Components of success in academic
reading tasks for Swedish students

Philip Shaw and Alan McMillion
Stockholm University (Sweden)
philip.shaw@english.su.se & alan.mcmillion@english.su.se

Abstract

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 wordrecognition 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.

Keywords: academic reading, parallel-language, academic English, reading
processes.