A Study of Advanced English Education Department of Digital Reading in Reading Comprehension

Abstract

This research presents advanced English Education Department students’ perception of digital reading on reading comprehension. Since, understanding English means understanding all aspects of English subjects, reading becomes main important element on English material which could obtain an information to acknowledge. Then, considering the development of the world began to affect all aspects including the world of education, technology is being the part of accomplishment that can work together in developing education realm. Moreover, world had been hyped up by Covid-19 that made all activities were done strictly including studying through online learning. As a useful tool that has been employed by learners, teacher, and general users, digital reading is contemplated as the bridge to help assisting students’ learning in reading comprehension process. Therefore, the researcher did the study to take a survey aimed to give a detail description of how advanced English Education Department students’ perceptions of digital reading in reading comprehension. In this study, the researcher used qualitative approach with descriptive qualitative design. The participants of this study were 5 students who were in their advanced level of semester at the University of Islam Malang. The participants were chosen randomly. This study was done by examining student’s perception through interviewing the students one by one via tape recorder in WhatsApp. With the use of semi-structured interview, the researcher let the participants shared their opinion informally. The instrument that was used in this research was 6 questions related to the research problem on how participants’ review their idea of digital reading in reading comprehension. The findings in this research provided positive results towards how they behaved into reviewing their opinion about digital reading in reading comprehension. Most of the participants look forward towards their future learning in reading comprehension although they found reading digitally which takes long time reflecting to screen could interfere their visions. Besides, participants reviewed the benefits that could be obtained from digital reading in reading comprehension, and they found digital reading as a flexible, motivational, and practical tool for assisting reading comprehension. Reading digitally has the flexible advantage, for readers are able to read whenever and wherever since the tool comes up with broader sources. The motivational aspect provides additional support for readers to stay understanding passages with how digital reading delivers its sophisticated to attract students interest reading digitally. Also, practical was mostly mentioned as ‘it helps’, they described digital reading serves source to make easy the readers to do the activity in comprehending the text. Overall, the positive responses were achieved from the participants’ idea inspecting about digital reading in reading comprehension. Keywords: Reading, Reading Comprehension, Digital Reading, Students’ Perceptions