Frustration and Hope: Examining Students’ Emotional Responses to Reading

Resurgence in college-level reading research has led to studies on rhetorical reading and reading transfer, but often absent from these discussions are student emotions about reading and themselves as readers. Our qualitative study explores these emotions by examining how basic writing students perceive ideal readers and reading difficulties. Our findings suggest students’ emotional responses play an important role in how they interact with texts and how they view themselves as readers and learners. Specifically, our research suggests students experience a sense of disassociation with a readerly identity, but they still maintain a sense of hope for developing reading strategies and identifying as readers in the future. We argue for more scholarly examinations of the role of emotions in reading and basic writing research.