Students generally don’t read academic journal articles. (Well, for that matter, how many people do?) The thing is, these journal articles show you exactly what Academic English really is. The reason students don’t generally read journal articles is that they don’t know where to find them and if they do find one, then it is incomprehensible. However, if you could find a journal article about a subject which you understood and were interested in, then you might get some very good reading practice in and you might start to understand and appreciate the genre of Academic English more.
So, take a look at a journal article about overseas students in Australia and their concerns. The article by Roberston, M and Line, MA and Jones, SM and Thomas, SL (2000) entitled International students, learning environments and perceptions: a case study using the Delphi technique from the Higher Education Research & Development journal is here and you can reach it by clicking on the pdf link.