Faculty of Humanities
School of Languages
Unit for Academic Literacy
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
Developing students’ academic reading abilities – as a component that would contribute towards attaining a level of academic literacy that would enable students to successfully complete a tertiary qualification – is one of the focal points of the interventions offered by the Unit for Academic Literacy. Research on academic reading is therefore undertaken by several members of this unit. Different approaches aimed at enhancing students’ academic reading abilities have been employed by various institutions, with varying degrees of success. The researcher is investigating a socio-affective approach to the development of reading competencies, attitudes and values. This approach, which is still relatively unexplored, yielded exceptionally favourable results in interventions facilitated by a group of researchers and academics from the University of Maryland (USA). As their interventions involved subjects (participants and respondents) at primary-school and high-school levels, she has adapted the approach to the multilingual, tertiary context at the University of Pretoria. Her research among first-year students has shown that most second-language speakers of English have a poor reading background, low motivation and a negative attitude towards reading. These students employ inappropriate reading strategies, do not engage in critical reading and, generally, do not read anything but the scheduled class texts. As her research revealed various social and affective factors that influence the above reading behaviour, beliefs and attitudes, her intervention was designed in such a way that it would remedy as many of the issues that influence these students’ reading behaviour as possible, and improve their reading abilities. The research has subsequently led her into consequential areas in a quest to further refine this intervention, which, for the very first time, uses a socio-affective approach for enhancing tertiary-level students’ academic reading abilities.
Contact person: Ms N Boakye.
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