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The aim of the present study is to determine the within-language and across-language longitudinal development of phonological processing skills (phonological awareness, phonological working memory and rapid automatised naming) and literacy (letter-sound knowledge, word recognition, text reading, reading comprehension, spelling) skills of emergent bilingual speakers of two closely related African languages (isiXhosa and isiZulu), and English from Grades 1 to 3. To meet this aim, parallel (African language – English) phonological processing assessments will be designed for this study. Additionally, the observed phonological processing and literacy developmental trajectories will be interpreted in light of theories of phonological processing development and linguistic transfer.

The aims of this pre-registered study are to establish the unique contributions which decoding and phonological awareness have on spelling in Grade 3 isiXhosa first language readers, as well as to determine whether the strength of these relationships differ by spelling ability. This pre-registered study acts as a replication of a non-pre-registered initial study where the same research questions were examined in a smaller sample of Grade 3 readers. For the preregistered study, we use secondary data from the Volkswagen Literacy Legacy Intervention Project. Data were collected from Grade 3 isiXhosa-speaking children attending five isiXhosa medium of instruction schools, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Participants completed phonological awareness tasks which included syllable and phoneme isolation and elision, real word spelling tasks as a measure of encoding and a one minute oral reading fluency task as a measure of decoding. The research questions of our preregistered study are: 1. What are the unique contributions of decoding and phonological awareness to spelling in Grade 3 isiXhosa readers? 2. To what extent does overall spelling ability affect the strength of the relationship between decoding and spelling, and phonological awareness and spelling?

Research instruments for "Phonological processing skills and their longitudinal relation to first and additional language literacy in isiXhosa and isiZulu speaking children".

Sociocultural influences on the development of child language skills have been widely studied, but the majority of the research findings were generated in Northern contexts. The current crosslinguistic, multisite study is the first of its kind in South Africa, considering the influence of a range of individual and sociocultural factors on expressive vocabulary size of young children. Caregivers of toddlers aged 16 to 32 months acquiring Afrikaans (n = 110), isiXhosa (n = 115), South African English (n = 105), or Xitsonga (n = 98) as home language completed a family background questionnaire and the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) about their children. Based on a revised version of Bronfenbrenner’s (1977) ecological systems theory, information was obtained from the family background questionnaire on individual factors (the child’s age and sex), microsystem-related factors (the number of other children and number of adults in the child’s household, maternal level of education, and SES), and exosystem-related factors (home language and geographic area, namely rural or urban). All sociocultural and individual factors combined explained 25% of the variance in expressive vocabulary size. Partial correlations between these sociocultural factors and the toddlers’ expressive vocabulary scores on 10 semantic domains yielded important insights into the impact of geographic area on the nature and size of children’s expressive vocabulary. Unlike in previous studies, maternal level of education and SES did not play a significant role in predicting children’s expressive vocabulary scores. These results indicate that there exists an interplay of sociocultural and individual influences on vocabulary development that requires a more complex ecological model of language development to understand the interaction between various sociocultural factors in diverse contexts.

A well-nourished and healthy population is a central tenet of sustainable development. In South Africa, cultural beliefs and food taboos followed by some pregnant women influence their food consumption, which impacts the health of mothers and children during pregnancy and immediately afterwards. We documented food taboos and beliefs amongst pregnant isiXhosa women from five communities in the Kat River Valley, South Africa. A mixed-methods approach was used, which was comprised of questionnaire interviews with 224 women and nine focus group discussions with 94 participants. Overall, 37% of the women reported one or more food practices shaped by local cultural taboos or beliefs. The most commonly avoided foods were meat products, fish, potatoes, fruits, beans, eggs, butternut and pumpkin, which are rich in essential micronutrients, protein and carbohydrates. Most foods were avoided for reasons associated with pregnancy outcome, labour and to avoid an undesirable body form for the baby. Some pregnant women consumed herbal decoctions for strengthening pregnancy, facilitating labour and overall health of both themselves and the foetus. Most learnt of the taboos and practices from their own mother or grandmother, but there was also knowledge transmission in social groups. Some pregnant women in the study may be considered nutritionally vulnerable due to the likelihood of decreased intake of nutrient-rich foods resulting from cultural beliefs and food taboos against some nutritious foods. Encouraging such women to adopt a healthy diet with more protein-rich foods, vegetables and fruits would significantly improve maternal nutrition and children&rsquo, s nutrition. Adhering to culturally appropriate nutrition education may be an important care practice for many pregnant women in the Kat River Valley.

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

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.