The teaching of reading in Botswana Government Primary Shcools

Abstract

This study investigated how reading is taught in Botswana Government schools. The findings indicate that inadequate reading instruction by teachers, their inability to model
and provide students with research-based proven strategies, lack of reading
specialists/coaches in the primary schools, the use of only basal series as the primary texts
for reading, were responsible for the presence of many struggling readers and non-readers
in the Botswana Government Primary Schools. The study is important in that it will
reacquaint teachers with some aspects of the reading process, adequate reading instruction
and ability to model reading strategies in their classes. In this regard the Ministry of
Education may have to employ reading couches in the primary schools. The paper also
recommends, among other things, raising the status of reading by making it a school
subject in its right so that it can be examined just like any other school subject.

Keywords: primary, reading, instruction, model, strategies, specialists

MARANG: Journal of Language and Literature Vol. 17 2007: pp. 13-28