Faculty of Humanities
School of Languages
Unit for Language Skills Development
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
The first and important phase of this project has now been completed, and the outputs - four tests of academic literacy in both English and Afrikaans - have been extensively used. Close to 14000 students at the three institutional partners (the Universities of Pretoria and Stellenbosch, and North-West University) will write the TALL (Test of Academic Literacy Levels) or TAG (Toets van Akademiese Geletterdheidsvlakke) in 2005. The tests have a range of reliability indices lying between 0.85 and 0.94 across various versions. Various aspects of the tests have been reported on in three articles by Albert Weideman and Tobie van Dyk. The development of the new test has enabled us to define academic literacy much more specifically, and in a more contextually appropriate way, than has been possible before.
Contact person: Prof AJ Weideman.
This project is reported on in a doctoral thesis with the same title. Using an action research methodology, the researcher addressed the problem of developing additional materials for Afrikaans second language learners in a township school. The results indicate how one can deal responsibly with materials development in a scarce resource environment, and with individual professional growth in an authoritarian context. Among the practical outcomes of the investigation and subsequent materials development is a set of instructional materials that deserve to be more widely used in the pre-final or final year of secondary school. The conclusions should also be of benefit to teachers of additional languages other than Afrikaans.
Contact person: Prof AJ Weideman.
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