The factors affecting reading behaviour among secondary school students at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Bongawan, Membakut Sabah / Josephine Lang

The focus on reading is crucial given the development of communications technology and the changed reality we confront in contemporary societies. For reading to be meaningful, it is essential that young people learn not only to read but they cultivate reading behaviour for lifelong learning. While new forms of reading texts (mass and multimedia) have emerged, it is still not certain if communications technology will be used to maintain their reading for pleasure and lifelong learning. In this paper I would like to focus my attention on students as studies have shown that many students are found to be reluctant to read for information or pleasure. This is a concern shared by many academicians, government officials and pressure groups that have stressed the need to investigate the poor reading behavior of Malaysians. If this phenomenon is left unattended, reluctant readers, that is, will eventually direct the future of Malaysia by people who are 'retarded' in terms of knowledge, intelligence and maturity. There are several objectives highlighted as guidelines to the study. First is to investigate the main factors that encourage student's interest to read. Second is to identify the reasons for lack of reading activities among students and thirdly is To give recommendation on how to improve the awareness and interest on reading among students in Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Bongawan Membakut, Sabah. 269 students from 906 students selected as our respondents according to simple random sampling. Based on the analysis of the findings, most of the respondents are aware to the reading behaviour in their school.