Abstract
The aim of this article was to investigate students’ attitudes towards reading in Polish and English. Two self-constructed questionnaires were administered to 48 ESL (English as a second language) pupils (26 boys, 22 girls) of primary school. The first questionnaire consisted of 15 questions about various attitudes, problems and opinions on reading books. The content of the survey’s questions also raised issues related to reading in Polish and English, and emotions connected to reading. The second questionnaire consisted of 5 follow-up questions. The results indicate that pupils simply like reading for pleasure and reading makes them feel good. However, they do not fancy long and difficult words. They enjoy adventure books and stories about animals. Pupils like adults reading books to them. However, there is a significant diffrence between boys and girls – boys like when adults read to them, girls – do not. They prefer reading by themselves. Reading to children evokes in a classroom a nice and friendly atmosphere, combined with an effect of surprise. The children react positively to a teacher, listen to them with interest and get involved in a lesson by repeating the text that has been read to them. When it comes to reading in English students confirmed that they read books in that language. The pupils enjoyed the lessons where the teacher read English books to them.
Highlights
An attitude towards reading has been defined as “(...) a state of mind, accompanied by feelings and emotions, that make reading more or less probable” (Smith 1990, p. 215) or as “(...) a system of feelings related to reading which causes the learner to approach or avoid a reading situation” (Alexander, Filler 1976, p. 1)
Storybooks ensure the pupils’ enjoyment, involvement and motivation to listen to a foreign language (Cameron 2001; Ghosn 2002, 2013; Read 2007)
All children were classified as ESL (English as a second or foreign language) students because they spoke Polish with their parents, siblings, and others who lived at home with them – this information was obtained through school records
Summary
An attitude towards reading has been defined as “(...) a state of mind, accompanied by feelings and emotions, that make reading more or less probable” (Smith 1990, p. 215) or as “(...) a system of feelings related to reading which causes the learner to approach or avoid a reading situation” (Alexander, Filler 1976, p. 1). Girls show more positive attitudes towards reading for pleasure than boys (Coles, Hall 2002; Sainsbury, Schagen 2004). They read more than boys (Coles, Hall 2002; Hall, Coles 1999) and have a better reading ability (Mullis, Martin, Gonzalez, Kennedy 2003; Logan, Johnston 2009; Mullis, Martin, Kennedy, Foy 2007). Stories are especially successful in young learner classes because children love books and reading stories is an activity familiar to them (Bland 2013; Dunn 2012). A convenient way of integrating children into the reading process with the whole class is by using big books. Big books are large format editions of storybooks which are
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