How much time do high-

school students spend

reading and how does it
affect their lives?
BY STUDENT GHITA ANTONIA, 10 H
Background Information
I chose this topic because it is interesting to correlate what students think about reading with how
much time they actually spend doing this activity. We think that there can be 3 main opinions about
reading:
◦ reading – a means of entertainment, of passing the free time;
◦ it is is a great way to exercise the brain, reading is a fundamental skill that every human should develop, even
if you don’t necessarily enjoy it;
◦ reading is boring and useless.
Also, we will be looking for opinions about how people are perceived as a result of their reading habits
and how does it influence them. We expect to find two principal perceptions:
◦ people who read are intelligent and are more likely to fit into new groups;
◦ people who read are boring, antisocial.
We will draw a comparison between reading and whatching TV, expecting to find that students prefer
the latter.
To this end, I will ask 7 people 10 questions.
 Questions and rationale behind them
Overall, do you LIKE reading? (yes/no)
Obviously, that should be the starting question.

How much time do you spend, on average, reading a day? (in hours)
What do you think are the benefits of reading (if any)?
It’s important to know what are the uses of reading in students’ perception. In the end, we are going to make a list with all of them and see how many we could find.

What do you THINK about reading? Choose one or more of the following three options:
1. reading – a means of entertainment, of passing the free time;
2. it is is a great way to exercise the brain, reading is a fundamental skill that every human should develop, even if you don’t necessarily enjoy it;
3. reading is boring and useless.

What do you think about PEOPLE who read a lot?

Some people might be influenced by what other think of them, either making them read or not.

Do you consider yourself in accord with what other people that are important to you expect of you in terms of reading habits? (For example, if you
care about what your classmates think of you, do you agree with and follow their standards?) (yes/no)
How much do you like reading? (on a scale from 1 to 10)
We need to get more quantitative than the first question in order to draw more conclusions.
What do you prefer: reading (a) or whatching movies/TV (b)?
This is the most straightforward comparison we can make.

Why, you think, students read in general? Choose the most likely from these:
1. they have to: school;
2. they enjoy it;
3. they think it makes them (look) smart.
We expect based on common experience that the first will be the most chosen.

What kind of genre do you read IN YOUR FREE TIME?

Of course, we expect the most answers will be for either young adult or none.
 Answers
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
No 0 It makes you smarter 2, 3 They are antisocial, trapped in their own world, boring. Yes 3 b 1 none

yes 2 It improves your memory, concentration, 1, 2 Time well spent, they’re probably smart. yes 10 a 2 SF
creativity, emotional intellingence, thus helping
you interact better with others.

yes 1 It helps you relax by disconnecting you from your 1 I know people of all sorts and I can correlate being smart or not so no 8 b 2 Psychological Thriller
personal worries while making you think about a smart or anything else with how much they read.
nice story.
no 0.5 It takes reading to complete school assignments 3 I have only seen that students who read are less likely to socialise. yes 6 b 1 none
but otherwise it’s a total waste of time.

Yes 2 It helps with vocabulary expansion, creativity 1, 2 I believe people which read are just nicer and funnier. Plus, you yes 9 a 1 Young Adult
development, it offers a nice way to get away always have something to talk about: books.
from your own mind stuff.

No 0 It’s of course helpful for school. 3 They are boring, inapproachable. no 5 b 3 Young Adult
no 0.5 It has no immediate benefits so it almost hasn’t 3 They probably have to because their teachers/ parents make yes 7 b 1 none
any. them, so I don’t think anything about them.
 Results discussion
Diagram 1
5
4
3
2
1
0
Category 1

Yes No
 Diagram 4
6

0
Yes No
Students
 Conclusions
Based on students’ opinions we can select the following BENEFITS of reading:
it offers a nice way to get away from your own mind stuff;
helps with vocabulary expansion,
creativity development;
It improves your emotional intellingence, thus helping you interact better with others;
helpful for school;
subject to talk about with friends.
As anticipated we found the two options disussed earlier regarding perception of people who read a lot. But there were two answers that
stated that how much they read doesn’t influence their opinion about others.
It’s interesting to note that most of them, according to Diagram 4, most of them fit other people’s expectations regarding reading.
Diagram 1 shows that generally students don’t like reading. The average grade (consult Diagram 3) they give to this activity is 6,86.
Diagram 2 shows most of them spend between 0 and 0.5 hours reading.
Also, the most preferd genre is Young Adult and movies are preferred to books, as expected.