Digital reading in English for Business Management and Tourism: The importance of micro-skills for the curriculum

An optimal reading performance is key in university degrees, and yet, the research focus on digital academic reading is much smaller than on writing skills (Boulton & Cobb, 2017; Pérez-Paredes, 2019; Curado-Fuentes, 2023). This paper focuses on analyzing learners’ development of digital reading skills in English at university. The study has been conducted as a mixed-methods analysis in two consecutive academic years (2021 and 2022) with first-year students in the double degree of Business Management and Tourism at the University of Extremadura. The two groups used different digital tools along 4-week reading sessions and were tested on their reading comprehension before and after the sessions. Additionally, students answered various questionnaires about the activities. Learners’ use of digital data-driven learning (DDL) techniques was combined with other types of online tools. Some face-to-face interviews with students were also conducted at the end of one course. The results from the tests indicated significant reading comprehension improvements in both years, whereas no significant difference between the two years was found. In the second academic year, the DDL tool was favored much more, in addition to online dictionaries, and students were more open to reading comprehension work. Overall, it is found that the reading of academic texts can be fostered by empowering learners with meta-cognition via specific digital reading micro-skills.