Developing academic language proficiency in grade 8 ESL learners

[摘要] The ability to achieve academic success is dependent on the acquisition of academiclanguage proficiency, basic to which is the ability to decode and comprehend relevantacademic content, with limited contextual support. Research indicates that EnglishSecond Language (ESL) learners at primary and tertiary educational institutions inSouth Africa lack the skills necessary for academic success. This study investigatedfirstly, the relationship between academic achievement of Grade 8 learners and theirdecoding and spelling ability and secondly, the impact of a peer mentoring pairedreading programme on reading and spelling skills of Grade 8 ESL learners. Resultsconfirm a strong positive relationship between reading and spelling skills of learnersand their academic achievement and suggests that the lack of reading skills is notconfined to second language English learners only. The reading programme had asignificant impact on the on the decoding skills of ESL learners and a small nonsignificantimpact on spelling and comprehension skills.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand