IELTS Research Reports

Tim Moore, Janne Morton and Steve PriceA number of other informants spoke of the effort they put in at the beginning of semester to persuadestudents to commit to doing the prescribed reading on their courses. For many, any adequateparticipation on academic programs (whether it be related to attending lectures, discussion in tutorials,participation in lab sessions) was contingent on students coming along to classes having read therelevant material. The lecturer from Communications, for example, drew attention in interview to thefollowing ‘firm instruction’ to students contained in the course manual.COMMUNICATIONS: I really hammer the following home to students at the beginningof the course (Referring to course outline document): “Please make sure you have done thereading before each lecture. The lectures and workshops will be based on the assumption thatyou have done this reading, and you will be expected to demonstrate some familiarity withthe content”.Whilst not emphasising reading to quite the same extent, some lecturers in the more technical (‘hard’)areas also affirmed the importance of this activity on their courses. The Architecture lecturer, forexample, saw the development of good habits of reading as a key part of students’ professional training.ARCHITECTURE: Even though we are a more technical subject, students need toappreciate that it is principally through reading that they will acquire key knowledge inthe discipline. We’re aware of this not only for their university study, but for their ongoingdevelopment as professionals too … I say to my students that good habits of reading willmake them good professionals.The overwhelming importance of reading in academic study was perhaps stated most emphatically bythe informant from History:HISTORY: What is very clear is that those students who do a lot of reading do better atwhatever they are called upon to do than students who don’t do very much, and this seems tobe the case with virtually all the academic work we set.As we shall see later in the discussion of the interview findings, a number of staff reported a notalways-felicitousrelationship between the expectations they had of reading, and the actual readingbehaviours and attitudes that students brought to their studies.Quantity and type of reading prescribed on coursesWhilst there was general agreement among informants about the importance of reading, a fair amountof variation was noted regarding the amount and types of reading prescribed in specific subject areas.The differences observed here were mainly disciplinary ones, and perhaps not surprisingly, were foundto divide mainly along the hard–soft distinction we have drawn between the disciplines investigated inthe study.Such differences were quite noticeable, for example, in the quantity of reading expected of students.In the ‘softer’ disciplines, informants spoke of the need for students to do ‘substantial’ reading on theircourses, and generally to go beyond the set readings:MEDIA STUDIES: There is a standard textbook. Every week there are particular pages ofreferences they need to read, but then there are other important books, journal, magazinearticles as well. To be properly informed in this subject, students also need to get into thehabit of reading newspapers every day, and to be monitoring articles on media developments.222 www.ielts.org