, ENG2601 Assignment 4 OCTOBER NOVEMBER
PORTFOLIO (COMPLETE ANSWERS) 2024 - DUE 9
October 2024; 100% TRUSTED Complete, trusted solutions
and explanations.
Read Text A and answer the questions that follows. South
Africa’s massive reading problem Luke Fraser 16 May 2023
Grade 4 learners in South Africa have the worst reading ability
in the world, with 81% incapable of reading for meaning. This is
according to the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy
Study (PIRLS 2021), which tested 12,426 learners across the
country and compared them to students at a similar age level
across 42 other nations. South Africa’s mean achievement score
was 288 in the study, far below the 500 international average.
Egypt was the second worst country in the study, but its score of
378 was well ahead of South Africa. A major concern for South
Africa is that its achievement score has dropped significantly
from the PIRLS 2016 study, where South Africa reported that
78% of children in Grade 4 could not read for meaning in any
language. However, researchers noted that 21 of the 32 countries
with trend data noticed a drop, with the Covid-19 pandemic
having a major effect on teaching hours globally. In the 2021
study, Singapore (587), Hong Kong (573), the Russian
Federation (567), England (588), and Finland (549) had the
highest overall scores: The results in South Africa varied heavily
across languages. Learners who were tested in Afrikaans and
English scored significantly higher than those who were tested
in African languages. Those tested in Afrikaans (387) and
English (382) scored well above the average, while nine African