Reading in a foreign language (FL) is a practice that should be essential for both pre-service and in-service teachers, since

it contributes to acquire pedagogical, technical, and social knowledge, and to improve their linguistic competence in that

language. This study aims to know the reading habits and consumption of pre-service teachers’ mother tongue and FL. A

quantitative observational method was applied. The data were collected from an online survey administered to 388

students enrolled in the Degree of Primary Education at the University of Málaga during the academic years 2019/2020

and 2020/2021. Results showed a great difference between the time spent in reading in their mother tongue (Spanish) and

in their first FL, and second FL. The type of reading most used during the last year has been through social networking

sites, above all through Instagram and Twitter, while the least used was newspapers. Besides, it has been demonstrated

that reader students had less difficulties in the linguistic skills and had a higher level of FL. These outcomes invite us to

omprehension (both oral and written) is

Multiple benefits have been associated to the practice of

reading (above all when it is reading for pleasure, Clark &

Rumbold, 2006; Cremin, 2020), and the subsequent

development of comprehension: reading and writing ability

(Clark & Rumbold, 2020), breadth of vocabulary (Ho &

Lau, 2018), general knowledge and wider knowledge of the

world (Maharsi et al., 2019), better health, and benefits for

work and lifestyle (du Sautoy, 2021), and the possibility to

develop a habit (Renandya & Jacobs, 2002). There exist

some studies dealing with the factors affecting effective

and students’ reading for pleasure. Likewise, Romero et al.

(2020) determined the decisive factors in secondary-

(2020) focused their interest on the information

consumption and reading habits in digital environments

and Pinto et al. (2014) on students’ habits, usage, and

perceptions around reading digitally. Similarly, Trigo et al.

(2020) paid attention to the adolescents analogic reading

consumption.

time and of confidence with reading. Other works were

reading (Acheson et al., 2008; Nadelson et al., 2013).

In the context of pre-service teacher training, some studies

examined the training of teachers from Preschool

Education and Primary Education as reading mediators

(Elche & Yubero, 2019; Trigo et al., 2020), others

investigated the reading consumption and habit of the pre-

service teachers (Munita, 2014, 2018, 2019; Parrado et al.,

2018), examined their reading identity and personal

In the context of foreign languages (FL), the research

conducted on FL reading habits by Pérez-Parejo et al.

(2018) collected the results of 4,288 surveys submitted to

primary, secondary and university students. The outcomes

revealed that reading in one’s mother tongue (MT) was

greater in the three educative levels. Reading in a FL

represented only 25% and it was more frequent among

university students, above all, in postgraduate students,

probably because these studies require reading books and

works in other languages. Moreover, English stands out

2001), in the literature some studies highlighted the

preference of undergraduate students to read online rather

than printed books or documents (Male et al., 2021), while

others analysed the situation in which printed materials

were preferred over the online ones (Podolsky &

Soiferman, 2014). And particularly the influence of social

media and their positive or negative impact on students’

reading habits (Huang et al., 2014; Hussain et al., 2021;

Mbamalu & Onyido, 2019; Owusu-Acheaw, 2016).

However, studies focusing on pre-service teachers’ reading

reading habits in their MT and in their FL; 2) to know their

usual types of reading (compulsory academic-professional

readings, children’s readings, academic-professional

journals, books, newspapers, social networks, academic-

professional blogs, and informal blogs); 3) to analyse the

relationship between reading habit and the difficulty

encountered by the students in the different skills; and 4) to

determine the differences between the reading habits and

consumption according to their FL level.

Education. Therefore, no intervention from the researchers

described, and analysed the frequencies of some aspects

related to reading at a given time of the study population.

second-year undergraduate students enrolled in the second

year of the Degree of Primary Education at the University

compared with males (n=117; 30.15%). Regarding their FL

level, 36.34% (n=141) stated not to have an official level

most frequent FL level according to participants’ responses

The level of English was very similar in both females and

males, although more females had an official certification

(65.68%) rather than males (58.97%). Besides, more than

English might have been at least A2 as all the students were

supposed to have studied at least a FL during their pre-

different universities validated its content.

into 5 dimensions: 1) Sociodemographic information; 2)

tools; and 5) Previous knowledge and experience in

Nevertheless, in our study we focused on questions from

the second and third dimensions (see Table 1).

The online survey was administered to the students of the

subject “Fundamentos teórico-prácticos de la enseñanza de

principles of teaching a foreign language’] from the Degree

educational system.

like WhatsApp, Wattpad, and Pinterest and only one

referred to YouTube.

13.14%) and reading (n=27; 6.96%).

highlighting in grey the cases of every sub-group with

greater percentage. To do so, we recoded the variable

related to the reading habit: the students who read at least

once a week, several times a week or every day were

considered readers. In case their frequency of reading

habits was less than once a week or the option marked was

Reader students tended to register a response percentage

considerably greater than those non-reader students in the

degree, referring to “no difficulties” and “some

entails less difficulties in both cases; therefore, the more

difficult the skill is, the more polarization in the responses

groups when referring to a lot of difficulties was reading