Background: Phonological awareness (PA) skills and working memory (WM) are universally regarded as crucial precursors to skilled reading. The orthography of the language being read influences the ease with which a child learns to read. Research has been undertaken on reading in languages with an opaque orthography. Research on the role of PA and…

This article examines the relationship between housing, a critical aspect of socio-economic conditions, and literacy achievement of children from a school in a high density suburb in South Africa. Data was collected through a quantitative survey that was administered to learners (N = 160) from four Grade Five classes. The survey included five…

Language is a contextual factor of an education system as it determines the Language of Learning and Teaching (LOLT). In order to provide for diversity in South Africa, the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, makes provision for 11 official languages and the Language in Education Policy (LiEP) promotes respect for not only these…

Self-efficacy, which is the belief about one's ability to perform a task successfully, has been widely acknowledged as important in learning. This affective factor, though not explicitly evident, has been said to play an important role in academic performance. However, its role in reading development has not been widely investigated. To determine…

Much hope is placed on education systems to reduce socio-economic learning gaps. However, in South Africa, uneven functioning of the school system widens learning gaps. This paper analyses education performance using ANA data. Weak calibration and inter-temporal or inter-grade comparability of ANA test scores limit their usefulness for measuring…

The acquisition of reading skills of 100 monolingual English and 100 bilingual Zulu-English third-grade learners was investigated by measuring their phonological and reading skills. Little research exists on how the presence of a spoken-only Zulu (L1) could influence the English (L2) reading acquisition process. PA tasks were correlated with…