Laying foundations for academic language competence: the effects of storybook reading on Zulu language, literacy and discourse development

Abstract

Success at school depends heavily on language and literacy skills. Research indicates that pre-school children whose parents read storybooks to them have a linguistic and literacy head start over other children when they start school. In contrast, learners who come to school with few literacy skills are at a disadvantage. A Family Literacy project was started in 2000 in disadvantaged areas of rural KwaZulu-Natal. One component of the programme promotes storybook reading in Zulu to pre-school children in Grade R. Various aspects of the children's language and emergent literacy skills were assessed longitudinally. Children in Grade 1 who were not in the project were also assessed, and their performance compared to those of the children in Grade R. The results showed that, on the whole, the Grade R children who were in the Family Literacy Project scored better on the literacy tests and showed stronger language and discourse development than the Grade 1 learners, even though the pre-schoolers were on average a year younger than the Grade 1 learners. These findings suggest that reading storybooks to pre-school children has beneficial effects on their language, literacy and discourse development.

Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2005, 23(1): 91–109