This article examines Higher Education students’ experiences of academic reading as a grudging act: something that is performed reluctantly or half-heartedly, because it has to be done. Drawing on group interviews with 30 social science undergraduates, registered at a research-intensive UK university, we offer a reflexive thematic analysis of academic reading, experienced as ‘a struggle’, as ‘a chore’ and as ‘pointless’. Our analysis centres the experiential dimensions of reading, revealing how student orientations towards reading—and the teaching that surrounds it—can influence their practices. The article makes two original contributions to the developing literature about student reading experiences in Higher Education. First, by examining student accounts of reading through Bottero’s (2022) sociology of ‘grudging acts’, we extend what is known about the intersection between reading experiences and practices, raising important questions for educators in the social sciences and beyond. Second, by examining what educators can do in response to these challenges, we collate and extend existing guidance for educators that seek to support student engagement with academic reading in Higher Education.

本文将高等教育学生的学术阅读体验视为一种勉强的行为：因为必须要做而不情愿或半心半意地进行的事情。根据对英国一所研究密集型大学注册的 30 名社会科学本科生的小组访谈，我们对学术阅读进行了反思性主题分析，将其视为“一场斗争”、“一件苦差事”和“毫无意义”。我们的分析以阅读的体验维度为中心，揭示了学生的阅读取向以及与之相关的教学如何影响他们的实践。本文对高等教育中学生阅读体验的文献发展做出了两项原创贡献。首先，通过Bottero（2022）的“勉强行为”社会学研究学生对阅读的描述，我们扩展了对阅读体验和实践之间交叉点的了解，为社会科学及其他领域的教育工作者提出了重要问题。其次，通过研究教育工作者可以采取哪些措施来应对这些挑战，我们整理并扩展了教育工作者的现有指南，以支持学生参与高等教育中的学术阅读。