Reading on Smartphones: Students' Habits and Implications for Reading Skills

Abstract

Since the introduction of the Internet and smartphones, there has been a shift in literacy patterns to digital texts. This change affects students’ reading habits. For EFL students in Malaysia, the influence of digital texts is significant for their reading skills because the texts encountered on their smartphones are primarily in English. Hence, the way those texts are handled is slightly different from those in their L1. This is a qualitative case study involving thematic analysis, which investigates the digital reading habits of 12 Malaysian pre-university students on smartphones through observations of their screen recordings and open-ended interviews. The aim was to examine their pre-reading while reading, and post-reading habits while handling texts on smartphones and the implications on their L2 reading skills. Findings revealed that students could read in any environment, and the texts usually involved messages, web articles, and feeds from social networking applications. The selection of texts depended on recommendations and interests, but lengthy texts were generally avoided. Nevertheless, texts with appealing topics were attempted using assistive tools. Students also tended to navigate from one text to another rather quickly and used skimming and scanning methods while reading. To manage distractions, students used designated smartphone applications.