Literacy teachers always have to deal with the reading attitudes of most learners. Every class presents diverse types of learners, who also have various attitudes towards reading. Therefore, it is usually important for the educators to evaluate the reading attitudes of their learners and formulate effective intervention methods for students who do not like reading. Reading is an important part of literacy and helps the students to master skills such as vocabulary, spelling, grammar, and comprehension. However, in many cases, the teachers do find out that some students in their lessons do not enjoy reading. The teachers should, therefore, know their students’ attitudes towards reading and come up with effective intervention methods to help them to master reading skills. The discussion below presents reading attitude results from a survey and discusses how the teacher can utilize the results to improve reading among the students.
The results of the study show that most students like reading since each of them state the name of at least one book that they last read. Similarly, the survey also shows that almost three-quarter of the students like going to the library. One can infer that when they go to the library, they do so with the aim of reading. It is important to acknowledge from the study that the students have a wide range of interests in books. For example, some student like reading motivational, self-help, romance-themed, and scary or horror books. Furthermore, the students have also proved that the books they like to read also influence the themes or story lines of the books they like to read or at least read last. For example, in the survey, the student who stated that she likes reading romance-themed books also read the color purple. On the same note, the results also show that apart from reading, the students also take time in part-time activities, for example, some of them read, go to the gym and watch television during their free times.
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Another important factor seen from the study is that most students seem to have varied but almost similar opinions about being a good reader and writer. For example, a good number of them say that for someone to be a good reader, the person must like what they are reading. The students do not understand that some factors such as diction, proper spelling, and other reading techniques would make someone good, if not a great reader. Moreover, some of the students believe that to be a good reader; someone must have the best knowledge of vocabulary. On the contrary, some professionals report that people acquire effective spelling and mastery of vocabulary by reading (Krashen, 1989). Thus according to the students, a good reader must have acquired these skills even before they start to read. It is important for the reader to inform the students that for them to be good readers, they need to develop good reading habits such as frequently reading books to acquire vocabulary skills.
The results of the study also show that the students believe in research, asking, and understanding as the method that they can use to help them make sense of some of the things they do not understand while reading (Morzano, Pickering, & Pollok, 2001). For example, most of the students state that they would ask their teachers questions in class. As such, it is important for literacy teachers and other educators to help their students make sense of sentences and ideas used in the comprehension materials to improve their reading. Better still, some of the students reported that they would research the words they do not understand by using Google.
It is important for literacy teachers to inculcate research techniques in their students to enable them to make sense of most of the hard vocabulary they come across while reading. The teachers also need to help their students to be able to use research methods such as using the dictionary to find the meaning of words, phrases, and vocabulary (Wigfield & Guthrie, 2000). They can also use the dictionary to perfect their pronunciation skills. The results also show that most of the students believe reading is important because it helps them to improve vocabulary, spelling, and comprehension. Therefore, the literacy educators should not only motivate their students to form a habit of reading but also aim to explain the benefits of reading to them.
Literacy educators can use the results in daily teaching activities to help the students improve their reading attitudes. For example, they can help those students who do not like reading by explaining the importance of reading. Similarly, teachers can help the students know that a liking for reading helps them improve their comprehension, grammar, and vocabulary skills and will affect their grades in English (Tracy, Beth, & Christy, 2003). The teacher can also use the results to identify those students who do not like going to the library and encourage them to take library lessons with the aim of improving their research skills and also reading attitudes.
The first adjustment I would make to the classroom is to explain to the students the important of reading. I will ensure that the students tie the importance of reading to factors such as improving grammar, comprehensions, and vocabulary and punctuations skills (Krashen, 1989). I will also let them know that reading is informative and they should practice reading more often. Secondly, I will inculcate research skills among the students; for example, I will explain to them that they should always understand what they read and let them know how to use a dictionary to search up the meaning of the difficult words. Similarly, I will still encourage the use of search engines such as Google as well as encourage them to ask the teacher questions.
References
Krashen, S. (1989). We Acquire Vocabulary and Spelling by Reading: Additional Evidence for the Input Hypothesis. The modern language journal. Vol 73 issu no 4 , 440–464.
Morzano, R. J., Pickering, D., & Pollok, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. New York: Routledge.
Tracy, B., Beth, L., & Christy, R. (2003). Increasing Reading Achievement of Primary and Middle School Students through Differentiated Instruction. ERIC , 1-44.
Wigfield, A., & Guthrie, J. T. (2000). Engagement and motivation in reading. Handbook of Reading Research. Vol 3 , 403-410.
