Open AccessDo Oral and Literacy Skills in Native Ghanaian Akan Language Modulate English Reading Comprehension as Second Language? A Study in Selected Basic Schools in Ghana
Author(s) -
Stephen Ntim
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
education and linguistics research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2377-1356
DOI - 10.5296/elr.v2i2.8867
Subject(s) - reading comprehension , first language , psychology , reading (process) , sentence , cognition , literacy , linguistics , test (biology) , comprehension , mathematics education , pedagogy , philosophy , neuroscience , paleontology , biology
This study investigated oral and literacy skills in native Ghanaian Akan language in mediating English reading comprehension of bilingual basic school students. Levene’s test for homogeneity of variance between groups on questions directly found in text showed variances were significantly different [F=49.070, p=0.00]. Bonferroni Post-hoc test comparing groups on questions requiring making multiple sentence meanings to be able to answer, data indicated a significant difference between mean scores of students who speak both English and Akan and students who speak English Only in favour of students who speak both English and Akan. Also, students who speak Akan Only performed significantly better than students who speak English Only with.no significant difference between mean scores of students who speak Akan Only and students who speak both English and Akan. This suggests the impact of native language in second language reading comprehension is enormous. When bilinguals are reading second language (and in this study English) they are likely to make use of previous knowledge, strategies and processes from the first language through cognitive/psycholinguistic factors as orthographic processing, phonological code and meaning activation among others and by so doing limiting the effect of cognitive load in the target language.