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Browsing Afrikaans and Dutch, German and French by Subject "Academic literacy"
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Item Open Access Die teoretiese begronding vir die ontwerp van ’n nagraadse toets van akademiese geletterdheid in Afrikaans(University of the Free State, 2017-07) Keyser, Gini; Weideman, A. J.English: The low levels of academic literacy of students at South African universities are a well-known problem, and one which is increasingly being identified as one of the prime reasons for a lack of academic performance and low throughput rates. The employment of academic literacy tests by tertiary institutions is a direct result of the need to identify which students are potentially at risk, and would therefore need additional academic support in order to complete their degree courses successfully in the prescribed time. One such test that has been used for some time nationally and internationally to measure the academic literacy levels specifically of postgraduate students is the Test of Academic Literacy for Postgraduate Students (TALPS). This test, however, is currently unavailable in any of the other official languages. This study therefore confirms the need to promote multilingualism at postgraduate level, even in the face of this goal at present being increasingly undermined by the favouring of a monolingual English dispensation at university. More specifically, this and previous studies acknowledge the lack of an Afrikaans alternative for TALPS as a serious shortcoming in language assessment at tertiary level. In response to this need the study intends to design, develop, test out and refine a postgraduate of academic literacy in Afrikaans (TAGNaS – Toets van Akademiese Geletterdheid vir Nagraadse Studente). This is done with reference to a theoretical-analytical framework of constitutive and regulative design principles that relate assessment design on the one hand to intrinsic, conventional conditions such as reliability and validity and, on the other, take account of social impacts such as transparency, accountability, and fairness. For the theoretical justification of TAGNaS multiple sets of evidence are presented, among which are the articulation of the theoretical rationale for the test (a key element of construct validity) and an argument integrating several statistical analyses of the pilot test results. Since the test rests theoretically upon a recently modified definition of academic literacy, experimentation with new or modified subtests and task types was part of the investigation. The results indicate that it can be highly productive to treat the operationalization of the construct with ingenuity and creativity, and also that experimentation with the challenges that new articulations of established constructs provide can be successfully accomplished.