By Joe Magliano and Melissa Ray

Starting college is a time of great academic transition. What makes a student ready to face the new challenges? This is a question that we have been asking in our research, in particular as it relates to reading. In this blog entry, we discuss what is expected of the college reader.

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Usually, reading in college is done for a purpose, rather than for enjoyment. Students need to read for many reasons, including to prepare for class discussions, to write papers and to study for tests and quizzes.

How students read can change based on what they are trying to accomplish (Rouet, 2006; Snow, 2002). For example, if students have a set of questions that they need to answer, it makes perfect sense for them to read strategically and look for the answers. However, if they are reading a text to prepare a paper, they may need to read more thoroughly to understand how the text applies to their work.

Moreover, reading is not the same across all courses.

Shanahan and Shanahan (2008) analyzed how reading changes across disciplines, such as history, biology and math. Experts in these areas read differently because they view the purpose of reading and text differently. For example, historians think a lot about why a particular document was written and what agenda the author had in mind. Mathematicians are less concerned about this.

Why are we concerned about students being ready to read for college?

The answer is simple. There is good evidence that a significant proportion of students entering college are simply not prepared to read for their college courses (ACT, 2006; Bailey, 2009).

While the number of under-prepared college students is not widely agreed upon, the estimates range from 40 percent to an alarming 90 percent (Perin & Charron, 2006). College is a huge investment in money and time for both parents and students, so these are sobering statistics.

The solution to the problem is not simple. There is a long history of programs to help new college students become ready to read for their courses, but their track records are less than optimal (Calcagno & Long, 2008; Jenkins, Jaggars, & Roksa, 2009).

While the programs vary from institution to institution, a recent study suggests that there is an unfortunate mismatch between what is taught in these programs and what is expected of students in both introductory and upper-division courses (Armstrong, Stahl, & Kanter, 2015).

For example, these courses often do not expose students to texts that are similar to those that they will read in their general courses, nor are students asked to read texts for reasons that reflect why they have to read in those courses. When this happens, it’s no wonder that students don’t understand how to use the skills they learned to help them succeed. So, even when we strive to help under-prepared students, we sometimes fail to help them learn what is expected of them.

We obviously need to do a better job preparing students for college before they get there. In particular, we need to help them to be ready for the variety of reading tasks that are expected of them.

Such preparation starts as early as pre-school and kindergarten and carries through high school. In fact, the often controversial Common Core Standards were developed by a blue-ribbon panel of educators and educational scientists with this notion in mind.

Finally, we also need to know what a prepared college student looks like, both in terms of what literacy skills they must bring to the table, and what motivates them to succeed in school and ultimately in their chosen careers. We have received funding from the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education to explore this issue. Look for a future NIU blog devoted to this topic.

Joe Magliano is a Presidential Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at Northern Illinois University. He teaches courses about cognitive psychology and the psychology of language. His research focuses on how we understand narratives across different media (text, film, graphic narratives) and how we can help struggling readers become more effective in academic reading.

Melissa Ray is a research scientist at Northern Illinois University and in the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language and Literacy. Her research interests include individual differences in reading comprehension and the relationship between text structure and comprehension. Ray is a former community college instructor, and has previously taught developmental reading, writing, and English as a second language.

Additional readings

Armstrong, S. L., Stahl, N., Kantner, M. J. (2015) What constitutes ‘college ready” for reading? An investigation of academic text readiness at one community college. Technical Report for the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language and Literacy (No. 1). http://www.niu.edu/cisll/_pdf/reports/TechnicalReport1.pdf

ACT (2006). Reading between the lines: What the ACT reveals about college readiness in reading. Retrieved June, 2008, from http://www.act.org/path/policy/reports/reading.html

Calcagno, J. C. & Long, B. T. (2008). The impact of postsecondary remediation using a regressions discontinuity approach: Addressing endogenous sorting and noncompliance. A Report from The National Center for Postsecondary Research.

Jenkins, D., Jaggars, S. S., & Roksa, J. (2009). Promoting gatekeeper course success among community college students needing remediation. Retrieved from http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/Publication.asp?UID=714

Perin, D., & Charron, K. (2006). Lights just clickon every day. In T. Bailey & V.S. Morest (Eds.), Defending the community college equity agenda (pp. 155–194). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Rouet, J.F. (2006). The skills of document use: From text comprehension to web-based learning. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Snow, C. (2002). Reading for understanding: Toward an R&D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

Shanahan, T. & Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy. Harvard Educational Review, 78(1), 40-59.