Skilled reading in isiZulu: what can we learn from it?

Research on reading in African languages is particularly pertinent in South Africa now, in view of the poor reading performance in many South African schools. This paper is based on a study of competent adult readers of isiZulu that analysed what its orthography (the way it is written) requires of readers. As an agglutinative language with a conjoined writing system, isiZulu carries meaning not only in separate words, but also in morphemes that cluster together, forming long complex words. Eye tracking data shows that competent readers of isiZulu move their eyes across text in saccades (shifts of the point of focus) that are short in comparison with the saccades of efficient reading of English. It also shows that readers of isiZulu fixate on points of text for longer periods than do readers of English. The study links eye movement data to information gained from a stimulated recall process, to discover strategies consciously used by competent readers of isiZulu. Some of these strategies, such as visualisation, are common to efficient readers of all languages, while others might be peculiar to agglutinating and/or tonal languages. These strategies inform suggestions for the development of effective reading skills in isiZulu. The key argument of the paper is that the orthography of isiZulu has features that require attention by teachers of reading if their learners are to benefit from the advantages that reading in their first language should bring.