Genre effects on higher education students' text reading for understanding

This study provides empirical support for the proposal that student learning in higher education is affected not only by prior subject knowledge and by approaches to learning but also by ability to deal with text genre. It first explores how 22 higher degree students on a course in education understood selected text extracts from different genres when reading at their own pace under conditions expected to promote thorough understanding. After reading a text each student wrote answers to a set of questions about their reading and understanding of the text. In tape-recorded discussion with another reader of the same text they then looked for similarities and differences between their responses. They later reported on their feelings about the task and text. Understandings were found to vary between readers of the same text, difference being largely attributed by the students to difficulty with the language and structure of the texts in terms which pointed to the genre. Considerable anxiety about difficulty and difference in understanding was partly allayed through discussion, but understanding was not much furthered. Most students felt that more work on the texts would be fruitful. In a second part of the study a further 39 students from a new intake to the same course were asked about text types in their recommended and actual course reading. The types they reported as most frequently recommended were also felt to be the most difficult for reasons to do with text genre. They were also those from which the earlier text extracts had been drawn. Theoretical and practical issues are discussed.