group were run in the library that they began to join. in contrast, it has been di#cult to keep the numbers of primary school children at a manageable level during the opening times and children’s sessions. !ese children’s sessions focus on a theme for six or seven sessions and encourage drawing, discussion, reading and listening. at the one community library the group had to be split into two to accommodate all the children. however all the children continue to come to both sessions and even when half the 81snoeks desmond group is sent away, they crowd around the windows to hear the story that they will hear the next day during their own session. a&er the sessions, the children exchange books and talk about the one that they have read. !ey are also encouraged to read to someone at home, either a younger sibling or an adult who is prepared to listen to them. evaluating the sharing in 2006, the facilitators in "ve sites were given cameras and asked to illustrate the changes in reading habits in their communities and to "nd out whether reading was seen as a pleasure and not only as a source of knowledge. a&er taking the "rst spool, the facilitators met to describe and discuss the photographs. once the second spool had been taken, all the photographs were displayed on large boards and taken out to each of the groups. !e group members were asked to look at the photographs their facilitator had taken, as well as those taken in the other sites. !ey commented on these before the "nal display which was at the flp end of the year event in december 2006. !is method ensured participation through the year and at all levels of the project. !e evaluation was led by an external evaluator, jill frow and the results were published by the flp (frow. 2006). using the photographs as a prompt, and a&er some interactive games, the group members were asked for their comments. !ey were quite forthcoming about books they did not enjoy such as books about war, “big fat books with a lot of writing” and books which were deemed too explicit for young children, such as those showing birth or discussing hiv/aids. some people complained of poor eyesight and being too tired at the end of the day to read. as these are women who have to fetch their own water and "rewood as well as care for children and do daily housework, it is not surprising that reading comes low down on their list of things to do. however there are many anecdotes told by the facilitators of people, saying that they use books and reading as a way to relax. 82 reading and writing many of the group members were able to give the title of their favourite book and had suggestions for additional material they would like to see in the library. as the sites are far from any towns it is not surprising that people requested newspapers and magazines. primary school children are keen members of the libraries and are always asking for di$erent books. as they would like books written in zulu, this is posing a problem to the flp as most of the available books are already carried by the libraries. adult group members read the easy readers for newly literate adults but there are not many of these available. many of them borrow books for children and then read them themselves. !is is not a problem as they are improving their literacy skills but more books for new readers would be more suitable. what is evident from the frow evaluation is that group members “have developed a deep concern for their children and community children to be reading” (frow, 2006:38). !e evaluation report goes on to describe how many children read to their parents as well as parents reading to children. as this quote from a flp member shows, “when we are "nished eating we take books and read and look at the pictures and do homework” (sibongile zuma, quoted in desmond 2004:14), this inter-generational sharing of books may contribute to the family reading time that appears to be growing in some families in the places where the family literacy project is active. references desmond, a. 2001. !e impact of the family literacy project on adults in rural kwazulunatal: a case study. m.ed. dissertation. durban: university of natal. desmond, s. 2004. exploring the links between adult education and children’s literacy/ education: a case study of the family literacy project, kwazulu-natal. kampala: pamoja desmond, s. 2005. !e family literacy project: now we are almost six. durban: family literacy project. desmond, a. 2007. doctoral thesis in progress dockrell, j. stuart, king, d. 2004. supporting early oral language skills. http://www.literacytrust.org.uk.uk/pubs/dockrell.html accessed on 1 february 2007 frow, j. 2006. family literacy project evaluation 2006. durban. family literacy project. also available on www.familyliteracyproject.co.za khulisa management services 2000. national early childhood development pilot project: phase !ree research report, khulisa management services, johannesburg. kwazulu-natal municipal portfolio. 2005. sisonke district municipality. www.kzntopbusiness.co.za/2005/kzn-municipalities accessed 13 march 2007 national literacy trust (undated) family literacy document. http://www.literacytrust.org. uk/database/familitindex.html accessed, february 2007 richter, l. 2006. personal communication with the author. article information authors: candice livingston1 betsie klopper1 sanet cox1 corrie uys1 affiliations: 1education faculty, cape peninsula university of technology, south africa correspondence to:    candice livingston email: livingstonc@cput.ac.za postal address: 6 avignon way, durbanville 7550, south africa dates: received: 30 oct. 2014 accepted: 02 mar. 2015 published: 29 may 2015 how to cite this article: livingston, c., klopper, b. & cox, s., 2015, ‘the impact of an academic reading programme in the bachelor of education (intermediate and senior phase) degree’, reading & writing 6(1), art. #66, 11 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v6i1.66 copyright notice: © 2015. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. the impact of an academic reading programme in the bachelor of education (intermediate and senior phase) degree in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • background and development of the programme • conceptual framework and review of literature • description of the academic reading programme    • reading comprehension    • reading speed • methodology    • participants    • data collection instruments and analysis    • validity and reliability in the quantitative phase    • trustworthiness in the qualitative phase • credibility • dependability    • confirmability       • ethical considerations • results    • quantitative results    • qualitative results • discussion    • limitations    • recommendations • acknowledgements    • competing interests    • authors’ contributions • references • appendix a abstract top ↑ research regarding the academic reading load experienced by first year students at universities in south africa indicated that students are woefully under-prepared to deal with this load as they have limited reading experiences and strategies. this led to the implementation of an academic reading programme at a university of technology. in order to measure the impact of this academic reading programme, a sequential explanatory mixed-method model was designed to determine if the reading programme had led to any significant gains in reading speed and reading comprehension. the results of the empirical study indicated that the academic reading programme improved reading speed whilst maintaining comprehension. introduction top ↑ research indicates that both local and international first year students struggle with the reading load that is required at tertiary level (van schalkwyk 2008; bharuthram 2006:269; 2012:205; falk-ross 2002). bharuthram (2006:268) states that students ‘enter tertiary institutions with limited reading experiences and strategies.’ lecturers at a university in the western cape also experienced this. it seemed that the problem was two-fold, namely (1) students struggled to get through the amount of reading (slow reading speed) and that (2) they struggled to comprehend texts at tertiary level. in a similar environment (a university of technology in south africa) bharuthram conducted a study on the development of reading strategies in higher education and came to the conclusion that curriculums or programmes should be developed through which reading can be taught explicitly. she also emphasised the urgency of addressing reading in higher education in south africa (bharuthram 2006:269). in support of this, pretorius (2002:194) states the following: ‘the longer the reading problem is ignored, the more the intellectual potential of current and future generations of students goes untapped’. a reading programme was thus developed on the above-mentioned campus to assist our students with the improvement of their reading speed and comprehension, with the ultimate goal of helping them to cope with their studies. background and development of the programme top ↑ in october 2009, four faculty members attended a training course in reading instruction. this led to the development of an academic reading strategy instruction programme for first year students, which was implemented in 2010. this initial programme was implemented for the first years, who were able to attend it on a voluntary basis. it addressed comprehension skills, particularly those used in the completion of comprehension tests and identifying main ideas in texts, as well as reading speed through eye exercises that the students had to do during class and at home. however, the accurate measurement and monitoring of students’ reading speed proved to be a problem. the students also seemed to struggle with the transfer of what they had learned in the comprehension component of the programme to their studies. by the end of the first two years the lecturers realised that the improvement of reading at all levels across the curriculum, whether the participants were weak readers or strong readers, was not covered in the existing programme and that it had to be changed to accommodate the needs of the students. in order to monitor students’ reading speed and immediate comprehension more accurately, we invested in the programme readers are leaders (cf. description of the programme). for aspects regarding the comprehension strategy development component of the programme klopper's study (2012) – an on-going study was used as the basis for the changes, which were implemented in the academic reading programme. klopper's (2012) study revealed that effective comprehension strategy instruction required definite steps if it was to be successful. both the reading speed and reading comprehension components of the programme were revised and resulted in the current programme. two of the important changes that were made to the reading programme were (1) a computer-mediated reading programme (readers are leaders) was bought in order to enhance reading speed and comprehension and (2) the selection of relevant academic texts to use during academic reading strategy instruction in the comprehension component was implemented. conceptual framework and review of literature top ↑ traditional definitions of reading comprehension often focus on successful decoding and the ability to answer questions after reading (zimmermann & hutchins 2003:7). however, research has shown that, although successful decoding is essential for a good reader, over time reading comprehension is much more than just decoding (zimmermann & hutchins 2003:5; pressley 2006:321). the aforementioned researchers claim that the thinking processes of the reader, the learning that takes place, the mastering of new information, the expansion of knowledge and the subtle connection with the thoughts of the unknown are equally important as decoding. the goal of reading is, after all, to read and understand, not only to decode successfully. for the purpose of this article, snow's definition of reading comprehension will be used: ‘… the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language’ (snow 2002:xiii). research over the past three decades has shown that explicit instruction in reading comprehension strategies is invaluable in the development of proficient readers (zimmermann & hutchins 2003:5; johnson 2005:1). duke and pearson (2002), zimmermann and hutchins (2003), pressley (2006), harvey and goudvis (2007), keene and zimmermann (2007), kelley and clausen-grace (2007), and block and parris (2008) each give a list of strategies they view as most successful to use for instruction. there appears to be consensus regarding the use of the following strategies: goal setting, scanning, activating prior knowledge, predicting, monitoring of comprehension, questioning, visualising, drawing inferences, connecting, summarising and evaluating. research has shown that explicit instruction strategy use stands central in effective comprehension instruction (block, gambrell & pressley 2002:9, 26; snow 2002:33; zimmermann & hutchins 2003: 5; pressley 2006:335; harvey & goudvis 2007:31; bharuthram 2012:206; klopper 2013:202). the question is, however, what is the best way to teach these strategies explicitly? klopper (2013:223) claims that effective comprehension strategy instruction within the south african context requires an introductory reading course at first year level because of the lack of exposure to reading instruction in south african schools. during such an introductory course, the concept of metacognition should be introduced and working definitions of specific reading strategies should be formulated in order to lay a foundation for this kind of reading strategy instruction. pressley (2000) states that there are a number of well researched methods for enhancing reading comprehension, one of which is transactional strategy instruction (also known as instruction through the gradual release of responsibility). he describes this as follows: student and teacher transactions with text are the heart of this form of instruction, with classroom discourse consisting of teachers providing support and guidance to students as they attempt to use strategies to learn regular elementary content. (pressley et al. 1992:513) this form of instruction is recommended by keene and zimmerman (2007:76), block et al. (2002:96), duke and pearson (2002:3), snow (2002:33), mclaughlin and de voogd (2004:38), harvey and goudvis (2007:32), block and parris (2008:27), au (2009), mckeown, beck and blake (2009:220) and meyer (2010:501). the following components, in this order, are essential to this form of reading strategy instruction: a comprehensive explanation of the focus strategy and how it is to be used. modelling of the focus strategy by the teacher. scaffolded instruction, where students practice the use of the strategy with help and guidance from the teacher. with the gradual release of responsibility from teacher to student, the students become more confident in the use of the strategy. independent strategy use where students use the focus strategy on their own in a variety of contexts. it can therefore be stated that transactional strategy instruction is a method of instruction that supports the development of self-regulating readers who can actively use strategies used by proficient readers to construct meaning from a text within a variety of contexts (pressley 2006:320; block & parris 2008:162). pressley (2006:334) describes the aim of strategy instruction as follows: ‘the goal with comprehension strategies instruction, however, is to teach students to take over their own reading and thinking.’ klopper (2013:223) states that effective comprehension instruction can indeed be obtained through transactional instruction, providing that the foundation is laid through an explicit explanation of what metacognition is and how that will assist the struggling reader to become a proficient reader. she also suggests that strategy instruction which is integrated with the use of academic texts should be done in conjunction with strategy instruction, which is offered in isolation (2012:108). a model well-suited for this kind of instruction is the metacognitive teaching framework (mtf) developed by kelley and clausen-grace (2007:6). figure 1: the metacognitive teaching framework (mtf). description of the academic reading programme top ↑ in 2012/2013, the academic reading programme (see figure 2) was prescribed and became compulsory for all first year education students in the general education and training (get) and further education and training (fet) bands of the bachelor of education degree. these two groups amounted to approximately 280 students. students were divided into smaller groups of 16 – 20 students per group for two contact periods per week. the groups were divided between four lecturers. figure 2: academic reading program. reading comprehension according to the metacognitive teaching framework, the following strategies were chosen for the explicit reading strategy instruction and use of strategy component (see figure 2) of this academic reading programme. the strategies were: prediction, questioning, monitoring of comprehension, connecting and summarising (kelley & clausen-grace 2007:6). the students attended two lesson periods of 45 minutes contact time each week, which were used for the explicit instruction component of the programme. the first few lessons formed a unit consisting of an introduction to metacognition, as well as the five strategies that were to be covered during the year. once the working definitions of the reading strategies had been formulated, the following strategy instruction cycle was followed, using the metacognitive teaching framework: period 1: the explicit instruction of a strategy, e.g. prediction, questioning, association, monitoring of understanding or summarising, using transactional instruction (cf.-conceptual framework). approximately 5 weeks were spent on each strategy. period 2: exercises were done, focusing on how the strategies are interwoven and work together to create understanding. the aim of these exercises was to help students with the integration of the different strategies for the construction of meaning and for them to realise that strategies do not stand in isolation (as might be deduced from the instruction of a focus strategy). the exercises we used were: → ‘reciprocal teaching’. while reading through a text, each student is given the role of predictor, questioner, summariser, connecter or clarifier to act out. while one reads the text out loud, they all then work together and play their part to understand the text fully (stricklin 2011:620). → ‘question answer relationship’. students learn that there is a relationship between a question and where the answer is found. for higher order thinking questions the answers may come directly from the text as well as indirectly and various other information sources (raphael, highfield & au 2006:13–14). → the implementation of ‘r5’. this is a process where students have time to (1) read and relax in class, (2) reflect and (3) respond in a journal to what they have read, (4) rap 1, where they talk in pairs about their use of strategy, and (5) rap 2, where the pairs give feedback to the class about each other's use of each strategy (kelly & clausen-grace 2006, 2007:13). transactional strategy instruction is used throughout the programme, where the lecturer demonstrates a strategy, works through it with the students and then leaves the students to work in pairs and eventually alone. the texts are specifically chosen to engender working from simple to complex reading strategies, where the initial text is an easier text and the participants work up to reading a difficult text, often a subject related academic text. here, texts in english are often used indicating that the taught strategies are applied to varying levels of academic difficulty. reading speed as mentioned in the description of the background and development of the project, the computerbased reading and language programme ‘readers are leaders’ was used for this component of the academic reading programme (see figure 2). the focus of ‘readers are leaders’ is on the improvement of reading speed and immediate comprehension. it aims to equip students with the ability to handle the reading load expected of a student at tertiary level. we installed the program on 50 computers on campus and at residences where students could work independently at their own pace. the program has 15 levels of content, with the expectancy that first year students should be able to read on level 13 with an ‘on the line’ comprehension level of 80%. in the beginning of the year, each student does a calibration exercise on level 12 in order to determine the participant's reading level. this level was chosen for calibration according to the readers are leaders requirements, and it is the level desirable for a student who has passed grade 12. based on their performance, each student was moved to the appropriate level by his or her lecturer, using a scale provided by readers are leaders (cf. appendix a). the students then had to do three exercises per week, in their own time (an exercise takes about 15 minutes to complete). each lecturer managed their own class levels according to the scale in appendix a. for example, when the student read on level 7 and reached the required reading speed for level 8 and scored 80+% on the comprehension component, they were moved up to level 8. using this program enabled us to measure each individual's progress more accurately. methodology top ↑ the aim of this study was to determine the effect of an academic reading programme on the reading comprehension and reading speed of the first year bachelor of education (b. ed) (intermediate and senior phase) students at a university of technology in the western cape. in order to meet the aim of this study, a sequential explanatory mixed-method was designed (ivankova, cresswell & stick 2006:7). the purpose of this research design was to seek elaboration, enhancement, illustration and clarification of results from the quantitative design with results from the qualitative design (also called complementarity). in essence, the two data sets were compared in order to generate complementary insights that created a bigger picture (sydenstricker-neto 1997; niglas 2000:4; brannen 2005:12; tashakkori & teddlie 2008:103). the purpose of this research project was to determine the impact of the reading programme on the participants’ reading speed and comprehension (the quantitative phase), and to identify the benefits and challenges experienced by the participants (the qualitative phase). using the sequential explanatory mixed methods design (byrne & humble 2006:4), the researchers employed the dominant quantitative analysis phase as the first stage of the research cycle, which in turn informed the subsequent qualitative analysis phase: quan →qual (brannen 2005:14) (see figure 3). figure 3: the sequential explanatory mixed-method design. a sequential explanatory mixed-method design (brannen 2005:14; ivankova et al. 2006:9) was used in order to answer the following research questions: has the academic reading programme improved the students’ reading speed and reading comprehension? the following sub-questions were also posed: does a relationship exist between the number of reading exercises completed and the increase in words per minute (reading speed) and reading comprehension? what are the students’ perceptions of the reading programme and the strategy instruction they receive? what do students find beneficial when using this programme? what challenges do students face when participating in this programme? participants the participants in this study comprised all the b. ed (intermediate and senior phase) first year students (n = 93) at a specific university in the western cape. using nonprobability convenience sampling, the students at this particular university were selected for participation in this study due to the fact that: (1) all the students were in their first year and (2) all the participants had been registered for the academic reading programme. the qualitative phase of this study relied on voluntary participation. half of the participants (n = 49) voluntarily completed an online questionnaire, which used open-ended questions, in order to qualitatively probe the participants’ experiences. data collection instruments and analysis two instruments were used to collect the data from the participants in this study in order to answer the research questions that had been posed. the first instrument was a quantitative pre-test post-test assessment of the participants’ reading comprehension and reading speed. the second instrument was a qualitative online questionnaire, which employed open-ended questions in order to identify the benefits and challenges experienced by the students. the quantitative phase of this study involved gathering data (reading speed and reading comprehension scores) from the reading programme ‘readers are leaders’. these were statistically converted by means of the spss inc. (2009) computer software program in order to obtain related scores for the purpose of quantitative interpretation. the statistical analyses of the data involved the inferential analysis of the factor scores: means, and standard deviations, the calculation of the practical significance (effect sizes) and the correlations between variables. the data from the qualitative questionnaire were analysed using atlas.ti, which formatted the codes into themes. the researcher was then able to analyse and discuss the codified categories in order to organise, identify and synthesise the themes and sub-themes found in the data. atlas.ti is acknowledged as a reliable software program that is capable of consistent qualitative data-analysis (smit 2002:74). validity and reliability in the quantitative phase in order to ensure validity in the quantitative phase of this study, the following measures were taken. test validity, or face validity was ensured by taking into account the degree to which our test or other measuring device is truly measuring what we intended it to measure (vos et al., 2007:160; leedy & ormrod 2010:92). predictive validity (kennet-cohen, bronner & cohen 2003) was ensured as the measurement of reading speed and reading comprehension were valid as part of a recognised reading programme (readers are leaders), and a high reading level predicts the fact that the participant can read at a certain speed while maintaining a certain level of reading comprehension. in order to test reliability, any other researcher should be able to conduct the same research, using the same instrument, with the same setting, conditions and constraints, yielding the same results (blaxter, hughes & tight 1996:200; vos et al. 2007:163)). this was ensured in this study; by using readers are leaders, a recognised academic reading programme, which is able to test reading speed and reading comprehension, within controlled conditions. test-retest reliability refers to the test's consistency among different administrations (leedy & ormrod 2010:93). in order to determine the coefficient for this type of reliability, the same test was given to a group of subjects on at least two separate occasions. trustworthiness in the qualitative phase in qualitative research, credibility, dependability and confirmability are sought to ensure that the qualitative research process is reliable and dependent (shenton 2004:63). credibility top ↑ within the arena of qualitative research, validity is described as credibility (struwig & stead 2001:143). certain steps were taken to ensure the credibility of the research process based on guidelines laid out by shenton (2004): strength of expertise: the strength of these researchers’ expertise lies in the fact that they have all taught reading strategies at schools and at university. there was rigorous monitoring of progress and meetings with supervisors. thorough review of literature to determine the aim of the study and to verify the results. thorough description of the phenomenon that was being studied so that it can be understood within the relative context. using a recognised research method or design. honesty of the participants is encouraged by the fact that they are not forced to participate and that the researchers were open and sincere with them (pp. 65–68). dependability top ↑ the dependability of the study indicates the degree to which a study measures the consequentiality of the data (shenton 2004:64). dependability was ensured by implementing the following steps: verification of the transcriptions of the questionnaire can be produced. in-depth discussions with experts in the field of academic reading resulted in agreement on the codes that would be used for the analysis of the data in atlas.ti. confirmability confirmability of the study indicates the neutrality of the data set (poggenpoel & myburgh 2004). reported confirmability was ensured by the fact that the results of the data were garnered from an independent analyser, in this instance atlas.ti. (muhr 1997) and direct quotes or references from the questionnaire confirmed that the reported questions were indeed answered in the questionnaire. ethical considerations adherence to relevant ethical aspects of research, which are embodied in individual and professional codes of conduct of a specific university in the western cape, were accounted for during the development and conduct of the empirical investigation. the rights and expectations of participants were respected, anonymity and confidentiality were granted, deception was avoided and the purpose of the research was made clear to the participants. the research was also conducted in such a manner so as to minimise any intrusion or disruption to the educational welfare of the participants. permission was obtained from the university's ethics committee in order to conduct this research. the only risk of harm that was identified was the following: students’ dignity may have been compromised due to the fact that the students’ may not have wanted their reading levels broadcast for all to see. as such, reading scores were held in confidence and measures of improvement or failure were not disclosed to anyone other than the participants. the questionnaire was also filled in anonymously in order to protect the dignity of the student. the participants were recruited from the first year isp group for 2013. there were 93 students in this group. all the participants took part in the pre and post-test of reading results as part of their course work. the qualitative questionnaire was filled in voluntarily and it was explained to the participants that they only had to fill in the online questionnaire (at the end of the year), which was placed on the university's lms (learning management system) blackboard. there was a specific plan in place for the protection of data, in order to ensure the confidentiality and anonymity of the participants in this study. the plan was as follows: the use of unique identifiers instead of names, storing all data in a locked file, care in disposing of all information that could identify a participant, securing confidentiality statements from all researchers. all participants also had to fill in a consent form, indicating that they were willing to take part in this research project. results top ↑ quantitative results at the outset of this research project, the researchers’ aim was to determine if the academic reading programme led to an improvement in the participants’ reading speed and reading comprehension. this aim was inherent in research question 1 which asked: has the reading programme improved the students’ reading speed and reading comprehension? pre-test and post-test means were calculated and are presented in table 1. table 1: inferential statistics (n = 93). the results show the pre-test reading speed mean (154.12) and the post-test reading speed mean (226.30) whilst the pre-test comprehension mean (68.28) and the post-test (66.38) indicate that, although the reading speed improved significantly, reading comprehension remained the same. the words per minute gains thus show that the gain in the post-test is highly significant (p-value <0.001) (see table 3). this led to the conclusion that the reading programme did improve the reading speed of the participants whilst maintaining the level of comprehension during reading. table 2: spearman's rho calculations of correlation between variables. table 3: coding categories for open-ended questionnaire. the average number of reading exercises completed by the participants was 46 (see table 2). the smallest number of exercises completed was 24 and the largest was 70. in order to determine if a relationship existed between the number of exercises completed by the participants in this study and their reading speed and comprehension, a spearman's rho (ᵨ) (fredricks & nelson 2007:2143) was conducted in order to determine correlations between the variables (see table 3). the spearman's rho produces a rank order correlation that evaluates the degree to which individuals with high rankings on one variable (i.e. reading speed and reading comprehension) were observed to have similar rankings on another variable (i.e. number of exercises completed). correlations were conducted in order to determine if the number of exercises completed by the participants had any impact on their reading speed and reading comprehension (see table 2). a significant correlation (.222) was found between the number of exercises completed and the increase in reading speed (words per minute). no correlation was found between the number of exercises completed and reading comprehension. therefore it can be surmised that the number of exercises completed by the participants in this study led to an improvement in their reading speed. qualitative results the final three research questions were exploratory in nature and sought to investigate the participants’ views on the implementation, preferences, benefits and challenges experienced by these participants whilst enrolled in the reading programme. after the qualitative data had been analysed and coded in order to determine the categories of the data, the following themes and sub-themes emerged and are summarised in table 3. the themes which emerged from the analysis of the qualitative data allowed the researchers to answer research question 3, which asked if a difference could be discerned between the students’ perceptions of the academic reading programme and the strategy instruction they received. the first theme which emerged from the coding of the data was that of a preference for strategy instruction. the majority of the participants who answered the survey questions indicated that they preferred the strategy instruction component of the reading programme. the following statements attest to this fact: ‘i enjoyed the classes and i really enjoyed seeing how other people think and differ to me’. ‘i really enjoyed the contact time more because the lecturer helped us with things we struggled with or explained things like associations to us’. ‘the part with the different focus strategies. the strategy instruction’. ‘the practical was the nicest part’. ‘i enjoyed learning how my brain works and to hear how other students in my group think’. research question 4's objective was to determine which aspects of the reading programme the participants found most beneficial or useful. the participants found that their reading speed had increased: ‘it has made me a faster reader. i can work through the content of subjects much faster than i could at school’. ‘it made me a faster reader’. ‘it was really nice to see how fast i really read and with comprehension. i could monitor my speed and pick up where i was still struggling’. ‘it helps a person to work faster and to summarise good information for projects and enables you to remember information for tests’. they had improved opportunities to learn: ‘it taught me new reading strategies and improved my learning’. ‘this programme opened my eyes and i realised that there is more to reading than just that and i want to use this in schools so that the children's language and reading comprehension will improve’. ‘leesnet has taught me many things about reading that i did not know before’. improved comprehension capabilities was another benefit noted by the participants: ‘i can read between the lines and it is easier to answer questions about the text after the fact’. ‘leesnet has improved my comprehension and i have learned to make assumptions from words that i struggled with’. ‘i read faster and with more understanding’. they were better able to concentrate and remain focused while reading: ‘i now read with more concentration and insight’. ‘i understand what i read better because i can focus on reading with comprehension’. ‘it has helped me with my concentration and to concentrate while reading’. a further benefit identified by the participants was that their ability to question and think about what they were reading had improved: ‘i think about how i think and have taught myself to question things and if there is something that i don’t understand, i look it up. i must know what it is about so that i can improve my general knowledge’. in an attempt to identify any challenges or limitations of the reading programme ‘leesnet’, the researchers posed research question 5 which asked: what do students find challenging when using this programme? the themes related to the challenges which were identified by the participants included – the fact that the programme was time consuming: ‘it is difficult to choose between time spent in the class and learning for a test’. ‘there is not always time for this in our busy schedules’. ‘readers are leaders is time consuming’. students who are stronger readers did not find benefit in this programme and this was highlighted by the negativity that some of them articulated in their comments. these students indicated that the level of academic difficulty was too easy: ‘i feel that these strategies must be taught to primary school learners. it also feels to me that we are treated like children who know nothing. many students did not even arrive for the classes and those that did received no advantage’. the fact that the students struggled with the increased workload in an already full academic timetable: ‘it feels as if it is extra work and we already have so much work to do’. ‘the workload was huge and people like me prefer to spend time exercising and not spending time on something i really have no interest in. i am also a slow reader because i want to understand the words i read. this results in the fact that i often spend too much time reading a text in a test. i also have to repeat the work i did in classes each day that this made that i spent less time on my studies. i would have preferred to use my free periods for summarising and not leesnet’. some participants indicated that they had mixed feelings regarding the academic reading programme. these participants were able to admit that there were beneficial aspects inherent in the programme but that there were elements that fell short of their expectations. the following statements elucidate this phenomenon: ‘positive – it did help with reading and learning negative – the classes were slightly boring because we did the same work over and over’. ‘generally speaking it was positive but the classes made me negative because there were students who attended every class but gained no real benefits from it’. ‘in the beginning it was enjoyable but later in the year, especially towards the end, it held no more value for me’. the participants were then asked for recommendations to improve the quality and implementation of the reading programme. the recommendations were categorised into three broad themes: a request to implement the reading programme across the curriculum, the use of time and level of academic engagement. the recommendation regarding the use of reading strategies across the curriculum was the most common theme identified: ‘we should use the strategies in all classes. if feels to me that ‘leesnet’ only helped me in that class and then i forgot about them’. ‘more application in the classroom and how to use the strategies. the focus strategies must be applied in class time’. the following statements relate to the theme of time: ‘i would make the time spent in class less. fewer reading pieces and more of our own reading pieces’. ‘fewer exercises per semester. it is time consuming’. ‘i would use less activities because students do not have time anymore’. another recommendation was that the level of academic engagement of the texts be improved: ‘that computer programme – it is as if it is made for a two year old and not a university student’. ‘the reading pieces on the computer, must be more interesting and what the students would be interested in’. ‘readers are leaders is absolute nonsense. the programme is meant for grade 1's’. ‘i would only use the programme in primary school. i feel that when a person is at university they should have mastered this’. ‘we should be reading academic texts’. discussion top ↑ the analysis of the data gleaned from this research project regarding the impact of the academic reading programme indicates that the words per minute gains in the post-test is highly significant (p-value <0.001), which indicates that the academic reading programme does improve the reading speed of the participants whilst maintaining the level of comprehension during reading (see table 2). a significant correlation was found between the number of reading exercises completed and the increase in reading speed (words per minute), indicating that an increase in the number of exercises completed by the participants will lead to an increase in their reading speed. the benefits of the academic reading programme as perceived by the participants lies in the fact that the reading programme works. participants indicated that their reading speed had increased, that they had improved opportunities to learn; they indicated that their comprehension capabilities had improved and that they were better able to concentrate and remain focused whilst reading, a further benefit identified by the participants was that their ability to question and think about what they were reading had improved. it must be noted that this academic reading programme has been implemented for those students who do not have the prerequisite reading skills needed for the reading load at university level and as such, should be seen as a bridging programme that is aimed at addressing the articulation gap that exists for these specific students. although there is concrete evidence that the academic reading programme improves the reading speed of the participants whilst maintaining comprehension, the majority of the participants indicated that they preferred the strategy instruction component of the reading programme. the reasons for this preference lie in the challenges identified in the research. the implementation of the reading programme places additional burdens on the participants in relation to the fact that it is very time consuming, it increases the workload of the participants, who feel that their academic timetable is already very full and that the level of academic difficulty of the texts is not challenging enough. some participants indicated that they had mixed feelings regarding the reading programme. these participants were able to admit that there were beneficial aspects inherent in the programme but that there were elements (i.e. time-consuming) that fell short of their expectations. limitations the following limitations were identified in this study: only half (n = 49) of the original population (n = 93) filled in the online qualitative questionnaire. some of the participants were negative towards the reading programme and this was reflected in their reticence in reflecting on the value of the reading program. no distinction was made between first language speakers and second language speakers. this constitutes a shortcoming in this study as second language speakers may not have been fully represented. this study used a convenience sample and cannot be generalised to the general population, which is a limitation of this study. recommendations in order to meet the specific needs of the participants using this specific academic reading programme, two specific recommendations have been made after careful analysis of the data: the incorporation of academic texts into the academic reading programme the integration of academic reading strategies across the curriculum. in order to implement the second recommendation, a third recommendation has been made: that there is collaboration with all academic staff members, across all subjects, in order to ensure that the specific academic reading skills are integrated across the curriculum. in order to create a culture of academic reading on this campus: the value of the academic reading programme must be stressed, and that the significance of strategy instruction be emphasised, as well as the importance of the reading programme ‘readers are leaders’ so that the participants (i.e. the students), who are, at the end of the day, the eventual customers, ‘buy into’ the totality of the programme. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions c.l. (cape peninsula university of technology) was the project leader and was responsible for experimental (both quantitative and qualitative) and project design. b.k. (cape peninsula university of technology) was responsible for the review of literature, conceptual design and experimental testing. s.c. 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for the social sciences and human service professions, 3rd edn., van schaik publishers, pretoria. zimmermann, s. & hutchins, c., 2003, 7 keys to comprehension: how to help your kids read it and get it!, three rivers press, new york. appendix a top ↑ appendix a: suggested guidelines. reviewer acknowledgement open accesshttp://www.rw.org.za page 1 of 1 the editorial team of reading & writing recognises the value and importance of the peer reviewer in the overall publication process – not only in shaping the individual manuscript, but also in shaping the credibility and reputation of our journal. we are committed to the timely publication of all original, innovative contributions submitted for publication. as such, the identification and selection of reviewers who have expertise and interest in the topics appropriate to each manuscript are essential elements in ensuring a timely, productive peer review process. we would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who provided scientific and logistical support for this issue of the reading & writing: boitumelo t. ramoroka candice livingston deborah v. sanoto eleni griva elsemieke wishart gerry shiel hanlie dippenaar jacqui dornbrack 75 janet condy judith mutemeri lisa zimmerman lorna dreyer monica hendricks mzwamadoda p. cekiso naomi boakye we appreciate the time taken to perform your review successfully. in an effort to facilitate the selection of appropriate peer reviewers for reading & writing, we ask that you take a moment to update your electronic portfolio on www.rw.org.za for our files, allowing us better access to your areas of interest and expertise, in order to match reviewers with submitted manuscripts. if you would like to become a reviewer, please visit the journal website and register as a reviewer. to access your details on the website, you will need to follow these steps: 1. log into the online journal at http://www. rw.org.za 2. in your ‘user home’ [http://www.rw.org.za/ index.php/rw/user] select ‘edit my profile’ under the heading ‘my account’ and insert all relevant details, bio statement and reviewing interest. 3. it is good practice as a reviewer to update your personal details regularly to ensure contact with you throughout your professional term as reviewer to reading & writing. please do not hesitate to contact me if you require assistance in performing this task. duncan hooker submissions@rw.org.za tel: +27 (0)21 975 2602 fax: +27 (0)21 975 4635 reading & writing journal of the reading association of south africa entire issue.pdf book reviews hilary janks, 2009. literacy and power. series: language, culture, and teaching. london: routledge, 250 pages. isbn: 978-0-8058-5577-7 hardback. isbn: 978-0-415-99963-2 paperback. !e title of hilary jank’s book literacy and power is an intertextual nod to norman fairclough’s groundbreaking language and power. it places literacy (and thus the classroom) rather than language at the centre, and goes to the heart of current debates about what is, and possibly always has been, a highly contested term. janks says upfront that her book works against the dividing practices in the "eld, so this review will focus on how the book achieves this on several levels. as a critical linguist, words and naming are deeply important to her; the "rst sentence in the book makes the arresting observation: many languages do not have a word for literacy: sotho doesn’t neither do xhosa, french or german. do we need it? but having found a word for itself in a dominant language like english in the mid 16th c, it is born into trouble because it was born into a binary, to give a positive meaning to its other, ‘illiteracy’. so the word literacy itself always works to divide, and to split; it always draws a line, because illiteracy lurks on the other side. janks points to how, from this founding binary in the english language, various di#erent versions of literacy ‘wars’ emerge, that keep reinventing themselves in either-or debates about whether literacy is a cognitive skill or a social practice (she refuses this binary, and argues that it is both skill and social practice); whether we should teach bottom-up or top-down, genre or process, whole language or phonics, the literary canon or popular culture. instead she advocates a four-part model that takes into account a range of di#erent approaches and scholarly takes on the critical, which she argues are profoundly interdependent. !ey revolve around four elements: domination, diversity, access and design, each the focus of a separate chapter. i have read journal articles where janks sets out this interdependence model, but to have the model unfold in the course of this book, with rich examples and full discussion of how this interdependence works, is complex, convincing and enabling. in an engaging "nal chapter she moves beyond the model, acknowledging how critical literacy rests on an essentially logocentric and rational view of language, and looks rw& 86 reading and writing tentatively at what critical literacy might look like beyond reason, in the realm of the unconscious, desire and play. !ere are two other ways in which this book works against the dividing practices in the "eld. !e "rst is its refusal to separate practice from theory. it is vividly illustrated with activities that eloquently embody theory. !is is a particular gi$ of the author’s. !e illustrations criss-cross time and space, from london in the mid-1970s to adelaide in australia, to atteridgeville, but the sense-making base is always south africa, from the shored up certainties of the apartheid regime to the much more complex terrain in which we are currently, where the need for the critical is just as important. !is book is rich in o#erings for practice, from a series of provocative questions about something as mundane as a cellphone, to tables for the analysis of ideology in texts, stories and rich descriptions of practice. !e last refusal of the dividing practices, and perhaps the most signi"cant, is the author’s inclusion of the personal as a thread that runs through the book. one of the dividing practices of the academic "eld is its tendency to split the head o# from the heart and from the body too and she refuses both. a particularly satisfying part of the book is towards the end where she re%ects on how what she calls ‘re-design’ work is far easier spoken about than achieved, and how some classroom innovations have not been sustained. in struggling for an answer, she recognizes how resistant our embodied ways of being are to change, and o#ers her experience of using the alexander technique as a therapy to unlearn her own embodied ways developed from long hours of critical literacy work on the computer. !e book o#ers a mapping of a sphere for action that is thoughtful, hopeful and profoundly practical. lucia thesen centre for higher education development, university of cape town 87book reviews mike baynham and mastin prinsloo, (eds). 2009. !e future of literacy studies. series: advances in linguistics. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. 234 pages. isbn: 978 0 230 55370 5 hardback. isbn: 978 0 230 55371 2 paperback. !is publication of an edited collection of commissioned papers by invited scholars on the future of literacy studies is timely, given the urgent need to improve literacy in schools and institutions of higher learning in south africa, and elsewhere. before brie%y discussing each chapter, i would like to highlight four key issues that struck me as particularly relevant to the local situation. firstly, while i applaud the signi"cant work done by new literacy studies (nls) scholars to make visible the out-of-school literacies of children and adults, i also welcome the call from numerous contributors in this collection for nls researchers to return to educational settings, in order to better understand the multiple ways in which written language mediates learning and assessment. secondly, some of the concepts a#orded by the lens of nls such as literacy networks, sponsors and brokers can be better employed to shi$ the dominant debates and practices that still situate literacy in narrow, technical ways in south africa. !is could have particular importance in impoverished and overcrowded schools, where we need to construct ways of increasing literacy, and ways of making better use of communal resources and approaches, where these exist. !irdly, teachers and researchers need to take up the challenge a#orded by new technologies and to address the wide range of technology-related skills that young people bring with them to the classrooms. so, too, we should examine the ways in which new technologies can deepen the divide of the haves and have-nots. snyder reminds us that simply providing the technology will not transform literacy education, let alone equip students with the necessary skills and agency to operate in the 21st century. rather, the whole ecology of the school needs to be transformed, which includes how teachers are trained and valued. my "nal point refers to the in%uencing of public discourses: what is highlighted is the urgent need for educators and researchers to actively shape and mediate public opinion on matters of education in a moral and responsible manner. having identi"ed what stood out for me, i now o#er a brief review of each chapter. brian street’s opening chapter, ‘future of social literacies’, immediately addresses the focus of the book. he provides the reader with an historical 88 reading and writing account of his deepening understanding of the complexities involved in identifying what being literate means, and of the need to eschew crude notions of literacy as simply technical skills, or of literacy practices as only those of the west or of urban societies. he further explains the premises on which the ideological model is based and how the ways that people address reading and writing are always rooted in conceptions of their own ‘knowledge, identity and being’. street brie%y outlines his work with colleagues at three distinct research sites and suggests that the lens of literacy as a social practice allows researchers a more nuanced understanding of literacy concerns at these sites. one site is his work with academic literacy among a group of english for academic purposes (eal/eap) university students. another is a development project working with adult literacy and numeracy trainers, to train them in ethnographic research approaches that allow them to value the local literacy practices their trainees bring with them. !e third site examines how new literacy studies and multimodality approaches can complement each other to develop more powerful ways of understanding literacy. david barton’s chapter highlights the textually mediated world we live in and the intricate link between literacy, identity and power. he argues that understanding what people do with texts and what texts do to people allows us a deeper and more nuanced understanding of signi"cant social issues and the ways in which people interact with texts to make sense of their worlds. he provides an historical account of the various contexts in which new literacy studies have been applied and highlights the importance of the ethnographic research methods used. he foregrounds the critical engagement with public discourses of education and the application of broader notions of what literacy and learning entail, in his identifying of areas of future research. in her chapter, titled ‘writing over reading: new directions in mass literacy’, deborah brandt argues that much greater focus is now being placed on people’s scribal skills, due to the increased demand on writing that the new communication technologies have enabled. she succinctly argues the need for a deeper comprehension of the cultural and political heritages of reading on the one hand, and writing on the other. in illustration, writing from the usa, brandt contrasts her interviewees’ pleasurable memories of reading with their more troubled memories of writing, which are o$en laced with recollected feelings of humiliation and embarrassment. she comments that reading and writing, and their study, take place within ‘profoundly tacit cultural regimes’ including long-standing patterns of sponsorship which have, over time in%uenced, how the two practices of reading and writing interrelate. for example, reading literacy has been more strongly sponsored in early schooling than writing, while in work sites, writing has been given prominence. 89book reviews in chapter four, catherine kell presents what she refers to as a transcontextual approach to exploring literacy across space and time. she addresses critical questions around the problem of framing of one’s research as local when it happens across various social spaces and across time. where does the boundary of the local end and how does a place-bound framing of what is local constrain our understanding? kell uses examples of her own research conducted in south africa to share methods and theoretical concepts that enabled her to address this question. chapter "ve, by roz ivanic, deals with literacy practices in vocational and further educational settings. she begins by clarifying what she understands by literacy practices and warns that the notion has become too loosely applied. !e examples taken from research in vocational settings pick up on concerns discussed in the previous chapter. like kell, ivanic explores ways in which literacy practices located in a particular context can be resourcefully deployed in another. she argues that practices cannot be recontextualised wholesale (say e.g., from home to school) because the ‘social domain changes the practice’, and therefore a more detailed way of de"ning literacy practices is required. to assist scholars in di#erentiating between literacy events and literacy practices, ivanic provides a detailed table describing the commonalities and di#erences of the elements that constitute the two. !is table is an excellent tool for literacy researchers. any signi"cant discussion of the future of literacy studies would be incomplete without referring to the huge shi$s that have taken place because of digital technologies and electronic media. in chapter six, mark warschauer brie%y outlines how using an nls lens has enabled insightful studies on meaningmaking with new technologies. however, he argues that more is needed to better understand how issues of power in%uence digital practices, particularly among low socio-economic groups. he suggests that an ideological model of digital literacy is required. an area he singles out as being under-researched is that of the ‘blogosphere’ (blogging). he also recommends that more research be conducted on technology use in schools as well as the design and implementation of technologies that facilitate assessment. ilana snyder examines reasons why print-oriented approaches to teaching literacy still dominate and stresses the need for educators and researchers to take seriously the preparation of young people to take part fully in a world "lled by new technologies. writing from australia, she says that despite the promise of computers, a technological revolution has not happened in schools, despite the huge investment being made. her argument is important for the sa context where some educational leaders present electronic whiteboards as the panacea for all literacy problems. she also discusses how public discourses 90 reading and writing can reinforce the binaries established between book literacy and digital literacies, by over-glorifying books and by warning of social evils brought about by social media such as facebook, twitter, and myspace. snyder concludes by stressing the need to "nd ways to integrate print and digital literacy e#ectively. chapter eight, by doris warriner, looks at the growing trend of transnational and transmigrational studies, and how transnational literacy studies can provide a window into local-global interfaces and %ows. !e notion of literacy’s ability to ‘travel, integrate, and endure’ is indeed a fascinating one and it opens up many possibilities of research. in chapter nine, lesley farrell focuses on literacy research in work settings and explores links between literacy and the so-called knowledge economy: global economic activities require that people have a repertoire of literacy practices, she says, which enable them to partake in both the local economy as well as in the global one, because of the networked nature of globalised production. farrell argues that workplace sites, where numerous literacy practices are enacted, produced, reproduced and contested have been under-researched and that the methodologies and notions associated with the nls have the potential to make visible the micro-processes of the globalization of work. !e relationships between people and the organisations they work for are o$en textually mediated. issues of discipline, regulation and surveillance o$en occur through texts such as registers, timing sheets and reports. such record-keeping as part of regulatory regimes could be relevant to south african schools and teacher unions and is an area that requires far more understanding and attention. !e "nal chapter, on ‘morality, literacy and the media’, examines the potential of the media to constitute moral public spaces. glynda hull and mark nelson argue that multi-modal texts construct opportunities for ‘respectful, intelligent and compassionate communication across di#erences’ and that the ‘limitless quality of connectivity’ a#orded by new technologies across personal, linguistic, geographical and political divisions needs to be further explored. to conclude, the theoretical and methodological insights provided by this collection, as well as the critiques and "ne-tuning of salient aspects of the nls, make the book highly valuable for those interested in literacy research. useful too are the clear identi"cations of areas for future research. jacqui dornbrack schools development unit, university of cape town article information authors: christelle andrich1 anne hill2 andré steenkamp2 affiliations: 1western cape education department, winelands district, south africa 2faculty of education and social sciences, cape peninsula university of technology, south africa correspondence to: andre steenkamp email: steenkampa@cput.ac.za postal address: po box 1906, bellville 7535, south africa dates: received: 05 dec. 2014 accepted: 08 june 2015 published: 07 aug. 2015 how to cite this article: andrich, c., hill, a. & steenkamp, a., 2015, ‘training grade r teachers to impart visual perceptual skills for early reading’, reading & writing 6(1), art. #73, 9 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v6i1.73 copyright notice: © 2015. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. training grade r teachers to impart visual perceptual skills for early reading in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • the grade r professional development landscape • grade r subject content knowledge • visual perceptual skills • caps curriculum • case study • conclusions • recommendations towards a model of professional development of grade r teachers • acknowledgements    • competing interests    • authors’ contributions • references abstract top ↑ visual perception is the mind's ability to interpret or give meaning to what is seen with the eyes (wced 2006). grade reception phase (r) teachers, of five and six year-old learners, need to impart visual perceptual skills (vps) during visual training for pre-reading. these pre-reading activities in grade r support early reading progress in grade 1, which is critical for improving basic literacy and numeracy education in south africa. a quality grade r programme which can deliver these visual training outcomes depends on a progressive model for effective preand in-service professional development of teachers. a model implemented via academic-governmental collaboration. this article seeks to describe and recommend best practices of such professional development. the recommendations are based on an overview of the current grade r professional development landscape, a brief exposition of the subject content knowledge (sck) of vps, a document analysis of the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) curriculum and, finally, a case study with a discourse analysis involving four grade r teachers. introduction top ↑ in south africa there is consensus that ‘getting basic education right’ is foundational for the future of this country. when national basic education minister angie motshekga spoke about the importance of the grade reception phase (r) programme for five and six year-old learners, on 09 february 2013, she focused on the teachers delivering the programme: we recognise the challenges of teacher training; working conditions and supply of skilled practitioners … we accept the task of ensuring that grade r teachers are paid well and know what they are supposed to do. (department of basic education 2013a) motshekga's comments imply that the quality of the grade r teachers’ knowledge and skill is pivotal to the effectiveness of the grade r programme. the mckinsey report on the world's top school systems cites three best practices which are all related to teacher knowledge, namely: getting the right people to become teachers developing them into effective instructors and ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction to every child (barber & mourshed 2007:5). teachers interact with cohorts of learners year after year. what the grade r teacher knows, and does, based on that knowledge is, therefore, extremely important. teachers impart what they know. once what they know is identified, then they can be developed further, during both pre-and in-service training. it is not helpful only to present findings on what grade r teachers know and can impart. professional development must be promoted which will empower grade r teachers to impart more knowledge more effectively in the classroom. this development includes pre-service training, in-service coaching, further studies, workshops and systemic monitoring by the school and educational department. this article seeks to describe and recommend best practices of such professional development. the recommendations below are based on an overview of the current professional development landscape, a brief exposition of the subject content knowledge (sck) of visual perceptual skills (vps), a document analysis of the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) curriculum and finally, a case study with a discourse analysis involving four grade r teachers. at the outset it is important to assess the following two aspects related to grade r teachers: firstly, the extent to which grade r teachers are currently being trained for their task; and, secondly, the general level of equipping they possess at present. an investigation of such considerations is beyond the scope of this article. however, the grade r professional development landscape needs to be reviewed briefly, in order to clarify the context within which the teachers featured in the case study perform their task, particularly with reference to their sck of vps and visual training. the grade r professional development landscape top ↑ a review of teacher training provides some background for present and future professional development. after 1996 the then department of education (doe) decided to spend less on teachers to enable more spending on infrastructure in public grade r facilities managed by school governing bodies (sgbs). as too few schools could offer departmental posts, most public posts were sgb funded. before 2007 the grade r teachers were trained by means of either: a four-year higher diploma in education (hde), including three years in junior primary followed by one year specialising in pre-primary; or a four-year b prim ed which included a pre-primary module. of particular relevance to the case study is a third option which took shape from 2007 onwards, when a national diploma course was launched in colleges, known as early childhood development (ecd). ecd 5 (nqf level 5) was designated for teaching 4–6 year-old children (one year full-time or via distance learning over about 18–24 months). it had to be either accessed via a school leaving qualification, or level 4, or a higher certificate in ecd. content wise, it covered the managing of a learning programme within the national school curriculum. ecd 5 only included grade r literacy as an elective component. education white paper 5 (ewp5) (department of education 2001a) had already confirmed the designation of teachers receiving this training as ecd practitioners . in-service training was made available to ecd practitioners in the form of caps training in mid–2012. at present, all new grade r practitioner contract appointments are only arranged by sgb's, for a salary of approximately r8000.00 net per month, paid by the education department in non-fee schools only. the ecd 5 facilitates access to the diploma in grade r teaching (nqf level 6) which in turn accesses the b ed foundation phase (nqf level 7). in 2011 the department of basic education (dbe), published the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications (2011a). in this document, the dbe sought to raise the minimum qualification requirements of grade r teachers, whilst drawing them more strongly into the foundation phase (fp) domain: all new entrants intending to become fp teachers [qualified to teach from grades r to 3 ], should register for a b ed (fp) rather than for the grade r teaching diploma, provided they meet the requirements for entry into the b ed. (p. 40) linked to this was the requirement that ‘grade r teaching qualifications must be designed cognately with the b ed (fp), to provide for maximum credit transfers when grade r teachers continue their studies …’ (p. 40). the dbe was aware of the fact that not all grade r teachers would have the credits for the b ed (fp). the diploma was promoted as the preferred alternative to the b ed for grade r teachers. it can be accessed by a school leaving qualification inclusive of a diploma entry-endorsement, or by a ‘level 4 or level 5 certificate or diploma in ecd’ (p. 41) carrying sufficient credits. the diploma also requires ‘ … curriculum differentiation and adaptation for multiple learning needs’ and calls for a strong ‘focus … on emerging literacy’ (p. 41). the latter single focus raises the question of the extent to which vps is considered important in the course-content, as adequate vps development is inseparable from equally strong foci on emergent numeracy and life skills. the knowledge mix prescribed for the diploma is as follows: 50% covers grade r specialist subjects, 40% covers general educational subjects and the remaining 10% can be used for ecd, that is, pre-grade r (p. 41). the substantial allocation of these resources to grade r specialist subjects can potentially facilitate in-depth coverage of sck of vps and competence in visual training design. the diploma was implemented in academic institutions at the start of 2014. from 2014 the following was proposed by the dbe: grade r training was to be compulsory for grade r teachers, the two available options being, firstly, the b ed (fp) and, secondly, the diploma for grade r teaching. the latter option provided access to grade r contract posts only. however, it was decided that from 2015 onwards, only the b ed (fp) would give access to permanent departmental grade r posts. by the end of 2015 permanent departmental posts will begin to be phased in. these posts will be advertised and will only be accessible by teachers and students already in possession of the b ed (fp). practitioners with ecd level 4 & 5 are currently doing the diploma in-service or improving their school leaving qualification in order to gain access to the b ed via distance learning, as well as to remain in the grade r domain, albeit as contract post holders. teachers with ecd level 4 and 5 qualifications are set to be excluded from the grade r domain in future. the b ed (fp) has, therefore, in effect been designated by the education department as the definitive grade r teachers’ qualification. this is where the analysis of pre-service grade r teacher training is likely to be focused in the near future. in the meantime, most grade r teachers are grade r practitioners with ecd level 4 and 5 qualifications, who can potentially access the level 6 diploma and the level 7degree via in-service training and distance learning, involving collaboration between academic institutions and education departments. this also applies to the teachers in the case study. the pertinent issue in this study is whether or not sck of vps, as an essential grade r focus, has been mastered by the teachers in the case study for competent visual training for pre-reading. therefore, to set the scene for the case study, it is necessary to provide a brief synopsis of sck of vps, as well as a document analysis of the curriculum content knowledge which frames it. grade r subject content knowledge top ↑ this article features a study which describes grade r teachers’ sck of vps in a rural school in the western cape, with reference to caps. the idea of using sck as a focal point for analysis has arisen from the need to establish a usable knowledge base with teachers. sck is closely linked to pedagogy or pedagogical content knowledge (pck) (snow, griffin & burns 2005:2011) and is important for sustaining pedagogy: we might expect some short-term efficiencies to be generated by improvements in pedagogy. however, any such gains are likely to reach a low ceiling unless a great deal more attention is paid to teacher subject knowledge resources at the same time … (taylor 2013:30) furthermore, in pre and in-service professional development, caps is a key source of sck. therefore, when literacy and numeracy interventions are conducted, caps and sck must dynamically interact with each other, as well as pck and eventually, teaching practice. taylor (2013:65) makes these connections whilst observing that the western cape education department's (wced) literacy numeracy intervention (litnum or lni) has ‘prioritized teacher subject knowledge as the key to more effective delivery of the curriculum’. he continues: the premise of this focus seems to be that teachers cannot teach what they do not understand very well, and that once they have this understanding, they will be better able to make sense of the curriculum, make better pedagogica l choices, and consequently be more effective orchestrators of classroom behaviour . (taylor 2013:65) the study was not only confined to sck to facilitate manageability of the data. it was also narrowed as a result of the highly specialised nature of grade r teacher sck stemming from the developmental phase being dealt with. grade r education feeds vitally into a critical developmental continuum that straddles a gulf between an absence of structured pre-schooling and formal reading instruction from early in grade 1. these teachers have to consolidate a wide range of developmental skills differing from learner to learner over a two-year span in their lives. although grade r learners are aged 4½ to 6½, they are usually spoken of as five to six year olds. even though early development according to age-categories is uneven and individualised (wood 2007:13), this two-year period is critical for the development of vps. therefore, as a critical element of their sck, grade r teachers need to know how the vps work, from their most concrete, elementary aspects to their most advanced abstract aspects. visual perceptual skills top ↑ visual perception is the mind's ability to interpret or give meaning to what is seen with the eyes (wced 2006). vps must be learned by all sighted children prior to learning to read. it is not enough for the eyes to send the correct images produced by the retina at the back of the eye, to the brain. the brain must make sense of those images. for example, the retina sends an inverted picture of an ice-cream cone to the brain, and the child knows what it is. but when that child sees the words ‘ice cream cone’, then the retina will send the image of the words as code which has to be correctly decoded to give meaning, to represent an ice-cream cone. the mind must receive visual training in a range of vps to learn how to decode these words and phrases. all the visual aspects of the words, such as their overall shape and the patterned sequence of their letters need to be correctly perceived, and connected to what the mind has previously processed, in order to produce meaning. individual vps work in unison. an overview of what they are and what they do reveals their interdependence (children's vision coalition n.d.; gardner 1996; kavale 1982; the learning centre foundation n.d.; wced 2006; wced & cami education 2009; wced provincial literacy committee 2005): visual discrimination: is the ability to see details that make one object or symbol different from another. for grade 1 learners to differentiate between ‘j’ and ‘i’, ‘come’ and ‘came’, in grade r they must have sorted objects according to shape, colour and size, identified the odd picture in a sequence and played matching games. visual memory: is the ability to remember exactly what something looks like even though it is not in front of you. for grade 1 learners to write out a non-phonic word from memory, for example, ‘they’, ‘put’, ‘you’, in grade r they must have answered questions about pictured items, objects or words after they had been removed, and have named and redrawn them. visual spatial relationships: is the ability to see that a symbol placed in a different position in fact becomes a different symbol. grade 1 learners need to understand that when they invert the symbol ‘u’, a different symbol appears, for example ‘n’, and if they reverse ‘b’, ‘d’ appears. for this to occur, in grade r they must have compared a symbol made up of two shapes or letters attached to each other in a specific way, with two other symbols, one with the same shapes or letters attached differently, the other with the same shapes or letters but turned to appear different. they must be able to turn the latter symbol back in their minds to identify it. visual form constancy: is the ability to identify a written symbol when it has been written in a different way.for grade 1learners to be able to read and identify written symbols whether or not they are in printed or handwritten forms, in grade r they must have matched printed and handwritten letters on a page by drawing a line between them, or copied printed letters and discussed that they do not need to look exactly the same. visual sequential memory: is the ability to see the order of letters or digits or objects. for grade 1 learners to correctly see that the order of letters in ‘was’ is different from the order of letters in ‘saw’, in grade r they have to have placed different objects in a specific order to make a pattern and copied a specific sequence of coloured beads threaded onto a string. visual figure ground: is the ability to differentiate between foreground and background. for grade 1 learners to correctly copy a word without being distracted by the other words around it or to read without leaving out words or skipping lines, in grade r they must have pointed out specific objects in a picture and coloured overlapping picture objects. visual closure: is the ability to successfully identify a word, letter or number when a part of it is missing. for grade 1 learners to read in chunks, filling in the details for themselves instead of reading letter by letter, in grade r they must have compared a picture of a complete object with four other fragments of objects, one of which is a fragment of the complete object. then they must have matched the correct fragment with the object. they should be able to repeat the exercise comparing word fragments with a complete word. visual form perception: is the ability to see the difference between forms or shapes of words. for grade 1 learners to differentiate between ‘where’ and ‘were’, even though both begin with ‘w’ and end with ‘ere’, in grade r they must have compared a picture of a shape or word with four other shapes or words, three of which are similar and one of which is identical. they must have been abe to match the correct shapes or words (wced 2006). these descriptions of vps indicate that the grade r teacher does not deal with early reading applications of vps, which are dealt with by the grade 1 teacher. instead, the grade r teacher must have quality sck of vps to be able to design and do the elementary visual training which enables the grade r learner to activate vps in his mind. the teacher must use tasks and activities which scaffold visual perception from concrete to semi-concrete to abstract learning levels to engage the learner in progressive pre-reading. the aim of the research is as follows: to assess the sck of vps of the teachers in the case study in relation to their level of pre-and in service training as well as to their potential curriculum content knowledge. the overall research question addressed by the documentary analysis and case study below is: are the grade r teachers in the case study adequately trained to impart vps for pre-reading? both the level of training as well as the delivered curriculum should provide a critical framework of sck for imparting these vps to grade r learners. therefore, a documentary analysis of caps is a necessary preliminary to the case study. caps curriculum top ↑ in 2011 the department of basic education (dbe) produced a grade r caps curriculum and provided in-service teacher training before implementing it in 2012. role players believe that in fusing the behaviouristic national christian education (nce) curriculum with the constructivist outcomes based education (obe) curriculum, caps represents a material improvement of these. how grade r caps could improve grade r teaching is closely linked to how well grade r teachers can be trained to use it. the question is: how serviceable is caps as a primary inand preservice training source for sck of vps? the basic set of documents for use by grade r teachers in the western cape is the caps resource file 2012 for grade r, in which the national documents have been collected by the wced (wced 2012a). this file was analysed with a view to addressing the following considerations: how clearly and comprehensively is sck of vps explained in the documents? what sck of vps do the documents provide for teaching and assessing visual training towards early reading? what sck of vps does the teacher still need to acquire, in order to effectively use the curriculum for visual training? three key publications within the caps resource file 2012 for grade r (wced 2012a), as listed below, were analysed to deal with these considerations. this qualitative documentary analysis was made by recording and listing: explicit references to the prominent vps featured above; and references to concepts or learning activities directly or indirectly related to vps. this analysis revealed the following: firstly, in the training manual (wced 2012a) teachers are briefed on the progression from concrete to semi-concrete and abstract levels of learning by providing examples of each. the emergent literacy module covers early reading categories such as copying letters, reading pictures, engagement with rich text environments, verbal or vocabulary ability, curiosity about words and letters and phonological awareness. it does not reference pre-reading categories, such as visual training in specific vps and the role played by cognitive skills. it also does not cover the need for progression from one set of competencies to another according to the levels of learning it summarises. the discussion of the balanced language (bl) approach also does not clearly reference any preto early reading progression, even though scaffolding is mentioned. the training manual is valuable as an overview and orientation but it does not provide a substantial or detailed sck framework for vps and visual training. secondly, in the ncs requirements for english home language (wced 2012a), the vps and visual training concepts are comprehensively covered by learning activities such as: identifying similarities and differences; matching pictures and words; using memory to recall letters; recognising objects in pictures or concrete formats; solving puzzles; forming letters; sequencing and copying; and distinguishing between shapes of different letters and words. but none of these activities are explicitly identified as imparting vps or representing visual training. there is no mention or description of visual perception, the prominent vps profiled in this study, or of visual training in general. as a result, the grade r teachers are likely to teach and assess visual training incidentally, and are likely to leave gaps. thirdly, the ncs for english mathematics (wced 2012a) contains clearer vps and visual training categories, and a more substantial collection of concrete activities using suitable apparatus such flash cards (pictures, dots, number symbols and names), counters, measuring devices, card games (uno, rummicub and snap) and board games (ludo, snakes & ladders). however, sck should not simply cover detailed learning activities; it also involves the synthesis of knowledge needed to design teaching and assessment strategies that provide learning activities with well-defined outcomes. grade r training must enable teachers to set up their own learning programmes according to the new curriculum, not merely superimpose the given learning programme onto their classroom context. the challenge is that more in-depth preand in-service training in the use of the curriculum itself is needed, and not in-depth merely in the sense of being able to apply the detailed learning activities in the ncs for english mathematics . the training must also be in-depth in terms of being able to understand the theoretical and conceptual design of the activities contained in these documents, and even to be able to modify and redesign them within the same curriculum framework for different instructional contexts. the visual training requirements of the ncs for english mathematics suggest that this finding is relevant to early numeracy as well. the findings of the analysis of the caps resource file 2012 for grade r raise concerns about the level of explicit sck of vps in the document for visual training towards early reading. too little explicit vps conceptual language is found in caps, and too much must still be imported into caps, in order for anyone but the most highly trained grade r teacher to consciously use caps for outcome-directed pre-reading visual training. this not only applies to the language of specific skills concepts but also the language of the three general english home language (hl) categories in the ncs requirements, namely: listening and speaking; emergent reading (includes word and sentence-level work, phonics, shared reading and independent reading); emergent writing (includes handwriting) (wced 2012a). these are mainly grade 1 and not grade r categories. the desirability of closer curricular-training alignment in quality preand in-service grade r professional development is illustrated in the case study which follows. case study top ↑ the case study, on which this article reports, analysed grade r sck of vps with regard to caps in a rural western cape public school with four grade r classes. data were collected from a qualitative questionnaire followed by a focus-group discussion, leading to an analysis of the discourse. the aim was to establish what kind of preand in-service professional development would benefit these teachers, especially regarding sck of vps. the case-study site is also significant as a wced departmental-circuit ‘focus school’. since 2011, systemic monitoring of grade r teachers has been formalised in the wced. ecd educational specialists have been appointed, one per district office, to support grade r teachers across the circuits. they are allocated to approximately five designated focus schools in each circuit, which require the most support, based on unsatisfactory grade 1 results. the four teachers in the case study were dedicated workers. relatively low foundation phase (fp) results in focus schools are not automatically indicative of teacher incompetence or of gaps in curriculum delivery. instead, they suggest a range of contextual factors which affect early reading achievement, such as the cognitive, linguistic, social and emotional backlogs documented in interventions by remedial teachers, learning support advisors (lsas) and educational psychologists. nevertheless, professional development can counteract deficiencies in curricula and learning environments. this is an accepted motivational narrative which drives in-service training and teacher-directed interventions. teachers and the principal were briefed on the nature and scope of the research, and signed consent forms before receiving the questionnaires to complete on their own. a week later the teachers had their completed questionnaires in front of them during the focus-group discussion. the discussion began by exploring what sck of vps the teachers had obtained from two years’ pre-service training at an fet college, that is, ecd levels 4 & 5. the teachers spoke about vps in terms of understanding different learning styles (such as visual and kinaesthetic learning), as opposed to specific vps. overall, the pre-service training was considered valuable by the educators in the sample. however, the lack of explicit vps content can potentially result in insufficient sck of vps required to implement effective, outcome-directed visual training. such training must impart recognised vps concepts in a flow from concrete to semi-concrete and eventually to abstract learning. such a flow is needed to scaffold a learner's progress from pre-reading to early reading competencies. for example, suppose the learner has to practice visual sequential memory. three blocks in moulded plastic or carved wood representing letters are set out in the sequence: ‘s’, ‘a’ and ‘w’. to copy the sequence at first, the learner will need to draw on as many senses as possible to identify, select, feel, and place new blocks in the same sequence. eventually the learner can move from this concrete, 3–d visual training activity to a similar one on paper or laminated board with loose, cut-out letters. this 2–d, semi-concrete format requires less sensory but more cognitive work. the learner is ‘reading’ the letters sequenced to spell ‘saw’, progressing from pre-alphabetic to partial-alphabetic reading. now the learner will begin to remember the order of ‘saw’, with the aid of phonics, sight-word learning, and related techniques, particularly in grade 1. for the grade r teacher to be able to do the required visual training on a concrete learning level, establishing each vps as a decoding tool, she needs critical training which can establish a thorough working knowledge of vps. the grade r teacher stands at the recognised threshold for the emergence and radical development from the age of 5 years onwards of key vps such as visual form constancy, visual figure ground and visual spatial relationships (schneck 2005:419). the accurate definitions of vps that the teachers articulated, were obtained from limited in-service training, and included discussing the use of 2– and 3–d apparatus to move learning from concrete to semi-concrete levels of learning. this knowledge enabled the teachers to teach visual training which imparted visual discrimination, visual form constancy, visual form perception and visual sequential memory to learners. these four vps represent half of the vps profiled above. this sck of vps was imparted through more random, incidental learning, as: this sck of vps was not necessarily covered in the pre-service training. the teachers recalled a limited range of vps concepts because of the brief nature of the in-service training insert. the teachers, working in a departmental-circuit focus school, are more accessible than other teachers, to lsas and other educational specialists who may or may not impart sck of vps. if too much sck acquisition is left to incidental learning, it may become piecemeal, leaving important gaps in content. this was the case in the sample, where the four other vps profiled in the study were not deliberately imparted. more systematic, comprehensive forms of knowledge acquisition are needed to provide the framework within which new or incidental knowledge can be included. the value of caps for sck of vps, as understood by the grade r teachers, was its ability to direct and integrate learning from concrete to semi-concrete levels of learning. for them, the concrete learning activities laid a suitable foundation for the actual early reading tasks that their learners began to perform, such as recognising, naming and writing letters. however, in the grade r caps curriculum, discussed above, learning from concrete to semi-concrete levels was also not comprehensively and explicitly applied to specific vps. when the group was asked, ‘is there specific wording which refers to vps?’ one member replied: ‘no, there aren’t. it is not written like that in the book. they will only refer, for example, to visual arts’. conclusions top ↑ the preceding case study presented the challenge of training grade r teachers to have better sck of vps for visual training and pre-reading. it is unclear whether or not the low visual discrimination and visual figure ground results, in the 2012 case-study site, are related to sck, contextual issues, or systemic-curricular issues. gaps may have originated in the teacher training or in the curriculum. these areas should be addressed simultaneously as they interact. much learning is incidental, but incidental teaching only works if it is embedded in a rich knowledge base which enables teachers to cover all the vps highlighted. this sck of vps should be given more prominence in the design of nqf level 5 pre-service training, in view of the current reality that the bulk of incoming grade r teachers are grade r practitioners with level 4 and 5 qualifications. however, as level 5 training will no longer provide access to grade r in future, research needs to be shifted to level 6 and 7 training. a study with documentary analyses of the b ed (fp) (nqf level 7) and the diploma in grade r teaching (nqf level 6) course-content would be required to examine the quality of these courses’ sck of vps content within their grade r specialist components. the case-study discourse also revealed that the teachers’ imparting of vps, via the grade r caps curriculum, from concrete to semi-concrete levels of learning, was imparted incidentally. the challenge is that this multilevel learning must be comprehensively and explicitly applied to imparting all the specific vps during the process of visual training and pre-reading. ideally, such training would need to lead the grade r teachers beyond the theoretical sck of vps to pck that knows which visual training strategies will work, to the practical teacher competence which knows how to deploy those strategies. the analysis of the grade r caps curriculum itself, in the form of the caps resource file 2012 for grade r, revealed that too little explicit vps content comes out of caps, and too much must still go into caps. within caps, the category of vps can be named visual skills and more explicitly included as a subset of the ‘emergent reading’ component of the english home language subject, as it is significant enough as a stand-alone category of language-acquisition. it is indispensable for meaning-making during preand early reading. such an insertion into the curriculum must be explicit and comprehensive if the grade r teacher is going to be deliberate about imparting it. grade r teachers would then be able to design visual training activities under a category in which all the vps profiled in this article would be imparted effectively. in the south african context, the curriculum itself is required to be a training resource. a vital matter that has arisen from the analysis is the issue of exactly how much of caps is covered in pre-service training. to what extent has the recent implementation of caps resulted in the revision of aspects of pre-service training? these issues lie outside the immediate focus of this article, but the challenge is to ensure that curricular-training alignment is deliberately pursued as a matter of collaboration between academic institutions and the relevant education departments. the study of sck of vps in level 6 and 7 teacher training referred to above could be broadened to include an analysis of caps curricular content in the same. in the overview of the professional development landscape, this article has sought to discuss levels of and access to preand in-service training which involve the curriculum and accredited courses’ modules. a model of professional development must be progressive in promoting grade r teachers’ progress through the institutions of education (snow et al. 2005:205). there needs to be a clear and achievable pathway by which hard-working and diligently studying grade r teachers can access the gazetted requirement of a national diploma or bachelor degree by means of pre-and in service training. if the grade r teachers are credited for it, they will be motivated to benefit optimally from all training opportunities that give them sustained progress along an accreditation continuum. in the wced, ewp5 (department of education 2001a) dealing with ecd is critically important. in 2012 the chief education specialist for ecd identified its implementation as the grade r priority for 2013 and 2014, particularly regarding compulsory grade r-curricular resourcing for quality grade r teaching and the upgrading of the qualifications of grade r practitioners (wced 2012b:1–4). however, roll-out of compulsory grade r programmes would only be constructive in tandem with suitably trained and paid teachers developed by academic-government partnerships. one aspect of such academic-government partnerships currently exists, in the form of part-time level 6 in-service training of grade r teachers with both academic accreditation and departmental approval. this is a recognition that the in-service training provided by departmental education specialists needs to be supplemented, as does level 5 pre-service training. these grade r teachers are sponsored via a wced learnership programme which also includes funding from the national skills fund (nsf) and a private bank. the point is that such collaboration produces workable training solutions. even more could be accomplished by the work of a collaborative training-design team at provincial or national level. such a grade r field-specific team would be in a position to more effectively reconfigure training models; and to infuse them with suitable curricular content, beginning with more sck of vps content, as well as visual training design content. at present, much caps content enters training streams via private companies and ngos acting as intermediaries between training institutions and the provincial education departments. a grade r field-specific team can potentially incorporate the role of the intermediaries. such a team would also need to be competent in matters like grade r policy development, in order to create policies which represent both academic and government interests. an advantage of such a partnership is that it could promote future agreements between the department of basic education (dbe), department of higher education and training (dhet) and academic institutions around grade r teacher training nationally. nevertheless, partnerships do not cohere unless they have a common focal point of interest. therefore, the applied vps category within caps for grade r, possibly named visual skills, can be used by a collaborative training-design team to bring caps more strongly into a role as a transferrable resource for preand in-service training. the partnerships are essential because even with private sector involvement, neither set of institutions has the human or financial capital resources to conduct the training job properly on its own. for example, in the cape winelands district (cwd), the coverage by the single ecd educational specialist is as follows: the cwd has eight circuits, comprising approximately 35 schools with grade r sites in each; at least once per term the educational specialist visits only the focus school sites; this works out to about one in seven of all the grade r sites in the cwd. the curriculum advisers (cas) and lsas support the remainder of the grade r sites. the frequency of these general purpose support visits is also once per term on average. with such sparse coverage, it is difficult to sustain effective in-service training for all the grade r sites. a model of professional development must not only be progressive in promoting grade r teachers’ progress through the institutions of education. it must also be progressive in empowering grade r teachers to mature as experts. aspects of such a model must be progressive in the sense that they seek to follow best teacher training practices, which propel a grade r teacher towards maturity, competence and expertise. best practices become distinctive when enough data, ratifying their effectiveness, are collected through research shared at a district, provincial, national or international level. furthermore, best practices review applied principles that work on a more universal level and then preview the application of those principles on localised, contextual levels. it would be presumptuous to proceed directly with application, without taking a good look at what is already being implemented locally. if what is being implemented locally is successful, they will confirm, or may even modify and improve the practices. if what is being implemented locally is less successful, they may be modified and improved by the practices. therefore, an improvement is possible both universally and locally, whereas no improvement whatsoever is less likely. this two-way change dynamic is what makes a model of professional development, which follows best practices, a progressive model. best practices not only need localised contexts of application, but also specific knowledge frameworks for application. therefore, sck in vps has been identified as a key element of grade r training-design which, when addressed, may draw in other important training elements (auditory, cognitive, emotional, social, cognitive and physical development) and subjects (mathematics, life skills). given the limitations of personnel and grade r infrastructure, academic-government partnerships would first have to find consensus around a set of best practices which can form the basis for a suitable and progressive model of professional development. aspects of such a model are illustrated by the recommendations made below. recommendations towards a model of professional development of grade r teachers top ↑ what follows are nine suggested and illustrative applications of best practices principles. these are applied to the preand in-service professional development of grade r teachers, with specific reference to sck of vps, represented by exploration questions in parentheses which can be used by the teachers. these principles would work most effectively within the context of academic-government partnerships: the practice of addressing prior knowledge to stimulate new knowledge can involve pre-service bridging training which recognises prior learning; and in-service revision of established expertise. (list and define the vps you already know. then describe how you would use specific apparatus to impart them.) developing the skills required for continuous learning can involve pre-service modules in lifelong learning and research methods; and in-service workshops in adaptation and reflection. (conduct research in your class to establish which two vps are the most challenging. reflect on the possible causes of challenge and design an alternative visual training activity for each.) the development of a comprehensive and usable knowledge base can involve pre-service balance between grade r specialist and general education subjects; and in-service school-departmental coverage of subject and curriculum-content knowledge over an extended period. (choose one vps you consider critically important. explain its use for mathematics, life skills and cognition. design your own flowchart in which you relate your own sck, pck, curriculum content knowledge and practical teacher competence to one another.) application and contextualisation within internships or mentorships can involve holistic pre-service assessment of the grade r practical internship; and in-service school-based or regional mentorship networks involving grade r heads, grade r lead teachers, ecd educational specialists and academic specialists. (design a mentorship model and assign a specific role for yourself. visit a grade r class in a completely different social and community context to your own. ask the incumbent teacher which vp skill is most challenging, find out why and formulate an intervention in partnership with him or her. then let the other teacher return the visit.) articulation of and integration between subject knowledge and pedagogy can involve pre-service assessment of application of vp subject knowledge to appropriate, scaffolded visual training activities; and in-service school or circuit-wide lesson and resource preparation workshops. (formulate how to impart a specific vp skill in respective concrete, semi-concrete and abstract learning levels. prepare a demonstration for other grade r teachers, which includes not only the selection of apparatus for the levels but also how to make them.) extended practical application as opposed to dabbling in eclectic topics can involve pre-service running of teaching practice or pedagogy concurrently with other course modules, and in-service departmental workshops to cover the practical application of specific curricular requirements over an extended 2–3 year period. (share your own system that you use to assess vps via direct observation. also observe a colleague's system, see what appeals to you and modify yours if necessary.) contextualised rather than generic approaches can involve pre-service modules in socio-cultural, ecd and learning barriers, contextualisation and differentiation; and in-service school-based diagnostic assessment and community based cross-sectional studies which inform teaching practice. (create a checklist of symptoms you encounter in your class, which you can use to identify the learning and ‘reading’ barriers related to vps. in a column alongside, infer the contextual causes of those barriers.) analysis of shared best teaching practices can involve a pre-service literature review of research covering best grade r teaching practices worldwide; and in-service development and regular application of a best grade r teaching practices checklist. (google and choose a developing country, on your own continent, where visual training, of 5–6 year-old learners, appears to be working. establish why and see if what is implemented there cna be reapplied in your class. compose your own best practices checklist.) lead teachers demonstrating the balancing of personal growth trajectories with school improvement plans can include direct involvement of lead teachers in pre-service training modules and accreditation. this can also include in-service use of an integrated quality management system (iqms) customised for grade r, as a template for linking a grade r teacher's personal growth plan with the grade r section's improvement plan. (judge whether or not there is any conflict of interest between your personal goals and those of your school or department. decide how a solution can be negotiated which may require compromise but will result in win-win for both parties. visualise and rationalise how good visual training will make the rest of your teaching job easier.) in summary, the general recommendation is that a progressive, nationally accredited model of professional development of grade r teachers can be: confirmed by academic-governmental role players. presented to all grade r teachers as a way forward from whichever context they find themselves. localised at classroom level by means of a pilot project focused on addressing a particular developmental issue such as sck of vps and visual training-design. designed to follow best practices involving relevant role players (teachers, lead teachers, hod's, grade r specialists and teacher-trainers) and locally situated methods: coaching; mentoring; lecturing on-site, off-site, or online. south african children younger than five years of age, should be everybody's concern, as should the seven-year-old children ‘entering’ the school system. but the children, five and six-years of age, must not be overlooked, nor must the grade r teachers trained to prepare them to read, write and calculate. the threat remains that the window of opportunity to give learners a firm foundation may still fall through the cracks of sweeping developmental programs, in spite of good intentions of phased national roll-out. grade r professional development and visual perceptual skills must become more than ephemeral buzz words. they must simply represent the five-year-old south african child next door being able to make sense of what is seen with the eyes, so that the way forward into the reading world is not a stumble down but a step up, with a steady hand-up from a competent grade r teacher. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions c.a. (western cape education department) was the main author. a.h. (cape peninsula university of technology) and a.s. (cape peninsula university of technology) were supervising authors. references top ↑ barber, m. & mourshed, m., 2007, how the world’s best performing school systems came out on top, mckinsey report, september 2007, mckinsey & company, london. wichita vision development center n.d., ‘children's vision coalition’, viewed 28 march 2012, from http://www.childrensvision.com/reading.html department of basic education (dbe), 2013a, address at the handing-over of a grade r unit to mbonisweni primary school by angie motshekga, minister of basic education, tongaat, kwazulu-natal, pretoria. department of education, 2001a, education white paper 5 on early childhood education, government printer, pretoria. gardner, m.f., 1996, test of visual-perceptual skills (nonmotor)–revised, psychological and educational publications, san francisco. kavale, k., 1982, ‘meta-analysis of the relationship between visual perceptual skills and reading achievement’, journal of learning disabilities 15(1), 42–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/002221948201500110 schneck, c.m., 2005, ‘visual perception’, in j. case-smith (ed.), occupational therapy in children, 5th edn., pp. 412–446, elseiver mosby, st. louis. snow, c.e., griffin, p. & burns, m.s., 2005, knowledge to support the teaching of reading, jossey-bass, san francisco. taylor, n., 2013, ‘national report 2012: the state of literacy teaching and learning in the foundation phase’, national education evaluation & development unit, pretoria, viewed from april 2013, http://www.education.gov.za/needu/tabid/860/default.aspx the learning centre foundation, n.d., viewed 28 march 2012, from from http://www.thelearningcentre.net/reading.html. ‘the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications’, 2011a, government gazette, 553(34467), 1–64, july 15, pretoria. wced, 2006, perception and cognition, cape town learning institute, cape town. wced, 2012a, fpgrade r training manual: guidelines for implementing the national curriculum and assessment policy (caps) in grade r, government printer, pretoria. wced, 2012b, grade r priorities, s.n., cape town. wced & cami education, 2009, barriers to learning assessment battery: assessment manual, wced specialized education support directorate, pretoria. wced provincial literacy committee, 2005, strategies for intervention, s.n., cape town. wood, c., 2007, yardsticks: children in the classroom ages 4–14, northeast foundation for children, inc., turners falls. article information authors: berit lundgren1 mathabo khau1 affiliations: 1faculty of education, nelson mandela metropolitan university, south africa correspondence to: berit lundgren email: berit.lundgren2@nmmu.ac.za postal address: po box 77000, port elizabeth 6031, south africa dates: received: 15 june 2015 accepted: 15 sept. 2015 published: 30 nov. 2015 how to cite this article: lundgren, b. & mathabo, k., 2015, ‘broken promises – a novel's impact on shaping youth identity’, reading & writing 6(1), art. #86, 8 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v6i1.86 copyright notice: © 2015. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. broken promises – a novel's impact on shaping youth identity in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • reading in south africa • the important context • gender constructions    • post-structural feminism    • the gender discourse    • gender perspective in books • methodology • findings    • the novel – broken promises    • affirmation of gender    • gender and power    • femininity and masculinity • conclusions • implications for the classroom • acknowledgements    • competing interests    • authors’ contributions • references abstract top ↑ in many emerging economies worldwide, and in south africa in particular, sizeable investments have been made in education with the hope of increasing literacy rates and hence producing a workforce that will fit into the job market. thus it is important to understand the context and literacy materials within south african classrooms and their impact. this article looks at the novel broken promises by roz haden, which is read in many south african classrooms. from a post-structural feminist theory and functional language theory, we analyse how the portrayal of characters and storyline can have an impact on young readers’ identity construction in relation to the novel's predominant discourses. the findings show that men are still portrayed as dominant in their own right within society whereas women are defined in relation to men. unchallenged, this portrayal can continue to perpetuate gendered stereotypes, which would affect young people's functionality in society. we therefore argue that while novels are good for improving literacy among young people, the messages they contain should be deconstructed and challenged so that young people can make informed decisions regarding their gender identities. introduction top ↑ in this article we focus on the gender constructions of girls and boys in contemporary youth literature from a south african context. novels that youths read in schools are often read without any discussion. in such cases, students’ knowledge of the relationship between gender and language can be limited or even absent; in addition, their awareness of how the connection between the social and linguistic construction of gender is implicated in daily life, where it is negotiated and visible through beliefs, speech and actions, can also be poorly developed. this paper draws from a study about teachers’ development of their literacy practice over a two-year period in two secondary schools in the eastern cape. the teachers found it frustrating when students in grade 8 could not read at a satisfactory level. the teachers realised that the students needed to read much more, not only for obtaining good marks, but also for the joy of reading and for their own satisfaction. therefore the teachers started reading projects in their classrooms through the assistance of the researchers (lundgren, scheckle & zinn 2015). a starting-point for those teachers was to find donors of books for their school: private individuals, publishers and other organisations. one of the donors was fundza, cover2cover, which gives out free books to many partner schools in south africa. this publisher mostly distributes ten copies of each title from the harmony series. broken promises by roz haden, which is set in a fictional township, is the first of five books in the harmony series. the series follows a group of teenagers at a fictional high school, harmony high. during an informal meeting with teachers at one of the schools, we also met some students. through discussions with teachers and students we realised that the students liked the novels from the harmony series very much because they could relate to the content as it was about their real world and real-life situations, the same as they experienced daily in the townships. furthermore, the students argued that they have learnt from the novels, for example, not to trust easily or believe everything they are told. they have also learnt to have more confidence in themselves. therefore we decided to examine the novels more closely from a gender perspective. we emphasise the importance of making classroom literacy practice visible and offering examples of fiction literature that challenge the status quo. this study hopes to contribute to a wider understanding of the impact that language and the content of fiction literature can have on students’ identity-shaping. the aim of this article, therefore, is to provide a gendered analysis of the novel broken promises. this analysis is guided by three questions: in what ways are gender and power presented in relation to women and men? what language is used to describe women, men and the power relations between them? what gendered messages do students receive from reading the book and how can these be understood and deconstructed? reading in south africa top ↑ firstly, to understand why it is extremely important for the teachers to find books for the students we contextualise youth and reading in south africa. studies have shown that the higher the socio-economic index for a country, the higher the reading and writing competency among its inhabitants (konstantopoulus & borman 2011). for south africa to improve its economy, therefore, there is a need to empower its citizens with skills in order to enhance their economic contribution (unesco 2012). south african youth experience emotional distress in many situations because of factors such as poverty and parental absence (eddy 2009). in the area of port elizabeth where the novel was read, more than 50% of the youths were living without their parents, according to holborn and eddy (2011). furthermore, young people might feel hopeless when they do not know where their fathers are while at the same time they are expected to respect adult male authority. within the area of the study community violence against women is common, making young people vulnerable in the context of absent fathers and dysfunctional families (nduna & jewkes 2012). dawson (2007) found in a south african high school study that boys thought that girls valued them only because they would buy things for them, whereas the girls saw boys as providers. reading competence is crucial in any economy; accordingly, countries generally invest in education to promote effective reading and writing and to develop human resources. the closure of libraries and the provision of fewer reading materials such as novels in schools does not promote the creation of a reading community in south africa (scheckle 2015). the fact that many students in grade 8 in south africa have not read a children's book in primary school also creates challenges for the development of reading competence. for many students, grade 8 could be the first time that they ever read a complete book (bertram 2006; scheckle 2015) because many students in south africa come from environments where school-level literacy and reading habits are not integral to daily life (bertram 2006; janks 2010; lundgren 2010; scheckle 2015). it is therefore important for south african teachers to consider how they can find contemporary youth literature that will enable dialogic engagement between learners and their immediate environments so that inclusive economic growth and gender equality can be achieved. furthermore, it is important for teachers to be aware of what their students are reading, as well as of the social groupings within which the students belong, in order for them to understand the influences of such identifiers on students’ reading habits and competence. the important context top ↑ the theoretical framework for the article is hermeneutic with a sociocultural and socio-constructivist view of identity, where language is situated in the social milieu and is the medium for expressing feelings, identity and development (barton 2007; moje et al. 2009). studies that have been conducted on identity-shaping have most often been based on otherness, an ‘us’ and ‘them’ perspective, where some criteria that are characteristic of a group contribute to separating people and creating different identities (goffman 1990). also, gee (2001) argues that language usage usually means building understanding in relation to others and ourselves. this may come about through solidarity or affiliation markers, on the one hand, and dissociation, on the other (goffman 1990). youths’ identity can be interpreted from the language they use when they talk about what they do. students create and communicate their identity in and through the various tools that they use to communicate, such as mobile phones, cameras, laptops and pens (wilson & boatridge 2011:273). gender constructions top ↑ this section describes the theories used in making meaning of the text and discourse in broken promises. first, post-structural feminism is presented. this is followed by a section problematising discourse, text and text reading. this section concludes with a consideration of the power of language in discourses. post-structural feminism the post-structural feminist theory observes that individual experiences are situated within a society where language, social structures and power produce contrasting ways of allocating meaning (jackson 2001). therefore, as individuals interact with different discursive fields, certain values become deeply held through contact with others. as a result, individuals become bound by norms and ways of doing that exist within a particular context. the post-structural feminist perspective also posits that people are neither passive recipients of socialisation nor are these values biologically fixed or psychologically predetermined. instead, people actively construct the world and shape their lives and those of others (weedon 1997). based on the idea that every relationship is fluid, one can argue that the problematic constructions of masculinity and femininity can be troubled. the fluidity of power and gender relations is evidence of the fact that the borders between femininity and masculinity are permeable and fragile, allowing for slip-ups and the performance of alternative scripts (butler 1990). what is deemed right and normal is socially interpreted and reproduced in discourse. therefore identities are actively constructed and reconstructed, produced and reproduced through interaction with the society, and are therefore not produced in rigid linear ways (butler 1990). post-structural thinking looks at discourse in terms of how it functions, where it is found and how it becomes produced and regulated (weedon 1997). based on these arguments, we take the stance that power is not owned or possessed but is exercised in ways that produce and reproduce inequalities. one important factor in the construction of gender is language. an analysis of language use can therefore be helpful in interpreting the complexity of phenomena such as gender constructions in a social context (martin & rose 2008). language influences society and inversely society influences language – they are dialectically connected to each other. social activities are described, interpreted and also constructed through language and linguistic features. language has, for example, the power to refer to people's feelings and opinions. janks (2010):24) points out the power of language as every language choice ‘… foregrounds what was selected and hides, silences or backgrounds what was not selected’. the gender discourse in this section the concepts discourse and text are presented as the novel: the text we discuss is written within frames of a special discourse. according to burman (1994), a discourse is a socially constructed framework that defines the limits of what can be said and done. the implication therefore is that once a discourse becomes normalised, it becomes a rule and therefore limits what can be said and done. in this way, the discourse positions individuals to become, for example, boys and girls. martin and rose (2008) also emphasise that discourse interfaces with grammar and social activity. making sense of a discourse requires the integration of language knowledge and use within the social context. the normalisation of discourse accordingly enables certain groups of people to wield power in ways that disadvantage others. best and kellner (1991):26) argue that this is because discourses are ‘… viewpoints and positions from which people speak and the power relations that these allow and presuppose’. thus, whereas individuals may be positioned as powerless in one situation, they could be powerful in others. foucault (1978):94) argues that power cannot be ‘… acquired, seized or shared and is not something that one holds on to or allows to slip away; power is exercised from innumerable points …’. it is through discourse that individuals can be subjected to power or can exercise power over others (foucault 1978). in addition, guerrero (1999) argues that the politicised nature of interpretations and meaning making is a product of power because interpretations that are powerful gain their status from societal interactions. the standpoint in this study is that discourse is rooted in power because of its ability to construct people in particular ways or dictate certain ways of being normal, often expressed through the language medium. the concept text, on the other hand, can, according to halliday and hasan (1976):1), be defined as language in use. halliday and hasan also add that a ‘… text is best regarded as a semantic unit: a unit not of form but of meaning’ (1976:2) whereas, according to kress (2010):148), a ‘… text is a multimodal semiotic entity …’ produced on social occasions. a text is positioned and shaped by the author's beliefs, values and attitudes. furthermore, a text is shaped by its place in the world and the author's own experiences. for this study it is important to realise that novels read by young students are also interpreted interactively between the author's language, values and norms, the reader and the text (barton 2007). within this constructivist perspective the reader is actively engaging with texts to make meanings out of it (barton 2007). in this way, readers pay attention not only to the words but also to the contextual information transferred through language use (luke & freebody 1999). the text may guide readers in constructing their gender identity as well as influence their language use; and both might correspond to the norms and values represented in the society. when readers rely on earlier knowledge and experience to interpret a text, they may supply meanings that do not always appear in the text itself. these meanings influence their identity (holland & leander 2004). therefore, we cannot only make meaning of the text without also making meaning of the society and culture in which the text is contextualised (martin & rose 2008), and vice versa. all this has to be challenged by teachers in order to realise the power of the word and the impact all texts have on the reader (janks et al. 2013). gender perspective in books many studies about novels, their content and language have been carried out, with only a few of them focusing on a gendered analysis of the text. lalbakhsh and wan yahya's (2011) study shows that doris lessing's the golden notebook (1962) depicts a world that is highly unfavourable to women where male domination is obvious. men determine the values and norms for women. the study also points out that the women in the novel are oppressed in a society dominated by males and are also seen as a subordinate class. furthermore, the study shows that women have to deal with the pressure put on them by the norms and values of society as portrayed in the novel. ueno (2006), who analyses women's gender identity in manga (japanese comics), agrees. women in manga are objects for men's pleasure and are defined in relation to men. however, other young adult fiction challenges normative assumptions about sexuality and deals with liberal gender views (wickens 2011). according to wickens (2011), in early texts and novels lesbians were isolated in society and doomed to dreary lives – but this has changed. in contemporary novels characters assume different sexualities and plots challenge and undermine established structures. also bean and moni (2003), in a study of the novel fighting ruben wolfe by zusak (2000), found that readers have to evaluate, analyse and discuss the language of the text in order to obtain a transparent representation of society. methodology top ↑ the novel broken promises by roz haden was analysed from a gender perspective, that is, how gender relations are represented through language use. critical discourse analysis was employed to understand how the language used portrayed the actors and situations in the novel. critical discourse analysis primarily studies the ways in which social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced and reinforced by text and talk in the social and political context (diamond 1996; fairclough 1995; wodak 1997). crucial to critical discourse analysts is the explicit awareness of the role of language in society. continuing a tradition that rejects the possibility of a ‘value-free’ science, it can be argued that science and especially scholarly discourse are inherently part of and influenced by social structure produced in social interaction (van dijk 1996). this article aligns itself with van dijk's view by acknowledging the relationship between the reader and society and posits that such relationships should be studied and accounted for in their own right. the analysis involved close readings of the novel, paying attention to female–male and male–female interactions and dialogues. furthermore, the analysis of the language is informed by halliday's systemic functional linguistics/language model (sfl) with the focus on ideation and appraisal (martin & rose 2008) as well as critical language analysis (fairclough 1995; janks 2010). the sfl theory and critical language analysis offer a method for analysing social conditions such as the unequal power relations between females and males as manifested in the printed language text. martin and rose (2008) organise the meaning-making of a written text according to six key concepts: appraisal, ideation, conjunction, identification, periodicity and negotiation. in this article the concepts appraisal and ideation are used to explore how gender is expressed through language use in a written text. according to martin and rose (2008), ideation is about how experiences can be interpreted in discourse. appraisal is ‘concerned with evaluation – the kinds of attitudes that are negotiated in a text, the strength of the feelings involved and the ways in which values are sourced and readers aligned’ (martin & rose 2008:25). furthermore, appraisal is about negotiating attitudes and the ways in which they are amplified, including the reason for the appraisal. attitudes can be explored first through affect, that is, how individuals express their feelings. secondly, they can be explored through judgement, that is, how a person's character can be judged, and thirdly, through how people appreciate things and how they feel about other people, their actions and behaviour (martin & rose 2008). negotiation is concerned with relationships and interactions in dialogues and the roles of the participants. from that perspective a dialogue can be between people but also internal within a person. roles and experiences can be interpreted to show how a social world of gender discourse is illustrated through language use. experiences exist in processes illustrating what is going on and their subjective effect (martin & rose 2008). without understanding how language is constructed to represent social life and cultural norms, reading can reinforce inequality in relationships between men and women (janks 2010). findings top ↑ this article considers how the characters in the novel represent a particular kind of gender power. as language use is not neutral, it is important to deconstruct the socio-semantic ways in which characters can be represented to establish gender roles. the novel was analysed using the following concepts: ‘affirmation’, ‘gender power’ and ‘constructions of masculinity and femininity’. the findings are illustrated with quotations from the novel. the quotations chosen for this article are some of many where positions of femininity and masculinity were manifested through language use. firstly, however, a short summary of the content in the novel is presented. the novel – broken promises the novel describes how ntombi deals with her life at school and in society generally after her parents’ separation. ntombi is committed to keeping her family together despite difficult circumstances caused by the absence of solid role models for the youth in their community. ntombi and her sister, zinzi, are raised by their mother who, after becoming involved with a man called zakes, starts neglecting her children. ntombi tries in vain to get her mother to see zakes’ true character, and eventually she finds herself having a relationship with mzi, the ‘hottest’ boy at her school. ntombi's social world comprises her friends, her sister and mzi's friends. through her interaction with a boy from her school, olwethu, ntombi learns about zakes’ illicit business deals and mzi's involvement in them. after a party at thabiso's tavern, ntombi sees mzi's true colours. ntombi then starts investigating mzi and zakes’ relationship and finds out that they deal in stolen cars. ntombi and olwethu plan to have the two men arrested, but mzi finds out and tries to rape ntombi as revenge. ntombi manages to escape from mzi with olwethu's assistance. mzi and zakes are finally arrested and ntombi's mother at last understands why ntombi never liked zakes. affirmation of gender in this first section quotations are used to highlight the affirmation of gender. through interpreting ntombi's experiences as expressed through language use, her social world can be explored: quotation 1: she could not believe they were moving out the way for her, ntombi, who had never drawn the attention of any of them before. now she felt really proud to be sitting next to mzi. (haden 2010:47) quotation 2: here she was, being driven by the hottest boy in matric out on a date. it felt unreal. (haden 2010:47) these quotations, from a context where ntombi has fallen in love with a boy from the same school as her, show how ntombi feels more appreciated because of mzi. while she was on her own she had no social standing, but with a popular man by her side she has gained status. she was proud to be someone's girl, as if being her own girl was not good enough. this is a social construction of femininity and womanhood as manifested in many communities where a woman's worth depends on the man she is attached to (cf. lalbakhsh & wan yaha 2011). her social standing has improved because of being with the ‘hottest’ boy in matric (cf. ueno 2006). the social construction of femininity described above is achieved through language use in the text. to construct femininity special vocabulary, clauses and grammar are used. a functional language approach shows that the participants in the process have different roles. the core participant in the novel is ntombi. in quotations 1 and 2, ntombi is represented through the pronoun she. she has the subject position, is the doer and performs the actions or events in the process (martin & rose 2008). illustrative phrases are: could not believe, had never drawn the attention of, felt really proud to be sitting and felt unreal. mzi is the agent where he drives the car and ntombi is the passenger, thus ntombi is the object for this activity. mzi's friends, represented by the pronoun they in quotation 1, are active in the subject position when ‘they are moving out the way for her’. the verbs reflect situations in which a woman needs affirmation to shape her identity (holland & leander 2004). ntombi expresses her feelings in the situation thus: quotation 3: suddenly the world looked rosier, because mzi wanted to take her, shy ntombi who had never had a proper boyfriend, to the party. (haden 2010:32) quotation 4: he called her ‘gorgeous’; he ‘couldn't wait to spend time with her’. no guy had ever said that to her before. (haden 2010:43) these quotations show the mindset of ntombi as a woman needing male affirmation to make her feel valued. in quotations 3 and 4 mzi is mostly in a subject position followed by phrases such as ‘wanted to take her’, ‘he called her’ and ‘he couldn't wait to spend time with her’. this creates a process where ntombi is not in charge of her own life. she needs a male who can affirm her existence. it is made even more obvious by the use of evaluating appraisals like ‘rosier’, ‘proper’ and ‘gorgeous’ (martin & rose 2008). these appraisals by mzi, a young man, elevate ntombi as a person. the words and phrases used in the quotations put her in a subordinate position even if ntombi is at times the subject of the sentence. the reader's background determines how his or her acceptance of the text is influenced by the different use of verbs for male and female characters. mostly when there is an event where girls or women are related to men, verbs are used to put them in a position where the men decide what they have to do and that what matters is what men think of them. in this way, language constructs the power relationship between women and men. gender and power in this section the presented quotations illustrate the relationship between gender and power. the following quotations are taken from a situation in which mzi has taken ntombi away from a club in a car to a dark place between tall trees. there ntombi feels anxious. mzi is hugging and kissing ntombi and roughly trying to push his hands under her bra. quotation 5: ‘mzi,’ she tried to push away. ‘mzi, stop!’ she said louder. ‘stop … stop or …’ ‘or what? you'll scream? nobody will hear you. besides, i know that trick. girls always say ‘no, no, no’ when they really mean ‘'yes’’’. (haden 2010:80) quotation 6: ‘okay, so maybe tonight wasn't the right time’ he took her hand and kissed it. ‘but i hope you're not going to hold out on me for too long, because those kind of girls get really boring after a very short time. those girls don't deserve boyfriends like me. do you get what i'm saying?’ (haden 2010:81–82) here we see gender power at play. ntombi is trapped in an environment and a situation in which she is alone with mzi far away from friends. the discourse positions mzi as powerful while ntomnbi is at his mercy as there is no one who can rescue her from mzi's domination. according to connell (2002), men are constructed as decision-makers and powerful, with the freedom to do as they please with girls and women. this construction is also visible in mzi and ntombi's interactions. the verbs portray ntombi as a subject in the following fragment: ‘she tried to push away, almost screaming ”stop … stop or …”’. quotation 5 is an internal interaction within ntombi where the roles become clear through her screaming and how her actions are related to mzi. no matter how capable she is in school, her identity is defined here by the man, mzi. ‘i know that trick. girls always say “no, no, no” when they really mean “yes”’. these sentences are central to the process of creating an event where ntombi is without power. the negotiation in quotation 5 shows that she questions mzi's behaviour, while accepting the power relationship between men and women. the appraisal shows that being a woman can be a challenge: the feeling and appreciation of being valued by mzi (quotation 3) in contrast to the wish of not wanting to get on intimate terms with him. it also shows how the two words, ‘no’ and ‘yes’ can silence ntombi and limit her activities against mzi. there is considerable pressure on ntombi to stand up to mzi's opinion that women are not able to make their own decisions. the quotations strongly polarise ntombi's struggling to be free, on the one hand, and the man's power, on the other. mzi judges ntombi as being boring and prudish. he tries to negotiate ntombi's role. quotation 7: ‘taken,’ thought ntombi to herself. ‘as if i was something they could own …’ (haden 2010:118) the quotation shows that males look at women as something they can possess. it is a situation in which men traditionally feel entitled to women's bodies (benninger-budel 2000). men feel that they own their women. here ntombi is questioning that sense of ownership that men have regarding women and girls. she is interacting with herself and is questioning the power men have over women by using the verb taken and relating it to could own. what has happened is that ntombi has started to question her relationship with mzi, a development that can be seen in the progression of the novel over time. she has started to judge a discourse where women are oppressed. femininity and masculinity in this last section some characteristic assumptions of femininity and masculinity, made visible in the novel, are presented. quotations 8–9 illustrate the role zakes has as a man, according to ntombi and her mother: quotation 8: every time he went out with her mother he bought her something. (haden 2010:5) quotation 9: he is my boyfriend and you must respect him. his word is law. (haden 2010:6) from an ideation perspective, he (zakes) is the medium in both quotations. the events reflect the expectation of male domination in the use of the fragments ‘he bought her something’ and particularly ‘his word is law’. the implication is that ntombi's mother is expecting her to also abide by society's expectations and beliefs of male domination within the home. quotation 8 echoes the social construction of men as providers. dawson (2007) also found in her study that boys thought girls expected them to be providers. quotation 9 shows the construction of men as decision-makers and leaders in the family. it can also be linked to issues of gendered power, where men are constructed as being more powerful than women in heading families and knowing what is best for everyone (cf. connell 1995): quotation 10: ‘why bother entering the competition,’ he said. ‘these days you have to have the whole package: the looks, the sex appeal and the voice …’. (haden 2010:17) ntombi wants to participate in a singing competition but does not have the time to practise; neither does she have high self-esteem. zakes is taunting her regarding the competition and reiterates the stereotypical construction of femininity as ‘the whole package’. this quotation therefore highlights the societal constructions of beauty and how women and girls find themselves wanting to conform to stereotypical constructions of feminine beauty. the description of an attractive woman (‘the looks, the sex appeal and the voice’) might be peripheral in the sentence, but as the source or medium is zakes, it supports the gender-based expectation that women should be good-looking: quotation 11: why couldn't he be content to kiss her? why did guys always want more? (haden 2010:84) quotation 12: a woman alone? already some guys who were chatting to each other at a nearby table looked up at her and whistled. (haden 2010:118) quotation 11 is from a scene in which ntombi lies in her bed considering what had happened earlier in the evening in mzi's car. boys and men are believed to have a stronger sexual drive that requires being satisfied more urgently than that of women and girls (kimmel 2004). this creates a situation in which young boys grow up wanting to show that they are real men by engaging in sexual intercourse at an early age just to prove that they are not effeminate. this stereotype has so much currency that girls and women also believe that a man's sexual urges cannot be controlled and therefore they have to give in to their demands for sex. what is deemed as normal here is rooted in unequal power dynamics, where everything masculine is better or more powerful than anything feminine (skeggs 2005; steinberg, epstein & johnson 1997). quotation 12 also shows how a woman who is seen in public alone is regarded as available for any man who wants her. if ntombi had been with a man, then the men in the bar would not have whistled at her. alone, however, she is fair game. the implication is that, without a man, a woman has no value. she can be taken by anyone (see kimmel 2004). the ideation in quotations 11 and 12 shows how ntombi's experiences are processes involving people (mzi), places (the bar) and things or individuals (a kiss, sexual activities and a woman). ntombi and mzi are directly involved in the process, while the place is more peripheral. in the interpretation of what is going on (‘a kiss’), a female as a ‘thing’ and ‘a whistle’ are central. the expressions ‘be content’, ‘want more’ and ‘whistled’ create a process in which ntombi is deeply involved, as she is questioning the role of males. conclusions top ↑ what does the present study of broken promises offer as a social and cultural commentary on questions of gender and language use? the purpose of the analysis was to establish the gendered messages that students receive from reading the book and how these can be understood and deconstructed. two questions have been asked: in what ways are gender and power presented in relation to women and men? what language is used to describe women, men and the power relationships between them? there is no definitive answer; however, the results support a need for careful critical analysis and discussion, by teachers and students, of youth novels regarding gendered power dynamics. ntombi tries to recognise and challenge the hidden power in relationships, but it is not easy to undo the embedded feminine gender roles that are accepted in society. thus the activities and cultural norms portrayed in the novel give the reader the images, the lines and the language to use in constructing gender identities. language is also used to justify unequal power relationships between boys and girls and the patriarchal gender order. furthermore, the novel tends to pursue hetero-normative gendered stereotypes, with the characters following gendered and accepted norms and values which might have an influence on the readers. it is a major concern and challenge worldwide to promote equality between the genders. the novel illustrates societal perceptions of men's power and women's inferiority, described and placed in a fictional society. plausible activities happen in the fictional society, but they resonate with the township settings in which the students reading the novel are living. the people who inhabit the novel, who live their lives in a fictional society, might be recognised as normal human beings by those who read it. the characters are trapped within ‘invisible’ borders, assuming their identities by following expected norms and values. violence, anger and danger are encountered and used by men in the novel. the men are portrayed as being able to protect women, those who are thought to be weaker within the society. the characters are subjects and objects within varying power relationships that control and decide the direction of their lives. language is concerned with different kinds of attitude that are negotiated in the text and also with different activities. as the selected passages show, the appraisal can be seen in concepts and words describing affect, judgement and appreciation. through language it is possible to desire what we believe to be normal and become a part of a gendered discourse. gendered roles, activities and hierarchies are dominant discourses across broken promises. females are typically portrayed in a language that creates inferiority and dependence whereas men are portrayed in a language that creates power and leadership. in many ways, however, both females and males transcend conservative gender roles. therefore it is important to put the spotlight on gender transformation but also on critical language and literacy competence. reading competence is a fundamental foundation for all learning, and a vital ingredient for economic growth. apart from improving the students’ language use, therefore, reading these novels can also influence their identity construction, because social identities, which include gendered identities, are constructed through the use of language in line with the hegemonic discourses prevailing within a society. implications for the classroom top ↑ this article ends with a short discussion of the question: is it worth reading novels of this kind in schools – novels that might reinforce gender stereotypes? in south africa, with its emerging economy, it is important that its knowledge, equality and information economy are on par with those of the rest of the world. this article established the need to promote gender equality as a vehicle of inclusive growth. this renders reading competence important because it creates awareness of the structures in society such as gender roles and poverty, and also creates opportunities for change in society and could even lead to economic equality. broken promises, the first in the harmony high series, has encouraged reading in a south african township classroom. a recurrent comment about the harmony series books mentioned in the introduction to this article was that the books are based on life in the readers’ own environment, the township. we therefore submit an affirmative response, because young readers need books in which they can identify with the characters and settings. but the underlying values portrayed in this kind of book always have to be questioned and discussed. according to janks (2010), the invisible structures in society can be challenged through, for example, book talks. therefore, an understanding of the message in a text can be achieved only through engaging with the text. gender and power can be discussed where the students have the opportunity to consider their own gendered identities, the environment and society's opinion about femininity and masculinity. reading novels can give students a chance to discuss how they and others relate to their own situations and daily lives. janks (2010) also argues that teachers have to be aware of the power in the texts they use in school. an analysis of a text using concepts such as design, access, diversity and power can help the students to challenge the purpose of a text according to who has written it and what effect it might have on the reader. in a multimodal world this is important knowledge. for young students in the process of shaping a gender identity it is important to discuss how gender is constructed. for example, men whose masculine identity and sense of self are predicated on exerting dominance and control over others express these characteristics even in their sexual interactions (jewkes, levin & penn-kekana 2002; wood, maforah & jewkes 1998). we would like to conclude this article with some reflections emerging from the findings. reading competence is important for all young students. therefore they need books set in south africa in which they can identify with the plot, characters and environment described in the books. novels such as broken promises have the potential to create a joy of reading, but that is not enough from a gender perspective. teachers need to create space for discussion about gender. it is also important for teachers to look at their own gendered identities in relation to how they conceptualise girls and boys and interact with them. in addition, it is recommended that authors of books written for a young audience should be sensitive to gender constructions. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions both b.l. (nelson mandela metropolitan university) and m.k. 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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10583-011-9129-0 wilson, a.a. & boatridge, m.d., 2011, ‘one adolescent's construction of native identity in school: “speaking with dance and not in words and writing”’, research in the teaching of english 45(3), 252–277. wodak, r., 1997, gender and discourse, sage, london. wood, k., maforah, f. & jewkes, r., 1998, ‘“he forced me to love him”: putting violence on adolescent sexual health agendas’, social science and medicine 47(2), 233–242. pmid: 9720642, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0277-9536(98)00057-4 zusak, m., 2000, fighting ruben wolfe, omnibus, australia. article information author: carien wilsenach1 affiliation: 1department of linguistics and modern languages, university of south africa, south africa correspondence to: carien wilsenach email: wilseac@unisa.ac.za postal address: po box 392, university of south africa 0003, south africa dates: received: 19 feb. 2015 accepted: 24 june 2015 published: 23 sept. 2015 how to cite this article: wilsenach, c., 2015, ‘receptive vocabulary and early literacy skills in emergent bilingual northern sotho-english children’, reading & writing 6(1), art. #77, 11 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v6i1.77 copyright notice: © 2015. the authors. licensee: aosis openjournals. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. receptive vocabulary and early literacy skills in emergent bilingual northern sotho-english children in this original research... open access • abstract • introduction • literature review    • vocabulary knowledge    • theoretical framework    • phonological, vocabulary and reading skills in northern sotho children • research questions and hypotheses • methodology    • the research setting    • participants    • data collection and analysis       • vocabulary knowledge       • letter knowledge       • phoneme-grapheme correspondences       • early writing    • statistical analyses • findings    • main effects and group differences    • correlations and multiple regression analyses • discussion    • recommendations for the classroom • conclusion • acknowledgements    • competing interests • references • footnotes abstract top ↑ this study explored receptive vocabulary size and early literacy skills (namely: letter naming, knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences and early writing) in emergent bilingual northern sotho-english children. two groups of grade 1 learners were tested in both english and in northern sotho. group 1 (n = 49) received their formal schooling in english, whilst group 2 (n = 50) received their formal schooling in northern sotho. receptive vocabulary was tested using the peabody picture vocabulary test. letter knowledge was assessed by asking learners to name letter cards, whilst knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences was tested by asking children to match letter cards with spoken sounds. early writing was assessed by asking children to write their names. statistical analyses indicated that both english and northern sotho receptive vocabulary knowledge had a significant effect on early literacy skills, whilst no main effect was found for the language of instruction. group 1 performed significantly better than group 2 in english receptive vocabulary, in knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences and in early writing, but no group differences were found for northern sotho receptive vocabulary or for letter knowledge. english receptive vocabulary significantly predicted the outcome of all of the early literacy skills, whilst northern sotho receptive vocabulary significantly predicted phoneme-grapheme correspondences and early writing. introduction top ↑ young children need to learn thousands of new words during their formal schooling years in order to comprehend the (mostly written) content of their school work. according to wolf (2008): [w]hen one realizes that children have to learn about 88 700 written words … and that at least 9000 of these words need to be learned by the end of grade 3, the huge importance of a child’s development of vocabulary becomes crystal-clear. (p. 123) english second language (esl) learners who wish to use english as an academic language need to know about 5000 individual word forms (over 3000 word families) in order to comprehend 95% of an academic text (laufer 1997). more recent research estimates that this number is even higher and that learners need to acquire 8000–9000 word families in order to successfully read a variety of texts in english (hu & nation 2000; nation 2006). grade 1 learners worldwide arrive in school exhibiting marked differences in their vocabulary and emergent literacy skills. learners from higher social economic status (ses) groups know about twice as many words as learners from lower ses groups, in both their first language (l1) and second language (l2) (if they have been exposed to one) (farkas & beron 2004; graves 2006). low ses children lag behind in vocabulary and in emergent literacy skills for the following reasons: they often do not attend educationally focused kindergarten groups (and when they do, their caregivers typically have lower levels of education, and caregiver-child ratios are not ideal) they have less access to a variety of printed materials in their homes and communities parents of low ses children are less likely to engage in conversational and book-reading routines that enhance oral language development and emergent literacy skills (hemphill & tivnan 2008). unless vocabulary development is targeted specifically, learners from lower ses communities are unlikely to reach the word knowledge targets mentioned above. in the south african educational context, the potential problems associated with insufficient vocabulary knowledge are believed to be intensified by the fact that many african learners from lower ses groups attend schools where the language of learning and teaching (lolt) is english. this often occurs from grade 1 or otherwise from grade 4 (i.e. after three years of instruction in an african language). although individual variation is to be expected, many south african children living in low ses communities may not have developed sufficient vocabulary skills in their l1 or l2 to support the development of literacy. however, research in support of this assumption is scarce, and little systematic information exists about the nature of baseline vocabulary skills in emergent bilingual first graders from low ses south african communities. baseline assessment of vocabulary is useful and important in any educational context, as it motivates the need for vocabulary development (graves 2006; nation 2001; read 2004). the present study explored the baseline receptive vocabulary knowledge of emergent bilingual northern sotho-english learners in grade 1. the aim of this study was to establish how receptive vocabulary skills relate to the development of early literacy skills in these children, and to determine whether or not vocabulary levels could be used to identify children who are at risk of not acquiring literacy skills in the first grade. literature review top ↑ vocabulary knowledge there is no consensus on what it means to ‘know a word’ or what it means to ‘measure vocabulary knowledge’ (hatami & tavakoli 2012). over the past three decades various frameworks of vocabulary knowledge have been developed based on models of the mental lexicon. the gist of all these frameworks is that vocabulary knowledge should be described as a multidimensional construct. typically, scholars draw a distinction between two dimensions of vocabulary knowledge, namely vocabulary breath and vocabulary depth. vocabulary breath is best understood as vocabulary size (i.e. the number of words for which some minimum knowledge of meaning exists in a learner’s mental lexicon) (nation 2001). vocabulary depth, on the other hand, is defined as a learner’s level of knowledge of various aspects of a word, including knowledge of the pronunciation, spelling, meaning and register, as well as knowledge of the morphological and syntactic properties of a specific word (qian 1999; wesche & paribakht 1996). these two dimensions of vocabulary knowledge correlate with each other (qian 1999) and with reading comprehension (anderson & freebody 1983; stahl & fairbanks 1986). more recent perspectives suggest that vocabulary knowledge is not only associated with reading comprehension; it may also predict reading in a more fundamental way. according to the lexical restructuring hypothesis, children learn new words by drawing implicit comparisons between similar sounding words (goswami 2001; metsala & walley 1998; walley, metsala & garlock 2003). for example, the word cut is restructured from the already known and phonologically similar word cat. when children can distinguish such similar sounding sequences rapidly and accurately, it helps them to recognise sequences that represent new words. the hypothesis is that children with larger vocabularies are better attuned to new segments and, thus, acquire new words quickly. goswami (2001) argues that lexical restructuring is strongly tied to the emergence of phonological awareness, which in turn is a pre-requisite for learning to read. put simply, when children know a word they can sound out the word more easily in print, which supports decoding and reading fluency. various assessment tools are used to measure the different dimensions of vocabulary knowledge, including tests that require the learner to identify a synonym or definition for a particular word, to translate a word into the l1, or to use checklists (wesche & paribakht 1996). such vocabulary measures require ‘just a single response to each target word and, by implication, give only a superficial indication of whether the word is known or not’ (read 2004:211). measuring vocabulary depth is, thus, tricky and time-consuming. vocabulary breath, on the other hand, is measured more easily and is often associated with performance on receptive vocabulary tests, such as the peabody picture vocabulary test (ppvt) (dunn & dunn 2007). in such tests, individuals only need to show some minimal understanding of a word in order for it to be considered known. theoretical framework two main schools of thought exist with regards to the role of oral language skills in literacy achievement (where ‘oral language’ typically refers to vocabulary). on the one hand, researchers argue that oral language skill is an essential prerequisite for the emergence of phonological awareness (pa) skills, but that pa, once it starts to develop, is the single most important linguistic skill that determines the success of literacy development in the lower grades. this position is referred to as the phonological sensitivity approach (psa) (dickinson et al. 2003). since the 1980s, a massive body of work has established that different aspects of pa are indeed critical precursors and predictors of reading achievement (bradley & bryant 1983; cronin & carver 1998; maclean, bryant & bradley 1987; shankweiler et al. 1999; shankweiler & fowler 2004; wagner & torgeson 1987; wagner, torgeson & rachotte 1994; whitehurst & lonigan 2001). the perspective of shankweiler et al. (1999:70) that ‘deficient skill in mapping between the alphabetic representations of words and their spoken counterparts is the chief barrier to comprehension of text’ became widely influential and shaped research and analytical approaches so much that little attention was paid to the independent contribution of other language skills to reading. in line with the psa, whitehurst and lonigan (2001) designed a model of the relationship between language skills and early reading skills, in which outside-in skills (i.e. meaning construction skills) were observed only indirectly via their impact on inside-out skills (decoding skills). the influence of outside-in skills was restricted to the preschool years and was believed to be unimportant once formal reading instruction began. thus, in the psa the strong and direct predictors of reading success are phonological and alphabetical. on the other hand, advocates of the comprehensive language approach (cla) claim that early literacy depends on a number of interrelated variables, including the following: oral language (i.e. vocabulary knowledge and discourse knowledge) pa knowledge of print (e.g. letters and orientation of letters on a page) knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences an understanding of the various uses of print (dickinson & mccabe 2001; dickinson et al. 2003). advocates of the cla propose that the relationship between language, reading and writing is complex, and that whilst reading and writing may be perceived as separate functional systems, they are highly interdependent and rely on common as well as unique underlying aspects of the linguistic system. berninger et al. (2001:64) introduced the term flexible orchestrationto describe this interdependency, claiming that reading and writing development cannot be understood without considering ‘the different ways those common language processes may be orchestrated, depending on which functional system is activated’. the importance of developing vocabulary skills alongside pa skills in young learners has also been stressed by researchers working with children who are at high risk of reading failure (such as low ses children). hemphill and tivnan (2008) assessed several language and early literacy skills (including receptive vocabulary, letter knowledge, sight word reading, phonemic awareness and word attack) in a group of low ses children and found that beginning-of-grade-one vocabulary knowledge best predicted reading comprehension at the end of the second and third grade. in line with similar longitudinal studies (see sénéchal & le fevre 2002; and spira, bracken & fischel 2005), hemphill and tivnan (2008) found that early literacy skills such as letter knowledge and work attack (i.e. essentially the ability to decode print) were the strongest predictors of reading comprehension at the end of the first grade, but that receptive vocabulary better predicted reading comprehension at the end of grade 2 and continued to reliably predict reading success at the end of grade 3. scarborough (2001) analysed the impact of several aspects of oral language on reading development in both normally developing and at risk children and concluded that (1) expressive and receptive vocabulary are highly correlated with each other during preschool and reliably predict later reading and (2) reading ability in children is not reliably predicted by a single linguistic domain during the preschool years. whilst it seems clear that a wide range of language and emergent literacy skills form the basis for later reading, the relative importance of outside-in skills and inside-out skills, as early predictors of literacy development, remains hotly debated in the associated literature. hemphill and tivnan (2008) and scarborough (2001) emphasise that this debate has serious implications for the design of early literacy teaching programmes and early reading intervention programmes. programmes that do not target the full range of outside-in and inside-out skills are unlikely to be successful. given the typical constraints of doing research in this field (such as time and resources and limitations related to working with young children), most researchers do not manage to measure the full range of outside-in, inside-outand reading skills in a large sample of children at a single point in time. as a result, although the literature suggests that both receptive and expressive vocabulary are significantly related to early literacy skills and word decoding in beginning readers, the exact nature of the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and emergent literacy is still not clear. the focus of the present study is on the relationship between receptive vocabulary and early literacy skills (including letter knowledge, knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondencesand early writing) in emergent bilingual northern sotho-english speaking children. the present study is limited in that other language skills, such as expressive vocabulary knowledge, pa, word attack and reading were not assessed, seeing that: the majority of the learners studied have not acquired vocabulary skills in their l2 (english) to such an extent that l2 vocabulary could be measured expressively most aspects of pa were so poorly developed in this sample that it was difficult to assess pa skills the majority of the learners have not started to decode text. phonological, vocabulary and reading skills in northern sotho children existing evidence suggests that reading levels in african languages, including northern sotho, are below international standards (howie et al. 2008; combrinck, van staden & roux 2014). researchers are becoming more interested in explaining poor literacy development in african languages in relation to linguistic skills, but so far this interest has primarily focused on the relationship between various pa skills and literacy development (see soares de sousa, broom & fry 2010; veii & everatt 2005; wilsenach 2013). wilsenach (2013) established that northern sotho pa (measured in terms of syllable awareness) significantly predicts word reading in both northern sotho and english in emergent bilingual northern sotho-english children. no information exists about the effect of vocabulary skills on the development of early literacy skills in these children. pretorius and mokhwesana (2009) assessed the development of a range of language (including vocabulary) and literacy skills in northern sotho learners over a period of four years, in order to measure the effectiveness of a reading intervention programme in a high poverty school. northern sotho expressive vocabulary was tested using an adapted version of the renfrew test. the authors noted (p. 66) that ‘an area that clearly needs more attention is that of vocabulary development’, as the learners showed only very slight increases in vocabulary size over the course of four years. pretorius & mokhwesana’s focus was not on the relationship between vocabulary and literacy skills and, therefore, they did not attempt to draw correlations between these skills. the present study will address this gap in the literature, with the aim of increasing our understanding of the role that vocabulary size plays in the development of early literacy skills in emergent bilingual northern sotho-english learners. research questions and hypotheses top ↑ the following research questions will be addressed in this study: what is the nature of receptive vocabulary and early literacy skills in emergent bilingual northern sotho-english children? is there a difference between the vocabulary skills and early literacy skills of northern sotho children who are instructed in their l1 versus northern sotho children who are instructed in their l2 (english)? what is the relationship between receptive vocabulary skills and early literacy skills in emergent bilingual northern sotho-english children? this study adopts the cla as its main theoretical framework, and it is, thus, hypothesised that receptive vocabulary skills will significantly correlate with early literacy skills and that vocabulary is likely to predict early literacy skills (letter knowledge, knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondencesand early writing). furthermore, it is predicted that the two groups of children studied here will show a pattern of development that is influenced by the lolt; the learners receiving instruction in english are expected to have a larger english vocabulary than the learners who receive instruction in northern sotho, and vice versa. methodology top ↑ the research setting the current study was undertaken in two primary schools located in a low ses suburb on the outskirts of pretoria (one of the capital cities of south africa). northern sotho is widely spoken as the home language in this suburb, but several other african languages are spoken in the research area as well. northern sotho is used as lolt in some schools within the research area (from grade r – grade 3). after grade 3, the lolt changes to english. northern sotho was used as lolt in one of the schools involved here; the other school followed a straight for english language policy. the ‘northern sotho school’ was a quintile one school, whereas the english school was a quintile two school.1 both schools had functioning libraries containing around 5000 books and the educators in both schools had equal access to the basic resources required to teach literacy to first graders. participants 99 grade 1 learners participated in the study. the learners all indicated that they spoke northern sotho at home and were divided into two groups: group 1 (n = 49; mean age 6.9 years) received their grade 1 instruction in english, whereas group 2 (n = 50; mean age 6.7 years) received their grade 1 instruction in northern sotho. there was no significant difference between the groups in terms of age and the gender of the learners was controlled as much as possible (group 1 = 24 female and group 2 = 26 female). the learners were tested individually during a single session lasting approximately 30 minutes. the research was conducted during the third term of the school year, after informed assent from each learner and informed consent (from the learners’ parents and the relevant educational authorities) had been obtained. data collection and analysis vocabulary knowledge receptive vocabulary knowledge was tested using the ppvt (dunn & dunn 2007). english receptive vocabulary was assessed using form b, whilst northern sotho (ns) receptive vocabulary was assessed by translating form a into northern sotho. the first 108 items (set 1 to set 9) were translated, using the oxford bilingual school dictionary (english-northern sotho) (de schryver 2007) and the online dictionary of the site african languages (http://africanlanguages.com/northern_sotho/). the translations were checked for inaccuracies with the assistance of three northern sotho mother tongue speakers (two grade 1 educators and one school librarian). the translated items were piloted with five learners and, based on their responses, further adjustments were made.2 the peabody test was administered as prescribed in the test manual: the researcher presented a page with four pictures to the learner and said the target word out loud (describing one of the pictures). the learner was asked to point to the matching picture. all learners were first assessed in english and then in northern sotho. english receptive vocabulary was measured by calculating raw scores and transforming these to standard scores, using the age norms provided in dunn and dunn (2007). a mean standard score for english receptive vocabulary was calculated for each group, as well as a mean equivalent age. ns receptive vocabulary was measured by calculating a raw score for each individual learner. the individual raw scores were used to calculate mean raw scores for ns receptive vocabulary in each of the groups. letter knowledge letter knowledge was assessed by asking learners to name letter cards. the researcher placed the letter cards, one by one, in front of the learner and requested the learner to name the letter. all the letters presented in the study had been introduced in class; the researcher confirmed that this was the case with the relevant educators. learners had to name ten letters, randomly selected from the following set: a; b; e; f; g; i; l; m; n; o; p; r; s; t; u. individual learners were awarded marks out of ten, which were transformed to percentages and used to calculate a mean percentage for letter knowledge in each group. phoneme-grapheme correspondences knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences was tested by asking children to match letter cards to spoken phonemes. the researcher spoke a phoneme and requested the learner to select the matching grapheme. all phonemes included in the study had been introduced in class during the first half of the year. learners had to match ten randomly spoken phonemes to letter cards, from the following set: /a/; /b/; /e/; /f/; /g/; /l/; /m/; /n/; /o/; /p/; /r/; /s/; /t/. individual learners were awarded marks out of ten, which were transformed to percentages and used to calculate a mean percentage for phoneme-grapheme correspondencesin each group. early writing early writing was measured by asking learners to write down their names and surnames. learners were awarded one of the following scores: 100% (both name and surname correct); 50% (name or surname correct); 0% (neither correct). mean scores depicting early writing was calculated for each group. statistical analyses independent samples t-tests were conducted to determine differences between the groups in vocabulary skills in both languages. following this, a multivariate analysis of covariance (mancova) was conducted (glm option multivariate), with the variable group entered as fixed factor and ns receptive vocabulary and english receptive vocabulary entered as covariates. letter knowledge, phoneme-grapheme correspondences and early writing were entered into the model as dependent variables. this model was used to determine the effect of group on the dependent variables when the covariates were held constant, to determine the effect of vocabulary skills on early literacy skills and to establish any group differences in early literacy skills. pearson correlations and three separate multiple regression analyses (method enter, with ns receptive vocabularyand english receptive vocabularyas independent variables and letter knowledge, phoneme-grapheme correspondences and early writing as dependent variables) were conducted on the collapsed data set in order to determine the relationships between all the measures. findings top ↑ main effects and group differences multivariate testing (pillay’s trace) showed a significant main effect for the covariates english receptive vocabulary (f[3,93] = 10.63; p = 0.000) and ns receptive vocabulary(f[3,93] = 3.29; p = 0.024). pillay’s trace for group was not significant (f[3,93] = 2.51; p = 0.063), suggesting that group did not have a significant effect on early literacy skills when the effect of vocabulary knowledge was controlled. following the significant multivariate test, tests of between subject effects and tukey’s hsd post-hoc tests (applying bonferroni corrections) were conducted. the between subjects tests indicated that english receptive vocabulary had a significant effect on letter knowledge(f[1,95] = 14.37, p = 0.000), on phoneme-grapheme correspondences (f[1,95] = 29.26, p = 0.000), and on early writing(f[1,95] = 10.28, p = 0.002). ns receptive vocabulary had a significant effect on phoneme-grapheme correspondences (f[1,95] = 9.51, p = 0.003) and on early writing (f[1,95] = 7.83, p = 0.006), but no effect on letter knowledge (f[1,95] = 3.01, p = 0.086). the mean scores and test statistics obtained for the measures english receptive vocabulary, ns receptive vocabulary, letter knowledge, phoneme-grapheme correspondences and early writing are represented in table 1. table 1: mean standardised score for english receptive vocabulary, mean raw score for ns receptive vocabulary, and mean percentages for letter knowledge, phoneme-grapheme correspondences and early writing. independent samples t-tests (two-tailed) indicated that the mean difference for english receptive vocabulary was significant (t = 2.4; p = 0.018), but that there was no significant difference between the groups with regards to ns receptive vocabulary (t = 0.21; p = 0.83). the tukey hsd post-hoc tests indicated that group 1 performed significantly better than group 2 in terms of phoneme-grapheme correspondences(f = 5.81; p = 0.018) and early writing(f = 7.03; p = 0.009), but no group difference was established for letter knowledge(f = 3.23; p = 0.075). correlations and multiple regression analyses pearson correlations (two-tailed) indicated that all the measures were positively and significantly correlated. the r-values of the correlations are given in table 2. significant correlations are flagged with an asterisk. table 2: r-values of pearson correlations between english receptive vocabulary, northern-sotho receptive vocabulary, letter knowledge, phoneme-grapheme correspondences and early writing. multiple regression models with letter knowledge, phoneme-grapheme correspondencesand early writing as dependent variables showed that english receptive vocabulary significantly predicted the outcome of all of the early literacy skills and that ns receptive vocabulary significantly predicted phoneme-grapheme correspondences and early writing. (english receptive vocabulary was entered at step 1 of the model and ns receptive vocabulary entered at step 2). the constant values, betas, standard errors, standardised betas and r2 values for each of these regression analyses are provided in table 3. table 3: overview of regression analyses with letter knowledge, phoneme-grapheme correspondences and early writing as dependent variables and english receptive vocabulary (ppvt) and ns receptive vocabulary (ns ppvt) as predictors. english receptive vocabulary significantly predicted letter knowledge(p = 0.000), and accounted for 24% of the variance in step 1 of this model. after ns receptive vocabulary was added as a predictor in step 2, the model accounted for 25% of the variance, but ns receptive vocabulary was not a significant independent predictor of letter knowledge (p = 0.12). likewise, english receptive vocabulary significantly predicted the outcome of the phoneme-grapheme correspondencetest (p = 0.000) and accounted for 38% of the variance at step 1 in the model. ns receptive vocabulary accounted for another 5% of the variance at step 2 of this model, and was found to also be a significant predictor of phoneme-grapheme correspondences (p = 0.006). finally, english receptive vocabulary reliably predicted performance in the early writing task (p = 0.000) and accounted for 23% of the variance at step 1 of the model. ns receptive vocabulary accounted for another 4% of the variance in step 2 and was also an independent predictor of early writing (p = 0.014). discussion top ↑ the primary aim of this study was to establish the nature of the relationship between bilingual receptive vocabulary skills and early literacy skills in grade 1 learners who grew up speaking northern sotho as their home language. the learners had been exposed to english (in varying degrees) for at least six months prior to the study, and as such could be described as emergent bilingual northern sotho-english learners. this study focused on two populations of learners: group 1 attended a school where the lolt is english from grade 1 onwards, whereas group 2 attended a school where the lolt is northern sotho in the foundation phase (i.e. grade 1–3) and where english is introduced as first additional language (fal) in the first grade. three research questions were posed at the outset of the study. the first research question asked: ‘what is the nature of receptive vocabulary and early literacy skills in emergent bilingual northern sotho-english children?’ the english receptive vocabulary levels were very low in both groups. it is not best practise to transform raw scores obtained on the ppvt to standard scores (sss) in esl learners (dunn & dunn 2007), but because the focus of this study was (partly) on investigating the effect of receptive vocabulary on early literacy skills in different groups of learners, and not on measuring individual performance, it was deemed acceptable to transform the raw scores into sss in order to reliably detect group differences. group 1 (english lolt group) obtained an average ss of 55.51 (3 standard deviations below the norm; age equivalent 37 months [3;1]). group 2 (northern sotho lolt group) obtained an average ss of 50.64 (around 3.5 standard deviations below the norm; age equivalent 32 months [2;6]). standard scores below 70 (i.e. more than two standard deviations below the norm) are considered to be extremely low (dunn & dunn 2007) and sss below 55 (3 to 4 standard deviations below the norm) very rarely occur in l1 speakers of english. the aim of this discussion is not to compare the emergent bilingual children tested here with the levels reached by l1 speakers of english, but to consider whether or not (given their current scores on the ppvt), the learners’ english vocabulary knowledge is sufficiently developed to support literacy and general scholastic development, particularly in light of the fact that all of these learners will eventually have to use english as lolt. in trying to answer this question it is useful to reflect on previous research with emergent bilingual children that employed the ppvt. hemphill and tivnan (2008) used the ppvt to assess english receptive vocabulary in low ses emergent bilingual spanish-english children over a set period of time. the children obtained a mean ss of 87 on the ppvt at the beginning of the first grade; a score that was nearly one standard deviation below the norm (placing the learners at the 19th percentile) and which was considered to be an indication of weak vocabulary skills. hemphill and tivnan (2008:444) found that these children were unlikely to reach expected standards in english reading and concluded that ‘even in the context of districtwide literacy reform initiatives, which raised all children’s potential for success, children’s vocabulary skills at the beginning of the first grade made a critical contribution to later achievement in reading comprehension’. in another study with at risk bilingual spanish-english children, carlisle et al. (1999) tested children using the ppvt and recorded a ss of 63, more than two standard deviations below the norm. carlisle et al. (1999) found that these emergent bilingual children had relatively poorly developed l1 skills, and that a significant portion of the variance in reading comprehension was explained by performance on the ppvt in both english and spanish. in the above studies, emergent bilingual hispanic children whose english vocabulary levels were higher than the levels achieved by the emergent bilingual children in the present study were at risk of performing poorly in reading comprehension. thus, emergent bilingual children in other parts of the world are considered to be at risk of not acquiring adequate reading comprehension skills (in english) when their english ppvt scores are more than one standard deviation below the norm at the beginning of the first grade. given this knowledge, the sss obtained by the learners in this study are worryingly low, and it seems reasonable to conclude that they are at risk of reading failure, especially at the comprehension level. both groups obtained higher raw scores on the translated northern sotho version of the ppvt than on the english version. it is not possible to directly compare the l1 and l2 vocabulary levels of the children in this study seeing that the northern sotho translation used here is not standardised, but it did seem as if the learners’ l1 vocabulary knowledge was somewhat more developed. children with underdeveloped vocabularies need to learn words at a rate of three to four root words per day, if they are to catch up with their peers within five or six years (biemiller 2003). given this, it seems fair to conclude that vocabulary development in both the l1 and l2 should be targeted in the south african curriculum from as early as possible (i.e. in grade r [reception] or in grade 1). the development of letter knowledge, phoneme-grapheme correspondences and early writingseemed to be on track in the english group. the learners in the northern sotho lolt group, on the other hand, fared significantly poorer in these skills and it was clear that many of the children in this group have not yet mastered literacy skills that are typically acquired before or at the beginning of the first grade (in other socio-educational contexts). the literature on the nature and development of emergent reading skills (as discussed in the literature review) and the association between such skills and later reading is quite extended. based on this research, it seems fair to conclude that the ability to map graphemes onto phonemes needs to be developed further in the tested sample in order to facilitate decoding. the literature on the nature and development of emergent writing skills is not as well developed, but previous research suggests that pre-schoolers can write some letters of the alphabet (puranik & lonigan 2011), can write their names (bloodgood 1999; both-de vries & bus 2008), can scribble or draw to communicate (levin & bus 2003) and can successfully write some single words (puranik, lonigan & kim 2011). these early writing skills develop substantially between the ages of three and five (puranik & lonigan 2011), again suggesting that the learners in the northern sotho lolt group are lagging behind in early writing. the literature offers several suggestions about why emergent bilingual children might experience difficulties with language and literacy acquisition. scholars have claimed that bilingual children are in fact in an advantageous position when it comes to learning to read – seeing that cognitive and metalinguistic capabilities have been found to be enhanced in bilingual children, compared to monolingual children (diaz & klingler 1991; bialystok 1987a, 1987b). bilingual children fare better in tasks requiring grammatical judgement, and they have a more advanced understanding of word concept than monolinguals (bialystok 1987a, 1987b). however, it is argued that only balanced bilingual children (i.e. children with comparable levels of l1 and l2 proficiency) will exhibit increased cognitive and metalinguistic development, and that only such children will benefit from being bilingual (cummins 1991, 1993, 2000). this hypothesis, known as the linguistic threshold hypothesis, has been criticised widely, as the level of linguistic proficiency that has to be attained in order to yield the benefits of bilingualism is not clear. one attempt to define the threshold level has focused on age-appropriate abilities in both languages (diaz & klingler 1991). by this definition, children with below average language development in either language would not derive the potential metalinguistic benefits of bilingual development. assuming that this definition is correct (and keeping in mind the performance on the ppvt) one could conclude that the emergent bilingual children tested here are unlikely to benefit from the theoretical advantages of bilingualism. it is more likely that their low levels of bilingualism might lead to low levels of academic achievement. bilingual children might also experience difficulties with acquiring language and literacy skills when their l1 development is limited. cummins (1991, 1993, 2000) claims that l1 proficiency is a critical resource that children bring to their learning of an l2, a hypothesis he developed in his linguistic interdependence theory. cummins’ hypothesis is that l2 learners automatically turn to their existing knowledge of grammatical structures, grammatical categories and linguistic functions, and that they try to analyse the relationships between grammatical structures/categories and meanings in their l2, based on this knowledge. when native language skills are underdeveloped, this might affect l2 learning, even when children receive their schooling in the l2. with regards to literacy, the linguistic interdependence theory proposes that those aspects of linguistic knowledge that is required for learning to read will transfer automatically from the l1 to the l2 and that they do not have to be relearnt in the l2. however, when such linguistic knowledge has not been developed in the l1, the learner is supposedly at a deficit (cummins 2000). some scholars believe that metalinguistic benefits are more obvious in bilinguals who speak languages that have similar sound structures (e.g. spanish-english bilinguals) than in bilinguals whose languages have different sound structures (e.g. chinese-english bilinguals) (bialystok, majumder & martin 2003). enhanced metalinguistic ability is perhaps not the result of bilingualism in itself, but of speaking a combination of languages that share similar features. emergent bilingual children in south africa typically speak african languages as first languages, which have linguistic structures that are different to that of english. the extent to which a theory like the linguistic interdependence theoryholds true in this context has not been fully determined, but some studies have questioned whether or not it is correct to apply this theory to all aspects of linguistic skill in contexts where bilingual children are exposed to an african-european combination of languages. in one such study, soares de sousa et al. (2010:530) investigated pa and spelling skills in emergent bilingual zulu-english children and found that ‘the transferability of some, but not all phonological processing skills may be equivalent across languages’. they noted that easier levels of phonological processing skills, such as syllable awareness and onset awareness (i.e. the ability to separate the onset ‘c’, from the rime ‘–at’ in the word ‘cat’), may be transferred between languages, even when the phonological structures of the languages are diverse. however, complex levels of pa, such as rime and phoneme awareness as well as spelling skills in languages that have diverse orthographies may rely on language specific and orthographic knowledge. such specific knowledge may need to be formally taught for each language and might not transfer automatically from the l1 to the l2. the second research question asked: is there a difference between the vocabulary skills and early literacy skills of northern sotho children who are instructed in their l1 versus northern sotho children who are instructed in their l2 (english)? the learners who received their grade 1 instruction in english performed significantly better in the ppvt, the phoneme-grapheme correspondence test and the early writing assessment, but there was no group difference in letter knowledge or knowledge of northern sotho vocabulary. it was anticipated that group 1 would outperform group 2 in english receptive vocabulary, given the fact that group 1 received their schooling in english. it is safe to assume that group 1’s enhanced performance was the result of their increased exposure to english. the results also suggest that the northern sotho learners who received instruction in english were not rapidly losing their northern sotho vocabulary skills. it was hypothesised that the learners who received instruction in northern sotho would show a somewhat bigger northern sotho receptive vocabulary (compared to english lolt group), seeing that exposure to storybook reading, focused discourse activities and dialogic shared reading (to which the learners should have been exposed in northern sotho in the first half of the year) are all associated with vocabulary growth (beals 2001; sénéchal et al. 1998; whitehurst & lonigan 2001). this hypothesis turned out to be incorrect. classroom observation did not form part of this study, which makes it impossible to speculate about the extent to which educators engaged in the activities mentioned above, but it is worrying that the learners in group 2 were not showing evidence of developing their vocabulary skills in either their l1 or their l2. the enhanced performance of the english lolt group in the phoneme-grapheme correspondence test, and in the early writing assessment, was not predicted and was somewhat surprising, given the theoretical advantages of mother tongue education (or bilingual education in which the l1 features). benson (2005), summarised these theoretical advantages as follows: learners find it easier to grasp sound-symbol or meaning-symbol correspondences when initial literacy instruction takes place in a familiar language the introduction of new concepts in content subjects does not have to wait until after learners are competent in the l2 the l2 can be taught systematically from early on in bilingual programmes, in ways that allow learners to acquire the l2 through communication transfer of linguistic and cognitive skills is facilitated in bilingual programs assessment of learning is potentially more accurate in bilingual classrooms the use of the l1 strengthens the affective domain of learners (including self-confidence, self-esteem and motivation) learners become highly functional in two languages. in the present study, these advantages were not immediately apparent. the learners in the northern sotho lolt group named letters correctly 67.6% of the time, identified the correct grapheme 51.6% of the time when presented with a phoneme and less than half of these learners could write their name and surname correctly. the multivariate testing showed a significant main effect for the covariates english receptive vocabulary and ns receptive vocabulary, suggesting that in this particular sample, the size of a learner’s receptive vocabulary (in the l1 and the al) was more likely to have an effect on the child’s early literacy development than the lolt (there was no significant main effect for group overall). this is an important finding, as it highlights the need to (in the south african context) respond cautiously and responsibly to the commonplace phrase mother tongue education is best. whilst the argument here is not against the theoretical advantage of mother tongue instruction, the findings of this study suggest that mother tongue education does not automatically guarantee successful attainment of (early) literacy skills. mother tongue education that fails to develop a wide range of l1 linguistic skills (including vocabulary skills), and that happens in a context where the learner is unlikely to receive parental support, and exposure to print in the mother tongue outside of school, is arguably not better for a child. various social variables (such as early exposure to storybooks and other forms of print, caregiver support and interaction, ses status, quality of education and educational programmes) and cognitive variables influence a learner’s school-readiness and grade 1 performance and, thus, the lolt might not be the most significant predictor of scholastic success in the south african context. this conclusion is in line with benson (2005), who stressed that the advantages of mother tongue education mentioned above are based on two assumptions: one, that basic human needs are being met so that schooling can take place; and two, that mother tongue-based bilingual schooling can be properly implemented. simply changing the language of instruction without resolving other pressing social and political issues is not likely to result in significant improvement in educational services. (p. 4) the final research question asked: ‘what is the relationship between receptive vocabulary skills and early literacy skills in emergent bilingual northern sotho-english children?’ pearson product moment correlations indicated that there was a positive and moderately strong association between english receptive vocabulary and ns vocabulary(r= 0.425). furthermore, english receptive vocabularywas strongly associated with phoneme-grapheme correspondences(r = 0.618), whilst letter knowledge(r = 0.486) and early writing(r= 0.475) were found to be moderately associated with english receptive vocabulary. ns receptive vocabularywas moderately associated with phoneme-grapheme correspondences(r = 0.459). the associations between ns receptive vocabulary and letter knowledge and ns receptive vocabulary and early writing were also significant, but had r-values between 0.3 and 0.4 and could be described as moderately weak (following the categorisation in dancey & reidy [2004]). the interrelationships between the early literacy measures were also tested. pearson product moment correlations indicated that letter knowledge was positively and strongly associated with early writing (r = 0.573) and positively and very strongly associated with phoneme-grapheme correspondences(r = 0.801). the strongest association was found between phoneme-grapheme correspondences and early writing (r = 0.854). it is clear from the correlation and regression statistics that both l1 and l2 receptive vocabulary skills were positively associated with and significantly predicted the outcome of the early literacy measures. english receptive vocabulary reliably predicted all of the early literacy measures, whereas ns receptive vocabulary reliably predicted the outcome of the phoneme-grapheme correspondences test and of early writing. combined, the correlation and regression statistics support berninger et al.’s (2001) proposition that (early) reading and (early) writing skills are highly interdependent and that they rely on common as well as unique aspects of language development. the findings of the present study supports the notion put forward by the cla (comprehensive language approach) that the development of early literacy skills are not only dependent on the development of pa skills, but that it depends on the development of a wide range of language abilities. the ‘outside-in’ skills (i.e. meaning construction skills) that were measured in the present study significantly contributed to the learners’ development of early literacy skills, even during the second half of the first grade, after the onset of formal literacy instruction. the findings presented here do not support the psa (phonological sensitivity approach) and whitehurst and lonigan’s model, which argue that decoding (i.e. pa skills) is the single most important skill in early literacy development, seems questionable. the results of the present study suggest that receptive vocabulary knowledge (an ‘outside-in’ skill), is a direct factor that determines the development of early literacy skills in emergent bilingual children. therefore, bilingual vocabulary development should be targeted specifically in the south african educational context, as emergent bilingual children from low ses communities clearly arrive in grade 1 with underdeveloped vocabulary skills, particularly in english. recommendations for the classroom the results of this study emphasise the importance of developing both the l1 and l2 vocabulary skills of emergent bilingual first graders in the south african context. practical ways in which educators can do this include: storybook reading, which provides opportunities for extended discussions and the introduction of new words ensuring that the classroom is a word rich environment, by labelling objects in the classroom and by pinning words (and pictures) on the board providing learners with a range of texts and text types (this could include books, but also flyers, advertisements, newspapers and magazines) encouraging a ‘word of the day’ routine, in which the educator and learners identify a new word and use it in context as often as possible during the day playing word games to extend understanding of vocabulary (e.g. exploring different meanings of the same word form, or identifying words which can be used as different parts of speech, such as face [noun] and face [verb]) stimulating dialogue activities such as role play and classroom dramas giving learners a notebook in which to write down new and unfamiliar words going beyond the medium of text and include multimedia to support vocabulary development where possible (such as films and computers) (department for children, schools and families 2008). conclusion top ↑ the present study investigated the relationship between receptive vocabulary skills and early literacy skills in two groups of northern sotho-english emergent bilingual children. this study shows that assessing receptive vocabulary in emergent bilingual children is a practical way of assessing vocabulary breath – grade 1 learners can complete a task like the ppvt in both their l1 and in english. furthermore, the results support existing evidence suggesting that receptive vocabulary size reliably predicts the development of early literacy skills, which are vital for the development of fluent reading and reading comprehension. in other words, measuring a learner’s receptive vocabulary knowledge is not only useful in predicting reading comprehension; it could also be a useful tool for educators to identify children who are possibly at risk of not acquiring basic literacy skills, such as phoneme-grapheme correspondences. the results of this study furthermore suggest that mother tongue education in itself does not guarantee successful literacy development and that a combination of socio-economic and educational variables (not systematically tested here) can possibly overrule the theoretical benefits of mother tongue instruction. more research should be conducted in order to establish exactly how social, educational, linguistic and cognitive variables interrelate and predict early literacy development in emergent bilingual south african learners. if low vocabulary levels in emergent bilingual children are not actively addressed in the south african educational context, children will be trapped in a vicious circle. learners who cannot comprehend more advanced texts will give up attempting to read such texts. as a result, vocabulary knowledge will not be extended, and reading comprehension will remain at insufficient levels. acknowledgements top ↑ competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references top ↑ anderson, r.c. & freebody, p., 1983, ‘vocabulary knowledge’, in r. ruddell, m. ruddell & h. singer (eds.), theoretical models and processes of reading, pp. 343–371, international 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as predictor of reading success: an investigation of emergent bilingual northern sotho/english learners’, per linguam: a journal of language learning 29(2), 17–32. wolf, m., 2008, proust and the squid: the story and science of the reading brain, harper collins, new york. footnotes top ↑ 1. south african public schools are categorised into five groups (quintiles), largely for the allocation of financial resources. quintile one schools are the ‘poorest’ schools, whilst quintile five schools are the ‘least poor’. these poverty rankings are determined by the poverty of the community around the school and by specific infrastructural factors. 2. the author acknowledges that standardised english language tests should not be translated blindly, and great care was taken with the translation of the peabody picture vocabulary test in this study. problematic english items were adapted as best as possible. for example, the english word ‘cobweb’ (item 41, form b) could not be translated satisfactorily with one word, and hence picture three on the sheet (depicting a shell) was translated instead. the author makes no claims about the usefulness of the translation used here for individual learner assessment. abstract word recognition: a complex interplay of orthography, language structure, and cognitive skills methodology findings discussion conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) tracy probert department of english language and linguistics, rhodes university, south africa mark de vos department of english language and linguistics, rhodes university, south africa citation probert, t. & de vos, m., 2016, ‘word recognition strategies amongst isixhosa/english bilingual learners: the interaction of orthography and language of learning and teaching’, reading & writing 7(1), a84. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i1.84 note: we use the internationally accepted term, ‘bantu’ to refer to the bantu group within the niger-congo language family. we do not use the term to refer to people as occurred during the apartheid regime. we acknowledge that the use of the term bantu has derogatory connotations in lay usage within the republic of south africa but use it in its technical sense in this article. the authors take full responsibility for this usage. original research word recognition strategies amongst isixhosa/english bilingual learners: the interaction of orthography and language of learning and teaching tracy probert, mark de vos received: 26 apr. 2015; accepted: 02 mar. 2016; published: 27 may 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract word recognition is a major component of fluent reading and involves an interaction of language structure, orthography, and metalinguistic skills. this study examined reading strategies in isixhosa and the transfer of these strategies to an additional language, english. isixhosa was chosen because of its agglutinative structure and conjunctive orthography. data was collected at two schools which differed with regards to their language of learning and teaching (lolt) in the first three years of schooling: isixhosa and english respectively. participants completed a wordand pseudo-word reading aloud task in each of two languages which hypothetically impose different cognitive demands. skills transfer occurs to a limited extent when the language of first literacy uses a transparent orthography, but is less predictable when the language of first literacy uses an opaque orthography. we show that although there is transfer of word recognition strategies from transparent to deep orthographies, felicitous transfer is limited to sublexical strategies; infelicitous transfer also occurs when lexical strategies are transferred in problematic ways. the results support the contention that reading strategies and cognitive skills are fine tuned to particular languages. this study emphasises that literacies in different languages present readers with different structural puzzles which require language-particular suites of cognitive reading skills. word recognition: a complex interplay of orthography, language structure, and cognitive skills rapid and effortless word recognition is a major component of fluent reading (aaron et al. 1999; invernizzi & hayes 2010:196). although reading straddles ‘linguistic, neurolinguistic, cognitive, psychological, sociological, developmental and educational domains’ (pretorius & mokhwesana 2009:55), word recognition, has been studied as a set of related neurological processes. there are distinct neural pathways for recognition of gestalt-like whole words versus decomposing a complex word into its component parts. however, there are at least three issues that impact on these neural processes. firstly, at a psycholinguistic level, words are defined through the structures of a language; different languages package different phonological and morphosyntactic features in different ways. secondly, linguistic words are mediated in print through orthographies. orthographies are, more often than not, a set of linguistic and sociocultural compromises developed in particular social contexts. for instance, although all south african bantu languages are agglutinative in their linguistic structure, they may have either conjunctive or disjunctive orthographies, reflecting both the linguistic and social decisions that went into their transcription (louwrens & poulos 2006). thirdly, learners have at their disposal a number of cognitive tools which they use to solve the reading puzzles presented to them. these skills are dynamically developed through exposure to print orthography and include phonological and morphological awareness. these three sets of interacting factors conspire to make word recognition different in different languages and for different orthographies. word structure in bantu languages isixhosa, like all bantu languages, has a relatively simple syllable structure based around a (c)v(v) template (hua 2002). in addition, there are constraints on complex syllable onsets. although some words appear to have a complex onset orthographically, these are often single consonants corresponding to single phonemes and not a true phonological cluster (1ab). in contrast, english allows for more complex structures than cv, such as ccv and cccv words (2ab): (1) a. cv: dla.la [lʒala] ‘play’ b. cv: hla.ba [ɬaba] ‘stab’ (2) a. ccv: try [trai], glue [glu:] b. cccv: straw [strɔ:], strew [stru:] the nature of words is language specific (guthrie 1948; louwrens & poulos 2006; prinsloo 2009). all bantu languages are agglutinating and consequently a bantu word includes rich, overt morphology. for example, nouns include noun class prefixes as well as stems whereas verbs include morphological reflexes of subject marking, object marking, tense, aspect, mood, causativity, and negation among others. the result is that bantu words (particularly nouns and verbs) tend to be much longer than their english equivalents. linguistic structure is mediated through orthography. because linguistic words may differ from orthographic words, learners are faced with language-specific processing challenges when attempting to recognise words in a particular language. these challenges, in turn, presuppose language-specific reading strategies. for example, nguni languages are written conjunctively and the tswana and sotho language groups tend to be written disjunctively. in (3a), a conjunctive writing system yields only one orthographic word also corresponding to one morphological word. the orthographic word ngiyabathanda (3a) is therefore both a morphological word and an orthographic word. in contrast, in disjunctive orthographies, a linguistic word may correspond to a number of orthographic words (3b): (3) a. ngi-ya-ba-thand-a sm1.1sg-pres-om2-like-fv ‘i like them’ (isizulu) b. ke a ba rat-a sm1.1sg pres om2 like-fv ‘i like them’ (northern sotho – taljard & bosch 2006:433). this correspondence between orthographic and morphological words is a characteristic feature of conjunctive orthographies which distinguishes them from disjunctive scripts, such as northern sotho (3b) and english (taljard & bosch 2006), although all south african bantu languages have aspects of both conjunctive and disjunctive systems triggered by linguistic context (louwrens & poulos 2006). the reason for the utilisation of different orthographies is based on both historical and phonological considerations. historically, orthographies were developed by european missionaries. although prescriptive and colonial suppositions may have influenced their decisions (van wyk 1987), the two languages necessitate different orthographies based on their phonological systems (louwrens & poulos 2006). in the nguni languages the presence of phonological processes, such as vowel elision and vowel coalescence make the use of a disjunctive orthography impractical. example (4a) demonstrates how the two vowels ‘a’ and ‘u’ coalesce into 'o', which makes a disjunctive rendering at odds with the phonetic pronunciation; (4b) demonstrates vowel coalescence between ‘a’ and ‘i’ yielding ‘e’: (4) a. utata na umama → realised as: utata nomama father and mother b. inciniba na inja → realised as: inciniba nenja ostrich and dog louwrens and poulos (2006) demonstrate convincingly that tswana is mostly written disjunctively except in contexts where phonological processes obscure the underlying forms; in these contexts, tswana is written conjunctively. thus, orthographic choices mediate linguistic structural considerations. there remain significant questions about how orthographies and language structures conspire to make the reading experience different for different learners. nevertheless, in south africa, the relationship between language structure and orthography are not always reflected in pedagogy: teacher training is oriented to english and afrikaans; indigenous language curriculum documents are often translated directly from english and therefore reflect english teaching concerns (bikitsha & katz 2013). there are limited studies on agglutinating languages which could shed light on how reading occurs in isixhosa. however, some research on turkish has been done. the structure of turkish, like that of isixhosa is agglutinating and the orthography is conjunctive in character. durgunoglu and öney (1999) found that, in turkish, a phonologically transparent orthography fosters early development of word recognition skills, and that phonological awareness contributes to word recognition in the early stages of reading acquisition. these results were attributed to the phonological and orthographic characteristics of the turkish language and orthography. isixhosa and orthographic depth written languages may differ with respect to orthographic depth and consistency. orthographic depth refers to the degree to which there are one-to-one correspondences between graphemes and linguistic categories (such as phonemes or syllables) (aro 2004). the source of opacity within the english orthography partly derives from historical spellings, dialectal speech differences, borrowing, and the fact that there are more phonemes in the spoken language than there are graphemes to represent them (frost 2005). consequently, there is a relative lack of one-to-one correspondences between phonemes and graphemes. the second factor, consistency, involves the uniqueness of pronunciation of an orthographic segment. therefore if two words are spelled similarly but pronounced differently (such as moth–both), the letter cluster oth is considered inconsistent (frost 2005; widjaja & winskel 2004). english has a very high number of words with irregular and unpredictable spellings, included in foundation phase vocabulary (e.g. one, two, four, five, eight, and nine). the irregularity and inconsistency of english orthography results in a deep orthography where readers rely less on grapheme-to-phoneme representation and more so on whole-word processing. in contrast, isixhosa has a fairly transparent, consistent, alphabetic orthography which is more amenable to sublexical processing. orthographic depth affects acquisition and development in reading (pillunat & adone 2009; sprenger-charolles 2003) and influences the cognitive process of word recognition (yamashita 2013). according to the orthographic depth hypothesis (odh), reading in a shallow orthography predisposes readers to rely more on decoding and phonological processing because of the direct and reliable grapheme-phoneme mapping. for deep orthographies, it is hypothesised that readers tend to rely more on orthographic processing because of the opacity in the relationship between grapheme-to-phoneme mapping. therefore differences in orthographic depth determine the dominant type of information (lexical or sublexical) used in word recognition in the brain (katz & frost 1992; yamashita 2013). within a cognitive approach to word recognition, one way of understanding the interaction of orthography and reading is through a dual route model (drc) of word recognition (levy et al. 2009; perre & ziegler 2008; simon & van herreweghe 2010). the model was originally developed to show differential word recognition in adult learners but can also potentially assist in understanding word recognition among l2 learners. the model suggests the existence of two distinct processing routes for word recognition – a lexical (direct route) and a sublexical (indirect) route. with respect to the lexical route, the brain recognises a word in its entirety (perhaps as a type of picture or gestalt); the word is accessed directly from the lexicon. consequently, for the processing of written language, the lexical route processes frequent and orthographically irregular words, such as yacht or one, but fails to process unfamiliar or pseudo-words, such as braston, which have no meaning at all, because, by definition, such words would be novel occurrences (invernizzi & hayes 2010; levy et al. 2009). in contrast to this, the sublexical route subdivides words into smaller segments and maps those to linguistic constituents, together making up the word in a bottom-up fashion (eskey & grabe 1988; lisson & wixson 1991). the bottom-up model of reading is concerned with the recognition of individual letters, phonemes, and words and the reading process begins with individual recognition of letter and phonemic counterparts (eskey & grabe 1988). according to the bottom-up model, learners learn to read through their ability to sound out letters through grapheme-to phoneme correspondences. only once the learner has these decoding skills can he/she move onto the meaning of the words in the text (lisson & wixson 1991). for top-down processing, the reader starts with a general idea or schema of what should be in the text and uses this in perceiving and interpreting the orthographic text (eskey & grabe 1988). most typically, it is assumed that graphemes are mapped to phonemes, although grain size theory (ziegler & goswami 2005) also suggests the possibility of sublexical processing involving syllables or morphemes. the sublexical route can process pseudo and real words which have a grapheme-to-phoneme representation but would fail to process irregular words which violate this representation (levy et al. 2009). this is an important distinction which is exploited in our methodology by using pseudo-words to factor out top-down, lexical recognition processes. pseudo-words are ‘pronounceable combinations of letters which lack semantic meaning but which can be decoded and pronounced via phonological processing and alphabetic (letter-sound) knowledge’ (fredrickson, frith & reason 1977 cited in thomson, crewther & crewther 2006:290). zock, brane, and repaki are all examples of english pseudo-words; lebina, warona, and menida are examples of isixhosa pseudo-words. pseudo-word reading tasks are commonly used as a measure of phonological processing and word recognition across diverse fields of reading research (thomson, crewther & crewther 2006). according to siegel (2004) ‘it is a well established fact that reading of pseudo-words is one of the best measures of phonological processing in an alphabetic language’ (cited in pillunat & adone 2009:3). because readers have never encountered a particular pseudo-word before, they cannot rely on top-down recognition processes such as contextual clues or previous sight word familiarity. rather it requires a reader to recall the phoneme associated with each grapheme and blend the separate sounds together in order to form a pronounceable unit. pseudo-word reading therefore provides an accurate assessment of the learner’s ability to apply grapheme-to-phoneme knowledge in decoding (rathvon 2004). however, pseudo-words are not merely an experimental task; they are also an indication of how learners may approach new words with which they are unfamiliar. in the context of school and higher education, ongoing learning involves routinely being exposed to new, unfamiliar words and it is therefore important that learners can cope with them. this makes the pseudo-word paradigm a particularly powerful and illuminating technique. transparent orthographies are often associated with faster initial learning trajectories. wimmer and goswami (1994) studied reading development in young english and german learners and found that the english learners had substantially more difficulties in decoding tasks than german learners did. these findings were attributed to the transparency of the german orthography. according to wimmer and goswami (1994), when learners learn to read using transparent orthographies they make use of the sublexical route, which ultimately ensures successful decoding. however, when approaching reading in a deep orthography, such as english, the learners recognise words via the lexical route. similarly, seymour, aro and erskine (2003) found that acquisition of a transparent orthography requires access to only one of two decoding strategies, as seen in the sublexical route, whereas acquisition of deep orthographies requires the implementation of both decoding strategies. likewise, defior, martos and cary (2002), comparing spanish and portuguese learners, showed that the accuracy in the pseudo-word reading of spanish and portuguese learners was relatively similar to the performance of german learners and much better than that reported for english learners in the aforementioned studies. the different puzzles presented by different orthography or structure pairings the tension between linguistic language structure and orthography results in different written languages presenting very different reading challenges to learners. important cognitive skills such as phonological and morphological awareness are used in different ways for different language/orthography combinations and emerge in acquisitionally different ways (bialystok 2002; geva & siegel 2000; goswami 1999; ota 2010 inter alia). there is thus a very tight relationship between language, orthography, and the particular cognitive strategies used in reading: literacy emerges out of the specific knowledge of the linguistic forms and orthographic principles of individual language and is unique to each of the learner’s languages. factors such as orthographic depth, for example, determine what strategies learners will need to use when learning to read the language and the success they will achieve as they acquire these skills. (bialystok 2002:164–165) in equivalent texts, english will present readers with larger numbers of shorter words in an idiosyncratic and unpredictable orthography; isixhosa presents readers with smaller numbers of longer, morphologically complex words in a highly regular syllabic pattern and a relatively transparent orthography. clearly, then, because the nature of words differs between languages, the cognitive problem of word recognition must be particularised too. therefore, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to fluent reading across languages. automaticity occurs through at least two neurological pathways and these are conditioned by orthography and language structure. this raises the important question of how these skills are transferred to reading in an l2. despite this, bantu languages are notably absent from the literature on word recognition and cross-orthography comparisons. it is this gap that our research attempts to come to grips with; with these issues in mind, our study focuses on, (1) what groups of strategies are used in word recognition and (2) how differences in transparency between two completely different orthographies and language families affect word recognition in bilingual learners. methodology participants undertook isolated wordand pseudo-word reading tasks in both isixhosa and english. an analysis of incorrect responses allowed a comparison of type of reading strategies (lexical and sublexical) used by learners was made across two schools which differed with regards to their language of learning and teaching (lolt). participants data were collected from a sample of 47 grade 4 isixhosa home language learners from two different schools. the learners were tested individually at their school by the researcher and an assistant. the first school (which we will refer to as school x) is an isixhosa-medium school in a coastal town in the eastern cape (n = 31). the school is a well-run and well-resourced public school on the outskirts of a township. learners receive three years of isixhosa lolt followed by english as lolt in their fourth year. therefore they had been learning in english for approximately 6 months at the time of testing. the second school (school e) is an english-medium school in an inland town in the eastern cape (n = 16). school e is a former model c public school and has learners from diverse backgrounds. the selected learners from school e are home language isixhosa speakers who have been taught in english from the start of their school career. isixhosa is taken as an additional language in this school. the learners from this sample, although isixhosa home language speakers, have only been exposed to written isixhosa for six months. it is important to bear in mind that although the learners from both school x and school e have isixhosa as their l1 and english as their l2, their exposure to the two orthographies is very different. the learners from school x are educated in isixhosa for three years up until the end of grade 3, where they make the ‘switch’ to english as the lolt. however once this ‘switch’ has been made, these learners still speak isixhosa in their homes and on the playground. the learners from school e however are educated in english, often from preschool age. they are only taught isixhosa formally as an additional language from grade 4 and english remains their lolt. most of these learners will speak isixhosa at home, but at school they tend to interact with their friends in english. thus the two schools will often be discussed in contrast to one another. table 1 provides a breakdown of the two schools involved in this study. the language of first literacy (the language the child first learns to read in), alternatively referred to as the child’s language of learning and teaching, and the learners’ first and second languages are outlined for each school. table 1: languages used at school x and school e. procedure the learners completed a set of reading tasks, including both wordand pseudo-word reading, in both english and isixhosa. each reading task consisted of a list of 10 words, with three practice words used to familiarise the learners with the task. the number of tokens obtained from each learner is thus 49 in each language. all pseudo-words were pronounceable, adhered to the orthographic conventions of the language being tested, and had been checked with l1 speakers of isixhosa beforehand. instructions were given orally by the assistant in both english and isixhosa to ensure that learners understood what was required of them. to ensure that all children were given the same instructions, the same assistant was used at both schools, with all the children. the assistant received formal training leading up to data collection and was given explicit guidelines on how to phrase the instructions for the learners. learners were presented with the words and pseudo-words one by one in the form of flashcards and they were then instructed to read the words out loud. learners’ responses were recorded for more in-depth analysis. words were randomised in order to secure the most accurate results. half of the learners were tested in isixhosa first and the other half were tested in english first so as to avoid any priming effects. the stimulus materials also controlled for word length (number of syllables) and syllable structure (simple vs. complex consonant clusters). table 2 provides examples of the stimuli presented to the learners for both isixhosa and english realand pseudo-word reading. table 2: examples of stimuli. data coding and analysis the real word reading task investigated the different word recognition strategies which isixhosa/english bilingual learners adopted when approaching the reading of real words in english and isixhosa. according to the odh, (katz & frost 1992), different orthographies promote different kinds of word recognition processes. transparent orthographies like isixhosa promote sublexical decoding, whereas opaque or deep orthographies like english promote whole-word recognition. one might therefore expect these processes to be evident from the errors made by learners. when there is adherence to alphabetic decoding (grapheme to phoneme mapping) in word recognition, the common errors which occur are those of mispronunciations (i.e. phoneme substitutions, deletions, insertions etc.), whereas the common errors which occur with orthographic (whole word) reading word recognition strategies are lexically primed, real-word substitution errors (i.e. related but wrong) (wimmer & goswami 1994). when learners identify and read the real-word stimulus correctly, this shows that they are able to recall and transfer pronunciation already taught to them before the items were encountered. the learner also draws on their knowledge of the orthography to interpret the words correctly. however, it does not necessarily shed any light as to whether the words are being recognised through lexical or sublexical processes. however, when learners make a mistake, the nature of the error may provide an indication of the underlying processes. in contrast, because pseudo-words have not been previously encountered and can only be parsed using sublexical processes, correct reading of pseudo-words demonstrates an ability to decode words sublexically by matching the correct grapheme to a phoneme. conversely, inability to complete the task shows inability to undertake this mapping. the learners’ responses in the reading tasks were coded on a 6-point nominal scale (table 3). the analysis of the results was interpreted using comparative descriptive statistics and fisher’s exact chi-squared test, which is useful for categorical data in the analysis of determining the significant association (contingency) between two kinds of groups and is used when nominal data are less than five (fisher 1954). table 3: nominal scale used for coding data. table 3 presents the 6-point nominal scale on which the learners’ responses were recorded. this scale is divided into three separate sections – general error types; lexically primed, whole-word recognition error types; and sublexical, decoding error types. an example from the data set is presented alongside each error type. findings findings: word recognition in a language of learning and teaching school e isixhosa-speaking learners in school e, with english as an lolt, made nine mistakes when reading english real words, the language with which they were most familiar. a breakdown of the error types (figure 1) shows that 45% were lexically primed errors (‘related but wrong’), 44% involved the deletion of a segment, and 11% were segment substitutions. learners made more errors (n = 22) during the pseudo-word reading task. in contrast to the reading of real english words, the reading of english pseudo-words in school e showed only 4% for lexically primed guesses with sublexical decoding shown to be more actively used as the errors involved those of substitution (41%), epenthesis and ellipsis (18%). this shows that learners largely decode pseudo-words with sublexical strategies as expected. figure 1: school e english real word reading (n = 9). a mixture of lexical and sublexical strategies. these data demonstrate, that known english words are recognised using a combination of whole-word recognition (55%) and sublexical strategies (45%) (contrary to pillunat and adone 2009). in contrast, pseudo-words are decoded using sublexical strategies. this is as expected given that these words are unknown to the learners and therefore, by definition, cannot be processed using whole-word recognition. the different distributions of the different reading strategies for english realand pseudo-word reading in school e are showed in figures 1 and 2. figure 1 shows that for real-word reading, 45% of error types were lexically primed (‘related but wrong’) errors, with 55% being sublexically primed errors. in contrast, the results for the pseudo-word reading task showed only 4% of errors to be lexically primed, with 96% being sublexically primed errors. figure 2: school e english pseudo-word reading (n = 22). mostly sublexical strategies. school x at school x, where the lolt is isixhosa, 26 errors were made when reading isixhosa real words. as in figure 3, which presents the distribution of the different error types among these learners, the majority (84%) are decoding errors, including 58% substitution errors, 19% insertion errors, and 7% deletion errors. similarly for pseudo-words, as in figure 4, 90% (n = 87) are decoding errors, including 55% substitution, 30% insertion, and 5% deletion. these data show that learners at school x overwhelmingly use sublexical decoding strategies for isixhosa. these data are consistent with the odh which correlates orthographic transparency with sublexical decoding and opacity with whole-word recognition (katz & frost 1992; yamashita 2013). figure 3: school x isixhosa real-word reading (n = 26). sublexical decoding strategies. figure 4: school x isixhosa pseudo-word reading (n = 87). sublexical decoding strategies. findings: transfer effects: word recognition in a non-language of learning and teaching having ascertained the strategies used in reading in the language in which literacy was first acquired (i.e. the lolt), we now turn to the question of whether these reading skills can be transferred to reading another language introduced at a later stage (the language of second literacy). to do this, we investigated the strategies used by school x learners in reading english and school e learners in reading isixhosa.1 school x isixhosa-speaking learners at school x, when reading english words made 64 errors with a variety of strategies being used: lexical primed errors (33%) and decoding errors (41%: segment substitution 17%, segment deletion 24%). these data are also consistent with the reading of english pseudo-words where lexical priming accounts for 28%, and decoding 59% (ellipsis 45% and substitution 14%). this shows that a combination of lexical and sublexical strategies is used to read both realand pseudo-words in english. evidence for the use of whole or sight word recognition was seen when the learners replaced an unfamiliar word which was presented to them with a related word which they knew. they were thus using the shape of the word in their word recognition strategy, referred to as the theory of bouma shape in word recognition studies (larsen 2004). a common example of this is where the learner was presented with the word, ‘sphere,’ and they said ‘shape’, or ‘wheel’ and they responded ‘well’. these learners are therefore making use of phonetic or visual cues for word recognition which entails guessing the word from the word base (aaron et al. 1999). in some instances, there was direct transfer of orthographic conventions. evidence for this transfer can be seen where clicks were substituted when learners read certain english real words (for example, square [sǃɦare], macaroni [maǀaroni], and calamari [ǀalamari]). the english grapheme is perceived as an isixhosa phoneme and is therefore read using isixhosa conventions. when this occurs, the learners are making use of phonological processing when attempting to decode the english words. similarly, some putative instances of segment deletion are actually reanalysis of an orthographic segment in a way consistent with the structure of the language. thus, it was found that in certain instances the learners were actually transferring orthographic conventions across orthographies and not deleting. this is seen in words such as, ‘pʰone’ for phone and ‘tʰink’ for think, where the learner is placing an isixhosa value on an english grapheme. they read the ‘ph’ as an aspirated ‘pʰ’. these errors were recoded as instances of transfer when the errors sounded typical of an l2 speaker. school x is thus making use of phonological decoding. figure 5 and figure 6 present the distribution of error types according to reading strategy. for english real-word reading (figure 5) it is shown that 33% of errors were lexically primed, with 58% being sublexical errors and 9% being completely incorrect. a similar distribution is seen for the english pseudo-word reading (figure 6) with 23% of errors being lexical and 71% sublexical. figure 5: school x english real words (n = 64). combination of lexical and sublexical strategies. figure 6: school x english pseudo-words (n = 114). mixed strategies (lexical and sublexical). school e when reading real isixhosa words, learners at school e used sublexical decoding (100%: substitution 73% and segment insertion 27%). this is consistent with the way they approached english pseudo-words (figure 4). interestingly however, the same learners approached isixhosa pseudo-words in a completely different way. instead of using decoding strategies, 70% of errors were lexically primed guesses (for example, ‘arch’ for ‘ache’, ‘science’ for ‘silence’), with only 15% being decoded. this shows that the learners from school e were attempting to guess words based on whole-word recognition and general cognitive skills – but doing so incorrectly. the use of both grapheme to phoneme correspondences (sublexical) as well as whole-word recognition (lexical) strategies in word recognition could be explained as individual differences in the learners’ reading styles. the learners who are decoding grapheme to phoneme are making use of what is called bottom-up processing whereas those learners who are reading the words through direct recognition are making use of top-down processing in their interpretation of the words. according to holm and dodd (1997) skilled reading can only happen successfully if there is interaction between top-down processing and bottom-up processing in the recognition of unfamiliar words. when the learners approach a pseudo-word in the language in which they are familiar they are able to distinguish between the word being a real word or a nonsense word and thus resort to alphabetic decoding (grapheme to phoneme correspondences) in their word recognition strategy in order to break down the word to make meaningful sense of it. however in the instance of learners from school e it was found that when faced with the interpretation of a word which they are unfamiliar with they are unable to separate the real words from the pseudo-words and thus rely on a ‘guessing’ strategy (otherwise known as phonetic cue or visual cue reading) resulting in sight word reading of the words. according to holm and dodd (1997) when the phonological awareness has not developed in the language in which the learner is attempting to read in, learners are limited to whole-word visual word recognition strategies. the pie-graphs below present a summary of the error types made by the learners from school e for isixhosa realand pseudo-word reading. figure 7 shows that all errors were a result of sublexical decoding, with 73% being substitution errors and 27% addition errors. in contrast, the distribution of errors in figure 8 shows 70% of errors were lexically-primed errors and 18% sublexical. figure 7: school e isixhosa real-word reading (n = 15). sublexical decoding strategies. figure 8: school e isixhosa pseudo-word reading (n = 40). mostly lexical strategies. discussion the findings of the previous section are schematically represented as generalisations in the following graphic (table 4). our data suggest more nuance is needed in the theoretical models, namely the odh and dual-route cascaded model of word recognition. the current models are deterministic and predict binary outcomes within word recognition (seidenberg 1992). this study, however, showed that learners can use a number of different reading strategies within and across orthographies. according to coady (1979) learners who are acquiring a second language use the strategies which they find most useful in their first language. therefore the significant issue is not whether the skills used in the first language transfer to the second language, but rather how these skills are applied (holm & dodd 1997). table 4: summary of the different word recognition strategies employed. table 4 presents a summary of the different word recognition strategies used by learners from school x and school e for both realand pseudo-word reading in their language of first literacy and language of second literacy (the language of literacy in which a learns to read, introduced in grade 4). firstly, the data show that reading in lolt is not identical but is determined by the parameters of the language being read. thus, isixhosa lolt learners use decoding strategies for both realand pseudo-words. this is consistent with the odh which claims that transparent orthographies promote the use of decoding strategies. in contrast, english lolt learners use a combination of lexical and sublexical strategies for real-word reading but use mainly sublexical strategies to decode pseudo-words. this also appears to be consistent with the odh, given that written english is relatively opaque.2 this supports our contention that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to reading and that different languages pose different cognitive puzzles for readers. secondly, although our findings support the claim that there is transfer of word recognition skills from transparent orthographies to deep orthographies (pillunat & adone 2009; siegel 2004), even when the languages are of different structures and language families, felicitous transfer seems largely limited to sublexical, decoding skills. in contrast, with respect to whole-word recognition, it appears that literacy skills can be transferred to a non-lolt in problematic ways – non-transfers and infelicitous transfers. both of these are problematic because both can lead to reading difficulties. non-felicitous transfers are evident when isixhosa lolt learners transfer decoding skills to english real words, and do not use as much whole-word recognition as english lolt learners do for english real words. this is expected given that the transparency of isixhosa orthography may not promote whole-word recognition and/or that isixhosa lolt learners have not yet achieved automaticity of recognition. however, this is not to say that isixhosa lolt learners do not use any whole-word recognition; they tend to favour a sublexical approach, most likely because, unlike an opaque orthography, a transparent one does not a priori preclude the use of a lexical recognition strategy. however, if, isixhosa lolt learners have not necessarily mastered whole-word recognition as a skill, it cannot be successfully transferred to english realword contexts. this can be contrasted with english lolt learners who acquire both whole-word recognition as well as decoding strategies and are able to transfer decoding strategies to isixhosa real words. infelicitous transfers tended to occur, for example, when english lolt learners infelicitously transfer whole-word recognition to isixhosa pseudo-words. one is led to ask why they do not decode isixhosa pseudo-words 100% of the time. when learners who are literate in an opaque orthography realise that a word is potentially ‘real’ they decode it. but when confronted with a pseudo-word and are able to identify it as such, they use whole-word recognition. in contrast, isixhosa lolt learners are able to draw on decoding strategies in approaching pseudo-words. this suggests that an isixhosa lolt in the foundation phase might better prepare learners for transferring (a subset of) skills to reading english. conclusion it appears that learners literate in a transparent orthography are indeed able to transfer decoding skills more easily than learners literate in an opaque orthography. the data also confirms that learners literate in an opaque orthography can transfer skills to another language, but that transfer can have problematic effects; transfer of lexical strategies can set them up for failure and they do not always transfer sublexical decoding strategies to novel contexts. the implications of this are important. if different languages imply different combinations of reading strategies then it is presumably important that these be reflected in pedagogy. thus, reading in languages like isixhosa needs to be taught differently to reading in english. to our knowledge, there is no formal training provided to teachers in this regard, especially in context where isixhosa caps documents are translations of english ones. this also means that care must be taken when introducing reading in an l2. traditionally, this occurs in grade 4 when learners who have been taught in isixhosa are suddenly thrust into a context where english takes over as lolt, and where it is assumed as matter of course that literacy skills transfer. our data suggest that isixhosa decoding skills can transfer under these circumstances but that isixhosa-speaking learners do not necessarily have mastery of the whole-word recognition skills necessary for becoming fluent english readers. although non-transfers can be remedied, more serious are infelicitous transfers which imply that a skill has to be unlearned. our findings also suggest that introducing additional languages of literacy during the foundation phase (i.e. before the skills for literacy in any single language have been consolidated) may be problematic. it is well known that learners struggle with the change in lolt in grade 4 and in an attempt to deal with this, since 2015, up to three languages are being taught in foundation phase classrooms. the noble intention behind this suggests that earlier exposure to english literacy will help learners cope with the switch in grade 4. our data suggest that such interventions should be managed with care. the literacy skills necessary in isixhosa-reading classrooms are not the same suite of literacy skills necessary in english reading classes. 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suggests that lolt is more significant than l1. both groups are learners are matched for l1 (isixhosa) but their reading strategies owe more to the properties of the lolt. this is good news for classrooms where learners come from multilingual backgrounds as it suggests that contradictory influences of l1 may be able to be reduced. abstract introduction conceptual framework: imagination and transformative education waldorf, imagination and language education imagination, critical literacies and waldorf conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) monica shank ontario institute for studies in education (oise), university of toronto, canada citation shank, m., 2016, ‘imagination, waldorf, and critical literacies: possibilities for transformative education in mainstream schools’, reading & writing 7(2), a99. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i2.99 original research imagination, waldorf, and critical literacies: possibilities for transformative education in mainstream schools monica shank received: 13 sep. 2015; accepted: 09 mar. 2016; published: 15 july 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract in the face of transmission-oriented national curricula, this study explores possibilities for claiming space for imagination, as ‘the most powerful and energetic of learning tools’ (egan 1986), in early childhood education in mainstream kenyan schools. drawing from egan’s work on imagination and cummins’ nested pedagogical orientations framework, this study interrogates the indispensable role of imagination in transformative education, as well as its utility in the ‘transmission’ of the government curriculum. this study draws insights from an initiative integrating imaginative, waldorf-inspired pedagogies into mainstream pre-primary and early primary classrooms to explore how imagination-based pedagogies, including storytelling, creative play, poems and verses, drawing and painting, can support the development of critical literacies in young children. ‘our highest endeavor must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives.’ – rudolf steiner introduction imagine a world in which all human beings are actively engaged in imagining and working towards a better world, with a burning commitment to bringing change. imagine a world in which each person seeks to understand the bigger picture and how their thoughts and actions are part of constructing global realities. imagine a world in which actions are taken with consideration of their long-term impact and where everyone embraces their own agency in transforming systems of oppression, exploitation and inequity. is such a world possible? what is the role of education in working towards such a world? in what ways is this vision, both in its construction and in its attainment, connected to imagination and literacies? this study explores the relationships between imagination, literacies and transformative education. emerging from work of integrating imaginative, waldorf-inspired approaches into mainstream kenyan schools, this study explores how imagination can enhance the teaching and learning of government curriculum, while infusing early childhood learning experiences with a transformative orientation. it examines imaginative, waldorf-inspired approaches in relationship to critical literacies and interrogates the (irreconcilable?) tensions between the convergent thinking demanded by government curriculum and the divergent thinking promoted through imagination and transformative pedagogies. while the focus of this study is on young children in pre-primary and early primary classes, the significance of imagination as a meaning-making faculty and its role in transformative education extend, in modified ways, to literacy learning across the lifespan. conceptual framework: imagination and transformative education imagination is central to all learning – particularly any approach to education aspiring to challenge social reproduction and contribute to societal transformation. imagination extends beyond the production of mental images, to include engagement with human experience and possibilities well beyond the domains of learners’ own experience. as an extraordinary tool of meaning-making and of humanisation of abstract concepts, imagination is an essential part of the learning process, with far-reaching implications for pedagogy, curriculum, agency and identity. here, we engage with kieran egan’s constructs of imagination and its relevance to education, using egan’s work as a framework through which to approach the discussion of imagination and literacy education. from there, we explore relationships between imagination and transformative education, before turning our attention to some kenyan schools that have dared to explore imaginative, waldorf-inspired approaches to education in their teaching and learning of kenyan government curriculum. kieran egan, in his work teaching as storytelling, discusses the problematic ad hoc principles that many education methods are based on: the idea that children’s learning proceeds from the concrete to the abstract, from the known to the unknown and from active manipulation to symbolic conceptualisation. egan argues that these assumptions severely under-represent the abilities of children (egan 1986). egan’s work focuses on the development of models of teaching and learning, which are fundamentally based on human beings’ imaginative capabilities, celebrating children’s imaginations in particular as ‘the most powerful and energetic learning tools’ (egan 1986:2). his imagination-based models offer alternatives to dominant approaches to education globally, which tend to be based on a narrow range of children’s logical thinking skills – the sorts of skills that are easily grasped and measured, quite unlike imagination. in an imaginative approach to teaching, egan asserts that: ‘engaging the imagination is not a sugar-coated adjunct to learning; it is the very heart of learning. it is what brings meaning and sense and context and understanding to the knowledge we wish to teach’ (2005:36). egan’s models of imaginative teaching and learning are based on a rich image of the child as an imaginative as well as logico-mathematical thinker, as ‘an energetic creator of mental images of what may never have been experienced’ (1986:7). this construction of the child contrasts sharply with a deficit approach to understanding childhood abilities stemming from a fixation on logico-mathematical capabilities the skills children are actually least good at. egan argues that children come to school with highly developed abstract concepts, such as good or bad, survival or destruction and greed or generosity, even if they lack the vocabulary to articulate these concepts as such. children’s abilities to conceptualise binary opposites and then to mediate between them enables them to make sense of stories very far removed from their own concrete experiences and can also be used as invaluable resources in the teaching and learning of any curriculum content (egan 1986). inspired by this rich understanding of children’s wide range of capabilities, egan has formulated a model of ‘teaching as storytelling’, in which he conceives of lessons and units not as sets of objectives to attain, but rather as ‘good stories to tell in order to engage students’ imaginations and emotions’ (2005:12). egan demonstrates how we can set up lessons and units like stories, creating a sense of dramatic tension or conflict at the beginning, and using rhythms of expectation and satisfaction for which children have well-developed conceptual abilities to understand (egan 1986). egan’s model requires the teacher to identify what is most important about a topic with regards to its human dimensions: why it should matter to children and what is affectively engaging about it. educators are then advised to identify binary opposites that can help communicate the importance of the topic and to organise content according to how it can effectively move the dramatic conflict forward. egan emphasises the importance of human emotions and intentions in making content meaningful and how this imaginative approach is applicable throughout the curriculum. indeed, he makes a particular point of (re) humanising science and mathematics, seeing these subjects not in a mechanical, objective way, but in a ‘living context of human emotions and intentions’ (egan 1986:30). beyond being a rich and indispensable tool for learning, imagination is a conduit of identity formation, for divergent thinking and for the envisioning of preferred futures. imagination plays a central role in the construction of our group affiliations, as discussed in benedict anderson’s seminal work imagined communities (anderson 2006). taking up anderson’s work in the context of language education, bonny norton (2010:3) discusses the role of imagination in creating a ‘sense of community with people they have not yet met, including future relationships that exist only in a learner’s imagination’. norton extends the concept of imagined communities to what she calls ‘imagined identities’, to explore the role of the imagination in a person’s sense of self, their perceptions of their future opportunities and their sense of agency (norton 2010). resisting singular, definitive interpretations of truth, imagination breeds creativity and engagement with diverse possibilities. freedom of imagination is required to envision alternative realities and potential futures, and courses of action that could produce these futures. indeed, the possibility of education catalysing transformation depends largely on the lively engagement of imagination. skourtou et al. (2006) have developed a framework they call nested pedagogical orientations, which describes the interrelationship between three orientations to education: transmission, social constructivist and transformative. the transmission orientation is comparable to what freire terms the ‘banking method’ of education, in which information and skills are transmitted to, or ‘deposited’ into, learners. the social constructivist orientation involves teachers’ and learners’ co-construction of knowledge and understanding and the development of higher-order thinking abilities. a transformative orientation involves collaborative critical inquiry to scrutinise and understand social realities of learners’ own lives and of their broader societies, and discussing and acting on ways these realities might be transformed (cummins & early 2011:28–31). the nested pedagogical orientations framework views these orientations as nested within each other, rather than as isolated orientations. while the transmission orientation has the narrowest focus, the social constructivist orientation includes transmission while broadening the focus to include experiential learning, higher-order thinking and the co-construction of knowledge. similarly, the transformative orientation expands upon both transmission and social constructivist orientations to include a critical orientation, an explicit focus on social justice and equity issues and the exercising of agency to intervene to transform reality (skourtou et al. 2006:446–447). imagination is a potent resource in the furthering of the educational objectives of all these orientations. most mainstream or government curricula worldwide focus on the transmission of information and skills specified in the curriculum and examinations. transmission (or banking) approaches contribute to passivity, the veiling of reality (through fragmentation of ‘information’), the suppression of agency and the monopolisation of power (freire 2007). on the other hand, transformative orientations, or what freire terms ‘problem-posing’ education, focus on the development of critical consciousness through dialogue and action. as freire (2007) observes: whereas banking education anesthetises and inhibits creative power, problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling of reality. the former attempts to maintain the submersion of consciousness; the latter strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality. (p. 81) this study explores ways of bringing transformative approaches into mainstream schools, using imaginative approaches that support the transmission of information and skills necessary to excel on standardised examinations, while also broadening pedagogical orientations to include co-constructions of knowledge, critical literacies and transformative interventions in reality. following freire (2007:77) in acknowledging that ‘thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world’, we now turn to a particular kenyan context where action is being taken to approach a ‘transmissive’ curriculum with transformative orientations, embedding the schooling experience with imagination, co-construction of knowledge, creativity and agency. the context: kenyan ‘8-4-4’ schools in 2012, four primary schools, all of which use the kenyan ‘8-4-4’ government curriculum (8 years of primary, 4 years of secondary, and 4 years of university), embarked on a journey of seeking ways of imbuing the government school experiences with imagination. all these schools are located in areas under-resourced by government schools (two in informal settlements or urban ‘slums’ of nairobi, two in rural kenya), and all were started independently by community members or local churches concerned with the number of children out of school. these schools came to know each other through their common relationship to a small non-governmental organisation (ngo), for which i worked as an educational advisor and which supports a number of schools and education projects in kenya. all charge a modest monthly school fee of 300–600 ksh (about $3–6 usd), which includes daily porridge and lunch (for some children the only food they eat in a day), although all these schools waive the fees for families who cannot afford. although located in different communities, these schools share similar challenges. because of the high demand for a limited number of schools, class sizes tend to be large, particularly in the urban schools, which often have 50–80 children in each of the pre-primary classes. as the ‘8-4-4’ system is characterised by high-stakes examinations, virtually all teaching and learning is oriented towards preparation for the examinations, beginning with ‘baby class’ for the 3-year olds. the combination of large class sizes and the orientation towards examinations results in a lot of what could be characterised as rote learning involving much chanting (of numbers, letters, syllables, body parts, etc.) and emphasis on the mechanics of reading and writing, as the exclusive form of assessment is the monthly written examinations. the medium of instruction is english, a second or third language for the children, who speak their ethnic languages and/or the national language, swahili, at home. while all teachers make extensive use of familiar languages, particularly swahili, in their classes, all written language is in english, meaning children’s initial literacy instruction is in a language with which they have minimal oral familiarity. apart from the daily ‘outdoor activity’ period and break time, the children spend the full day seated in crowded desks, with limited kinesthetic engagement or attention to physical development beyond that which relates to the mechanics of writing. this description is meant to give a sense of the contextual realities in which the schools function and is not meant as an indictment of anything or anyone. many of the teachers have extraordinary creativity, resilience and commitment to their pupils. because of the hegemony of examinations in the ‘8-4-4’ system, children ‘must’ be given daily written homework and monthly examinations from their first days of baby class, and schools proposing to do otherwise risk having parents remove their children in favour of more ‘academically oriented’ schools. the kenyan ministry of education early childhood development and education syllabus aligns completely with the ad hoc principles discussed by egan: the content is all based on simple, concrete, everyday realities, using the ‘concentric circles’ model (egan 1986) expanding outwards from the child, to the family, to the neighbourhood and the broader community (ministry of education, republic of kenya 2008). it presents an image of a child as a being that must be socialised, domesticated and disciplined into ‘drawing within the lines’ and the ‘right answers’ of schooling. the curriculum is divided into themes, such as ‘myself,’ ‘our home’, ‘my school’ and ‘transport’, which cut across the activity areas of language, mathematics, outdoor, science, social, creative, music and movement, religious education and life skills. while in theory this curriculum leaves room for discussion of diverse forms of families, or alternatives to standard clothes worn by family members (for example), in practice the curriculum is very prescriptive, being co-constructed with examinations which demand the reproduction of hegemonic constructions of the everyday. the language activities component of the syllabus presents an overwhelming focus on cognitive abilities and the mechanical skills of writing (ministry of education, republic of kenya 2008:1–6), although the ‘general objectives of early childhood development (ecd)’ mention the development of aesthetic and artistic skills and the child’s exploration skills, creativity, self-expression and discovery (ministry of education, republic of kenya 2008:xi). although there is no mention of imagination, affect or emotion anywhere in the introduction and/or overview or language activities sections of the syllabus, the inclusion of songs and stories offers possible inroads for imaginative engagement. overall, while the syllabus itself is generally oriented towards a prescriptive transmission of knowledge and skills, in the hands of creative, imaginative teachers, the learning of this syllabus can be done in an imaginative way, while also leaving space for transformative approaches which demonstrate an orientation to education as the practice of freedom (freire 2007). waldorf, imagination and language education eager to explore ways of bringing more life, imagination and holistic engagement to the potentially dry government ecd curriculum, these four primary schools, in collaboration with their partner ngo, developed a partnership with the nairobi waldorf school, to seek ways of learning from each other and mediating between waldorf-inspired approaches and the government curriculum. there is significant alignment between waldorf approaches and egan’s frameworks for imaginative education, transformative orientations and freire’s construction of education as the practice of freedom (freire 2007). what follows is an exploration of waldorf education generally and waldorf approaches to language and literacy education specifically, with a particular emphasis on younger children. waldorf education begins with a commitment to the development of whole human beings, understanding the deep interconnectedness of intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual development. founded by rudolf steiner in the aftermath of world war one, the waldorf education movement seeks to support the development of intentional, compassionate, conscientious human beings, who are mindful of our interconnected roles in working towards a more humane, just world. waldorf education emerges from an understanding of human beings as willing, feeling and thinking beings, whose learning and growth as individuals depend on the balanced and integrated development of all three. while all deep, meaningful learning depends on the cohesive engagement of the will (through doing; physical involvement), feeling (involving sympathy; human connection) and thinking (cognitive aspects; reason), the relative dominance of these three learning faculties (which are also forms of consciousness) shifts throughout childhood development, with the will being dominant throughout the first seven years of life. the will can be characterised as the power to achieve one’s goals, and its effective development, particularly through freedom of movement and active physical engagement in early childhood, can result in strong character and work ethic later in life (edmunds 1975:31). thus, waldorf classrooms are very active, set up to allow children to explore, discover, construct, question and experience for themselves, with teachers’ gentle guidance. the waldorf curriculum emerges from a deep understanding of child development and seeks to support the particular developmental tasks (physical, emotional and intellectual) children face at any given stage. children aged 3–5, for example, are developing a keen interest in the world, supported to a large extent by freedom of movement and must be supported to follow and deepen their curiosity through the encouragement of their sometimes endless asking of questions (van alphen & van alphen 1997). this approach to supporting children’s naturally blossoming curiosity is in stark contrast to many mainstream pre-primary classrooms, where children’s role is largely that of answering the teachers’ questions (‘what colour is this?’, ‘what is this animal called?’), rather than being allowed the freedom to generate their own. at this stage, children’s play becomes increasingly complex, with children spontaneously engaging in role plays, as they construct and act upon imaginative situations based on their own experiences and stories they have heard. thus, in waldorf schools, ample time is given for free imaginative play as a cornerstone of children’s early learning. young children develop language abilities at an exceptionally rapid rate through imitation of people in their environment and through actively doing or speaking language (i.e., largely through the will) (van alphen 1997a). understanding that writing and reading are built on strong oral foundations and that clear thinking emerges from clear speech, waldorf kindergartens (equivalent to kenyan pre-primary classes) provide an environment rich in meaningful oral language. the foundation of the kindergarten and early primary waldorf experience is the story, which contributes to oral language development while also welcoming children into an imaginative world rich with feeling, beauty and intention. indeed, virtually all content taught in pre-primary and early primary classes is presented in the form of a story. when told from the heart, stories are quickly internalised by children. children live deeply into the experiences and realities of characters in the stories, including when the content of the stories is far removed from children’s own experiences (they have no problem identifying with stories about 3-eyed giants and magical potions from talking eagles, for example). stories help to develop children’s concentration and memories, while offering a rich feast for children’s imaginations, hearts and minds, as they situate learning in a context alive with human relationships, emotions and meaning. in addition to rich experiences of stories, oral language development is supported through the recitation and internalisation of imagination-rich poems and verses, accompanied by meaningful gestures. action songs and singing games also assist oral language development, while developing co-ordination, strengthening the will and nurturing a reverence for the beauty and active qualities of language. waldorf advocates for the use of home language(s) as the media of instruction, but where this is not possible, developing strong oral foundations in the medium of instruction through meaningful exposure to and use of language is even more important. no matter what the medium of instruction, the use of multiple different languages in early childhood and beyond helps to develop flexibility of thinking, joy in diverse forms of expression and comfort with the unfamiliar. all experiences of language, whatever the language(s) may be, must be infused with life, meaning and beauty, such that children sense the intrinsic value of language and literacy learning, and their joy and inquisitiveness propels their learning forward. language and literacy development are also propelled through physical movement in the waldorf approach. in contrast to the kenyan ecd syllabus, which emphasises the importance of fine motor skill development specifically for the mechanics of writing (ministry of education, republic of kenya 2008), waldorf education acknowledges that there is a direct connection between the development of strong, clear movements (both gross and fine) and of clear speech and thought (van alphen 1997). as such, ample opportunities are provided for creative balancing, hopping, climbing in and out of things, handcrafts, beanbag exercises, circle dances, stepping and clapping rhythms and other forms of fun, meaningful movements. movement is frequently combined with speech in the forms of poems, verses and action songs and is connected to agency, holistic participation and the confidence to act upon reality. overall, waldorf approaches to language and literacy development reflect a conceptualisation of literacy that extends beyond cognitive processes to acknowledge the centrality of the imagination, the body and emotions in the construction and representation of knowledge. waldorf pedagogies reflect an image of a child as a capable, multidimensional being, with a rich imaginative life and profound capacity for understanding through their interconnected faculties of the will, feeling and thinking. waldorf constructions of childhood, like those of egan, point to the gross inadequacies of cognitive-dominant approaches to early childhood education. waldorf expands on egan’s understanding of the complementarity of affect and cognition to offer models of education that embrace the interconnectedness of the physical and spiritual, as well as the emotional and intellectual, in the development of children and indeed of all human beings. integrating waldorf into the mainstream the partnership between the nairobi waldorf school and these four 8-4-4 schools began with informal visits of some of the 8-4-4 teachers to waldorf kindergarten classes. no number of workshops, books or discussion groups could have opened up teachers’ imaginations to alternatives for early childhood education as effectively as a few hours’ exposure to the dramatically different paradigms underlying a waldorf kindergarten. it was amazing for me, as a resource person facilitating this partnership, to walk with these teachers as they began to process this radically different concept of education. ‘if they don’t do exams, how do they know when to promote the children to the next class?’ ‘how do they learn without desks, chalkboards, and notebooks?’ ‘if they spend all day playing, listening to stories, drawing and painting, what time do they learn?’ these were among the questions teachers asked upon initial exposure to waldorf learning environments. these classroom visits were magical seeds which sprouted ever-expanding options for imagining how ecd classrooms can operate, be organised and conceive of success. we followed up on these ongoing visits to waldorf classrooms with lunchtime discussions with teams of ecd teachers and school leadership at each of the schools, where teachers explored possibilities for adapting aspects of what they saw and learned into their own classrooms. in my near-weekly visits to each of the schools, i spent many hours with the teachers in the ecd classes, observing, team teaching, leading circle times and puzzling over challenges. significantly, some waldorf teachers also came to visit these 8-4-4 schools, which helped immensely to facilitate dialogue and mutual understanding, while offering opportunities to co-construct possibilities for the creative integration of waldorf approaches into the 8-4-4 contexts. we also held several saturday workshops, facilitated by waldorf teachers, which brought together teachers from all four of the 8-4-4 schools and offered opportunities for rich experiential learning, discussions and visioning. among the full-day workshops was one on developing language through stories, poems, and verses, which included explorations of appropriate stories for different developmental stages, doll-making, beeswax modelling, drawing and, of course, storytelling. as mary goral asserts in her study of the process of integrating waldorf into public schools in the united states, the combination of teacher–teacher support, regular contact with support persons for bouncing ideas and questions off of and ongoing training, were key interacting aspects of bringing about transformation, rather than relying on single workshops of ‘sit and get’ (goral 2009:20). similarly, in our development trajectories, observation, teacher–teacher collaboration, discussion groups, regular association with support persons and workshops were key interrelated components of promoting change. throughout all these processes, change was documented through teachers’ written reflections, written documentation of teachers’ discussion groups and classroom observations over more than two years. the resulting data show teachers’ broadening understanding of what counts as knowledge and learning, changes in teacher–child relationships and teachers’ questioning of their practice and exploring possibilities for interrupting the status quo. transformations in teaching and learning in the ecd classrooms were gradual, often stuttering, but transformational nonetheless. teachers’ broadening conceptualisations of knowledge and learning were manifested in a decreasing reliance on writing and reading as the main sites of instruction and assessment and an increasing focus on oral language development, particularly through stories, verses, songs and poems. in many classes, songs and verses went from being energisers or offering a break from seat-learning to being integrated centrally into the learning of the curriculum. in a written reflection, one teacher expressed surprise at how much learning could take place without reading or writing, and this discovery was reflected in her classroom in increased movement, less time spent in desks, the introduction of materials such as beanbags and homemade shakers and the very frequent use of action songs and verses. previously spending hours every day distributing, collecting and correcting notebooks for simple writing exercises (a chaotic process in which some children spent only a few minutes on the intended writing task), an increased focus on oral language development decreased some of the need for the endless notebook process, while also engaging children’s hearts and bodies in a joyful learning process which energised rather than exhausted children. these practices reflected an expanding conceptualisation of literacy beyond a mechanical, cognitive process towards one which accounts for the role of the body, the imagination and emotions in the construction and representation of knowledge. another teacher’s reflections articulated a growing determination to ‘involve learners from head to toes…every day for holistic growth and coordination, e.g. through songs’. a primary teacher, previously extremely focused on academic learning oriented towards examination, stated: ‘how wonderful it is to involve a child’s heart, head and limbs in his/her growth and learning’. along with these expanding understandings of what constitutes literacy and learning came a sense of urgency to challenge society’s narrow expectations of school learning as reading and writing, and speaking english. one teacher echoed the comments of several other teachers and school administrators when she wrote, ‘we must sensitise parents on the kinds of knowledge and skills which must be taught to young children’. in a context where pre-primary examinations are not mandated by the ministry of education, these attitude shifts could result in the creative development of alternative pre-primary assessment models at these schools in the future. the introduction of imaginative, waldorf-inspired pedagogies shifted teacher–pupil relationships in ways which affirmed the agency of the children by offering greater freedom and by being less prescriptive. several teachers began welcoming free drawing or scribbling, rather than only joining the dots and colouring in the lines. some teachers began building singing and clapping into their daily routines to signal transitions in lessons and expectations for behaviour, rather than yelling instructions like ‘keep quiet!’ and ‘sit down!’ one teacher wrote that he was bringing more ‘movement into class where the child is the centre of everything, while the teacher is to guide and facilitate materials and songs. the teacher is to be creative and to be a role model’. many of the teachers found opportunities to push restrictive desks out of the way, or to move children outside, in order to spend more time in active movement, such as circle time. stories entered into many classes, including stories told in the familiar language of swahili, for maximum engagement with imagination and emotions, which are very difficult to access in an unfamiliar language. particularly when told in a circle, stories became participatory, with children collectively transforming into various characters to perform the actions taking place in the story. often, the same story was told multiple times, including in english once the story became familiar, and the repetition offered opportunities for greater participation of the children. the repetition and increasing sense of ownership of the stories also allowed the children to internalise the stories (including vocabulary and repetitive phrases), which then quite naturally re-emerged in their creative play time and drawings, including in creative re-versionings of the familiar stories. because these are still 8-4-4 schools and the syllabus still had to be covered, teachers worked on developing stories which emerged from the thematic areas of the syllabus. although the syllabus is full of simple, everyday things, when infused with imagination ordinary things like household utensils can take on extraordinary meaning. for example, spoons, forks and knives can be playing happily together, when they encounter a challenge they must overcome. they work together, using their respective virtues, to overcome the challenge. a story like this engages the imagination, brings out human qualities, while also bringing out the essence of ‘spoon’, ‘fork’ and ‘knife’ by exploring creative possibilities for their unconventional uses, in a way quite impossible when we just teach, ‘this is a spoon, we use it for eating githeri’. these practices, by creating space for imagination and children’s creative participation, challenge the teacher’s monopoly on knowledge and re-position learners as active creators, participants and interpreters, rather than idle recipients of skills and knowledge. these practices also signal teachers’ questioning of reproductive models of education and represent bold interventions towards changing the educational status quo. increased time spent in circles rather than teacher-fronted classrooms, the introduction of storytelling, and the creation of space for activities which are not directly examinable represent challenges to traditional classroom power relations and rigid standardisation of learning. additionally, the unapologetic use of swahili in storytelling and other activities is a move towards engaging learners’ imaginations in a medium which allows them greater flexibility of thinking and increased power to make interventions. while also using english in these activities, particularly once children’s confidence has already been built, and in a few cases also claiming space for songs or other contributions in the children’s mother tongues, this more multilingual approach supported engagement with options of ways of conceiving of and naming the world, while also opening up space for identity affirmation and negotiation. one teacher stated her need to ‘fully understand the development of children’. many of the teachers, in their thinking and practice, demonstrated a move beyond ‘trivia-style’ education (egan 2005) towards questioning the bigger developmental tasks of children (physical, emotional and intellectual) which education must support. another teacher wrote that ‘materials must be improvised and not bought, e.g. made by the teacher, children, and parents’. teachers taking ownership of making their own dolls, beanbags, musical instruments and other materials, often with the participation of children, gave the materials a living nature, open to adaptation and creative intervention. incomplete materials, such as dolls without faces, demanded engagement of the imagination to complete and left room for interpretation and change. in general, the transformations documented in these classrooms represent a broadening understanding of what can constitute knowledge and learning, shifts in traditional top-down teacher–pupil relations and an unsettling of the educational status quo. imagination, critical literacies and waldorf the imaginative, waldorf-inspired approaches to literacy interrogated in this study are particularly conducive to the development of critical literacies in young children. imagination resists singular, definitive interpretations of truth, and imaginative approaches create space for each learner to negotiate their own interpretations, in ways which defy closure or conformity. by creating space for each learner to experience and interact with living content, imagination necessarily opens doors to engagement with possibilities, divergent thinking and diversity. in literacy and power, hilary janks (2010) details the significance of practices of design and re-design, in addition to analyses of power, access and diversity, in transformative critical literacies practices. young children are prolific at re-designing, or re-versioning, texts to which they are exposed, and these waldorf-inspired approaches offer children freedom to engage with and re-design texts (broadly conceived) imaginatively and in varieties of media. putting productive practices at the core, these approaches nurture learners’ creative agency, by offering them living, dynamic content which they can negotiate, interpret and act upon, including in their imaginative play, their drawings and paintings, and their creative re-tellings of stories. importantly, by not limiting ‘learning’ or ‘literacy’ to the (re)production of written letters, words and sentences, these imaginative and creative practices engage and nurture ‘multiliteracies,’ which the new london group (1996) propounds as a plurality of literacies of increasing importance within the changing socio-economic conditions and communication practices associated with globalisation. freire (2007), in describing the ‘banking’ or transmission approach to education, notes that: the more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. the more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them. (p. 73) most standardised national curricula (and examinations) lead to the fragmentation of knowledge, leading to ahistorical and apolitical (and a-human) collections of facts and skills ‘which they do not perceive as interacting constituent elements of the whole’ (freire 2007:104). waldorf-inspired approaches present content in holistic ways, encouraging the development of understanding of how everything fits together in a meaningful whole (van alphen 1997). in addition, the integration of intellectual development with that of the body, feelings and intuition leads to fuller understanding of meaning and relevance and of how language and knowledge act on us and on the world. comber and nichols (2004) question the conditions that allow, or even require, the creation of classrooms where understanding instructions and carrying them out with precision is the benchmark of success and in which conformity seems to dominate constructions of giftedness and academic achievement. in a way which echoes comber and nichol’s (2004) observations, in the mainstream 8-4-4 classrooms observed, the omnipresent constructions of ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ learners is entirely based on the ability to conform to the demand for very specific ‘right answers’ in the schools. even where a supposedly creative activity like drawing exists (in examination questions like ‘draw a cup’), there is no creative license allowed, and the attainment of a check mark depends upon the ability to reproduce the standard picture, devoid of beauty or imagination. the introduction of imaginative, waldorf-inspired approaches into these schools was an intervention aimed at creating spaces in which children could create alternatives to hegemonic constructions of ‘knowledge’, by centring learners’ agency and multimodal productive literacies. observations of children in waldorf-inspired classrooms align with comber’s (2001) observation that ‘a great deal of [young children’s] play is about the negotiation of power and identity through language’ (comber 2001). when imaginative stories enter into children’s thinking, the children engage with them in their creative play, taking on the identities of different characters, and changing the stories through their interactions with them. often, through these processes of deep engagement and organic re-design, critical questions gradually emerge: ‘why should the step-mother be so mean?’ ‘what if the brother goes back home after the quarrel?’ the constant engagement of the imagination, including through creative play, drawing, painting and storytelling allows children to claim their agency ‘to think and imagine otherwise’ (comber 2001). indeed, the imaginative practices of these waldorf-inspired classrooms defy stagnation by inviting children’s ongoing creative interventions, contributing to experiences of ‘reality as a process, as transformation, rather than as a static entity’ (freire 2007:92). janks states that, ‘different ways of reading and writing the world in a range of modalities are a central resource for changing consciousness’ (janks 2010:24). waldorf-inspired approaches functionally expand notions of literacy to include diverse modes of communication and expression, including drawing, movement, painting, imaginative play, handcrafts, storytelling and other oral modalities, and the celebration of multilingualism. these multimodal pedagogies use imagination as a central resource, while creating space for children’s diverse ‘ways with words’ (heath 1983). putting productive practices at the core, these waldorf-inspired approaches expand upon critical literacies perspectives which are predominantly cognitive or analytical, noting that children’s critical faculties are not limited to cognition and are much greater than what they can articulate within traditional constructs of literacy, or even within the verbal discussions of texts which frequently factor prominently in critical pedagogies. these creative literacy practices allow ‘learners [to] assume from the beginning the role of creative subjects’ (freire 1972, as quoted in janks 2010:13). the positioning of learners as creative subjects follows comber (2001) in ‘assum[ing] young people’s complex productive and analytical capacities for engagement with what really matters’, and treating young people not ‘as infants, but with respect and expectation’ (comber 2001). conclusion while this study has explored possibilities for transformation in mainstream schools using government curriculum, the transformations in the four schools involved in this particular initiative are far from ‘complete’ or free from challenges. ongoing significant challenges to the integration of imaginative, waldorf-inspired approaches include parental objections and misunderstandings, rigid assessment models, large class sizes and the unfamiliar medium of instruction (english). moving forward, there is an urgent need for greater engagement of parents, and for continued movement towards more fluid classrooms, still greater emphasis on oral language development and increasing space for multilingualism. in addition, there is a critical need to imagine alternative assessment models which encompass holistic child development and pay heed to children’s multimodal communicative and expressive abilities, for the sake of understanding and supporting children’s development and not for the sake of categorising students or quantifying learning. significantly, the examinations children are subjected to in pre-primary schools are not mandated by the government, but are purchased by the schools in order to train young children on examination-writing skills and to satisfy pressures for ‘evidence’ of learning. while i believe schools have a moral imperative to assist children to succeed on the high-stakes national examinations (taken in class 8, which serve as a gate-keeper to secondary school opportunities), i reject the presumption that disciplining young children into the reproductive, imagination-less structures of testing from the age of 3 is an effective way of preparing for examination excellence 11 years later. the development of strong linguistic foundations, a keen love of learning and the agency of productive literacies will serve children much better in examination success than regimenting lifeless learning into early childhood education. that said, these 8-4-4 schools still have the responsibility to effectively teach the government ecd syllabus. a key argument of this study is that imagination, as ‘the most powerful and energetic of learning tools’ (egan 1986:2), is a key resource in all forms of learning, whether oriented towards the transmission of the knowledge and skills mandated by the government curriculum or working towards social constructivist and transformative ideals. while i would love to re-design the kenyan ecd syllabus, the focus of this study is to explore possibilities for working within the confines of the current syllabus to infuse imagination and transformative pedagogies into early childhood learning, while also ensuring our children have access to bright futures by excelling on high-stakes national examinations. while there are significant, and perhaps irreconcilable, tensions between the rigidity of government curriculum and the divergent thinking promoted through imagination and critical literacies, i believe that the directions pointed to in this study can support young people to access the dominant system through mastery of its codes, while simultaneously supporting them to develop the attitudes, agency and vision to subvert neoliberal government agendas and standardising policies, to contribute to constructing just, equitable, imaginative futures. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. references anderson, b., 2006, imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, verso, london. comber, b., 2001, ‘critical literacy: power and pleasure with language in the early years’, australian journal of language and literacy 24(3), 168–181. comber, b. & nichols, s., 2004, ‘getting the big picture: regulating knowledge in the early childhood literacy curriculum’, journal of early childhood literacy 4(1), 43–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1468798404041455 cummins, j. & early, m., 2011, identity texts: the collaborative creation of power in multilingual schools, trentham books, stoke on trent, uk. edmunds, f., 1975, rudolf steiner’s gift to education: the waldorf schools, 3rd rev. edn., rudolf steiner press, london. egan, k., 1986, teaching as storytelling, the university of chicago press, chicago. egan, k., 2005, an imaginative approach to teaching, jossey-boss, san francisco. freire, p., 1972, cultural action for freedom, penguin, harmondsworth. freire, p., 2007, pedagogy of the oppressed, 30th anniversary edition., continuum, new york. goral, m., 2009, transformational teaching: waldorf-inspired methods in the public schools, steiner books, great barrington. heath, s.b., 1983, ways with words, cambridge university press, cambridge. janks, h., 2010, literacy and power, routledge, new york. ministry of education, republic of kenya, 2008, early childhood development and education syllabus, kenya institute of education, nairobi. new london group, 1996, ‘a pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures’, harvard educational review 66(1), 60–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.17763/haer.66.1.17370n67v22j160u norton, b., 2010, ‘identity, literacy, and english language teaching’, tesl canada journal 28(1), 1–13. skourtou, e., kourtis-kazoullis, v. & cummins, j., 2006, ‘designing virtual learning environments for academic language development’, in j. weiss, j. nolan & v. nincic (eds.), international handbook of virtual learning environments, pp. 441–467, springer, dordrecht. van alphen, c., 1997a, the waldorf approach to writing and reading in grades 1 & 2, zukunftsstiftung entwicklungshilfe, bochum, germany. van alphen, p. & van alphen, c., 1997, child development: based on the insights of rudolf steiner and as used in waldorf/steiner schools, zukunftsstiftung entwicklungshilfe, bochum, germany. abstract introduction and problem statement conceptual framework curriculum policy and language teaching approaches research method and design data presentation and analysis conclusion acknowledgements references footnote about the author(s) caroline akinyeye faculty of education, university of the western cape, south africa peter plüddemann faculty of education, university of the western cape, south africa citation akinyeye, c. & plüddemann, p., 2016, ‘the story of a narrative: teaching and assessing english writing in a township school’, reading & writing 7(1), a88. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i1.88 original research the story of a narrative: teaching and assessing english writing in a township school caroline akinyeye, peter plüddemann received: 17 july 2015; accepted: 03 dec. 2015; published: 05 may 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract the new language curriculum in south africa recommends that extended writing be taught through a combination of text-based (or genre) and process approaches. this article reports on a study of the teaching and assessment of narrative writing in english as a first additional language (fal) at a time of curriculum change. the setting is a cape flats township school. in focusing on a story written by a grade 9 learner and assessed by her teacher, the study sought evidence of the use of text-based and process approaches. the theoretical frame is informed by genre theory, which draws on systemic functional linguistics and social constructivist approaches to language learning. a qualitative research paradigm was used. data obtained for this case study included the learner’s writing, interviews with the teacher, and classroom observation. the study finds very little evidence of a scaffolded approach to the teaching and assessment of writing, and explores the constraints on the realisation of the curriculum cycle in english fal. these relate to the teacher’s understanding of writing as well as to material conditions in township schools. introduction and problem statement in a globalising world increasingly networked through multiple modes of literacy, writing is becoming arguably more important than it ever was. for schooling systems, effective engagement with the contemporary world of literacy requires learners to be critical and knowledgeable interpreters as well as producers of a range of socially-useful texts. increasingly, learners’ chances of success in the knowledge economy, as well as their social standing, will depend on their repertoire of skills with literacy, understood as the ability to comprehend, reconstruct, and engage texts in a culturally accepted way (cope & kalantzis 1993). in general, what is regarded as culturally accepted is both context-specific and subject to change. for the schooling system in south africa, writing has long been a staple form of assessment in language subjects, particularly in english. two decades into the post-apartheid era, writing continues to present a major educational challenge across the system. following south africa’s transition to democratic rule in the mid-1990s, the new but somewhat alien outcomes-based education, instantiated by curriculum 2005, replaced the traditional aims-and-objectives approach. it was a predictable failure (jansen 1999) also in its subsequent guise as the revised national curriculum statement (rncs) (doe 2002). one of the most visible indicators of systemic underachievement in the post-apartheid period has been learner performance in key areas of the curriculum. overall, south african learners have fared poorly in high-profile international benchmark tests of literacy or language over the past decade. these have been accompanied by low scores on domestic systemic assessments at all levels. furthermore, persisting societal inequality has led to a ‘bimodal distribution of achievement’ between an affluent minority and an indigent majority, an inequality of outcomes that mirrors the ‘two economies’ in the country (fleisch 2008). these trends resulted in much public hand-wringing and forced government into a second review of the curriculum. beginning in 2009, this process resulted in the current curriculum and assessment policy statements (caps) (dbe 2011). for purposes of this article, the most pertinent language/literacy results are those at senior phase level. the annual national assessment (ana) results paint a bleak picture. the grade 9 test for first additional language (fal), in addition to measuring basic reading ability, requires learners to write several short pieces. in 2013 the average grade 9 score for fal (in practice english for most learners) was 33% (dbe 2013), indicating that most learners cannot read and write at acceptable levels in english. given the near-ubiquitous, albeit constrained ‘choice’ for english as a teaching medium across the system, problems of academic literacy are bound to extend to other areas of the curriculum. the ana results serve to confirm those from a large-scale western cape study of grade 8 literacy performance, which found that most learners across the various language backgrounds (afrikaans, isixhosa, english) could hardly read or write, with few prospects of reaching higher education (cited in heugh 2013). this parlous state of affairs echoes hendricks’ (2008) finding of the paucity of extended writing at grade 5 level, even in a well-resourced school. taken together, the results suggest that the teaching of writing in language/literacy is in crisis throughout the phases of compulsory schooling, and that teacher education in literacy teaching methods may be the single most effective intervention (wright 2012). amongst the reasons advanced for the systemic underachievement in literacy and language are the lack of fit between home and school languages, the lack of a culture of reading, and the effectiveness (or otherwise) of teaching methods and assessment practices – including the absence of genre pedagogy (kerfoot & van heerden 2015). it is this last factor that is the focus of the present article, which is based on akinyeye’s master’s thesis (2013). it is against the above background that the present study seeks to locate itself. in what follows we present a case study of narrative writing at a time of curriculum change in south africa. following a brief outline of the conceptual framework and the research design, the article discusses a piece of narrative writing produced by a grade 9 learner, and the way in which it was assessed by her teacher. the teacher’s own views of the writing process are presented in the form of interview extracts. we end by summing up the constraints on the realisation of a genre approach to writing, as identified in this study. conceptual framework genre pedagogy has its origins in hallidayan systemic functional linguistics (sfl), a theory of language in social context. according to sfl, any act of (oral, written, signed, or multimodal) communication has content, establishes relationships, and is organised in particular ways. that is, linguistic resources are deployed to realise ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings, termed metafunctions, which co-occur in any piece of discourse (text) but are amenable to separate analysis (martin & white 2005:7–9). sfl has been influential in shaping applied language studies over the past two decades, particularly in australia and north america, and has been the foundation of genre theory: genres have been referred to as social processes because members of a culture interact with each other to achieve them; as goal oriented because they have evolved to get things done; and as staged because it usually takes more than one step for participants to achieve their goals (martin, christie & rothery 1987:59). the above definition of genre as a staged, goal-oriented, social process indicates that human interaction is based on the use of distinct, recognisable, and accepted patterns of behaviour in a particular social setting for a specific purpose at a particular time. genre as the general function of text is thus located within a particular culture in relation to other texts circulating in the culture (eggins 2004:55). a key theoretical resource for genre theory is vygotsky’s (1978) psycho-socio-cultural theory of development, in terms of which learning is a process of social interaction mediated by a ‘more knowledgeable other’ such as an adult or a more capable peer. in this mediation model, learning as guided problem-solving occurs in the learner’s zone of proximal development (vygotsky 1978:86). one implication is that learners be enabled to draw on their own sociocultural and linguistic resources when writing, whilst being ‘scaffolded’ onto the formal registers of schooling genres. in terms of extended writing tasks, the learner would need to receive feedback at the formative or drafting stage of the writing process. in hyland’s (2007) explication, genre pedagogy is characterised by an approach that is explicit, systematic, needs-based, supportive, empowering, critical, and consciousness-raising. in other words, learning to write is a social activity that is needs-oriented, requires explicit outcomes and expectations, and involves learning to use language (2007:150–153). curriculum policy and language teaching approaches the present study was carried out at a time of curriculum change, when schools were caught between the old national curriculum statement and the new, with teachers already attending caps workshops. various continuities and discontinuities between the two language curricula have made for an uneasy transition. as pointed out by hendricks (2008), genre theory found its way into the first post-apartheid language curriculum alongside communicative language teaching and the process approach to writing. curriculum 2005 (1997) and the rncs (2002–2003), built around assessable learning outcomes, were marked by theoretical eclecticism (hendricks 2008:32). there was fuzziness around the meaning of ‘genre’ and how grammar could be integrated into factual writing. the learning outcome for languages (fal, grade 9) used a genre discourse, and required learners to ‘be able to write different kinds of factual and imaginative texts for a wide range of purposes’. yet its realisation as assessment standards emphasised writing as process, and was reminiscent of the earlier personal growth model (hendricks 2008:32). in their critique of the caps curriculum, dornbrack and dixon (2014) note the problems in the continued conflation of the process approach, with its cognitive-individualist bias, and the social-contextual approach of genre theory. in the process approach, learners are expected to follow different steps, namely planning, drafting, editing, proofreading, rewriting, and presentation of the text (dbe 2011). however, this occurs without sufficient attention being given to the social purpose of the text, or to the social-interactive nature of the drafting process. furthermore, the process approach with its emphasis on cognition and individual skill is somewhat problematic in a second-language context where learners are left to develop their writing skills with little input from the teacher or an awareness of the social context of the text. what l2 learners need is interaction around the drafting stage, including formative feedback from their teacher. by contrast, a genre approach to writing, although superficially similar, encodes these two aspects – note the focus on deciding on the purpose and audience of the text (our italics), brainstorming, consulting relevant sources, producing a draft, reading the draft and getting feedback from peers and the teacher, editing and proofreading, and the production of a final draft (doe n.d.). the mention of both approaches may be somewhat confusing to teachers, however, as few may be theoretically well versed enough to make meaning of them (cf. kerfoot & van heerden 2015). research method and design the research site, a secondary school in the township of delft, is situated some 30 km from central cape town. delft is a new working-class suburb (established 1989) with a non-racial profile and a population of 152 030 in 2011 (city of cape town 2013). witbooi high (a pseudonym) was founded in 1995. it is a no-fee (quintile 3) school with 1168 learners, of which 345 were in grade 9 in 2012. the majority of learners and teachers are afrikaans mother-tongue speakers, whilst a considerable number speak isixhosa. the school is a parallel-medium institution, with afrikaans and english serving as the two languages of learning and teaching for afrikaans-speakers and xhosa-speakers, respectively. english as a subject is offered at both home language (hl) and fal levels, with the majority of learners taking english fal. a qualitative research paradigm was used because the study involved an in-depth look at human subjects (henning, van rensburg & smit 2004) and human (inter)action in its natural setting. qualitative research methods such as participant interviews and classroom observations were used, as these correspond with the interpretive paradigm. the focus was on generating theoretically-informed understanding from patterns, and using fieldwork to discover conceptual complexity (cf. suter 2012:347). research participants were purposively selected, and comprised a bilingual (english or afrikaans) qualified teacher of english fal and her grade 9 learners. thus samples of learners’ written work were collected from two strong, two average, and two weak performers per grade 9 english fal class, as identified by the teacher. it was felt that a random selection would have run the risk of obtaining null data. the research site was visited twice per week over a 4-month period. data were collected through audio-taped records of classroom observations, unstructured and semi-structured interviews of participants, and relevant documents from the participants’ written texts. thematic analysis was used, and the interviews together with the lesson observations of the participants were transcribed and coded according to the emerging themes in relation to the research questions. data analysis was performed whilst data collection was still in progress. learners’ written texts were analysed in relation to curriculum requirements as well as insights deriving from theory. care was taken to conduct the research in an ethical manner commensurate with accepted ethical principles and procedures. data presentation and analysis the focus of the study is on essay writing, a key schooling genre and one that requires more lengthy elaboration than text types such as the invitation, the friendly letter, and diary entries. the narrative essay, in particular, lends itself to the analysis of how learners are able to express themselves in writing, and also to gauging the extent to which teachers follow the rncs guidelines in the teaching of writing. according to the rncs, narrative requires learners to ‘relate a story’ in response to a stimulus. the following assessment criteria are specified: introduction catches the interest of the reader an appropriate setting is created characterisation is convincing sequence of events is logical pace is maintained throughout the story events build to a climax the conclusion brings the story to a satisfying end/opens other possibilities (doe n.d.:56). although this list of seven criteria represents the conventional elements of narrative, it falls short of providing an adequate description of the genre in three respects. firstly, it does not identify the social purpose of narrative as entertaining and instructing through reflection on experience, in which individuals encounter problematic events that are resolved positively or negatively. secondly, it omits what genre theory would regard as the key stages of narrative, viz. the orientation, complication of events, evaluation, and resolution (cf. macken-horarik 2002:21–23). thirdly, no guidance is provided on the linguistic features of the genre, including how to achieve cohesion in paragraph structure. the remainder of this section presents and analyses one learner’s writing at witbooi high, and the manner in which it was assessed. zenobia’s story in the english fal grade 9 class of ms petersen (a pseudonym), the writing chosen for analysis was that of a particularly hard-working learner, whom we shall call zenobia, who had a complete set of written texts and who was always punctual in class. one piece was in response to the teacher’s instruction: ‘write a story entitled “my dream came true”’ – meaning, presumably, a narrative essay. zenobia duly followed the teacher’s instructions, using planning (a mind map) before writing a rough draft, followed by a final draft. it is worth pointing out here that at no stage did the teacher refer to any of the structural features of the narrative essay. instead, the focus was exclusively on process. we shall return to this issue, below. in what follows, each of the stages of zenobia’s essay are briefly presented and discussed. zenobia’s mind map (figure 1) was evidently intended to generate thoughts on her proposed topic, with the title at the centre and the main ideas (to be developed into paragraphs) branching out from there. yet the mind map is clearly under-developed in relation to the rncs’ seven features of narrative, and it is hardly surprising that zenobia’s essay ended up bearing little resemblance to it. one can infer that she had not been oriented in the purpose of a mind map, or in how to make the link between it and her first draft. tellingly, zenobia’s mind map shows no evidence of written feedback by the teacher. figure 1: zenobia’s mind map prior to writing the first draft. the text is about a topic that is familiar enough: pursuit of a personal ambition, involving obstacles that need to be overcome, resulting in character development. however, the first draft (figure 2) falls short of the four basic stages of narrative (orientation, complication, evaluation, resolution), and has only some of the structural features specified by the rncs. at 175 words it is also a little short of the required length of 180–200 words for a grade 9 narrative essay for fal. it was not marked or commented on in writing by her teacher. figure 2: transcript of zenobia’s final draft (with added numbering). it is therefore unsurprising that zenobia’s final draft (figure 2) differs little from the first. the only changes occur in two places in the second paragraph. in the first instance, ‘…would get me a musical lesson or person who will teach to sing…’ has been improved to ‘…would get me a singing teacher like a person who will teach me singing…’ (s5). the second change involves the elaboration of ‘… i got more better’ to ‘i got courage and i sang very well and he was pleased with me’. ‘as he was teaching me, i got better and better’ (s7–8). the second change provides additional information whilst improving cohesion without, however, adding much by way of ideational content. taken together the changes do little to lift what is essentially a personal recount to the level of the narrative that was required. the text lacks several crucial structural elements. firstly, it is divided into only two paragraphs, of which the first can be said to represent the orientation and the second the complication and resolution, when a minimum of three would have been better. the first paragraph begins with a clear opening statement (‘when i was young singing was the only thing i thought about’ – s1). however, the paragraph contains no reference to the title and no connection between the dream and singing, leaving the reader to infer the link. there is little information about setting (time, place), and no awareness of reader expectations. the characterisation is sparse. we learn about zenobia’s love of (gospel) singing and the pastor’s encouragement, but only superficially. in the second paragraph zenobia mentions her parents’ sacrifices, and we find out about her dream of becoming a singer. the complication is hinted at (‘i was struggling at first because it was not easy’ – s7) but not expatiated upon as she does not illustrate what was difficult about the task and what she did to emerge victorious. because there is no real complication the resolution is similarly unsatisfying (‘but as he was teaching me i got courage and i sang very well’ – s7). although the sequence of events is logical enough, specificity is lacking and could have been achieved by focusing on a particular incident or event. as a result, the story lacks tension and pace, and the putative climax (leading the worship) is a bit flat – as is the conclusion, in which zenobia shares her joy at having fulfilled her dream. at best, therefore, the narrative structure is only partly realised (table 1). table 1: theme-rheme analysis of zenobia’s final draft, with added clause numbering. the linguistic features of the composition are partially controlled. a clause analysis reveals that zenobia uses a fairly high number of subordinate clauses (15/38), resulting in a hypotaxis rate of 39.5%. of these, the majority (10) are adverb clauses, with 6 temporal clauses (‘as i/he…’, ‘when i…’), 2 causal and 2 conditional subordinates. there are also three noun clauses and two adjective (relative) clauses. zenobia’s use of subordination suggests that her writing has moved beyond beginner level to an intermediate level of proficiency – what raison, dewsbury and rivalland (1997), on their writing developmental continuum, would term conventional writing. yet this impression is offset by the frequent use of ‘speech on paper’ (cf. hendricks 2008), such as in the concatenation of clauses resulting in run-on sentences (cf. repeated conjunctive use of ‘and’), the conversational tone, and the limited vocabulary. the heavy use of temporal adverb clauses and the repeated use of ‘and’ index a linear, chronological rendition that is more characteristic of an (oral) recount than a narrative. in this respect her writing can be described as unsophisticated and basic. with one exception (‘teached’ for ‘taught’, s7), the use of verb forms is accurate. however, use of tenses is patchy. although zenobia largely manages to use the past tense in recounting past events, and the present tense when reflecting on her current feelings (beginning with ‘now i am a worship leading singer’ – s9), her writing is less secure in other places. thus in ‘i loved singing so much when i was in church, even if i am sad if i sing everything turns out perfect’ (s2), the use of tense is erratic, shifting from past tense (‘loved’, ‘was’) to conjunctive/present (‘if i am sad’). this is compounded by one of several syntax errors. the paucity of punctuation results in sentences which are confusing, necessitating a rereading (s2, s3); others have several ideas lumped together that should have been subdivided (s4, s5, s7, s10). two sentences (s3, s9) begin with ‘and’, suggesting unfamiliarity with a conventional prohibition in english composition. the probable influence of the hl (afrikaans) is suggested at syntactical level (i stand there in front… s10) as well as at lexical level, in the repetition of better in better and better (s8). although zenobia’s vocabulary is no more than adequate, her spelling is generally good: the two spelling errors (‘familliar’, ‘my self’) do not disrupt the flow or impede understanding. overall, therefore, zenobia’s essay reveals some promise but also several shortcomings in structure as well as at the level of linguistic features. this raises questions about the type and timing of feedback she received. the impression of a writer caught between early writing and conventional writing is confirmed by an analysis of mode (realised through the textual metafunction) and tenor (interpersonal metafunction) (figure 3). a theme-rheme analysis reveals a complete absence of interpersonal themes; that is, it signals the writer’s lack of awareness of the reader’s expectation of emotional engagement in what is after all a highly personal topic. of the 38 topical themes, by far the largest number (17) consist of the first person ‘i’, highlighting the subjective experience of zenobia the writer and her personal ‘voice’. and yet the tenor of the text is far from monoglot. a considerable number of topical themes introduce ‘significant others’ in zenobia’s life: her parents (mentioned four times), her singing teacher (five), her pastor (two) and her church mates (two). a closer look at the distribution of topical themes shows that the teller’s ‘i’ is dominant in the first and last thirds of the story, whereas the voices of these significant others dominate the middle third of the text. their views emerge in several of the respective rhemes, and are interwoven with zenobia’s own voice; that is, the text uses a noticeable amount of projection, or reported speech. given the general lack of sophistication in the writing, this structural arrangement produces an overtly heteroglot text, i.e. one which foregrounds sources of attitude in interlocutors other than the writer. figure 3: zenobia’s final draft, marked. thus we read about her pastor’s enjoyment of her singing (clause 9), her parents’ supportiveness of her singing (17–22), her teacher’s pleasure at the improvement in her singing (30), and her fellow churchmates’ appraisal of her singing (36–37). this last instance of heteroglossia is particularly interesting for its use of projection: ‘…and my fellow churchmates tell me that they enjoy my singing’. here the projecting clause ‘tell me’ introduces the projected (noun) clause ‘that they enjoy my singing’. such heteroglossia indicates a degree of emotional maturity in zenobia the person, who is aware of her socially networked existence. unfortunately, this maturity is not fully realised in her writing – mainly, we would argue, as a result of a lack of feedback. assessing zenobia’s essay it is worth recalling that the curriculum explicitly links feedback to formative assessment, or ‘assessment for learning’, in which learners are given ‘thought-provoking questions to stimulate learner thinking and discussion’ (doe n.d.:2). in keeping with this developmental approach to writing, the teacher is to give constructive feedback to enable the learner to grow (doe 2002:114). a key assessment standard for writing in the languages learning area (grades 7–9) is that the learner ‘uses feedback to revise, edit, and rewrite’ (doe 2002:105). accordingly, the characteristics of continuous assessment are ‘appropriate questioning, focusing the teacher’s oral and written comments on what was intended to be achieved by an assessment activity, and encouragement to a learner’ (doe 2002:115). the document adds that ‘feedback is more effective when combined with comments. there is more likely to be an improvement in achievement when learners are given written feedback rather than marks only’ (doe 2002:118). in light of the above, what type of feedback did zenobia receive on her draft, and at what stage did she receive it? the answer, unfortunately, is too little, too late. the only written comments received were on the final draft, and thus had a summative rather than a formative function. in terms of the process approach to writing, the comments and suggestions should have come earlier, at the drafting stage, as there is relatively little formative value in providing comments to the learner after the fact. an analysis of the teacher’s markings on zenobia’s final product (figure 3) reveals the following: p (punctuation): eight instances identified – mostly missing commas and full stops sp (spelling): three instances, of which one (‘teached’ for ‘taught’) is more a verb form error than a spelling mistake g (grammar): one instance, pointing to an incomplete clause (‘i stand there in front’) l: five instances. presumably a catch-all ‘language’ category that subsumes inappropriate use of vocabulary/word form (‘a singing teacher’), incorrect tense or aspect (‘who will teach me singing’), the wrong register or inappropriate expression (‘they got me one’; ‘i got better and better’), and inappropriate use of a conjunction (‘and’) to start a sentence. thus the in-text corrections were largely limited to punctuation and grammar. as such they constitute inadequate feedback with regard to structure, cohesion, and context. in terms of the genre approach (or what the caps curriculum refers to as a text-based approach), written comments on the draft should have gone beyond punctuation (syntax) and spelling to include other assessment criteria such as those identified on the departmental assessment rubric that was attached to the learner’s marked final essay. these include register, tone, audience awareness and purpose; originality; paragraphing and development of topic; vocabulary; planning and coherence; editing; and proofreading. although the teacher has, in our view, given an appropriate mark of 17/30 to zenobia’s final product, the mark is more a reflection on the process that was (not) followed than on zenobia’s ability as a writer. had zenobia received feedback at the planning (mind map) and drafting stages, it could well have become formative and she would have learnt more about writing narratives. it is troubling as well as ironic that ms petersen’s avowed focus on writing as process, observed at the start of the lesson, was not followed through. it is evident, therefore, that zenobia was not given enough guidance on how to write a narrative. in particular, she was denied formative comments and suggestions on her mind map and, crucially, on her first draft – something that serves to disadvantage all but the best-performing learners. several of the limitations of structure and of linguistic feature could otherwise have been overcome. as we have seen, the assessment standards envisage that learners use feedback to revise and rewrite their text for the final draft (murray 2009); in zenobia’s case this was not adhered to. it is troubling that the restricted nature of the feedback, and the belated stage at which it was provided, combine to limit opportunities for the learner to develop her critical thinking, structure her ideas, and thus improve her writing. constraints on feedback two main reasons for the lack of feedback when assessing writing suggest themselves. the first has to do with an unwinnable numbers game involving teacher–pupil (learner) ratios in relation to the quantity of assessment tasks. when asked about class size in relation to learner performance, ms petersen states matter-of-factly: ‘’because i have such a lot of learners, i have about 60 in each class, so for me to take in the rough draft and mark it, it is going to be hard for me to mark’. ms petersen’s point is simply that excessively large classes undermine the possibility of providing formative feedback. the absence of essential scaffolding at the drafting stage renders the process approach to writing inoperable. what is implied, rather than stated explicitly is that the number of assessment tasks is unrealistic under conditions of overcrowding1. the teacher has to rush through her marking to keep pace with the curriculum demands. a second constraint, we would argue, is the teacher’s own (partial) understanding of approaches to writing outlined in the curriculum. this is hardly surprising, given that the policy is incomplete, patchy, with insufficient explanation of the social purpose, organisational structure, and linguistic features of the different genres (cf. hendricks 2008). small wonder, therefore, that ms petersen tends to emphasise the time-honoured but limited concepts of introduction, body, and conclusion: ‘okay before you give them a whole lot of writing let them first practice and do introduction and conclusion before they start on the body before they start to do the main part of the essay and obviously then you are done with the text’. these views suggest that the genre-based approach is unfamiliar. ms petersen’s tried-and-tested approach to writing was borne out by lesson observations. at no stage was the schematic structure of narrative explicitly taught, nor was the modelling stage of the curriculum cycle used (cf. derewianka 1990). for example, in her teaching of ‘story’ the terms orientation, complication, evaluation, and resolution were not used, nor was the concept of narrative formally introduced. it is our contention that the overt teaching of the schematic structures of the different genres and their social purpose, through the metalanguage, is a precondition for meaningful writing (see also kerfoot & van heerden 2015). there is thus a glaring disparity between the curriculum requirements with regard to process and genre (or what are termed text-based) approaches to writing, on the one hand, and the teacher’s understanding of these and her classroom practice, on the other. in view of the problems involved in the interpretation and implementation of the curriculum, as outlined above, teachers cannot be held solely responsible for the poor performance of their learners in english additional-language writing. conclusion in this article we have provided evidence of the potential of as well as the constraints on language teaching at a time of curriculum change, with particular reference to the teaching and assessment of narrative writing at grade 9 level. as cross, mungadi and rouhani (2002) have pointed out, one of the flaws of the curriculum change in the post-apartheid era was its indifference over the issue of overcrowded learning spaces, which created limited possibilities for learning in the classroom. this failure of educational provision undoubtedly contributes to the mediocrity of learners’ writing. the required pace of curriculum coverage, combined with virtually unmanageable learner–teacher ratios in some schools constrain teachers from giving sufficient individual attention to struggling learners. it is easy to see ms petersen’s point that learner performance is negatively affected by the lack of individualised attention the teacher is able to provide during writing lessons. however, a better-trained teacher may well have been able to overcome some of these constraints. it is our contention that as a result of having only a superficial understanding of the theories that underpin the teaching of writing, the teacher in this study is unable to realise the required combination of genre-based and process approaches to writing advocated in the language curriculum. this has self-evident implications for in-service as well as pre-service teacher development, for which government and the universities have respective responsibility. in this article we have argued that several converging factors are responsible for zenobia’s under-developed essay. the pivotal ones appear to be a less-than-coherent language curriculum and inadequately trained teachers, exacerbated by unmanageable learner–teacher ratios and the consequent lack of time available for individualised attention during the writing process. until all three issues are addressed, the undoubted potential of writers such as zenobia and the generation she represents is unlikely to be realised. acknowledgements competing interests the authors confirm that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions this article is based on the completed m.ed thesis of c.a. (university of the western cape) supervised by p.p. 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