Background: Reading development in agglutinating African languages is a relatively under-researched area. While numerous studies highlight the low comprehension levels among learners reading in African languages in South Africa, little has been done to probe beneath this ‘comprehension iceberg’ in terms of decoding skills. Aim: As a tentative step towards benchmarking in African languages, we analyse the sub-components of reading across three languages (Northern Sotho, Xitsonga and isiZulu), to better understand the nature of alphabetic knowledge, word reading and fluency in these languages, how these relate to one another, and how accuracy and speed relate to comprehension. Setting: Data was obtained from 785 Grade 3 learners across three African languages in three provinces in South Africa. Methods: The early grade reading assessment (EGRA) framework was adapted to the written features of the three languages to assess letter-sounds, single-word reading, non-word reading, oral reading fluency (ORF) and oral comprehension. Results: We present results on fluency, accuracy and comprehension and their interrelationships in these morphologically rich languages. While differences emerged between the conjunctive and disjunctive orthographies, strong relations occurred across the languages between letter-sound knowledge and word reading, word reading and oral reading fluency, and ORF and reading comprehension. Results suggest minimum thresholds of accuracy and ORF in each language, below which it is virtually impossible to read for meaning. Conclusion: There is a strong need for language-specific norms and benchmarks for African languages. Preliminary minimum decoding thresholds for comprehension found in these three languages serve as a move in that direction.

中文翻译：

---

调查理解的冰山：为凝结的非洲语言开发早期阅读的经验基准

背景：凝结的非洲语言中的阅读发展是一个相对未被充分研究的领域。尽管大量研究强调了在南非使用非洲语言阅读的学习者的理解水平较低，但在解码技能方面却几乎没有做任何工作来探究这种“理解冰山”。目的：作为迈向非洲语言基准测试的一个尝试性步骤，我们分析了三种语言（北索托语，希松加语和isiZulu）中阅读的子成分，以更好地理解这些语言的字母知识，单词阅读和流利程度，以及如何它们彼此相关，以及准确性和速度与理解之间的关系。设置：数据来自南非三个省的三种非洲语言的785名3年级学习者。方法：早期阅读评估（EGRA）框架适应了这三种语言的书面特征，以评估字母发音，单词阅读，非单词阅读，口语阅读流利度（ORF）和口头理解能力。结果：我们在这些形态丰富的语言中提供了关于流利性，准确性和理解性及其相互关系的结果。虽然合拼字法和分字拼字法之间出现了差异，但跨语言的字母发音知识和单词阅读，单词阅读和口头阅读流利程度，ORF和阅读理解之间存在着密切的关系。结果表明每种语言的准确性和ORF的最低阈值，低于该阈值实际上就无法理解其含义。结论：强烈需要针对非洲语言的特定于语言的规范和基准。