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This exploratory study measured the generic music style preferences of urban South African adolescents using a cross-section of grade nine adolescent learners living in Johannesburg. Johannesburg is the third largest city in Africa and the largest in sub-Saharan Africa. Quantitatively, through a survey, the research determined which music styles were preferred and qualitatively, through interviews, established the extent to which multifarious variables affected preference. LeBlanc’s Model of the Sources of Variation in Music Preference was used as the theoretical framework upon which the study was built. A similar study, completed ten years ago on South African urban adolescents, conducted by Jennifer James, inspired this study and was used as a point of departure for this project. James’s 2000 study was entitled, Generic Style Music Preferences of Urban South African Students. Examples of fifteen generic styles of music, selected from popular, classical and indigenous traditions, were used as music excerpts in the listening test (Music Preference Questionnaire). Through purposive sampling, a total of five-hundred and sixty-eight learners in grade nine participated in the study. The learner sample used was demographically true in its representation of the country’s population. Three broad categories of variables pertaining to preference were delineated and discussed within the study. These encompassed listener, music and environmental variables. Learner variables included: music training, gender (sex), ethnic group (race and language), socio-economic status, and age. Music variables pertaining to preference included: physiological properties of the stimulus [music], complexity of the stimulus [music], and referential meaning of the stimulus [music]. Environmental variables pertaining to preference included media, peer influence, family influence, and the influence of teachers and authority figures. The study revealed that the current generic music style preferences of South African urban adolescents in order of most to least preferred were: Rhythm and Blues, Western Pop, Kwaito, Reggae, House, Hip-Hop, South African Pop, Western Choral, Metal, Rock, Gospel Jazz, Traditional African, Western Classical and Indian Classical. / Dissertation (MMus)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Music / unrestricted

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This study investigated the relationship between reading attitudes in L1 and in L2 of learners in Pakistan. It also investigated the differences between reading attitudes of learners from different home backgrounds, rural and urban. The participants of the study had Sindhi as their L1 and English as their L2. They came from rural (n=186) and urban (n=202) parts of Sindh. The study employed a mixed methods approach. It collected data through a questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews. The questionnaire collected information on four reading attitude variables: self perception as a reader, utilitarian value for reading, personal involvement for reading and lack of reading anxiety both in Sindhi and in English. The fifth variable was learner’s rural/urban home background. My study partially confirms findings from previous studies indicating that reading attitudes in L1 and in L2 are related. Rural learners displayed a stronger relationship between reading attitudes in L1 and in L2, whereas urban learners displayed a weaker relationship. This finding was further confirmed when, through a multiple regression analysis, the contribution of each reading attitude was checked in terms of the coefficient values. A learner’s ‘rural/urban home background’ emerged as the strongest indicator of a learner’s reading attitudes than his/her reading attitudes in Sindhi. Thus, urban home background seems to add positively to reading attitudes in English. The findings show the importance of one’s educational background, home and society on the whole in the process of developing a learner’s attitudes towards reading in English. Furthermore, this study also demonstrated marked differences in the reading attitudes of both the groups in terms of their reading attitudes in L1 and in L2. The rural learners had better reading attitudes in L1 than their counterparts, whereas the urban learners had better reading attitudes in English than the rural learners. Such a finding again supports the role of society and social background in shaping learners’ reading attitudes in L1 or in L2.

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