Ten years into a democratic South Africa, significant changes have been witnessed in economic, social, political and educational development. Changes in the education system have resulted in many of the learners being encouraged to attend English medium schools although this is not their L1. Hence, there has been an increase of learners learning to read in a language that is not their first language. The transition from their home language to the language of learning is often not easy and impacts on their academic proficiency as well as academic development. This study investigated English reading abilities and academic performance of Grade 8 L1 and L2 learners attending an Ex-Model C school. The SDRT – Brown Level was used to assess the level of reading and its impact on academic achievement was investigated. Results show that the SDRT was highly correlated with, and a significant predictor of academic performance with certain tests being stronger predictors than others for L1 and L2 learners. Implications of these findings for the education of L1 and L2 learners are discussed.

This dissertation contributes to an ongoing debate on the types of linguistic features which can be acquired in a second language by looking at the multiple learning challenges related to the ergative case system (the appearance of –ne with the subject) in Hindi-Urdu by classroom learners. Some hypotheses in second language research hold that interpretable features (features which contribute semantic information) can be acquired in a second language, whereas uninterpretable features (features which express grammatical information) cannot be easily acquired, if ever. Additionally, hypotheses in second language processing hold that the second language learners are able to process semantic information but not grammatical information. This dissertation investigates at the acquisition process of second language learners of Hindi-Urdu acquiring the uninterpretable ergative case. In Hindi-Urdu, the subject of a sentence appears with the ergative case marker –ne, when the verb is transitive and in the perfective aspect. In my dissertation, I test the validity of the aforementioned hypotheses and investigate the acquisition and acquisitional process of ergative case in L2 Hindi-Urdu by L1 English speakers by analyzing data collected by using an acceptability/grammaticality judgement task, a self-paced reading task and a production task from Hindi-Urdu learners and native speakers.