Research on College Students' Reading Engagement in Blended Reading Classrooms

Given that the reading engagement of college students is increasingly receiving scholarly attention in the information age, this study investigates the correlation between teaching and learning in blended reading classrooms. Viewing students’ reading engagement as a three-dimensional construct, the present study examines the mediating roles of students’ behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement in the relation between students’ perceived teacher support and their academic achievement. A convenience sampling method was employed to recruit 300 college students from Z University, which is located in Z Province, China. The utilization of the sample, data, and data analysis procedure of the present study has been approved by the medical ethics committee of Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences. The participants consisted of sophomore and junior students from various majors, all of whom were enrolled in parallel classes of either College English III or College English IV taught by the same teacher.The participants were drawn from China’s emerging landscape of technology-enhanced second language instruction. As Chinese universities increasingly adopt AI-assisted assessment systems, blended reading models have become institutionalized in college English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms. All the participants had prior experience with digital reading, ensuring familiarity with the technological instruments of this study. According to the English Department of the university, the participants were identified as advanced-level learners in accordance with the C1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The present findings would offer comprehensive inferences that probe into the reading strategy instruction in blended reading classrooms. On the one hand, the findings highlight the importance of strategy instruction at the tertiary level to sustain students’ reading engagement via affirmative, instrumental, and informational support. There is a pressing need for college teachers to adapt to the development of information and communication technology and design more interactive activities to enhance students’ engagement in blended reading classrooms. On the other hand, the findings are expected to inform additional comparisons between traditional and blended reading environments, as well as advocate further investigations on other motivational factors in blended reading classrooms, i.e., college students’ ICT accessibility, computer and information literacy (CIL), peer competition, and peer collaboration.