Inferences from the Test of Academic Literacy for Postgraduate Students (TALPS)

Abstract

Inadequate student success at the undergraduate level forms the focus of much current research in the realm of higher education in South Africa. However, few studies have examined to what extent success is being achieved at postgraduate level, and whether language proficiency constitutes a barrier to academic achievement at this more advanced phase of study. In this article, which provides an analysis of the test results of a cohort of postgraduate students who wrote the Test of Academic Literacy for Postgraduate Students (TALPS) at a centrally located university in South Africa, I find that postgraduate students show the same kind of vulnerability to academic literacy challenges as their undergraduate peers. On the basis of inferential statistics and an analysis of student writing, the inferences to be drawn from the available test data are that not only are students being allowed to graduate with low levels of academic literacy and language proficiency, creating another form of social injustice, but some of these students are even being admitted to postgraduate study. This anomaly suggests that existing short-term literacy interventions fall short of reaching the desired outcomes and that language issues need to be prioritised considerably more throughout the undergraduate phase.