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EGRA SENEGAL

Early Grade Reading Assessment:Second Workshop, March 12-14, 2008

Washington, DC

Momar Samb, National Institute for Education Development, Senegal,

Liliane Sprenger-Charolles, CNRS & Paris Descartes, France

Senegalese Primary School Students Learning to Read in French

and in Wolof

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A. METHODWith Senegalese and Gambian officials, during a workshop

organized in Dakar by RTI and the World Bank (April 2007) : the initial EGRA protocol was modified and adapted in French and English the French version was translated into Wolof these new versions of the EGRA protocol were pretested in several schools After the pretesting process, the EGRA protocol was once again modified

Tasks used in Senegal (and Gambia): 1 reading and 1 listening comprehension task 4 tasks that assess accuracy and speed in reading (1 minute tests):

- letters - isolated words - words in context - invented words (pseudowords)

1 spelling task, including an assessment of word spelling 2 phonemic awareness tasks: phoneme identification and counting

Surveys: Questions to students about their cultural and linguistic

environment, and socioeconomic status (SES). Questions to teachers about their practices of instruction (results

not analyzed)

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Participants: Senegalese students learning to read in– French: 502 children (1st, 2nd and 3rd graders) – Wolof: 186 children (only 1st and 3rd graders)

Two main analyses were performed: To assess the significance of the differences due to the

main factors assumed to have an incidence on reading acquisition (e.g., socio-economic status, SES) we have compared (ANOVAs and t-tests) the results of:

• children from the lower SES category versus those from the higher category• boys versus girls, • children speaking only Wolof at home versus those speaking also French,• children with at least one literate parent versus those with no literate parent, • children learning to read in their mother tongue (Wolof) versus in French, • and those learning to read in French versus in English (Gambian study).

To determine the main predictors of reading level, regression analyses were carried out.

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B. RESULTS1. Percentage of first graders with scores at the floor level (= 0)

Word spelling

PseudoWords

IsolatedWords

Word-context

Read-ing

Listen-ing

Coun-ting

Identifi-cation

Wolof 95% 63% 63% 71% 81% 26% 44% 37%

French 80% 39% 27% 50% 79% 63% 38% 37%

Spelling Reading Comprehension Phoneme: counting and identification

Very high percentage of first graders with scores at the floor level: o for the word reading and spelling tasks,

especially for children who were learning to read in Wolofo For the listening comprehension task,

especially for children who were learning to read in French

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A problem for the reading comprehension task: 5 questions on the text used to assess word-in-context reading. A child had to read at least 20 words of this text to obtain a reading

comprehension score of 1. About 50% of the Senegalese children were unable to correctly read

more than 5 words of this text in 1 minute. Some of these children achieved a reading comprehension score

between 1 and 5 (5 being the maximum).

Problem due to the procedure used for the word-in-context task: The students were allowed to read the text for at least 2 minutes, but

only words correctly read in 1 minute were coded: Not possible to determine the total number of words read correctly.

When the child was unable to read a word, the examiner provided it: In cases where the examiner provided a large number of words, the

task became a mixture of reading and listening comprehension. Children can have guessed on answers, especially for yes/no questions

Therefore, for the regression analyses, we have only examined the reading comprehension scores for children who were able to read at least 20 words in 1 minute (around 30% in each group)

However, for comparisons within and between the groups, we have taken into account the original data these results, thus, should be considered with caution

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2. Effects of SES, Gender, Parents’ literacy status…

•SES: Significant only among children learning to read in Wolof•GENDER: Significant only among children learning to read in French: Girls outperformed boys in word reading and spelling•PARENTS’ LITERACY STATUS: Significant only among the children learning to read in French•HOME LANGUAGE: *Children learning to read in French and speaking at home only Wolof or French + Wolof Significant differences, except for spelling.

*

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3a. Effect of the language in which children are learning to Read: Wolof vs French (Grades 1 and 3)

•No differences between the groups in terms of age and SES. •Children learning to read in Wolof scored higher for two tasks that assessed spoken language (listening comprehension and phoneme counting) •Children learning to read in French scored higher for two tasks that assessed written language (orthographic skills).

mean and Standard Deviation

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3b. Effect of the language in which children are learning to Read: English vs French (Grades 1 to 3)

mean and Standard Deviation

•The SES of Gambian children was lower than that of Senegalese children.•Even after the effect of SES was taken into account, the scores of the Senegalese children were higher than those of the Gambian children•Except for the listening comprehension task.

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Cells in grey: Variables not taken into account

4. Prediction of Isolated Word and Word in context reading and reading comprehension

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C. SUMMARY1. Predictors of reading skills

Isolated-word and word-in-context reading: for both groups most of the variance in these two tasks was explained by the

variables entered in the model, and the sole unique predictor was pseudoword reading, not phonemic awareness, nor letter knowledge, WHY?

Significance of decoding skills for reading acquisition

Reading comprehension: for both groups only a small part of the variance was explained by the variables

entered in the model, and the sole unique predictor was listening comprehension, not word reading, except word-in-context reading for children

learning to read in Wolof. This result might be due to the fact that only children able to read at

least 20 words of the text in 1 min. were included in the analyses (30%) The reading comprehension task should be modified

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2a. Effect of the language in which the children are learning to read:

English versus French For the reading tasks, the Senegalese children

surpassed the Gambian children.

This result confirms those reported in the literature, indicating that the degree of consistency of Grapheme-phoneme correspondences affects the acquisition of reading skills

see Seymour et al., 2003; Sprenger-Charolles, 2003; Sprenger-Charolles et al., 2006; Ziegler & Goswami, 2005.

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2b. Wolof versus French In some tasks involving written language,

children learning to read in French surpassed those learning to read in Wolof.

This result may be due to the fact that written Wolof is not as developed as written French. Children learning to read in Wolof were thus less exposed to written materials in this language than those learning to read in French.

This interpretation is reinforced by the fact that: there were more floor effects in reading-spelling tasks among

children learning to read in Wolof than among those learning to read in French;

there were no difference in reading-spelling scores due to the parents’ literacy status among children learning to read in Wolof,

• while for children learning to read in French, those with at least one literate parent scored higher in almost all reading-spelling task

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This study highlights the fact that reading acquisition depends on the degree of Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondence (GPC) consistency.

Given the importance of mastering GPC to learn to read, teachers must be aware of the GPC rules in the language in

which they are teaching children how to read.

To master GPC, children must be able to discriminate the phonemes of the language in which they learn to read,

Thus, teachers must know the phonological system:- of the language in which they are teaching - and that of the children’s mother tongue.

This knowledge might help them understand the possible interferences between phonological systems that may impede:

- not only the acquisition of a new spoken language, - but also reading acquisition in that language.

At least, the main characteristics of the phonological and orthographic systems of the languages concerned must be provided to the local teams

D. Implications for educational policy

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This study also highlights the difficulties related to establishing educational policy.

The fact that children learning to read in their mother tongue (Wolof) achieved better results than those learning to read in French

o only for tasks involving spoken language o not for tasks involving written language

might be due to the fact that written Wolof is not as developed as written French.

Thus, two policy options are possible: either to develop the writing culture in Wolof  Or to learn to read in a language that is not the

mother tongue of the children but for which written materials are numerous,

diverse, and accessible.

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see for some suggestions, the reports for the World Bank on:

Senegalese results (Report in English and in French)Sprenger-Charolles, L. (2008). Results from Senegalese Primary School

Students Learning to Read in French and in Wolof—Report for the World Bank. Web site: www.eddataglobal.org

Sprenger-Charolles, L. (2008). Résultats d’élèves sénégalais des trois premiers grades ayant appris à lire en français et en wolof—rapport pour la Banque mondiale. Web site: www.eddataglobal.org

Gambian resultsSprenger-Charolles, L. (2008). Early grade reading assessments (EGRA):

Results of 1200 Gambian children learning to read in English (Report for the World Bank). Web site: www.eddataglobal.org

E. Implications for future EGRA applications