Abstract:

Reading constitutes an essential life skill and, at the same time, presents a fundamental basis for learning. To pre-service EFL teachers studying at the university level, reading promotes knowledge acquisition and affects language acquisition as well as their academic performance. Though the study programmes for EFL teacher candidates offers numerous and often compulsory literature courses, the students' results in linguistic and interpretative literary classes are lower than desirable. The presented study aims to investigate the students' attitudes and motivations towards reading in English while considering differences in their proficiency levels. The research will employ a questionnaire survey adapted from available literature (Applegate & Applegate, 2004, Erdem, 2014, Şentürk, 2015, Bharuthram, 2017). The findings and conclusions will provide a basis for streamlining literary and linguistic teaching processes, including cultivating students' reading and reception habits, developing critical thinking concerning text analysis and interpretation, and shaping efficient argumentation frameworks.

Keywords:

Reading habits, motivation, attitudes, literature.