- Title
- Orthographic knowledge in isiXhosa and its relation to phonological processing, letter-sound knowledge, reading and spelling
- Creator
- Daries, Mikaela Ann
- Subject
- Xhosa language Orthography and spelling
- Subject
- Phonological awareness
- Subject
- Psycholinguistics
- Subject
- Oral reading Usage
- Subject
- Literacy South Africa
- Subject
- Reading Phonetic method
- Date Issued
- 2022-10-14
- Date
- 2022-10-14
- Type
- Academic theses
- Type
- Master's theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/406703
- Identifier
- vital:70300
- Description
- Despite international research confirming its importance, writing and related metalinguistic skills have often been neglected in comparison to reading in literacy research (Cunningham et al., 2001; Castles & Coltheart, 2004; Nag, 2007; Roman et al., 2009; Zhao et al., 2017). On a national level there are very few studies that have explored the writing aspect of literacy in South Africa, and none that has investigated orthographic knowledge in a Southern Bantu language, such as isiXhosa. In an attempt to address this gap, this thesis explores orthographic knowledge and its components in isiXhosa. In particular, it seeks to investigate the unique predictors of word specific and general orthographic knowledge as well as their role for reading and spelling in isiXhosa while controlling for phonological awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN), and letter-sound knowledge. Furthermore, the thesis attempts to situate its findings within the main premises of the self-teaching hypothesis and dual route approach to orthographic processing in order to contribute to linguistic theories of reading with cross-linguistic evidence (Jorm & Share, 1983; Share & Jorm, 1987; Share, 1995; Grainger & Ziegler, 2011). A quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted with 140 isiXhosa home language third grade learners in which word specific and general orthographic knowledge tasks were specifically designed. These tasks were administered along with oral reading fluency (ORF), spelling, PA, RAN, and letter-sound knowledge. The findings revealed that letter-sound knowledge and PA contributed the largest variance towards both word specific and general orthographic knowledge. Further, word specific orthographic knowledge and letter-sound knowledge were the only significant predictors of spelling. Similarly, both word specific and letter-sound knowledge were significant predictors of reading, along with RAN and general orthographic knowledge. Quantile linear regression analyses revealed that word specific orthographic knowledge was a robust predictor of spelling and letter-sound knowledge was a robust predictor of reading across ability levels confirming the importance for word specific orthographic knowledge for spelling and letter-sound knowledge for reading in isiXhosa. In relation to the two reading theories considered in this thesis, the findings reflect similarities between the assertions of the self-teaching hypothesis and current thesis with suggestions made for further inquiry. The dual route approach to orthographic processing provides insights into the potential processing of orthographic information while reading in isiXhosa. The findings of this study confirm the importance of orthographic knowledge for reading and spelling for languages with transparent orthographies such as isiXhosa.
- Description
- Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2022
- Format
- computer
- Format
- online resource
- Format
- application/pdf
- Format
- 1 online resource (160 pages)
- Format
- Publisher
- Rhodes University
- Publisher
- Faculty of Humanities, Linguistics and Applied Language Studies
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Daries, Mikaela Ann
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike" License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | DARIES-MA-TR22-265.pdf | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |