CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
4.5 PART C: ACADEMIC LITERACY
Fig.4.3 Presentation of academic literacy benchmark levels and students’ performance in each level.
4.5.1The general students’ performance
The general student’s performance is at a mean score of 39.05.This means that generally students did not perform satisfactorily on the NBT. Various reasons might have led them to perform at this level. The students’ performance is of average, which according to the NBT score level is intermediate. This indicate the justification for students to be placed in the Foundation Programme (NBT, 2014, p.11). Of the 100 students who sat for the academic literacy test, 51 obtained at the basic level, 41 at the intermediate lower level and 8 at the intermediate upper level. According to the NBT (2014, p.12), the basic level indicated students’ performance as being a serious challenges. Students who register at this level require an extensive and long term support for them to cope with tertiary studies. 41 % of those who sat for the test achieved at the intermediate lower level. The implication of these performance is that students should be placed in an extended programme.
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Basic Intermediate Lower Intermediate Upper Total
PROFILES OF STUDENTS
Students’ scores were based on their achievement in the recognized academic literacy competencies as stated in International English Testing Service (IELTS, National Benchmarking Test (2014), Test of Academic Literacy and also set by Cliff and Hansford (2003).There were 26 percent of students who performed at the minimum level in the Book and Whiskers plot. Students who performed at the first Quartile of 25
% and below were at the level of 33 %.Those who performed at 2nd Quartile of 50 % were at 37 % and those who performed at the last Quartile of 75 % were at the level of 44 %.
4.5.2 Performance in benchmark levels
This section explains the levels of performance on the NBT.
(i) Basic level
In this benchmark level, students are struggling with the expectations of academic reading. Of the 100 students who sat for the test, the majority of them belong to the Basic level (51%).This means that they operate at a level where they experience serious learning challenges (NBT, 2014). They need an intervention programme which will take them through the process of becoming academically ready. The NBT (2014) describe students in this category as the ones suitable for admission at FET colleges.
This tells that the majority of students, even though they are admitted at university, are not ready to meet the academic challenges at universities. The NBT (2014, p.7) describes students who perform at Basic levels as the ones who can:
infer the overall purpose of text, which requires that they have to understand the overall point that the text is making.
understand the basis by which concepts or processes are compared, by using analogy.
infer a percentage by referring to a text.
infer the meaning in context of a common, collogual idiomatic phrase.
know the function of quotation marks as they apply to neologisms.
understand the connotations of a common term in context
understand communicative purpose to include giving examples of points.
These are the characteristics of students’ performance in this category. The fact that the majority of students (51%) performed at this level shows that they are not ready for university studies. The researcher thinks that students who are admitted at universities, with a performance at this level should be put through a foundation programme where their basic language skills (as stated above) will be thoroughly developed.
(ii) Intermediate level
The intermediate level, as discussed in chapter two, is divided into two levels; which are the lower level and the upper level. Students who should perform at the intermediate level:
know the meaning in context of a phrase.
know the meaning of a common, colloquial term.
draw from a known lexicon to identify/describe author attitude.
extract and classifying essential meaning within a paragraph.
know the function of quotation marks as they apply to neologism.
understand the connotations of a common term in context.
understand communicative purpose to include giving examples of points.
(NBT 2014, p.8).
Students in the intermediate lower performed at (41%).The performance is above the minimum benchmark level of 38 % as stated in the benchmark table. This means that these students operate at a level where they experience challenges in domains of speciality, in this case, science. They need to be placed in extended degree programmes, like the foundation programme.
(iii) Intermediate upper level
The data presented indicated that only 8 students performed in the category of intermediate upper and this amount to only 8%.The implication of this performance is that only 8 students are capable of meeting the academic challenges when admitted at universities. However, they should be given some attention through the extended degree or foundation programme, like the ones who performed at the intermediate
lower. Students who performed at this level should be given opportunities to develop their interpretative language skills that will enable them to have illustrative skills. They should be exposed to argumentative skills where they will be able to establish the relationship between main points and their supporting detail in academic reading and writing.
4.5.3 Descriptive statistics
The following table will present data on the descriptive analysis of students’
performance as per their number, mean, standard deviation, minimum, quartile 1 (25%),quartile 2 (50%),quartile 3(75%) and the maximum level.
Table 4.5 Descriptive statistics
N Mean SD Min p25 p50 p75 Max AL 100 39.5 7.178 26 33 37 44 54
The data above present the general performance of students in the NBT. There were 100 students who sat for the test. The general mean for the students’ performance is at 39.5 %. Students’ performance in different quartile levels is as follows: at the first quartile of 25%, students’ performance is at 33%, 37% of students performed at the second quartile of 50% and 44% of students performed at the third quartile of 75%.There were 54% of students who performed at the maximum level of between 75%
and 100%.
The descriptive statistics above may be presented in the following graph
Fig 4.4 Descriptive analysis presentation
The above figure 4.4 presented students’ results according to their performance in quartiles. The students’ performance is placed according to the quatiles.i.e from the lowest quartile to the highest.