Comparing university students' reading proficiency with course reading materials
What is it about?
University students read a lot as part of their coursework, but are their reading skills at a level where they can comprehend what they read for class? We compared first-year students' English reading proficiency and how complex their course textbooks are to see how well their reading skills match course reading demands. We did this in English-medium instruction (EMI) degree programs with students whose first language is not English. Our findings show that, in general, students' reading skills are at level with their course textbooks. We also found that students vary greatly in their reading abilities, and there is a wide range in text complexity across course textbooks.
Why is it important?
As a global language, English holds a position of privilege and access to upward mobility. English-medium instruction (EMI) degree programs offer greater access to higher education for prospective students who live outside of English-dominant countries. However, more often than not, these students face the challenge of taking in content and subject knowledge in a language that is not their first language or even the language in which they received their primary and secondary education. As a result, reading academic texts in English as an additional language requires more time and effort than reading in their first language. At the moment, we don't know a lot about students' reading proficiency and the type of academic reading skills students need to use in order to be successful in their EMI university studies across the globe. Our work takes a step forward in exploring this topic. The study also takes into consideration implications that our findings have on reading assessments designed for university admissions decision-making in EMI contexts. In the spirit of setting students up to succeed in their academics, we believe this paper is of great interest to EMI university admissions teams, administrators, course instructors, and prospective students.