The Content and Form of School Reading as a Factor Influencing Text Comprehension in Society 4.0

The content and form of School reading lists significantly impact pupils' understanding of various types of texts, including artistic, non-artistic, and electronic. To this end, a research study explores whether recommended School reading lists at secondary technical schools in the Moravian-Silesian and Zlín regions of the Czech Republic are available electronically on school websites. Additionally, the study aims to determine whether they include everyday life texts that reflect the current characteristics of Society 4.0, influenced by digitisation, automation, and electronicisation. The study examined factors influencing readers' comprehension of printed and electronic digital texts through a questionnaire-based survey of 439 pupils from four Czech secondary technical schools and two vocational schools. It also explored how the content and form of secondary school reading impact the comprehension of various types of traditional and non-traditional texts. The research findings indicated that Czech secondary school students tend to engage with texts from everyday life on social networks and electronic texts in their free time. However, they frequently struggle to understand journalistic texts such as reviews and do not frequently engage with everyday life texts in their schoolwork. These results provide valuable insights into the concept of traditional and non-traditional readers, along with current typologies of texting. Moreover, they highlight factors influencing functional literacy and reading comprehension, viewed through the lens of secondary school students in Society 4.0. It is worth noting that international research by PISA (2018, 2021) has drawn attention to the average to below-average reading and digital literacy levels among Czechs, particularly 15-year-old boys.