ETD Collection

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/104


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    Developing academic language proficiency in grade 8 ESL learners
    (2007-02-22T13:01:07Z) Bhorat, Sumayya
    The ability to achieve academic success is dependent on the acquisition of academic language proficiency, basic to which is the ability to decode and comprehend relevant academic content, with limited contextual support. Research indicates that English Second Language (ESL) learners at primary and tertiary educational institutions in South Africa lack the skills necessary for academic success. This study investigated firstly, the relationship between academic achievement of Grade 8 learners and their decoding and spelling ability and secondly, the impact of a peer mentoring paired reading programme on reading and spelling skills of Grade 8 ESL learners. Results confirm a strong positive relationship between reading and spelling skills of learners and their academic achievement and suggests that the lack of reading skills is not confined to second language English learners only. The reading programme had a significant impact on the on the decoding skills of ESL learners and a small nonsignificant impact on spelling and comprehension skills.
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    Predictors of Academic Achievement in Multilingual Learners
    (2007-02-22T11:19:43Z) MacFarlane, Marco
    This research considered factors that predict academic achievement in Grade 8 and 9 learners. The learners in this study were categorised primarily based on their first language. As a researcher in South Africa one is not faced with a division between monolinguals and bilinguals, but rather is forced to classify language users based on their ‘home’ or ‘first’ language. Thus learners whose first language was English fell into the first-language (L1) group, while learners whose first language was not English fell into the second-language (L2) group Academic achievement was defined in this study as the marks obtained by learners in their school subjects. This method of assessing students and learners is both pervasive and essential in the determination of academic potential, and the subsequent determination of future employment and educational opportunities. The results of these school achievement tests were compared with results obtained from the Differential Aptitude Test Form S (DAT-S) English Version. The DAT-S is an assessment instrument used to determine academic potential. This test was developed in South Africa, and normed against Afrikaans and English speaking students (Vosloo, Coetzee & Claassen, 2000). The test was chosen for use in this study because “the kind of information obtained from the differential aptitude tests can … facilitate judgements regarding potential success in the course of a career” (Vosloo, Coetzee & Claassen, 2000 p. 1). The results of this comparison were used to examine factors that determine success in an academic sphere, and which underlying proficiencies as predicted by the DAT-S may have contributed to this success.