would be lost because I didn‟t go through all the way. (interview 1)
Kayhan Anthropology, you have to read a lot. (interview 1)
Tabasum Whenever I have time, I do my reading, like my English class and my
Psychology, but there‟s not enough time to read for all of them. (interview 6)
Sabrina We do a lot of reading, a lot. (interview 1)
Solange Oh my God. The readings for this semester is too much, especially government. I spend like a lot of time reading. (interview 6)
Musa Oh, God, a lot, a lot of reading, like a crazy lot of reading. (interview 5)
In some cases, the comment about having been assigned a heavy reading load seems to be indeed warranted. For example, for Anthropology, at one point, Kayhan, Solange and Musa were asked to read 120 pages of an ethnographic book in one week. Or, similarly, Tabasum was asked to read 120 pages of the textbook for her World Religions class. In both classes, even though there were weeks that did not require this much reading, these specific examples were not the only time such a number of pages were required in a week. Considering the other classes they were taking and the fact that they were all working an average of 15 hours a week, it is not
difficult to see how they felt under pressure trying to complete these readings. In other cases, however, as mentioned above, it seems that the feelings the participants had of having been assigned too much reading was confounded with other reading challenges such as insufficient background knowledge. Also, for some of the classes, while some weeks seemed to be more reading-heavy, others were less so, and, as a consequence, the timing of the interview affected how much participants would complain about their reading load.
One example of a participant changing her perception of how much reading was involved in a course is Solange in her American Government class (GOV 211). As can be seen in Table 5.3, in interview 6, the second of spring semester, she was quite overwhelmed by the amount of reading required in that class. In that interview, I asked her whether the readings were difficult, or if it was simply too much reading. She said: “It‟s just a lot. And, for me, when the reading is a lot, I end up not understanding what I‟m reading, it‟s like I‟m reading just to read” (Solange,
interview 6). A month later, however, when I asked her about her readings for the government class, she said: “We don‟t have much reading in government” (Solange, interview 7). I was quite
surprised to realize that her perception had changed so dramatically, especially because Solange typically did not say anything lightly or without pondering. It‟s possible that the amount of reading per week had decreased somewhat by then, although I doubt it would have gone from “too much” to “not much”. This is difficult to verify since, as will become clear below, this
particular professor did not follow the syllabus closely and this is the document I often used to know what the assigned reading was for a certain class. However, it seems that a better
understanding of Solange‟s changing perception can be obtained by looking at the knowledge she had gained in that month regarding the professor and his dynamics. She says: “I like [the
explains like, I like the way he explains, he spends more time in one topic, like he makes sure you understand it before he move on to the next one” (Solange, interview 7). That the professor respected the students‟ pace, including hers, seems to have somewhat relieved her from the
pressure she felt at the beginning of the semester. In our interview, the professor also confirmed he was very flexible with the amount of content he was able to cover in his course. He says:
[GOV 211] is an overly ambitious class. The syllabus for it is absurd. I tell the students from the get-go we will not cover probably half of the stuff on the syllabus but this is my dream syllabus. If I had all the time given to me that I‟d like to teach you everything you
need to know to be well versed as a citizen in American politics. […] And then we will confront the reality that I don‟t have the time to teach you all of that. So we will get
through what we can get through.
Another important event that had happened between the two interviews is that Solange had taken the midterm and had received it back. She got a B on it, which the professor clarified was slightly above class average and “an outstanding score”. In taking that exam, Solange
learned that the readings were not the main source of content, and I imagine this also must have taken the pressure off of the required readings. She explains: “the exam, it doesn‟t come,
everything comes from what he teaches in class, so that‟s why we have to pay attention. Nothing
comes from the reading. The reading is just to help you understand more, but, cause he talks everything” (Solange, interview 7). Solange‟s change in perspective regarding her GOV 211
readings illustrate the point that Carson, Chase, Gibson, & Hargrove (1992) make that “how and what students read is determined by [what] they will have to do to demonstrate control of course content” (p. 33).
Clearly, then, the amount of reading alone may not be as much of a challenge as what the students are asked to do based on the reading, the language used, and its content. In other words, participants‟ perception of what is “too much reading” is affected by how much they believe they
have to understand from reading the text independently, the difficulty of the language in the text and the complexity of the content. All of these seem to be susceptible to the professor‟s
mediation, especially through class lectures, as became evident in Solange‟s experience in her
Government class.
5.1.3 Language issues
All seven participants learned English as their second or third written language. And, even though they are in college, taking content classes, most of them still are, in many ways, developing their English literacy. It is therefore unsurprising that, at times, they would get frustrated with the difficulties they faced in understanding what they were reading. Analysis of the data suggests there were two main factors underlying their difficulty with reading
comprehension. The first, and more frequent, factor was the language used in the texts they were assigned to read. More often than not, participants mentioned unknown vocabulary as a main source of language difficulty. This is the focus of this section. The second factor was lack of, or insufficient, background knowledge. This will be the focus of the next section. These issues are not clearly distinct from each other, but they will be discussed separately in accordance with comments participants made.
Table 5.4
Language affecting reading Participant Comments
Yar Zar When I‟m reading […] like in Theatre, it‟s like really hard, what I would do is I‟d just keep reading and then I‟ll try to make sense out of it, you know, you know how sometimes you just skip it and if you keep reading it starts making sense, you pick it up, so that‟s what I‟ll do every now and then (interview 1)
Arezo For my government, we had to read a lot of articles. If I was born here, if I read that article, I‟m sure I‟ll get it, but since it‟s hard to read it like you read it slowly, and sometimes you can‟t even say a word, you‟re like “Okay, how do I pronounce that?” […] but sometimes you don‟t even know what you are reading, like you‟re just reading for the sake of reading. (interview 4)
Kayhan The federalist papers are basically, they are part of the constitution, and they are hard because they are 18th century English and they are very difficult to
understand, […] if you try to read on your own, it‟s really hard to understand, it‟s just basically new words, very different from what we speak now. (Kayhan 3)
Tabasum If I have time and I have to read and read again and again and again until I understand like I have to find the words from dictionary that I don‟t understand, […] if I don‟t use dictionary then I don‟t understand (interview 2)
Sabrina It‟s hard for me to understand some of the vocabulary words that they use, like in
Government, I always have to go back and to look it up and stuff […] you know, and so like it‟s really hard, like, not knowing like these hard vocabulary words that you should know, that will help you for college a lot (interview 4)
Solange When I‟m reading, I usually sit next to my computer cause I don‟t have a
dictionary, so I type in dictionary.com so that‟s when I define most of the words. And sometimes like even still I‟m not understanding the word, I ask [the
professor] the next morning. (interview 1)
Musa I have problems finishing books, so it takes me a long period of time cause I