Assessing Academic Literacy in a Multilingual Society

South African universities face major challenges in meeting the needs of their students in the area of academic language and literacy. The dominant medium of instruction in the universities is English and, to a much lesser extent, Afrikaans, but only a minority of the national population are native speakers of these languages. Nine other languages can be media of instruction in schools, which makes the transition to tertiary education difficult enough in itself for students from these schools. The focus of this book is on procedures for assessing the academic language and literacy levels and needs of students, not in order to exclude students from higher education but rather to identify those who would benefit from further development of their ability in order to undertake their degree studies successfully. The volume also aims to bring the innovative solutions designed by South African educators to a wider international audience.

Albert Weideman is Professor of Applied Language Studies and Research Fellow at the University of the Free State, South Africa.

John Read is Professor Emeritus at The University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Theo du Plessis is Professor of Language Management at the University of the Free State, South Africa.