18.3 Million Thais Don’t Read

[george]

18.3 million Thais don’t read

BANGKOK: -- About 3.3 million Thais are illiterate while 15 million others can read and write but do not do so for a variety of reasons, a new survey on the reading habits of Thais has shown. The survey, which was released yesterday by the National Statistical Office (NSO), came as a second ominous warning for the Education Ministry in two weeks. Recently, the English Language Development Centre revealed that Thai students score among the lowest in Southeast Asia on standardised English tests.

The new survey on reading habits also indicates that both illiterates and literates not choosing to read overwhelmingly prefer television to printed material.

The NSO conducted a nationwide survey in May to gauge the reading habits of a population of 59.2 million citizens over six years old. Of those surveyed, 40.9 million people said they read regularly or occasionally, while 18.3 million of them admitted never reading at all.

Males accounted for 51.5 per cent of people who read regularly.

Children aged between 10 and 14 in the compulsory education programme have the highest rate of readers at 95.2 per cent, followed by young adults aged 15-24 (83.1 per cent). Senior citizens over 60 have the lowest rate, at 37.4 per cent.

Not surprisingly, the study found that people’s reading habits diminish in accordance with the decreasing scale of their educational level. Whereas 96.3 per cent of university graduates read regularly, less than two-thirds of people with primary education do so.

The survey also found that on average a Thai spends 1.59 hours a day on reading.

As regards the type of printed materials people like to peruse, almost 73 per cent of respondents said they preferred newspapers to magazines, comic books, and novels. About 10 per cent of respondents said they liked to read websites on the Internet. News articles were ranked top among favourite topics by most readers.

Those who do not read comprise 8.4 million men and 9.9 million women, with an estimated 3.3 million of the combined total illiterate.

Citing their reasons for not reading, 48.4 per cent of the 15 million non-reading literates said they preferred to watch television, while 36 per cent said they could not spare sufficient time.

About 1.1 per cent of the 15 million are those with visual impairments, or people too sick to read.

Almost a third of non-readers admitted to not being interested in newspapers, books or other printed materials.

--TNA 2005-08-21

[pazu]

I won't be very surprised by this survey if they said most people don't like reading, but it seems to be quite strange when they count in reading comics as a kind of reading too... well.. I'm using the word "reading" comics too but in my heart I found them quite different from reading other books.

[Scott]

I don't discourage kids from reading comics. The hope is that if they read something and have an interest maybe they will make the leap to other things. Comics were a great motivator for me to learn to read and to read. The difficulty here seems to be to get people to move on to something else--but then they start reading comics as adolescents/young adults, rather than as primary students.

The other problem seems to be the overwhelming amounts of homework, study time that children are required/expected to partake in. I think it turns them off from reading and certainly to reading for pleasure.

This is also too bad. A very close friend with excellent spoken and written English attributes his ability to write well to having been a constant reader of English language novels. According to him, reading built an extensive usable vocabulary as well. Movies (and TV--in English) helped with listening and speaking somewhat.

[bino]

This is actually one of the first things I noticed when I arrived in Bangkok.

Before I had learned the basic Thai words, I had one of the girls in the office write me up a set of "recipe cards" in Thai with all of my common destinations to show to taxi drivers.

I was quite surprised when about one in five of them couldn't read the Thai instructions.

[chownah]

If you want your child to be a reader when s/he grows up then the almost guaranteed way to do this is to read to them every day. If children only read when in school they will eventually learn that its a chore and not a pleasure. When parents read to children it entertains the child and it not only teaches the child that reading is fun but the parent is also a role model demonstrating that reading is something that adults do and enjoy. Of course there are other advantages, not the least of which can be vocabulary development and even reading skills if the child is encouraged to recognize some letters or words and eventually read a bit for the parents enjoyment.