Investigating the Pleasure Reading Habit of the Students of University of Islam Malang during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Reading has a very important role and becomes a daily necessity for every person who wants to acquire whatever information is required. For most learners, it is the most important skill to master to ensure success not only in studying English but also in learning in any content class where reading is needed. Students who frequently do pleasure reading will be developed more cognitively and it will make them tend to do better in school than their peers. However, the spread of the COVID-19 virus that has occurred in recent years has affected various spheres of life. This is ranging from health, education, economy, religious practice, and society. The restrictions on most activities outside the home have forced children to find their reading resources from home through online orders of physical books, online reading materials, or online loans or purchases of e-books. This research aimed at investigating the students’ pleasure reading habits during the pandemic since they spend most of their time at home. The main focus of this research is to investigate the performance of the students’ pleasure reading habits before and during the pandemic, to know the devices that they mostly use to read during the pandemic, and to identify the factors that prevent the students to read during the covid-19 pandemic. In this research, the researcher used the qualitative descriptive method. There were 25 students in the 8th semester of English Education Department of University of Islam Malang as the subjects of this study. The researcher used questionnaires to collect the data to investigate the students’ pleasure reading habits during the pandemic time, while the interviews were done to get more information to complete their answers from the questionnaires. The questionnaires were in the form of Google Forms. The researcher distributed those questionnaires by personal massage on WhatsApp to the students of the university of Islam Malang who were asked to be the subjects in this research. Next, the researcher conducted a semi-structured interview to follow up and get more deep information from the subjects. The researcher used the Zoom application to conduct an online interview. The findings showed that the students' reading habits during this pandemic continued but with a different frequency than before the pandemic. Most of the students were reading to add general information and knowledge during the Covid-19 pandemic, especially about the current information on the Covid-19 pandemic, and for academic reasons, the frequency of reading was about fifteen minutes to one hour. Meanwhile, only a few students read for entertainment which means that they probably got their entertainment from other activities. Then, the data showed that mobile phones became the most popular device for reading among the participants during the pandemic. The students revealed that their duration of using devices, especially mobile phones increased because they spent most of their time at home during the pandemic. The participants stated that most of them read non-prints for their reading sources. All participants said they used their mobile phones more often to read because it was more practical. Next, most participants preferred to access their social media rather than read during the Covid-19 pandemic. From the data collected, it could be concluded that the main factor that hindered students from reading during the pandemic was social media. Keyword: Reading Habit, Pleasure Reading, Factor Influencing Reading Habit