Reading challenges occasioned by the third to fourth grade transition in South Africa's primary schools are well-documented, particularly in content area texts. Grade 4 reading heralds a shift from narrative text to content text reading, the latter credited with greater reading demands than the former. There is, however, dearth of research on how…

The underperformance of South African learners in literacy and numeracy is a cause of concern, especially at the transition from Grade 3 to Grade 4. At Grade 4 in South Africa, the majority of learners begin learning in English, which to them is an additional language posing transition challenges of a linguistic nature. The sustained poor…