Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction
178
literacy contexts (for example Perry 2008; Roy 2008). The experience
of refugees in tertiary settings, however, still remains virtually
unexplored (Dryden-Peterson and Giles 2010). The Canadian journal
Refuge is an exception, with a special issue on international concerns
surrounding access to and policy in higher education for refugees.
The dearth of research exploring refugees in higher education may be
explained by the small number of refugees that pursue education at that
level. According to Ferede (2010), for example, refugees are the least
represented newcomer group in higher education in Canada. Because
going to college poses such a challenge to this population, it becomes
even more important to understand how refugee students cope with
college-level academic reading despite their histories of disrupted or
interrupted formal education.
Methodology
179
Course title*
Yar Zar
Introduction to Cultural
Anthropology
First-year Seminar
Principles of Economics I
Contemporary World Issues
American National Government
Introduction to Psychology
World Religions
Theatre Appreciation
Arezo
Kayhan
Tabasum
Sabrina
Solange
Musa
Note: *the students took many more courses besides these but due to limited space they cannot all be listed here
1
A summary of courses taken
by the student participants
ta b l e
Data collection
Data analysis
Data analysis was ongoing, recursive, inductive, and data driven (Taylor
and Bogdan 1998; Duff 2008). Data were first analysed through open
coding, in which I looked for anything pertinent to the research question
or problem, also bearing in mind that new insights and observations
that are not derived from the research question or literature review may
be important (Mackey and Gass 2005: 241). As analysis progressed, I
examined the data to identify emergent patterns and themes.
Academic reading
challenges
The reading practices the participants engaged in during their first year
of college were motivated almost exclusively by required course reading
assignments that came from textbooks, compilations of primary source
180
Eliana Hirano
material, and from a few journal articles. They were sometimes also
required to read ethnographic accounts or biographies. The different
reading challenges identified in the data are discussed below.
College reading is
different from high
school reading
Amount of required
reading
Language issues
All seven participants had learnt English as their second or third written
language and were still in the process of developing their English
literacy when they began college. They would, therefore, sometimes
get frustrated with the difficulties they faced in understanding what
they were reading. Whenever a participant mentioned a difficulty
181
Eliana Hirano
Insufficient
background
knowledge
All the participants, at some point during this study, claimed they were
not doing the assigned readings before class but were instead relying
on lectures and the occasional accompanying PowerPoint slides to
learn what they were supposed to. They used this strategy for different
reasons. At the beginning of the spring semester, for example, many
of the participants mentioned that they perceived the lectures as mere
repetition of the textbook and were waiting to see how they did in the
first exam of each discipline to decide how important it was to do the
assigned reading. This strategy did not result in good grades and most
participants started reading more subsequently. A second reason was
the perception that the lecture conflicted with the textbook and that
the professor gave precedence to his or her exposition in class. A third
reason for not doing the assigned reading before class was because the
reading was too complex, as was the case with Kayhan when he was
learning about neurons and the brain in Psychology. Solange, in her
American National Government class, sometimes did the same. Lastly,
participants sometimes did not complete their reading assignments for
sheer lack of time. Tabasum, for example, said that Theres not enough
time to read for all of [the classes] and, in choosing what not to read,
she would leave her least favourite class (for example Economics) until
last.
Reading selectively
183
Strategies developed
and used to cope
with reading
challenges
184
Eliana Hirano
Most of the participants in this study, when they felt they were
struggling with content, took the initiative to seek their professors help.
These interactions did not seem to focus exclusively on the reading
assignments students were asked to do, but more generally on the
combination of reading assignments and class lectures. Most of the
time, when participants sought their professors help, they seemed to
have a specific question about the course content that they wanted to
ask. If they had a more global difficulty with the class, however, they
tended to consult tutors instead. Tabasum clarified this point in Extract
1 below:
Extract 1: taken from Interview 8
(T = Tabasum; R = Researcher)
T: I went to talk with [the Economics professor] before I took the
exam because [] I had question.
185
R: Was it the first time that you went to talk to this professor?
T: Yeah, [] because before, I didnt understand, I didnt know what
to ask.
Likewise, Sabrina explained that she had not looked for the
Contemporary World Issues professor outside class because For his
class I dont even know what to ask him. This is like the biggest thing, I
dont know what to ask him (Interview 1).
Conclusion and
implications
Eliana Hirano
The challenges these seven refugee students faced as they tried to cope
with academic reading across the disciplines in their first year of college
corroborate, in many ways, findings from previous studies that have
investigated the experience of students who start college while still in the
process of learning English (for example Harklau 2001; Crosby 2009).
References
Crosby, C. 2009. Academic reading and writing
difficulties and strategic knowledge of Generation
1.5 learners in M. Roberge, M. Siegal, and
L.Harklau (eds.). Generation 1.5 in College
Composition: Teaching Academic Writing to U.S.educated learners of ESL. New York, NY: Routledge.
Dryden-Peterson, S. and W. Giles. 2010.
Introduction: higher education for refugees. Refuge
27/2: 39.
Duff, P. A. 2008. Case Study Research in Applied
Linguistics. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Ferede, M. K. 2010. Structural factors associated
with higher education access for first-generation
refugees in Canada: an agenda for research. Refuge
27/2: 7988.
Gee, J. P. 1996. Social Linguistics and Literacies:
Ideology in Discourses (second edition). London:
Taylor & Francis.
Harklau, L. 2001. From high school to college:
student perspectives on literacy practices. Journal of
Literacy Research 33/1: 3370.
187
Notes
1 The focus of the larger study was on academic
writing and reading. The main findings
pertaining to academic writing can be found in
Hirano (2014).
2 All names (institution and student) are
pseudonyms.
3 The Gettysburg Address refers to a speech given
by US President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 during
the American Civil War. It is considered one of
the most important speeches in American history.
4 Martin Luther King Jr.s I have a dream . . .
speech was delivered in 1963, and it is considered
a defining moment of the American Civil Rights
movement.