Abstract
M.Ed. (Educational Psychology)
The high failure rate of especially first year students at tertiary institutions with its
financial and manpower implications poses a problem. A report of the work
committee of the Committee of University Principals Identified the lack of research
on the learning needs of students as well as the need for a student learning profile
and ways in which learning style research results can be utilised in the tertiary
instruction programme. The implications of learning styles on the reading
development of university students are still in doubt.
Reading demands a vast amount of a student's study hours and reading ability
underachievement occurs to a great extent. Consequently reading development
programmes were introduced at tertiary Institutions to offer students the
opportunity of developing and improving their reading skills. At the Rand
Afrikaans University three different reading courses are offered, but during the
past years it has become evident that not all students benefit equally from a
specific course. These three courses accentuate the two main components of the
reading act. namely the optical-mechanical (in course A), or the cognitive linguistic
(in course B) as against the integration of both these components (in
course C). The problem is which factors determine to which specific course a
student should be assigned to optimise his reading ability. One probability is that
a student's learning style could be such a factor. Hypotheses were posed to
examine this.
The aim of this study is to determine whether a student's learning style has any
implications for the different reading courses which are conducted at the Student
Counseling Bureau at RAU. An attempt was made to determine the preferred
learning style of students in order to ascertain whether 8 student with 8 specific
learning style would benefit more from a specific reading course (or courses).