1. Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, Unisa 5 July 2019
HOW DOES THE EARLY READING TRAJECTORY IN NGUNI LANGUAGES DIFFER WHEN WE INTERVENE OR DON’T?
Asked to discuss some of the factors driving poor reading outcomes, and how we can change them.
Mixed metaphors
Lilli Pretorius
Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, Unisa
5 July 2019

2. TRAJECTORY Latin trans ‘across’ + jacere ‘throw’ (first used in English in the late 17th century)
The path followed by a projectile flying or an object moving under the action of given forces The reading development path of learners prompted by the action of (mainly) classroom forces

3. They've put all their eggs in one basket and it's misfired Paul Merson, Sky football pundit, of West Ham's purchase of Andy Carroll.
When you open that Pandora's box, you will find it full of Trojan horses Ernest Bevin, Labour Foreign Secretary, on the idea of a Council of Europe, 1948
We're like the canary down the mine. We're the first people who pick up what's going on out there and what we're seeing at the moment is a boiling pot whose lid is coming off Markos Chrysostomou, Haringey Citizens Advice Bureau, on the effects of cuts, 19 November 2012.
Out of the hat on Monday night the Home Secretary produced the rabbit, the temporary provisions Bill, as her fig leaf to cover her major U-turn Simon Hughes, Lib Dem MP, 2008.
Karin Sullivan Mixed metaphors: their use and abuse. Bloomsbury

4. GETTING IT RIGHT FROM THE START
What does reading success look like?
By the end of Grade 3 children are expected to be able to read fluently, with meaning and enjoyment.
We need to prevent reading problems rather than try to catch up or fix up problems afterwards.
A faltering initial reading trajectory creates cracks in literacy development which “in time become gaps, and finally...chasms in learning” (Johnson, 2012).
We can only identify cracks and gaps if we know what reading success looks like
cracks gaps chasms
If we want to prevent reading problems or pick them up and remediate them early, we need to have a good understanding of what we’re dealing with. What IS reading? We need a theoretical framework

5. 2016 PIRLS LITERACY BENCHMARKS: SA AND INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE
Benchmark descriptors (according to question types)
International mean
SA mean
Learners not able to reach the lowest benchmark (i.e. could not read for meaning) 4%
78%
Learners could read for meaning at some level
96%
22%
Focusing on and retrieving explicitly stated information
14%
15%
2. Drawing straightforward conclusions
35% 6%
3. Understanding and integrating ideas and information
37% 2%
4. Examining and evaluating content, language and textual elements
10%
0.2%
No common understanding
Window of opportunity been missed? Sense of urgency?
Tells us they cannot understand. Doesn’t tell us why, where the problems lie

6. MAIN FEATURES OF THE ZENLIT PROJECT Three years: 2015 - 2017
A pilot study in three provinces – KZN rural, EC urban, WC urban
11 x 2-day workshops, teacher materials (guides and handouts), book cases and book resources, laminating machines
No lesson plans – materials to build content K and pedagogic content K
Intensive coaching coach per 4 schools
Intensive work with coaches (New Leaders Foundation)
HOD training in 2nd and 3rd year (New Leaders Foundation)
68% = 100% attendance; 28% = 92% attendance HOD training 5/6 = 100% (100% in WC)
PASSING THE BATON
Worked with the whole FP for three years

7. CORE COMPONENTS of ZENLIT
Reading corner alphabet charts
Theme table Posters relating to reading/literacy
Word walls Story gloves, etc
Bilingual labels
PRINT-RICH CLASSROOM
Planning and organisation
Creating an environment conducive to learning
Self-regulation, instilling a growth mindset
PLANNING/
CLASSROOM ROUTINES
Decoding (phonemic awareness, phonics, ORF)
Comprehension (strategies, text structure, discussion, comprehension)
Response/Motivation (enjoyment, engagement)
READING
Shared reading Read alouds
Group guided reading
Paired reading Independent reading
READING ACTIVITIES
Raising awareness Being systematic and organised
Providing incidental and explicit word experiences
Teaching vocab strategies
VOCABULARY
ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION

8. CAPS LITERACY FRAMEWORK
ENABLING FACTORS THAT SUPORT LITERACY
PRINT-RICH CLASSROOMS
ROUTINES PLANNING
MOTIVATION
LEARNER SELF-REGULATION
CLASSROOM LITERACY PRACTICES
SHARED READING
GROUP GUIDED READING
PAIRED READING
INDEPENDENT READING
GROUP WORK
WRITING
EXPLICIT PHONICS
READ ALOUD
Things teachers can control
Things teachers can control
LISTENING & SPEAKING
Vocabulary
Language
Thinking skills

9. COMPONENTS OF READING LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY COGNITIVE PROCESSES
Working memory
Phonological processing
EXECUTIVE CONTROL
Cognitive self-control
Cognitive flexibility
COMPREHENSION
READER RESPONSE
DECODING
LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY
Listening comprehension
Vocabulary
Grammar (morphology/
syntax)

10. WHAT DO WE MEAN BY SKILLED READING?
Reading as a construct changes over time
Reading does not represent the same cognitive processes at different points in time - what happens in the brain of a skilled Grade 3 reader is not the same as what happens in the brain of a skilled Grade 1 reader
Different processes come into play at different stages of development and contribute differentially to performance as proficiency increases
Ph Awareness Word reading Context Fluency Comprehension M Awareness
Letter-sounds (ORF) literal inferential
The importance of some processes as drivers of reading development diminish as proficiency increases and are replaced by qualitatively different processes
accuracy speed automaticity metacognition

11. COMPONENTS OF DECODING
PHONOLOGICAL & PHONEMIC
AWARENESS
LETTER-SOUND KNOWLEDGE/
PHONICS
WORD RECOGNITION/
WORD WORK
ORAL READING FLUENCY
(ORF)
DECODING VOCABULARY & COMPREHENSION
Constrained skills Unconstrained skills
They enable reading Lifelong development (Paris 2005)
Necessary but not sufficient
Early mastery critical
(mid Grade 2)

12. Patterns of Literacy among US students (Reardon, Valentino & Shores 2012)

13. COMPREHENSION CRITERIA (McCormick 1995:100)
INDEPENDENT LEVEL
98% decoding accuracy
95% level of comprehension
Highly skilled readers who can effectively learn from texts appropriate for that specific maturational level.
INSTRUCTIONAL LEVEL
95% decoding accuracy
75% comprehension
Readers who do not have major reading problems but who benefit from reading instruction at their maturational level.
BORDERLINE LEVEL
90-94% accuracy in decoding
55-74% accuracy in comprehension
These readers need to be given additional reading exposure and practice.
FRUSTRATION LEVEL
less than 90% decoding accuracy and about 50% or less comprehension
Readers who have major reading problems and who read well below their maturational level. They need intensive reading programmes to increase their reading level.

14. ORTHOGRAPHIC FEATURES OF AFRICAN LANGUAGES
SOUTHERN BANTU LANGUAGE FAMILY IN SOUTH AFRICA
NGUNI LANGUAGES
(Conjunctive orthography)
isiZulu
isiXhosa
Siswati
isiNdebele
SOTHO LANGUAGES
(Disjunctive orthography)
Northern Sotho/Sepedi
Southern Sotho/Sesotho
Setswana
Minority languages
Tshivenda
Xitsonga
Techniques that measure electrical and magnetic signals during neural activity (e.g. MEG) can measure the speed of brain activity during reading
Techniques that measure blood flow (e.g. PET scans or fMRI) are able to localize activity in the brain

15. LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY ENGLISH VS AFRICAN LANGUAGES
Analytic
Nguni languages
Agglutinating
44 phonemes
Complex vowels (about 22)
Simple consonant system (17, about 7 digraphs)
Many high frequency short single syllable words
Average word length = 4.1 letters
Lots of rhyming words (very productive)
Opaque orthography (not transparent)
Stress-timed language
Morphology not very complex – some prefixes and suffixes
About phonemes (Zulu)
Simple vowels (5-7)
Complex consonant system (55: over 30 digraphs, 6 trigraphs)
Very few short words in Nguni; multisyllabic words the norm
Average word length = 8 letters (ranges from 8-12 in Nguni languages)
Very little rhyming (not productive)
Transparent orthography
Syllable timed language
Very rich and complex morphology (many prefixes, infixes, suffixes)
Teachers need to be aware of some of the main differences between EFAL and African HL as these differences have an impact on the way we teach phonics in these languages

16. PERCEPTUAL LEARNING OF THE CODE
Initially beginners cannot easily tell letters apart
Practice is necessary for habituation
Larger numbers of letters take longer to tell apart and automatize
Notion of a word is different
Ndiyanithanda I love you all
Ndiyayithanda I love it (e.g. a dog)
Ndiyawathanda I love them (e.g. horses)
Dense print is read more slowly
Ndiyahamba ngomso. Ndilungiselela uhambo. Kufuneka ndilungiselele nosana. Nalo luyahamba. Ndinetikiti lohambo.
(I’m going tomorrow. I’m preparing for the journey. I must also prepare the baby. She too is going. I have a ticket for the journey.) 
When we start to look at a set of stimuli we cannot distinguish it well from each other. Then the critical space matters. But after a few days of practice we get habituated.
The children who grow up around print and TV may get habituated early, even if they do not learn to read.
The problem is that once we get used to small sizes we cannot really perceive that others may not be used to them
25/27 words in English – 11 in Xhosa
ORF

17. VISUAL SIMILARITY/DISSIMILARITY
It is easier to develop automaticity in reading when orthographies have visually dissimilar words - common amongst English words.
In contrast, the complex morphology of agglutinating languages results in many letter sequences with visually similar CV patterns. Over 30 visually similar syllable sequences in Zulu (Land 2016)
Andiyayithandi I don’t love it
Andizokuthanda I will not love you anymore
Ndizakuthanda I will love you
Ndisezakuthanda I will still love you
Ndisezanithanda I will still love you all
This requires attention to detail and hence more cognitive work while reading;
there is loss of meaning if any of the bits within the linguistic unit are decoded inaccurately.
Similar in other agglutinating languages – Finnish and Turkish

18. WHAT IS AUTOMATICITY IN LEARNING?
In early stages of learning a skill (e.g. decoding), new neural connections are made and conscious attention mechanisms consume working memory
Automaticity enables attention to be shifted elsewhere, e.g. comprehension
Schreiner (2003) suggests that automaticity in cognitive function frees up 90% of working memory for higher-order skills.
Automaticity develops through practice

19. Building impetus for comprehension: Creating a lift off

20. CHILDREN WHO CANNOT READ AT ALL (ZERO SCORES IN FOUNDATIONAL LITERACY)
Grade 1
Grade 2
Grade 3
Letter-sounds
Nigeria %
Ghana %
Setswana %
Zulu (rural) 56%
Setswana 8%
Xhosa 9% (urban)
Zulu 18% (rural)
Xhosa 12% (EC)
Xhosa digraphs 52%
Word reading
Ghana %
Zulu/Swati 45%
Setswana %
Zulu (rural) 80%
36% Setswana
Xhosa 42%
Zulu 32%
Swahili, Kenya %
Home Lang, Kenya %
Home Lang, Uganda 38%
Xhosa %
Zulu %
Composite literacy score
52% Zambia (Whole L)
39% Zambia (phonics)

21. THE EGRA JOURNEY in ZENLIT1.
EGRA from EC 2.
Pilot EGRA 2015 & CEA report 3.
Tweaked EGRA 2016 (& a little in 2017) 4.
What can we learn from it?

22. ORAL READING COMPREHENSION
EGRA COMPONENTS
Included digraphs and trigraphs
LETTER SOUNDS
Adapted a PA test for the Nguni languages (syllable awareness, phoneme awareness, phoneme deletion – 13 items)
PHONEMIC AWARENESS
Included longer words – 3-, 4- and 5-syllable words
WORD READING
Used grade appropriate text for each grade (longer and more difficult with each grade)
ORAL READING FLUENCY
5-8 questions, depending on grade
at least one inferential question
ORAL READING COMPREHENSION
ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION

23. DEMOGRAPHICS 2017 (n=990 Zulu/Xhosa)
Grade 1
Grade 2
Grade 3
Mean Age
6.7
(5 – 9)
7.8
(6 – 10)
8.8
(6 - 11)
Boys
Girls
49%
51%
50%
55%
45%
KZN
(n) EC WC
Control
Intervention
180
360
Zulu
270
Xhosa 450
301
Eng

24. ASSESSMENT RESULTS NOT JUST SCORES: NORMAL GROWTH, BACKSLIDING AND PLATEAU EFFECTS

25. SHARING ZENLIT 2016 ASSESSMENT RESULTS
Teachers and HODS sat at their school tables
How well are your learners reading in Zulu compared to the Zenlit mean results in KZN?
How can we use these results to help us pass the baton and set appropriate high standards (benchmarks)?
HODS to set up a reading and assessment plan for the year and report back (after tea)
Prov X School Y
Grade 1
Grade 2
Grade 3
Prov
School
Phonemic awareness %
31.7
28.2
50.7
40.5
59.5
37.4
Letter sounds score
Min – max
18.9
0- 70
16.3
0-31
36.1
0-96
23.5
0-46
35.7
0-93
21.9
0-55
Word reading score
12.7
10.8
25.9
20.8
55.2
42.2
ORF score
11.3
0-36
7.8
0-13
30.8
0-58
22.9
0-54
0-79
21.4
Oral Reading comprehension %
12.6 8
51.3
13.3

26. SHARING ZENLIT 2016 ASSESSMENT RESULTS
What kind of baton is being passed from grade to grade in each component?
Is there a plateau/levelling off effect?
If so, in which component and between which grades?
Is there any backsliding?
If so, in which component and grade?
No Yes 2
For each grade and component, how does your school perform compared to the KZN average/mean score? Are you above (+) or below (-)? 3a
Which components need the most attention in Grade 1? 3b
Which components need the most attention in Grade 2? 3c
Which components need the most attention in Grade 3?
Teachers and HODS sat at their school tables Carefully examine the literacy results from your school and then answer the following questions.

27. RURAL/URBAN CONTROLS AND INTERVENTIONS (Nguni languages – Zulu and Xhosa)
LS = Letter sound knowledge (letters correct per minute)
ORF = Oral reading fluency (words correct per minute)
Rural Intervention (Int) - KZN Zulu schools Urban intervention = PE Xhosa schools

28. CORRELATIONS between EGRA components NGUNI (Zulu/Xhosa) n = 988 correlations** significant at the 0.01 level
Phonemic awareness
Word Reading
ORF
Comprehension
Letter sounds
.65**
.75**
.67**
.58**
Phonemic
Awareness
.62**
.55**
.51**
.89**
.69**
.80**

29. MULTIPLE REGRESSION: What predicts WORD READING in NGUNI languages(Zulu/Xhosa) n = 988 Adjusted R square = 0.59
Beta
Standard error 𝜷 p
Letter sounds
.37
.017
.60
.000
Phonemic
Awareness
.84
.100
.22

30. MULTIPLE REGRESSION: What predicts READING COMPREHENSION in Nguni languages(Zulu/Xhosa) n = 988 Adjusted R square = 0.66
Beta
Standard error 𝜷 p
Letter sounds
.006
.002
.08
.004
Phonemic
Awareness
.046
.01
.10
.000
Word reading
-.028
-.22
ORF
.089
.89

31. Who’s lifting off where in Grades 1 & 2?

32. Who’s gaining fluency and comprehension?

33. Who’s lifting off where in Grade 3?

34. WHAT DOES READING SUCCESS LOOK LIKE in the NGUNI LANGUAGES?
Knowing what reading success looks can like help drive more effective classroom practices
Interventions should help build a common understanding of what reading success looks like
Schools (Principals and SMT) and teachers need a good understanding of what reading success looks like
Reading is a complex phenomenon, so success means different things at different stages of reading development
Early – and high – mastery of letter sounds is important – an easy win
But it must be coupled with text work – using letter-sounds to read words

35. SOME TAKEAWAYS
It’s important to adapt the EGRA tool to the orthographic features of the target languages
The adapted EGRA results discriminated between learners’ reading abilities in control and intervention schools
The KZN and EC results provide preliminary data for differences in reading development between rural and urban schools
The results suggest that in transparent agglutinating languages, letter sound knowledge is important for word reading
The results indicate that in transparent agglutinating languages, ORF is a strong predictor of reading comprehension. This has been confirmed by other studies in SA (Spaull, Pretorius & Mohohlwane 2018)
Given the relatively small sample sizes, these results could serve as a starting part for further research into benchmarks for letter-sound knowledge and ORF

36. THANK YOU Human history becomes more and more a race between
education and catastrophe
HG Wells