Abstract:
This study aimed at establishing how the school library can be used to nurture a reading
culture among senior high school students. The objectives were to: establish the types
and availability of reading materials in the school library; establish the attitudes of
students towards the use of the school library, investigate how students make use of the
reading materials provided and to find out the roles of librarians and teachers of English
in promoting a reading culture among students. The study was guided by Vygotsky’s
socio-cultural model of reading, Skinner’s behaviorists theory and a conceptual
framework. It adopted a convergent parallel design. Schools were purposively sampled
in that only schools with libraries were selected. A total of ten schools were chosen.
One librarian and one teacher for English were picked from each school, hence a
sampling frame of 10 librarians and 10 teachers of English was attained. The sample
also included 33 students selected by simple random sampling in each school; thus, a
total of 330 students were used. Data was collected using the questionnaire, interview
guide and observation checklist. What was analyzed using descriptive statistics was
then presented thematically and also in the form of tables and figures. Findings
indicated that school libraries mostly stock examination-oriented texts like course
books, revision books and story books (mostly old text books), newspapers and books
on donations. It was established that students believe that these texts equip them with
knowledge and skills necessary for passing examinations. The conclusions were that
most libraries were stocked with only course books and had insufficient comic books,
storybooks, journals and magazines. School libraries need to be stocked with books
with relevant content and library lessons should be included in the school time table.
Description:
A thesis in the Department of Applied Linguistics,
Faculty of Foreign Languages Education,
Submitted to the school of Graduate Studies, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the award of degree of
Master of Philosophy
(Teaching English as a Second Language)
in the University of Education, Winneba.