Critique Article

Investigating Reading Habits and Preferences of Student Teachers at Foreign Language Department

Written by

Muchlise Cosgun Ogeyik & Esin Akyay

Trakya University Faculty of Eduaction Edirne, Turkey

Muclise Cosgun Ogeyik & Esin Akyay are interested in areas of Teaching and

Learning as a Foreign Language, which encouraged them to write this research article

as part of a doctoral dissertation. Published in The International Journal of Language

Society and Culture  in December 2009, the article of above title explores on reading

habits and preferences of the students. Ogeyik and Akyay assert that reading is one

of language skills that as a way for reaching new information and assumed to be

consistent with the comprehension capabilities of individuals. Reading is the

important way to the knowledge space. It can make individuals to gain their

creativeness and develops their critical thinking. In educational institutions, it is a

must to give a motivation to the learners to read some text comprehension because

the motivation is able to increase reading amount and both intrinsic and extrinsic

reading habits. They also quoted from Calkins ( 2001) that positive attitudes are

created by motivating individual habits and interest, and they are all interrelated and

supportive items for boosting reading habits. The motivation that given by the

educators can direct students to gain awareness in their social interaction and self

esteem.

Even there are many aims of reading such as reading for giving fun or for

having some information, reading is a factor affecting the initialization of the reading

process and/or reading action. Individuals’ interest, gender, culture, and occupation

are some common factors that influenced the reading habit in choosing reading text.

But individuals‘ reading habit is able to be fostered through some arrangements. One

of the effective arrangements in education through which learners can increase their

reading habits due to the fact that teaching and training are built on reading. Such as

interaction between educational aims and reading habits can be seen as the

requirement of education process.

This article delivers three purposes; (1) to find out how the reading habits of

the students attending foreign language department are, (2) to find out what types of

books or texts they generally prefer reading, and (3) to find out whether they enjoy

reading texts in foreign language. Therefore, this research study tries to investigate

reading habits of foreign language learners aims at determining learners’ tendencies

and attitudes towards reading. Under the heading of this general topic, the study has

subcategories exploring reading preferences.

The research article is limited in finding out how the reading habits of the

students attending foreign language department are using both qualitative and

quantitative approaches. The writers, Ogeyik and Akyay, employed specified

research methods from participant selection, design, materials, procedure, and stages

of analysis. It could be deemed that the researchers’ intention of identifying the

specific areas of the methodology is effective not only on understanding how the

findings were gathered and measured; rather it also addresses the issue of validity and

reliability. On the aspect of participant selection, 187 students of the second, third,

and fourth year who were attending English Language Teaching and German

Teaching Divisions at the Faculty of Education in Trakya University, Turkey. The

participation was on a volunteer base. Since there were a few students in both

departments, gender differences were not examined on the study. They were asked to

answer a 40-item questionnaire. The items were designed for evaluating reading

habits, general attitudes towards reading, and reading preferences of the students.

Each item has two choices --yes or no--. The questionnaire was completely by the

students for 15 minutes. During the application process, the written instructions were

also explained verbally. The statistical analysis of the data was computed through

SPPS 11.0 software program. Each item was evaluated on the base of frequency and

percentile values. The questionnaire was analyzed and displayed in four tables

separately; General attitudes towards reading table, Reading preferences of the

students table, Effect of reading on students’ performances table, and negative views

of students about reading table.

The findings of the articles show that (1) the students have reading habits and

positive attitudes towards reading activities. In addition, they are conscious readers.

Because they investigate about the books before they buy books and do not have

general tendency for reading only best sellers. (2) Most of the students prefer reading

the books of Turkish and foreign authors and they mostly like reading in foreign

language. (3) The students find reading resourceful in all aspects of life, particularly

by referring to individual’s emotional satisfaction and fast reasoning. (4) Most the

students did not explain any negative attitudes towards reading. Despite their

optimistic views on reading, nearly half of the students cannot reach much due to

heavy workload.

From the discussion above, it is able to be taken an account that there are

some weaknesses that appear in this article (1) the writers do not describe the main

points of the articles clearly because it only gives the concepts of reading. It is

recommended that the writers also give the concepts of habits and preferences. (2)

The writers still used references from 1990 even though it still can be used for the

recent research. (3) Despite the suggestions that given by the writers to overcome the

negative view of students about reading, that is to give motivation through reading

activities both in school an out of school, the writers do not explain clearly how to

motivate the students to read those kind of books and the strategies to make the

students to read so that the students will be fond of reading and then become their

habits. According to the National Reading Research Center (Baumann & Duffy 1997)

in www.coe.fgcu.edu/faculty/ray/red/mhome.htm, children need to be motivated to

read and use literacy to develop into fluent readers. There are some way that can be

used by the teacher to motivate the students to do reading such as; assign the reading

at least two sessions before it will be discussed, assign study questions, if your class

is small, have students turn in brief notes on the day's reading that they can use during

exams, ask students to write a one-word journal or one-word sentence, ask

nonthreatening questions about the reading, use class time as a reading period,

prepare an exam question on undiscussed readings, and give a written assignment to

those students who have not done the reading (Davis:1999). It also shows that there

are some strategies that can be used by the teacher to make the students to read such

as read aloud everyday, book talk, use a picture book, maintain a large classroom

library, time to read, and have fun with books. (4) The article does not show the role

of the teachers in reading class even the writers only focus the students’ reading

habits and preferences. Because there are some tips that can be used by the teacher

to motivate the students to read, for example; focus on the content; avoid language

exercises and tests; teacher should read parts of the story dramatically aloud. Other

parts should be read silently by the class. This allows the teacher to help others who

have finished or those experiencing language difficulty; during semi-extensive

reading, teach helpful strategies such as prediction and inference; and the teacher can

talk about what the students read at home in class. Start the lesson with one leading

question regarding the text. (Sasson, 2007).

On the other hand, the article also gives some strengths, such as the article

always compare the findings to the former findings whether they are in line or not.

So that the readers are not only having the information about the article’s finding but

also from the others. It gives some advantages to the readers that want to investigate

a similar topic because they have the guidance from the writers. Besides that, the

findings are able to be used as a feedback to the educators in teaching reading to the

students. Even it looks simple to ask the students to read but the educators must

considers some factors that always faced by the students in reading assignments.

In conclusions, the motivation is needed to the students in growing their

reading habits because it should be one of the main objectives of education policies

from the very beginning to the end. The students can transfer some information from

reading, as a channel for learning about other cultures, so that it is recommended to

the educators to encourage the students to read some different txt type. It is hoped

that the students are not reading the books because they have to read them but

because they need them to read. The findings in this article are recommended to be

investigated by other researcher to have better outcomes that can be used for the

readers.

References

Davis, Barbara Gross.1999.Motivating Students. Retrived September 1999 from www. honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/ motiv.htm

Motivating Students To Read taken from www.coe.fgcu.edu/faculty/ray/red/mhome.htm

Ogeyik M.C. & Akyay, Esin. 2009. Investigating Reading Habits and Preferences of Students Teachers at Foreign Language Department. Retrieved 2009 from www.educ.utas.edu.au/users/tle/JOURNAL

Philip, A. 1990. The Reading Habit-A Missing Link Between Literacy and Libraries. Retrieved September 6, 2007 from http.//www.pngbuai.com/000general/libraries/literacy-services/READRAB.pdf

Sasson, Dorit. 2007. Motivating Children to Read. Get Children Reading! Tips and Ideas on How to Motivate Them. Retrieved 2009 from www.lesson-plan-help.suite101.com/article.cfm/motivating_children_to_read