This research aimed to examine the use of linguistic markers and mitigation devices in expressing disagreement, as well as the influence of the power, rank, and severity of disagreement on the frequency of different types of disagreement among Iranian EFL students. The study involved 90 participants, including advanced-level students and teachers, who took part in six free discussion classes. The data analysis based on the models of disagreement by Brown and Levinson (1978) and Miller and Spencer-Oatey (2018) showed that most participants expressed disagreement in a softened manner. Female participants predominantly expressed softened disagreement, while male participants expressed aggravated disagreement. In addition, female participants often used positive comments to express disagreement, whereas the males employed judgemental vocabulary and intensifiers. The paper discusses further detailed findings. The results of this study have implications for English instructors, syllabus designers, and English institutes working with EFL learners regarding their use of disagreement strategies.

Teaching in global multilingual societies requires a change of instruction concerning reading comprehension, as many learners are not instructed in their home language. Reading comprehension skills are lacking in South Africa and are discernible in subjects like physical sciences, where the text requires high levels of cognitive thinking. This study focused on improving reading comprehension using strategies like vocabulary, syntactical awareness, and text recognition, among others. An interpretative qualitative approach was chosen to determine to which extent reading strategies are used and taught in the physical sciences classroom. Semi-structured interviews and non-participant teacher observations were conducted to determine the participants’ knowledge of and ability and skill in using reading strategies. The study found that the use of reading strategies in physical sciences classrooms was limited, and the participants (physical sciences teachers) were unable to integrate many strategies to assist with reading comprehension.

This paper explores heritage language transmission among immigrant families in South Africa. Such research is essential to maintaining language for educational purposes and family interactions. This is a very important topic in a multilingual and multicultural country such as South Africa, and it adds new knowledge to the current research on family language policies and heritage languages. Family interactions are central to language transmission. The available literature shows family units as central to language maintenance and sustenance among immigrant families. Research on immigrant language practices in South Africa is sparse, with available research mainly focusing on school experiences. No available research specifically addresses heritage language transmission within Malawian immigrant families in South Africa, which this study aimed to investigate. The research employed a sociolinguistic approach to explore the language transmission of Chichewa within Malawian immigrant families. The theoretical framework positions Chichewa as mainly used in family circles and less at religious and social gatherings. Data were collected through interviews and observations at family and social gatherings. The study finds that the family context is the main domain within which children are exposed to parental heritage language to a consequential degree, whereas social gatherings contribute to a lesser extent. The data show that parental efforts at transmitting heritage language are insufficient for sustainable levels. Although parents wish to preserve some elements of their identities and culture, a signifier of ethnic identity, their children seem not keen to do so. The study uncovered two major reasons for children’s disinterest: fear of anti-foreign sentiments and a lack of attachment to the parental home country. The paper concludes with the identification of an emerging ‘indelible’ heritage language speaker, a phenomenon that could motivate further research in this field.

There is overwhelming evidence in the South African education context regarding reading challenges in schools. While the majority of studies conducted in the last decade focus heavily on learners’ inadequate age-appropriate reading skills, very few studies focus on teachers’ or teacher educators’ facilitation of effective reading comprehension skills, particularly for at-risk readers. In this study, the term at-risk readers refers to learners with reading difficulties in mainstream schools. Since pre-service teacher preparation is a responsibility of university teacher education departments, at the university level, effective pedagogical strategies for teaching inclusive reading to at-risk readers should be taught by university lecturers. The current study aims to analyse the pedagogical strategies used to prepare pre-service Intermediate Phase (IP) isiZulu teachers to teach inclusive reading in mainstream schools. This qualitative study is guided by the simple view of reading, which integrates word reading, language skills and reading comprehension for holistic literacy development. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with seven isiZulu methodology lecturers purposively selected from five South African universities. The researcher analysed the qualitative data through thematic analysis. The unit of analysis in this study was pre-service lecturers’ strategies used to prepare IP isiZulu teachers to teach inclusive reading. Findings reveal that university teacher education departments do not adequately equip pre-service IP teachers with the necessary pedagogical skills to teach inclusive reading to at-risk readers in mainstream schools. This study aims to extend the debate on teacher pedagogical content knowledge required for developing inclusive reading in mainstream schools.

Teaching reading in the Foundation Phase is a challenging issue since most South African learners struggle to read at their grade level. Learners in rural areas suffer the most as they are from disadvantaged homes that do not have sufficient resources for the promotion of a literate environment. The study aimed to understand the teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge in teaching reading in isiZulu. A qualitative approach framed within an interpretive paradigm was undertaken. Seventeen Foundation Phase teachers in King Cetshwayo District, KwaZulu-Natal, participated in two focus group discussions. The data obtained from transcripts were analysed using a thematic approach. The findings revealed that teachers seemed to have misconceptions and inadequate knowledge of how to develop basic foundational reading skills. It was evident that the teachers lacked the capacity to choose appropriate strategies for teaching reading that suited the learners’ individual needs. Thus, the study recommends multisensory and multimodal approaches to teaching reading to accommodate the different learning styles of learners.

This article reports on the effectiveness of a reading comprehension intervention that was implemented in Namibia. It aimed to empower teachers with knowledge and strategies for teaching reading comprehension, so as to improve the low reading comprehension of Grade 5 learners. The intervention targeted the improvement of performance in both the decoding and comprehension aspects of reading and was carried out during two school terms, in which teachers were provided with teaching and learning resources, guidance on how to utilise the resources and coaching on instructional practices. The study involved two control and two intervention schools. A modest interventionist approach was applied in which four of the six quality criteria for formative assessment of intervention programmes, as proposed by Nieveen (2007) were adopted to guide the study. Analysis of the pre- and post-intervention scores for the intervention and control groupsindicated larger effect sizes in decoding ability and reading comprehension at the intervention schools than at the control schools. The intervention teachers also seemed to have changed some of their instructional practices and some shifts in their attitudes towards teaching reading were discerned. The findings suggest that better quality teaching and learning can happen if teachers receive ongoing support to enhance their instructional practices. With effective reading instructional practices, learners’ decoding skills are developed, resulting in improved reading comprehension levels.

We hope you will still find this an interesting number. There are two articles on language learning in higher education and two on secondary education. This number starts off with only our second isiXhosa article since I became editor of the journal.

It is expected that English Home Language (Eng HL), as a subject, is more complex than English First Additional Language (Eng FAL). This article aims to uncover the reality of this expectation by comparatively investigating the linguistic complexity of texts used for reading comprehension and summaries in the final school exit examinations. The Coh-Metrix online platform was used to analyse a combined total of 24 Grade 12 final examination texts for Eng HL and Eng FAL ranging from 2008 to 2019. Five main indices relating to the word level, sentence, readability, lexical diversity and referential cohesion linguistic complexity were explored. The findings illustrated that the linguistic complexities of the texts used for reading comprehension and summary writing in the two subjects differ significantly, with Eng HL being more linguistically complex than Eng FAL texts. Furthermore, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level measure indicates the Eng FAL texts as two grades below the overall grade for Eng HL texts. Nonetheless, the linguistic complexity measures used in this article confirm the expectation that texts used in Eng HL reading comprehension and summary writing are more complex than those used in Eng FAL.

This study analysed the possibilities of implementing principles of language teaching and learning for expanding and improving classroom input strategies. Thirty-three English as a foreign language student teachers participated in the study for four weeks. Data were collected through Likert-type surveys, written assessments and a third-party interview. Findings indicated that (1) participants showed a high level of perceived knowledge; (2) participants showed a high level of content knowledge on written tests; (3) students expressed positive attitudes towards the learning approach (i.e., grounding input strategies in well-established principles of teaching and learning); and (4) participants performed better in the post-videotaped evaluation than in the pre-videotaped evaluation.

CITATION: Van der Merwe, M. F. 2020. Scaffolding for content knowledge of home language learning by collaborative online dictionaries. Per Linguam : a Journal of Language Learning, 36(1):1-14, doi:10.5785/36-1-893.