Abstract
M.Ed. (Educational Psychology)
Reading is an integral part of learning and knowing throughout one’s life. While observing and assessing learners’ reading at the school where I work, it became evident that there is definitely a major shortage as to how much and what learner’s understand of what is read. In the social media, it is prominent that learners from grade 4 are struggling in literacy and mathematics. Looking at various intervention programmes as implemented by the department of Education, it is shocking to discover that learners are taught to read, but only minority of these learners can do so with comprehension.
The purpose of this inquiry was to observe, analyse and then attempt to understand how learners read and how the instruction pedagogy of reading comprehension contribute to their own and other’s understanding and knowing. This study considered how the integration of talk and discussion may lead to better reading comprehension and also realizing other benefits that discourse may have on the individual and his or her reading and learning. It is essential that a learner’s comprehension and language is optimally developed to enable them to become literate (Beck & McKeown, 2001). Talking about reading and text enables the reader to actively construct meanings within text, to share knowledge and ideas and to promote interactions within the learning environment that is beneficial to everybody involved.
This study was an ethnomethodological design and classroom interaction data was analysed using Conversational Analysis. Different levels of analysis was used to scrutinize data to describe and explain the learning and comprehension that took place. The participants utterances guided the researcher to determine what, how and to what extend knowing and understanding happened during the interactions, relevant to the reading lesson presented.
This study indicated that reading conversations are extremely valuable for reading comprehension. Talking guides thinking, knowing and learning. High levels of thinking and active use of knowledge were constantly displayed within the interactions between the learners. The interactional learning as displayed in this study revealed how learners interpreted and understood the meanings within the text and how shared ideas and conversing about words and sentences could facilitate the knowing of the text. The findings of this study implies that interactional learning of reading comprehension suggest vast potential for credible learning in educational settings. Education may be transformed to an active...