Reading Is How Learning Happens | The Reading Lab and Writing Lab Workshops
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SU Student Success Initiative Series: Episode Nine.
Recorded on Thursday 17 September 2026.
Most of your learning does not happen in a lecture hall. It happens when you read. Which makes reading the single skill most worth protecting, and the first one to lose out when your phone is within reach. This conversation is about getting it back, and about the writing support waiting for postgraduates who have lost steam halfway through a thesis.
Jacolette Kloppers hosts the ninth of 15 conversations on AM2PM, joined by two guests from the SU Language Centre: Marisca Coetzee, lecturer and coordinator of the Reading Lab, and Selene Delport, Coordinator of Writing Lab Workshops.
What we cover in this episode:
- What the Reading Lab is, and who it is for: Coetzee explains how the lab supports students, and makes the case that it is not remedial. Anyone who wants to read better at university level qualifies, undergraduate to staff.
Does South Africa have a reading culture problem? And can reading realistically compete with social media and digital entertainment, or is that a fight already lost?
- Reading as a learning tool, not a task: Why some students treat reading as something to get through rather than something to learn from, and what changes when you approach it the other way round.
- Note-taking, questioning, remembering: How writing while you read improves comprehension, why asking questions of a text matters, and what actually helps you retain what you have read.
- Why the source text still matters in an age of AI: Coetzee on what you lose when you engage with a summary rather than the thing itself.
- Reading beyond marks: Perspective, empathy and personal growth, and what an ideal reading culture at the university would look like.
- Writing support for postgraduates: Delport on why postgraduate writing gets stuck, whether at the proposal stage or halfway through a dissertation, and how the Writing Lab workshops address it. Topics span internal organisation, coherence, cohesion, style, structure, editing, argumentation, referencing and the purpose of scientific writing.
- The workshops themselves: Journal articles, literature reviews, research proposals, theses and dissertations, academic arguments, and writing marathons. Offered at modest cost, with tailor-made versions available for specific departments in English, Afrikaans, or both.
Where to find support:
Reading Lab: https://languagecentre.sun.ac.za/reading-lab/
Writing Lab workshops: contact the SU Language Centre via the Language Centre website.
SU website: https://www.su.ac.za/en/students/success - or from the SU homepage, click Students, then Support, then Student Success.
Recorded on Thursday 17 September 2026.
Most of your learning does not happen in a lecture hall. It happens when you read. Which makes reading the single skill most worth protecting, and the first one to lose out when your phone is within reach. This conversation is about getting it back, and about the writing support waiting for postgraduates who have lost steam halfway through a thesis.
Jacolette Kloppers hosts the ninth of 15 conversations on AM2PM, joined by two guests from the SU Language Centre: Marisca Coetzee, lecturer and coordinator of the Reading Lab, and Selene Delport, Coordinator of Writing Lab Workshops.
What we cover in this episode:
- What the Reading Lab is, and who it is for: Coetzee explains how the lab supports students, and makes the case that it is not remedial. Anyone who wants to read better at university level qualifies, undergraduate to staff.
Does South Africa have a reading culture problem? And can reading realistically compete with social media and digital entertainment, or is that a fight already lost?
- Reading as a learning tool, not a task: Why some students treat reading as something to get through rather than something to learn from, and what changes when you approach it the other way round.
- Note-taking, questioning, remembering: How writing while you read improves comprehension, why asking questions of a text matters, and what actually helps you retain what you have read.
- Why the source text still matters in an age of AI: Coetzee on what you lose when you engage with a summary rather than the thing itself.
- Reading beyond marks: Perspective, empathy and personal growth, and what an ideal reading culture at the university would look like.
- Writing support for postgraduates: Delport on why postgraduate writing gets stuck, whether at the proposal stage or halfway through a dissertation, and how the Writing Lab workshops address it. Topics span internal organisation, coherence, cohesion, style, structure, editing, argumentation, referencing and the purpose of scientific writing.
- The workshops themselves: Journal articles, literature reviews, research proposals, theses and dissertations, academic arguments, and writing marathons. Offered at modest cost, with tailor-made versions available for specific departments in English, Afrikaans, or both.
Where to find support:
Reading Lab: https://languagecentre.sun.ac.za/reading-lab/
Writing Lab workshops: contact the SU Language Centre via the Language Centre website.
SU website: https://www.su.ac.za/en/students/success - or from the SU homepage, click Students, then Support, then Student Success.
