Search

Background: This article critically examines the nature of isiXhosa translations in mathematics learning materials, specifically focusing on the doubling and halving unit within the ‘South African Grade 3 Mental Starters Assessment Project (MSAP): Teacher Guide’. Teaching in home languages is encouraged in the Foundation Phase, but unfamiliar standardised isiXhosa translations in support materials often contain barriers to understanding and/or distortion in meaning. Aim: The article addresses three questions: (1) To what extent is there fidelity and alignment of the translated isiXhosa materials to the original mathematical meaning? (2) To what extent do the selected terms align with the everyday isiXhosa that learners are accustomed to? (3) What are the implications for future translation of such materials? Setting: Analysis of the isiXhosa translation of a doubling and halving teaching unit and adapted translation for use in a Grade 3 classroom in the Eastern Cape. Methods: This qualitative research uses Toury’s Descriptive Translation Studies theory. Results: The findings highlight several ambiguities and incoherent translations. The article advocates for a comprehensive approach to translation, emphasising the importance of maintaining conceptual fidelity and clarity. Conclusion: The authors suggest the need for transliteration techniques in translations to support teacher and learner access to mathematical sense-making. Contribution: This research provides insights for translators of materials and implications for teachers, proposing an approach to translation. In particular, it argues that the involvement of Foundation Phase teachers in the translation of such materials is crucial.

Background: Lexical properties such as orthographic neighbours have been shown to have an influence on reading and writing; however, this phenomenon is yet to be explored in the Southern Bantu languages. Objectives: We investigate the role of orthographic neighbourhood density and neighbourhood frequency in reading and spelling in Grade 3 isiXhosa home-language learners. The aim is to establish whether orthographic neighbours facilitate or hinder reading and spelling. The dual-route model of orthographic processing is used to interpret our findings. Method: Data were collected from 97 Grade 3 isiXhosa home-language learners. Lexical decision, word reading, and spelling tasks were administered. Tasks included both real and pseudowords varying in orthographic neighbourhood density and neighbourhood frequency, while controlling for word length and word frequency. Results: Findings show a significant inhibitory effect of orthographic neighbourhood frequency and word length for spelling accuracy. Longer words with higher frequency neighbours were more likely to be spelt incorrectly. No effect was recorded for the lexical decision and word reading tasks. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that spelling in isiXhosa relies partially on lexical processing strategies, which allows for the inhibitory effects of orthographic neighbours to be observed. While in reading, sublexical processing is more prominent, therefore mitigating the effect of orthographic neighbours. Contribution: Empirical evidence for the effects of orthographic neighbours, specifically in a Southern Bantu language, provides a clearer picture of the underlying cognitive-linguistic processes involved in reading and writing. This evidence may contribute to the development of targeted pedagogical practices to address spelling errors.

Learners in Umzimkhulu identify as amaBhaca and speak isiBhaca at home and with friends. However, at school, they use isiXhosa as a home language (HL) and first additional language (FAL). This article examines how isiBhaca influences isiXhosa in the educational space in Umzimkhulu. Research identified three schools across Umzimkhulu through which data were collected; using a qualitative approach, this article used document analysis and interviews for data collection. Data were gathered from 60 learners’ written essays and 6 teachers through semi-structured interviews. Findings revealed that isiBhaca influences written isiXhosa in Umzimkhulu. This was seen through the learners’ essays and teacher interviews. The conclusion of this study is that teachers should undergo standardised training on how to handle non-standard language speakers in class. At the same time, teachers should find a way of not disadvantaging learners who speak non-standard varieties and not encourage learners to develop negative attitudes towards their languages. Contribution: The contribution to the body of scholarship is the consideration of learners who speak dialects in the classroom and the view that teachers should be taught strategies to change their approach to teaching an HL. Teachers do not have to penalise learners for using non-standard languages, especially when they are non-standard varieties of the HL, which is mostly the standard language, but rather introduce them, for example, to the correct word in the standard language.

Background: One factor which is consistently highlighted in research on literacy is the lack of understanding of how literacy develops in the Southern-Bantu languages. In particular, little is known about spelling in the Southern-Bantu languages such as isiXhosa. Objectives: Through the use of an initial exploratory study and a conceptual replication study, we examined the relationships between reading, phonological awareness, and spelling in isiXhosa grade 3 learners. The initial exploratory study sought to describe the relationships between reading and spelling, and phonological awareness and spelling in a sample of 49 grade 3 isiXhosa learners. We then conceptually replicated this study with a larger sample of 200 grade 3 isiXhosa learners. We expected that both reading and phonological awareness would be related to spelling and that the strength of the relationship between reading and spelling, and phonological awareness and spelling would vary with spelling ability, due to the changes that occur in the development of spelling. Method: Cross-sectional, quantitative secondary data were used from two different projects to answer the research questions. Tasks of phonological awareness, oral reading fluency and spelling were developed and administered to the participants. Results: We found that reading was a replicable predictor of spelling for grade 3 isiXhosa learners and that phonological awareness was influential only at the mid-range of spelling performance. Conclusion: Our findings emphasise the importance of the reading – writing connection, and lend support for what has been found for other consistently written languages, adding to the growing body of knowledge of universal predictors of spelling development.

Word problems form an important part of the early grade mathematics curriculum in South Africa. Studies have shown that the relative difficulty of word problems differ: learners are more likely to solve certain types of word problems than others, with compare type problems being the most difficult. In order to help early grade learners understand and solve compare problems, it is important to understand the relative difficulty of different types of compare type problems and the factors that contribute to their relative difficulty. While these factors have been studied in English, less research has attended to word problems in other languages, such as isiXhosa. In this study a typology of isiXhosa compare type (difference unknown) word problem was set up. The typology included two dimensions, namely the problem situation and the comparative question. The relative difficulties of specific word problems from this typology were compared by analysing the results from an early grade mathematics assessment administered to two cohorts of Grade 1–3 isiXhosa learners in five rural Eastern Cape schools. The analysis showed that in isiXhosa, as in English, some compare type problems are easier to solve than others. Problems with ‘matching’ situations are easier to solve than problems with ‘no matching’ situations. Problems with alternatively formulated comparative questions, specifically those using -shota or kangakanani, are easier to solve than those using a more classic formulation. This study highlights the importance of understanding the ways in which African languages express mathematical ideas in order to identify and leverage affordances for teaching and learning mathematics.

Background: Spelling is a vital component of literacy. This is because spelling includes multiple metalinguistic components, such as phoneme-grapheme awareness, orthographic awareness and morphophonemic knowledge. Despite this, there remains, to date, insufficient literature on spelling in the Southern Bantu languages and, more specifically, in isiXhosa. Objectives: This study explores the nature of spelling among Grade 3 isiXhosa home-language learners and provides a linguistic analysis of the types of errors produced by these learners. Method: Data were collected from 51 isiXhosa home-language learners using a carefully designed isiXhosa spelling task, which included both real and pseudowords. Results: The findings showed that grapheme complexity was a significant predictor of spelling error production in isiXhosa. Furthermore, the main error type for both real words and pseudowords was errors of omission, specifically 〈n〉 in nasal blends and 〈h〉 in aspirated digraphs. Conclusion: While the isiXhosa orthography is transparent, and thus relatively predictable in decoding, its agglutinative, conjunctive character coupled with the existence of a number of complex graphemes presents a greater challenge for spelling. This supports the need for targeted instruction of complex graphemes in isiXhosa pedagogical practice to improve encoding skills.

Background: While much research is dedicated to the understanding of dyslexia in the English-speaking population, there is limited knowledge about how this condition presents in African languages. The need for a literacy screening tool in a learner’s home language to aid in early identification, and therefore early intervention, is crucial for reading success in South Africa. Objectives: The aim of this study was to adapt and develop a screening tool for dyslexia for home language isiXhosa learners. Method: The three-part tool consisting of a learner screening tool, a teacher checklist and a parent questionnaire to target the identification of the majority of the indicators for dyslexia. The tool was piloted on a small group of 15 learners across Grades 1–4, identified by their teachers as having literacy difficulties. In addition, seven learners were identified by their teachers as average performers and were used as a control group. A team of three professional field workers analysed the data collected and identified five learners as clearly at risk and five learners as possibly at risk. Ten indicators for dyslexia were considered. Of these, there were high correlations between Phonological Awareness and Spelling, Decoding and Alphabetic Principle, as well as Spelling and Oral/Written Discrepancy. After piloting the screening tool, the researchers made further revisions to the content and length of all three parts of the tool, with the aim to simplify the tool for both the assessor and the teachers or parents completing the checklists. Results: Findings indicate that the adapted screening tool, together with the adapted teacher checklist and parent interview, give professionals an indication of whether an isiXhosa-speaking child is at risk for dyslexia. Conclusion: A larger study using the same tool with the aim of refining the tool further would be beneficial. The study also opens doors for the adaptation of the tool into other African languages.

Background: A large amount of evidence highlights the obvious inequalities in literacy results of South African learners. Despite this, a sound understanding of how learners approach the task of reading in the African languages is lacking. Aim: This article examines the role of the syllable, phoneme and morpheme in reading in transparent, agglutinating languages. The focus is on whether differences in the orthographies of isiXhosa and Setswana influence reading strategies through a comparative study of the interaction between metalinguistic skills and orthography. Setting: Data was collected from Grade 3 first-language and Grade 4 Setswana home-language learners attending no fee schools in the Eastern Cape and North West Province respectively. Methods: Learners were tested on four linguistic tasks: an open-ended decomposition task, a phonological awareness task, a morphological awareness task and an oral reading fluency task. These tasks were administered to determine the grain size unit which learners use in connected-text reading. Results: The results indicated that syllables were the dominant grain size in both isiXhosa and Setswana, with the use of morphemes as secondary grains in isiXhosa. These results are reflected in the scores of the metalinguistic tasks. Conclusion: This research contributes to an understanding of how linguistic and orthographic features of African languages need to be taken into consideration in understanding literacy development.

Audiologists and speech-language therapists working in developing contexts like South Africa have the opportunity to address a range of needs through their research. One of these needs is the development of assessments and therapy materials that are appropriate for their clients’particular language needs and cultural background. This editorial paper aims to introduce original research in speech-language therapy and audiology, which has been carried out in South Africa and other developing contexts and is presented in this volume of the journal. In addition we suggest that while the focus of much research is on the destination or end product that is developed, there is a need to share the methodologies that are used to reach that goal so that more research can be carried out by a wider pool of students, researchers and clinicians. We describe some of the methods that we have used in our research – often in small scale projects with budgetary constraints, which would be feasible for clinicians in their routine clinical contexts. Our hope is that others can build on these approaches, critique and share their own strategies for the ultimate advancement of the professions in southern Africa.

Background: Quantifiers form part of the discourse-internal linguistic devices that children need to access and produce narratives and other classroom discourse. Little is known about the development - especially the prodiction - of quantifiers in child language, specifically in speakers of an African language. Objectives: The study aimed to ascertain how well Grade 1 isiXhosa first language (L1) learners perform at the beginning and at the end of Grade 1 on quantifier comprehension and production tasks. Method: Two low socioeconomic groups of L1 isiXhosa learners with either isiXhosa or English as language of learning and teaching (LOLT) were tested in February and November of their Grade 1 year with tasks targeting several quantifiers. Results: The isiXhosa LOLT group comprehended no/none, any and all fully either in February or then in November of Grade 1, and they produced all assessed quantifiers in February of Grade 1. For the English LOLT group, neither the comprehension nor the production of quantifiers was mastered by the end of Grade 1, although there was a significant increase in both their comprehension and production scores. Conclusion: The English LOLT group made significant progress in comprehension and production of quantifiers, but still performed worse than peers who had their L1 as LOLT. Generally, children with no or very little prior knowledge of the LOLT need either, (1) more deliberate exposure to quantifier-rich language or, (2) longer exposure to general classroom language before quantifiers can be expected to be mastered sufficiently to allow access to quantifier-related curriculum content. Keywords: quantifiers; isiXhosa; Grade 1

The article calls for critical theological examination of the politics of ethnicity in the context of mainline churches in South Africa. The category of ethnicity is largely missing in the interrogation of diversity in the delineated context. Including this category of difference in the theological and religious studies diversity discourse would, if brought to bear on praxis, facilitate the building of inclusive worship spaces. On the contrary, neglecting the politics of ethnicity in the context of churches means neglecting a dynamic that impacts negatively on the everyday life of ordinary churchgoers. The argument is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the author in a Methodist church in Johannesburg primarily in 2009.