In higher education settings where English is the official language of instruction, students worldwide are expected to read, understand, and learn from an increasing number of English-language texts (Erikson 2023). However, according to Boakye and Adika (2020), several university students have demonstrated low literacy levels, which have negatively impacted their academic performance. Students must understand the importance of reading and their own potential as readers to be engaged readers, according to McGeown and Smith (2024). The authors go on to say that readers who are engaged are those who have interests, aspirations, and beliefs that motivate them to put in the effort necessary to become literate. Pilgrim and Martinez (2013) define literacy as the ability to read and write well in a range of situations. According to Rintaningrum (2009), literacy not only promotes learning and personal growth, but also results in success in both school and life for the individual. Since the current study solely focuses on reading, literacy in this context refers to the capacity to read successfully in a variety of settings. Therefore, it is essential to better understand how students feel about the reading process. Previous research shows that there is a correlation between attitudes and academic achievement, with a positive attitude typically translating into better academic performance (Abdullah et al. 2015; Dagnew 2017; Diez-Palomar et al. 2020; Mao et al. 2021; Maseka, Hong & Wang 2024). Subsequently, lecturers are increasingly concerned with students’ attitudes towards reading. For instance, McGeown and Smith (2024) state that one of the primary goals of any classroom reading lesson is to foster a positive attitude towards reading. Furthermore, Muchtar (2015) notes that lecturers should understand that enhancing students’ attitudes towards reading is just as crucial as enhancing their reading comprehension. Rafi, Islam and Cahyani (2021), who carried out a study to ascertain whether there is a significant correlation between students’ attitudes and their reading comprehension results, support this viewpoint. The findings of their study indicate a positive relationship between students’ reading attitudes and their reading comprehension. Another similar study was conducted by Baba and Affendiz (2020), who studied how students feel about reading. The goal of the article was to learn more about the reading attitudes of the Faculty of Education students at the Universiti Teknologi MARA in Malaysia. The results of the study indicate that, in terms of student preference and accessibility, digital resources are preferred over printed texts. Researchers have distinguished positive and negative attitudes towards reading. A positive attitude towards reading serves as a motivating stimulus that promotes and facilitates learning, whereas a negative attitude towards reading has the opposite effect (Akhmetova, Imambayeva & Csapo 2022; Moneba & Lovitos 2024).

Lecturers frequently overlook the part that student attitudes play in the literacy process, despite evidence that attitudes are important in increasing students’ interest in reading (Davis & Bernadowski 2024). Muchtar (2015) supports this viewpoint by pointing out that, despite lecturers’ frequent recognition of the importance of students’ attitudes towards reading, universities spend little time cultivating positive reading attitudes. This is a regrettable circumstance, because in countries such as South Africa, there is widespread indignation regarding university students who lack the ability to read for meaning (Andrianatos 2019; Bharuthram 2012; Cekiso 2024; Cekiso, Boakye & Olifant 2025). The results of studies that sought to explore university students’ attitudes towards reading are mixed. For example, some studies showed that students demonstrated positive attitudes towards reading (Divya & Mohamed 2020; Octavianti, Retnaningdyah & Munir 2023), while other studies revealed that students have negative attitudes towards reading (Mumba & Sultana-Muchindu 2024). All the above-mentioned studies was conducted outside of South Africa’s boundaries. For example, Octavianti et al. (2023) study was conducted at the Universitas Negeri Surabaya in Indonesia. Divya and Mohamed’s (2020) study was conducted at the University of Calicut in India. Even though reading attitudes, especially if they are positive, play a facilitating role regarding reading comprehension, the research results on the issue are mixed. For instance, a study by Sur and Unal (2023) aimed to investigate how reading attitudes and engagement affect the success of reading skills, as well as how reading attitude functions as a mediator in the relationship between reading engagement and reading comprehension skills. According to the study, reading attitude has no discernible impact on reading comprehension, but reading engagement has a significant and positive impact.

Although there is some literature on the reading habits of undergraduate students in South Africa, there is notably little that focuses on how students feel about reading in general and its significance in their lives. More generally, research tends to concentrate on reading habits and strategies (Bharuthram 2017; Cekiso et al. 2025; Soliba et al. 2020) and the effects of reading programmes (Chimenya 2025; Livingstone et al. 2015). As a result, research is required to understand how students view reading, and to create interventions that strengthen the reading culture in higher education institutions. The study aimed to address the following two research questions to accomplish this goal:

Muchtar (2015) defined attitudes as a predisposition or a tendency to react favourably or unfavourably to a particular concept, item, individual, or circumstance. The author went on to say that a person’s attitude affects their decision-making and how they react to obstacles, rewards, and incentives. The phrase ‘reading attitudes’ refers to the emotional disposition, perceptions and beliefs individuals hold about reading and its related activities (Soliba et al. 2020). Similarly, Sur and Unal (2023) define reading attitude as a mental status accompanied by feelings about reading, leading a student to embrace or avoid the act of reading. This perspective supports Muchtar’s (2015) assertion that students’ attitudes towards reading have a significant impact on how much they read, whether positively or negatively. Similar findings on the influence of students’ attitudes towards reading were obtained by Sukarni (2019). The article investigates the level of the students’ reading attitude and examine its influence on their reading comprehension in an undergraduate programme of English at Muhammadiyah Purworejo University in Indonesia. The findings reveal that reading attitude influences reading comprehension.

Positive attitudes towards reading are a strong predictor of students’ success in language acquisition and general academic achievement, according to recent studies (Buterbaugh 2021; Hasam 2024; Nureldeen et al. 2024). According to these studies, a favourable attitude towards reading encourages more participation in reading-related activities, results in more reading time, and eventually enhances vocabulary, reading comprehension, and other general skills.

First, through influencing factors such as practice and engagement, attitude affects the level of skill that a person eventually achieves. Second, a bad attitude can lead someone, regardless of whether they are a fluent reader or a struggling reader, to decide not to read when other options are available. Since reading attitudes can change over time due to various factors (Nootens 2019), creating students’ awareness about the connection between reading habits and academic success is the key. Moreover, students should be motivated and challenged to read.

Recent research on encouraging university students to read suggests emphasising intrinsic motivation by making reading engaging, relevant, and personalised, as well as by providing text selection and chances for autonomous problem-solving (Bergman 2024; Kheang & Em 2025).

According to Muchtar (2015), attitudes towards reading can be divided into three facets. The first characteristic of an attitude is its focus, which refers to opinions on subjects or problems. Second, direct or indirect experience with a subject shapes attitude. Third, opinions generally lie on a spectrum that ranges from completely positive at one end to completely negative at the other. Since positive reading attitudes can be a result of reading skills rather than a cause of them, or because other factors such as engagement, reading strategies, and background knowledge play a crucial role, it is not always the case that they improve comprehension, as was already mentioned in the introduction (Bergman 2024; Yengusie, Endale & Akele 2025).

Similar results were obtained by Boshoff (2023), who examined the reading habits and attitudes of pre-service teachers who oversee early literacy development. The purpose of the study was to ascertain the attitudes and reading habits of pre-service teachers. The English Reading Attitudes Survey (ERAS) was created as the data collection tool to investigate the reading habits and attitudes of pre-service teachers. The results show that while most pre-service teachers had positive attitudes towards reading, they do not engage in extensive or leisure reading, and their attitudes did not correspond with their reading practices.

Van den Branden (2012) notes that attitudes towards reading are influenced by several factors. The author states that the child’s upbringing is one of the contributing factors. Reading attitude is another factor that influences reading ability, Van den Branden continues. According to the author, when students fall behind and stop reading at grade level, they find assignments more difficult, frustrating, and overwhelming.

Reading consistently throughout life has been linked to the development of a positive attitude towards reading (Akhmetova et al. 2022; Kush & Watkins 1996; Nonte, Hartwich & Willems 2018; Walberg 2015). According to Alqahtari (2024), students must acknowledge the importance of reading and their own potential as readers if they are to become engaged readers. The author defines engaged readers as those who have values, aspirations, and passions that motivate the effort required to become literate. According to the literature mentioned above, students are more likely to succeed academically if they cultivate a positive attitude towards reading.

Rimensberger (2014) declares that little research has been conducted on South African universities students’ reading attitudes. Research conducted in South Africa on university students’ reading attitudes has frequently shown low reading literacy, especially among students starting university (Boakye & Southey 2021; Cekiso et al. 2025). Although many students demonstrated a positive attitude towards reading, the findings of these studies have shown that improving home environments to promote reading is necessary, that students only read for tests and exams, and that teaching reading strategies is important to improving reading competency and engagement. There is a dearth of literature in the South African context regarding undergraduate students’ attitudes towards reading attitude and its significance in their academic lives, so the current study is likely to contribute to filling that gap.

The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) served as the foundation for the investigation. According to Ajzen (1991), broadly speaking, the theory is found to have strong empirical support. Attitudes towards the behaviour, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control can all be used to predict intentions to perform various types of behaviours with high accuracy. It has been demonstrated that appropriate sets of salient behavioural, normative, and control beliefs about behaviour are related to attitudes (Ajzen 1991).

For instance, behavioural beliefs influence a person’s attitude towards a behaviour by highlighting the potential consequences of the behaviour. Normative factors influence the subjective norm, which is the perceived social pressure from important people to engage in or abstain from the behaviour. Ajzen (1991) goes on to say that control beliefs are personal convictions regarding the existence of elements that can help or hurt a behaviour’s performance. They serve to create perceived behavioural control, which is a person’s assessment of how easy or difficult a behaviour is to carry out.

Ajzen (1991) further points out that the intention of the individual to carry out a specific behaviour is a key component of TPB, just as it was in the original theory of reasoned action. As indicators of how hard people are willing to try and how much effort they plan to put forth to perform the behaviour, intentions are thought to capture the motivational factors that influence a behaviour. In general, the likelihood that a behaviour will be performed increases with the strength of the intention to engage in it (Ajzen 1991).

Perceived behavioural control, which is in line with a focus on elements that are directly related to a specific behaviour, is people’s assessment of how easy or difficult it is to carry out the behaviour of interest. According to Ajzen (1991), a person may therefore feel that his actions generally determine his results (internal locus of control), but he may also feel that there has little chance of achieving a particular goal (low perceived behavioural control). Moreover, TPB states that intentions and perceived behavioural control work together to determine how a behaviour is performed. This is made possible by numerous requirements that must be fulfilled for an accurate prediction. According to Ajzen and Fishbein (1980), the intention and perceived behavioural control measures need to match the behaviour that needs to be predicted or be compatible with it. Therefore, the context must be the same as the one in which the behaviour is expected to occur, and the behaviour of interest must be assessed considering intentions and perceptions of control (Ajzen 1988). In the context of university students’ reading attitudes, perceived behavioural control (their perceived ability and resources to read), subjective norms (perceived social pressure from important people to read or not), and attitudes towards reading (liking or disliking it) all influence their intentions to read, according to TPB.

Based on the themes that emerged from the students’ answers to the open-ended questions, the results are presented in this section. The respondents’ exact quotes serve as evidence for the author’s narratives. This article only includes responses that were insightful and demonstrated how important students thought about their attitudes towards reading. The code ‘S’ in the data stands for student, and it was used to hide the respondents’ identities. Thus, codes such as S1, S2, S3, and so on were used.

The purpose of the study was to investigate how undergraduate students felt about reading and how important it was to their academic lives. The findings showed that students’ opinions on the reading process varied. While a minority of students exhibited negative attitudes, most students demonstrated positive attitudes. Some students displayed positive attitudes, while others displayed negative attitudes, depending on how closely the reading material matched their interests. Yulmiati, Zaim and Atmazaki (2021) declare that reading material that is pertinent to students’ interests boosts motivation and engagement, resulting in a more thorough and successful educational process. The authors further state that by relating what they are learning to their own experiences and the larger world, students who engage in relevant reading can improve their communication skills, develop empathy, expand their vocabulary, and think critically. This finding is also linked to TPB which was used as a theoretical framework for the current study. This theory stipulates that by positively reinforcing desired behaviours, lecturers can motivate students and increase the likelihood of those behaviours being repeated. At the heart of TPB is the role of attitudes. However, research shows that attitudes do not always translate directly into actions. This view is supported by Yengusie et al. (2025), Bergman (2024) and Boshoff (2023). These authors show that while most students may demonstrate positive attitudes towards reading, they do not engage in extensive or leisure reading, and their attitudes do not correspond with their reading practices. This calls for the consideration of other factors like engagement, reading strategies, background knowledge and other similar factors.

Additionally, the results showed that students varied in how well they responded to cognitive demands. In the context of the current study cognitive demand refers to the level of mental effort, skill and complexity required to engage with a task of reading. As already stated above, the module demanded critical and analytical reading skills. Analytical skills concentrate on methodically dissecting complex data into its constituent parts to comprehend relationships and patterns, whereas critical skills entail evaluating and judging information to form well-reasoned opinions. While analytical thinking concentrates on obtaining, organising, and interpreting data to arrive at logical conclusions, critical thinking aids in challenging presumptions and biases. When combined, these cognitive skills are essential for solving problems, making decisions, and reaching well-informed conclusions in a variety of academic and professional settings. Parrish and Bryd (2022) declare that the consistent implementation of cognitively demanding tasks has been shown to improve students’ conceptual understanding of text. Since some students find it difficult to cope with the complexity of certain tasks, the subjective norm which is a crucial part of TPB shows us how our decisions are often influenced by the expectations and opinions of those around us. This theory further points out that if we think that others approve of a behaviour, we are more likely to engage in it, even if we do not feel strongly about it. This is important to encourage those students who do not believe that they can cope with some reading materials as they should be motivated to follow the students who cope.

The study findings also showed that reading is a necessity for intellectual growth and advancement. The results of a similar study by Hicks (2023) indicate that regular reading practices are closely linked to university students’ increased intellectual development and academic success, developing critical thinking, vocabulary, and writing skills, all of which are critical for academic success (Hicks 2023).

The findings further showed that reading is a skill for acquiring new knowledge. According to Cornerstone University (2019), reading as a skill for learning new information entails actively and critically interacting with written material to comprehend, interpret, and retain information. Cornerstone University further points out that this helps one expand their vocabulary, broaden their understanding of the world, and improve their capacity for critical thought and reasoning about novel ideas.

Finally, the results revealed that reading is essential for students’ future careers. This result is consistent with research findings by Scott and Saaiman (2016). The study investigated the attitudes and reading habits of students enrolled in a tertiary institution’s intermediate programme as well as any apparent shifts in those attitudes or habits. The study’s conclusions demonstrate that students recognise the academic value of reading and that reading instruction seems to be extremely beneficial at the post-secondary level.

To inform lecturers and students about undergraduate students’ attitudes towards reading in English, the current study aimed to investigate how undergraduate students perceive the reading process. This relates to the idea that attitudes towards reading are dynamic rather than fixed. Consequently, lecturers would have the chance to identify strategies for fostering a positive reading culture if they had knowledge about students’ attitudes towards reading. The study’s findings showed that students’ attitudes towards reading were generally positive. Few students showed a negative attitude towards reading. Additionally, the results demonstrated that students believed reading was essential to their future academic careers. The findings of the study also showed that students believed reading to be a lifelong skill.

Interest-based reading is a key component of successful learning experiences, as the results of the study show a critical relationship between a student’s interest in reading material and their ensuing attitudes, motivation, and engagement. Therefore, to promote a positive attitude and improve academic results, lecturers must design inclusive learning environments and choose a variety of materials to suit the interests of their students. This situation emphasises how crucial affective components such as motivation and attitude are to the learning process.