Abstract
The recent Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) results have shown that South African learners, in general, are not able to read proficiently by the age of ten. This leaves foundation phase teachers with the difficult and challenging task of teaching children how to read early in the phase. This challenge is further exacerbated by the fact that learners are not always taught in their home language, but in a language that very often is their second or third language. The heavy task of teaching children how to read is left to the Grade 1 teachers, who carry that responsibility.
The motivation for this study was the researcher’s concern not only about the reading levels of South African children, but also a need to understand whether it is possible for teachers of reading to simultaneously teach Grade 1 learners how to read in English in a dual medium class, while also teaching them to read in their home languages of either isiZulu or Sesotho.
The literature on the science of reading and neuroimaging research forms the theoretical background for this thesis and sets out from the theoretical framework of Tunmer and Hoover’s (2019) Cognitive Components of Learning to Read, to show how learning to decode text in an alphabetic language like English requires not only a deep understanding of the science of reading but an expert understanding of how the phonological system of the English language functions.
In the case study design of this thesis, the researcher used document analysis, classroom observations, video recordings and semi-structured interviews to investigate the practices of two English reading teachers in Grade 1 in a dual-language school. In the findings that emanated from the analysis of the data, it was evident that learning to read concurrently in two different languages, using two different phonological systems, is extremely difficult: Teachers would require a much deeper theoretical understanding of the science of reading to assist them in overcoming this challenge. The findings of the study highlight the importance of understanding the phonemic structures of the learners' home language and English and their graphemic representations in individual letters or in letter strings...