Abstract—Reading on smartphones is now a common activity
due to the variety of platforms that cater to all kinds of users.
The number of texts and range of difficulty levels in the English
language are significant for EFL students because they affect
their language acquisition efforts. This qualitative case study
investigates the types of texts that EFL students engage with on
smartphones and the approaches they use to select specific texts
to read. Students submitted screen recordings of their
smartphone activities and justified their actions through
interviews. Findings were thematically reported. The study
revealed the kinds of texts students engaged with and how they
were selected and evaluated. Students generally avoided texts
perceived as challenging but attempted texts with topics that
attracted them. These findings shed more light on text features
that students seek and create awareness for content creators to
produce digital content that is engaging and relevant for
educational purposes.
Index Terms—Digital texts, smartphones, text features,
reading.
The authors are with the Centre for Research in Language and Linguistics,
National University of Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Malaysia (e-mail:
bm-0180@moe-dl.edu.my, pramela@ukm.edu.my, fendi@ukm.edu.my).
Cite: Chen May Oh, Pramela Krish, and Afendi Hamat, "Text Selection and Preferences of EFL Students While Reading on Smartphones," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 12, no. 10, pp. 1022-1030, 2022.
Copyright © 2022 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).