Reading Habits of Undergraduates and their Academic Performances: Issues and Perspectives

Reading is an indispensable tool of learning. Every course of study is accomplished partly through reading. Lecturers in the University usually have high expectations of a students‟ ability to cope with the demands of reading. However, reading as a practice and an art has tended to diminish. The general expectations of these students‟ reading ability have not been met. Students have a key role to play for them to succeed academically. Required information, skill and more information can be acquired through reading. This study examined the reading habits of undergraduates and their academic performance. A total number of two hundred (200) undergraduates of Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka and Anambra State University were randomly selected from four faculties as research subjects. The subjects were exposed to a reading test, while some students were interviewed so as to elicit useful information on their reading habits and how it affects their performance. Result revealed poor reading habit and negative attitude towards reading which resulted in their abysmal performance as evident in the reading test conducted. This study shows also that many students read only to pass their examination and not for pleasure and acquiring knowledge. This was arrived at through reading test, structured interview and questionnaire administered to the selected undergraduate students. Issues and perspectives towards the pedagogy of reading and how students can defeat this apathy and improve their reading skills and efficiency is the crux of this study. Based on the findings, few recommendations for improved reading among our undergraduates were made

Beyond English text: Multilingual and multimedia information retrieval.

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English Writing for International Publication in the Age of Globalization: Practices and Perceptions of Mainland Chinese Academics in the Humanities and Social Sciences

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On the relationship between indexed grammars and logic programs

AbstractThis article provides detailed constructions demonstrating that the class of indexed grammars introduced as a simple extension of context-free grammars has essentially the same expressive power as the class of logic programs with unary predicates and functions and exactly one variable symbol.Some additional considerations are concerned with parsing procedures

The emergence of automaticity in reading: effects of orthographic depth and word decoding ability on an adjusted Stroop measure

Abstract Aims How long does it take for word reading to become automatic? Does the appearance and development of automaticity differ as a function of orthographic depth (e.g. French vs. English)? These questions were addressed in a longitudinal study of English and French beginning readers. The study focused on automaticity as obligatory processing as measured in the Stroop test. Method Measures of decoding ability and the Stroop effect were taken at three time points during the first grade (and 2nd grade in the UK) in 84 children. The study was the first to adjust the classic Stroop effect for inhibition (of distracting colors). Results The adjusted Stroop effect was zero in the absence of reading ability, and it was found to develop in tandem with decoding ability. After a further control for decoding, no effects of age or orthography were found on the adjusted Stroop measure. Conclusion The results are in line with theories of the development of whole word recognition that emphasize the importance of the acquisition of the basic orthographic code