Visual and Linguistic Factors in Literacy Acquisition : Instructional Implications for Beginning Readers in Low-income Countries
Improving the quality of literacy teaching may require intervening at different levels, for example, encouraging school attendance and optimizing textbook format and teaching methods. Reading is a complex task involving perceptual, motor, linguisti...
Main Authors: | , , , , |
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Format: | Working Paper |
Language: | English en_US |
Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2013
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/01/18043049/visual-linguistic-factors-literacy-acquisition-instructional-implications-beginning-readers-low-income-countries http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16244 |
Summary: | Improving the quality of literacy
teaching may require intervening at different levels, for
example, encouraging school attendance and optimizing
textbook format and teaching methods. Reading is a complex
task involving perceptual, motor, linguistic, phonological,
and memory components, each of which has a crucial role in
determining reading rate. High poverty rates continue to
have a negative impact on human resource development and
education quality in Africa, further complicating the
ability of most countries to reach the Education for All
(EFA) and Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Moreover,
Africa and Asia are hosts to most of the world's
multilingual countries, in which textbook availability in
major indigenous languages is sorely lacking. Therefore, it
is important to take all possible steps to maximize the
effectiveness of teaching interventions. In parallel, also
the quality of textbooks is a crucial factor for quality
education, especially in developing countries. It is
important to dispose of well-written and well-designed
textbooks, because the quality of textbook can be an
important predictor of student learning and can contribute
to the effective use of instructional time and classroom
teaching. This review examines the evidence regarding
variables influencing acquisition of decoding and
comprehension reading skills. One important caveat is in
order. While the educational, psychological and neuroscience
literature on reading is extensive, it largely depends upon
studies on English speaking individuals. The first part of
the review focuses on studies of visual psychophysics and
examines the visual limitations affecting reading and its
development. The second part of the review draws on the
psychological and neuroscience literature to examine the
role of several variables influencing reading acquisition,
such as letter knowledge, teaching method, teacher's
competence, orthographic consistency. |
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