Saudi EFL students’ reading interests

Abstract

This study investigates the reading interests of Saudi EFL teacher–college students’ reading interests in English, the obstacles hindering their reading efforts, the persons who help them choose their reading materials, the factors which determine their choice of reading materials and the reasons why they read. The statistical analysis of the questionnaire returned by 460 respondents revealed that the students have a wide range of reading interests, the top of which are stories, adventure books, books about religion, magazines about the internet, newspaper world events, magazines about computer, magazines about new advances in technology, sports magazines, newspaper local interests, newspaper sports sections, books about the internet, picture magazines, books about computers, novels, poetry, and plays. On the other hand, they are found to dislike books about economics. The findings also showed that the obstacles that hinder their reading efforts are rare visits to the library, inability to get books quickly, unavailability of reading materials, time constraints, lack of local libraries, beliefs of having better things to do than reading, difficulty of reading materials provided by English departments, beliefs that improving reading is not as important as improving other language skills, beliefs that there is no relationship between reading and other language skills, and lack of family interests in reading. Furthermore, the findings revealed that the student choose their reading materials by interest, teacher’s request, the main character, length, literary quality, and cost. They also showed that the students read for improving their language, learning something, improving their academic achievements, keeping in touch with the local, economic, cultural, scientific, and political developments, improving their local status, keeping in touch with what is happening around the world, and entertainment. In addition, the students depend on themselves, their teachers, and their friends for choosing their reading materials.