Multilingualism can mask poor reading instruction, educator says

The multilingual nature of South African society is used as an easy excuse for the fact that many primary school pupils have reading problems but it is masking the fact that reading skills are often poorly taught, according to Sarah Howie, director of Pretoria University's Centre for Evaluation and Assessment. South Africa participated last year in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement in almost 40 countries worldwide. "We don't have (academically) publishable evidence yet ... but from what we've seen the (pupils) do no better in their own language (than they do in English), and that's rather depressing," says Howie. Read more about the problems of multilingual classrooms at allAfrica.com.