Oral reading fluency and comprehension in Kenya: reading acquisition in a multilingual environment

Oral reading fluency and comprehensionin Kenya: reading acquisition in amultilingual environment

Benjamin PiperRTI International, Nairobi, Kenya

Leila Schroeder and Barbara TrudellSIL Africa, Nairobi, Kenya

Reading research has shown that variable relationships exist between measures oforal reading fluency and reading comprehension, depending on whether thelanguage of the text is the reader’s first language or an additional language. Thispaper explores this phenomenon, using reading assessment data for 2,000 Kenyanchildren in two or three languages: English, Kiswahili and one of two mothertongues, Dholuo or Gikuyu. The assessment data allowed us to compare readingand comprehension rates across languages. The data indicated that many childrencould read English words more easily than words in Kiswahili or their mothertongue; nevertheless, their reading comprehension was significantly lower inEnglish than in Kiswahili, Dholuo or Gikuyu. The paper concludes thatemphasising English reading fluency is an inefficient route to gaining readingcomprehension skills because pupils are actually attaining minimal oral readingfluency in English and only modest comprehension skills in their own languages.The evidence also demonstrates that Kenya’s national language policy of mothertongue as a medium of instruction in the early primary grades is consistentlyignored in practice.

Kenyan language policy mandates mother tongue instruction in the first three grades(Kenya Institute of Education, 2002). However, implementation of this language policyis inconsistent in Kenyan classrooms for a variety of reasons; instead, instruction is givenprimarily in English (Trudell & Piper, 2013). Kenya’s colonial history and the currenteconomic influence of English in sub-Saharan Africa have given the English language aperceived value, which increases incentives for English to be used in classrooms,although English skills are quite limited in many parts of Kenya (Nyaga, 2013; Schroeder,2007; Trudell & Piper, 2013).Language-of-instruction choices such as those being made in Kenyan classrooms influ-

ence the relationships between oral reading fluency and comprehension. Research showsthat oral reading fluency is necessary for reading comprehension (Hoover & Gough,1990). For children to comprehend what they read, they must read with sufficientfluency – accuracy, speed and prosody (National Institute of Child Health & Human

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permitsuse, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Copyright © 2015 UKLA. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ,

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Journal of Research in Reading, ISSN 0141-0423 DOI:10.1111/1467-9817.12052Volume 00, Issue 00, 2015, pp 1–20

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Development [United States], 2000; Rasinski, Reutzel, Chard, & Linan-Thompson, 2010).Oral reading fluency has been shown to have a correlation of 0.5 or higher with readingcomprehension (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Stanovich, Cunningham, & Freeman, 1984),particularly where children are reading in their first language.The linearity of this relationship is often assumed, with the expectation that the

more fluently (accurately and quickly) a child recognises words in a text, the betterhe or she is likely to comprehend it. However, recent research on reading comprehen-sion in a second language indicates that the slope of the relationship between oralreading fluency and comprehension differs for a child’s first, second or third language(Abadzi, 2010; Kung, 2009; Walczyk & Griffith-Ross, 2007). It is evident thatresearch findings on children reading in their first language only are quite differentfrom research findings in multilingual reading situations (Gathercole, 2013). This re-search on second-language reading comprehension reveals a dimension missing fromearlier studies: the degree of readers’ mastery of the vocabulary and grammar of thesecond language. Thus, the predicted relationship between oral reading fluency andcomprehension, based on monolingual research settings, has dubious applicability tomultilingual reading situations (Gathercole, 2013; Perez, Izura, Stadthagen-Gonzanes,& Marín, 2013).These findings corroborate the simple view of reading described by Gough and Tunmer

(1986); they suggest that reading comprehension is the result of a combination of listeningcomprehension and decoding. While this approach is somewhat controversial, its emphasison the essential nature of listening comprehension implies that oral vocabulary is essentialfor reading outcomes (Rose, 2006).Research also shows that listening comprehension is not the only factor affecting the re-

lationship between oral reading fluency and reading comprehension. This relationship isalso mediated by the linguistic and socioeconomic features of the learner’s home environ-ment (August, Calderón, & Nutall, 2006; Piper, 2009), reading instruction and oral lan-guage skills (Koda & Zehler, 2008; Kung, 2009; Nakamoto, Lindsey, & Manis, 2008).These additional factors make it even less clear whether the relationships between oralreading fluency and reading comprehension in Western contexts hold in sub-SaharanAfrican contexts like Kenya.The Kenyan multilingual environment is well suited to investigate the range of factors

that affect the relationship between oral reading fluency and reading comprehension(Commeyras & Inyega, 2007). Sixty-nine languages are spoken in Kenya, with many chil-dren speaking three or more of those languages (Ethnologue, 2011). Kiswahili is a linguafranca and frequently a second language (L2) for Kenyan children, while English –where itis spoken at all – is usually a third or fourth language (Nyaga & Anthonissen, 2012; UwezoKenya, 2011). Yet, English is the predominant language of instruction in Kenyan primaryschools.This article examines the relationship between oral reading fluency and reading

comprehension as measured in two Kenyan language communities: the Dholuo-speaking area of Nyanza province1 and the Gikuyu-speaking Central province. TheKikuyu and Luo are two of the largest ethnic groups in Kenya, with 7,180,000Gikuyu and 4,270,000 Dholuo speakers (Ethnologue, 2011). The Kenyan Ministryof Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) chose Nyanza and Central provincesas the locations for this research because of the size of the ethnic groups and therelative language homogeneity of the provinces (Piper, 2010). The MoEST includedKiswahili in the study alongside the two mother tongues and English because

2 PIPER, SCHROEDER and TRUDELL

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Kiswahili is the official lingua franca of Kenya and the ostensible language of instruc-tion in the cosmopolitan and urban areas of the country.Thus, this study analyses student reading outcomes in four languages: English,

Kiswahili, Dholuo and Gikuyu. It focuses on the relationships between oral reading flu-ency and reading comprehension in these languages and explores the implications of theserelationships for Kenyan language policy. While other studies have investigated language-of-instruction policy, there remains a gap in the empirical evidence comparing student out-comes in Kenya across various languages.In order to explore these relationships, we used the data from a 2009 Early Grade Read-

ing Assessment (EGRA) undertaken by RTI International2 in Central and Nyanza prov-inces in Kenya, funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The study wasdesigned to evaluate the relationship between language of instruction and reading out-comes. The Kenyan data set was unique because children were assessed in more thanone language, and the children’s classrooms were observed to determine what languagesof instruction were being used. The study assessed 2,000 students in Standard (grade) 3(approximately 9 years old). Standard 3 was chosen because children would have had timeto learn fundamental reading skills. Children were assessed in English and Kiswahili, andin rural schools, in Dholuo or Gikuyu as well.

The context

Medium of instruction

Much research suggests that using a child’s mother tongue as the medium of instructionraises student achievement. Thomas and Collier (2002) showed that the longer immigrantchildren in the United States were taught in their mother tongue, the better their academicachievement. The Ife project in Nigeria (Fafunwa, Macauley, & Sokoya, 1989) demon-strated that using Nigerian languages of instruction improved academic performance. As-sessments from Ethiopia (Heugh, Benson, Bogale, & Yohannes, 2007), Zambia (Williams,1996) and Mali (Fomba et al., 2003) have argued that the use of the mother tongue as themedium of instruction leads to better learning.However, as Benson (2004) observed, parents, communities and policy-makers often

demand ex-colonial languages more than the mother tongue. The result is that many coun-tries utilise languages that are not understood by many children (Trudell, 2007). The com-plexity of book production in many languages often turns cost-benefit analyses againstlocal languages. If there is insufficient attention to teaching in local languages, if booksare unavailable and if teachers are undertrained, then instruction in local languages willbe poorly executed. A conventional wisdom then emerges that low quality and poor learn-ing outcomes are an inevitable result of linguistic complexity.

Reading fluency

Reading fluency has been described in various ways (National Institute of Child Health &Human Development [United States], 2000; Pikulski & Chard, 2005; Samuels, 2006), butwe define it as the ability to read accurately, quickly and with appropriate expression orprosody (Rasinski, 2003). Although this assessment did not gauge prosody –which is dif-ficult to measure reliably (National Institute of Child Health & Human Development

FLUENCYAND COMPREHENSION IN KENYA 3


[United States], 2000; Rasinski et al., 2010; Schwanenflugel, Hamilton, Wisenbaker,Kuhn, & Stahl, 2004) –we use the broader term fluency to respond to the literature that usesfluency and reading rate interchangeably.In some U.S. reading assessment contexts, the most common measure of reading fluency

is the number of correct words read per minute (cwpm) (Deno, 1985). Some U.S.-basedresearchers set the benchmark for English oral reading fluency needed for comprehensionat 60–90 cwpm in Grade 1, 85–120 in Grade 2 and 115–140 in Grade 3 (Harris & Sipay,1990; Hasbrouck & Tindal, 2006).Oral reading fluency measures must be language-specific because word length and or-

thographic complexity vary. Ellis et al. (2004) argued that the relationship between wordidentification fluency and word length is more linear in transparent orthographies. Trudelland Schroeder (2007) observed that, because of phonologically derived word-break rules,Bantu language words are often long and polymorphemic, so they take longer to decode(more than 500 languages in eastern and southern Africa are in the Bantu family, includingGikuyu and Kiswahili). Cwpm measures are problematic in comparing fluency across lan-guages; therefore, they cannot account for word length differences and grapheme complex-ity, and they ignore the fact that relationships between decoding speed and word length canbe non-linear (Ellis et al., 2004).

Implications for Kenyan languages

These linguistic features have an impact on reading fluency for the languages in this article.Fluent reading in Bantu languages such as Gikuyu and Kiswahili is aided by their transpar-ent orthographies; on the other hand, fluency requires the reader to master bothpolyphonemic syllables and polymorphemic words. In contrast, the relatively short wordsin English – and its orthographic depth –make sight-word recognition a more viable initialreading strategy than for many Bantu languages.For this discussion, the most important feature of Dholuo is its orthographic underrepre-

sentation (Okombo, 1997), both in the number of vowels and the lack of tone markings. Asa result, Dholuo readers try to read text via a writing system that often fails them; it hidesthe linguistic cues and the phonemic contrasts that their spoken language provides. Dholuohas nine contrastive vowel sounds, but they are represented with only five vowel letters.The letter < o>, for example, represents two vowel phonemes, /o/ and /ɔ/. <chanjo> or‘limping’ is pronounced /tsanjɔ/, while< chanjo> or ‘to vaccinate’ is pronounced/tsanjɔ/. The Dholuo writing system does not show the contrast. Aside from thousandsof vowel contrasts like this one, which are unwritten, Dholuo also has unwritten tonalcontrasts. For example, <kor> /ḳór/, which means ‘a prophecy’, and< kor> /kor/, whichmeans ‘a narrow path’, are spelled the same.

Comprehension

Gough and Tunmer’s (1986) model simplifies reading comprehension as the product of achild’s decoding and listening comprehension skills. Reading comprehension researchindicates that readers construct meaning by combining the information in the text withwhat they already know (Piper, Zuilkowski, & Mugenda, 2014; Samuels, 2006). Snow(2002) calls reading comprehension ‘the process of simultaneously extracting and con-structing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language’ (p. xiii).



Comprehension includes the ability to use prior knowledge to derive meaning from what isread (Hudson, 2007). Literature that reflects the linguistic and social contexts with whichthe readers are familiar will help them develop comprehension skills from the momentthey enter school (Schroeder, 2007).Regardless of first-language reading skills, failure to grasp the oral syntactic and mor-

phological features of the second language impedes text comprehension, although thiscan be overcome by high-quality instruction (Lesaux, Rupp, & Siegel, 2007; Lesaux &Siegel, 2003).

Relating fluency skills to comprehension skills

Discussion of reading skills often refers to lower-level (decoding or word-attack) skills andhigher-level (comprehension) skills. This is perhaps a simplistic description of the relation-ship between the skills; Stecker, Roser, and Martinez (1998) noted that ‘fluency has beenshown to have a “reciprocal relationship” with comprehension, with each fostering theother’ (p. 306). The view that comprehension is dependent on fluency also assumes thatthe reader has oral language skills in the language read. These readers often use word-decoding skills, and, as they become more accomplished readers, rely more on visual rec-ognition (Just & Carpenter, 1987).However, when learners in a second language are already literate in their first language,

they use their knowledge of the orthographic and syntactic features of both languages tomake sense of second-language text (Hudson, 2007). Where first-language readers are con-cerned, accuracy and speed of word-decoding skill are strong predictors of comprehension(Hudson, 2007). However, when the learners’ reading fluency is assessed in a language inwhich they lack oral skills and vocabulary, as is likely in a multilingual setting such asKenya, the relationship between fluency and comprehension documented with English-speaking monolinguals may differ (Gough & Tunmer, 1986).

Reading and the multilingual environment

Understanding effective reading instruction in multilingual primary classrooms requires at-tention to context. Children are not usually fluent speakers of their first language by thetime they begin primary school, given that mature speech patterns are not present untilage 10 (Baker, 2006; Cummins, 1984; Thomas & Collier, 2002). Introducing a second lan-guage as a medium of instruction before children master the first language can cause delay(Baker, 2006). Multilingual education is most likely to succeed (a) in settings in whichchildren have the chance to fully develop the first language (Cenoz & Genesee, 1998)and (b) when children are specifically taught how reading in one language is similar toor different from the second language (Lau & Liow, 2005; Nikolopoulos & Goulandris,2000; Patel, Snowling, & de Jong, 2004; Scholfield & Chwo, 2005; Seymour, 2006).

Transferring reading skills

After a learner is a proficient reader in a given language, several reading skills readilytransfer to a second language, including the knowledge that print carries meaning and isrelated to speech. Koda (2008) noted that the transfer of literacy ability from one languageto another may occur after the reader grasps three universals as follows: (a) print relates to



speech; (b) speech can be segmented into a sequence of sounds; and (c) these sounds relatesystematically to the graphic symbols in the writing system.Non-transferrable reading skills are the mapping details (e.g. particular sound–symbol

correspondences and grammatical features; see Koda, 2008) in the first language. The abil-ity to transfer reading ability from one language to another is affected by the linguistic sim-ilarity of the two languages (Cenoz & Genesee, 1998). As noted earlier, two languages inour study –Kiswahili and Gikuyu – are related members of the Bantu language family;Dholuo is Nilo-Saharan and English Indo-European.Successful reading acquisition in a second language depends on phonological aware-

ness, decoding skills and oral reading fluency in the first language, along with oral fluencyin the second language (Gove & Cvelich, 2011; Hudson, 2007). The goals of formal edu-cation in Kenya revolve around developing reading fluency and comprehension in English,which is either a second or a foreign language for most students, as described previously. Ifthe goal is reading fluency and comprehension in both the first and subsequent languages,then sufficient time must be given to developing oral and reading skills across languages.Even if the goal is solely second-language fluency (Kamwangamalu, 2010), attention tofirst-language reading skills – and second-language oral fluency –needs to be central toinstruction. However, empirical research from countries like Kenya on learning outcomesacross languages is lacking.

Language use in Kenyan schools

The unique language-of-instruction data in this article give a clear picture of languageusage in Kenyan primary schools. Based on the documented observations, in early-gradeclassrooms, the students’ mother tongue was used only 14.1% of the time (Piper & Miksic,2011). English was used more frequently than Kiswahili and the mother tongue in bothurban and rural locations. Use of the mother tongue was primarily limited to the subjectcalled ‘mother tongue’ and was not the medium of instruction in the content areas of socialstudies, mathematics, life skills or science.Piper and Miksic (2011) found statistically significant relationships between English

language use and English achievement and Gikuyu language use and Gikuyu achieve-ment. These relationships were relatively weak in magnitude, explaining only 6.9% and7.2% of the variation in English and Gikuyu oral reading fluency outcomes, respectively.On the other hand, no statistically significant relationship was found between the percent-age of classroom Kiswahili language use and students’ Kiswahili oral reading fluency.Similarly, there was no relationship between Dholuo language use and fluency. Of course,these relatively simple analyses cannot estimate the causal processes responsible for flu-ency and comprehension, and more analysis is necessary to understand how languagechoice overlaps with learning outcomes. Research on bilinguals’ oral comprehensionskills in their first and second languages is in its early stages. In addition, the transferabil-ity of these skills is affected by the unique characteristics of the individual languagesinvolved (Gathercole, 2013).Given the lack of research in Kenya that empirically investigated the relationships be-

tween oral reading fluency and comprehension in English, Kiswahili and mother tongue,we were interested in answering the following research questions.

1. Do children read more fluently in English, Kiswahili or mother tongue? Does this dif-fer by urban or rural location?



2. Do children comprehend better in English, Kiswahili or mother tongue? Does thisdiffer by urban or rural location?

3. If oral reading fluency scores are similar, will children comprehend better in English,Kiswahili or mother tongue?

4. Do oral reading fluency levels and reading comprehension scores in one languagepredict oral reading fluency and reading comprehension scores in another language?

Research design and methodology

Sample

The data analysed in this paper were initially collected as part of a language-of-instructionand student literacy achievement study undertaken by RTI International with funding fromthe William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and technically supported by the National As-sessment Centre. The sampling framework utilised in this study was a three-stage stratifiedrandom sample. Within the Central Province and Dholuo-speaking portions of NyanzaProvince, districts were randomly selected after stratifying by urban/rural status (Table 1).Schools were randomly selected within districts using proportional-to-population samplingmethods. At the school level, Standard 3 children were sampled – stratified by gender–using systematic random sampling. The assessors identified the mother-tongue status ofchildren by asking the children what language they spoke at home to their mother (or otherfemale guardian). The age range of these Standard 3 children was between 6 and 15, with83.2% of the children between 8 and 10 years old. Table 2 describes the sample.

Table 1. Sample, disaggregated by language and urban and rural status.

Province LanguagesUrbanor rural Schools

Childrenassessed

Totalassessments

Central English and Kiswahili Urban 25 501 1,002

English, Kiswahili and Gikuyu Rural 25 503 1,509

Nyanza English and Kiswahili Urban 25 499 998

English, Kiswahili and Dholuo Rural 25 497 1,491

Total 100 2,000 5,000

Table 2. Sample, disaggregated by gender and urban and rural status.

Total Central Dholuo-speaking Nyanza

Total Urban Rural Total Urban Rural

Students 2,000 1,003 501 502 997 499 498

Female 989 496 250 246 493 247 246

Male 1,011 507 251 256 504 252 252

Schools 100 50 25 25 50 25 25



Specific language assessments

Language was a key variable in the research design. In schools in urban Central Province(Nyeri County) and urban Nyanza Province (Kisumu County), children were assessed inboth Kiswahili and English. In schools in rural Central Province and rural Dholuo-speaking Nyanza Province, children were assessed in English, Kiswahili and their mothertongue: Gikuyu for Central Province and Dholuo for Nyanza. These multiple-language as-sessments allowed us to perform within-child analyses investigating whether children whocould decode words in one language could also decode in another and whether childrenwho could comprehend in one language could comprehend in another.

Research instruments

The EGRA is an assessment tool used in more than 70 countries and 100 languagesbetween 2007 and 2014 (A. M. Mulcahy-Dunn, personal communication, 17 October2014). It is a criterion-referenced instrument that investigates key early reading skills.The EGRA for this study was developed in Kenya, utilising language experts from the uni-versities, the MoEST and the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD). Drafttools were evaluated by a technical panel including participants from the relevant MoESTdirectorates during an adaptation workshop in September 2009. The workshop participantsensured that the assessment was based on the KICD curriculum for Standards 1–3. TheKenyan EGRA included several subtasks, which were assessed in all languages (Piper &Miksic, 2011). The tasks analysed included the following:

1. Oral reading fluency – the ability to read a passage of about 60 words. Measured bycwpm. Figures 1 and 2 are sample excerpts from the instruments for two of the four

Figure 1. Assessor protocol sheet for English oral passage reading fluency and reading comprehension.



languages: the assessment protocols for English and Dholuo connected text oral read-ing fluency.

2. Reading comprehension in connected text – the ability to orally answer several com-prehension questions about a passage. Measured by (a) the percentage correct of fivecomprehension questions and (b) the percentage correct of the five comprehensionquestions attempted. Again as a sample, Figures 1 and 2 provide comprehensionquestions for English and Dholuo.

Prior to tool finalisation, a pilot survey was undertaken with 100 children in each of thefour languages. A Rasch model was fit to examine item behaviour, and the tools were re-vised prior to data collection. In the full assessment, the tools performed quite well. Piper(2010) showed that the Cronbach’s alpha reliability statistics for the entire English (0.89),Kiswahili (0.90), Gikuyu (0.93) and Dholuo (0.88) assessments were above acceptablelevels. The assessments were administered by trained assessors (with interrater reliabilityscores above 0.94; Piper, 2010). The assessor sat in a quiet location with the child andadministered one language assessment, before sending the pupil to another trained assessorto administer the EGRA in another language.

Data analysis

In order to answer the research questions in this paper, we undertook general linear hypoth-esis (GLH) tests and fit ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models in the Stata statis-tical software package. In order to ensure external validity to Central Province and Dholuo-speaking portions of Nyanza Province, we used the svyset weighting procedure in Stata toaccount for the sampling of children, schools and districts. Analyses in this study were

Figure 2. Assessor protocol sheet for Dholuo oral passage reading fluency and reading comprehension.



undertaken on weighted rather than raw data to account for the sampling design. That is,the svyset procedure in Stata allows for the data to be weighted and for standard errorsto account for the nested nature of education in Kenya. In Kenya, pupils are nested withschools, and schools are nested within districts. The standard errors account for the simi-larities of students within those schools and schools within those districts. Our regressionmodelling was carried out in the svy set of commands in Stata, with fluency or comprehen-sion scores as the dependent variable. The methods used were simple. To answer ResearchQuestion 1, we undertook GLH tests to compare whether mean scores were statisticallysignificantly different between languages. To answer Research Question 2, we comparedR2, the variance explained by particular relationships across models. The R2 was calculatedafter OLS regressions were fit on the weighted data.For each language, the pupils were asked five comprehension questions that matched

with approximately 12 words of the story they had just read. The questions were designedso that each language had two explicit, two textually implicit and one implicit question(refer to Figures 1 and 2). All questions were answered orally.3

Results

RQ1 Do children read more fluently in English, Kiswahili or mother tongue? Doesthis differ by urban or rural location?

To answer RQ1, we analysed student outcomes in oral reading fluency using mean scorecomparisons and GLH tests. Table 3 presents (a) the oral reading fluency outcomes by thenumber of words read correctly per minute and the results of the GLH tests betweenlanguages, which determined whether students read more fluently in particular languages.The data showed that in Central Province, overall, children read more fluently in English

(40.2 cwpm) than in Kiswahili (26.7 cwpm; p-value<.01), and that children read morefluently in English (40.2 cwpm) than in Gikuyu (20.0 cwpm; p-value .04). In NyanzaProvince, the results showed that children read more fluently in English (25.6 cwpm)than in Kiswahili (19.0 cwpm; p-value .05), and in English (25.6 cwpm) than in Dholuo(19.6 cwpm; p-value .08).In urban Central Province, none of the differences was statistically significant (p-value .12

for the comparison between English and Kiswahili cwpm). The same is true forDholuo-speaking Nyanza (p-value .13 for the comparison between English andKiswahili cwpm). Differences did exist in rural Central, however. Pupils read more flu-ently in English than in Kiswahili (p-value<.01) and in English than in Gikuyu (p-value.04). In rural Dholuo-speaking Nyanza, we found differences at the 0.10 level thatshowed higher results for English than Kiswahili (p-value .10) and for English thanDholou (p-value .08).

RQ2 Do children comprehend better in English, Kiswahili or mother tongue? Doesthis differ by urban or rural location?

Table 3 presented the results of comparisons between reading comprehension levels. Wefound that reading comprehension percentage scores were higher in Kiswahili than in En-glish, which was surprising because children in urban Central and urban Dholuo-speakingNyanza read more words in English than in Kiswahili. The percentage scores were



significantly higher on the reading comprehension total scores: by 28.1 percentage pointsin Central province (p-value <.01) and 12.3 percentage points in Dholuo-speakingNyanza. In urban schools, the results were 14.3 percentage points higher in urban Central(p-value .10) and 25.9 percentage points in urban Dholuo-speaking Nyanza.4 The distinc-tion is more dramatic when expressed in percentage differences: The Kiswahili readingcomprehension scores were 61.9% higher than English reading comprehension scores inCentral, and 141.5% higher in Dholuo-speaking Nyanza. Clearly, urban Kenyan childrenunderstood what they read better in Kiswahili then they did in English.For rural Kenyan children, the gaps between English and non-English reading compre-

hension scores were even larger. The absolute difference in reading comprehension scoresbetween English and Gikuyu in rural Central was 45.0 percentage points (p-value .04). Thecomprehension score in Gikuyu was 483.4% higher than in English. In Dholuo-speakingNyanza, the gap was remarkable, with Dholuo comprehension at 50.0 percentage pointshigher than in English (p-value< .01) or 833.3% higher than in English.

Table 3. Oral reading fluency rates by language, measured by correct words per minute, and reading compre-hension scores, as a percentage of items attempted. Results of post-hoc GLH tests measuring whether scoreswere higher in English versus Kiswahili or English versus mother tongue.

ProvinceUrbanor rural Task

Language GLH test

English Kiswahili Gikuyu

Englishversus

Kiswahili

EnglishversusGikuyu

Central Urban Oral reading fluency(cwpm)

54.0 30.5 0.12

Reading comprehension 23.1 37.4 0.10

Rural Oral reading fluency(cwpm)

39.8 26.6 20.0 < .01 0.04

Reading comprehension 9.3 47.6 54.3 0.01 0.04

Total Oral reading fluency(cwpm)

40.2 26.7 20.0 < .01 0.04

Reading comprehension 9.6 37.7 54.3 < .01 0.04

English Kiswahili Dholuo Englishversus

Kiswahili

EnglishversusDholuo

Nyanza Urban Oral reading fluency(cwpm)

47.1 28.0 0.13

Reading comprehension 18.3 44.2 < .01

Rural Oral reading fluency(cwpm)

25.6 18.6 19.6 0.10 0.08

Reading comprehension 6.0 17.6 56.0 0.11 < .01

Total Oral reading fluency(cwpm)

25.6 19.0 19.6 0.05 0.08

Reading comprehension 6.6 18.9 56.0 < .001 < .01

GLH, general linear hypothesis.Notes: The GLH tested whether the parameter estimate on English was greater than the parameter estimate forKiswahili, Gikuyu or Dholuo. P-values from the GLH tests from the population estimates are presented, except forreading comprehension in urbanNyanza and overall Nyanza, whereGLH tests from the sample estimate are presented.



Although Kiswahili was not the children’s mother tongue in either rural Central or ruralDholuo-speaking Nyanza, comprehension was still much higher in Kiswahili than in En-glish. For rural Central, Kiswahili reading comprehension was 38.3 percentage pointshigher, or 411.8% higher when the comprehension scores were compared (p-value .01).This difference was statistically insignificant (p-value .11) in rural Dholuo-speakingNyanza, where the percentage-point gap was 11.6 points, which means that children’sreading comprehension scores were 193.3% higher in Kiswahili than in English. Thegreater linguistic similarities between Gikuyu and Kiswahili were reflected in the largergaps between Kiswahili and English scores in rural Central (47.6 vs. 9.3) than in ruralDholuo-speaking Nyanza (17.6 vs. 6.0).

RQ3 If oral reading fluency scores are similar, will children comprehend better inEnglish, Kiswahili or mother tongue?

To answer RQ3, we fit multiple regression models to estimate the reading comprehen-sion scores if the children had been able to read 60 words (the length of the English pas-sage) correctly in a minute. This conversion allowed a more fair comparison between thelanguage-of-instruction choices that Kenya is making. Figure 3 presents our findings: Iffluency scores were similar across languages, children in rural Central would comprehendat a significantly higher percentage in their mother tongue (54.4%) than in either Kiswahili(20.0%) or English (14.0%). Children in rural Dholuo-speaking Nyanza would compre-hend much more in Dholuo (43.4%) than in either Kiswahili (15.4%) or English(15.2%). Children in both urban Central and urban Dholuo-speaking Nyanza would com-prehend at a higher level in Kiswahili than in English (31.4% compared with 21.2% inCentral and 28.4% compared with 19.2% in urban Dholuo-speaking Nyanza).

RQ4 Do oral reading fluency levels and reading comprehension scores in onelanguage predict oral reading fluency and reading comprehension scores inanother language?

To better understand why the aforementioned analysis showed such large differencesbetween oral reading fluency and reading comprehension outcomes across languages, we

Figure 3. Predicted reading comprehension score for 60 words read.



investigated how reading fluency outcomes predicted reading comprehension. To do this,we fit OLS regressions using oral reading fluency scores in one language to predict oralreading fluency scores in the other language. Figure 4 shows the results. The variance ex-plained by those models is expressed by the grey bars and ranges from 55.3% to 81.3%.The black bars in Figure 4 present the percentage of variance explained by scores in read-ing comprehension in one language on reading comprehension in another language. It ap-pears that decoding skills did transfer from one language to another. However, the datasupported the obvious fact that the ability to comprehend text does not necessarily transferacross languages. Note the large magnitude of the differences identified and how the sizeof the differences maps to the similarity or difference between languages.

Summary of results

Given the dominance of English as the language of instruction in Central and Dholuo-speaking Nyanza schools, it is not surprising that these children read English words some-what more readily than words of the other languages (Piper & Miksic, 2011). Children’soral reading fluency scores in their first language were more predictive of reading compre-hension than were those in their second language. However, these children’s reading com-prehension scores were significantly higher in the mother tongue than in English. In urbanCentral, children’s comprehension was 61.9% higher in Kiswahili than in English; in urbanNyanza, comprehension was 141.5% better in Kiswahili than in English. Children under-stood what they read in Kiswahili 292.7% better than in English in rural Central and193.3% better in rural Dholuo-speaking Nyanza. The mother tongue had an even largerdifference, with children understanding their mother tongue 465.6% better than in Englishin rural Central and 748.5% better in rural Nyanza, even though they read significantly lessfluently in their mother tongues. In addition, children’s oral reading fluency scores in their

Figure 4. R2 from ordinary least squares regression models predicting oral reading fluency and reading compre-hension scores from one language to another within children.



first language were found to be more predictive of reading comprehension than their oralreading fluency scores in a second language.

Discussion

The results show that although these children could recognise English words readily, theirunderstanding of English remained quite limited. The comprehension questions on the En-glish assessment were very simple, yet children struggled to decipher meaning from whatthey had read in order to answer them. On the other hand, children could understand muchmore of what they read in their mother tongue, although their skills in decoding words inthe mother tongue were weaker than they were in English.These findings call into question earlier perspectives that have ignored the multilingual

nature of reading instruction in Kenya, and they show that the relationship between oralreading fluency and reading comprehension depends on children having the requisitevocabulary in the language being used. It appears that after three years of predominantlyEnglish instruction, children are able to recognise common words and have very modestdecoding skills, but lack the English vocabulary necessary to understand the meaning ofthose words.Our findings confirmed that the English fluency of these primary-school children was

significantly weaker than their fluency in their mother tongue. The patterns were consis-tent: If oral reading fluency rates were held constant, Kiswahili comprehension rates wouldbe 48.1% higher than English in urban Central and 47.9% higher in urban Nyanza. For ru-ral Central, the comprehension rates at similar fluency rates would be 288.6% higher formother tongue than for English and 185.5% higher in rural Nyanza. These children simplyunderstood better in their mother tongue, even if their oral fluency rates in English werehigher; the basic reading comprehension levels expected of those tested by the EGRA werequite easily attained in the mother tongue, even with minimal instructional time. The im-plication is that using English as the medium of instruction is extremely inefficient. Thestudy indicates that children’s decoding abilities in their mother tongue correlated withtheir decoding ability in English. However, reading comprehension scores in mothertongue and Kiswahili were not as predictive of English scores. Urban children’s Kiswahilicomprehension predicted only 15.5% of the variation in Central children’s English scores,and 28.6% of the variation for Nyanza children. For mother tongue in rural schools, the re-lationship was even weaker, with Gikuyu predicting only 5.5% of the variation in Englishcomprehension and Dholuo predicting only 11.2% of the variation in English comprehen-sion scores in rural Nyanza.These findings show that many children were able to transfer the ability to identify

words across languages. These findings held when other multiple regression models (notincluded in this article because of space constraints) were fit that controlled for the percent-age of time each language was used. Therefore, even with limited instructional time in thevariety of languages in multilingual Kenya, children had learned to decode basic words inother languages. On the other hand, children were unable to transfer comprehension skillsacross languages. Kenya is ‘buying’ English fluency by spending more than 60% of class-room time in English. This increased instructional time helps the children unlock the or-thography challenges of English and gain some basic fluency. However, they are neithergaining proficiency in spoken English nor mastering English academic vocabulary. Thus,even if reading fluency can be bought, comprehension cannot.



We think that two key elements are likely to be heavily correlated with children’s readingcomprehension: oral vocabulary (Piper &Mugenda, 2014) and sufficient instructional time inmother tongue (Piper & Mugenda, 2012, 2013). Without oral vocabulary, children areunlikely to comprehend what they read, even if they are taught primarily in English.Unfortunately, the data used in this analysis did not include oral vocabulary measures. With-out sufficient instructional time in reading, pupils do not have the time to practise these skillsto develop them fluently.The predictive power of the relationships between language outcomes was higher when

the languages were more similar. In other words, Kiswahili reading outcomes were a betterpredictor for children in Central than they were for children in Nyanza. Conversely,English reading outcomes were a better predictor for children in Nyanza than for childrenin Central. This suggests that even in linguistically complex environments, reading skillstransfer more easily across languages that are linguistically similar.

Conclusion

This analysis of language, oral reading fluency and comprehension in two regions of Kenyaconfirms observations that have been made by educators over a number of years about theshortcomings of the current practice of using English as the primary medium of instructionthroughout the formal education system. Despite the national policy that supports the use oflocal languages as languages of instruction in Grades 1–3 (see, for example, Bunyi, 2005,2008; Kioko, 2013; Trudell & Piper, 2013; Trudell & Schroeder, 2007), the data indicatethat local choices about language of instruction are directly and consistently contraveningnational language and education policy. The result is lower student achievement.The inconsistent policy implementation found in the schools studied can be readily seen in

primary classrooms elsewhere in Kenya as well. In part, it is related to the tension betweencultural and linguistic realities and perceptions of what education is for (Trudell & Piper,2013). Powerful ideas regarding the centrality of formal, international language-medium ed-ucation in economic development (Chaudenson, 2008; Djité, 2008; Piper & Mugenda, 2014;Piper, Zuilkowski, & Mugenda, 2014; Trudell & Piper, 2013; Trudell, Young, & Nyaga, inpress), as well as a keen national-level desire for inclusion in the international (largely Anglo-phone) community of nations (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010), continue to influence local andnational decisions concerning language of instruction in the classroom.The evidence is that a single-minded focus on English in Kenyan primary school education

is not yielding strong learning outcomes. While prioritising English as the language of in-struction has indeed resulted in children who are better at pronouncing English words thanwords in any other language, their mastery of the English language is inadequate for themto understand what they are reading. The data suggest that 3 years of using English as the pre-dominant language of instruction can impart basic skills in decoding and recognising words,but not the level of English language mastery necessary to understand the meaning of thosewords. In contrast, it was found that basic reading comprehension levels are quickly and eas-ily attained in the mother tongue, even with minimal classroom attention. Greater attention tothe use of the mother tongue as a language of instruction in the classrooms studied wouldlikely have yielded even stronger reading comprehension levels for these same children.A weakness of the current study is that there was no measure of vocabulary, either ex-

pressive or receptive, and therefore, a full examination of whether the simple view of read-ing is appropriate in this multilingual context is not possible. Further research should more



deeply examine the relationship between vocabulary skills and listening comprehension, aswell as the interaction between vocabulary skills and fluency in producing reading compre-hension in multilingual contexts such as Kenya. Nevertheless, an important recommenda-tion from this study – even without the inclusion of vocabulary measures in the currentanalysis – is that Kenya should ensure that children have rich oral language experiencesin English to combine with their skills in decoding English words.This study suggests that the Kenyan education system is trying to ‘buy’ strong English-

language reading outcomes through an emphasis on English-medium instruction; but whatis actually being produced are children with limited fluency in either oral or written Englishand minimal reading skills in their own languages as well. Hence, even if a certain level ofEnglish oral reading fluency can be ‘bought’ in this way, English language comprehensioncannot.

Acknowledgements

The data set examined in this study came from an Early Grade Reading Assessment admin-istered in Kenya in October 2009. The assessment was a collaboration involving the Min-istry of Education, Science and Technology and the Kenya National Examinations Counciland was funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Notes

1. The predominant language in Nyanza Province is Dholuo, spoken by the Luo people. Inurban portions of Nyanza, more Kiswahili is spoken than in rural Nyanza, whichallowed us to make contrasting language analyses within that province.

2. RTI International is a registered trademark and a trade name of Research Triangle Insti-tute. RTI is a U.S.-based nongovernmental organisation, with projects in dozens ofcountries.

3. Reading comprehension scores on EGRA assessments are typically derived in one oftwo ways: (a) dividing the number of comprehension questions (between 0 and 5) an-swered correctly by the number of questions on the assessment (5) and multiplyingby 100; or (b) dividing the number of comprehension questions answered correctly (be-tween 0 and 5) by the number of comprehension questions attempted (between 0 and 5)and multiplying by 100. The models presented in this article were fit using both defini-tions of comprehension, but we present only the second method. The findings were notsubstantively different by either of these methods, although scores were higher with thesecond method.

4. Distinctions between ‘percentage point’ and ‘percentage’ differences in this paragraph areintentional. The figures are derived from the same data but have very different meanings.

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Benjamin Piper is the Chief of Party of the British Department for International Development andUnited States Agency for International Development-funded Tusome programme in Kenya, whichis providing technical assistance to the national literacy programme in Kenya. He is also the SeniorAdvisor of the Tayari programme, implementing a low-cost Early Childhood Development approachin Kenya. His previous work investigated the impact of a literacy and numeracy programme on learn-ing outcomes, and examined a variety of language-of-instruction educational policies on student out-comes, with particular focus on how pedagogical differences relate to early grade reading acquisitionand the transfer of reading skills between the first language and the second language. He has experi-ence researching classroom pedagogy, instructional supervision, policy analysis and studentassessments.

Leila Schroeder serves SIL Africa. She has worked in Africa for 23 years and has been a seniorconsultant for multilingual education, literacy and orthography development in Africa since 2007.Her previous experiences include bilingual classroom teaching in the United States and developmentof curricula for use in American early primary classrooms. She has published several articles onlanguage-related issues such as cognitive development, literacy and orthographies for previouslyunwritten languages.

Barbara Trudell, PhD, has worked in the field of language and education in both South Americaand Africa. Her research interests include local processes of language development, language policyimplementation, local-language literacy and development, language and reading and languagechoices in formal education contexts. Barbara lives in Nairobi, Kenya.

Received 20 November 2013; revised version received 12 February 2015.

Address for correspondence: Benjamin Piper, RTI International, PO Box 1181-00621,Nairobi, Kenya. E-mail: [email protected]



Oral reading fluency and comprehension in Kenya: reading acquisition in a multilingual environment

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