Differences in students’ reading comprehension of international financial reporting standards: a South African case

ABSTRACT

This study explores differences in students’ reading comprehension of International Financial Reporting Standards in a South African financial reporting class with a heterogeneous student cohort. Statistically significant differences were identified for prior academic performance, language of instruction, first language and enrolment in the Thuthuka programme. Where students, in a heterogeneous financial reporting class, require additional interventions to develop their reading comprehension, instructors may need to consider implementing differentiated instruction. Although this study considers South African students, the results may be of interest in other multicultural or multilingual environments, particularly where students also have diverse traits and backgrounds and have to comprehend learning material in a second language.

KEYWORDS:

• Reading comprehension
• IFRS
• Cloze
• students

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Stephen A. Coetzee http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3092-0257

Astrid Schmulian http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4946-3076

Notes

1 The FRES has long been favoured as a valid measure of readability in accounting communication literature (Stone & Parker, 2013). The score is based on the syllables per word and average words per sentence.

2 A differentiated replication is deliberate or known variation on a major aspect of a study with the aim of extending the known range of conditions for which the result may hold true (Lindsay & Ehrenberg, 1993).

3 These topics include: IFRS 3, Business Combinations (IASB, 2008); IAS 8, Accounting Policies, Changes in Accounting Estimates and Errors (IASB, 2003a); IAS 36, Impairment of Assets (IASB, 2003d) and IAS 40, Investment Property (IASB, 2003e).

4 For purposes of this paper, ‘professional accounting education’ is defined as accounting programmes, which have as their primary objective the graduating of students who qualify to enter the professional accountancy examinations of a professional accounting body.

5 The 11 official South African languages spoken at home are Afrikaans, English and nine African languages (Sesotho, isiZulu, isiXhosa, Setswana, isiNdbele, Siswati, TshiVenda, XiTsonga and Sepedi).

6 Afrikaans is a West Germanic language which is spoken natively in South Africa; with approximately six million native speakers in South Africa, or 13.3% of the population, it is the third most spoken mother tongue in the country (De Swaan, 2001).

7 The Other population group comprises Asian, Chinese, Indian and Mixed-race students. The Mixed-race population group originates from at least five different paternal and maternal populations (Khoisan, Bantus, Europeans, Indians and Southeast Asians).

8 The poverty score is calculated with reference to the average household income dependency ratio and the literacy rate of the community (Human Science Research Council, 2009). This poverty score determines the government funding received by the school in terms of the South African Schools Act (84/1996).

9 Twenty-six students did not complete this information, therefore n = 349 for this variable.

10 Students may voluntarily attend reading courses with the intention of, inter alia, increasing their reading speed, comprehension, concentration, retention and recall skills. Reading courses usually involve the assessment of current reading speed and comprehension levels together with the identification of poor reading habits. The outcome of such a course usually results in an increase in reading speed and comprehension levels as well as the introduction of improved reading habits (Janse van Rensburg et al., 2014).

11 The results are reported for the total Cloze reading comprehension scores of IAS 2 and IAS 16 combined. The results between the separate passages within each of these standards and between the standards are highly correlated (untabulated) with no statistically significant difference in the mean scores of each passage (untabulated). The results for each standard are also highly correlated to the total combined Cloze reading comprehension score (untabulated).

12 Quintile 1–4 schools were combined, as the individual quintiles were too small to allow for meaningful statistical analysis.