With increased implementation of EMI in tertiary education, students are required to read increasingly more in English, both in graduate and undergraduate years. This situation leads to substantial problems voiced both by lectures and students: students spend more time and effort reading and learning from texts in an L2 (Hellekjær, 2009; Pecorari et al., 2011b; Tatzl, 2011; Vinke, 1995; Ward, 2001). In addition, students tend to neglect their reading lists (Pecorari et al., 2012), and, as a consequence, they are not prepared for lecturers or, in a worse case scenario, cannot follow the lectures (Me ek, 2013).
In this talk, I will present test data from an EMI workshop taught at the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports (NEXS) from 2011 until 2015, combined with interviews with lecturers and students from NEXS that served as a basis for a study I conducted on students’ and lecturers’ perceptions on reading skills and strategies. I will focus on the development of students’ reading proficiency levels, and their strengths and weaknesses in terms of reading subskills. In addition, I will give some reasons why students believe they struggle with reading, and, finally, I will focus on the attitudes and classroom practices of lecturers in terms of reading.