1. 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

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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