Challenges of Academic Reading Facing EFL Students in Azawiya University

Abstract

Reading in higher education is one of the most difficulties encountered university EFL students. This paper aims to determine reading comprehension difficulties at the university level focusing on Azawiya university students. This study used mixed method. Quantitative data will be collected from close-ended questionnaires while qualitative data from one open-ended question. This study includes 40 EFL students who were asked to rate the reading sides as listed in the questionnaires depending on their level of difficulty and provide comments and probable additional aspect. The quantitative results revealed that most students considered academic reading easy (M=2.445, SD=0.584). Reading carefully to understand the text was identified as the aspect with the least difficulty (M=2.18, SD= 0.974) while knowing the meaning of difficult words was found as the most difficult one (M=2.74, SD=1.252). The qualitative results supports these statistics while 30% of first year Azawiya University students have difficulties understanding and translating difficult and formal words.