A CTITUD DE LAS EMPRESAS HACIA EL OUTSOURCING

The dearth of studies on reading habits and attitudes in the specific context of EFL instruction in higher education indicates that considerably more research is warranted (Crawford Camiciottoli, 2001, p.149).

There have been few studies of the reading habits of college students in an ESL/EFL setting and even fewer of Arabs as readers: “The present state of the system of knowledge and its acquisition in the Arab world, especially when it comes to reading and book production, suffers from a great shortage of verified data” (Hanafy, 2007, p.1), and none that have generated theory in the area of college students ‘leisure reading habits, or those of readers in general (Moyer, 2007, p.67). This study combines all three by investigating the reading habits of female Emirati university students in order to replace anecdotal claims with strong empirical evidence which can help to inform best practices. A combination of this paucity of research (Gallik, 1999) and the fact that: “as students get older, the amount of reading they do decreases”

(Cullinan, 2000, p.2) views first-year university students as a critical group because university represents the student’s last stage of formal education; it is the teacher’s last stand.

The main needs in research on college students’ reading habits are:

19 1) a sensitive explorative approach which aims to capture as wide a range of factors as possible, which appear to impact students’ reading habits. Many studies set out to investigate a selection of factors

identified from the outset which risks the exclusion of other key variables. As Greaney (1980) discovered, the factors affecting reading are more complex than he had anticipated, our current understanding of them is inadequate, and “if we are to throw further light on our present inadequate understanding of the

variables affecting leisure reading” (p.355), we have much more work to do.

2) There is a need for a more theoretical understanding of the key factors, many of which are referred to repeatedly in the literature, to show how they relate to each other. Several concepts, such as

encouragement, reasons for reading, attitude, and more, are frequently investigated in various studies of leisure reading but few studies have explained them in ways that are helpful to teachers who want to make a difference.

The emergence of many Gulf Arab states as rapidly developing economies creates an urgent need for a highly educated national workforce, both male and female, who will contribute to the development of their country. Not only does such a workforce need to be educated but they need to feel educated and smart in a world where literacies are constantly evolving in step with new advancements in all fields.

It is imperative that Emirati students develop reading skills to be able to engage in the written word so that they can make sense of the complex and rapidly evolving social, political and economic environment of the Middle East (Beatty, Hyland, Hyland and Kelly, 2009, p.101).

Students need to be mature readers who know what they like and want in a text because they will have to sift through a plethora of reading materials whenever they wish to read and, although we may wish to deny it, they will not acquire such reading skills simply by attending regular classes.

In spite of the money and foreign expertise that has been ploughed into the teaching of English in state-run schools in this Gulf country: “tertiary level institutions are having to dedicate considerable resources to equip students with the language skills necessary for coping with academic life” (O’Sullivan, 2005, p.1). There is little evidence that such students are arriving in undergraduate classes ready to study through the medium of English. In other words, students who have already come through the compulsory education stages need to be able to improve their language, independently, and, one tried and tested way to do that is through leisure reading (Tomlinson, 2000; Krashen, 2004). In parallel, the country’s private international school graduate students are better prepared to study in English at third level but, at a huge cost: the loss of their own, native language and so, they need to be able to improve their Arabic language, independently. Again, one tried and tested way to do that is through leisure reading, and the following comment can be applied to all languages:

20 The student who wants to learn English will have to read himself into a knowledge of it, unless he

can move into an English environment. He must substitute imaginary for actual experience (Bright and McGregor, 1970, p.52).

We may wonder how this happens; why imaginary experiences can make a reader live the experiences she is reading about, as did Manguel (1996), for example, who claims to have had his first experiences of most things in his life, in the books he read (p.8). Joseph (2004) explains that it is because we meet such experiences through language alone that they appear more real to us because they are described and portrayed using language alone:

Perhaps the people whose identity we feel we most fully comprehend are the great literary characters, the Lears and Emma Bovarys and, close to earth, the Harry Potters. Their authors have captured something even more remarkable than the inner essence of an actual human being. Using language alone, they have created persons in whom readers find a resonance of their own inner being – persons in a sense more real than any actual individual. On account of being strictly linguistic in make-up, they are more knowable (ibid, p.1)

As there is a shortage of studies of reading habits in both L1 and L2 (Moll, 1992) this investigation into the reading habits of female Emirati university students in whatever language they are reading, is necessary.

Like many other educators, I believe that the question, “How can I get my students to read?” is best answered by students and teachers working together (Ramsay, 2002; Burns, 2003; Reynolds, 2004;

Bokhorst-Heng and Pereira, 2008). Study after study concludes with the importance of teachers investigating their students’ reading interests and practices so as to more successfully effect the desired changes. Burns (2003) claims that most people agree that teaching should be student-centred but that few explore students’ reading practices outside the classroom. One of the teachers in her study cautioned that

“assumptions cannot be made about the reading needs of students” (Lahoud, 2000, p.11) and the students in Mustafa’s (2002) UAE study of the teaching of English “demanded more variety, more respect, and more involvement” (p.127, emphasis added) in their English classes, which suggests that they wish to be heard. Having taught many such students at university for a number of years I was in the privileged position of being close to a potential source of rich data, and the opportunity of becoming teacher-turned-researcher could not be missed.

Although my respondents are members of larger groups such as Arabs and college students, the very collective identities which make them the target of such phrases as, “Arabs don’t read” or “our students

21 don’t read; it’s an oral culture”, there may be readers among them whose stories may yield valuable insights into our whole outlook on our students as readers, because:

Mere membership in an ethnic group may involve too broad a categorization for meaningful social norms to affect beliefs (McKenna, Kear and Ellsworth, 1995, p.952).

Therefore, I aim to uncover the reading habits and practices of the individual, the smallest social unit, situated as she is within the slightly larger social units of family and friends. Finally, I wish to avoid the risk, for my research setting, of having solutions imposed from without for, as Dewey (1922) reminds us:

What cannot be understood cannot be managed intelligently. It has to be forced into subjection from without (p.3).

It is neither my wish nor my intention that solutions would be imposed from outside.

22

CHAPTER 2

It is important to note here that although my literature review is presented in chapter 2 ahead of my data analysis, it was written after my data analysis was completed. Therefore, it should not be allowed to detract from the element of discovery which runs through my thesis. In addition to printed texts, my literature review also includes an occasional reference to what I call oral literature, such as conversations with colleagues, for example. It starts with a brief overview of a perceived issue related to literature reviews today, followed by a close look at leisure reading and some key factors related to it, including a critical look at its separation from academic reading, a brief investigation of the concept of habit and my working definition of a leisure reading habit.

2.1 Introduction

Maxwell (1996) calls the literature review a conceptual context which we must construct ourselves, not merely look for in the literature. Before carrying out my research, in keeping with a grounded theory approach, I reviewed a limited sample of the existing research on the leisure reading habits of college students and young adults to justify my study and, after my analysis was complete, I carried out a more complete review to set a theoretical backdrop for my findings from my research. I aimed to avoid painting a merely “presentist” view (Camic, 1986, p.1077) of my topic and go beyond the “rolling history”

lamented by Herber (1994) which is prevalent in so many literature reviews, today:

Researchers and practitioners should familiarize themselves with the antecedents of the endeavors on which they focus their professional attention, tracing these antecedents across as many

generations as possible. Researchers and practitioners who choose to write about their work should share with readers the evolution of theory and practice that has contributed to their own thinking (Herber, 1994, p.13).

Herber uses the term “rolling history” to describe a phenomenon whereby references in many current scholarly articles mostly date from within a twenty-year span, a claim he verified by studying the works cited in seven reading-related journals between 1983 and 1990. He found that 80-85% of the references were less than fifteen years old and that, overall, there was a “rolling history syndrome” (p.13) of twenty years. His concern is that:

This rolling history … seriously jeopardizes the development or maintenance of professional connections among pioneers and contemporaries (p.12),

and that, professionals risk being set adrift from “the knowledge base that constitutes their heritage”

(Herber, 1994, p.15). Our thinking is not distinct from that which has gone before and so we must reach

23 as far back as we can and interpret anew what went before, while at the same time meeting the demands of our profession:

Pressures to be on the cutting edge of one’s field, to be current, up to date, and original in one’s thinking, can lead one to draw only sparingly on the richness of the past (Herber, 1994, p.15).

One way to attempt to resist such pressures is to follow curiously, the various threads that run through the tapestries of relevant literature, which the novice researcher, in any case, feels compelled to do. It is a conspiracy against which she is defenseless, where text after text refers to key sources until they seem like long-lost relatives that she simply has to meet. Before I read Herber (1994) I had felt drawn towards what would be termed old literature, attempting to lay out flat the “rolling history” to see as far as my scholarly eye could see, in my quest to make sense of the current literature on reading. When I found original sources, having worked my way backward in time, I then worked my way forward again and reread those which had cited them to further inform my interpretation of those older sources. Older sources include a sample of work by James (1890), Andrews (1903) and Dewey (1922) on habit, and by Huey (1908), Gray (1924) and others on reading which were also selected by various reading experts as key sources on literacy (Herber, 1994; Robinson, 2007).

Robinsons’ (2007) top-ten list contains names of sources which are over fifty years old but which “often read as if they were written yesterday” (ibid, p.214):

This list is not intended to be “something to get through” but rather an opportunity to sample some of the best writing and thinking that has been done in the teaching of reading. If we as educators want to go beyond the merely contemporary trends and issues, we will want to know something of the thinking that has laid the foundations of what we are about in today’s literacy world (p.213).

Such “classics” are reread frequently by many educators, including Atwell and Mayher (2006) who selected Frank Smith as the one educator whose work continues to inspire them. Atwell tells colleagues annually: “I’m reading Frank Smith again” (ibid, p.462), in what she refers to as “an August ritual”, because after teaching for thirty years she still comes away from his writing “challenged, refreshed, stimulated, determined, and reminded of the possibilities” (ibid, p.462) for her students. Mayher describes Smith as a “most practical theorist” (Atwell and Mayher, 2006, p.464) who coined the phrase “joining the literacy club” (Smith, 1987) to describe becoming a reader just by being in the company of readers. In a way, my research is about students who have joined the literacy club and, to a lesser extent, those who have not.

Those are some of the giant scholars on whose shoulders I stand in order to develop my new knowledge.

In the days prior to planned obsolescence and disposable commodities, items of quality endured and were

24 treasured, and so it is with quality scholarly writing. Taking a backward glance also helps us to trace the roots of certain taken-for-granted aspects such as silent reading and spaces between the words which are integral to all the reading we do today and which have their roots in the Middle Ages. Combining old and new references, from Antiquity to the second millennium and from east to west, signals a desire to view reading holistically rather than as the splintered concept it has become today. Could it be that “to remember things past about reading is, in truth, to see the future”? (Katz, 2001, p.3). I will now look at some of the “things past” and the things more recent of leisure reading.