Reading ability and academic acculturation: the case of South African students entering higher education
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Date
2013Author
Van Dyk, Tobie
Van de Poel, Kris
Van der Slik, Frans
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First-year students experience a range of challenges when transferring from secondary to higher
education (HE) (cf. Darlaston-Jones et al. 2003, Leki 2006, Brinkworth et al. 2009). This is no
different in South Africa, where deviating levels of preparedness for the demands of HE is a
recurring theme (Slonimsky and Shalem 2005, Van Schalkwyk 2008, Scott 2009, Yeld 2009,
Van Dyk 2010, Van Dyk and Coetzee-Van Rooy 2012). Weideman (2003:56) rightfully points
out that the inability to understand and utilise appropriate academic discourse has a detrimental
effect on academic success. Young students need to acculturate to the academic environment
while adopting the academic community’s currency (Van de Poel and Gasiorek 2012a:294).
With this article, we wish to contribute to the discussion by reporting on the academic language
ability of one group of first-year students at a South African university, with specific reference
to these students’ reading ability, on the basis of the following data: (i) individual differences
in terms of learner characteristics (race, first language, gender, Grade 12 results, academic
performance); (ii) self-reported reading preparedness; and (iii) reading profiles resulting from
a valid and reliable academic literacy test, the Test of Academic Literacy Levels (TALL) and
its Afrikaans counterpart, the Toets van Akademiese Geletterdheidsvlakke (TAG). The findings
suggest that academic reading ability, as reflected in the test results, is indeed one of the salient
contributors to academic success (as confirmed in the literature), regardless of social and
individual differences, and that it needs to be supported in order for students to perceive their
reading ability in accordance with their reading performance and be able to progress in their
academic acculturation. A follow-up study will report on students’ awareness-raising about their own academic reading through the use of the validated scale for Perceived Academic
Reading Preparedness (PARP) as a pedagogical tool
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- Faculty of Humanities [2033]
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