ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Authentic Learning for Teaching Reading: Foundation Phase Pre-Service Student Teachers&apos; Learning Experiences of Creating and Using Digital Stories in Real Classrooms
Author: Moodley, Trevor
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Reading Instruction,Student Teachers,Teaching Methods,Student Teacher Attitudes,Teacher Education Programs,Preservice Teacher Education,Foreign Countries,Information Technology,Story Telling,Communities of Practice,Technology Uses in Education,Reflection,Student Experience

Teaching and learning, an evolving endeavour, is associated with many factors, with advancements in technology, playing an ever-growing role in the classroom. It is therefore important to include the use of interactive communication technologies (ICTs) in university curricula of teacher education programmes. Universities ought to be creative in advancing autonomous learning among their students by providing opportunities for integrated and rich learning experiences. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to intentionally integrate ICTs in the planning and delivery of foundation phase reading lessons. This was achieved by providing authentic learning opportunities to final year foundation phase student teachers through the provision of training in the creation of digital stories (DS), collaborating within communities of practice (COP) (peers and other relevant parties), and then using their creations in 'real-world' classroom contexts. The aims of this study were to explore student teachers' perceptions and experiences of developing DS in groups with minimal formal initial input and their use of DS during foundation phase (FP) reading lessons in real-class settings during teaching practice. Data were collected via focus group interviews and participants' reflection essays. The study's findings indicate that the creation of their own DS provided rich, rewarding multidimensional learning experiences to student teachers. Participants reported that they found the 'assignment' to be of real value, since it was directly linked to classroom practice, and despite the cognitive demands of the assignment; the nature of the task nurtured, an agentic disposition towards their own learning. Participants further reported that the DS provided enthusiasm among young learners during the delivery of lessons and were of pedagogical value, despite experiencing some challenges in using DS during reading lessons. Participants were of the view that the use of DS in advancing reading and literacy holds much pedagogical promise, because it resonates with the this generation of digital natives, the present generation of learners who have been born into a world where they interact with digital technology from an early age.
Are We Teaching Critical Literacy? Reading Practices in a Township Classroom
Author: Lloyd, Glynis
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Critical Literacy,High School Students,Slums,Disadvantaged Schools,Feminism,Discourse Analysis,Classroom Communication,Foreign Countries,English (Second Language),Second Language Learning,Equal Education,Educational Policy,Academic Achievement,Case Studies,Second Language Instruction,Literature,Racial Segregation,Language Variation,Student Attitudes,Grade 11,Literacy Education

Despite improvements in educational provision in South Africa since 1994, the opportunities for learners from historically under-resourced schools to gain access to powerful English resources remain limited and unequal (Prinsloo 2012). In this article I will provide a detailed description of literacy practices in a township high school in Cape Town, specifically of the orientations to text that are made available to learners. I will draw on feminist poststructuralist theory, in which the subject is theorised as constructed and contested in language to construct difference. The analysis of classroom discourse and text-based tasks shows that the orientations to reading that were offered were characterised by a focus on the surface meaning of the texts and by an absence of critical engagement, despite the latter being required in the new Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement. The analysis reveals how the power dynamics of our racialised past and dominant ideologies about gender, class and race continue to define teaching in our classrooms in ways that limit access to the English resources that learners in under-resourced schools need for academic success.
Automaticity in Reading isiZulu
Author: Land, Sandra
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: African Languages,Reading Processes,Adults,Native Language,Spelling,Decoding (Reading),Written Language,Alphabets,Reading Instruction,Teaching Methods,Reading Tests,Eye Movements,Word Recognition,Foreign Countries

Automaticity, or instant recognition of combinations of letters as units of language, is essential for proficient reading in any language. The article explores automaticity amongst competent adult first-language readers of isiZulu, and the factors associated with it or its opposite - active decoding. Whilst the transparent spelling patterns of isiZulu aid learner readers, some of its orthographical features may militate against their gaining automaticity. These features are agglutination; a conjoined writing system; comparatively long, complex words; and a high rate of recurring strings of particular letters. This implies that optimal strategies for teaching reading in orthographically opaque languages such as English should not be assumed to apply to languages with dissimilar orthographies.
Cultural and Social Uses of Orality and Functional Literacy: A Narrative Approach
Author: Johnson, Lineo R.
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Functional Literacy,Personal Narratives,Story Telling,Foreign Countries,Reading Skills,Writing Skills,Adult Literacy,Adult Reading Programs,Indigenous Knowledge,Numeracy,Computation,Literacy Education,Mathematics Skills

Lesotho's educational system and development are largely influenced by missionaries and colonisers who taught the three 'Rs' (reading, writing and numeracy skills) to the Basotho. Most of those enlightened Basotho were to carry on the duties of either educating others or as missionary workers. Some became clerks, interpreters, police officers, nurses and Sunday school teachers. This article is an account of a functionally literate Mosotho male adult learner who was herding livestock and taught himself reading and writing skills. In his narrative, Hlalefang (not his real name) compares literacy to money and a watch or a clock. He further expresses how people like him have managed to muster some basic and restructure the cognitive and oral history and archival memories, through intuitiveness. The story is based on the work of Paulo Freire where culture influences the discourse of literacy. A qualitative narrative story-telling approach was used to relate Hlalefang's lived-experiences as he navigated his ways and challenges using orality acquired through various life encounters. This inspirational cultural narrative demonstrates that culture and social uses are imperatives in functional literacy. The article challenges those in adult education, literacy, development practitioners and policy-makers to consider some aspects of culture and to be innovative in their approaches to multi-literacies.
Exploring Writing Apprehension amongst Afrikaans-speaking First-Year Students
Author: Olivier, Louise
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Writing Apprehension,College Freshmen,Foreign Countries,Indo European Languages,Gender Differences,Grades (Scholastic),Essays,Required Courses,Elective Courses,Tests

Writing apprehension relates to a reluctance to write or even fear of writing and little research has been done on this phenomenon in the South African context, especially in terms of compulsory academic literacy and academic linguistic modules. This article aimed at determining the nature of writing apprehension in these two modules in terms of the Daly and Miller's Writing Apprehension Test (DM-WAT), essay marks and gender at a South African university. The DM-WAT was conducted with two groups of first-year students. An exploratory factor analysis was administered and this led to the identification of four distinct factors which are also associated with related aspects in the literature: positivity towards writing, negativity towards writing, evaluation apprehension and self-efficacy and writing. It is evident that in the context of this study, the chosen instrument could not be used to measure writing apprehension, rather the four identified factors. No linear relationships between essay marks and the identified constructs were clear. Also a practical significant difference between genders was found in terms of the identified constructs. Significantly, students in the compulsory academic literacy module showed a greater tendency towards apprehension in terms of the four identified factors than students from the linguistics module. The chosen instrument could be used to gauge the identified factors. Writing in compulsory academic literacy modules should be taught through individualised student-centred methods, affective support and reflective instruction, positive personal feedback, with additional support through counselling as well as effective modelled writing behaviour from lecturers.
First-Year Students&apos; Essay Writing Practices: Formative Feedback and Interim Literacies
Author: Esambe, Emmanuel
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Undergraduate Students,Essays,Academic Discourse,Writing Assignments,Feedback (Response),Focus Groups,Dental Schools,Health Sciences,Foreign Countries,Writing Skills

The varying literacy standards that undergraduate students represent are a reflection of their interim grasp of academic literacy (Paxton 2007). The aim of this study is to analyse a small group of undergraduate first-year students' depiction of their interim grasp of academic writing and to reflect on how lecturers use formative feedback to respond to specific issues regarding students' academic transitions within their discipline. Using an emancipatory methodology, this study was designed as a participatory action research. Qualitative data from focus group interviews with lecturers and photovoice presentations by first-year dental technology students were used to explore how students demonstrated their interim grasp of academic essay writing in a Health Science department at a university of technology. However, this article, which is part of a broader study, analyses a small class of first-year students' depiction of their interim grasp of essay writing and reflects on how their lecturers use formative feedback to respond to these students' academic transitions within their discipline. Using activity theory and morphogenetic realist theory to analyse essay writing activities during an intervention, the study reveals that images are potent artefacts that students and lecturers use to build meaningful dialogue during essay writing in an uneven terrain.
The Story of a Narrative: Teaching and Assessing English Writing in a Township School
Author: Akinyeye, Caroline
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Personal Narratives,Foreign Countries,English (Second Language),Second Language Learning,Writing (Composition),Curriculum Development,Grade 9,Secondary School Students,Secondary School Teachers,Writing Instruction

The new language curriculum in South Africa recommends that extended writing be taught through a combination of text-based (or genre) and process approaches. This article reports on a study of the teaching and assessment of narrative writing in English as a first additional language (FAL) at a time of curriculum change. The setting is a Cape Flats township school. In focusing on a story written by a Grade 9 learner and assessed by her teacher, the study sought evidence of the use of text-based and process approaches. The theoretical frame is informed by genre theory, which draws on Systemic Functional Linguistics and social constructivist approaches to language learning. A qualitative research paradigm was used. Data obtained for this case study included the learner's writing, interviews with the teacher, and classroom observation. The study finds very little evidence of a scaffolded approach to the teaching and assessment of writing, and explores the constraints on the realisation of the curriculum cycle in English FAL. These relate to the teacher's understanding of writing as well as to material conditions in township schools.
Word Recognition Strategies amongst Isixhosa/English Bilingual Learners: The Interaction of Orthography and Language of Learning and Teaching
Author: Probert, Tracy
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: African Languages,English (Second Language),Language of Instruction,Word Recognition,Reading Strategies,Cognitive Processes,Transfer of Training,Foreign Countries,Reading Processes,Grade 4,Elementary School Students,Written Language

Word recognition is a major component of fluent reading and involves an interaction of language structure, orthography, and metalinguistic skills. This study examined reading strategies in isiXhosa and the transfer of these strategies to an additional language, English. IsiXhosa was chosen because of its agglutinative structure and conjunctive orthography. Data was collected at two schools which differed with regards to their language of learning and teaching (LoLT) in the first three years of schooling: isiXhosa and English respectively. Participants completed a word- and pseudo-word reading aloud task in each of two languages which hypothetically impose different cognitive demands. Skills transfer occurs to a limited extent when the language of first literacy uses a transparent orthography, but is less predictable when the language of first literacy uses an opaque orthography. We show that although there is transfer of word recognition strategies from transparent to deep orthographies, felicitous transfer is limited to sublexical strategies; infelicitous transfer also occurs when lexical strategies are transferred in problematic ways. The results support the contention that reading strategies and cognitive skills are fine tuned to particular languages. This study emphasises that literacies in different languages present readers with different structural puzzles which require language-particular suites of cognitive reading skills.
Promoting Reading Skills or Wasting Time? Students&apos; Perceived Benefits of Reading in an Intermediary Programme at the Vaal University of Technology
Author: Scott, Linda
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Reading Instruction,Distance Education,English (Second Language),Second Language Instruction,College Students,Reading Attitudes,Reading Habits,Program Effectiveness,Attitude Change,Student Attitudes,Academic Achievement,Questionnaires,Reading Programs,Behavior Change

Notwithstanding the substantial transformation of education in South Africa in the last 20 years, specifically to redress the past inequalities, the challenges are ongoing. These challenges include tertiary institutions having to accommodate a culturally and linguistically diverse group of students, often second-language (L2) English speakers, in an English &quot;lingua franca&quot; classroom. This study investigated the reading attitudes and habits of students in an intermediary programme of a tertiary institution and any perceived changes to these attitudes or habits, as well as their perceptions of the promotion of reading by the programme. On successful completion of the intermediary programme, students register for the compulsory first-year English distance learning course and are required to complete a placement test. Results for students who attended the intermediary programme were compared with those of students who did not attend the intermediary programme but registered directly for mainstream. The teaching of reading appeared invaluable at the tertiary level with the indication that students' attitudes and behaviour changed and that they &quot;inter alia&quot; realised the academic value thereof, made decisions to take up reading as a hobby and discovered new genres.
Promoting Literacy through Reading Programmes for First-Year University Students
Author: Shober, Dianne
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Literacy,Reading Motivation,Reading Programs,College Freshmen,Foreign Countries,Vocabulary Development,Reading Comprehension,Program Implementation,English (Second Language),Second Language Learning,Reading Interests

University lecturers share a concern for incoming varsity students who lack the literacy competence to succeed in their courses. Given the strong correlation between reading and literacy, the English Department commenced an innovative and effective reading programme which witnessed positive and enthusiastic results. By engaging students in reading select works of fiction, we were able to increase their comprehension, build their vocabulary and inculcate an individual interest in reading literature. This paper discusses the resultant voluntary reading programme that was organised for first-year students enrolled in English language classes, the theoretical methodology of the programme, its implementation and positive results, especially in the students' improved English course marks. It also explores ways to configure this programme to extend beyond university boundaries into effective community engagement.
Genre Analysis of Essays in the Social Sciences: The Case of Botswana Students
Author: Magogwe,Joel, M.
Date: 2017-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Social Sciences,Essays,Writing (Composition),Foreign Countries,College Freshmen,English for Academic Purposes,Second Language Learning,Computational Linguistics,Writing Instruction,Study Skills,Interdisciplinary Approach,Second Language Instruction,Student Attitudes,College Faculty,Teacher Collaboration

Writing is a challenging but requisite skill at university and other life situations. At university, essay writing is generally challenging to first-year students across disciplines or faculties. This study therefore describes the writing challenges of the Faculty of Social Sciences students at the University of Botswana. To that end, this study asks the following research questions: (1) What writing tasks are first-year students in the Faculty of Social Sciences given? (2) What problems do the students encounter when writing essays in the Faculty of Social Sciences? (3) What kind of assistance do students receive on writing essays? This article is underpinned by the English for Academic Purposes genre analysis framework. All in all, the findings of this study point to the need for a more intensive writing programme for first-year students at the University of Botswana in which both faculties and the Communication and Study Skills Unit will cooperatively assist students with writing. Students' responses clearly indicated the need for such collaboration.
Teachers&apos; Perceptions of Reading Instruction in Selected Primary Schools in the Eastern Cape
Author: Cekiso, Madoda
Date: 2017-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Public School Teachers,Elementary School Teachers,Reading Teachers,Teacher Attitudes,Reading Instruction,Reading Strategies,Preservice Teacher Education,Oral Reading,Reading Comprehension,Teaching Methods

Background: There is a general outcry that too many South African Foundation Phase (Grades 1-3) teachers do not know how to teach reading and are currently teaching reading in an &quot;ad hoc&quot;, unsystematic way. Objectives: In response to this, this study explored the Foundation Phase teachers' perceptions of their role in teaching reading. The focus was on the relevance of the initial training, awareness of reading strategies and how these strategies were reflected in their classroom practice. Method: The study was qualitative in nature and a case study design was followed. Semi structured interviews were conducted with nine teachers who were purposively selected from three public schools. Content analysis was used to analyse the data. Results: Regarding the initial training programme, teachers received at tertiary institutions, the findings of the study showed that the majority of teachers were not adequately prepared to teach reading and to deal with learners who experience problems in reading. Some teachers indicated that they were not even trained to teach in the Foundation Phase. The findings also showed that the majority of respondents doubted if their classroom practice would yield positive results as far as reading instruction is concerned. The findings further indicated that the majority of respondents only paid attention to oral reading (observing punctuation marks and pronunciation), without attending to reading comprehension. There was a general consensus that the new ways of teaching reading were necessary in order to improve the reading ability of learners. Conclusion: Recommendations based on the findings are that institutions of higher learning that train Foundation Phase teachers should do so in ways that adequately equip them to produce student teachers who are knowledgeable about research and theory regarding how individuals learn to read. Workshops on appropriate instruction of reading strategies are recommended for in-service teachers.
Traversing the Spaces of Higher Education through Writing
Author: Drennan, Laura M.
Date: 2017-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Writing (Composition),Laboratories,Higher Education,Writing Instruction,Writing Skills,Teaching Methods,Cooperation,Medical Students,College Faculty,Cooperative Learning,Workshops,Student Attitudes,Philosophy,Interdisciplinary Approach,Foreign Countries

Writing functions as an important tool that spans various spaces in higher education. Moving away from a 'skills approach' to writing, this article argues that the writing centre serves as an intermediary between students and academic lecturers. The article discusses how the current practices at the writing centre promotes the development of writing as a key construct that spans a number of spaces in higher education. The article draws on the collaborative initiatives with two different disciplines. The data collection on stakeholders' responses indicates that a more structured, purposeful writing-intensive approach needs to be undertaken within the disciplines in order to address institutional objectives of access and success in higher education.
Employing a Multifocal View of ECD Curriculum Development at a Rural Settlement Community in South Africa: Themes from a &apos;Design by Implementation&apos; Early Childhood Education Programme
Author: Brink, Sonja
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Early Childhood Education,Curriculum Development,Curriculum Implementation,Rural Areas,Educational Change,Disadvantaged Environment,Poverty Areas,Participatory Research,Action Research

Early childhood curriculum development is challenged by the vast contextual variability of sites in South Africa. In this article, the author reports on the implementation of an early childhood development programme at an informal rural settlement community by an external societal agent. The article looks at the complex dynamics at play within such an early education development situation and examines the main themes that emerged from the process. Referring to the tensions that emanated from the implementation of this programme as a positive driver for change, it concludes that the employment of participatory methodologies could be utilised as a curriculum development tool and calls for the employment of a less formulaic and more holistic view of early childhood development.