Abstract:

The paper deals with the issue of reading enthusiasm of younger learners 9-10 years old. This study follows up on two studies presented on ICERI 2018, Seville, Spain: Theoretical scopes of support younger school-age learners and Reading Enthusiasm of Pupils at Elementary School from the Perspective of Pedagogical Research.

The contemporary world involves some factors of children's reading interest. We established sequential theory on the levels of children's reading maturity based on: characters of the reader, social context of children's reading and reading preferences. These factors are changing in the context of flowing time, social development, cultural and social diversity. The aim of the paper is to present the results of qualitative research of three factors of reading interest and to find out the reading preferences of contemporary Slovak 9-10 years old learners.

In this study we present some results of the project VEGA 1/0455/18 "Research and Development of Reading Enthusiasm with Younger School-Age Learners“. We analysed three features of reading enthusiasm as first step of this searching. In the process of the qualitative research via interviews with learners focus groups we identified three features or factors:
1. characters of readers,
2. the social context of reading,
3. younger learners' reading preferences. In the second step of research we analysed in detail the younger learners' reading preferences. The learner’s answers were analysed in the qualitative way of categorisation. We have focused on the content, genres and forms preferred by current Slovak children. These result were compared with similar past researches.

We have identified several sequential grounded theories:
1. Slovak younger learners prefer to read fairy-tale and life stories, consistent with the past;
2. different from past findings, horror is becoming one of the most preferred books;
3. in the centre of younger learners' interest are books with mysterious, eerie and scary stories and stories with declared resistance to authority;
4. current children in Slovakia prefer especially foreign literature; 5. the image of the preferred literary hero of younger learners was changed.

Keywords:

Young readers, reading interest, reading preferences, the social context of readership.