Turkish language teacher candidates’ thoughts on e-readers, digital reading, and reading preferences

Year 2025, Volume: 9 Issue: 2, 167 - 180, 03.06.2025

Münire Özden , Mehmet Çiçek

Abstract

This research aims to determine teacher candidates’ thoughts, experiences, and expectations about digital reading and e-readers and examine students' reading habits comprehensively. The research study group consists of 116 teacher candidates studying in the Turkish Language Teaching program. This qualitative research investigated many important factors, such as students' daily reading time, digital and traditional reading preferences, the software they use in digital reading, e-readers, and the reasons for preferring these devices. The study's findings were made more meaningful by comparing the data obtained with other studies in the literature. The study results show that students prefer digital platforms, but using e-readers is less common than using digital applications. However, it was concluded that students prefer reading from printed sources to reading from digital tools. This indicates that printed books are still a strong preference and that students face some barriers in transitioning to digital reading tools. Regarding the interest and usage rate of e-readers, it is understood that students mostly prefer printed books, and it will take time for their digital reading habits to develop. Furthermore, the study concluded that digital reading tools and e-readers may not be equally effective or important for all users. This shows that digital reading habits may vary according to the user's preferences, age, technological predisposition, and reading habits. In this context, it can be said that design, accessibility, and ease of use should be considered for digital reading tools to appeal to a broader user base.

Keywords

E-reader , digital reading , reading preferences , paper-based reading

Ethical Statement

This research was approved by the Giresun University Ethics Committee's Social and Human Sciences Ethics Committee, decision no. 138012, dated 18.01.2023.

Supporting Institution

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

References

• Anand, B. N., Olson, P. W., & Tripsas, M. (2009). eReading: Amazon's Kindle (Harvard Business School Case No. 709-486). Harvard Business School. https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=37016
• Anderson, T. L. (2018). E-readers make a difference for diverse readers. International Journal of Technology in Education and Science (IJTES), 2(1), 40–56. https://www.ijtes.net/index.php/ijtes/article/view/10/10
• Ateş, S. (2013). Eleştirel okuma ve bir beceri olarak öğretimi (Critical reading and its teaching as a skill). Turkish Journal of Education, 2(3), 40–49. https://doi.org/10.19128/turje.181063
• Ayre, C., & Scally, A. (2014). Critical values for Lawshe’s content validity ratio: Revisiting the original methods of calculation. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 47(1), 79–86. https://doi.org/10.1177/0748175613513808
• Baron, N. S. (2021). How we read now: Strategic choices for print, screen, and audio. Oxford University Press.
• Block, C. C. (2004). Teaching comprehension. Pearson Education Inc.
• Caple, H. (2018). Analysing the multimodal text. In C. Taylor & A. Marchi (Eds.), Corpus approaches to discourse: A critical review (pp. 85–109). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315179346-5
• Ciğerci, M. F. (2015). İlkokul dördüncü sınıf Türkçe dersinde dinleme becerilerinin geliştirilmesinde dijital metinlerin kullanılması (The use of digital texts in developing listening skills in the 4th grade primary school Turkish course). (Doctoral dissertation, Anadolu University, Institute of Educational Sciences).
• Coyne, I. T. (1997). Sampling in qualitative research, purposeful and theoretical sampling; merging or clear boundaries? Journal of Advanced Nursing, 26(3), 623–630. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2648.1997.t01-25-00999.x
• Creswell, J. W., & Plano Clark, V. L. (2017). Designing and conducting mixed methods research. Sage.
• Cuddy, C. (2008). E-book readers. Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries, 5(4), 389–394. https://doi.org/10.1080/15424060802453787
• Cull, B. W. (2011). Reading revolutions: Online digital text and implications for reading in academy. First Monday, 16(6), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v16i6.3340
• Culén, A. L., & Gasparini, A. (2011). E-book reader and the necessity of divergence from the legacy of paper book. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Advances in Computer Human Interaction (pp. 267–273).
• Dalton, B., & Proctor, C. P. (2008). The changing landscape of text and comprehension in the age of new literacies. In J. Coiro, M. Knobel, C. Lankshear, & D. J. Leu (Eds.), Handbook of research on new literacies (pp. 297–324). Erlbaum.
• Ekiz, D. (2003). Eğitimde araştırma yöntem ve metodlarına giriş: Nitel, nicel ve eleştirel kuram metodolojileri (Introduction to research methods and techniques in education: Qualitative, quantitative and critical theory methodologies). Anı.
• Grabe, W., & Stoller, F. L. (2002). Teaching and researching reading. Pearson Education.
• Güneş, F. (2016). Kâğıttan ekrana okuma alanındaki gelişmeler (Advances in reading from paper to screen). Bartın University Journal of Faculty of Education, 5(1), 1–18. https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/buefad/issue/24919/263039
• Hancock, G. M., Schmidt-Daly, T. N., Fanfarelli, J., Wolfe, J. L., & Szalma, J. L. (2016). Is e-reader technology killing or kindling the reading experience? Ergonomics in Design, 24(1), 225–230. https://doi.org/10.1177/1064804615611269.
• Howell, V. (2014). E-books and Reading Experience. The Journal of Publishing Culture, 2, 2009-2017.
• Kaban, A. L. (2021). Gamified e-reading experiences and their impact on reading comprehension and attitude in EFL classes. International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning, 13(3), 54–74. https://doi.org/10.4018/IJMBL.2021070105
• Karasar, N. (2012). Bilimsel araştırma yöntemi (Scientific research method). Nobel Yayıncılık.
• Keskin, H., & Akyol, H. (2014). Yapılandırılmış okuma yönteminin okuma hızı, doğru okuma ve sesli okuma prozodisi üzerindeki etkisi (Effect of structured reading method on reading speed, reading accuracy and oral reading prosody). Journal of Mother Tongue Education, 2(4), 107–119. https://www.anadiliegitimi.com/tr/pub/issue/1361/16049
• Klenke, K. (2016). Qualitative research in the study of leadership. Emerald Group Publishing.
• Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Routledge.
• Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2006). New literacies: Everyday practices and classroom learning. Open University Press.
• Lawshe, C. H. (1975). A quantitative approach to content validity. Personnel Psychology, 28, 563–575.
• Lewis, S. (2015). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Health Promotion Practice, 16(4), 473–475. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524839915580941
• Morgan, D. L., & Morgan, R. K. (2008). Single-case research methods for the behavioral and health sciences. Sage.
• Myrberg, C., & Wiberg, N. (2015). Screen vs. paper: What is the difference for reading and learning? The UKSG Journal, 28(2), 49–54. https://doi.org/10.1629/UKSG.236
• O'Halloran, K. L. (2008). Systemic functional-multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA): Constructing ideational meaning using language and visual imagery. Sage Journals, 7(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/1470357208096210
• Öngöz, S. (2023). Akademik okuma için ideal e-okuyucu cihaz tasarımı üzerine bir durum çalışması (A case study on ideal e-reader device design for academic reading). Journal of Instructional Technologies and Teacher Education, 12(1), 14–30. https://doi.org/10.51960/jitte.1212285
• Patton, M. Q. (2005). Qualitative research. Sage.
• Sackstein, S., Spark, L., & Jenkins, A. (2015). Are e-books effective tools for learning? Reading speed and comprehension: iPad® vs. paper. South African Journal of Education, 35(4), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.15700/SAJE.V35N4A1202
• Van Leeuwen, T. (2011). The language of colour: An introduction. Routledge.
• Wilson, F., Pan, W., & Schumsk, D. (2012). Recalculation of the critical values for Lawshe’s content validity ratio. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 45(3), 197–210. https://doi.org/10.1177/0748175612440286
• Wulandari, M. (2023). Using e-book readers to foster EFL students’ multi-literacies: A case study at a vocational high school in Ciamis. Journal of English Education Program (JEEP), 10(1), 57–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.25157/(jeep).v10i1.9685