Abstract:
Educators’ reading comprehension instructional practices have been identified as 1 of the factors that contribute to learners’
poor reading comprehension performance. To this end, several studies were conducted to identify and analyse educators’
practices while teaching reading comprehension. As a result, the aim of the study reported on here was to investigate
educators’ teaching practices when teaching reading comprehension in order to diagnose challenges and then make
recommendations. The study was qualitative in nature with a case study design. For the purpose of data collection, 3 Grade 9
English First Additional Language (FAL) educators were purposively chosen. The observation data collection method was
followed and content analysis was used to analyse data. With regard to the choice of reading comprehension strategies, the
findings reveal that the educators did not appear to have a thorough knowledge of reading comprehension strategies. In the
observed lessons, the reading comprehension strategies were neither applied explicitly nor implicitly. Educators tended to
change the reading lessons into vocabulary lessons. The findings further reveal that the educators relied on traditional
questioning techniques that did not engage learners with the text. Thus, the reading comprehension support, motivation and
feedback from educators were limited. The main recommendation is for teacher training institutions and universities to play
a more active role in developing both pre-service and in-service educators’ reading comprehension instructional practices.
