Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, many children are not learning to read competently in the first 3 years of primary school; thus, both ‘reading to learn’ and ‘reading for pleasure’ in these early years, and in higher grades, are constrained. Two of the many reasons for reading failure are the absence of suitable materials in languages with which learners are familiar and teachers’ limited knowledge of pedagogic practices that support reading development. In this article, we describe the African Storybook (ASb) initiative as one imaginative response to the dearth of interesting and accessible stories in local languages and report findings from the first phase of a professional development project in which teacher-researchers in two Ugandan schools are using ASb materials to ‘language’ in Lunyole at the meetings of their action research group. We argue that their investment in extending their literacy in a language which they speak more fluently than they read or write, and the contestations over written forms of this language that have surfaced in some of the discussions, are likely to be productive for their professional development as teachers and for their participation in ongoing community debates about the orthography of a recently codified and standardised language. By languaging together in Lunyole, with ASb materials as the main object of their conversations and activities, the teacher-researchers have begun to develop capabilities that are likely to benefit the Lunyole/ English biliteracy of the learners whom they teach. They are imagining new possibilities for themselves and for the learners.

中文翻译：

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朗约语及其相关语言：《非洲故事书》的材料，可重新构想乌干达两所小学的扫盲教学

在整个撒哈拉以南非洲地区，许多儿童在小学的头三年没有学习到能干的阅读能力；因此，在早期和更高年级，“阅读学习”和“娱乐阅读”都受到限制。阅读失败的许多原因中的两个是缺乏合适的学习者所熟悉的语言的材料以及老师对支持阅读发展的教学实践知识的有限了解。在本文中，我们将非洲故事书（ASb）计划描述为对缺乏以当地语言编写的有趣且可访问的故事的一种富有想象力的回应，并报告了职业发展项目第一阶段的发现，该项目的主要研究对象是乌干达两所学校的教师研究人员在他们的行动研究小组的会议上使用ASb材料在Lunyole中“语言化”。我们认为，他们投资于用一种比他们读或写更为流利的语言来提高其读写能力的能力，以及在某些讨论中已经浮出水面的关于这种语言的书面形式的争论，可能对他们的专业发展很有成效作为教师，以及他们参与正在进行的社区辩论，讨论有关最近编纂和标准化的语言的拼字法。通过在Lunyole中进行语言交流，并以ASb资料作为他们的对话和活动的主要对象，教师研究人员已开始发展可能使他们所教的学习者的Lunyole /英语双语能力受益的能力。他们正在为自己和学习者想象新的可能性。