In the wake of a rapidly growing generation of digital natives, educators face greater challenges of identifying, understanding and acknowledging their learning habits, interests and preferences, let alone teaching them. The current study aims at investigating the reading trends and preferences of digital natives in higher education in Malaysia and more particularly Engineering and Management students. It has conducted a survey among Engineering and Management undergraduates of various ethnic, cultural, linguistic and geographical backgrounds at a Malaysian university while highlighting their preferences of a) types of reading materials, b) reading frequency, c) reading topics, d) reading habits, e) reading reasons and f) vocabulary learning strategies for reading. The findings have reported that digital natives are avid and frequent readers, with a constant consumption of all sorts of social media content, who prefer reading for more information and current affairs, fun and pleasure or even for personal development.
Keywords: Higher Education, Reading Habits, digital natives, millennial learners, reading preferences, reading trends
