Question 5: Interpretation
5.2 Summary
5.3.2 Parental involvement
The findings show that the parents don’t have enough time to create a learning environment at home. The parents also are not communicating with their children about homework. Every day they prepare to go to work and later when they come back they feel very tired and they want to rest.
Kerr (2018) asserts that a setting in the home that is conducive to learning can have a positive impact on graders, but parents who are disengaged are less likely to provide this.
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This inadequate environment can be something as simple as not having a quiet place to concentrate or something much greater, such as parental abuse.
The parents are investing more time in working to earn a living than to encourage schooling for their children. This became evident during the interviews with educator’s who stated that some learners become parents at home as they have to look after their siblings, clean the house and cook for them. When it is time to study or watch television the learner is tired already. Sometimes learners tend to be absent from school, so that they will be able to focus on the family issues.
In addition, if there is no electricity the learner will not able to charge his/ her cell phone to attend the group discussion online either presented by a teacher or other learners.
The curriculum assessment and policy statement also attempts to involve the contribution of parents to assist their learners in education, but some parents do not care about their children’s education.
Gibbons, (2006) states that promotion of children’s ability to read and write is not a program for schools only but it also requires home and community environment that are supportive. In their interviews educators mentioned that in order to make sure that children are able to read, they must start to learn from the foundation phase and the teacher needs to understand the reading and writing background of these children. The teacher should know or understand whether the children in his/her classroom are given any support for reading and writing at their homes.
One teacher mentioned that cell phones can capture information that will help the children at home. The teacher can teach the learner online how to pronounce words, how to read words and how to write words. Teachers can also give these children extra lessons through cell phones.
125 5.3.3 Literature as a tool and language problem
It is common knowledge that literature and language are closely related. Literature is constituted by language and represents one of the most recurrent uses of language.
Language and linguistic analysis can be employed to access literature from the learner’s point of view. Literature can be used in language and for teaching because it provides the learners with authentic samples of language and a wide range of styles, text types and registers.
Another finding from the study is that it is important that technology be used in class for young children, as it helps with child language development and motivates them to learn.
The starting point for children to learn a language could be in the form of a word processor that will allow children to create and recreate text until it is fully comprehensible to others and is accurate.
Each technological tool utilised in language learning has a specific benefit and application to one of the four language parts, namely reading, speaking, listening and writing.
However, to use these techniques successfully, the language learners should be familiar with using computers and the internet and be capable of interacting with these technologies.
Reading refers not only to the ability to decode words on a page but also to read with appropriate speech, expression and comprehension of what is being read. Children learn to decode print initially by recognising words based on their key visual characteristics.
They learn about the alphabetic principle and letter-sound correspondences. Reading comprehension can be thought of as the product of decoding and language skills.
Active listening strategies and critical thinking skills promote the ability to articulate and develop ideas, participate appropriately in group activities, and improvise and produce an appropriate script. Today, teaching children how to read is vastly different from traditional
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education methods, and many children struggle with reading and speaking. Some show a lack of interest and others simply have difficulty in understanding what they are reading.
The study revealed that technology can support teaching and listening skills, which in turn, impacts on children's narrative composition skills and how they can be used as a focus for collaborative activity between peers on a literacy-orientated task in the early years.
Long and Gove (2003) believe that students who are engaged in what they read make deeper connections to the text, whether fiction or non-fiction, by questioning, investigating and interpreting what they read as they read. A literature lesson can require children to make up poems, stories and perform in plays.
The use of computers can enable children to create a draft of their work, show it to others, make changes, if necessary, reveal that their spelling or grammar needs improvement, improve their language and literacy skills, allow them to use the internet to search for information, and communicate with each other.
There is challenge for learners who are doing a home language subject and who were not educated in their mother tongue during their early years of education. As a result these learners have poor language proficiency in their mother tongue which affects the learner’s ability to cope at school.
The data received highlighted that the inability of learners to understand or read and write in African languages is the reason for their failure or lack of progress in the school. The researcher sees the CAPS document as grounded on social constructivism which emphasises culture and language development of reading, writing, listening and speaking.
The chapter on literature review analysed the CAPS curriculum. The culture of reading and writing in the classroom is done through the CAPS document. Prepared and unprepared speeches form part of the CAPS curriculum. A prepared speech is described
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as a topic that is researched and prepared for a presentation of approximately two to three minutes in class. An unprepared speech is delivered without being planned. The finding on orality in the classroom has shown that there is limited time given for oral lesson the reason being the overcrowding of the class and it is difficult to do oral exercises with 45 learners. The period cannot accommodate all learners. Some learners are afraid of doing orals for fear of being ridiculed for their mistakes.