Mohammad N. Khreisat and Sarjit Kaur
This study aims to investigate English recreational reading habits of Arab Jordanian EFL university students when classes are in session and during vacation, and the types of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate English recreational reading habits of Arab Jordanian EFL university students when classes are in session and during vacation, and the types of recreational reading they engage in. In addition, the study explores other relationships such as the relationship between reading habits and students ' cumulative grade point average (CGPA); and the effect of parents ' educational level and their time spent on reading.
Design/methodology/approach
The respondents, comprising 225 third- and fourth-year English majors, completed an English recreational reading habits questionnaire. The study utilised a non-probability sampling method, namely, purposive sampling. Data were analysed using IBM SPSS software v. 20.
Findings
The findings indicated that students read more when they were on vacation compared to their readings while classes are in session. The students ' average time spent on reading when classes are in session and during vacation is 2.15 hours and 2.82 hours per week, respectively. Slightly more than half (57 percent) the students always read emails/chat rooms/Facebook, which are their most preferred type of recreational reading. Non-fiction books were the least favourite among students with 47 percent of students indicating that they never or rarely read this type of genre. Among all the reading interests, only novels had a significant correlation with the students ' CGPA. The findings showed that the respondents with higher levels of fathers ' education were significantly reading more.
Originality/value
The reading habits of EFL students have received little attention and there is limited research that surveyed Arab EFL students ' recreational reading habits at the tertiary level. The purpose of this study is to address this gap in the literature and set out to be a point of reference and comparison for future investigations about English recreational reading habits of Arab EFL tertiary students.
Details
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Shadi Habis Abualoush, Abdallah Mishael Obeidat, Ali Tarhini, Ra’ed Masa’deh and Ali Al-Badi
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interrelationships among knowledge management (KM), information systems (IS) and employees’ empowerment (EE) on employees’…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interrelationships among knowledge management (KM), information systems (IS) and employees’ empowerment (EE) on employees’ performance (EP).
Design/methodology/approach
Accordingly, a structural model is developed that delineates the interactions among these constructs and explores the mediating effect of EE on the relationship between KM, IS and EP. A questionnaire-based survey was designed to test the aforementioned model based on dataset of 287 employees’ pharmaceutical industries in Jordan. The model and posited hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling analysis.
Findings
The results indicated that KM and IS positively and significantly affect EE, in which the latter impact EP as well. However, neither KM nor IS proved to be positively related to EP. Additionally, EE positively and significantly mediated the relationship between KM and EP, besides the relationship between IS and EP.
Originality/value
This is one of the few studies which investigate the interrelationships among KM, IS and EE on EP, and the first to test the model on companies in the pharmaceutical industries in Jordan.