ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a case study conducted in 2012 in which students participated in a collaborative reading and interpretation process conducted bilingually. This was done as part of a larger study (Batyi 2014) for the purposes of producing a number of strategic interventions with using Xhosa alongside English as a language of learning and teaching. Data were collected from students participating in 1st-year Tourism Communication tutorials The research took place in the Business Faculty of a comprehensive provincial university in South Africa. Data were also collected from summaries, questionnaires and interviews. The research aim was to ascertain whether, and in what way, the students experienced bilingual reading comprehension as beneficial to their interpreting complex Tourism texts in English. The benefits of bilingual reading were assessed objectively (the content of the student assignments) and subjectively (how the students felt about the process). The results were remarkably positive.
