Abstract:

South Africa’s performance in the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study indicates that 76% of Grade 4 learners are unable to read for meaning, the lowest of all 57 participant countries. This exemplifies the inequalities prevalent in basic education as English is the Language of Learning and Teaching but not the Home Language for the majority of South African learners. This bleeds into the tertiary education space where students are required to read for meaning at an advanced level in a language in which they lack proficiency. South Africa faces a critical shortage of professionals in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), threatening the country’s capacity for sustained economic growth. There is an urgent need to increase graduation rates in STEM. This research study investigates the English reading fluency of students, pre- and post-intervention, in a first-year engineering support programme at one of the leading South African Universities. The students were selected for the programme based on their Grade 12 results, with the intention to improve their reading fluency as this directly correlates to reading comprehension and student success.

Ethical clearance for the study was granted by the University’s ethics committee in 2024. The action research cycle has been applied to this study and the interventions form part of the curriculum for the module in which it is embedded. This study combines quantitative data from reading speed and comprehension with qualitative data from student reflections. The study focuses on the 2025 cohort consisting of 322 students across nine engineering sub-disciplines - chemical, civil, computer, electrical, electronic, industrial, mechanical, metallurgical, and mining engineering. Although all registered students participated in the interventions (as these were done during class time), the researchers only analysed the data of those who consented to their participation in the study. Reading speed and comprehension, as aspects of fluency, were measured pre- and post-intervention using a free online tool.

A total of 314 students participated in the pre- or post-reading assessment. Of these, 74 results were excluded because the students were either absent when the pre- or post-assessments were done, or because they recorded excessively high reading speeds (outliers), leaving 240 participants. A preliminary analysis shows that 169 (70,5%) students were unable to read at a high school level in terms of Words per Minute prior to the intervention, and this number decreased to 95 (39,8%) post-intervention. Overall, 198 students (82.5%) increased their reading speed after the intervention, indicating a strong improvement. Only 39 students (16.25%) showed a decrease, and 3 students (1.25%) remained the same on their second attempt. The data indicates that many learners more than doubled their initial reading speed. Student reflections show that before the interventions, many struggled often reading slowly due to single word fixations. After the interventions, most reported substantial improvements in speed, while maintaining or slightly improving their comprehension. Furthermore, students expressed confidence or neutral-positive sentiments about their progress. This suggests that the reading interventions were effective in addressing reading fluency, which could have a positive impact on student success in the programme. This is explored in further detail in the research paper.

Keywords:

Reading fluency, higher education, STEM, engineering.