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Abstract

This chapter discusses how English reading (i.e., vocabulary, comprehension and phonics) was enacted at the two schools: Nyika (an urban school) and Mutituni (a countryside school). The Nyika children spoke English while the Mutituni children did not speak English. This chapter documents how reading is influenced by the language policy of the school (i.e., English only in both schools), classroom context and availability of literacy materials. The Mutituni classroom had a very constraining environment (e.g., lack of reading books, crowded classroom, etc.) compared to the Nyika classroom. These physical and ideological contexts impacted how reading was done in both schools; for example, choral reading was very common at Mutituni, while at Nyika there were dialogues during reading because the Nyika children had English and other resources at their disposal.

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Lisanza, E.M. (2020). The Enacted English Reading Curriculum. In: The Multivoices of Kenyan Primary School Children Learning to Read and Write. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38110-3_3

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