(SKKN 2022) Some experience in helping grade 12 students at Le Loi upper-secondary school to improve their grades in English reading comprehension parts in the national high school graduation exam

Main types of reading comprehension questions in an English’s test 4 1.. Guiding students to recognize and deal with each type of reading comprehension questions with useful strategies 9

CONTENTS Page

III Scope, objective and method of the research 2

2 Main types of reading comprehension questions in an English’s test 4

1 The structure of the English test suggested by the Ministry of

2 The teacher’s and students’ attitudes towards the solving the reading

3 The investigation of the students' skills at answering the reading

1 Guiding students to recognize and deal with each type of reading

comprehension questions with useful strategies 9

2 Applying the appropriate procedure of guiding students to practice

3 Providing students with useful tips to help them practice reading

1 Results after applying the research in teaching 19

A INTRODUCTION

I THE REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE THEME

English, one of the international languages used by most of people in theworld, has become the second foreign language which is obligatorily taught fromprimary school up to university in Vietnam English is also one of thecompulsory subjects to pass the National Examination In learning English, thereare four skills to be mastered, they are listening, speaking, reading and writing.Listening and reading are receptive skills On the other hand, speaking andwriting are productive skills

It is true that reading is a very important skill in teaching and learningEnglish especially reading comprehension Evidently, since 2017 GCSEEnglish's test, students have to answer from 12 to 15 reading comprehensionquestions This is not a small challenge for most students in general and for thestudents at Le Loi high school in particular In fact, they have difficulty inrecognizing types of questions; they also lack reading strategies and they areafraid of meeting with a wide range of new words As a result, poor students andstudents of medium level hardly gain any grades whereas good students havedifficulty getting the maximum one

Understanding these problems, I decided to choose " Some experience in helping grade 12 students at Le Loi upper-secondary school to improve their grades in English reading comprehension parts in the national high school graduation exam " as the topic of my experience initiatives with the hope that I can help mystudents to be more confident in reading skills and practically, they will succeed

in their final exam

II THE OBJECTIVES OF THE PAPER.

The study is aimed to serve some main objectives as listed following

- To give teachers an experience in teaching how to recognize and dealwith each type of reading comprehension questions

- To help students in grade 12th of all levels use some effective strategies

to boost their grades in this part of the test

- To equip students with the system of reading exercises so that they willhave chance to practice reading skills

As a result, they will have high motivation to read and they will also knowhow to improve their grades in reading comprehension part in the GCSEEnglish's test effectively

III THE SCOPE OF THE PAPER

Based on the background and identification of the theme, the paper islimited on teaching reading skill to the students in grade 12th by using someeffective techniques The research was conducted at my workplace- at Le Loihigh school, Tho Xuan district, Thanh Hoa province The subject consists of 70

students who come from class 12A10, 12A4, school year 2021-2022 All ofthem are at the age of eighteenth to nineteenth years old They have to take everyskill in each period; learning time is 3 periods per week

IV THE METHODS OF THE PAPER.

The writer did some steps to do this research, they are as follows;

- surveying the literature relating to do the problem;

- defining the problem;

- constructing an experimental plan by writing the research design;

- design the research instrument;

- doing the instrument try-out;

- giving the test to the students;

- practicing teaching

- collecting the data through the posttest;

- analyzing the data;

- drawing conclusions;

- proposing suggestions;

- writing the report as subject

- Exchanging experience with colleagues

B CONTENT

I THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1 Definitions of reading comprehension.

What exactly is reading comprehension?

Simply put, reading comprehension is the act of understanding what you arereading While the definition can be simply stated the act is not simple to teach,learn or practice Reading comprehension is an intentional, active, interactiveprocess that occurs before, during and after a person reads a particular piece ofwriting

Reading comprehension is one of the pillars of the act of reading When a personreads a text he engages in a complex array of cognitive processes He issimultaneously using his awareness and understanding of phonemes (individualsound “pieces” in language), phonics (connection between letters and sounds andthe relationship between sounds, letters and words) and ability to comprehend orconstruct meaning from the text This last component of the act of reading isreading comprehension It cannot occur independently of the other two elements

of the process At the same time, it is the most difficult and most important of thethree

There are two elements that make up the process of reading

comprehension: vocabulary knowledge and text comprehension In order to

understand a text the reader must be able to comprehend the vocabulary used inthe piece of writing If the individual words don’t make the sense then theoverall story will not either Children can draw on their prior knowledge ofvocabulary, but they also need to continually be taught new words The bestvocabulary instruction occurs at the point of need Parents and teachers shouldpre-teach new words that a child will encounter in a text or aid her inunderstanding unfamiliar words as she comes upon them in the writing Inaddition to being able to understand each distinct word in a text, the child alsohas to be able to put them together to develop an overall conception of what it istrying to say This is text comprehension Text comprehension is much morecomplex and varied that vocabulary knowledge Readers use many different textcomprehension strategies to develop reading comprehension These includemonitoring for understanding, answering and generating questions, summarizingand being aware of and using a text’s structure to aid comprehension

How does reading comprehension develop?

As you can see, reading comprehension is incredibly complex and multifaceted.Because of this, readers do not develop the ability to comprehend texts quickly,easily or independently Reading comprehension strategies must be taught over

an extended period of time by parents and teachers who have knowledge andexperience using them It might seem that once a child learns to read in the

elementary grades he is able to tackle any future text that comes his way This isnot true Reading comprehension strategies must be refined, practiced andreinforced continually throughout life Even in the middle grades and highschool, parents and teachers need to continue to help their children developreading comprehension strategies As their reading materials become morediverse and challenging, children need to learn new tools for comprehendingthese texts Content area materials such as textbooks and newspaper, magazineand journal articles pose different reading comprehension challenges for youngpeople and thus require different comprehension strategies The development ofreading comprehension is a lifelong process that changes based on the depth andbreadth of texts the person is reading.

Why is reading comprehension so important?

Without comprehension, reading is nothing more than tracking symbols on apage with your eyes and sounding them out Imagine being handed a storywritten in Egyptian hieroglyphics with no understanding of their meaning Youmay appreciate the words aesthetically and even be able to draw some small bits

of meaning from the page, but you are not truly reading the story The words onthe page have no meaning They are simply symbols People read for manyreasons but understanding is always a part of their purpose Readingcomprehension is important because without it reading doesn’t provide thereader with any information

Beyond this, reading comprehension is essential to life Much has been writtenabout the importance of functional literacy In order to survive and thrive intoday’s world individuals must be able to comprehend basic texts such as bills,housing agreements (leases, purchase contracts), directions on packaging andtransportation documents (bus and train schedules, maps, travel directions).Reading comprehension is a critical component of functional literacy Think ofthe potentially dire effects of not being able to comprehend dosage directions on

a bottle of medicine or warnings on a container of dangerous chemicals With theability to comprehend what they read, people are able not only to live safely andproductively, but also to continue to develop socially, emotionally andintellectually

The Reading Comprehension section contains reading passages and questionsabout the passages The questions are about information that is stated or implied

in the passage and about some of the specific words in the passages Becausemany English words have more than one meaning, it is important to rememberthat these questions concern the meaning of a word or phrase within the context

of the passage

2 Main types of comprehension questions

There are a handful of reading comprehension question types thatconstitute the bulk of questions you will face in this section The ability torecognize these question types quickly and understand the aim of the questionand the common traits of correct and incorrect answers is extremely important.Depending upon how specific one is in classifying questions, there are aboutnine question types:

- Questions on author’s purpose

- Questions on author’s attitude

- The origin of the passage

In addition, those types of questions often focus on these following populartopics in reading texts

- Education and languages

- Social issues

- Health

- Food

- people and places

- Science, technology and inventions

- Tourism, festivals and entertainment

- Nature and environment

II PRACTICAL BACKGROUND

1 The new structure English test designed by the Ministry of Education and Training.

As we all know the national high school English test consists of 50 multiplechoice questions and 60 minutes to complete 50 sentences

The 2022 high school English exam consists of:

- Phonetics (tress + pronunciation): 4 questions

- Error correction: 3 questions

- Sentence Completion: 15 questions

- Functional question: 2 questions

- Closest >< opposite meaning: 4 questions

- Same meaning: 5 questions

- Cloze test: 5 questions

- Reading 1: (reading comprehension questions) 5questions

- Reading 2: (reading comprehension questions) 7 questions

It can be seen clearly that reading comprehension part is always the hardest part

of the test because it requires students to use all the skills [Remember(meaning / usage of the word, data in the article), Understanding (meaning ofwords / sentences / paragraphs Use (word/phrase/sentence structure) andknowledge (vocabulary / grammar) to improve and get maximum score Thissection fully and accurately assesses the ability of the candidate should alwayshave high weight in a test In addition to mastering all of the above topics,students also have to practice quick, effective exercises for a limited time

2 The teacher’s and students’ attitudes towards the solving the reading comprehension questions in the English test.

It is a matter of fact that getting high or full grades in reading

comprehension parts in the GCSE English's test is not easy We all are

habituated to solve simple and direct passages in our school days, but when itcomes to competitive exams, the task becomes difficult Unable to understandthe vocabulary (meaning of words) and concept of the passage, many studentsbecome dull and uninterested in this section Gradually, many students are afraid

of reading Consequently, most of the teachers and the students think thestudents’ reading comprehension competence is not good

2.1 Students’ difficulties in solving the reading comprehension questions in the English test.

It is clear that the students in my school have to face many difficulties.These difficulties are from two causes: (1) from the students themselves, and (2)from the teachers’ lectures

In terms of the first cause, the majority of the students have trouble with readingbecause of their low level of English proficiency Their vocabulary and sentencestructures are poor Grammar mistakes and spelling are also a common fear formany of them Besides, their low background knowledge also makes them feelstressed when reading.In contrast to good readers, most poor readers do not readstrategically Nor do they have sufficient cognitive awareness to develop, select,and apply strategies that can enhance their comprehension of text Typical poorreaders rarely prepare before reading They often begin to read without settinggoals They seldom consider how best to read a particular type of text Duringreading, poor readers may have difficulty decoding, and so have difficultyreading the words of their texts accurately In addition, some poor readers readtoo slowly, or lack fluency As a result of their slow, labored reading, they often

do not comprehend much of what they read, and the attention they have to give

to figuring out the words keeps them from understanding the text's message

All too often poor readers lack sufficient background knowledge about the topic

of a text They may have trouble connecting the ideas of a text They often arenot familiar with the vocabulary they encounter, and have trouble determiningword meanings Further, even when poor readers possess relevant backgroundknowledge, they frequently are not able to activate it to help them understandwhat they read Some poor readers also are unaware of text organization They

do not know enough about the organizational structure of narratives or thevarious organizational structures of expository texts to help them read andunderstand After reading, poor readers typically do not think about or reflectupon what they have read They almost never seek out additional informationabout a topic The cumulative effect of these difficulties is that poor readersoften lose confidence in their ability to read Because reading is difficult forthem, poor readers cannot and do not read widely As a result, they are exposed

to much less text than are good readers and so receive much less practicereading Further, the practice they do receive is often frustrating, because many

of the texts they are asked to read are too difficult for them

In terms of the second cause, the students do not highly asses their teachers’assistance They find their teachers’ feedbacks are not comprehensive and theirteachers’ instructions are not adequate

2.2 Teachers’ difficulties in improve students’ grades in reading comprehension part in the GCSE English's test for grade 12 students.

Not only the students but also the teachers cope with numerous problemswhen encouraging students to practice reading

The first difficulty I and my colleague are coping with is the low Englishlevel of the students Our students often lack vocabulary and have difficulties inrecognizing the types of questions with useful tips The students’ low motivationand low background knowledge are also other problems encountered by theteachers

The second difficulty is the problem of large and multilevel classes Inmultilevel classes, we face difficulties in shortening a big gap between ourstudents In the same class, some students who are good at English are activewhile many others are de- motivated In addition, English classes at Le Loi highschool are very large There are at least 34 students in a class Hence, it isdifficult for the teachers to give each of the students individual attention andmake sure who is on task and who is off task

For the next difficulty, with the help of the Internet, students do not actuallypractice reading, they find the keys or translate the reading passages just to finishoff the tasks

3 The investigation of the students’ paragraph writing skills

In the process of teaching, I have been given the duty to teach the grade

12 With the awareness of researching and studying the situation of students’learning the subject and learning from experience, right since the beginning ofthe school year, I outlined a specific plan and method to actively investigate thesituation of students’ learning in my classes by giving them the questionnaire

first then do the reading tasks in 25 minutes (both The questionnaire and The reading tasks are found in the addendum)

And the tables below show the result of the investigation.

These findings would serve as the foundations for further suggestions that

I would like to make in the next part

III THE SOLUTIONS

Basing on the process of reading, I wish to share some experiencesincluding guiding students to recognize and deal with each type of readingcomprehension questions, providing students with useful strategies to help themimprove their grades in reading comprehension questions, applying the procedure

of guiding students to practice reading effectively and providing students withuseful tips to help them practice reading more actively and effectively

1 Guiding students to recognize and deal with each type of reading comprehension questions with useful strategies.

Depending upon how specific one is in classifying questions, there areabout nine question types that come up frequently in most tests

1.1 Main idea

Main idea questions ask you to identify the "primary purpose" or "mainpoint" of the passage In order to answer these questions correctly, you must beable to identify the thesis of the passage and those ideas that support this thesis.The test-writers attempt to confuse you with a few answer choices that aresupporting ideas

Common Question Stems

- Which of the following most accurately states the main idea of the passage?

- The primary purpose of the passage is to

- The passage is primarily concerned with which of the following?

- The author of this passage is primarily concerned with

- The main point made by the passage is that

- What is the topic of this passage?

- What is the subject of the article?

- What is the main idea expressed in this passage?

- What is the main idea shown in the article?

- Which title best reflects the main idea of the passage?

-What is the most appropriate title for the main idea of the article?

Strategies

Main point questions ask you to identify the crux of the author's point.You must identify which ideas in the passage play a supporting role and whichidea is being supported In many ways, this is similar to identifying the premisesand conclusion to a critical reasoning argument The correct answer to a mainpoint question is often a paraphrase of the conclusion or thesis statement of thepassage Common incorrect answer choices are those that feature supportingideas These answer choices are appealing to many test-takers because thematerial presented in them is true and based upon the passage

To answer questions about the main idea of the article, let's look at the title

of the article if there is one Focus on the main idea in the opening or endingparagraph, as this is usually the introduction and summary of the main point ofthe whole article The main thing is to show the content of the whole article, notthe paragraph one This is also a trap that you need to avoid The options if toolax, we can also let this sentence to the last and then do, because after handlingthe other questions of the post, readers necessarily read the text again or severaltimes more, so they will understand the internal content of the text moreaccurately

1.2 Factual information questions

Factual information questions are often prefaced by "according to thepassage" or "the passage states that" Most of the questions that fit into thiscategory could be called "find the fact" as they rely on your ability to find aspecific piece of information, often contained in two or three sentences

These questions tend to be more difficult than main idea questions because theyrequire a more detailed recollection of the test If necessary, you can return to thetext and quickly re-read a few sentences

Unlike main idea questions which are more generic in their question stem, thesequestions tend to incorporate an idea specific to the passage in the question stem

Common Question Stems

- According to the passage, a questionable assumption about x is that

- The passage states that x occurs because

- According to the passage, which of the following is true of x

- The passage mentions each of the following EXCEPT

- According to the passage, if x occurs then

- According to the passage, why / what / how …?

- According to the passage, why? What? What? …

- According to the information in paragraph 1, what …?

- According to the information in paragraph 1, what …?

Strategies

Asking for detailed information, it is necessary to stick to the specificcontent of the article to find the answer In these types of questions, finding thekey word for both the question and the answer is extremely important, taking thekeyword from the clue to find the answer in the reading Notice the keywords inthe question are the main verbs, the main nouns, the main adjectives, the word incapital letters, the time, the place … The difficulty in this form is that sometimesthey use synonyms rather than the primary The keyword in question is given Tosolve this problem need to constantly accumulate vocabulary for rich, varied

1.3 Negative factual questions.

Common Question Stems

Carefully read the question and pay attention to the following negative words:

- EXCEPT …

- (NOT) – NOT mention …

- LEAST likely … (less likely …)

Strategies

These questions are often not addressed in the article or the wrong informationwill be the selected answer Be calm about the psychology to read the standardquestions and the types of alternatives that appear in the article to find the correctanswer

1.4 Vocabulary Questions

Common Question Stems

- The expression “ ” in line “ ” could best be replaced by …

- The word “ ” in the line “ ” can be replaced by / closest to the word?

Strategies

This question asks for knowledge of the vocabulary and the ability to understandthe meaning of the word or phrase It will be great if you know the meaning ofthe word in bold and the alternatives But often the test will ask a difficult word

or new words of the unknown, calm, do not worry or give up Use sentences andcontexts containing words to ask meaning, use logic to judge its meaning andthen choose Or you can completely replace the choice of words to find meaning,see what the most reasonable Note that there is a case where the word is asked ifthe individual is clearly synonymous or close to a given one; But pay attentionbecause if it is put into its context, the correct answer may be another alternativethat fits the context of the text

1.5 Reference Questions

Common Question Stems

- “It” / “They”, “Them”, “Those” … In line “ ” refers to _

- “It” / “They”, “Them”, “Those” … On the line … to refer to …

Strategies

This is a relatively simple sentence, because the correct answer to be replaced bythe above words should only lie very close to these words, read the sentence orsentences with Related to find the correct answer

NEVER be correct In inference questions, the answer lies directly in the textand requires a very small logical step (e.g., if the text says that "all the cups inthe room are red", an inference would be that "there are no green cups in theroom").

In other ways, inference and application questions are similar They both requireyou to draw a conclusion, albeit a very small one, based upon what the passagestates explicitly However, the inference question type asks for an answer that isoften a near paraphrase of a fact in the passage or a fact that the information inthe passage rules out (e.g., if a species of an animal has existed for 1 millionyears, you can infer that the animal is not new to the earth) On the contrary,the application question type asks you to use the information in the passage aspremises and draw a conclusion that is not directly addressed in the passage Inother words, the answer to inference questions is a conclusion made in thepassage while the answer to application questions is a conclusion that is appliedoutside of the passage to an idea or action

Common Question Stems

- The passage implies that which of the following was true of x

- It can be inferred from the passage that

- The passage suggests which of the following about x

- The author implies that x occurred because

- The author implies that all of the following statements about x are trueEXCEPT

- It could be … It can be inferred from the passage … In paragraph 2, theimplicit hypothetical author Just / hint that …

Strategies

The correct answer to these questions is usually an obvious logicalconsequence of a sentence in the text The logical consequence will be extremelyclear The difficulty in these questions resides in finding the specific sentence inthe passage that provides the premise for the conclusion in the correct answer.Stay away from answer choices that do not directly and closely follow from astatement in the passage, even if this statement seems plausible based upon thegeneral idea of the passage or commonly accepted knowledge

This form of sentence is relatively difficult because the correct answermay not appear directly in the article, so you need to know the text well enough

to give the correct answer to the inference question Note the logic of the postand clues, serial properties …

1.7 Questions on author’s purpose

Common Question Stems

- Why does the author mention ?

- The author’s main purpose in paragraph 2 is to …

- Why do the authors mention …?

- The main purpose of the author in paragraph 2 is to …

Strategies

Question asked about the purpose when the author wrote about a problem orwrite a paragraph, maybe the answer after the “to” (or …) We have to argue theanswer ourselves

1.8 Questions on author’s attitude

Tone questions or questions on author’s attitude ask you to identify the attitude

or mood of a specific part of the passage or of the entire passage A commoncharacteristic of this question type is answer choices that are marked by one tothree word phrases containing adjectives Tone questions test your ability torecognize an attitude or disposition of the author, which is signaled by the use of

a handful of trigger words Never base your guess about the author's tone on asingle word this is not enough to define the tone of the entire passage

Tone questions tend to be among the more infrequent question types

Common Question Stems

- The attitude of the author of the passage toward x is best described as one of…

- The tone of the author is best described as…

- What is the author’s opinion / attitude of _?

- Which of the following most reflectively reflects the author’s opinion?

- What is the opinion / attitude of the author shown in the article? Which of thefollowing best describes the author’s opinions / attitudes?

(Some words may appear in choices: Positive: Negative Neutral: NeutralSupportive: Support/ admire) Skeptical: Doubt …

Strategies

To answer this question should rely on statements that express personal views.The author of praise, criticism, support, suspicion …

1.9 The origin of the passage (source of the article)

Common Question Stems

- Where is this passage most likely seen / found?

- Where can the article be seen / found?

Strategies

Based on the content of the mentions, choose the right solution, which can befound in scientific journals, fashion magazines, newspaper ads, medical journals,automotive magazines

Although there is by no means a hard-and-fast rule about the difficulty of thequestions that fall into each category, questions in the main idea category tend to

be easier while questions in the inference and application categories tend to bemore difficult Questions about the author’s tone tend to appear less frequentlythan other questions, although there is no definitive and widely-public rule that