This article is based on a study that was conducted at a university based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The research aimed to explore and describe challenges that are likely to limit the success of postgraduate research students, mostly focusing on the relationship between students and supervisors. The study adopted a case study design with qualitative data. A self-constructedinterview guide with open-ended questions was utilised as the main data collection tool from a sample of 34 postgraduate students from one faculty of the university in question. The study findings revealed that communication breakdown, poor feedback, non-availability of some supervisors and lack of ethical consideration were some of the major factors that contributed to negative supervisory experiences of the students who participated in the study. Based on the findings, the study recommended a number of intervention strategies that could be put in place for both students and supervisors to improve the supervision experience. Among these are the adoption of collaborative cohort model, supervisor training and communication guidelines.
Despite the fact that comprehension plays an important role in the reading process, the literature in a South African context reveals that learners continue to struggle with it and teachers continue to neglect it in their teaching. The literature has further shown that teachers’ neglect of comprehension in their reading lessons could be attributed to various reasons, including the fact that teachers seemingly are not taught how to teach reading during their teaching training years. This paper analyses the English First Additional Language teachers’ understanding and their implementation of reading strategies in their classrooms to develop teachers’ understanding and awareness of the important role played by reading strategies in the reading process. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were followed and a survey design was used. Purposive sampling was used to select 126 teachers, to whom questionnaires were administered. Statistical Package for Social Sciences software was used to analyse the quantitative data and the qualitative data were analysed thematically. The results indicated that the majority of teachers seemed not to understand certain reading strategies and, therefore, implemented only a few that they understood, greatly limiting learners’ potential to explore other reading strategies. The study also established that some teachers only paid attention to traditional reading strategies that did not facilitate comprehension. The study recommended that teachers should be trained on how to teach reading strategies so that they are exposed to a wide range of reading strategies in order to assist learners improve their literacy.
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