The Student's Experience of Reading

Author(s): Sarah J. Mann

Source: Higher Education , Apr., 2000, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Apr., 2000), pp. 297-317
Published by: Springer

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 LA Higher Education 39: 297-317, 2000. 297
" ? 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed

The student's experience of reading

SARAH J. MANN
Teaching and Learning Service, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

Abstract. Many studies have focused on student learning through text and have investigated
relationships between approach, conception, outcomes, task definitions and context. However,
little research has been undertaken on trying to understand the meaning that reading in the
academic context has for the individual student. The aim of the study reported here was to
reveal this meaning and to show how the way a student approaches reading is bound up with
this. Extracts from four case studies of student readers are presented, describing how each
student approaches the reading of the same text, and how this approach seems to be related to
the student's general approach to academic reading, what reading in general means to them,
and the significance that being a student has for each of them. It is argued that the normally
neutral or pleasurable private activity of reading is disturbed in the academic context by the
potential for this activity to be made public through the various assessment activities which
bound the student's daily reading life. When engaging in reading for academic purposes,
students are no longer engaging in a private activity undertaken for its own sake, but in an
activity whose evaluated outcomes will - crucially - tell them something about their worth in
the eyes of others. Reading in the academic context cannot thus be viewed as a purely neutral
cognitive process undertaken in a social vacuum, but has to be understood within both the
personal and biographical context of the individual reader, and within the socio-cultural and
political context of the particular reading activity.

In this paper I present four case studies of first year undergraduate students'
experiences of reading in an academic context. Each case study describes how
each student approaches the reading of the same text, and seeks to understand
the different approaches taken in terms of how the students normally go about
their academic reading, what reading means to them in general, and what
it means for each of them to be a student. The case studies thus seek to
illuminate the approaches taken by the students in terms of the particular
"webs of significance" (Geertz 1975) brought by each to the activity of read-
ing. The focus here is not on the relationship between their approach and
the learning outcomes derived from their reading. Rather the focus is on the
interrelationships between the student's approach to reading and the different
assumptions, expectations and purposes that they bring to this activity. The
aim, by maintaining the integrity of the individual case, is to show what it
means to be a student engaged in reading, to reveal the existential dimension
of reading in an academic context.

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298 SARAH J. MANN

Little research has been undertaken which focuses directly on trying to

understand the meaning that reading in the academic context has from the
student's perspective. Most studies have focused on student learning through
text and have investigated relationships between approach, conception, out-
comes, task definitions and context.
Such research into the student's experience of learning as exemplified
by Marton et al. (1984) and by subsequent studies in this tradition have
made a significant contribution to our understanding of how students learn
through text. Amongst other things, studies have established that students
approach their learning in different ways (Pask and Scott 1972); that learning
outcomes vary in significant ways between students, and that approaches
to study and learning outcomes seem to be strongly related (Marton and
Saljo 1976a); that approach and outcome can be influenced by a number of
factors including conceptions of learning (Silj6 1982); orientation to study-
ing (Entwistle 1988); definition of task (Laurillard 1984); and educational
context and assessment practices (Ramsden 1988). Reviews of this research
(for example, Schmeck 1988; Ramsden 1992) have synthesised findings to
provide a rich and complex view of the learner and the different influences on
learning approach and outcome.
In the field of tertiary literacy studies, a recent study by Kirkpatrick
and Mulligan (1996) has investigated reading requirements and attitudes to
reading across the social sciences, health sciences and engineering in an
Australian university. They conclude that there are significant differences in
what are taken to be appropriate reading practices at an undergraduate level
across these disciplinary areas. They therefore contest the view that success
across higher education is dependent on the capacity to think critically or, in
other words, on the adoption of 'deep' approaches to learning. They identify
social sciences as the exception in its encouragement of critical thinking,
with the applied sciences working from a more transmission-oriented model
of knowledge from expert to learner. This study which focuses specifically
on reading practices as described by learners and teachers thus adds to the
complexity of the picture of reading in higher education as it uncovers the
additional influence of a discipline on what will be seen to be 'appropriate'
reading practices.
Saljo's (1982) research reveals further complexities. Although focusing
primarily on learning, he also explores the nature of reading in academic
contexts as a way of interpreting the relationship between the conceptions
of learning held by individuals, their approaches to learning through text,
and the quality of learning outcomes. In particular, he seeks to understand
why some learners are more 'successful' than others, i.e., have sought to
understand the author's meaning rather than list the component parts of the

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 THE STUDENT'S EXPERIENCE OF READING 299

text. He argues that reading has to be understood, not as a straightforw

decoding process, but as a communicative act which depends on the re
making certain basic presuppositions about the intention of the write
communicate a message. Saljo argues that this communicative assumpt
or 'contract' often breaks down in the educational context where readers
mostly read what is required of them rather than what they are curious to
learn from. Thus the communicative assumption underlying the act of reading
is often replaced by an assumption on the student reader's part that reading
is for finding out what it is important to remember. Further, he suggests that
the adoption of this presupposition will depend on the particular conception
of learning held by the student. Students who see learning as constructing
new knowledge will maintain the contract with the author to understand,
whereas those with a conception of learning as memorising will replace
this contract with the focus on remembering rather than understanding. As
Saljo's study was undertaken within the social sciences, it shows how, des-
pite what may be a message from within the discipline to approach texts
critically, some learners do not 'get' this message. Siljo suggests this may
be as a result of the predominance in the wider socio-cultural context of
more transmissive conceptions of teaching and learning. Reading can thus
be seen to be a site of potentially contradictory messages concerning the
nature of reading and learning, and to have a potentially disturbed quality
when it is undertaken within the particular context of education. That is,
what may normally be experienced as a straightforward and even pleasurable
activity, may become disturbed through being undertaken in an educational
context.

Although the above studies are based on qualitative data obtained from
in-depth interviews with individual students, the focus of analysis has been
on extrapolating from data about the individual categories or types applicable
across the group of subjects. Where such studies use a phenomenographic
approach, the focus is on describing a finite, logically related and hierarch-
ically organised (though open) number of conceptions that students might
hold about the phenomena under investigation. Such studies seek to abstract
from individual data in order to identify and describe different ways of con-
ceiving of or experiencing the world (see Marton 1981, 1994). The focus
is on describing discrete aspects of the individual student's experience and
exploring these across the range of students rather than building up a picture
of the more holistic interrelationship of such discrete elements for any one
individual.

Recent research by Beaty et al. (1997) involved longitudinal case studies

of Open University students to explore their experience of higher education
and, in particular, their changing and enduring personal views of learning. In

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300 SARAH J. MANN

the analysis, the researchers explored thematic differences between individu-

als by exploring these themes within the integrity of the individual case. They
conclude a common theme which unites the particular individual differences
as being the significance of learing to one's life, to one's person:

What we have been dealing with here is the existential aspect of learning.
Or in other words: learning as lived. (Beaty et al. 1997, p. 164)

As with that longitudinal investigation, the research reported in the present

paper aims both to maintain the integrity of the individual case and focus on
the existential aspect of the student's experience, in this case regarding the
particular activity of academic reading. The case studies reported here, rather
like oral history accounts in contrast to historical treatises, place the focus
upon the individual student's lived experience of reading and, in doing so,
illuminate further the disturbed quality of reading in the educational context
suggested by Siljo's and Kirkpatrick and Mulligan's research.
Szwed has observed that, "in theory, at least, there is a form of reading
specific to every room in the house" (Szwed 1988, p. 307). In this paper I
want to show something of what it is like to inhabit four students' different
reading rooms.

The research design

Two principles guided the research design for this study. First, the research
methods should facilitate individual informants' revelations of their world of
reading, including academic reading: what it means to them, how they experi-
ence it and act in it. Second, in order to preserve the integrity of the individual
case, the research design should ensure that the informants' accounts drive the
progressive focusing of the data collection.
Therefore the research design involved the following sequence of steps:
* The keeping of a reading diary over a period of a week, followed by a
first interview focused on this diary.
* A second interview focusing on the constructs' informants had concern-
ing different text and task types and significant others, identified through
the reading diary and making use of reportory grids.
* A third focused reading interview (see below).
* A final unstructured interview in order to follow up on themes emerging
from the analysis of the data, including the students' general approaches
to reading, the meaning of reading and of being a student at university.

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 THE STUDENT'S EXPERIENCE OF READING 301

The focused reading interview

In the third of the four interviews, each informant was asked to read
page extract from Chomsky's Language and Mind, selected for its relev
to the informants and for its relative difficulty. Informants were asked to
the text in order to gain as full an understanding of it as possible. They
also asked to mark the text wherever they experienced a pause in their
ing and to be ready to talk about their reading once they had finishe
text. These pause marks acted as a focus for the retrospective account
then gave of how they had read the text and experienced the reading
informant also wrote down what they could remember of their understandi
of the text after reading it. This was done also as a check that they had actu
read the text.

This focused reading interview provided data on how and why indivi
informants experienced and approached the same text, how this re
related to their other academic reading, and what impact the research co
might have had on their reading.

The informants

It was necessary for this study to have informants who would be wil
to give up the required time; who would be interested in the research
might find the experience beneficial; who would be competent to talk
their experience; and whose world was currently affected to some exte
reading. Volunteers were therefore sought from a group of thirty-one first
undergraduates who were all participating in a unit of study on literacy. Sev
students volunteered - six female and one male student. They had all st
a first-year linguistics course.

The analysis of the data

The initial stages of analysis, drawing on the data from all four interviews,
reading diary and the repertory grids, provided a set of discrete descr
'facts' about each informant. For example, x has this kind of approach
reading, she reads these kinds of texts, she is interested in this kind of
she has these kinds of assumptions about academic reading, and so on
next stage in the analysis was to piece together the picture for each inform
and to see how the different discrete 'facts' fitted together for each individ
One way of thinking about these discrete 'facts' is that they are rather like
pieces of a mosaic which have been uncovered on an archaeological
They can be classified according to colour or shape or texture, but un
an attempt is made to assemble them into some kind of picture they r
meaningless. This is what I attempted to do for each of the informants.

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302 SARAH J. MANN

The following questions guided this process:

* How does this informant read the extract from Chomsky?
* What clues are there in the reading interview as to why they read the text
in this way?
* How do they go about their academic reading in general?
* What does reading mean to this informant? How do they experience it?
* Are there any clues in what reading means to them and how they gener-
ally approach it which might throw light on how they read the Chomsky
text?

* What does it mean to this informant to be who they are at the moment -
that is to be a student at university?
* Are there any clues in how they see themselves at the present time which
might illuminate what reading means to them and how they go about
their reading? Does this throw any light on how they read the Chomsky
text?

The case studies

For the purposes of this paper, illustrative extracts from four of the cases3 ar
presented here. On the surface the students appear to be very similar. Th
are all women, they are all first year undergraduates and they are all studying
linguistics in their first year and going on to major in literature and language
And yet they each seem to represent a different perspective on the experience
of being a student at university. One of them seems to be very confident
a student, one of them seems much less confident and the other two fall
between.

In the extracts that follow, I first briefly recount how the student concerned
approached the reading of the Chomsky text and relate this to the student's
general approach to academic reading. I then explore their approach in rela-
tion to what reading means to them generally and to the significance that
being a student has for each of them. I use fictitious names when referring to
each student.

Sheila

Sheila reads the first paragraph of the Chomsky text, and then rereads it in
order to orient herself to the text through a redefinition of the task. She recalls:

I tried not to think too consciously that I'm reading this because I've got to
mark pauses in it because that is a killer, then you don't read the passage,
it's not natural. I tried to think of reading through it as though I were

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 THE STUDENT'S EXPERIENCE OF READING 303

going to have to write a review on it afterwards. It was a prelimin

reading but nevertheless with more concentration than I would have
if I were going to have to write a review because I would read it thr
again. I tried to get as much from the passage as possible and try to
the overall sense of what he was talking about. I tackled it as thou
for the next reading I would have gone on to underline what I tho
were the major points and then I would have read through it and don
review.

She says of her general approach to academic reading:

For the first five to ten minutes I don't absorb much of what I read.
It takes a while to get concentrating, at least with set texts, then there
comes the middle period where my concentration and absorption is at
its greatest, lasting about half an hour, then concentration and interest
ebb and I have to do something else for a short while. This cycle is then
repeated.
I don't approach it expecting it to be either difficult or easy, but I
approach it expecting having to concentrate. I know that I'm going to
have to think about it. It's not just going to float above my head. I'll
have to really get into the text.

Sheila seems to assume that academic reading requires an in-depth approach,

accepting it as normal that this will involve effort on her part to really under-
stand the text. She also seems to be aware of a cycle of concentration that she
has in her reading and manages her reading accordingly to optimise her effort.
Her reading of the Chomsky text seems to echo this concentration cycle and
her assumptions about academic reading. She tries to understand as much as
she can of the text, even though she finds it difficult.
Sheila says about the activity of reading in general:

I love reading. I read loads and loads as a kid. I am an only child, so I

used to hibernate with books. They were the biggest part of my life. I hate
being interrupted when I'm reading. It's so much better if I can really
get into it, living in a book .... At university, you do a lot more thinking
for yourself and if you do that then you've got to concentrate more and
formulate your own ideas as opposed to just reading things through and
having someone tell you what was in it ... Reading equals academic in
some way. Also reading is an intellectual activity.

Sheila seems to positively value reading. It was a kind of companion for her
in her life as an only child. She is at home in the world of books and likes to
immerse herself in them. She sees academic reading as an intellectual activity

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304 SARAH J. MANN

involving her in working out her own ideas. This demands concentration and
engagement.
Sheila feels at home at university. She says about being a student at
university:

(It) is a protective outer garment that will protect you and look after
you while allowing you to be yourself. It may give gentle hints as to
the right direction but it is somewhere you can go and be yourself in an
intellectual atmosphere, an atmosphere of thought. It's home from home
really. It's a comforting place.
I realised I would be with people I wanted to be with. Thinking
people. I feel more at ease talking to older people and more mature about
academic things ... My responsibility as a student is to do enough work,
be able to contribute and put forward ideas, discuss things and maintain
my own personal view whilst accepting the views of others and the facts
behind them.

Sheila appears to see herself as an intellectual and as more mature than her
peers. And since she sees universities as places for the intellectual, she can be
herself at university. It provides her with the security of home and the space
in which to realise herself. She is 'protected' here. She seems to be in the
ideal position from which to take risks.
What everyday reading means to Sheila and what it means to her to be
a student form the context or "webs of significance" within which Sheila
gives particular meaning to the activity of academic reading and how she
approaches it. She seems to see it as one of the activities in which she can
engage herself intellectually and thus fulfil what it means for her to be a
student. She sees it as requiring her to really think about what she is reading
and get into the text. Sheila appears to be in harmony with her situation - a
'natural' in it. When it comes to the Chomsky text she locates the task on her
terms 'as if for a review' and tries to understand what she can of it.

Monica

Monica goes 'straight in' to the text and re-reads the first paragraph three
times. She re-reads in order to stop her mind wandering. As she goes through
the text she speeds up to get to the end. She pauses to re-read where she can
relate the text to her own experience and where she understands the text. Sh
is shocked by its difficulty, but rewarded by the achievement of understanding
some small part of it. She says:

A lot of parts I had to read twice, to start off with I did, and then I realised
I just wasn't getting anywhere with it so I just read quickly and because

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 THE STUDENT'S EXPERIENCE OF READING 305

I don't have to do anything with it I didn't make any special eff

understand it. I just did it because you asked me to. It was quite d
so I just wanted to get through it. I feel I've achieved something. It
me feel a bit better. It's a bit late in the day but never mind.

She describes her general approach to academic reading as follows:

I just do what I have to do and then do something else. I don't mind

easy, but I don't push myself hard. I don't like the concentration
... For seminars I pick out main points because I know what I'm go
be asked. They will say 'can you sum this up' and then I'll think ab
deeper implications because I know I will be asked and I link to the
being done at the time ... If I can find lot of books on it in the library
sets me off on the right track, but if my friends are going out a
supposed to do an essay, then I end up doing the bare minimum.

Monica seems to aim to get by with the minimum that she can. She
that the work demands concentration but she will reduce that effort as m
possible. In order to do so she works out what will be required of her
out to be able to fulfil that requirement. When reading the Chomsky tex
seems to do the same. She establishes that she does not have to do an
with her reading of the text, except to read it. She seems to want to get
end of the text without much effort, but is also open to being surprised
she understands parts of it. It seems as if her approach is related to w
interprets as expected of her in the particular task.
Monica says about reading generally:

I don't like reading much. It's a bit of a waste of time. A lot of th

I'm reading through and I'm thinking I can't think of anyone who
just read this for fun ... I didn't do that (read the newspaper) at
because my parents have "The Times" which I don't like, and now
choose my own.

Unlike Sheila, Monica does not appear to like academic reading

something she sees as having to be done and as not intrinsically mean
and enjoyable. This contrasts with her newspaper reading. Choosing h
can be seen as a symbol of her independence and growing adulthood
seems to be less interested in the activity of reading and more inter
the symbolic meaning that books and newspapers have in the social
She once said to me that she was pleased to have a book by Chomsky
bought by chance on her shelves. She had never read the book but w
mother visited her, it meant something to Monica to have that book
shelf.

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306 SARAH J. MANN

For Monica, being at university is a symbol of her social status, her

independence and her growth into adulthood. It is the place where she is
developing as a social being. She says:

Socially it makes you higher status or whatever. It's good to have

something like that behind you ... Academic should be more important,
perhaps I haven't analysed what I've actually learnt, it's not so obvious,
but socially I know where I stand and so it strikes me that I've learnt more
socially ... It's really important since I've been here I've really enjoyed
myself - it's my life at the moment.

The context that seems to frame Monica's approach to academic reading

is that Monica's main aim is to develop socially and to derive status from
being at university. She is aware that she is not seeing her academic life as
particularly important. Reading is significant only in so far as it may offer her
status; she appears neither interested in the pursuit of knowledge through it,
nor in any pleasure it might bring.

Judith

Judith orients herself to the Chomsky text using the title and the author as
a clue for giving herself a purpose for her reading of the text, thus making
it relevant to herself. She re-reads the first paragraph, and continues through
the text re-reading where it is interesting, difficult or important. Where it is
difficult she sub-vocalises in order to work at the meaning. She says:

It was quite complicated. I thought it was quite interesting, but it needed

a thorough reading. Well, according to the title I thought it might be quite
interesting. Well, I've sort of come across the name in linguistics so I
thought I'd see what he'd got to say.

Judith is different again with her general approach to academic reading.

Although like Monica she likes to get 'it' out of the way, she is also interested
in her subject. When she defines her reading as 'work' she approaches it one
way, whereas when she defines it as 'just for interest', or for pleasure, she
approaches it another way. Sometimes she deliberately redefines her course
work reading from being 'work' to being 'for pleasure'. She then approaches
her reading of this re-defined text in such a way that she can enjoy it.

Academic reasons for reading are for a course, to write an essay, to do

work. I don't enjoy it so much. Not for the fact of what it is but because
it is work. If I've got to do it, told to do it, then I sit down and time
myself and count it as work. Whereas if something might be part of a
course but it's just for interest, it's different. I think because it's work I

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 THE STUDENT'S EXPERIENCE OF READING 307

feel I have to take it all in and therefore read more slowly and with
concentration. I just sit down and do it, but if I'm not taking it in, I'
it down and come back to it later. I like to get it out of the way as
as possible after it's given me. To be free again. I read slowly if it n
concentration. How I read depends on what I'm reading. It depends
my interest and on whether I need it in the future.

Like Monica and Sheila (in their different ways) Judith is able to manag
reading to suit the task, her interest, and her level of concentration. Howev
once she defines a piece of reading as for work, she loses her ownersh
it. She does not want to have to 'take it all in', but she assumes that t
what is required of her. This definition of academic reading denies he
opportunity her work presents her for further engaging her interest in En
literature. However, she sometimes redefines her academic reading as
pleasure' and then does not feel the pressure to 'get it out of the way' an
can enjoy it.
Judith's approach to the Chomsky text can also be looked at in terms of her
general approach to academic reading. If she had defined the task of reading
the Chomsky text as 'work' she might have had to read it 'very slowly and
with concentration'. This she does not do. Rather, she defines the task in
terms of her own interest 'to see what he'd got to say'. Her approach to the
Chomsky text means that she does not have to put pressure on herself to read
it in a special way, but 'just' for interest.
Judith is similar to Sheila in her love of reading. She says:

I usually have a book on the go for pleasure. I read novels to get involved
with the story which is pleasurable. I like English best because I like
reading. I like books really ... It's (reading) quite important really. In fact
most of the work time is probably spent reading. I don't know what the
purpose of it is. Just as background for the subjects as a whole.

Reading novels is a pleasurable experience for her. This is why she likes
studying English. She can be involved in a world of books. However, unlike
Sheila she does not seem to see books as a means for working out her ideas,
but rather as a means for getting involved with a story or of providing her
with background for her studies. And she does not seem to be altogether clear
what function this background reading actually serves. It is as if its purpose
belongs to someone else and not to her. Her purpose is the enjoyment of
English literature.
She says of being a student:
I came here because I wanted a decent career. I like the idea of three or
more years' education and to give me independence from home ... I'm

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308 SARAH J. MANN

not aiming particularly high but I would want to get a 2:2 (lower second
class honours degree). Well I like to know I've got some purpose in being
here, so I might as well make the most of it. I just want to enjoy it really.
I'm not too ambitious about doing well. I'm quite happy being an average
as long as I'm enjoying myself ... I like choosing what to do. Here as
opposed to school the onus is more on you to go and get essay titles and
make sure it's in on time rather than have someone dishing things out to
you. You can choose when you do your work a bit more because there are
not many lecture and tutorial hours.

She is aiming to be a primary school teacher, which does not require her to
have a degree. This career orientation seems to allow her to take on little
pressure to perform, seeing work as something to be got out of the way when
it is there so that she can go back to enjoying herself. Part of her enjoyment
seems to come from the pleasure she gets from reading literature and from
her new measure of educational independence. Her approach to academic
reading can thus be understood from within this context of her lack of a
need to be a highly successful student and her desire to enjoy her reading
of literature and her autonomy as a student. When reading the Chomsky text
she makes it her own by clarifying a purpose for herself in reading it, thus also
bringing it closer to pleasure than to work by doing so. This is an approach
she sometimes adopts for her academic reading.

Sally

Sally re-reads the first paragraph in order to understand the detail of each
sentence. She continues to read at a detailed level until paragraph five when
she stops bothering and decides to just get through by marking pauses where
she feels she ought to. She finds the text tedious. She says:

I think I read it very superficially as I got going through, because I

couldn't hope to retain any of it in my mind at all. So it was just a
question of getting through it, because I'd been told to. I suppose I was
more conscientious. I think at first I paused at the end of this paragraph
here, and then I went over it again. Then I paused on the word 'difficulty',
what did it mean by the word 'difficulty' because I was surprised to see
it there; I paused on 'psychological sciences' to see how 'psychological'
combines with 'sciences' and what it means, but once I got the tone of the
whole couple of pages, it was so abstract that I was just reading without
thinking about it.

Sally seems to have two approaches to her academic reading. The first is to
go into something - a text or a book list for example - right from the start in

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 THE STUDENT'S EXPERIENCE OF READING 309

great detail focusing thoroughly on each point. Her assumption behind

approach - rather like Judith's - is that academic reading involves "kno
all that" or "taking it all in." Her problem is that this is impossible. It
too long, she can't take in "all that" and pick out the relevant informati

I probably go into too much detail, into it too thoroughly, and can't
the wood for the trees. I used to take notes but now because it takes so
long and I end up not finishing the task and then I'd have to come back to
it, and it's rather depressing because it is half finished.

She has therefore developed another approach in order to deal with the seem-
ing ineffectiveness of her detailed approach. Her second approach is to put
things off, and even not to do them. In this way she can rationalise her failure
by saying that she hadn't tried, and if she had tried she would have been
alright.

I just hadn't revised at all. I thought well I'm either going to start reading
something and realise all I haven't read and start panicking, so I thought
no, I'm not going to read anything. So I decided I'm not going to take
these exams seriously and so I didn't. But if I'd worked for them I feel I
would have, I feel alright because I would be able to cope with them if I'd
worked.

Sally most clearly reflects her day-to-day approach to reading in her approach
to the Chomsky text. She reads that text by focusing in great detail on the first
five paragraphs and then it was "just a question of getting through it." The
text seems too abstract and it is taking too long; she cannot take it all in. In
some ways she seems to abandon it and chooses to do nothing with it.
For Sally, academic reading seems to signify pressure from the need to
concentrate and to achieve certain academic tasks whose consequences worry
her. Only light reading which she chooses herself offers her some relief.

There's pressure on you now. Everything you have to read you have to
concentrate more on. Here I don't read much for pleasure as I feel I
ought to concentrate on academic work. If there is no pressure to do
something with a text then I can read it more and I'm less worried of the
consequences of reading it. I enjoy more what is in a magazine because
they are read from choice and are a welcome relief.

Sally's story is very different from the other three - all of whom are in some
way at ease with their situation at university. Sally dropped out when she first
went to university at eighteen and only returned - to a new university and a
new subject - at the age of twenty one. She says:

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310 SARAH J. MANN

I couldn't stand it because I was being compared to my brother and

because of the difficulties I had at X, and in the sixth form, everyone
starts comparing because he went to X, and he isn't cleverer than me ... I
felt I was being dismissed as the stupid one, 'he's academic and you're
not' ... It's a matter for me of establishing a good reputation by getting
good marks. I want to be thought of as a good student. Not average. What
counts at the end is the mark you are going to get ... As it was my second
start I was worried whether I would stick it out. I was conscious of having
to prove myself a lot. Before I had taken it for granted I was intelligent, I
would go through the system but when I found I had nothing to identify
with, no academic status at all I felt as if I had lost all my brain power.
Now I'm back I feel on a par with everyone else and it's in perspective
more.

Sally seems to be at university to prove herself, to reclaim an earlier pictu

of herself as an intelligent being which was shattered when her brother we
to Oxbridge and she dropped out of her first year. For a while she had to
live with the loss of identity that experience brought for her and now she
struggling to regain that identity. She seems to want to be a good student a
university is the place where she can do it, but unlike Sheila, she does not have
the security of knowing that this is her world. This is a world that rejected her
and which she dropped out of. Being back seems to be her only way of re
establishing herself - in her eyes - but it is also most perilous for she ma
fail yet again. These are the "webs of significance" which seem to frame
her definition of academic reading as pressure and her general approaches
to it: 'doing it thoroughly' (i.e. being a good student) or doing nothing (i.
dropping out). At least if she fails she can say she never tried. This she doe
with the Chomsky text. It is as if the private internal activity of reading
watched over in her case by the eye of the other. This other may be the tut
who will mark her assignments which are the outcomes of her reading. Th
mark can put her on the road to re-establishing what seems to be her aspiration
to be a good student, or it may shatter this.
These extracts from the four case studies thus reveal the different worlds
which the student readers inhabit: Sheila's love of reading and engagement
in working out her own ideas; Monica's use of reading as a symbol of social
status; Judith's replacement of her love of reading with her redefinition of it
as work to be got out of the way so that she can be free again; and the bleak
picture of Sally's pressured battle with the fear that academic reading holds
for her.

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 THE STUDENT'S EXPERIENCE OF READING 311

Towards an understanding of student reading

The extracts from the four cases illustrated and briefly described in this
paper suggest certain deductions about reading as an activity and in particul
reading in an academic context.

1. Each student defines what outwardly appears as the same reading task
differently.
2. Each student gives meaning both to the activity of reading and to its
academic context in different ways. They have different approaches to
it and derive different experiences from it.
3. The reading situation is redefined during the reading of a text, and this
redefinition seems to lead to adaptation in how the students approach
their reading.
4. Students have routinised ways of dealing with academic reading which
they can draw on in any particular instance of academic reading. These
approaches may be flexible depending on the student's definition of the
demands of the particular task.
5. Each student's approach seems to be related to how each conceives of
academic reading and what each assumes is the best way to meet the
requirements of that definition.
Points 1-5 above seem to confirm the findings from previous studies on
student learning from text. The students adopt different approaches (Mar-
ton and Saljo 1976a); they have different conceptions of reading/learning
(Salj6 1982); and how they define the task seems to impact on how they
approach their reading (Laurillard 1984).
6. It seems however that a student's conception of what is required in aca-
demic reading is only one part of the meaning that academic reading is
likely to have for that individual. Academic reading is also likely to have
significance according to how it relates to the meaning given to reading
in general by that student.
7. The significance of academic reading for each student is further contex-
tualised by what it means to each to be a student. In all four cases it
seems that this significance has to do with how the students currently see
themselves, what aspirations they have for themselves and how being at
university impacts on those aspirations.
8. All of the undergraduate students I spoke to expressed the attitude that the
activity of reading for academic purposes was on the whole problematic.
This was not the case, however, with reading for pleasure. Reading for
pleasure was seen as a relaxing and enjoyable activity which could be
done in order to provide relief from the requirement to fulfil set tasks for
their degree work. Thus reading per se, as a process was not problematic

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312 SARAH J. MANN

for any of these students, but as an activity they liked it in varying degrees.
The activity of reading for academic purposes was experienced by all as
in some way problematic, as 'work' and was certainly an activity that
needed to be 'managed' by them. It was experienced as differentially
problematic by different individuals and was therefore managed by them
in different ways. So, what is it about the activity of academic reading
which seems to differentiate it from general reading for pleasure or for
personal information? What is it that might constitute the disturbance that
occurs around academic reading highlighted by Salj6's and Kirkpatrick
and Mulligan's research?

A particular feature of reading for academic purposes is that it is part of a

configuration of activities the normative purpose of which is to help students
to learn and explore new ideas, concepts and information and to examine
them on their learning of these new ideas. As Peelo (1994) says:

Unfortunately deadlines come so fast, especially when students are

assessed by coursework, that reading has become linked to writing assign-
ments which will be marked. Separating reading from writing, then, in a
university context, is artificial as reading has become part of the means
by which students are assessed, at least indirectly. (p. 61)

Thus this 'reading' is not a personal and private affair. It is made public and
evaluated through examinations, projects, essays, and seminar discussions.
And these are all tasks which are set by other people; the people who are to
evaluate them. In the educational context, the private and personal activity
of reading almost always has the potential for a public sharing of its out-
come. And this outcome is likely to be judged by both peers and tutors, both
informally through implicit judgments and formally through tutor marks and
comments.

Foucault (1991) argues in Discipline and Punish that a significant cha

has taken place over the past two to three centuries in the way power is
cised. What he calls 'disciplinary practices' have emerged as processes w
both bring into existence an individual's aptitude and capabilities at the
time as placing them in a position of subjection or domination. Such prac
involve two key processes: hierarchical observation and normalising jud
ment, supremely expressed by the examination which puts the individual
public view in an unequal relationship of power with his/her examiners
where the outcome of their judgement locates the individual in a hierar
according to their place against the 'norm'.

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 THE STUDENT'S EXPERIENCE OF READING 313

Traditionally power was what was seen, what was shown, and wh
manifested ... Disciplinary power, on the other hand, is exercised th
its invisibility; at the same time it imposes on those whom it sub
principle of compulsory visibility. In discipline, it is the subjects
have to be seen. Their visibility assures the hold of the power th
exercised over them. It is the fact of being constantly seen, of b
able always to be seen, that maintains the disciplined individual i
subjection. And the examination is the technique by which power, i
of emitting the signs of its potency, instead of imposing its mark
subjects, holds them in a mechanism of objectification. In this
of domination, disciplinary power manifests its potency, essentiall
arranging objects. The examination is, as it were, the ceremony o
objectification. (Foucault 1991, p. 187) (my emphasis)

The paradox for the person is that the examination provides one wi
stance and individuality, with a place in the scheme of things, while
same time, marks one against a 'norm', finds gaps in one and thus r
one less than others. It both provides substance and takes it away.

The examination as the fixing, at once ritual and "scientific", of individ

differences, as the pinning down of each individual in his own part
ity ..., clearly indicates the appearance of a new modality of pow
which each individual receives as his status his own individuality,
which he is linked by his status to the features, the measurement
gaps, the "marks" that characterise him and make him a "case". (
p. 192)

Thus when students engage in reading for academic purposes they are no
longer engaging in a private activity undertaken for its own sake, but in an
activity whose evaluated outcomes will - crucially - tell them something
about themselves, and in particular about themselves as students. It will tell
them something about their worth in the eyes of others, and will have the
potential to shape their changing image of themselves as university students.
Part of the meaning of the activity of reading in the academic context is
therefore its potential impact on the students' views of themselves as may be
reflected in the judgement of others. Where the students' views of themselves
are relatively robust or not dependent on confirmation related to their aca-
demic achievement, like Sheila, Monica and Judith, then they are less likely
to be threatened by the prospect of academic reading. Whereas for a student
like Sally, whose self-image is fragile and who seeks to aspire to one which
is dependent on evaluated outcomes from their reading, the activity becomes
potentially very threatening.

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314 SARAH J. MANN

Another, related, meaning one can attribute to academic reading from

these case studies is that of reading as work, where work is seen as a task
to be done, to be got out of the way, to be outside the realm of the student's
own control to satisfy the demands of others rather than to fulfil the student's
own purposes of inquiry and curiosity. Derek Rowntree (1987) has likened
this quality of academic work to Marx's concept of 'alienated labour':

(I)n the fact that labour is external to the worker, i.e. it does not belong to
his essential being; that in his work therefore he does not affirm himself,
does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his body and
ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside this work,
and in his work feels outside himself ... It is therefore not the satisfac-
tion of a need, it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its
alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or
other compulsion exists, labour is shunned like the plague. (Rowntree,
p. 47)

We might identify this kind of alienation from owning one's own activity in
Judith, for example, in the way she seems to grapple with the tension between
reading as work and reading as pleasure, and how the significance of either
perspective has an impact on both how she reads and on her experience of it.

Conclusion

In conclusion, students' approaches to and experience of reading need to be

understood by viewing reading as a meaningful activity which has signific-
ance for students in different ways. It is not enough to view reading in the
academic context as a purely neutral cognitive process, it has to be understood
within both its personal, and its socio-cultural and political context. As Freir
and Macedo (1987) put it:

In general this [positivistic] approach abstracts methodological issues

from their ideological contexts and consequently ignores the interrrela-
tionship between the sociopolitical structures of a society and the act of
reading. In part, the exclusion of social and political dimensions from the
practice of reading gives rise to an ideology of cultural reproduction, one
that views readers as "objects". It is as though their conscious bodies were
simply empty, waiting to be filled by that word from the teacher. (Freire
and Macedo 1987, pp. 144-145)

As an activity, reading can be looked at from two perspectives: a historical

perspective and a socio-political perspective. The historical perspective cap-
tures the quality of reading as something which takes place in time, drawing

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 THE STUDENT'S EXPERIENCE OF READING 315

on students' past experience and future aspirations - the students' "w

significance" - which frame the context of their current definitions of the
ticular reading situation. The historical perspective captures the notion
students come to reading with a biography. The socio-political perspec
however, captures the quality of reading as an activity which is undert
within particular social contexts and which is set within a context of
sibly unequal relationships between the student and significant others,
as parents and university tutors.
Students are therefore not in an asocial, timeless state when they engage
reading. They are social beings with a biography and aspirations that co
tualise and make particularly significant any instances of academic re
and they are engaging in reading in the particular socio-political contex
education where there is an unequal distribution of power between thos
teach and those who are taught. As Becker et al. (1968) say in Making
Grade:

The relation between the university and students is one of subjection

expressing a hierarchical arrangement where all decision-making is in the
power of one group, i.e. students are powerless in this arena. (p. 7)

Part of this view of reading is captured by Hynds (1990):

We might begin by conceptualising literacy as a system of mutually

influential social forces. Readers operate within a context of social per-
spectives, including their conceptions of teachers' expectations, the value
placed on reading by peers and significant adults, and their own notions
of themselves as readers. (p. 250)

Morgan however emphasises the more political dimension referred to above:

The fact is that most forms of reading and interpreting in which our stu-
dents engage are institutional ones - but which they are encouraged to see
as natural ways of proceeding ... This is to assert that any schooled read-
ing practice is a form of social relations with consequences for cultural
life in general. It also shifts the ground from curricular, psychological,
or epistemological accounts of reading to a politics of reading. (Morgan
1990, p. 335)

I am suggesting that in order to understand the richness and complexity of

reading, we need to view it as an activity that has both personal significance
and socio-political significance. It is as an activity which has a history - a
cultural history in the broadest sense, and a history in the life of each indi-
vidual student. It is through trying to come closer to these biographical and
socio-political realities for any one student that we can understand how it is

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316 SARAH J. MANN

that reading means what it does for that person. And from this, we may begin
to understand why they approach and experience the reading of texts in the
ways that they do.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to my husband Mike Breen for his encouragement, support and

insight in helping me with this paper. My thanks also to Ference Marton for
his helpful comments and support.
The research reported here was supported by funding from the Department
of Linguistics at the University of Lancaster and the Economic and Social
Science Research Council.

Notes

1. See Kelly (1955) and Bannister and Fransella (1971) for an account of personal construct
theory and repertory grids.
2. I owe this metaphor for research to Charles Desforges.
3. For a full account of these case studies, see Mann (1987).

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