Review of Related Literature

Reading Attitude. Reading attitude pertains to the people/groups or behaviours

in reading (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2005). Reading attitudes is a system of feelings related

to reading which causes the learner to approach or avoid a reading situation. It is a

state of mind, accompanied by feelings and emotions that make reading more or less

probable (Smith, 2001)

Researchers argue that reading attitudes rely on the nature or purpose of the

activity. McKenna, Conradi, Lawrence, Jang and Meyer, (2012) distinguished these

as recreational reading, where the reader are the ones who decides when and what to

read, and the academic reading which often means reading for young people imposed

by an instructor in a school setting. Lazarus and Callahan (2000) applied this

distinction in their study to describe elementary students’ diagnosed with learning

disabilities attitudes toward academic and recreational reading and to compare their

attitudes with those expressed by their non-disabled peers.

(Ivey and Broaddus, 2001) Attitude towards reading plays an important role in

explaining the interest of a student to read.

Reading Attitude and the Students. Students think that reading attitude is not as

imperative as standardized test. However, attitude is important because if students

went through an education system focused exclusively on aptitudes and test readiness,

they may build up an aversion of reading (Kohn, 2010). For instance, devoted and

competent Singaporean readers developed negative reading attitudes after their first

year in a test-oriented secondary school environment (Bokhorst-Heng & Pereira,

2008).
 Bettinger and Long (2009) stated that there are many secondary graduate

students, who wants to enter college, comes academically unprepared for college

material. This struggle came from the students’ difficulty in reading and writing. As a

result, community colleges care prompt to put these students in remedial classes. The

researchers study suggested students in remediation are more likely to persist in

college in comparison to students with similar backgrounds who were not required to

take the courses.

Reading Attitude and Student Achievements. Lukhele’s (2013) study

suggested that whilst there is no relationship between reading attitudes and reading

ability, there is some relationship between reading ability and academic performance.

The statistical analyses further indicate a relationship between reading and vocabulary

ability of the participants.

Using a structural equation modelling to prove his hypothesis, Bastug (2014)

study results confirmed the hypothesis model for the relationship between in reading

attitude, reading comprehension and academic achievement. In other words, reading

attitude and reading comprehension significantly predicted academic achievement. In

addition, reading attitude was found to be a significant predictor of reading

comprehension. The results and recommendations are then discussed.

There are several researches which support the correlation between reading

attitudes and academic success. Sallabas’ (2008) research presented this links and

determined that there is a low level correlation between attitude towards reading and

academic achievement. Sahin and Bas (2012) also observed this correlation and

suggested that the more students have positive attitudes towards reading in all sub

dimensions of reading attitude, the higher marks they get from examinations of
Turkish course in elementary schools. Petcher’s (2010) findings indicated that the

attitude–achievement relationship is stronger in elementary school, therefore

suggested to model appropriate behaviours and provide situation-appropriate reading

availability for children in their preeducation and early formal education years.

However, Kush, Watkins and Brookheart (2005) also showed that primary attitude

was not correlated with primary achievement yet both had causal paths to 7th-grade

achievement.

. Reading also plays a key role in developing and used of lifelong reading skills

(Lazarus & Callahan, 2000). Although the connection between students attitudes to

reading and the improvement of reading abilities have already been examine

(Martinezetal, 2008)

changes in these attitudes have yet to be properly managed, especially during

the transition from primary to middle school.

Moreover, McKenna, Conradi, Lawrence, Jang & Meyer (2012) proposed that

positive attitudes in reading that relates to lifelong learning. This attitude would also

help develop important skills needed in life

Reading Attitude and the advent of Technology. Over the course of the

twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a significant decline has been observed in the

time adults and youngsters spend reading, and each new generation generally reads

less than the generations that came previously. One of the most notable declines in

reading took place after the introduction of television in the fifties: not only did

people read less; they also seemed to develop a more negative attitude towards

reading (Heyman, 2016). Johns (2009) also stated that the internet has totally changed
the attitude of the individuals towards reading and reading habits. He noted that

people these days want to read articles quicker, simpler, and skim as fast as possible

so that they can move to the other website. And also person wants information in

video form, too.

A recent survey conducted in the United States by Scholastic and Harrison

Group (2010) found that the number of kids who loved reading books for leisure had

decreased while others spend time going on the internet for entertainment only. In

addition, it was noted that popular social media sites like Facebook are more attractive

to the kids.

Teal, Garcia, Ireland (as cited in de Guzman, 2013) believed that those

children, who have no interest in reading, mainly caused of the growing interest with

technological advances which is very harmful to the education and training of every

children. It shows the idea that the decline in children’s reading habits appears to be a

result of technological advances that have led to overall changes in family, social and

economic conditions.

The main objective of a teacher is to motivate an active and involved reading

attitude in each student (Sanacore, 2000). Teachers manage the problem of attitudes

day by day in the classroom and constantly try to find ways to improve the attitude of

their students towards reading. A teacher needs to enhance these dispositions and ask

for help in explaining why it is a problem and how it can be solved (Sanacore,2002).

Other researchers have also studied the extent to which students successfully read is

directly related to their understanding of reading (Garrett, 2002).

Factors Affecting Reading Attitude. There are some children who love and

enjoy the reading task and are competent in this field. However, a lot of children see
reading in a negative way, and therefore fail (Garrett, 2002). It is important to first

look at what affects students reading attitudes to better understand where attitude

influences come from. Evidence shows that there are personal attributes and

environmental factors that influence children’s attitudes to reading. These elements

include ability, achievement, self-concept, home environment, instructional practices

and special programs, gender, interests and testing intelligence (Garrett, 2000).

Reading Attitude and Grade Level. Surveys conducted among older children,

such as the survey conducted by McKenna et al,. (2012) reported comparable

differences in the positive attitudes of students towards reading throughout middle

school. In this cross-sectional study, McKenna et al,. (2012) asked 4,491 American

grade 6 to 8 middle school students to finish an adapted ERAS version. The

researchers observed an increase of negative attitudes towards reading, with attitudes

towards academic reading appearing to be more stable across grades but more

negative than towards leisure reading.

Reading Attitude and Gender. As demonstrated by a number of studies, most of

which were cross-sectional, attitudes to reading vary significantly by grade and also

by sex, that girls show more positive views in elementary schools. Sainsbury and

Schagen, 2004;

Worrel et al., 2006;

Logan and Johnston, 2009;

Graham et al., 2012;

Clark, 2014;
McGeown et al., 2015) and in middle school (Swalander and Taube, 2007; McKenna

et al., 2012).

Wolter, Braun and Hannover (2015) reported in a longitudinal study conducted

in Germany, from the beginning of kindergarten to the end of first grade that females

were more motivated to learn to read as early as kindergarten, owing to the negative

impact on males motivation of teachers gender role attitudes.

In their longitudinal study, Kolić-Vehovec, Zubković and Pahljina-Reinić

(2014) recorded similar results among Croatian pupils, who completed an adapted

version of the ERAS three times, in Grades 4, 6, and 8 it shows that girls’ reading

attitudes being consistently more positive than boys’ across those grades.

Forshey (2013) reported similar findings, based on a cross-sectional study of

476 elementary-school pupils. In the United Kingdom, both Sainsbury and Schagen

(2004) and

Logan and Johnston (2009) observed significant sex-related differences in

attitudes among pupils in the second half of their elementary education, with girls

expressing more positive views, as did McKenna et al. (2012) among American

middle-school students.

Reading Attitudes in the Phillippines. In a survey, commissioned by the

National Book Development Board (NBDB, 2012), reported a positive response

regarding the attitude of Filipinos towards reading spanning an 88% of Filipinos who

reads in the country. However this was a slight decline of Filipino readers from the

past survey with a number of reader of about 92% in 2007 and 94% in 2003. The

survey also reported that 12% of Filipinos read every day and found no correlation of
this frequency with the economic status of every Filipino. However it was found out

that there is a positive correlation to reading and getting an education from a private

school, or having had some private school education. The findings say that those

educated in private schools read books more often than those educated in public

schools. Most of those educated in private schools do their reading every week or

every day.

There are also researches in the Philippines that aimed or somehow included

determining reading attitude of Filipinos. A study conducted by Aunario (as cited in

Ilustre, 2011) revealed a critical contrast in disposition towards reading among male

and female high school students and between those with high and low reading

accomplishment in the distinctive subscales of the said survey. This was concluded

after discovering a good and average connection between reading attitude scores and

short story scores with the use of a validated questionnaire that is supported on

Mathewson’s and Mckenna’s models of reading acquisition. However Ilustre (2011)

in her study to recognize which factor, beliefs about perusing or metacognitive

techniques is a good indicator of Filipino undergrad’s text comprehension.

contradicted this and reported that gender plays no significance.

Mercado, Urrutia, Bautista, Borigas and Elgaran, (2015) also conducted a study

to determine the attitude of the students in Polytechnic University of the Philippines

towards reading. They sub divided the reading attitude into 4 factors namely; Love for

Reading, Skills in Reading, Social Interaction in Reading, and Benefit of Reading.

The results yielded to the variables be present more akin to the first factor compared

to the other factors. The results also shows that reading is very essential in learning, to

be exact, reading and learning are two categories that work hand in hand in the

development of the students. Therefore, the study shows that it is indeed important to
redefine measures of reading attitudes in order in redefine measurement of learning of

the students not only in tertiary level but throughout different academic level.