Contextualizing reading instruction by language: Sociolinguistic, orthographic, and pedagogical considerations

• In Event: Adapting instruction to context: Global case studies on how language and culture shape the teaching of reading

Proposal

The current global focus on reading instruction as a key strategy of the international education community can largely be traced to the determination of a few key stakeholders that the ability to read is a central feature of successful learning – and that the measurement of reading skills constitutes an appropriate indicator of overall learning. The development of the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA), and its popularization across the international education domain in the last 10 years, has solidified the role of reading skills acquisition in evaluating pupil progress and program effectiveness.
However, the complex linguistic environment in which much reading programming takes place in the global South has been a cause for frustration and program failure in some cases, and a prompter of careful consideration of language and reading in other cases. Assumptions about reading, based on research and practice in the global North (and specifically English-speaking environments), have shown themselves to be inadequate; new understandings are arising related to the impact of specific linguistic and orthographic realities on reading skills development.
With the growth of this awareness, increasing attention is being given to the language-related elements that must be considered in effective reading programming. This paper provides an overview of those elements and the nature of their impact on reading skills development. Three types of language-related features are examined:
● Sociolinguistic features. These include stakeholders’ attitudes towards the range of languages under consideration for the program, their readiness to support local language-medium learning, and the larger language policy context as well. Learners’ oral fluency in the languages under consideration is also a related issue.
● Linguistic and orthographic features. These include the structure of the proposed language of instruction, the type of writing system in use, the adequacy of that writing system for reading, and the degree of orthographic match between the local language and the language into which the learner will transition.
● Pedagogical features related to language and reading instruction. These include the model of reading being followed, the reading methodology to be used (based on the orthography among other considerations), the type of assessments to be used, and the intended model of language-medium transition (if relevant).

Authors

• Barbara Trudell, SIL Africa

• Leila Schroeder, SIL Africa