CHAPTER FOUR FINDINGS
Type 5: Previews, reviews, comments, analyses, or summaries of movies
participants usually visit to obtain multimedia materials.
Table 4-5 Websites for Sources of Multimedia Materials
Website Name URL
Almost half of the participants (49% with 23 respondents) reported that they visit their friends’ or classmates’ weblogs or write on their own weblogs. Some participants mentioned that they actually seldom read weblogs in English because few of their friends would like to blog in English except for some friends from English major.
However, being assigned to write and respond in English on their own personal or classmates’ weblogs by the teachers, they grew to be used to reading and writing on their and others’ weblogs. Furthermore, the participants said they also expand their circles of friends by blogging since weblogs are places where they can occasionally encounter people from different countries. Table 4-6 demonstrates where the
participants usually blog.
Table 4-6 Websites for Blogging
Website Name URL
Type 5: Previews, reviews, comments, analyses, or summaries of movies
Seventeen participants (35% of all the participants) reported that they sometimes turn to the Internet to watch previews of the news movies and to read others’
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comments, analyses, or summaries of movies they have seen. To them, movie
watching is a very typical leisure time activity and the use of the Internet to search for movie-related information can benefit them before and after their appreciation of the movies. Before going to the movies, they first read others’ reflections after movies and recommendations to judge whether the movie is worth watching. Moreover, in order to get an early glimpse of the new movie or its information, the participants usually frequent certain foreign websites to watch the preview. After watching the movie, if they find they cannot fully understand it, they turn to the Internet to clear their confusions by reading other views’ analyses and interpretations on the same movie they see. Table 4-7 provided the websites where the participants usually go to search for movie-related information.
Table 4-7 Websites for Sources of English Reading Materials for Information about Movies
Website Name URL
Video Detective http://www.videodetective.com/
IMDB: The Internet Movie Database http://www.imdb.com/
Spike.com http://www.spike.com/
Sony Pictures: http://www.sonypictures.com/
Type 6: E-magazines
Interestingly, eleven female participants (22% of all the participants), but not any of the male participants stated that they enjoy reading magazines on the Internet because they can read these online magazines for free. From Table 4-8, it can be observed that the magazines the participants mentioned are all imported from other countries and therefore the price might not be affordable for them. As a result, with the use of the Internet, the participants can always google the magazine websites to read the magazine online for free.
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Table 4-8 Websites for Sources of English Reading Materials from E-magazines
Website Name URL
Fictions are the less favored type of English reading materials on the Internet.
According to the interview data, the fiction includes short stories and novels. Six participants (12% of all the participants) reported that they read fictions online. This result indicates that it seems that the participants seldom read fictions online. Inquired why the participants barely read fictions on the Internet, they explained that the fiction was so lengthy that they felt uncomfortable reading it online as well as incapable of reading through it. They would rather read the fiction in print than on the Internet.
Compared to the other types of Internet English reading materials discussed above, the participants had a tendency to read nonfictions such as news and information online. Table 4-9 displays the websites where the participants read fictions.
Table 4-9 Websites for Sources of English Reading Materials in Fictions
Website Name URL
Fan Fiction Net Project Gutenberg
Chicken Soup for the Soul
http://www.fanfiction.net/
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page http://www.chickensoup.com/
Type 8: E-newsletters
The last type of online English reading materials is e-newsletter. An e-newsletter
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refers to a regularly distributed small publication containing updated news of interest mainly to a special group and its subscribers. In the present study, only 5 participants (10% of all the participants) said that although they usually subscribed to a certain e-newsletter from their favorite websites, they rarely thoroughly went through the reading since sometimes the topic failed to cater to their personal interests.
E-newsletters accordingly were easy to be ignored in their e-mail inbox. The e-newsletters the participants pointed out are presented in Table 4-10.
Table 4-10 Websites for Sources of English Reading Materials from E-newsletters
Website Name URL
Christian Dior New York Times
Chicken Soup for the Soul
http://www.dior.com/prehomeFlash.htm/
http://www.nytimes.com/
http://www.chickensoup.com/
Topics of interest in Internet English reading materials
The third interview question intends to explore what topics of the online English reading materials the students are interested in and why they like reading these topics.
The participants’ interview data were analyzed and classified by the news topic categories displayed on the official website of The China Post4. The main reason for the adoption of the news categories from The China Post to categorize the
participants’ responses is that the reading topics from The China Post are more categorized and subcategorized as well as more suitable, compared to others’ news websites, to correspond to the participants’ responses.
Overall, the participants’ favorite topics were put into seven categories, five of which were adopted from The China Post, and the rest of the two were adopted from the participants’ interview data. Besides the main categories, there are several
4 The China Post is one of the English-language newspapers published here in Taiwan. It is usually regarded as one of the best authentic reading materials for English learning.
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subcategories under two main categories, which will be elaborated in the following part. On the whole, the categories of favorite reading topics found in this study are (1) arts and leisure, (2) international news and crucial issues, (3) life, (4) literature-related information, (5) sports, (6) health, and (7) English learning or teaching.
The total number of each favorite topic that the participants liked to read on the Internet is shown in Table 4-11. The total number of frequency in each favorite reading topic is the count of the total number of responses that fell into that certain main category of reading topic of interest. Since the interview question is an open-ended question, the participants were allowed to give more than one favorite reading topics. Furthermore, the percentage was calculated by dividing the number of particular reading topic of interest by the total number of all reading topics of interest.
Table 4-11 Frequency of Topics of Interest in Internet English Reading Materials
Topics of Interest % N
International news and crucial issues Life
Note. [N] = the number of the responses the participants gave concerning the reading topic they were interested in.
As illustrated in Table 4-11, the favorite reading topics ranked in order of the frequency are arts and leisure (48%), international news and crucial issues (15%), life (13%), literature-related information (9%), sports (9%), health (3%), and English learning or teaching (3%). According to the participants, topics pertaining to arts and leisure encompass arts, celebrity news, food, music, movies, and lifestyles. Besides, reading topics on life comprise environment, fashion, science technology, and offbeat.
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Overall, the results of the participants’ preferred reading topics suggest that they tend to regard reading online as a kind of pastime and that they would rather spend more time reading something light and relaxing than something dry, dull, and serious.
Frequency of reading English online
The fourth interview question aims to find out how often the students read English on the Internet on a weekly basis. Participants indicated six levels of reading English online: (1) every day, (2) four to five times a week, (3) three to four times a week, (4) two to three times a week, (5) one to two times a week, and (6) never. The results illustrated in Table 4-12 indicate that more than half of the interviewees (51.92%) reported that they read English on the Internet almost every day, followed by one to two times (20.41%), three to four times (14.29%), two to three times (6.12%) and never (6.12%), and four to five times (2.04%).
Table 4-12 Frequency of Reading English Online on a Weekly Basis
Frequency % N
Every day 51 25
Four to five times 2 1
Three to four times 14 7
Two to three times 6 3
One to two times 20 10
Never 6 3
Total 100 49
Note. [N] = the number of the responses the participants gave in answering how many times they read English on the Internet on a weekly basis.
It is known that computer technologies indeed have huge impact on people’s reading habits in many ways. For some of the participants, they understand the
significance of easy access to authentic information from the Internet and accordingly avail themselves of all the resources the Internet equipped with to facilitate their
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English learning. Nevertheless, for the participants with less experiences of reading English online, they seem not to have the habit of reading English online yet. The following section elaborates on the reasons why some of the participants read English online every day while some fail to do so.
Reasons for reading English online every day
As shown in Table 4-12, the most frequently reported frequency of reading English online is every day (51%). Investigating into the responses the interviewees provided, five reasons are found.
First of all, three students mentioned that they have to read English online every day due to their subscriptions to e-newsletters:
P1: Almost every day.
P2/P3: Right, I think almost every day.
P1: Because I have subscriptions. They are sent by email every day.
P2/P3: That’s right. (SG#1)
Secondly, to obtain updated information is another reason to motivate the students to read English on the Internet every day:
P1: Because I want to know if there is any updated information about music or sale.
P2: Right, because entertainment is updated every day, I read it almost every day to keep up with new entertainment information. (SG#1)
P1: Every day because the Internet is the most accessible resource.
P2: Me too. Also, I am watching many American dramas, so I would like to keep myself updated about their news. There’ll be the newest episode of each drama, so I want to know new information about them. (SG#4)
P1: It seems we read English online every day. Because the information on English websites is always updated very fast, the information must be much newer. (FG#8)
Thirdly, some students even described that reading English online every day is their personal habit or daily routine.
P1: Every day because I am used to reading on the Internet.
P2: Me too. And I like the feelings of typing the keyboard because it seems more
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concrete to type than to write. I think am addicted to the Internet. (SG#6) P1: I think it is hard to avoid not going to the foreign websites.
P2: Even if I have no time, at least I would read the news headings. (SG#12) P2: Now, I don’t really care about if I am going to read in English online because
it seems natural and habitual for me to read in English. So, I don’t bother to take out my dictionary to check the new vocabulary. (FG#8)
Fourthly, a student believed that reading English on the Internet every day can help her cultivate English reading habit and thus enhance her English abilities:
P1: Almost every day because I use the Internet almost every day. Plus, I used to feel troublesome to read English. However, I am an English major now, and I should push myself to read English every day in order to develop English reading habits and further improve my English ability. (FG#12)
At last, the reason for reading English online every day is to search for information and glean all the information found in preparation for the approaching exams:
P1/P3: Every day when the test is coming.
P3: Because there are so many important things to memorize and so much information to search for through the Internet that I need more time to collect information online. (FG#9)
P1: Every day, especially when the test is coming or when the report deadline in coming, I read even more. (FG#17)
Reasons for hardly ever reading English online
Regardless of the high percentage of reading English online every day, some students said they seldom or never read English online, which altogether takes up 26% of the participants. Asked why they read English online so rarely, a student stated that there is no need to read English online owing to the abundance of Chinese
information, as shown below:
P2: Because I think there is a lot of Chinese information available, why do I have to read in English? (SG#5)
Furthermore, some students confessed that they actually did not develop the habit of reading English online. Accordingly, they would like to read English on the Internet only when the teacher planned a test or required them to do assignment
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through the Internet. This view is clarified by the following statements:
P3: Once a week because I read online in English only when I have to do my assignment through the Net to post my reflections and feedbacks to other classmates’ articles and the teacher’s articles. (SG#10)
P3: Once a week because our oral training teacher asks us to improve our listening ability by listening English news online. So, every week I have to listen to the news and write down what I listen to from online news report.
Then I listen to it again and again to correct what I have written. She asks us to do this because she wants our English listening improve by self-study online, so she doesn’t require us to hand in the listening scripts we write.
(FG#17)
P1: Basically, I never read in English online on weekly basis. I only read it when the test is coming or when the report deadline is coming. (FG#18)
P2: I seldom read online but I read online when the test is coming.
P3: I read English online once a week.
R: Why do you read in English on the Internet rarely?
P3: Because I don’t make it the habit to read online in English. (SG#11)
Factors affecting the selection of Internet reading materials
Interview Question 5 tries to find out what factors would affect students’
selection of reading materials while reading on the Internet. Five main themes with twelve subcategories emerge from participants’ responses: (1) format of documents or websites, (2) feature of online information, (3) users’ personal factor, (4) users’ task purpose, and (5) cost. The results are demonstrated in Table 4-13.
The subtotal number of each main factor, highlighted in bold in the table below, is the total number of the frequency in reporting some subcategorized factors that affect the participants’ choices of English reading materials while reading online. The participants were able to point out more than one main category of affecting factor, but even if they pointed out the same subcategorized factor more than once, the frequency was taken as once. For the total number of frequency in all factors, it was calculated by adding the subtotal number of each main category of factor. As for the
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percentage of each subcategorized factor, it was computed by dividing the frequency of each subcategorized factor by the total number of frequency in that certain main factor so as to further reveal the distribution of the subcategorized factor under certain main category of factor. Moreover, the percentage of each main factor was calculated by dividing the subtotal number of frequency of each main factor by the total number of frequency of all main factors.
Table 4-13 Factors Influencing the Selection of Internet English Reading Materials
Factors Subcategories N %
Note. [N] = the number of the responses the participants gave concerning the factor that affected their selection of English reading materials while reading online.
As evidenced by the information presented in Table 4-13, the most influential factor in students’ choices of online English reading materials is the feature of online
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information (43%). The second most reported influential factor is the quality of format of documents or websites (23%) and the users’ task purpose (23%). The last two least reported factors are users’ personal factor and cost, taking up 9% and 2% of all factors respectively. Each of the factors is discussed in the following.