A majority of course literature across most disciplines in higher education in Sweden, a Nordic country where English is a foreign language, are English-language publications (Bolton & Kuteeva, 2012), even in courses that do not have English as the official medium of instruction (Pecorari, Shaw, Malmström & Irvine, 2011). Swedes have a reputation as having high general competence in English and as a result, universities generally expect students to be able to read course literature in English without any help or guidance. Despite this, little research has been done on students' perceptions of academic reading in English or any potential problems that this practice may cause. In my PhD project, I aim to demonstrate not only to what extent Swedish university students have problems reading academic English, but also what the cause of these issues are and how they may be resolved.
During the first phase of the project, a sequential explanatory design (Creswell, Plano Clark, Gutmann & Hanson, 2003) has been used, involving two questionnaires with 505 participants in social science and follow-up interviews with 12 of the participants. The closed-ended questionnaire items have been analyzed using a combination of descriptive and inferential statistics, while the open-ended questionnaire items and interview transcripts have been analyzed using content analysis. Results show that more than half of Swedish university students in social science express negative attitudes including fear, anxiety and stress toward reading in English. Students further perceive reading in English to be considerably more time-consuming, and report trying to avoid it entirely. Early results also show that students who are not the highest achievers are actively discouraged from attending additional English in upper secondary school, likely making the transition from school to university more difficult.
References
Bolton, K., & Kuteeva, M. (2012). English as an academic language at a Swedish university: Parallel language use and the 'threat' of English. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 33(5), 429-447.
Creswell, J., Plano Clark, V., Gutmann, M., & Hanson, W. (2003). Advanced mixed methods research designs. In A. Tashakkori, & C. Teddlie (Eds.), Handbook of mixed methods in social and behavioral research (pp. 209-240). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Pecorari, D., Shaw, P., Malmstr m, H., & Irvine, A. (2011). English textbooks in parallel language tertiary education. TESOL Quarterly, 45(2), 313-333.
2022.
American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL 2022), Pittsburgh, USA, March 19-22, 2022