I read, I dont understand:

refugees coping with academic

reading
Eliana Hirano

Introduction

This article investigates the experience of refugee students with

academic reading during their first year at a liberal arts college. Their
experience with academic writing is reported elsewhere (Hirano
2014). With varying degrees of interrupted education, these refugees
graduated from American high schools, but were not considered
college-ready according to their scores in the standardized exams
which are often considered for university admissions. A refugee is
defined as a person who is outside his or her country of nationality
and is unable to return to that country because of a well-founded fear
of persecution. Refugees are resettled worldwide, with the United
States being the worlds top resettlement country, having resettled
approximately three million refugees since 1975.
The educational experience refugees go through in their country of
resettlement has only recently started to attract attention. Even though
Rumbaut and Imas (1988) report on the educational attainment of
refugee students in California was published 25 years ago, it has only
been in the last ten years that this population started to be the focus of
more research in education, especially in school settings and in family
ELT Journal Volume 69/2 April 2015; doi:10.1093/elt/ccu068 
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This article investigates the experience of seven refugee students with

academic reading during their first year of college, with a focus on the
challenges they faced completing assigned readings and the strategies they
used to cope with these challenges. Although the participants graduated
from American high schools, they were not considered college-ready,
according to their scores in standardized exams. Data were collected over two
semesters through interviews with participants and faculty, class observations,
and written documents such as assigned readings. Data analysis followed
qualitative procedures. Findings show that all seven participants were able
to cope with academic reading in first-year college, despite the numerous
difficulties they faced. This article has implications for college instructors
teaching not only refugee students but also teaching any of the growing
number of international students currently attending higher education
worldwide.

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.

Drawing from a larger study,1 this investigation explores the challenges

a group of refugee students faced with academic reading across the
disciplines in their first year of college as well as the strategies they
developed and used to overcome these difficulties.

Methodology

In order to explore the experience of refugee students with academic

reading, a qualitative year-long multiple-case study (Duff 2008) was
carried out. This study took place at Hope College,2 a small private
liberal arts college in the United States. For the 20092010 academic
year, Hope College admitted seven refugee students even though they
were not considered college ready by traditional measures used in
admissions such as scores in standardized exams.
Four of the focal participants (Arezo, Kayhan, Tabasum, and Sabrina)
were from Afghanistan and the remaining three (Yar Zar, Solange,
and Musa) were from Burma, Rwanda, and Liberia, respectively. They
were four women and three men, and at the beginning of the study
their ages ranged from 18 to 21. They had lived in the United States for
an average of five years, ranging from two-and-a-half to seven. In the
process of being resettled, their education was interrupted from almost
zero to five years. They all graduated from high school.
This study also included 13 faculty participants who were teaching
the classes taken by the focal participants (see Table 1 for an overview
of some of the courses taken). The professors that were invited to

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In this study, academic reading is viewed within the framework of

academic literacy as a sociocultural practice (Gee 1996; Street 1999).
To clarify, from this perspective, neither reading nor writing is viewed
as a skill that is independent from the social context in which it occurs.
Rather, literacy is conceptualized as a social practice that is necessarily
intertwined with different contextual factors such as purpose, audience,
and text. Within this framework, a student whose reading level is
considered low for college purposes, as measured by a standardized
exam, may still be able to deal successfully with college-level academic
reading because of the use of coping strategies. Reading in real life is
not necessarily done in isolation but, rather, constitutes a sociocultural
activity.

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

This study used interviews, observations, and written documents

to collect data. Each focal participant was interviewed eight times,
following semi-structured guidelines (Merriam 1998) that focused on
the readings students were assigned, the challenges they faced, and the
strategies they used to cope with the texts. Interviews lasted an average
of 55 minutes, ranging from 30 to 90 minutes.
Faculty participants were interviewed once in the second half of the
semester. They were asked about the reading assignments required
in their courses and their perceptions of how the focal participants
dealt with these requirements. Faculty interviews followed classroom
observations and lasted an average of 50 minutes, ranging from 30
to 97 minutes. Between focal and faculty participants, there were 69
interviews in total, which were all audiotaped and transcribed in full.
Throughout the two semesters of data collection, different types of
documents were collected including course syllabi, reading material
discussed in the observed classes, and reading material participants
found particularly difficult.

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

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participate taught classes that the focal participants perceived as

challenging in terms of reading and/or writing. They had different levels
of experience at Hope College ranging from adjunct to full professors;
most of the professors were at the associate or full professor ranking.

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

Another major difference between high school and college reading

practices, as identified by the participants, regarded what students were
expected to do with what they read, especially in exams. They all did
very poorly in their first exam in college because they expected to be
asked questions requiring them to simply recite knowledge memorized
from books, such as definitions of terms. In Kayhans words, In
college, [] they want you to know not the basic answer, but to apply
that answer (Interview 1). To illustrate, a question from the exam he
was referring to read Define exegesis and explain the relevance of the
term with regard to Neihardts book.

Amount of required
reading

The participants were unanimous in saying that the amount of reading

they were expected to do for some of their classes was beyond that which
they could handle comfortably; this was often a cause of stress. Tabasum
said, for example, Whenever I have time, I do my reading, [], but theres
not enough time to read for all of them (Interview 6). Their struggle often
seemed warranted. For their Introduction to Cultural Anthropology and
World Religions courses, for example, they were sometimes expected to
read 120 pages in a week. Considering the other classes they were taking
and the fact that they were all working an average of 15 hours per week
as part of their scholarship, it is not difficult to understand why they felt
under pressure trying to complete these assigned readings.

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

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As first-year students, the difficulties they encountered with reading

sometimes did not stem from the assigned readings themselves but from
the very different ways reading is dealt with in high school and college.
According to the students, in high school, reading was often done in the
classroom and, even when it was assigned as homework, students seemed
to understand the assignment more as a suggestion. As Kayhan put it,
teachers would still give you a chance if you had not done your reading
at home and let you do it in the classroom. Or, as Yar Zar explained, even
if you had not done the reading, if you just listened to the lecture on the
following day and took notes, you could get by. In college, on the other
hand, as Yar Zar stated, you actually have to read. Arezo, moreover,
explained that college professors often did not remind students of when
reading assignments were due, which made her feel that, in college, youre
on your own. Furthermore, because college professors often did not ask
whether students had done the assigned readings, Kayhan felt that, In
college, if you didnt read it, no one really cares. Thus, although students
were sometimes able to get by without reading in college, the lack of class
reading time meant that higher levels of autonomy were required.

understanding a text, if they could identify the origin of the problem,

they pointed to vocabulary as the main culprit.
Some of the courses presented participants with more reading
challenges originating from language than others. Two such courses
were Theatre Appreciation and American National Government. The
origin of the difficulty in both of these classes was related to the fact
that students were required to read texts in their original form. Kayhan,
for example, mentioned that reading Shakespeare plays in old English
(Interview 5) was very difficult. Similarly, those participants taking
the American National Government class often struggled with the
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century materials.
The role of insufficient background knowledge affecting reading
comprehension became the most evident in two government classes. In
particular, it affected Solange in the American Government class, and
Sabrina and Arezo in their Contemporary World Issues class.
Most, if not all, of the reading assignments in the American Government
class were stand-alone pieces of writing such as the Gettysburg Address.3
Solange found that reading these texts was very hard, but she managed to
cope, assisted by the professors lectures that provided the historical and
political backdrop against which the reading could be understood.
Without the professors explanations, however, lack of background
knowledge sometimes prevented Solange from fully appreciating a
text. A point in case was when she was required to read and write an
essay on Martin Luther King Jr.s I have a dream speech.4 Solange
mentioned several times that this was a very difficult paper to write,
and much of her difficulty seemed to stem from the fact that she was
not familiar with the history surrounding the speech, and that the
professor did not discuss it in class. She said, Thats the thing. We had
to read it on your own (Interview 6). Her paper showed her perhaps
naive reading of the speech when she wrote, for example, [MLK] found
a way of stating the obvious without offending anybody or taking the
side of any race. Thinking about this assignment retrospectively, the
government professor realized that ESL students may have an extra
layer of difficulty when tackling it. He said:
It just never crossed my mind that I needed to say in class that
[] King is making the speech in the era of segregation. This is so
matter-of-fact that it just escapes notice that youd need to point out
to somebody that segregation, institutionalized discrimination, is
taking place in America.
The other course that required a lot of background knowledge to
understand the assigned readings was the Contemporary World Issues
class. Arezo, Sabrina, and Yar Zar took it; however, unlike Arezo and
Sabrina, who had a very difficult time in this class, Yar Zar thrived
in it. Having chosen International Relations as his major, the issues
discussed in this class were consistent with his interests. Arezo and
Sabrina, on the other hand, constantly struggled in that class. Arezos
comment summarizes how they felt about this class most of the time:
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Insufficient
background
knowledge

For my Government class, we had to read two articles thats like 10

to 15 pages long and two of them each day and like I read the article,
its like I read, I dont understand, I can read, but I dont understand
whats going on. (Interview 1)
All the assigned readings for the Contemporary World Issues
class were articles taken from journals such as Foreign Affairs and
Current History. Students were typically assigned one to two articles
per 50-minute class. The professor was aware of the importance
of background knowledge to understand these texts and tried to
provide it in his lectures. Despite this, however, what he taught in
class was probably still beyond Sabrina and Arezo in terms of their
understanding of these issues.
As discussed above, the seven participants faced various reading
challenges in their first year of college. Most of the time, however, they
were quite adept at developing strategies to help them cope with these
challenges, and these are discussed below.

Not doing the

assigned readings
before class

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

All the participants used the strategy of reading selectively in order to

cope with too much or difficult reading. Participants used this strategy
extensively.
Skimming
Participants used this reading strategy quite deliberately, especially
before going to class, often with the intention of reading the text again
after class, or before the exam. Some of the professors condoned the
use of this strategy. As Solanges American National Government

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Strategies developed
and used to cope
with reading
challenges

professor said, Theres [] nothing wrong [] with skimming the

material, especially if youre having a hard time understanding it.
Reading according to PowerPoint slides
Several of the professors the participants had in their first year did not
make use of PowerPoint slides. However, in most classes where this
technology was used consistently, it tended to acquire more prominence
than just assisting the delivery of a lecture. Sabrina explained her
rationale for using this strategy: instead of reading the five pages which
[] dont have to do anything with it, we read the paragraph that shes
talking about [on the PowerPoint] (Interview 6).

Enhancing the reading

experience

As the participants struggled with reading in their first year of college,

as well as not doing the reading assignments or doing them selectively,
another strategy they often used was to enhance their reading
experience by finding different ways of improving the quality of their
reading, as shown below.
Finding moments and places conducive to better reading
In an attempt to find ways to be more productive when reading, several
of the participants started going to the library, where they could find
a quiet space, instead of staying in their dorms, where there was
always so much distraction. As Solange mentioned, I dont want to
be in my room a lot, cause every time Im in my room I just sleep or
I watch TV (Interview 5). Likewise, after failing her first three exams
in Contemporary World Issues, Arezo decided not to do the assigned
readings in her room, especially before going to bed.
Reading with a peer
Several of the participants relied on peers to aid their comprehension of
course material. Some of the participants did the assigned reading itself
in groups, sharing their understanding of the text as they went along.
Others mentioned getting together with peers to study and clarify
points they were not clear about.
Using a dictionary
As discussed above in the Reading challenges section, all the
participants mentioned, at one point or another, having some reading

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Reading according to study guides

Professors often provided materials that highlighted the key concepts
and ideas for a specific section of the course (for example handouts,
study guides, review sheets). The students made extensive use of these
materials, often to the point of not knowing what to read or study if
they were not given one. Yar Zar, for example, said, Before the exam, I
go to the study guide. The study guide makes you read the book. Like,
you look at the study guide, you read the book (Interview 6). Likewise,
Solange explained, In Anthropology, she gives us [a] review sheet
whereby you have questions that guide your reading (Interview 4). In
the same vein, Musa stated, I look at the question [in the review sheet]
and just read a lot on that stuff, on the topic (Interview 4).

difficulty related to unknown vocabulary. It is therefore interesting to

see that using a dictionary was generally not a very popular strategy, at
least as reflected in the data collected.
Of the participants who reported using a dictionary, only Tabasum and
Musa mentioned having a hard copy and using it regularly. Tabasum
said, If I dont use [a] dictionary then I dont understand [] I have
a paper dictionary I usually carry with me (Interview 2). The other
participants used online dictionaries occasionally.

This was not, understandably, a common practice among the

participants. Most of the reading strategies they used involved trying
to find ways of cutting back on the time they needed to accomplish
reading assignments and not the other way around. Just to illustrate,
when asked if he ever reread the plays he had struggled with in his
Theatre Appreciation class, Kayhan replied, No, youve got to be
kidding me, no way (Interview 6).
Tutor-supported reading
At Hope College, tutors for the different courses are available to
students who request them. Most of the participants made use of this
resource to help them with reading assignments they had difficulty
with. At one point, for example, Arezo was meeting with her tutor for
the Contemporary World Issues class twice a week, every week. Yar Zar,
at the end of the spring semester, reported having a tutor for almost
every class. Tabasum, similarly, reported requesting and meeting with
tutors for almost all of her classes.

Seeking out assistance

from professors

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.

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Rereading after lectures

When the Contemporary World Issues professor suggested to Arezo
and Sabrina that they should reread the articles when they could not
understand them, they did not think his advice was helpful and felt
frustrated. As it turned out, both of them ended up going back to the
articles after the lectures and found the practice to be useful.

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

Despite these reading challenges, however, all seven participants were

proactive in finding strategies to cope. By not doing all the assigned
readings, reading selectively, enhancing their reading experience, and
seeking help from their professors, these students were able to manage
the reading assignments they were expected to do. How much of the
content in these reading assignments they actually grasped is beyond
the scope of this study. The fact that all the participants completed all of
the courses they took in their first year successfully, and later graduated
from college, is a strong indication that they managed to navigate the
academic reading practices in college.
The challenges and strategies described above are undoubtedly particular
to these seven students in a specific college, as analysed by this one
researcher. In this respect, it is not possible to establish any generalizations.
Even among the participants in this study, there were differences. Studying
with peers, for example, was very popular with most of them, but not so
much with Solange or Tabasum. Yet, these strategies can be interpreted
as different possibilities that might help not only refugee students but any
student facing similar difficulties with academic reading in college.
The major contribution made by this study, therefore, lies in the
description of the strategies used by the participants. The supportive
atmosphere provided by their college enabled them to develop these
strategies and succeed. Small classes, a teaching-oriented faculty, a
residential campus, the cohort of seven refugee students, and having
tutors available are all factors that facilitated the development of
the coping strategies discussed above. Other institutions of higher
education, however, may not be able to provide the same level of
support and, as a result, students struggling with reading might have
trouble developing coping strategies by themselves and may, as a
consequence, fail courses they find challenging in terms of reading.
Professors and instructors in different institutions of higher education
can help ease students experience with academic reading by being aware
of the types of challenges they may face and by encouraging the use of
some of the strategies that the participants in this study found useful.
College professors, for example, play an important role in mediating the
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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).

reading challenge experienced by students. For one, they can provide

students with additional information when the content they teach requires
background information that is unlikely to be available to a student. EAP
instructors, in turn, can encourage students to use different ways of
enhancing their reading experience and can raise students awareness of
the benefits of interacting with professors during office hours whereas
instructors of first-year seminars can explore the different expectations
regarding reading in high school and in college. Overall, these seven cases,
collectively, make the point that students who are not considered collegeready may still be able to cope with academic reading in college.
Final version received September 2014

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The author
Eliana Hirano is Assistant Professor of Teacher
Education at Berry College, Georgia, USA. She holds
a doctorate in Applied Linguistics from Georgia
State University. Her research interests include
academic literacies, second language reading and
writing, and immigrant and refugee students.
Email: ehirano@berry.edu

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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.