Increasing Leisure Reading Among University Students Using E-readers with Audio

Abstract

This article reports on a study investigating leisure reading among university students using Kindle devices. The study employed a pre-post reading engagement survey of a cohort of twenty-one college students. Students participated in the study by completing self-reported surveys before and after a semester-long reading engagement program. The program involved preloaded audio and e-books on Kindle Fire devices, giving students the option to read, listen, or read and listen simultaneously. The students were selected by their enrollment in either a reading improvement class or a comparative literature class contained within a multilingual student course cluster. All students either struggled with English language skills, based on SAT scores, or were ESL students. Students indicated in the presurvey results that they spent less than one hour weekly reading material. In the postsurvey results, analysis shows that students were more interested in recreational reading materials, noting that they were likely or very likely to read or listen to books outside of class material in the future.