Reading development in L1 and L2: An investigation of information recall among 7th graders of limpopo

Abstract

Reading development achievement in South Africa is generally cited to be low compared to the rest of the world. While general reading challenges and low reading proficiencies have been adequately expressed in the literature, very little is said about the performance of learners in rural and peri-rural areas of the Limpopo Province, who are trying to cope with two distal language systems. In order to address this issue, this study sought to investigate the reading achievement of Limpopo learners using the reading scores of 150 learners who took a reading comprehension test in order to report on their information recall results. Descriptive statistics were used to answer research questions. The results of the study revealed that the peri-rural school performed better in English than in Sepedi, the two rural schools performed well in their mother tongue. The results further indicate similar performance levels for the two rural schools (different dialects). The results in the peri-rural school thus support the commonly held assumption that readers develop higher proficiency in English than they do in African languages (peri-rural school) (Pretorius & Mampuru, 2007). Suggestions for bi-literacy development, emphasising reading achievement in the home language, are offered for adaptations in comparable contexts.