Nicholas Spaull|Elizabeth J. Pretorius|Nompumelelo Mohohlwane
Investigating the comprehension iceberg: Developing empirical benchmarks for early-grade reading in agglutinating African languages
Stellenbosch University|University of South Africa
background reading development agglutinating african languages relatively underresearched area numerous studies highlight low comprehension levels among learners reading african languages south africa little done probe beneath comprehension iceberg terms decoding skillsaim tentative step towards benchmarking african languages analyse subcomponents reading across three languages northern sotho xitsonga isizulu better understand nature alphabetic knowledge word reading fluency languages relate one another accuracy speed relate comprehensionsetting data obtained 785 grade 3 learners across three african languages three provinces south africamethods early grade reading assessment egra framework adapted written features three languages assess lettersounds singleword reading nonword reading oral reading fluency orf oral comprehensionresults present results fluency accuracy comprehension interrelationships morphologically rich languages differences emerged conjunctive disjunctive orthographies strong relations occurred across languages lettersound knowledge word reading word reading oral reading fluency orf reading comprehension results suggest minimum thresholds accuracy orf language virtually impossible read meaningconclusion strong need languagespecific norms benchmarks african languages preliminary minimum decoding thresholds comprehension found three languages serve move direction