This study, within the framework of improving the English course for postgraduate level at IPB (Bogor Institute of Agriculture), attempts to determine the extent of English reading activities for academic purposes expected by agricultural teaching staff at post graduate level, different expectations across the study programs or a particular area of specialised discipline, the extent of English problems experienced by postgraduate students and the strategies used to cope with English needs in their postgraduate studies, to test a hypothesis that there is a positive correlation between the students' command/scores of English and their achievements/scores in agricultural subjects. Questionnaires for agricultural staff and students were adapted from Hughes (1988) and Weir (1988) to address these questions. Students' academic records were obtained to compute the correlation between scores in English and agricultural subjects. Review of literature and research in current theories of reading in EFL is given to serve as a theoretical foundation to discuss English reading lessons from secondary level to tertiary level in Indonesia and to provide general implications to improve the English course at IPB. The results indicate that staff reading expectation in English is high in comparison to the students' level of English and in that all eight types of reading activities listed in the questionnaires were expected. There are some different expectations across the study programs. However, the most relevant finding to note in regard to the the English course is that reading English texts as review of literature for research proposes and reading English texts for writing assignments were expected across all the study programs. It is also found that reading English texts for academic purposes was still a problem for the majority of student respondents and there are various interesting reading strategies used by the student to cope with the English needs of their studies. However, further investigation is essential to assist the students with reading problems since the results do not specify the nature of reading problems and methods used by the respondents. A significant correlation is found between scores in English and agricultural subjects at the level of 5% and 1% by the Spearman rank- order and the Pearson product-moment correlation formulas. This implies that English is central to the students' success in their postgraduate studies, which is also supported by the student respondents' opinions. General implications and suggestions are provided to assist postgraduate with reading problems and to improve the English course for the students.