Diagnostic Assessment of the Barriers to Comprehending Academic Articles: A Case Study of EAP Students and Teachers at Two Universities

A number of EAP teachers (n = 63) and students (n = 100) shared their perceptions about the most common sources of difficulties with reading academic articles. Three bottomlevelcompetencies including general English knowledge, mastery of specialized English, and academic jibberish (Krashen, 2012) and two top-level parameters of reading strategiesawareness and content knowledge were investigated through a checklist developed andfactorially validated by the researchers. The results of two multivariate regression analyses indicated that to the teachers inadequacy of general English knowledge and reading strategies awareness accounted forcomprehension failures, whereas for students the same factors along with the academicjibberish were the significant predictors thereof. The results have implications for EAP students, instructors, and materials developers.

Keywords:

English for academic purposes (EAP) , academic reading comprehension , expository texts , academic jibberish , bottom-level competencies , top-level competencies