(SKKN 2022) improve students’ reading comprehension skill through reading fill exercises

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO THANH HOÁ TRƯỜNG THPT NGUYỄN THỊ LỢI SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM IMPROVE STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION SKILL THROUGH READING FILL EXERCISES Người thực hiện: Nguyễn Th

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO THANH HOÁ

TRƯỜNG THPT NGUYỄN THỊ LỢI

SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

IMPROVE STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION SKILL THROUGH READING FILL EXERCISES

Người thực hiện: Nguyễn Thị Xuân

Chức vụ: Giáo viên SKKN thuộc lĩnh vực (môn): Tiếng Anh

THANH HOÁ NĂM 2022

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Reasons for studying: 1

1.1 Reasons for the theoretical side 1

1.2 Practical reasons 1

1.3 Reasons for urgency 2

1.4 Reasons for the condition and capacity of the instructor 2

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Methods of the study 2

4 Scope of the study 2

4.1.Subjects of study: grade 12 students 2

4.2 Scope of study: practice test and semester exam questions 2

5 New features in the study’s result 2

PART II: CONTENT 2

1 General difficulties in the process of teaching and learning reading: 2

On the learner's side: 2

On the teacher's side 3

2 Limitations in the process of teaching and learning reading skills 3

2.1 Subjective limitations: 3

2.2 Objective limitations: 3

*For teachers 3

*On the student's side 4

3 Measure implementation 4

3.1 Checking the word formation 5

3.2 Checking the meaning of the word 7

4 The adaptation of the textbook 10

PART III PROCEDURE 12

1 Experimental time: 5 months (the first semester of school year 2021 - 2022).12 2 Arrange the experimental groups 12

3 Educational effects of the study 12

PART IV CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS 16

1 Conclusion 16

2.1 To teachers: 16

2.2 To students: 16

REFERENCES: 17

DANH MỤC SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM 18

IMPROVE STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION SKILL THROUGH

READING FILL EXERCISES

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Reasons for studying:

1.1 Reasons for the theoretical side

Today, when English has confirmed its role and importance in schools, improving the quality of teaching and learning is a top important issue How students can fully grasp the knowledge and use it competently is a matter of concern to our teachers We all know that learning English is simply learning a language To use that language fluently, learners must practice four basic skills: -Listening, -Speaking, -Reading, -Writing In which, reading skills play a decisive role in determining whether learners understand the content of the article or not

In Vietnam, as in many Asian countries, English is now taught as a compulsory school subject from an early age (it is officially taught from grade 3 onwards) (Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), 2008), and many changes have been initiated in the teaching of the subject in the last few years Implement multiple-choice test for English subjects becomes popular and compulsory in high school graduation exams, university exams, and colleges of the Ministry of Education and Training Practicing test-taking skills is considered as a basic goal in the teaching process to meet national examinations Reading comprehension is considered as a basic element of the exam preparation process Only when readers can respond will the reading process be completed and will the communication process achieve the desired results Poor reading skills cannot gain high scores in general exams and national examinations in the reading test part Therefore, learners who want to improve their grade in English exams have no other way but

to improve their reading comprehension skills, and also do better in English tests

Based on the results of the tests, lesson plans, assessments on the receptive ability of Nguyen Thi Loi School students and observation of the students’ activities in choosing the best answer in each test of grade 12 students, the conductor can recognize the difficulties of students in the process of solving differences in each reading fill exercise Therefore, I decided to choose the topic:

“Improve students’ reading comprehension skill through reading fill exercises” 1.2 Practical reasons.

With the direction of the Ministry of Education on innovating the teaching methods of English subject under the 2020 project and the changes in the forms of tests, the grammatical knowledge plays an important role

1.3 Reasons for urgency.

According to the Department of Education's guidelines for the 2014-2015 school-year assessment innovation, the grade of reading skills account for 40% of the 45-minute tests and semester exams as well as national examination Therefore,

it is essential for learners to focus on improving the effectiveness of reading classes

1.4 Reasons for the condition and capacity of the instructor.

Based on the results of the tests, lesson plans, assessments on the receptive ability of Nguyen Thi Loi School students and observation of the students’ activities in solving reading comprehension exercises of grade 12 students, the conductor can recognize the difficulties in the process of teaching and learning reading skills, especially through the reading fill exercises for high school students

2 Aims of the study

The aims of this research are to investigate how English reading skills are taught in here and to apply some new techniques and adjustment to help the students tackle the challenges on the learning reading skills more effectively

3 Methods of the study

- Observe reading classes

- Consult many documents, especially methods of study

- Study colleagues’ experience

4 Scope of the study

4.1.Subjects of study: grade 12 students.

The research has been carried out in 2 classes of grade 11: 12A1 (in the controlling group) and 12A6 (in the experimental group) at Nguyen Thi Loi High School

4.2 Scope of study: practice test and semester exam questions

5 New features in the study’s result

In the study with the researcher’s innovation, the new approaches help students to identify the types of exercises and to solve situation better

PART II: CONTENT

1 General difficulties in the process of teaching and learning reading:

On the learner's side:

Nguyen Thi Loi High School is located in a tourist area, Sam son beach, the development of the tourism has had a significant impact on the learning of most students They don’t focus on studying seriously because of their part time jobs It

is the thinking of earning money early and easily that makes them neglect study They spend the less time doing homework and preparing lessons before class

Another drawback in this context is the bad learning habits that many beginning learners have The habit of translating into Vietnamese to understand each word, the desire to read and understand 100% of information also makes many students unable to know what is the core content to capture and what information to skip during reading Misunderstanding of the requirements of different types of exercises makes the learner tired and tends to become confused during reading lessons in class

The passive learning attitude during reading lessons in some classes observed by the teachers also shows that learners do not seem to pay adequate attention to self-improvement in the learning process

On the teacher's side.

The application of translation methods or traditional methods in language teaching including reading comprehension observed in some teachers makes the skill training ineffective

It is still believed that reading is practicing receptive skill Learners are asked

to get to know information of the writing without any prior hints about the situation they are about to read This means that there is no pre-reading step in the class, or they are not allowed to request feedback after reading clearly It is observed that some teachers often begin a reading lesson by listing all the new words that appear

in the text, which is a waste of time and destroys the ability of guessing the meaning of new words in the context, a vital skill for a foreign language learner

Some teachers, although are aware of the need to change teaching methods, they cannot apply many effective measures to change the situation due to the limited time in class

2 Limitations in the process of teaching and learning reading skills.

2.1 Subjective limitations:

One of the main obstacles that prevents students from doing well the form of filling in is the lack of language knowledge Limited vocabulary is the biggest obstruction to the reading comprehension process of learners This restriction interferes with learners’ reading process when seeing to many new words, which has affected the speed and time of reading

2.2 Objective limitations:

*For teachers: Due to the limited time of 45 minute with so many tasks to

carry out in a class, there is not enough time to carefully guide students on tips to read effectively On the other hand, skill training requires time, perseverance, and repetition

of the requirements of the lesson many times, but due to subjective and hasty

psychology, some teachers do not have detailed instructions to clearly orient students about the topic of the reading or the steps to follow to solve the given reading exercises Especially, teacher’s attention cannot be paid equally to all the student groups in a big size class (40- 50 students)

*On the student's side:

During learning process, students at Nguyen Thi Loi high school have complained that reading comprehension skill through reading fill exercises is extremely difficult because his skill not only requires students to understand the content of the reading passage, but also master the relevant grammar knowledge I have found that when doing this kind of tasks, I found that the majority of the students choose the answer indiscriminately As the result, they usually get bad marks At the beginning of the first semester - school year 2021 - 2022, I conducted

a small survey with 83 students in 2 classes – 12A1 and 12A6 - to find out the difficulties when they did the test and why a lot of them got bad result, and I got the result:

e

1 There are too many new words in the passage 65%

2 I spend time reading and translating the passage into

Vietnamese

66%

3 I don’t remember the grammatical knowledge 57%

4 I don’t know how to do this type of exercise 70%

5 I choose the answer indiscriminately 55%

In the process of teaching students to do reading comprehension tests and fill

in correct answers, I noticed that most of the students do not grasp relevant grammatical knowledge such as word forms, conjunctions, quantity words

By analyzing subjective and objective difficulties in the process of teaching and learning reading, focusing on the type of exercise: filling in words the researcher recognizes that most students are confused, encounter many mistakes when doing homework, or do not even be able to do this type of exercise at the average level The aim of the research is to suggest some solutions to improve the situation, to help students do the reading comprehension tasks more effectively and eventually improve their results and grades in exams

3 Measure implementation

The structure of the comprehension skill through reading fill exercises

Number question s

Recogniz e

Understandin

g

Comprehensio

n

Advanced applicatio n

- Relative

pronoun

3.1 Checking the word formation

Students must first understand the functional position of adjectives, nouns, verbs and adverbs Only then can you choose the correct answer

3.1.1 Nouns

Before or after verb

After adj

After the articles

Place

“ ness, er, or,

ty, ment, ance, -tion, -sion, -ee, - cy,

dom, hood, ism, ship, th,

-After words of quantity After indicative adj

After possessive adj

NOUN

Formation:

Noun usually ends by

3.1.2 Adjective

3.1.3 Adverb

Before noun

Adj usually ends by: “ ful, able, ic, less, -ous, - al, - ing/ed, - y, - ive, -ish, - ible, -ent, -ant,

-ly… ”

After “to be” or linking verbs

Used in the structures: so that/ such that/ too

or the comparisons ADJ

Before or after verb

Before adj

Adv At the beginning of the sentence

Between aux and participle

Adj + ly = Adv

3.2 Checking the meaning of the word

For this type of exercise, students often encounter conjunctions and quantity words

3.2.1 Conjunctions

For sentences with answers that are conjunctions, what form should students get after the blank?

- if it is a clause, subordinators are used

- if it is phrasal noun or Ving, prepositions are used

- if it is a sentences, conjunction adverbs are used

Meaning

Conjunctions

Subordinator Preposition Conjunctionadverbs Reason

Because, since, as Because of, thanks

to, on account of, owning to

Result

Therefore, consequently, as result, thus Contrast

Although, even though, though, even if

Despite, in spite

of, regardless of

Nevertheless, however

Additional

meaning

In addition to, apart from, except for

Also, furthermore, moreover, in addition, besides, Giving example Such as For example

3.2.2 The quantities

When the answer is a word indicating quantity, it is necessary to determine what kind of noun after the vacancy is, countable or uncountable, plural or singular

- MANY = a large number of/a great

many/ a majority of/ a wide variety of/

a wide range of

- Used with countable nouns

MUCH = a great deal of/a large

amount of

- Used with uncountable nouns

A FEW/ FEW

- Used with countable nouns

A LITTLE/ LITTLE

- Used with uncountable nouns

SOME

- Used in affirmative sentences and in

interrogative sentences when

inviting/suggesting

ANY

- Used in negative, interrogative

ALL

- Used to refer to three or more people/

things (all) or more

BOTH

- Used to refer to both people/things (both)

NONE

- Used to refer to three or more people/

things

NEITHER/EITHER

- Used to refer to both people/things not

+ Neither: used in affirmative sentences

+ Either: used in negative sentences

MOST

- Most + N

MOSTLY (mostly): used as an adverb

ALMOST (almost): used as an adverb

to complement verbs, adjectives, and

nouns

MOST OF

Most of + the/possessive adjective + N

EACH

- used with singular countable nouns

EVERY

- used with singular countable nouns

OTHER

- Other + uncountable noun

- Other + plural noun

- Other + ones

- Others are used as pronouns

- The other: the other of two, or the

other of two,

- The others: the remaining or

remaining people in a group of many

things or people

ANOTHER

- Another + singular noun

- Another + one

- Another + count + plural noun

- Another is used as a pronoun

3.2.3 Relative pronouns

When the answer is the relative pronoun, students must understand the use and place of each type of relative pronouns

Table 1: Functions of relative pronouns

Person Who/ that Who/ whom/ that Whose

Thing Which/ that Which/ that Whose/ of which

Table 2: Notes of “that”

Table 3: Use of the relative adverbs

That

it can replace the nouns: person/thing

(subjetc or onject)

it can't be put after comma and

preposition

it's required to put after indefinite pronouns, the superlative

Where

= in/at/on + which

place

When

= in/at/on + which

time

Why

= for which

reason