Abstract
One of the basic language skills, reading is considered to be a key to improve critical thinking skills and to grasp different perspectives by experiencing changing nature of world. It is an inevitable fact that teachers, who are responsible for contributing to widen students' horizons and aid them to gain new insights, are still regarded as sources of knowledge even in such an environment surrounded by high technology facilities. Therefore, it is crucial to see whether, and/or how often, prospective English teachers are interested in online reading and what kind of perceptions, or feelings, they have towards reading online and making use of such online readings in their future profession. In this respect, the current study aims to find out prospective English teachers' online reading habits and perceptions. The data was collected via convenience sampling which is a type of non-probability sampling. Accordingly, the study was conducted at two different universities in northern Turkey and a total of 164 prospective teachers of English (37 male, 127 female) took the survey. The study suggests that the literacy focus has been turning from paper to online. Online reading is considered as a valuable source of knowledge, a tool for reaching educational goals, an integral part of English language learning and a crucial constituent of language teaching profession. It seems to contribute a lot to prospective English teachers who are developing their professional, procedural and personal knowledge base so as to be effective teachers of future.
Highlights
Emerging technologies have a great impact on every aspect of life
While almost 63% of the participants spend 1-3 hours on paper-based reading, 72% of them spend the same time (1-3 hours) on online readings. The percentages of those who spend less than an hour on paper-based (7.9%) and online reading (6.7%) are almost similar while the percentages of those who spend more than six hours on paper-based (4.9%) and online reading (4.9%) are the same
Many researchers have devoted efforts to investigate online reading, skills and strategies that individuals use during online reading, habits of online reading, factors influencing preferences of individuals in the course of online reading, perceptions of online reading, comparisons between online and paper-based reading habits, the effects of different variables such as age, academic performance, field of study, and gender on online reading and the correlations between these variables and online reading habits (Brantmeier, 2003; Caverly & Peterson, 2000; Edem & Ofre, 2010; Ilgar & Ilgar, 2012; Lui & Huang, 2008; Noor, 2011; Shaikh & Chaparro, 2004; Shen, 2006; Tseng, 2007; 2008; 2010)
Summary
Emerging technologies have a great impact on every aspect of life They transform life, society, business, economy and education etc. As Kumaravadivelu (2012) puts forward, transformative teachers are needed for this new global society. It means that the dynamics of language education, the perspectives, the role of teacher and the role of students are changing. In order to “develop teachers into strategic thinkers, exploratory researchers and transformative teachers”, Kumaravadivelu (2012, p.17) presents the modular model KARDS: knowing, analyzing, recognizing, doing and seeing and states that teachers have to: a) Develop their professional, procedural and personal knowledge base b) Analyze learner needs, motivation and autonomy c) Recognize their own identities, beliefs and values d) Perform teaching, theorizing and dialogizing e) Monitor their own teaching acts.
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