Exploring Students’ Reading Profiles to Guide a Reading Intervention Programme

Abstract

There have been a number of studies on reading interventions to improve students' reading proficiency, yet the majority of these interventions are undertaken with the assumption that students' reading challenges are obvious and generic in nature. The interventions do not take into consideration the diversity in students' reading backgrounds and the specific nature of the challenges. Thus interventions may not address students' specific reading needs. This paper reports on a study that explored students' reading profiles as a needs analysis for an intervention programme to improve the reading proficiency of first-year Sociology students. The aim was to investigate the students' reading backgrounds to determine their specific reading needs. A Likert scale questionnaire with an open-ended section was used to explore the students' reading profiles. The Likert scale questions were analysed quantitatively, while the open-ended questions were analysed qualitatively. In addition, a regression analysis was conducted to determine the correlation between students' use of strategies and their self-efficacy levels. The findings show that a number of students have little reading experience, use inappropriate reading strategies, and have low self-efficacy and poor reading habits. In addition, students identified comprehension, language, vocabulary, length and density of Sociology texts as factors compounding their reading challenges. This paper discusses the implications of these findings in designing an appropriate reading intervention programme for this cohort.

Extended strategy-use instruction to improve students’ reading proficiency in a content subject

“…These authors claim that avoiding reading course material prevents students from contributing in class discussions, and consequently, they underperform in the module. A similar trend was found by Boakye (2017a) at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, where the current study was conducted. The author found that majority of first-year sociology students do not read their assigned texts.…”

“…Pretorius and Klapwijk (2016) explored the literacy practices of teachers in rural and disadvantaged areas and found they did not include appropriate reading strategies. This was confirmed by Boakye's (2017a) study. Her survey showed that the majority of first-year sociology students stated that reading did not receive much attention in their schools, and instruction was for a limited time and given haphazardly.…”

“…The students further confirmed that deep engagement with texts was not required at school level and they found a huge gap between reading at tertiary level and reading at school level (Boakye 2017a). Unfortunately, very little is done at tertiary level to bridge this reading gap.…”

“…Consequently high failure rates were recorded for the module (University of Pretoria Department of Sociology 2014). Although introducing compulsory tutorials reduced the failure rate, a number of students continued to complain about reading challenges (Boakye 2017a). Anecdotal evidence gathered from discussions with lecturers and tutors in the Department of Sociology confirmed that reading challenges and a lack of reader engagement with texts were some of the major factors contributing to the high rate of failure.…”

Investigation the Relationship between Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies and Self-Efficacy Perception in Reading Comprehension in Mother-tongue: Sample of 8th Graders

“…Karadeniz (2015) found a positive correlation between the participants' perceptions of self-efficacy for critical reading and their reading habits in his study. Boakye (2017), found that students who have little reading experience and use inappropriate reading strategies, also have low self-efficacy and poor reading habits, moreover, they were identified as having difficulty in reading comprehension. Therefore, we can conclude that the findings of these studies overlap with our study in terms of our results for the 3 rd and 4 th research questions, focusing on reading habits (poor, average or advanced) and perseverance of students to finish books that they start.…”