A NARRATIVE ENRICHMENT PROGRAMME IN LITERACY DEVELOPMENT OF AFRIKAANS GRADE 3 LEARNERS IN MONOLINGUAL RURAL SCHOOLS

This study is motivated by existing information on the discontinuity between home literacy practices and school literacy expectations of learners who typically speak a local variety of their mother tongue which differs in various ways from the standardised language of learning and teaching (LoLT). In this particular case, the study refers to Afrikaans as a home language and language in education. These learners typically perform below par on standardised South African literacy tests such as the Annual National Assessment (ANA) and the Systemic Evaluation Test. They show delayed achievement of literacy milestones, higher school dropout rates and less achievement of access to higher learning opportunities In the present study, a two-part Narrative Enrichment Programme was introduced. The first part provided learners with an enriched reading, listening and writing environment in which they could engage with novel stories and work towards producing their own little books. The second part of the programme consisted of supporting exercises that addressed narrative structure issues that arose in the course of the first part. Specifically, exercises of picture sequencing, picture-sentence matching and an exercise called "Beginning, Middle and End" were used to assess how learners recount the various narrative components and the chronology.