To succeed in their studies, students majoring in English require
higher reading abilities than other students because they have to read in
English. Moreover, their departments assume that the students admitted
possess adequate reading abilities in English because they passed the
school and university entrance examinations. However, as Alderson (2000:
1) states, despite this specific need for reading in English, it is common
that most students fail to learn to read adequately in English. Very
frequently, students reading in English seem to read with less
understanding than one might expect them to have, and to read
considerably slower than they reportedly read in their first languages.