Title:
THE EFFECT OF ONLINE READING ON IRAQI EFL STUDENTS' READING COMPREHENSION

Authors:
Asst. Prof. Ali M. Al-Majdawi (Ph.D.),Iraq

Abstract:
This study aimed to examine students' perceptions of reading hypertext on computer screens and the difficulties they encountered. This paper studies how online reading influenced EFL students' reading comprehension and mentioned the hardships eighty-eight Iraqi EFL students admitted in the first-year English course at Wasit University experienced during the process of hypertext reading. The results show that students did not like reading from computer screens. The factors that influenced students when reading hypertext were font size and background colour of web pages. The main difficulties involved eyestrain, disability to take notes or highlight text, and missing lines when reading online. Results, in addition, promote the demand that students found hypertext reading to be harder than print reading