| Summary: | A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts
Unitrers:Ltyof the witwatersrand, Johannesburg
for the degree ~f Master of Arts.
Johannesburg, 1992. === This investigat:i.ondemonstrates that school-leavers"
experience the greatest amount pf difficulty in answering
comprehension questions that demand inferencing related to
stylistic effects in written passages. It also demonstrates
that the texts use,d in Transvaal Education Department
written comprehension examinations and the questions<asked
on the texts ar,enot syntactica.lly difficUlt to.process.
A brief introduction to comprehension testing in the
Republ)~c of •South Africa is followed bY an explanation as to
how 2077 scripts from the Transvaal province were seleqted
and treated" to establish which questions ma't:riculatioU
candid~tes found most, difficult and which the easiest. \\t'he
items most ca.ndidates<,failed, and those for which most
scored 70% er'more, were then categorised accol:'d.in,•tg•o two ,
different taxonomies"" to,reveal that the c(}f.ficultquestioIj~
reguire inferencing procedures that easy questions do not. ,/,
,;;:-~ .
, ... . .... , _ _ _ ,f,~", ' __ ' ' , , ." ", ,,' ,',", " __ ~~;;;o<'; T,O,conf-rm that comprehensJ.on'·dJ.ffl.cultyfor school"'leavers
stems ~rom what they are asked to infer, and not from the
inhere\~t syntactic complexity of the t~,ts or questions
the:mse:l)ves,the syntax of both,the difficult and easy items
is scrutinized.
The inferencing tasks demanded of candida~es in the six ~ost
difficult questions are desc:.;:ih~d in detai~l."and,sonte,of the
findings of this investigation are related·to ongoing
research in Britain. The study questions. whe~;:::(er
c(;)mp::.~ehertsa1b0inlity is best tested by the kinds of
g:jlestir\lclRit'nldSic1atesfound :most difficult and suggests ways
teachers may use to prepare candidates for a comprehem~ion
examination of this kind.
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