English for Mass Communications and for Other Purposes-Readers' Perception

Abstract

This study was an investigation into the way readers perceive the use of English, for different purposes, and in particular, for mass communication in a second language setting. For this purpose, a simple questionnaire in form of the Likert rating scale was used to generate data. The study involved 337 respondents. A decision rule was set at 3.01 as the agreement level and any item below that was disagreed with. The result revealed that although the use of English for mass communication was considered normal, it should, however, still be simpler than the present level; that there should be a difference between the use of English for mass communication and the use of English for other purposes, bearing in mind that the audience for mass communication products vary from the highly educated to the barely educated who have just a smattering of the vocabulary of the English language in a second language English environment.

Keywords: Perception, comprehensibility, mass communication, second language English.