Malaysian students’ English literary text selection: a mixed method approach / Jayson Sehsu and Dr. Lim Jia Wei

English literary text selection is still a problem in Malaysia, due to the conflict of interest between the text selectors and the students. Thus, this study investigated the students’ English literary text selection essentially in terms of the student’s preference for a literary genre, context and topic of the text. A mixed method of the explanatory sequential design was employed in the study with two stages of data collection. The findings of the study revealed that students favoured short stories and do not mind the contexts of literary text be it a local or foreign one. In terms of topics, students mostly prefer topics that are familiar and informative. Additionally, it was discovered that students related these criteria of literary text selection with several themes that result in an enhanced comprehension of a literary text and interest in literature or vice versa.