Failure to thrive? The community literacy strand of an additive bilingual project in a South African community school

George Hunt

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This paper discusses an attempt to establish community literacy procedures in an Eastern Cape community school. The school hosts the Additive Bilingual Education (ABLE) project, a cooperation between UK and South African universities and the school trust. The community literacy strand of the project encourages family members to contribute oral texts in Xhosa to the school (for example, ntsomi or traditional stories, biographies and procedural texts such as recipes). These are then turned into print and electronic text through shared writing, and act as reading resources through paired reading, a cross-age peer-tutoring procedure. This is an attempt to deal with the shortage of reading material in Xhosa, while at the same time enhancing community involvement in the school by producing ‘culturally relevant’ materials. In discussing the problems I encountered in attempting to establish these procedures, I seek to link factors operating at the micro level of school practicalities and community attitudes with those operating at the macro level of national policy and international cooperation.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)80-96
JournalJournal of Research in Reading
Volume30
Issue number1
Early online date31 Jan 2007
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2007

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • bilingual education
  • literacy
  • South Africa

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