Teaching Reading to Multilingual Learners

Teaching and learning of language and literacy in South Africa has been evolving since the end of the Apartheid regime. With eleven officially recognized languages in our country, it is inevitable that we will find learners that speak one or more languages in schools where the language of teaching and learning is not their home language. The following essay will be discussing the teaching of reading to multilingual learners, the methods teachers use in the classroom to assist these learners, the challenges teachers and learners face while teaching and learning and the possible solutions to these challenges.

South Africa is a diverse country with many cultures and religions that has lead to the recognition of the many official languages that we have today. The eleven official languages of South Africa include English (the language that is commonly used to communicate across the globe), isiXhosa, isiNdebele, isiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga and Afrikaans making it more than likely for teachers to have learners in their classes that speak more than one of these eleven languages or, more importantly, learners sitting in their classroom that speak one or more of these languages but do not understand the language in which the teaching and learning takes place.

Learners would need to be able to understand the language that they are being taught in and be able to read, with the ability to comprehend what they have read, in the language of teaching and learning (Manasse, 2010).

To be considered multilingual, you would have to speak two or more languages. These languages could possibly be two or more of the South Africa’s eleven official languages (Prosper & Nomlomo, 2016) or it could be two or more languages that is not recognized as any of the country’s official languages such as Dutch or French if that forms part of your heritage. However, being multilingual (irrespective which official or unofficial language is your home language), being in a class where the language of teaching and learning is not your home language, you may experience some barriers when learning.

Reading plays a vital role in learning as it is a way of transferring information from one person to another. Reading is broadly described as a social interaction in which a person makes use of the information in a text in conjunction with the information that the person already possesses (their prior knowledge) to create meaning of what they have read. The ability to read successfully leads to the understanding and comprehension of written texts, with the reader being able to apply the newly gained knowledge in a similar or completely different context (Manasse, 2010).

Reading is one of the most important skills to acquire when it comes to teaching and learning so much so, that teachers that have the appropriate qualifications are sought to be extremely important when it comes to primary education. Although reading is deemed as one of the most important skills, it is, as well as many other literacy skills, identified by some a difficult skill to master especially for those that are not learning in their Home Language but rather their second or third language. For many learners that sits in classrooms where teaching and learning takes place in their second or third language, a skill such as reading is difficult to master. The difficulty is not only an intrinsic barrier but, more likely an extrinsic barrier as it is external factors that make it difficult for them to learn (Manasse, 2010; Kotze, Van der Westhuizen & Barnard, 2017).

Some of these barriers only exist because they had little to no understanding of the language that they were being taught in. Learners often failed to grasp concepts or master any skill because they did not understand the language the instructions were given in (Kotze et al, 2017). Often, these barriers to learning derive from having teachers that lack the competencies to teach multilingual learners, learners not being exposed to languages that they are being taught in at school, outside of their school environment and schools having little to no multilingual material for learners to interact with (Prosper & Nomlomo, 2016).

Teaching reading to multilingual learners can be somewhat challenging especially if the teacher does not have the adequate training and the adequate resources to do so (Kotze et al, 2017). The time that teachers have to teach content or to work on developing learners skills is just not sufficient enough. Time is very limited for teachers to teach their learners meaningful content because they have to work at a fast pace, feeling as if they have rushed their learners to complete tasks, instead of teaching their learners while using a variety of teaching strategies that would be beneficial to their learning or as teachers, for them to be as encouraging as they could be when their learners are not learning in their Home language. This creates an opportunity for teachers to try and teach multilingual learners using a combination of methods (Kotze et al, 2017; Manasse, 2010).

The method or approach that is suggested by the government in the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) document which teachers should use to teach reading to learners is the balanced approach / the balanced reading programme (Pretorius, Jackson, McKay, Murray & Spaull, 2016). A balanced approach is considered as a decision making approach in which the teacher has to make considerate decisions that would best suit his or her on a daily basis that would assist each child becoming a better reader and a better writer. This approach allows for the teacher to reflect on the decisions that were made and change up instructions daily it if it did not produce a suitable outcome (Joubert, Bester, Meyer, Evans, & Phatudi, 2015).

For learners that learns in a language that is not their home language but rather their first additional language, teachers could possibly use mixed methods to teach these learners to read as they are not learning in their home language (Caddy, 2015). For example, a teacher could possibly use a combination of a whole language approach and a phonic approach. The whole language approach emphasizes strongly on the integration of listening, writing and reading whereas the phonic method on the other hand the phonic method, also called phonology, which is the formation and pronunciation of speech sounds (Joubert et al., 2015: Caddy, 2015) and in combination, teachers would be focusing on the formation and pronunciation of words when teaching learners listening, writing and reading.

The ability to successfully teach reading to learners that are from a multilingual background and that is not learning or being taught in their home language, is dependent on the teacher’s knowledge of literacy too. The teacher’s effectiveness of his/her literacy instructions could possibly be linked to the teacher’s own reading habits. Teachers should also familiarize themselves with the types of literacy, whether it may be poems, fiction or non-fiction, that creates opportunities for young learners to engage with print and become familiar with it, to harness information and to gain new perspective but most importantly, print that the learners would find interesting and entertaining that is on their level (Pretorius et al., 2016).