Chapter 7 Reading Habits of Malaysian Students beyond Classrooms Torsten Schaar, Merry Lapasau and Ng Chwee Fang We live in a technological and information age which is dominated by information management and dissemination. …most of the world’s knowledge is stored in print - either paper print or, increasingly, electronic print - and retrieved through reading. Reading provides us with access to information, and in today’s world information is power. (Elizabeth J. Pretorius) THE IMPORTANCE OF READING Comprehensive reading research has been conducted all over the world for many decades. Numerous books and articles have been published on many aspects of the study field ‘reading’ analysing the two main components of reading – decoding and comprehension. Decoding involves the oculomotor, perceptual and parsing aspects of reading activity whereby written symbols are translated into language. Comprehension refers to the overall understanding process whereby meaning is constructed within sentence units, between adjacent sentences, and across larger units of text contributing to the meaning of the text as a whole (Carpenter & Just, 1986). Further research was conducted on reading behaviour, attitude towards reading and language, reading reluctancy and reading skills of different peer and age-groups, historical, socio-political, socio-economic, social psychological and cultural factors, correlations between reading and academic as well as professional success (Heath, 1983; Ninio, 1983; Chapter 7.indd 114 12/19/2013 9:24:22 AM