Macao High School Students Extracurricular Reading

In these years, the Macau government realizes the importance of reading andgreatly promotes reading activity. The government is eager to cultivate the students'interest and habit on reading, and it also promotes reading within families and schools.However, there are only few researches in this field conducted in Macau. Thisresearch must be helpful in many aspects in promoting reading in Macau.This research adopts the method of questionnaire and is subjected to mainly 1091secondary students from Form 1 to Form 6 chosen at random in 5 secondary schoolsin Macau. It also examines the current situation of the Macau secondary students inreading motivation, reading attitude, reading interest and reading behavior. Theresults are as follow:1. The characteristic of reading behavior include: The utility rate of libraries is highamong the secondary students in reading books outside the class. Reading takes muchproportion on entertainment. Most secondary students go on reading the books thatare not accepted by teachers and parents. New reading styles, such as reading oninternet and pocket books, are popular. However, secondary students tend not to doany reading plan.2. Female students have higher reading motivation, reading attitude, reading interestand reading behavior than male students. Form 3 to Form 6 students get higherintention on Reading Motivation and Reading attitude while Form 1 to Form 2students have lower intention of Reading Interest. The students from upper classfamilies have a higher reading motivation, reading attitude and reading interest thanthose from middle and lower class families. These results tell us we should adoptdifferent methods for different people to improve their reading.3. There is positive correlation with the academic results and the reading motivation,reading attitude and reading interest. Since there is positive correlation with readingmotivation, reading attitude, reading interest and the surroundings provided byschools and families. By using multiple regression analysis, here comes a result of prediction by schools, families, gender and graders about secondary students' readingmotivation, reading attitude and reading interest in Macau. These results prove thefamily makes much sense for reading.The results are very helpful to predict how the teenagers read outside the class.This research can also provide essential data for the parents, schools and libraries toimprove their ability on reading activities.