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국회도서관 홈으로 정보검색 소장정보 검색

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Title page

Contents

Abstract 1

1. Introduction 3

2. Literature and theories of reading acquisition 5

2.1. The Simple View of Reading 5

2.2. Deciding on the Language of Instruction (LOI) 7

3. South African Context 9

3.1. Language policy 10

4. Program Description and Evaluation Design 11

4.1. Program Description 11

4.2. Experimental Design 14

4.3. Data Collection 15

5. Data analysis 16

5.1. Empirical Strategy 16

5.2. Internal validity tests: balance and attrition 17

5.3. Implementation quality and earlier impacts 19

5.4. Main Results: Language Transfer 22

5.5. Quantile Regressions 23

5.6. Mediation Analysis 25

6. Discussion and mechanisms 26

6.1. Ruling out competing mechanisms 26

6.2. Theoretical explanations 28

7. Conclusion 30

References 33

Table 1. Timelines for the intervention and data collection EGRS I and EGRS II 14

Table 2. Common items of the learner assessments across rounds of data collection 16

Table 3. Comparison between EGRS I and II samples in grade 4 English literacy 18

Table 4. Implementation Quality 20

Table 5. Impacts on home language and English literacy at the end of grade 4 23

Table 6. Mediating effects of grade 2 home language literacy on grade 4 English ORF 26

Figure 1. Proportion of students cannot read a single word, by grade, language, and sample 18

Figure 2. Treatment effects, by study and year 21

Figure 3. Quantile regressions for ERGS II on Grade 3 literacy outcomes 24

초록보기

In many countries children need to become proficient in both their home language (L1) and an international language, such as English (L2). Governments face trade-offs in how to prioritize these two objectives. We provide empirical evidence on cross-linguistic transfer between L1 and L2, using results of two randomized evaluations of Structured Pedagogy Programs implemented in South Africa. The programs had the same design, implementing organization, and duration. The key difference is that one program targeted the teaching of reading in L1, while the other targeted L2. We find that both interventions had positive effects on the languages they targeted. The L1 intervention also had a positive effect on L2 reading proficiency. In contrast, the L2 intervention had a negative effect on L1 outcomes, for the lower-performing students. These results are consistent with the Simple View of Reading and suggest that decoding skills are best learned in L1. It is thus cost-effective to prioritize learning to read in L1, as well as supporting teachers in this subject, even if becoming proficient in L2 is also regarded as an important policy objective.