Appraisal of Holistic and Analytical Literacy Instructions in Tanzanian Primary School English Classrooms

Performance in literacy among primary school pupils has sparked both academic and public concerns in Tanzania. This paper appraises the use of holistic and analytical approaches as used in learning English vowel phonemes in Kiswahili and English media primary schools based on performance indicators. Data was collected from Standard Two pupils in two primary schools in Temeke Municipality. An Achievement Test was used in data collection, which was administered to 60 Standard Two pupils. Data analysis was aided by the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), Version 18 and Microsoft Excel. Although performance is skewed in favour of English medium primary schools, findings also suggest variations in pupils’ abilities irrespective of school category. This suggests that holistic and analytical approaches work better for some vowel phonemes than for others, and this calls for the need to determine the best practices for specific vowel phonemes.