Examining oral reading fluency among grade 5 rural English Second Language (ESL) learners in South Africa: An analysis of NEEDU 2013

Kim Draper () and Nicholas Spaull ()
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Kim Draper: Centre for Development and Enterprise

No 09/2015, Working Papers from Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The ability to read for meaning and pleasure is arguably the most important skill children learn in primary school. One integral component of learning to read is Oral Reading Fluency (ORF), defined as the ability to read text quickly, accurately, and with meaningful expression. Although widely acknowledged in the literature as important, to date there have been no large-scale studies on ORF in English in South Africa, despite this being the language of learning and teaching for 90% of students from Grade 4 onwards. As part of the National Education and Evaluation Development Unit (NEEDU) of South Africa, we collected and here analyze data on 4667 grade 5 English Second Language (ESL) students from 214 schools across rural areas in South Africa. This included ORF and comprehension measures for a subset of 1772 students. We find that 41% of the sample were non-readers in English (

Keywords: Oral reading fluency; ESL; South Africa; NEEDU; WCPM (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I21 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ger
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