Page 157 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

156 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol. 7, 2015

the traditional reading which focuses on one’s reading, such as their reading skill or reading
achievement (Baker & Wigfield, 1999; C. Y. Liu, 2007; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997). Because
of that, the two dimensions of Social Interaction and Peer Recognition could be well integrated
together as one category, namely Socializing Motivation.
According to self-determination theory developed by Deci and Ryan (2008), intrinsic and
extrinsic motivations may form a continuum. The six dimensions of adolescents’ social reading
motivation identified in the present study may lie on different points of this self-determination
continuum. The three dimensions such as Information Acquisition, Killing Time and Personal
Interests could be integrated as the Intrinsic Motivation, lying toward the intrinsic end of the
continuum. The two dimensions, Social Interaction and Peer Recognition, interpreted as the
Socializing Motivation, could lie towards the extrinsic end of the continuum. Self Development,
as an independent dimension, seems to involve some self-determination, but at the same time does
not focus on inherently rewarding qualities of reading, falling in the middle of the continuum. In
term of their contributions to the total variance, Social Interaction ranked number one, followed
by Self Development and Peer Recognition, and then the other three dimensions. In this sense,
it seems that the Socializing Motivation plays the most important role in promoting adolescents’
social reading activity. This finding not only clarifies interactive functions provided by social
reading, the most distinguished feature compared to the traditional reading, but also demonstrates
that students view the social reading as “superficial reading” to communicate with others rather
than “deep reading” to seek information and satisfy their curiosities. However, as Johnson, Smith,
Willis, Levine and Haywood (2011) put it, social reading “allows journey through worlds real and
imagined, undertaken not alone, but in the company with other readers”. The true value of social
reading is to enable readers to better understand the meaning of the texts, even further to generate
new contents, through the way of interaction with others. This should be fully understood by
students, teachers and librarians.

4.3 Group differences in social reading motivation

Gender and Grade are the most frequently used demographical variables when researchers explore
group differences of reading motivation. Many empirical studies have found that there were gender
differences for overall reading motivation and the majority of dimensions (Eccles, Wigfield,
Harold, & Blumenfeld, 1993; Marsh, 1989; F. N. Song et al., 2000; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997).
Generally speaking, girls’ reading motivation is remarkably stronger than boys’. But the present
study revealed that there were no gender differences for overall motivation and six dimensions.
The similar result was found in Liu’s study which explored the middle school students’ reading
motivation using the samples in Tianjin (C. Y. Liu, 2007). Another investigation on college
students’ online reading also indicated there were no gender differences for online reading