Exploring the Gaps Between Policy and Practice in a South African Reading Comprehension Class: An Appraisal Analysis.

This paper explores possible factors contributing to the South African literacy crisis. Using Appraisal analysis and Don's (2016) invocation spectrum, this study tracks the role of invoked meaning in the theoretical taxonomies informing reading comprehension in South Africa and in the Curriculum and...

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Publicado en:Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics Vol. 16; no. 2; pp. 178 - 195
Autores principales: Kitchen, Tracy, Adendorff, Ralph
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz 2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: Exploring the Gaps Between Policy and Practice in a South African Reading Comprehension Class: An Appraisal Analysis.
      aug:
        au:
          Kitchen, Tracy
          Adendorff, Ralph
        affil:
          Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching & Learning, Education Faculty, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa
          Department of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Humanities Faculty, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa
      su:
        Literacy
        Reading comprehension
        South Africans
        Meaning (Philosophy)
        Curriculum-based assessment
        Fourth grade (Education)
        Educational evaluation
        Standards
        South Africa
      sug:
        subj:
          South Africa
          Literacy
          Reading comprehension
          South Africans
          Meaning (Philosophy)
          Curriculum-based assessment
          Fourth grade (Education)
          Educational evaluation
          Standards
      keyword:
        Appraisal
        Implicit Meaning
        Reading Comprehension Pedagogy
      ab: This paper explores possible factors contributing to the South African literacy crisis. Using Appraisal analysis and Don's (2016) invocation spectrum, this study tracks the role of invoked meaning in the theoretical taxonomies informing reading comprehension in South Africa and in the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement governing teaching/assessing at the Grade 4 (10-year-old) level. Similarly, instantiations of invoked meaning in a teacher-selected comprehension text, its associated questions, and learners' responses to them are investigated. The analysis reveals significant disjuncts between policy and practice, particularly in the treatment of invoked meaning and how it is assessed. An overreliance on literal meaning in the comprehension activity further exacerbates matters, providing teachers and learners with a false sense of reading comprehension success, prompting the need for alternative ways of doing reading comprehension in classrooms.
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      src: R
    language: English
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