An Exploratory Study On The Relationship Between Personal Values And English Reading Interest Of High School Students

The purpose of this study was to gain insights and an understanding of the influence of adolescents' personal values on their English reading interest. In this regard, the present study has five main objectives. The first objective is to identify the personal value systems of male and female high school students. The second objective is to study the relationship between the personal value system of high school students and their preferred types of English reading materials (e.g., magazine, newspaper, comic book and so on). The third objective is to examine the relationship between the personal value system of high school students and their preferences for subjects as well as genres of English reading materials. The fourth objective is to see whether there are significant gender differences in the English reading interest of high school students. The fifth objective is to attempt to uncover the links between the gender differences in personal values and English reading interest.To shed light on the above issues, both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed and questionnaires were used for data collection. There were mainly two sections to the instrument utilized in the study. The first section of the questionnaire was designed to measure personal values by using Rokeach Values Survey (RVS). The second section contained questions that addressed students' English reading interest. The questionnaire also asked for some personal characteristics of the students such as age, sex, which enabled a comparison based on gender difference. The sample of the present study numbered 136 high middle school students. The statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS, v.13.0) was used to encode and analyze the data. To validate dissertation's hypotheses a host of statistical techniques were employed, including descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations analysis, Independent samples T-test etc.The findings of this study were: the personal value sets of both female and male students overlap to a great extent with significant gender differences existing on certain specific values; there was a statistically significant relationship between the personal value system of high school students and various types, themes and genres of the English reading materials they were interested in; there were statistically significant gender differences in certain types and subjects of students' preferred English reading materials ; there was a statistically significant gender difference in English reading interest on the whole, while females were more interested in English reading than males. Analyses of the data obtained from the questionnaire also indicated that some values were significantly positively correlated with a greater variety of subjects than others, showing an influence on the extensiveness of English reading interest. The correlated values of similar subjects were similar as well and differentiating correlated values of similar subjects were found reflective of the peculiarity of the specific subjects. On the whole, gender differences in values were found related with differences in preferences for certain English reading materials.A set of recommendations and suggestions for further research were also included in the thesis.