Reading English Text on Screen vs Reading English Text on Printed-Book: A Phenomenological Study

Abstract

There are many people use smartphones, tablets and computers to read English text. The use of gadget is popular on students live not only for socializing but also to help them to improve their English skills especially reading. This study sought the preference of the students on reading English text which is reading on screen or reading on printed book. The respondents of this study were 1% from total students enrolled for the short semester at Universitas Advent Indonesia, academic year 2018/2019. Each respondent was the representative from 5 majors; 1 from Accounting, 1 from Management, 1 from System Information, 1 from Mathematic Education, and 1 from Technique Information. The respondents were chosen randomly using the ballot system. This study was a qualitative research. The semi-structured interviews were utilized with open-ended questions and consisted of 10 questions and some followed-up questions to simplify and to make it easy for the students to understand the questions. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analysed in order to find out the answer of the research questions. The result of the study showed that the students prefer reading on screen instead of paper because it is easy to access and easy to carry everywhere. Three of the respondents were chosen handphone as the easier tool to use when reading English text. Based on the result, it is recommended for the English teachers to combine the teaching English reading with interesting reading topic by using screens not only papers or textbooks.