Abstract:

The paper deals with the issue of declining interest in reading at teenager´s research group. 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´. In the context of the VEGA 1/0455/18 research project "Research and Development of Reading Enthusiasm with Younger School-Age Learners", we present the results of a qualitative analysis of 13-year-old students´ testimonies. The question was: “If you have stopped reading recently, why?” We have sorted the answers by three basal categories. These formed the outline of research on young readers. In the process of the previous stage of 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. Within this structure, we were looking for an open coding of the categories of causes that involve children to stop reading, or reading does not make them happy.

We were also particularly interested in the testimony of children who did not stop reading developed during childhood and we analyzed them as well. From the results, we are trying to formulate grounded theory.

We found out that the interest in reading in the leisure time persists for pupils who have become readers at a younger age in their previous period. The choice of genre, form, and electronic media are significantly changing. They consider reading as a source of rest, a source of knowledge, they prefer their own choice of books, prefer books for adults.

Students who have ceased to read state as a reason: reading is boring, suffering, losing time. These students prefer other activities, other forms and leisure time opportunities, they do not know the meaning of reading, reading does not bring them fun and pleasure. These pupils are characterized by the sentence: “I have never read and I will not”. Research findings provide inspiration and challenges for educational practice and the development of reading in the primary and low secondary education.

Keywords:

Reading interest, reading enthuziasm, declining interest in reading, research on teenager´s reading.