Reading gets a makeover to marvel at
Institute develops effective course
WITH Youth Day approaching, literacy experts hope to make a breakthrough in what has become a crisis for young children learning to read across the country.
In 2016, South Africa placed last out of 50 countries assessed in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. The study found that eight out of 10 Grade 4 learners struggle to understand what they are reading.
The Molteno Institute for Language and Literacy, a nonprofit organisation which aims to improve worldwide literacy by providing research and teaching strategies to South Africa, has responded to what it considers a “national emergency” in reading comprehension by developing a mother-tongue literacy course aimed at helping children to read for meaning.
“If children can’t read, they can’t learn, so are more likely to be trapped in the scourge of poverty, hopelessness and unemployment. Being able to read enables children to live a better future,” the institute said in a release.
The programme, called Breakthrough to Literacy (BTL), helps grades 1 to 3 learners to read with comprehension and develop writing and listening skills.
Masennya Dikotla, the chief executive of the Molteno Institute for Language and Literacy, said that unlike other literacy courses, BTL works in children’s mother tongue and combines various elements of teaching to ensure it is relevant to the life and language experiences of African children.
The course is offered in 13 languages, including many of South Africa’s official languages, and allows a child to bring aural and oral language skills learnt at home into the classroom.
“BTL is a very effective literacy methodology that responds to curriculum and educational contexts. It ensures that it achieves results with the children who learn to read and write freely within the first year of schooling and with their teachers, who develop knowledge and skills in early literacy pedagogy (the method and practice of teaching) and classroom management,” Dikotla said.
BTL teaches children by allowing them to break down sentences into syllables and sounds and describe what they see on a poster orally before writing what they have described with a teacher’s guidance.
After children read stories that are part of the BTL programme, teachers ask questions, answered orally and in notebooks, to determine if pupils comprehend the stories.
“The programme lays the ideal foundation for teaching English as an additional language,” Dikotla said. “It also provides children with the skills they need to learn through English.”
To make the course successful, Molteno said they worked with teachers to train them about the curriculum, during which teachers developed skills in learner-centred classroom management that could be transferred to other subjects. Various South African schools have begun implementing BTL, which complies with the Department of Basic Education’s curriculum requirements.
The institute believes the programme will have success in South Africa in part because it has been successful in other countries.
In Zambia, where the course is also available, the Molteno Institute said individual evaluation found that Grade 1 children were reading and writing at a Grade 4 level after implementing the literacy programme.
According to Dikotla, the opposite is true in South Africa, with Grade 4 learners reading at a Grade 1 level. As such, he said BTL had the potential to turn the literacy crisis around.