Reading Habits of Teachers

This week we discussed reading and vocabulary acquisition. Before beginning class, we did a quick internal survey of how we read.  The survey is fairly sloppy and should be viewed with a suspicious, cocked eyebrow.

However, if you are a teacher and would like to take the survey (it's a quick 5 question survey), you can see it here.  I'll add it to the pool of responses. 

Reading Habits of Teachers.

The results were probably not that surprising, but I thought it would be good to take a look at some of them. As you can see in the first figure, most of the respondents read the news primarily through news websites.  This was a "check all that apply" question, and for many respondents new sites weren't the only source of information; social networking was also a source of reading news.   



This, of course, corresponds with the responses to the next question about the way we read (in general).  Most of the respondents reported that they read on computers, followed by smart phones.  Of course, this question did not make it clear whether reading referred to only news or to reading in general (as it immediately followed the news question, it may have been ambiguous).  I have adjusted the question to make it clearer. 



Finally, I asked participants what types of reading materials they use with their students and the results highlight the contrasts between how we, as professionals and advanced students read and the types of materials we disseminate to our students. Here are the results.  As you can see, there is a big difference here between this figure and the first figure.  Part of this is, of course, because textbooks are still such a part of the instructional model, but even comparing things like magazines vs. magazine websites reveals some differences.