Academic Reading ability of first-year students: what's high school performance or prior exposure to academic reading got to do with it?

Zulu, Constance

doi:10.2989/16073610509486377

Cited by 8 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The test was based on reading comprehension and an essay. Reading and writing were chosen because they were regarded as more problematic for first-years than listening and speaking (Zulu, 2005 and. Each section carried fifty marks.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Correlating first-year law students' profile with the language demands of their content subjects

Ngwenya¹

2011

Per Ling.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Correlating first-year law students' profile with the language demands of their content subjects

Ngwenya¹

2011

Per Ling.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…First-year students from previously disadvantaged backgrounds have been found to encounter difficulty in their academic work (Zulu, 2011). A number of reasons for this, as proposed by various authors (Czerniewicz and Brown, 2014;Zulu, 2005Zulu, , 2007Zulu, , 2008 include being underprepared from high school, coming from under-resourced schools with no facilities such as libraries, and having little or no access to ICTs in their communities and schools. This study seeks to identify the factors influencing an online learning community amongst a sample of first-year students in not only empowering the student but also effective systems utilisation to facilitate teaching and learning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors influencing student usage of an online learning community: the case of a rural South African university

Chinyamurindi

Mahembe

Chimucheka

et al. 2017

IJEED

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Technology adoption within higher education is becoming popular. This has often resulted in hubs of learning referred to as an online learning community. The success of such platforms is dependent on full system utilisation. The study draws on a quantitative empirical investigation into the factors that influence the adoption of an online learning community amongst 252 first year students at a rural university in South Africa. The results of the study show that a positive relationship exists between online course design and student ratings of perceived usefulness and perceived interaction (PI) concerning the utilisation and usage of an online learning community. Furthermore, the online learning community's interface design was found to be positively related to ratings of perceived ease of use but not with PI. Based on these findings, interventions are proposed, which have ramifications in working within online learning communities to benefit both the student and the lecturer.

show abstract

“…good. grades.in.Matric.English).performed.better.in.the.test.of.reading.ability.administered. in the study (Zulu, 2005). This was an indication that a student with a good grade (A, B or C) in English was more likely than a student with a poor grade (D, E or F) to succeed.in.comprehending.academic.texts ..An.analysis.of.the.responses.students.gave.to.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…As a result, students are not sufficiently exposed to the target language to develop strong reading ability. Thus students from this.background.have.poorly.developed.communicative.competence.and.lack.appropriate reading skills and strategies for tertiary learning (Paxton, 1998in Zulu 2005. The level of their reading proficiency tends to be below that normally expected of an adequately prepared first-year student, which would be an advanced-plus level.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

First-year university L2 readers’ patterns of performance in a test of academic reading ability

Zulu

2007

Language Matters

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article presents findings from an investigation into the patterns of L2 readers' performance in a test of reading ability. The test was first administered to an intact class of law students enrolled in an English and Academic Skills (EAS) course in 1999, at a historically black university in South Africa. When the student composition and the duration of the course changed, the study was replicated on a similar group of law students in 2001 to see if the performance of the students in the reading course in the two cohorts would be the same, or different. A qualitative analysis of the test results showed a consistent pattern of performance on both measures of reading ability, namely the cloze test and the comprehension test. Nevertheless, the quantitative results showed a different pattern. The 2001 cohort had higher means on both measures of reading ability than the 1999 cohort. Nevertheless, the students' main reading problems were found to be similar regardless of cohort. Common to both cohorts were the reading difficulties related to weak analytical and critical reading skills and poorly developed inference skills. There was a significant difference in the pre-and post-test scores of the students in 2001 but not in 1999, indicating that the intervention given to these two cohorts had a better effect on the reading ability of students in the 2001 cohort. In view of the findings it is recommended that emphasis be placed on training first-year L2 readers in analytical, critical and inferential reasoning skills, and that these skills be reinforced in all courses.

show abstract

Academic Reading ability of first-year students: what's high school performance or prior exposure to academic reading got to do with it?

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Correlating first-year law students' profile with the language demands of their content subjects

Correlating first-year law students' profile with the language demands of their content subjects

Factors influencing student usage of an online learning community: the case of a rural South African university

First-year university L2 readers’ patterns of performance in a test of academic reading ability

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About