Cultural content as a precursor to the development of students’ reading comprehension in selected secondary schools in Jinja District

Abstract

Reading comprehension is an essential skill vital to propel learning, not only in English as a language, but also in all other disciplines across the curriculum. Cognizant of this fact, this study; Cultural Content as a Precursor to the Development of Students‟ Reading was carried out specifically to establish how teachers of language can utilise the content provided for in the instructional texts to spur students‟ comprehension which was deteriorating. This study was carried out randomly in four selected schools in Jinja District in Eastern Uganda following the three set objectives. Using observation, interviews, questionnaires, document analysis and Focus Discussion Groups (FDGs), the researcher was in position to gather the necessary data which facilitated the analysis in this research. It was found out that the Cultural Content (CC) ingrained in the instructional texts had a strong bearing in the students‟ reading cognition hence development. 64.7% of the students strongly agreed that they enthusiastically dealt with reading texts of Source Cultural Content (SCC) with ease and great engagement. The present study established that this was because learners were in position to exploit and exercise their prior knowledge of the characters, places and incidences in these texts drawn from their communities and everyday life.

On the contrary, reading texts from (Target Cultural Content) TCC were viewed by learners as challenging to deal with because of their „alien‟ nature. This, consequently, constrained students reading‟ cognition as evidenced in the documents analysed in the study. It was also observed that students engaged more proactively with texts of SCC nature as opposed to those of TCC. It was concluded that plenty of reading texts from SCC was perceived to be critical, as learners would use their background knowledge to navigate through them. Thereafter, such proficiency would be transferred to texts of TCC in a gradual manner. It was recommended that textbook writers and material developers should take into account more of the students‟ CC orientation when choosing content. This would promote incidental language learning, which is desirable in ELT.