M.Ed. / The problem of academic performance standards among first year students is cause for concern for many tertiary institutions. The incidence of failure and attrition is unacceptably high, primarily because of the repercussions not only on the institutions concerned, but also on the individual students who drop out of those institutions feeling bewildered and frustrated ...

Higher education in South Africa faces severe challenges due to the under preparedness of many students entering the system. Research (Perkins 1991; Pretorius 2000, 2005; Balfour 2002) has shown that many students who enter higher education do not have the required academic literacy knowledge and strategies to engage meaningfully with the relevant texts in their disciplines. A major obstacle to students’ success is their limited reading strategies. A significantly large number of students are not able to read at the appropriate grade and/or age level. Yet, reading is one of the most important academic tasks encountered by students. This thesis focuses on the use of reading strategy interventions together with integrated reading/writing activities to enhance reading comprehension. The study is located at the Durban University of Technology, using as participants the students who were registered on the first year extended Dental Technology programme in 2004. The interventions are implemented through an action research project. The piloting phase of the interventions reveals the need for an understanding of the students’ backgrounds in, amongst others, their reading and writing practices, attitudes, approaches to learning, and motivational factors. Consequently, the action research project was conducted in parallel with an ethnographic inquiry into students’ reading worlds and practices. Given that reading and writing are complementary processes whereby the enhancement of the one has a positive effect on the other, the ethnographic inquiry also explores students’ attitudes and practices towards writing. Using the ideological model (Street 1984) and, in particular, the new literacy approach to teaching and learning as a framework for the thesis, I argue that the students’ early childhood and schooling experiences of reading and writing impact on their current attitudes and practices. I further suggest that for children from disadvantaged backgrounds learning and retaining literacy is more difficult than for children from advantaged, middle class backgrounds. The ethnographic inquiry involved a series of interviews with students, as well as a questionnaire to ascertain students’ attitudes and practices towards reading and writing. In addition, a questionnaire was designed for lecturers to obtain their attitudes and practices towards reading and writing in their disciplines. A major finding of the ethnographic inquiry was that the majority of participants in the study come from a background that can be described as traditionally oral in the sense that it is one in which very little or no emphasis is placed on reading. For some participants story telling was a more common form of interaction or communication with the elders. Also, the majority of participants come from lower socio-economic backgrounds where the purchasing of reading materials is considered a luxury. In addition, for many of the English additional language students, their school environment and experiences were not adequate enough to foster the need for reading and/or any engagement in reading. Based on my research, as well as the findings of other researchers, I argue that reading strategy interventions are essential in order to raise awareness and promote the use of reading strategies so as to enhance the learning (reading) process. The review of literature on reading development and the findings from the interviews indicate that the explicit teaching of reading strategies is essential for students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds (Heath 1983; Delpit 1986; Cope and Kalantzis 1993). To this end the action research component of the study was implemented through the explicit teaching of three reading strategies, namely, identifying the main idea in a paragraph, using context clues to guess the meaning of unknown words in a text, and summarization. The focus of the intervention was on the process and on raising students’ levels of metacognitive awareness. The approach is novel in two ways. First, via the process approach to reading the chosen reading strategies were initially taught independently to the students using the explicit explanation approach which involved scaffolded tasks involving explanations, modeling (using the think-aloud protocol), practice, and transfer exercises. Thereafter, using the cognitive apprenticeship approach, students were taught to use all three strategies simultaneously during reading. Second, discipline specific materials were used as reading sources during the interventions which were conducted with integrated reading/writing activities. Data was collected by means of a language proficiency pre-and post-test, a reading strategy pre-and post-test, worksheets, student reflective pieces, portfolios, and observations. An analysis of the pre-and post-test data showed that the reading strategy interventions were highly successful. Students performed better in the reading strategy post-test than in the pre-test. Furthermore, their performance was better than that of a control group of students who were registered for the first year mainstream programme and who wrote only the reading strategy post-test. A marked improvement was also noted in the language proficiency post-test. These results stress the need for the teaching of reading strategies through integrated reading and writing activities. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2006.

M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / The high failure rate of especially first year students at tertiary institutions with its financial and manpower implications poses a problem. A report of the work committee of the Committee of University Principals Identified the lack of research on the learning needs of students as well as the need for a student learning profile and ways in which learning style research results can be utilised in the tertiary instruction programme. The implications of learning styles on the reading development of university students are still in doubt. Reading demands a vast amount of a student's study hours and reading ability underachievement occurs to a great extent. Consequently reading development programmes were introduced at tertiary Institutions to offer students the opportunity of developing and improving their reading skills. At the Rand Afrikaans University three different reading courses are offered, but during the past years it has become evident that not all students benefit equally from a specific course. These three courses accentuate the two main components of the reading act. namely the optical-mechanical (in course A), or the cognitive linguistic (in course B) as against the integration of both these components (in course C). The problem is which factors determine to which specific course a student should be assigned to optimise his reading ability. One probability is that a student's learning style could be such a factor. Hypotheses were posed to examine this. The aim of this study is to determine whether a student's learning style has any implications for the different reading courses which are conducted at the Student Counseling Bureau at RAU. An attempt was made to determine the preferred learning style of students in order to ascertain whether 8 student with 8 specific learning style would benefit more from a specific reading course (or courses).

PhD (English) / Department of English / It has been established, through research, that some first-entering science students display levels of under-preparedness for tertiary studies. One area in which this is seen is in students’ lack of academic reading ability. Although, some of these students read fluently they do not display competencies in other reading areas, such as to understand, interpret, infer or critique ideas expressed in science academic texts. This low academic reading proficiency has a negative effect on their studies. The aim of this study was to identify, through the National Benchmarking Tests (NBT), the reading competencies of all (100) students registered in the Science Foundation Programme (SFP) in the University of Venda. SFP caters for students who did not attain the required scores in Mathematics and Physical Science. These students’ overall scoring, including English competency, is less than the required (26) points, even though they obtained university entrance scores in their Matric Examination. A NBT was used to identify students’ reading competencies and based on these results, a reading profile of the students was drawn up and was used to design an intervention strategy to enhance existing competencies and to remedy any shortcomings. To achieve the study’s aim, a mixedmethod approach was used. The method was predominantly quantitative, because of the statistical aspects of the data from NBT, however, it had some elements of qualitative approach through the use of a case study and the designing of an intervention strategy in response to the profile. The results of the study indicated that the majority of students performed at the basic and lower-intermediate levels. This kind of reading profile means that students on SFP do not possess the academic reading skills needed for them to succeed with their required academic reading activities, without some kind of structured intervention. The design of such a tool (appendix 5) forms the second part of this study

Reading is considered to be a vital skill for academic success, yet it is seldom taught to or practised with students. Students begin to `read to learn' during primary and secondary schooling. However, at tertiary level the academic demands are much greater than before and involve more extensive reading of conceptually more complex texts. This study investigates the implementation of an intensive reading programme for post-matric English Second Language Science students, based on the assumption that reading improves reading. In addition, this study investigates the effect that reading ability has on academic performance in Science, which relies inter alia, on the ability to read, comprehend and interpret word problems. An intervention group and a control group were used to ascertain the effects of an intensive reading programme and the findings suggest that any reading (intensive or extensive) improves reading and language skills. This in turn impacts on academic performance in Science, if students have an ability in Science to begin with. / Linguistics / MA - SP APPLIED LINGUISTICS

Reading is considered to be a vital skill for academic success, yet it is seldom taught to or practised with students. Students begin to `read to learn' during primary and secondary schooling. However, at tertiary level the academic demands are much greater than before and involve more extensive reading of conceptually more complex texts. This study investigates the implementation of an intensive reading programme for post-matric English Second Language Science students, based on the assumption that reading improves reading. In addition, this study investigates the effect that reading ability has on academic performance in Science, which relies inter alia, on the ability to read, comprehend and interpret word problems. An intervention group and a control group were used to ascertain the effects of an intensive reading programme and the findings suggest that any reading (intensive or extensive) improves reading and language skills. This in turn impacts on academic performance in Science, if students have an ability in Science to begin with. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / MA - SP APPLIED LINGUISTICS

Students who study through the medium of a second language often have reading/listening comprehension and general study problems. This study focuses on particular aspects of these problems only, namely, identification of main ideas, summarisation and note-taking. The aim of this study was w determine the effect of teaching L2 students a combination of metacognitive and cognitive strategies for reading and listening comprehension (the main idea, summarising and note-taking by means of dictation). An intervention programme was designed in order to teach students these skills. There were ten students in both the experimental and the control groups. Both groups were assessed before and after the intervention programme. The findings reveal that the intervention was successful, with the experimental group showing greater improvement than the control group. The findings of this study have implications for second language tertiary learning and teaching theory and practice / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Linguistics)

Students who study through the medium of a second language often have reading/listening comprehension and general study problems. This study focuses on particular aspects of these problems only, namely, identification of main ideas, summarisation and note-taking. The aim of this study was w determine the effect of teaching L2 students a combination of metacognitive and cognitive strategies for reading and listening comprehension (the main idea, summarising and note-taking by means of dictation). An intervention programme was designed in order to teach students these skills. There were ten students in both the experimental and the control groups. Both groups were assessed before and after the intervention programme. The findings reveal that the intervention was successful, with the experimental group showing greater improvement than the control group. The findings of this study have implications for second language tertiary learning and teaching theory and practice / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Linguistics)