An investigation of reading literacy in monolingual and bilingual elementary students in Chaharmahal Bakhtyari province

Subject Areas : Educational Science

M.T Mahmoodi ¹ (دکترا علوم تربیتی، عضو هیأت علمی دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی واحد شهر کرد)

Received: 2017-02-03 Accepted : 2017-02-03 Published : 2011-09-23

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Abstract :

The present study investigates literacy between two groups (abilingual and a monolingual) of fourth graders in elementary schools.The first group, native speakers of Lori, were taught in Persian. Thesecond group, native speakers of Persian, are taught in Persian. Thedata collecting instrument was PLRIS(2006) questionnaire. Thestatistical population consisted of 13745 students, of which a sampleof 240 was selected through multi-step cluster sampling. Theperformance of the groups in reading comprehension and makinginferences was compared. The results showed that the monolingualgroup outperform in all aspects. Since native language plays asignificant role in literacy, the implication is that native speakers ofthe local language should be employed as teachers at least for the firstthree years of primary education.