INVESTIGATING FACTORS AFFECTING POOR READING CULTURE AMONG EFL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

Reading books has not become a habit among university students in Kurdistan; one can count the good readers in a class with fingers of a hand. This is a big crisis and needs serious work. The problem is demonstrated through the students’ performance and proven knowledge in the academic years and it matters because when the students graduate in the university and during the university academic years they do not have sufficient knowledge that a university student needs to have. This study aims to investigate the factors that affect poor reading culture of the EFL learners in Kurdistan universities. It provides the major factors that affect the reading interest of EFL learners. For this purpose, a questionnaire, and an interview are used. The questionnaire is designed to obtain certain information regarding the learners’ reading culture, environment, factors that motivate and demotivate them. The interview is designed to ask certain questions which are answered by university lecturers and one of them is the director of the general library in one of the universities. Through the study, it was found that reading books has not become a habit among university students in Kurdistan and they have given little or no attention to reading books, and students’ cultural environment demotivates them from reading books. Kurdish culture, lack of role models, and insufficient libraries are among factors of poor reading culture among university students. However, it was found that university libraries are quite sufficient for reading books. Therefore, the results indicate that the reading culture is not at the needed level and students are not used to providing a decent time for reading daily. They spend their free time on other things rather than reading. The findings of this study may serve as reliable data regarding the culture and habit of reading which shows an up-to-date piece of information about one of the great aspects of EFL learners in universities in Kurdistan which is reading culture.