Reading Practices of Higher Education Students in North Andhra Pradesh: A Study

A bstract: The aim of this research is to study the factors affecting the reading habit in the path of computer-generated and realistic reading. To this culmination, a study was led and the questionnaire among the students of the higher education. The replies have been studied by chart analysis. The consequences of the study have shown that most of the people already habituated to virtual reading and prefer to continue it. The reasons are ease of access from the root sources, availability of space for storage and forwarding from one to another within fraction of seconds. This could give enough to qualify the academic curriculum. This work would cover all the factors like language of reading, types of material, source of material, time spending on reading, purpose of reading, etc., influencing the students about their reading habits and reading behavior in the stated colleges. This study not covered several aspects due to restricted to Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, and Visakhapatnam locality only.


Types of Reading:
Academic reading: Academic reading is a more active process than simply reading and highlighting your text. Take notes, make connections between the text and what you already know or have experienced, and ask critical questions about the material you are reading to interact with it.

Leisure reading:
Leisure reading is called as free voluntary/recreational reading and desire reading, is simply the certain and independent reading for personal and social purposes. Reading for pleasure can occur at any time.

Types of Reading Techniques: Skimming:
Skimming, once in a while alluded to as essence perusing, implies going through the text to get a handle on the fundamental thought. Here, the pursuer doesn't articulate every single expression of the text yet concentrates on the fundamental topic or the center of the text. Instance of skimming is to understanding magazines or papers and looking for a name and address in a phone directory.

Scanning:
The reader quickly leaves through sentences to acquire to a specific snippet of data. Filtering includes the procedure of dismissing or overlooking unessential data from the message to find a particular snippet of data.

Intensive reading:
Escalated perusing is undeniably additional tedious than skimming and examining as it needs the pursuer's meticulousness. It includes close perusing that focuses on the exactness of understanding. Here, the pursuer needs to grasp the significance of every single word.

II. Review of Literature:
Jill castek, Lisa Jawalinski.et.al 1 (2010), opined that improving reading and comprehension skills, particularly for students who struggle with reading, is one and only of today's most pressing educational priorities. We will fail to develop the potential of these students to improve their individual and collective lives unless we develop more effective instructional approaches to address this problem. It is critical that all students become fully prepared for a widespread of reading experiences so that each individual can reach their full potential, achieve their goals, and make the world a better place through their achievements. Ma. Joahna M. Estacio 4 (2016). Reading is a remarkable skill, where the growth of a subject and use the new literacies are seen because of the internet. In his opinion, there is a significance to know the reading motivation, reading strategies and reading anxiety of the students while they are reading online as well as offline. Even though the technology dwelling a great role in new learning and literacy development, the matter of accuracy and pragmatic proof is very important to develop the syllabuses by the teachers, subject matter experts and authors. In his paper he enlightened clearly, there is a need to teach strategy awareness and use among learners.

Merliyani Putri Anggraini & Bambang Yudi Cahyono et.al 5 (2021).
Explained that, in the digital age,online reading has evolved into a primary method of obtaining information. Nonetheless, research into the factors that influence EFL university students' online reading comprehension success is limited. The review looked to grasp the connection between three elements related with web based understanding cognizance: metacognitive perusing system mindfulness, disconnected ability to understand, and general English capability. There was no critical connection between metacognitive perusing system mindfulness and disconnected ability to understand and internet understanding perception. The contrast among disconnected and web based perusing might be because of an absence of consciousness of metacognitive understanding procedures. In this way, more express language educating and learning practice is earnestly expected to unequivocally resolve these issues more.

III. Research Methodology:
The research is purely based on primary data and the data has collected through a questionnaire designed exclusively for the study. The questionnaire was designed to collect information about academic profile of the students such as age, gender, education, reading material, source of material, purpose of reading and specialization. In addition to this various questions related to the knowledge and experience about virtual reading Vs. authentic reading, reason for choosing virtual/authentic reading, type of materials, documents and sources used for reading, factors affecting user reading activities while virtual/authentic reading etc. Secondary data was collected from research papers, Journals, magazines and websites.

Sample size:
Sample was collected from the students of Engineering, pharmacy, management and education from various colleges of vizianagaram. The questionnaires were entertained by around 200 students. Male(131) and Female (69). The average age of the students at the time the study is 21.5 IV. Statistical Tools: 1. Demographic Analysis : Graphical Representation:

Interpretation:
The students are preferred various languages to read like Telugu, Hindi, English, Sanskrit, Urdu and other languages. Even though in in the digital era most of the students are preferred read in Telugu language. In total population 92 members are interested to read in Telugu.82 members are interested at English language. In Hindi language (15), Urdu language (7), Sanskrit (3) and other languages (1) are interests to read any study material. Graphical Representation:

Interpretation:
This table indicates the impact of students influencing the specialization. The specializations are engineering, pharmacy, education and management respectively. Highly 64 engineering students are impacted by virtual reading. 31 engineering students are interested in authentic reading. Ultimately the students are impacted exceedingly in specialization wise by authentic reading only except engineering students. Students are impacted by authentication reading mode engineering (31), pharmacy (26), education (14) and management (34) correspondingly.
Especially education specialized students 14 out of 15 (93.33%) are very unquestionably impacted by authentic reading only. Because these students are teacher training specialized. They are mostly following the traditional teaching methods. Graphical Representation:

Interpretation:
Usually any reader can prefer to read either hard copy or soft copy. The materials may be books, periodicals, newspapers, pdfs, videos, images, education applications and social media applications etc. In the total population, maximum number of students is preferred to read books are 28%. After that more people are preferred to pdfs is 26%. Due to the technical enhanced learning and other factors, learning by watching videos 16% of students preferred videos as reading material. 15% of students preferred hardcopy newspapers.
As technology developed abnormally and the world became shorter into the palms of the latest generations in the practice of mobiles, social media and various types of applications, information seeking is becoming easier than previous days. In that way also via social media 4% of students preferred to reading as well as via educational apps 3% of students are rising their interest to reading. Through images and related aspects 1% of students are preferred to reading.
Still the digital resources (including pdfs and online resources) are controlling the libraries and book stores while selecting of material availability sources among the students. Graphical Representation:

Interpretation:
The source of material is an important component in this study. The students are actually interested to get the different materials like books, journals, newspapers, e-books, and other digital materials from the different sources like libraries, book stores, friends, pdfs, online resources and websites, amazon, etc.
From the above pie chart we can note, Libraries are the extreme material providing sources with providing 35%. PDFs are also became the main materials towards the students with 30%.Online resources also play a key role to meet the needs of the students with 20%.The students are circulating the materials from peer levels like friends, mates, etc., is 11%. Less number of students are preferred to take the materials from book stores 2%, as well as from amazon is 2%. H0=There is no significant relation between reading mode and its purposes H1= There is a significant relation between reading mode and its purposes.

Interpretation:
In this statement One way ANOVA test, 'f' distribution has been used to analyze. Since 'p' value is lesser than α, H0 is rejected. p value=0.0009221, it means the change of type1 error (rejecting correct H0) is smaller. The smaller the value the stronger it support H1. H0: There is a significant relation between reading mode and its influenced factors H1: There is no significant relation between reading mode and its influenced factors

Interpretation:
In this statement One way ANOVA test, 'f' distribution has been used to analyze. Since 'p' value is greater than α, H0 is accepted. p value=0.01713, it means the change of type1 error (accepting correct H0) is smaller. The smaller the value the stronger it support H0.

V. Findings:
The following findings are drawn out by this study 1. Engineering students are addicted to virtual reading comparing with other professional courses.
2. Most of the students prefer to read their mother-tongue Telugu only. 3. Most of the professional teacher trainers never determine the virtual reading practice. 4. Even though in the digital age, more number of students prefer read the hard copy materials than soft copy materials.
5. Libraries playing always a key role to attract the students to choose the sources of materials rather than PDFs, online sources, educational applications, Social media applications, etc. 6. Reading habit is becoming an irregular activity in the students. 7. The resolution of reading through authentic reading practice is fetching for the permanent life time settlement. 8. Time saving factor is influencing the students to like better virtual reading. 9. Recreation, Remembrance and satisfaction levels by authentic reading are also keynote points to practice the offline reading.

VI. Suggestions:
1. Reading habits/practices are the foremost role players of any course or curriculum. The students are must be habituate reading as part of the contemporary lifestyle. 2. The students must be practice to read in English language rather than mother tongue. Mother tongue play an important role to understand the particular topic or subject but, English language reading gives the job opportunities to settle in career. 3. The teacher training/ education department students are to be habituate the virtual reading in this present scenario because teach the students in future, virtual environment is also playing vital role in teaching profession. 4. Libraries and library professional staff is to be more accurate and active to provide the materials by the various types of services to encourage the students in their career achievements. 5. While preparing for the competitive type of examinations, it is good to prefer authentic/offline reading to recognize the concepts deeper and quicker. 6. The students should follow the authentic reading practice to get recreation, long life remembrance about a topic/ subject. 7. By authentic reading practice only the user can get satisfaction as a reader, learner, researcher, etc.

VII. Conclusion:
Reading plays a major part in human life. Every individual can grew by reading the nature, surroundings, books, etc. Reading habits can show the strength of an individual. Only by reading, understanding, applying that on a particular situation can show the caliber of an individual. Reading gives more benefits like improving memory and vocabulary, helping us in learn new things, improves attention and concentration. To habituate reading some pre-requisites may be need for a reader that are as to schedule a time for reading, find a good place to read, read actively, keep a reading notes, carry a book wherever you go, have to know when to quit, replace other form of entertainment with reading, read several books at the same period, good reading partner to discussion.
The proclivity for reading is quite possibly of all that quality that an individual can have. Books are known to be your closest companion who is as it should be. So it is vital to foster a decent understanding propensity. We should all peruse consistently for somewhere around thirty minutes to partake in the sweet products of reading. It is a phenomenal satisfaction to sit in a quiet spot and value perusing. Perusing a respectable book is the most wonderful experience one can guarantee.
Everybody must enhance the reading skills by thorough practice only. The reading habit practice of the students in north Andhra Pradesh of higher education level absolutely likes at offline reading to reach their personality development and career growth.