الملخص الإنجليزي
The current study is addressing the following points:
1. What are the sources of the reading materials of the students at their final year at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU)?
2. What is the favorite reading materials of the same students?
3. What are the reading interests of the same students?
4. What are the effects of the reading interests of the same students respectively to their gender, major (theoretical and practical), practitioners of extra-curricular activities and academic achievements (cumulative GPA)?
The study has used a customized designed questionnaire to determine the reading interests. This questionnaire was refereed by a group of judges and specialists in the fields. The questionnaire reliability was measured against Alpha chronbach method, whose result was at 0.95. Furthermore, it was conducted on a sample size of 195 students in their final academic year of their studies at SQU, both on theoretical and practical majors. This was conducted in the spring of the academic year 2001/02.
The following are the major findings of the present studies: Subjects obtain the reading materials from the following sources ordered in terms of priority, the internet, purchased books, SQU main library, friends and privet home collection. They tend to prefer reading newspapers and magazines, books and finally fiction. Subjects reading preferences in terms of domains can also ordered in terms of priority as follows: Entertainment domain, social and crime domains, and finally the religion.
Statistically significant differences in favor of males, science students, those who do not participate in extracurricular activities and lowachievers were found.
The study concluded with a number of recommendations. A general knowledge program should be introduced to increase student's motivation for reading. A number recommendation for further researches was also made. The reading preferences of different academic levels need to be compared same return to students of different colleges of education.
