A Linguistic Research Programme for Reading in African Languages to underpin CAPS

Abstract

Although ANAs show language conditioned problems in reading comprehension and decoding ability, most South African research focuses disproportionately on (a) English and Afrikaans and (b) macro approaches to literacy rather than formal and psycholinguistic analyses of reading. Obviously African languages are structurally and typologically different to English and Afrikaans; reading strategies required for the mechanics of reading are necessarily different and should be supported by language-specific pedagogies. We argue for research programmes that situate reading pedagogy within the language-specific spaces defined by Linguistic approaches to understanding (a) orthography, (b) cognitive reading skills and models and (c) indigenous, language-specific norms and resources.

Keywords: psycholinguistics, linguistics, orthography, morphological awareness, phonological awareness, curriculum development