The effects of teaching assistants on letter knowledge of foundation phase students in South Africa: Findings from an exploratory trial

There is increasing evidence that letter knowledge is a significant predictor of early grade reading achievements and that interventions designed to improve learning of this constrained skill can be effective. However, little is known about ways to enhance the teaching of letter knowledge in African languages and the degree to which teaching assistants can facilitate this process. This paper reports findings from an exploratory study designed to establish if teaching assistants can improve letter knowledge in African languages. A pre-post-trial with 249 pre-Grade R and Grade 1 students was conducted in two South African provinces with two distinctive African languages, isiXhosa and Sepedi. Our analysis shows significant positive correlations for both languages between students’ exposure to teaching assistants and their improvements in the number of attempted letters as well as correct letters in a standardised test. Therefore, our findings suggest that teaching assistants, who are instructed to play letter games with foundation phase students to complement the teaching of letter knowledge, could be an effective, low-cost strategy to facilitate future improvements in reading.