Reading habits among school students: A study based on school children in Dehiovita educational zone

Abstract

Today readers are tomorrow leaders .People tend to read become knowledgeable persons .If child and elder people have good and correct reading habits, it is a good opportunity to make an intelligent society .The school students can obtain good quality education from successful reading .The main objective of this study is to explore and identify the reading habits of school students. The other objectives are to study the factors for upgrading their reading habits, the internet use for effective reading and to study what are the information some schools need .They compel for reading place and time spend for reading .The survey research method was used for this study .There are nearly 10,000 schools in Sri Lanka .The Kegalle district in Dehiovita region has 279 schools .The population of this study is A/L art subject doing students in schools .The sample was 137 students selected form three schools. Rathnavali Maha Vidylaya Mattamagoda, Sri Sena Maha Vidyalaya Imbulana, Dehiovita National school Dehiovita .A questionnaire was administered to obtain primary data among the sample .Interviews were also done for collecting data .Data analysis was done using SPSS software. It revealed that more school students prefer to use internet than reading books .They search information but they use it mainly for entertainment purposes than academic work both male and female students use library mainly for entertainment purposes .Most students are reading less than one hour at home .Both male and female students do not use school library once a week. As suggestions, students should be informed academic blogs, web sites and other organized websites .Actions have to be taken to motivate the students to organize reading societies .More hours should be allocated for the library period.