Academic Reading in Graduate Students

Abstract

The aim of the study was to determine the academic reading experiences of graduate students in Turkish Education. The study data was provided in the context of the principles of the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) method. The information was collected through in-depth interviews with 20 students who have received postgraduate education in Turkish at different universities and determined by the criterion -sampling approach. Contextual analysis principles were used to analyze the data. There was evidence that graduate students favor reading academic articles and theses. The project and evaluation essays were taken out of this class. Additionally, the authors searched the findings, discussion, and conclusion parts of academic literature for important information. The authors used this material by quoting, highlighting, marking, recording, taking notes, and crafting their phrases to represent it. However, it was shown that students struggle with issues including reading various academic sources, identifying important information, comprehending academic language, and synthesizing data from several sources. In this context, in order for students to have academic reading skills at the graduate level, academic reading courses should be offered at the master's level and advanced academic reading courses should be offered at the doctoral level.