EJ1266040
EJ1266040
EJ1266040
Arny Bana
Universitas Kristen Indonesia
arryagasshi@gmail.com
Abstract
The internet ubiquity in education has flooded the teaching and learning
process with digital tools and drastically changed many aspects of academic
life, including students' reading habits. This study aimed at exploring
students' perceptions of using the internet to develop reading habits. The study
employed the qualitative descriptive method with survey design and involved
43 students of the English department of Universitas Kristen Indonesia
Jakarta. Data was collected by means of a questionnaire consisting of 20
items. The results showed that 43% of the respondents had a positive
perception that the internet developed their reading habits. However, the
majority of them regarded reading as merely an activity for getting
information to finish school assignments. They viewed the internet as the
main source of information they needed to finish their learning assignments.
Since about one-fifth of them preferred paper-based reading, it was concluded
that not the whole of Generation Z members totally ignored printed reading
materials.
INTRODUCTION
The internet has been popular in the world, and people use it to support their everyday
activities and needs fulfillment. The exponential recent growth of technologies connected
to the internet has led to drastic changes in almost all life aspects, particularly the
industrial, trading and educational sectors (Pardede, 2012). Through the internet which
has been globally interconnected to computers provides various benefits, including access
to information from faraway documents and databases that can be read and studied to
corroborate knowledge (Larose, as cited in Oluwaseyi & Oluwatise, 2013). Due to
technological advancement, people are now living in the world of digital. Pardede (2019a)
accentuated that technological ubiquity in the sector of education has inundated the
teaching and learning process with digital tools.
World of digital which is connected to the internet can provide any kind of
information people want to know, and this has changed the habit of students in collecting
data. Instead of visiting the library to find printed books, students tend to access digital
texts through the internet. The internet does not merely provide information for students
but also facilitating tools for discussing class materials and sharing academic issues
through various social media (Salas & Alexander, as cited in Gok, 2016). In terms of
language learning, Pardede (2019b) stated that information and communication
technologies that are connected to the internet have even provided a growing range of
possible solutions for refining the teaching and learning inputs, processes, and outcomes.
Technological ubiquity has really brought people to live in the digital world, and
one of the main impacts is that people in general and students, in particular, spend more
and more time accessing digital tools. Liu (as cited in Harafsheh & Pandian, 2016) found
that “with the emergence of digital society, most people particularly adolescents are
devoting much more time to reading electronic resources. They spend their time
skimming, downloading and browsing information on the internet” (p. 18). Today’s
students prefer to stay in one place and access the internet to read while doing another
activity not just focus in one place and read lots of documents. Statista Research
Department (2014) conveyed that though only 10.03 million e-books were sold in 2008
in the U.S., the sale increased to 457.09 million units by 2014. VitalSource Technologies
Inc. (2015) found that the students using digital tools to read course material increased
from 63% (2011) to 87% (2015), and those reading digital course materials frequently
increased from 48% (2011) to 78% (2015).
In the current academic life, the use of digital texts is inescapable (Pardede, 2017)
and it has significantly impacted students’ attitudes and reading habits. According to
Chou and Hsiao (as cited in Oluwaseyi (2013) "the internet becomes an important part
of college students' lives, not only for their studies and daily routine but as a tool for
getting to know other people and the rest of the world" (p. 40). Several studies (Ackerman
& Lauterman, 2012; Abanomey, 2013; Huang, 2014; Taj et.al. 2017) have been
conducted to investigate the effectiveness of digital reading vs. printed reading. Some
studies (Chauhan & Lal, 2012; Gay et al., 2006) have been also carried out to investigate
the changes caused by digital texts to students’ reading habits. However, studies
investigating students’ perception of the use of the internet to develop reading habits are
still rare. As an attempt to fill in the gap, the present study was conducted to find out
students' perception of using the internet to develop reading habits.
Based on the background above, the research question to be answered in this study
was formulated as follows "What is students' perception of using the internet to develop
their reading habits?”
LITERATURE REVIEW
Reading
Reading is very vital for the overall improvement of a human being. According to Chettri
and Rout (2013), reading affords experience through which an individual may enlarge his
horizons of knowledge, identify, spread and increase his awareness and advances a deeper
understanding of himself, of other people and of the world. In the context of education, a
large amount of reading is essential because all learning activities involve reading skills
and the success of students' study also depends on the greater part in their ability to read.
Bashir and Mattoo (2012) emphasized that both reading and academic success are
consistent and dependent relative to each other. Thus, the more students read books, the
more successful they will be in learning. Additionally, Palani (2012) stated that reading
is interconnected with the total educational development and educational achievement
needs successful reading. Krashen’s (2004) study revealed that people with good reading
habits tend to score better on all kinds of tests.
In the EFL context, reading is essentially the most important skill every learner
should master. Pardede (2019a) identified three reasons why reading is crucial for EFL
learners. First, EFL learners lack inputs from their daily interactions because English is
not the primary language of the society where they study it. To overcome the input
limitation, reading is the best solution. Secondly, reading significantly contributes to
one’s personal and intellectual development, further studies, job success, and career
development, and the capability to meet changes. Third, reading skills enhance a learner's
mastery of other areas of language teaching because it offers the learners with various
good sentence structures so many times that they become accustomed to them. Reading
also develops EFL learners’ vocabulary by letting them get the most frequently used and
useful words and learn them in context. It also improves writing skills for it enables the
learners to figure out how to express ideas through words, how to use punctuation
correctly, and so on. Reading is even the basis of instruction in all aspects of language
learning.
. In the past, reading was used to be defined as the ability to read and interpret
meaning from varied texts. Widdowson (1979), for instance, defines reading as "the
process of getting linguistic information via print". The expression "getting information",
appears to imply that reading is a linear process by which readers decode a text word by
word, linking the words into phrases and then sentences. Due to a better understanding of
reading, current definitions view reading as a complex activity involving the
understanding process of a whole text composed of written symbols. It is not regarded as
a passive mechanical activity anymore but purposeful and rational, reliant on the reader’s
prior knowledge and expectations. Cline et.al (2006, p. 2) state that reading is “the process
of deriving meaning from the text”. For Toit (2001), reading is a process of thinking,
recalling and relating concepts under the functioning of texts. In short, it is a
psycholinguistic guessing game, a process in which readers sample the text, make
hypotheses, confirm or reject them, make new hypotheses, and so forth.
Reading Habits
Reading habit refers to the behavior which expresses the likeness of reading of individual
types of reading and tastes of reading (Sangkaeo, 1999). It is a pattern with which an
individual organizes his or her reading in terms of the type, content, and quantity of
materials read, the reading frequency and the average time spent on reading. A person
with a good reading habit makes reading a regular activity. In short, reading habit is the
activity of deriving meaning from the text which is conducted frequently.
These definitions indicate that reading habit is personal because it is affected by an
individual environment, education, gender, and age. According to Azikiwe (1998),
reading habit is "the adopted way and manner a student plans his private readings, after
classroom learning so as to attain mastery of the subject". According to her, "good reading
habits are good assets to learners because they (habits) assist students to attain mastery in
areas of specialization and consequent excellent performance, while opposite constitutes
constraints to learning and achievement leading to failure".
The results of some current researches on reading habits have discovered that
reading habits are associated with students' gender, age, educational background,
academic performance, and professional growth. According to Cesar, et.al (2010), there
are six indicators of reading habit. First, reading frequency, i.e. the frequency at which
the person reports to read books in their spare time. Moreover, reading frequency is the
activity when someone does to read for some minutes or hours as frequently. Second,
books read, which refer to the number of books that the person reports having read in the
last three months. It is considered from the amount of books. Third, time spent on
academic reading, i.e., the time that the person reports to devote to reading books on his
or her study subjects. It is considered from the time reported as devoted to “Books for
Class”. Fourth, time spent on non-academic reading, which refers to the time that the
respondent reports to devote to reading books that are not directly related to the subjects
of his or her studies. It is considered from the time reported as devoted to “Books that are
not for class”. Fifth, motivation in the family environment, which is often reported by the
person on the purchase of books, recommending books and reading interest in the family.
Finally, motivation in the academic environment, i.e., the frequency the student reports
on the teacher using activities to promote contact with psychology literature.
misunderstanding among students; (4) increasing the students' curiosity; and (5)
increasing the students' competitiveness to achieve their goals" (p. 687). Currently, most
people believe that the success of graduates of each college or school is depending on
how they learn to apply or use the internet as a source for gathering information. As a
means of increasing knowledge, the internet plays a key role in learning reading
comprehension because it helps students acquired much information from which their
achievement has developed. The use of the internet for reading English makes students
more capable and creative in learning.
However, various previous studies tended to suggest that printed or paper-based
reading was superior to digital or screen-based reading tasks in terms of speed, accuracy,
and comprehension. Dillon (1994) found that reading from a screen was almost 20 to 30%
slower with regard to performance than a paper. Mayes et al. (2001) also found computer-
based reading significantly slower. However, a more recent study (Solak, 2014) revealed
that reading speed on a screen reading was nearly 12% faster than paper-based reading.
In terms of accuracy, various studies (Muter et al., 1982; Creed et al., 1987; Ziefle, 1998)
found that that print reading was superior to digital reading. However, Creed et al. (1987)
found no significant difference between the two reading modes. In terms of
comprehension, various studies (Macedo-Rouet et al., 2003; Mangen et.al. 2013; Solak,
2014) showed paper-based reading supremacy, while others (Abanomey, 2013; Aydemir
et.al. 2013; Huang, 2014; Taj et.al. 2017) found that digital reading outperformed paper-
based reading for comprehension.
These contradictive results of studies investigating the effect of paper-based reading
versus screen-based reading to reading speed, accuracy, and comprehension, according
to Pardede (2017) is due to two factors. First, the varieties of the study designs, including
the heterogeneity of the subjects’ age-group and sample size inadequacy, varied settings,
diverse independent and dependent variables, unclear measures validity and reliability,
and inappropriate mastery or even absence of digital reading strategies among the
participants. Second, the various advancement levels of the technology employed in the
study.
Numerous recent studies (Jeong, 2012; Lim & Hew, 2014) examining students'
and teachers' perceptions of digital reading focus on the use of e-books commonly
revealed that more than 50% of users who had used e-book s were satisfied with their
experience of using them. Pardede (2019) found that pre-service English teachers
perceived digital modules use in blended learning positively. But they expected the
modules to be written in ‘easier’ language and accompanied by relevant videos. Jeong
(2012) indicated that Korean students approved e-books. The students also admitted the
current e-book's usefulness. Lim and Hew (2014) found that students generally held
positive attitudes toward e-book.
Some other studies focused on comparing the preference for digital texts with their
counterparts. Abdullah and Gibb (2008) revealed that users still prefer reading paper
books for various reasons: preference of the feel for real books, disinclination to read on
the screen, or difficulty to purchase the equipment. However, Eden and Eshet-Alkalai’s
(2013) study showed no significant differences in readers’ average scores on the two
formats, but participants reading the digital format finished their assignments faster.
METHOD
This study is qualitative research with descriptive design employing the survey method.
The participants were 43 students of the English Education Department Faculty of
Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Kristen Indonesia. Data was collected by
means of a questionnaire consisting of twenty statements. This questionnaire had been
validated by Sudiran (2015) and the researcher only adopted it according to the needs of
this research. The participants responded to each statement by choosing one of the five
options designed in the form of a Likert Scale. The obtained data were analysed using
descriptive statistics.
SD D N A SA
No. Statements Mean
F F F F F
(%) (%) (%) (%) (%)
1. I do reading on learning English 0 6 7 26 4 3.65
through Internet. (0%) (14%) (16%) (60%) (9%)
2 I enjoy reading e-book or articles 1 5 20 14 3 3.30
through the internet. (2%) (12%) (47%) (33%) (7%)
However, since a majority of them did not love reading, they only read to access
the required information. Only less than half of them enjoyed reading web-based texts
and prepared a particular time to read online every day.
Reading Habits
Table 2 shows that the majority of the respondents basically did not love reading.
They read only because they were assigned to or to finish their assignment. Only 40% of
them viewed reading as their hobby and liked reading most compared to other language
skills. Consequently, only 32% read online every day; only 31% felt comfortable
spending time reading online, and only 42% read books online. These findings indicate
that a majority of the respondents employed online reading as the main way to get
information, but they did it only for finishing the school works assigned by their teacher.
Only a minority of the read for enjoyment.
In terms of preference, 42% of respondents favored digital reading and 21% favored
paper-based reading. This finding confirms Jong’s (2012) findings indicating Korean
students 'satisfaction with e-books and the results of Lim and Hew’s (2014) study that
showed that students generally had positive perceptions toward e-book use. The finding,
however, does not confirm the results of a survey conducted by University of California
(2014) revealing that among the 2,561 respondents, 49% stated they preferred reading
printed books, 34 percent preferred digital book, and 17% answered no preference or that
it depends on the context of the usage.
CONCLUSION
Based on the findings and discussion above, it was concluded that a slightly higher than
half of the respondents positively perceived that the internet developed their reading
habits. However, the majority regarded reading as an activity for getting information to
finish school assignments only. They believed that the internet provides them many
sources they could search to finish their learning assignments. They also believed the
internet offers activities and materials they could use to learn English. However, the
majority did not see the internet as a means for reading as entertainment. Only about 40%
of them loved reading for pleasure and were ready to spend more time reading online.
Despite these, almost one-fifth of them still preferred reading printed materials. This
indicates that not the whole of Generation Z members totally ignored printed reading
materials.
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