To begin to treat our reluctant readers, we must first ask ourselves why they are reluctant. We must invest some time in understanding the reasons for reader reluctance. (22) Various factors contribute to reading reluctance and poor reading performance. Especially among minority students, who are disproportionately placed in remedial reading programs and who disproportionately experience school discipline, missing time is often a problem. According to Robinson (2019), “students experiencing higher rates of school discipline may also experience (a) limited time to participate in reading activities and (b) a deficit perspective versus a strength-based perspective regarding their learning, which both result in teachers not identifying their academic abilities.” (152) These students, often African American, lack the time to read in class because they are often out of class for disciplinary reasons, getting sent to "the principal's office" or some equivalent for behavior issues in class. They are often kept after school for the same reasons, leaving them with less time outside of school for even mandatory reading and with negative attitudes towards anything school-related which further discourage reading even for pleasure. Further, by missing time so frequently, they often go unidentified as successful or unsuccessful students and readers. Robinson (2019) states that scholars continue to find correlations “between low literacy levels and academic readiness (i.e. reading ability) for African American students, particularly boys.” (151) So, this factor should be a serious consideration when addressing the reading reluctance of college age students, especially minority students; many of them have difficult educational histories that may contribute to their present reluctance.

Minority students and non-native English speakers are also more likely to have difficulties learning to read because of differences between their own languages or varieties of English and the dominant discourse used in education. Sound-sign correlations [the connections between a visual representation (e.g. the letter 'a') and the sound it represents] are difficult to make when your language or your variant of English has different sounds than the version of English used in school. (152) “Students who struggle with mastering the basic skills of decoding words and learning to read have difficulty achieving fluency, which in turn leads to lower comprehension and critical literacy skills.” (152) “Fluency” here is defined as  “accurate, effortless, and expressive reading.” (270) The cause of these students’ reading difficulties may be that they simply do not speak the variety of English used in school, especially in early reading programs, making it difficult to make connections between their spoken language and the written language.

Of course, there are other issues involved in students’ reluctance to read. One of them is that assigned texts may be too difficult. Allington and Gabriel (2012) suggest that students should read texts with no more than 10% unknown vocabulary to improve their reading abilities. (12) “It’s not just the time spent with a book in hand, but rather the intensity and volume of high-success reading, that determines a student’s progress in learning to read.” (12) In other words, it is not enough simply to read extensively; rather, students need to read successfully as well, understanding at least 90% of what they read, to improve.

A further reason for their reluctance may be that, as mentioned above, students do not see themselves in their reading, causing them to become disengaged from it. As Robinson (2019) states, “the practice of reading for young Black men is rarely about reading alone. It is about who they are, what they believe, and who they want others to see them as.” (152) His statement certainly applies to any reader who fails to see themselves and their lived experiences in educational texts, not just to young African American men. In other words, any minority or differently abled student, under-represented in almost all of the literature taught in schools, can develop a resistance to reading about lives and topics so thoroughly unrelated to their own lived experiences.

A final factor to consider that can lead to reading reluctance is student agency or, rather, the lack of it. Most school-related reading is chosen for students by teachers; students have no control over what they read for classes. This can cause resentment and resistance to reading in even college-age students.

We now have a number of factors that can lead to reading reluctance. In the next section, we will explore some guidelines for reading instruction that can help to address these issues and then a few suggestions for practical applications.