Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1072992
7 NEWS maltatoday | SUNDAY • 20 JANUARY 2019 JAMES DEBONO STUDENTS hailing from Maltese-speaking families may be at a disadvantage in literacy tests assessing their reading and comprehension abilities in English. According to the study pub- lished in the Malta Review for Educational Studies, literacy tests currently used in schools are based on proficiency tests devised for English-speaking populations – and not for bi- lingual societies like Malta where a large section of the population, especially those attending state schools, speak Maltese at home. These tests are used in schools to assess the indi- vidual educational needs of each child and thus determine which students need extra learning support assistance. The study recommends that in the assessment of children's reading and comprehension skills, assessors should give greater consideration to the "the influence of home lan- guage background." It also refers to previous studies which recommended a greater use of Maltese to help students comprehend English texts. The study warns that the use of these tests can result in the "misdiagnoses of read- ing skill profiles" of the Mal- tese-speaking population of schoolchildren, which can lead to "inaccurate decision making" with regards to indi- vidualised school support and examination arrangements. The study also shows that a significant segment of Maltese students, especially those at- tending State schools – most of which hail from Maltese- speaking families – can ac- curately read single words at a fast pace but still show poor understanding of what they are reading. On the other hand students hailing from English-speaking backgrounds tend to fare bet- ter in both reading skills and comprehension abilities. The study was based on a sample of 224 students aged 7-14 years, who were submit- ted to the a widely-used test known as the Neale Analysis of Reading Comprehension. In this test students are asked to read six passages of varying levels of difficulty and length. The sample consisted of two groups of students coming from different home back- grounds: 54.5% of participants hailing from State schools were students who come from a mainly Maltese-speaking home language background, and 45.5% from an independ- ent school. Only six of the 122 state school students participating in the study spoke English at home while only 21 of the 102 private independent school students spoke Maltese as the main language at home. The students had to read each passage aloud. The ex- aminer also asked them a set of questions about the text which the students had to an- swer orally. The students' performance yielded three separate scores: a reading accuracy score de- pending on the number of errors made while reading aloud; a reading rate score depending on the time taken to read each passage; and a reading comprehension score depending on the number of correct answers given to the oral questions for each pas- sage. The results showed that younger students attending Year 5 and Year 6, including State school students tend to be as proficient in reading as British students for whom these tests are designed. Those attending independ- ent schools performed above the British average. But as they grow older Maltese students tend to fall behind when com- pared to their British peers. Moreover, even at the older level Maltese students per- form better in reading accu- racy and pace than in compre- hension skills. And State school students showed little improvement in both reading and comprehen- sion scores as they grew older and progressed to secondary school. Describing this find- ing as "worrisome" factor, the study attributes the lack of improvement to the fact that teachers at secondary level dedicate less time to word reading, even though words become more sophisticated than in the primary years. This may further weaken the ability of students to decode the English language. The study was authored by University of Malta lecturers Louisa Grech, Paul Bartolo and Liberato Camilleri and by John Everatt from the Univer- sity of Canterbury, New Zea- land. State school students showed little improvement in both reading and comprehension scores as they grew older and progressed to secondary school Literacy tests 'misdiagnosing' Maltese-speaking students In 2018, a MaltaToday survey revealed that Maltese is the spoken language at home for people of all ages – but Labour voters were likelier to speak the mother tongue more frequently than Nationalist voters. The MaltaToday survey found that 87.3% of those who voted for the Labour Party said the frequently spoken language at home was Maltese, while 11.9% said they frequently used both Maltese and English. Among voters of the Nationalist Party, 71.6% said they spoke Maltese most frequently at home while 26.1% spoke Maltese and English. PL voters who identified English as the frequently used language at home were a measly three quarters of a percentage point, with the equivalent number of PN voters totalling 2.3%. The figures show that spoken Maltese at home had a strong base in Gozo where 91.3% said it was the frequent language of choice, as opposed to 8.7% who identified both Maltese and English. The Western, Northern and Northern Harbour regions are the ones with the highest prevalence of people who frequently speak Maltese and English at home, ranging between 20.2% and 24.3%. The prevalence of people who speak Maltese most frequently at home is highest among those with a primary education and decreases, the higher the education level the person has attained. The highest prevalence of those who speak Maltese and English is among those with a post-secondary education where 28.2% said they frequently used both languages at home, followed by those with a tertiary education (23.9%). Traditional newspapers appear to be the last bulwark of Maltese readership with 37.7% of people saying they prefer reading them in Maltese. This stands out when compared to other preferences for books and online news, where English prevails as the language of choice. Another 27.2% prefer reading English- language newspapers, while 19.3% have no particular preference, choosing to read both in English and Maltese. Significantly, 14.8% say they do not read newspapers, with the largest group being the elderly category. There is a slightly higher preference for reading traditional newspapers in English among those aged between 18 and 35 but this belies the trend in all other age groups. Labour voters are more inclined to prefer Maltese-language newspapers (50.1%) as opposed to a relative majority of PN supporters (42.3%) who prefer reading newspapers in English. People have a higher preference for reading news in English on the internet, although almost a quarter say they prefer both languages. The highest preference for English is among those aged 18-35 (49%), declining to 19.1% among those aged 65 and over. The preference for English is higher among those with a post-secondary and tertiary education with 46.8% and 57.9% respectively. English is the primary choice of language for Facebook users and not surprisingly the highest prevalence is among those aged 18 and 35. Among the young, 45% say they prefer to write status posts in English, followed by 30.1% who use both Maltese and English. Who speaks Maltese and English in Malta? Students hailing from English- speaking backgrounds tend to fare better in both reading skills and comprehension abilities