Extramural Reading, Attitudes, and Motivation : How students' extramural reading habits affect their attitudes toward and motivation for reading in the L2 English classroom

Sammanfattning: This essay aims to investigate Swedish upper secondary school students’ extramural reading (ER) habits as well as if and how these habits affect students’ attitudes toward and motivation for reading in the L2 English classroom. The research questions addressed are: “What are Swedish upper secondary school students’ extramural reading habits?” and “Do students’ extramural reading habits affect their a) attitudes toward, and b) motivation for reading in the L2 English classroom? If yes, in what way?” As engagement in extramural English is suggested to both motivate and demotivate students to read in school, this essay can provide insights into how students’ extramural reading habits affect the reading they do in school. A questionnaire is used to collect data from 99 Swedish upper secondary school students from all three English courses. The questionnaire consists of closed-ended and open-ended questions about the students’ extramural reading habits, attitudes toward and motivation for reading in the L2 English classroom. Quantitative content analysis is used to analyse the data. The findings of this essay reveal that the reading habits of the participating students are varied. While some students read extramurally in English frequently and in a large quantity, others never read extramurally in English. The most commonly read text types are web texts and subtitles. Furthermore, the results show that some aspects of students’ attitudes toward reading in the L2 classroom are significantly affected by the students’ ER and that 77% of the students agree to some extent that their extramural reading provides them with more motivation to read in school. To conclude, pedagogical implications in relation to the findings of this essay are discussed.