Reading in the intermediate phase for Zulu L2

M.A.It is the contention of this study that historical factors surrounding education and the teaching of African languages in South Africa have led to there being deficiencies in second-language Zulu courses for learners of diverse language and cultural groups in primary schools. The focus of this investigation is on the authentic cultural content of courses and the application of reading research from Applied Linguistics to such courses. The research concerned with second-language learning, reading, reading comprehension, cultural schemata and intercultural competence is examined in this study. An application of this research to Zulu second-language teaching materials, in order to demonstrate ways in which different kinds of reading and cultural schemata can be taught to ten to fourteen year-old L2 learners with limited vocabulary and linguistic competence in Zulu, is made within a single teaching theme. The study illustrates ways in which reading is a particularly effective teaching device in the second-language Zulu classroom and that multi-level tasks can be devised which promote the development of reading skills and strategies, the textual as well as the intercultural competence of diverse groups of learners