Components of success in academic reading tasks for Swedish students

In a parallel-language environment students are often required to read in a language different from the one they use in lectures, seminars, and among themselves. Relatively little research has been done on the overall reading success of such groups or on the componential make up of their L2 reading...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIbérica (Castellón de la Plana, Spain) Vol. 22; no. 22; pp. 141 - 162
Main Authors Shaw, Philip, McMillion, Alan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Asociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines Específicos (AELFE) 2011
Asociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines Específicos
Subjects
academic English
academic reading
comprensión lectora académica
Engelska språket
English language
HUMANIORA och RELIGIONSVETENSKAP
HUMANITIES and RELIGION
inglés académico
language
Languages and linguistics
lengua paralela
Linguistics
lingvistik
Other Germanic languages
parallel
parallel-language
procesos de lectura
reading
reading processes
Språkvetenskap
Övriga germanska språk
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Summary:In a parallel-language environment students are often required to read in a language different from the one they use in lectures, seminars, and among themselves. Relatively little research has been done on the overall reading success of such groups or on the componential make up of their L2 reading skills. This paper compares the English-language reading skills of Swedish students of biology with that of equivalent British biology students. Many Swedish readers perform within or above the normal British range on the study-reading test, but the overall average score of this sample of Swedish readers was considerably lower than that of the British sample. For the Swedes study-reading success correlates significantly with vocabulary knowledge, inferencing and newspaper reading, and at a lower level for word recognition speed. For the British informants the pattern is similar, but with no significant correlation for word-recognition speed. Multiple regression analyses show that academic vocabulary knowledge test scores can account for nearly half the variance in study-reading scores and newspaper reading test scores for about ten percent more. For the British informants the same pattern emerged, but the contributions of vocabulary knowledge was considerably greater and that of newspaper skimming rather less.
ISSN:2340-2784
1139-7241