ABSTRACT

The purposes of this study were to determine if information technology had an impact on EFL (English as a Foreign Language) university students’ reading habits and if students’ online reading habits and their demographic variables, such as gender, age, CJEE scores, employment status, and online hours were related. 124 valid survey questionnaires were collected from university students in a university in southern Taiwan. The results indicated that university EFL students’ reading habits changed from paper-based to internet-based reading. 83.9% of students read online information often everyday and 69.3% of them read emails everyday. In contrast, only 31.4% of them read newspapers, and 33.1% of them read magazines often everyday. The top 8 things students do online daily are checking emails (100%), listening to music (96.8%), chatting with friends (96%), using MSN (95.2%), reading online information (88.7%), viewing online photo albums (85.5%), using Yahoo messenger (76.6%), and shopping online (54%). Students read more online news, emails, sales information, movie review, and fashion news than any other information. As to the topics of interest, the ranking sequence that students indicated is entertainment, news and media, computer and internet, recreation and sports, references, arts and humanities, and health. The results also indicated that gender, age, education, CJEE scores, employment status, online hours, and university students’ reading habits are related. Suggestions and implications as well as future research directions were included in this study. Key words: Reading habit, Reading behaviour, Online reading, Computer technology