Improving reading skills through reading strategies for first year students of faculty of english in hanoi open university

The aim of this study is to investigate the reading strategies used by first-year students who are learning English as a foreign language to enhance reading comprehension.. - To identity

1 COVER PAGE

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF ENGLISH

SCIENTIFIC STUDY

Improving reading skills through reading strategies for first-year students of Faculty of

English in Hanoi Open University (Cải thiện kỹ năng đọc qua chiến lược đọc cho sinh viên năm nhất khoa Tiếng Anh của

trường Đại học Mở Hà Nội )

LE THUY DUNG

Date of birth: 05/02/2002

Field: English Language Supervisor: Dr Le Phuong Thao

Hanoi - 2021

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS :

2.2 Review of theoretical background/framework •

3.3 Research methods

References

Appendices (optional)

Research schedule

3 MAIN TEXT

(IN DETAILS)

1 Introduction :

1.1. Rationale :

Nowadays English is considered as the language of intemational communication Therefore, the ability

to speak, read, and comprehend the English language has become increasingly important for students worldwide Proficiency in English facilitates international communication in educational, vocational, and business fields (Bockarie, 2002; Krashen, 1993; Oller, 1970) and greatly enhances EFL students' learning experiences and opens up a lot of career opportunities for them Nevertheless, comprehending a text written in English has its own problems Failure to such understanding may be due to various reasons such as insufficient knowledge of vocabulary, lack of motìvatìon, or unsatisfactory knowledge of

grammar (Whiting, 1992) To decrease such breakdowns, students can be presented with a kind of instruction that is intentionally and carefully scaffolded, through which they can learn to become independent and self-regulated learners (Vygotsky, 1986)

Reading is a lifelong skill to be used both at school and throughout life According to Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, reading is a basic life skill It is a cornerstone for a child's success in school and, indeed, throughout life Without the ability to read well, opportunities for personal fulfillment and job success inevitably will be lost

(1985) Despite its importance, reading is one of the most challenging areas in the

education system The ever-increasing demand for high levels of literacy in our

technological society makes this problem even more pressing (Snow, Burns,

&Griffin, 1998) If students want to get the most out of the materials they are

assigned, they have to learn to read critically or analytically The idea here is that

when we read something, the purpose is to try to understand what the author’s

intention is When dealing with reading, we encounter two layers of reality: one that

we can see and one that we cannot see Therefore, the purpose of reading is to make the invisible layer, the underlying meaning, visible and clear ) Teele asserts that the goal of all readers should be to understand what they read (2004, p 92) Research

shows good readers are actively involved with the text, and they are aware of the

processes they use to understand what they read Teachers can help improve student comprehension through the instruction of reading strategies Predicting, making

connections, visualizing, inferring, questioning, and summarizing are strategies shown

by research to improve reading comprehension (Block & Israel, 2005) It is important

to teach the strategies by naming the strategy and how it should be used, modelling through the think-aloud process, group practice, partner practice, and independent use

of the strategy (Duke & Pearson, 2005).

1.2. Aim and objectives :

1.2.1 Research aim :

The aim of this study is to investigate the reading strategies used by first-year students who are learning English as a foreign language to enhance reading comprehension More speciíically, this study aims to improve the reading skills for the freshmen of Faculty of English in HOU To achieve the set aim mentioned above, the study tries to fulfill the following objectives :

- To review the theoretical frameworks/backgrounds.

- To know what the difficult factors that the students faced in reading comprehension

- To identity types of reading strategies to improve reading comprehension skills at FOE.

- To access the effect of reading strategies on reading comprehension.

1.3. Scope of the study :

This study investigates the use of reading strategies by first-year students of Faculty

of English in Hanoi Open University.

1.4. Research questions :

In order to achieve the main purpose of the study, the following questions need

answering :

- What are the theoretical backgrounds/frameworks of the study?

- What are the difficult factors that the students faced in reading comprehension?

- What reading strategies should the FOE’s students use in their reading process?

- How effective are reading strategies?

1.5. Structure of the study :

The study is divided into 5 chapters

Chapter 1: Introduction.

Chapter 2: Literature review.

Chapter 3: Methodology.

Chapter 4: Results/Findings and discussion.

Chapter 5: Conclusion.

2 Literature review

There have been many studies on reading comprehension skills for English learners for many years The other researchers have pointed out how to define reading comprehension skills, reading strategies, the use of reading strategies, and studies of reading strategies.

2.1. Review of previous studies :

2.2. Review of theoretical background/framework :

2.2.1 Deíine of reading comprehension skills :

2.2.2 Many researches have shown the definition of reading comprehension skills But this definition provides the most comprehensive overview of reading

comprehension skills.

Reading comprehension skills refers to the ability of readers to understand the surface and

the hidden meanings of the text using meta-cognitive reading strategies Reading

comprehension is a complex process involving a combination of text and readers It is

widely reasonable that the three key types of reading are as; accuracy

(involves

phonological and orthographic processing), fluency (includes time), and

comprehension

(Ahmadi, Hairul, & Pourhossein, 2012; NICHHD, 2000) Perfetti & Hogaboam (1975)

explained the importance of “the conceptualization of reading as composed

of separable

components” (p 461), since it allows the investigators to test the relationship among the

various of reading components and the way that they are related The

purpose of reading

comprehension is to construct meaning from the contexts (Sweet & Snow, 2002) Reading

comprehension is a complex cognitive ability providing the ability to

integrate text

information with the background knowledge of the reader and resulting in the explanation

of a mental representation (Meneghetti, Carretti, & De Beni, 2006) So,

reading

comprehension is an interactive activity between students and contexts (Rumelhart, 1994);

in the period of this interaction between students and contexts, students utilize different

experiences and knowledge which involve language skills, cognitive

information and world

knowledge Researchers found that readers need to utilize a wide range of strategies while

reading a text and especially in reading comprehension (Paris, Wasik, & Turner, 1991),

because in reading comprehension process readers should utilize various of conscious and

unconscious strategies to solve their problem in order to construct meaning from written

message/messages (Johnston, 1983).

2.2.3. Define of reading strategies :

2.2.4 Reading strategies are “an intentional plan that readers use to help themselves

make sense

of their reading Strategies are flexible and can be adapted to meet the demands of the reading task Good readers use lots of strategies to help themselves make sense of text” (Tovani, 2000) Helping students to be aware of and master diverse reading strategies allows them to be proficient and independent readers (Booth & Swartz, 2004) Reading strategies are mind games through which readers interact with written materials in many ways This includes planning, deciding the purpose for the reading and the selecting what to read before reading, monitoring of understanding during reading, and evaluating the reading experience (Wolfe et al., 1998; Meniado, 2016) For example when reading short or long reading professional readers often involve in different process that include previewing the written materials and approach them with the right mind set Through their reading process these readers keep connecting skillfully and automatically what they are reading to their previous knowledge and experience This suggests that when these readers encounter challenges during the reading they often consciously resort to different mental techniques

to help them identify the sources of the confusion and address it accordingly Such sort of techniques and mental negotiation are known as reading strategies and involve various process (Alexander & Jetton, 2000).

2.3.Difficulty is something that complicated to do (Richard 2007, as cited in Wahab 2012) It will be seen from students' mistake or error learning process In fact, many senior high school students often find the difficulties in reading comprehension These difficulties result the student's poor performance in reading test Thus, from these factors arise some difficulties in reading comprehension

2.3.1. Factors difficulties that faced by students divided into external and internal Internal factor

includes physics, intellectual, and psychological While external factors include family and school environments (Rahim, 2006) There are some internal factors that influence the students in reading comprehension that are generally found by the reader during reading, namely; difficulty

in understanding long sentence and text, difficulty that is caused by limited background knowledge, difficulty in using reading strategies and difficulty in concentration (Fajar: 2009)

a Difficulty in understanding long sentence

2.3.2. In a common problem that most of students finds difficulty in understanding the long

sentence with complicated structure It is supported by report of Barfield (1999) that shows almost 12 percent of students had difficulty in understanding long sentences in graded story and 20 percent in academic text Therefore, the effect of this problem is the students who cannot comprehending long sentence they fail to understand the main idea presented in the text

b Difficulty in Using Reading Strategies

2.3.3. The students who lack of reading strategies often fails in understanding the text The students

who are not familiar with reading strategies such as skimming and scanning will feel down and frustrated because they lack of tool necessary to succeed in reading comprehension test (Duarte, 2005) There are characteristics of the students who lack in use of reading strategies First, the students read word by word within the text, relying too heavily on their visual information, which greatly impedes their reading speed and hampers their reading comprehension Second, the students spent a lot attention on detail with the result they often miss the main idea of the text Third, they just focused too much attention on form of the expense meaning Furthermore, the students who do not possess effective reading strategies may be difficulty to deal with reading comprehension test (Mei-yu, 1998 as cited by Fajar, 2009)

c Difficulty in Concentration

2.3.4. Difficulty in concentration during reading can be caused by a psychological factor Bad concentration will lead the students fail to comprehend the text It can be worse when the students do reading test Difficulty in concentration is another reason for students' poor reading because concentration is an important factor for a good and effective reading Shaw (1959) states that comprehension of a text results from reading with concentration But students, in most cases, cannot or do not concentrate properly while reading

2.3.5. According to Peter (2001), there are external factors that influence the students in reading

comprehension are reader environment The environment factors can also influence the students in mastering and in learning English Home and school are the two kinds of learners' environment that can influence their learning reading achievement

2.3.6. a House environment It cannot be neglected that parents play important role in the home

Freeman and Long (1990) stated that every students needs attention from their parents to reach their learning achievement Since learning English is not the same as learning Indonesia, children's need parents or his/her family attention to learn about English Learning reading

2.3.7.without family attention will make students feel difficult in

one support them to learn English text.

2.3.8 b School environment The school environment also can be a cause of students learning difficulties in reading comprehension, such as school with lack of learning media The lack of learning media such as English books, magazines or newspapers make reading learning process become ineffective and will be impeding students in understanding the material

2.4 Some reading strategies are highly appreciated :

2.4.1. Nuttal (1982) classifies reading strategies into four types Those are skimming, scanning, extensive and intensive readings

a) Skimming

2.4.2. Skimming is a useful skill to be applied in reading Grellet (1999) stated that skimming

means glance rapidly over a text to get the gist of it It means skimming is used to build students confidence and an understanding that it is possible to gain meaning without reading every word in a text Skimming assists the readers to understand the main idea

of the text before reading it carefully Students can do skimming in several ways such as reading the title or the other heading and look at 10 the picture, reading the first and the last paragraph of the text (Islam and Steenburgh, 2009)

b) Scanning

2.4.3. Scanning means glancing rapidly through a text to search for a specific piece of information (Grellet, 1981) It means that scanning is the ability to read a text quickly in order to find specific information that is needed like a date, a figure, or a name and ignore over all unimportant information For example, a student scan the list of name in

a telephone directory to find a phone number Scanning helps the reader find information quickly without reading the whole text

c) Extensive Reading

2.4.4. In extensive reading, the readers usually face a longer text In reading, the

a total understanding of writing According to Brown (2001), extensive reading is carried out to achieve a general understanding of a text Long and Richards (1987) identify extensive reading as occurring when the students read large amounts of high interest material, concentrating of meaning, reading for gist and skips unknown the words So, the aims of extensive reading are to build the readers' confidence and enjoyment d) Intensive Reading

2.4.5. Intensive reading is reading for detail It usually has a shorter text A reader usually

wants to get some specific information According to Macleod (2011), intensive reading exercises may include looking at main ideas versus details, 11 understanding of what the text implies, making inferences, looking at the order of information and how it affects the message, identìfying words that connect one idea to another and identifying words that indicate change from one section to another

2.5 How Reading Strategies Affect Reading Comprehension :

2.5.1 Researchers have found that teaching reading strategies is a key element in developing student

comprehension Competent readers who are aware of the different skills involves in metacognitive reading strategies are often able to self-regulate- the skills involve in their reading and they are able to decide when to use more/less of certain strategy and check its