(SKKN 2022) TO IMPROVE READING COMPREHENSION SKILL FOR GRADE 12 STUDENTS BY UTILIZING GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS

There have been a lot of activities organized in order to enhance theeffectiveness and help students be more active and self-confident in learningEnglish in general and reading skills in

THANH HOA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND

High school: Le Loi Experience Initiative:

English

THANH HOA, 2022

CONTENTS Pages

I REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE RESEARCH 01

II AIMS OF THE RESEARCH 02 III SCOPE, OBJECT AND RESEARCHING METHOD 02

2 General views on post-reading activities 03

3 The Post-/After Reading Stage 04

4 The importance of post-reading activities. 04

5 What students gain from post-reading activities 05

6 Interactive post-reading activities 05

II POST-READING ACTIVITIES FOCUSING ON SPEAKING 06

1 Post-reading activities focusing on speaking. 06

2 Demonstration of activities usually used in teaching

English 12 at Le Loi high school.

08

III APPLYING THE RESEARCH IN TEACHING ENGLISH 12 14

IV RESULT AFTER APPLYING THE RESEARCH IN

A INTRODUCTION

It is widely recognized that reading is one of the most important skills for English as a foreign language students to master The ability to read and comprehend what one reads is crucial to success in our educational system For academic success, for English language learning, or to expand students’ knowledge

of language, cultures and the world, reading comprehension has always played a central role in the curricula of the schools in this study At present, reading comprehension is not the product of word recognition skills, grammar or world experience as separate entities, but it is considered a highly interactive process between the reader and the text, one that enables “the construction of meaning by making inferences and interpretations” The post-reading stage of a reading lesson

is often confused with the closing of a lesson However, having new information from the whilst-reading stage should bring about a change such as the students would know more, or think or feel differently from before Teachers should help students connect the new information they are now familiar with and their lives This article re-introduces the importance of the post-reading stage and some workable, meaningful activities Interactive activities are chosen so that students not only process their knowledge obtained from the text but also communicate this new knowledge to peers

I REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE RESEARCH

In Vietnam, in recent years teaching methods have been more and moreimproved Of four language skills, reading is believed to be the mostimportant and also most difficult skill to students According to the timeallocation, the school time for English lessons is limited with only 3 periods aweek, each lasts 45 minutes In an academic year, students complete 16 units,

in which there are 16 reading lessons

There have been a lot of activities organized in order to enhance theeffectiveness and help students be more active and self-confident in learningEnglish in general and reading skills in particular Many universities andupper-secondary schools, including Le Loi upper-secondary school applypost reading activities which can be seen as one of the most effective way todevelop students’ reading competence It is stated that post-reading activitiesencourage student to reflect upon what they have read For the information

to stay with the students, they need to go beyond simply reading it to using

it Until now, there have been a lot of researches done in the area of postreading activities In 2000, Alderson wrote Assessing reading with the aim ofanalyzing the effectiveness of reading activities, including post readingactivities Sasson (n.d) wrote post-reading activities – how teachers canend the lesson effectively to give some advice so that teachers can applywhen implementing post-reading activities However, there is a gap betweenthe theory and the practice At upper-secondary schools in general, the

advantages of post-reading activities have not been fully made use of Inaddition, teachers and students encounter some difficulties related to thestudents’ level, time, etc; as a result, the implementation of these activitieshas not been effective All mentioned above, I have decided to suggestpost-reading activities I have ever taught my grade 12 students at my school.

II AIMS OF THE RESEARCH

- To introduce how to teach reading skills and post-reading part

- To show ways of teaching post-reading part

- To show how post-reading activities can be designed for teachingEnglish in grade 12 at Le Loi high school

- To draw out what the learners understand the reading texts and apply them to their daily life through post-reading activities

III SCOPE, OBJECT AND RESEARCHING METHOD

- Scope : Researching in the process of teaching English 12 at Le Loi high school

- Object: This subject is concerned with ways of organizing

post-reading activities in the class

- Researching method: Reading reference books , discussing with other teachers, applying in teaching, observing and drawing out experiences

B DISCUSSION

I POST- READING STAGE

1 The importance of reading

Reading is an activity of inferring meaning out of written symbols withthe collaborative work of cognitive behaviors and psychomotor skills(Demirel, 1992) Reading is described as the process of perception in terms

of written and published words with the help of senses, comprehension ofthese after building meaningful connections; intellectual and spiritualacquisition, active and communicative involvement with the written andpublished symbols, reception consisting of a number of perceptive andcognitive processes, an interpretation and also a reaction According toAlderson (1984), most scholars would suppose that reading is one of themost important skills for educational and professional success Inhighlighting the importance of reading comprehension Rivers (1981) statedthat reading is the most important activity in any language class, not only as

a source of information and pleasurable activity but also as a means ofconsolidating and extending one’s which are knowledge of the language

As Karakas (2002) pointed that the real objective of reading is fast andright grasp of the meaning Especially, reading at high speed along with fullcomprehension is a critical factor affecting the success of the students.Students who can read at a high speed, understand what is being read, have a

rich verbal repertoire and have a good master of the language, learn moreeasily and have higher rates of success The level of reading can bedesignated by asking questions about the reading text being read andevaluating the related answers in verbal or written way.

According to Eskey (1988) in advanced levels of second language theability to read the written language at a reasonable rate and with goodcomprehension has long been recognized to be as oral skills if not moreimportant

2 General views on post-reading activities

Definitions of post-reading activities

As language learning involves the acquisition of thousands of words,teachers and learners alike would like to know how vocabulary learning can

be fostered, especially in EFL settings where learners frequently acquireimpoverished lexicons, despite years of formal study Research indicates thatreading is important but not sufficient for second-language vocabularylearning, and that it should be supplemented by post-reading activities toenhance students vocabulary knowledge

Post reading activities play an important role in language teaching andlearning There are many reasons for its being important Firstly,learners come across it a lot in their daily lives Secondly, since the students

in this research are preparatory learners who are learning English foracademic purposes, that means students learn English for the examination.Therefore, without understanding the texts, they cannot learn anything, as aresult, cannot be successful in the exams Since post reading is an importantskill in language learning, it is necessary to define it According to Chastain(1998), post-reading activities help readers to clarify any unclear meaningwhere the focus is on the meaning not on the grammatical or lexical aspects

of the text Ur (1996) discusses summary as a kind of post-reading activitywhere the readers are asked to summarize the content in a sentence or two It

is also possible to give this post-reading activity in the mother tongue.Karakas (2002) proposes that the readers interpret the text and illustrate therelationship between the questions and their answers by using activities such

as summarizing, question and answer, and drawing conclusions and it ispossible to catch the missing parts of the mental picture through thinkingaloud, discussion and summarizing "Post-reading" (after, follow-up, beyondreading) exercises first check students' comprehension and then lead students

to a deeper analysis of the text, when warranted (Alderson, 2000)

The primary goal of post-reading activity is to make sure that satisfactorycomprehension was taken place If the person is looking for a number in atelephone directory, she or he should be very selective She/ he should scanthe directory for the number needed On the contrary, a researcher needs toread an article in detail to get the main ideas of the writer and to learn moreabout the subject Nevertheless, it can still be argued that any reading isselective Wallace (1992) shares the same idea by saying, Just as wefilter spoken messages in deciding what to attend to, so do we filter

written messages And even when we commit ourselves to a full reading, thatreading will still be selective, some parts being read with greater care thanothers.

3.The Post-/After Reading Stage

When the during-/whilst- reading stage is completed, the students areexpected to have obtained new information from the text This should bringabout a change of some kind such as they would know more, or think or feeldifferently from before Therefore, we ask, So what?, which leads to theconnection between the new information the students are now familiar withand their lives According to Nuttall (1996: 164) when intensive work in aduring-/whilst reading stage is completed, general comprehension must beintended to At this stage, the students should be able to evaluate the text as awhole to respond to it from a more or less personal point of view They may

be asked to agree or disagree with the author or the characters in the text;relate the content to their own experience; connect the content with otherwork in the same field; discuss characters, incidents, ideas, feelings orpredict what can happen afterwards

Common post reading activities are: creating stories or end of stories,producing posters, reconstructing texts, and questioning the text or views ofthe writer

4.The importance of post-reading activities.

Post-reading activities are simply activities done after during readingactivities are completed At this stage the students are in a temporary change

of state or condition, that is, they now know something they did not knowbefore They know some new vocabulary items, some new sentencestructures, some new idiomatic expressions, and they have new knowledgeabout a certain topic However, it is definitely not the right time for the class

to just call it a day How many times do we see lesson plans with good reading activities and well- planned during reading activities, but brief, classicpost-reading activities such as write the answers on a piece of paper, translateparagraph 2, write a sentence for each of the new words found in thetext, using a similar pattern, write about your house?

pre-Something must be done to help the students use what they now know sothat these new things will become more than just knowledge In a post-reading stage students are not studying about the language of the text and theyare not comprehending the text, either At the post-reading stage students aresupposed to apply what they possess

Post-reading activities are expected to encourage students to reflect uponwhat they have read The purposes of the activities are for the students to usethe familiar text as basis for specific language study, to allow the students torespond to the text creatively and to get the students to focus more deeply onthe information in the text For the new information to stay with them, thestudents need to go beyond simply reading the information to using it.Following up in the post-reading stage is critical to both comprehension,which is instruction sensitive, and obtaining and working on new

information, which takes the students to their real life situation designed after-reading activities usually require the learners to return to thetext several times and to reread it to check on particular information oflanguage use Students, individually or in groups, should have sample time toshare and discuss the work they have completed This enables the students totie up loose ends, answer any remaining questions, and to understand theinterrelationships of topics covered When readers are called on tocommunicate the ideas they have read, it is then that they learn toconceptualize and discover what meaning the text has to them Althoughteachers should be careful to spend just some time in the pre-reading stage,they are actually expected to spend more time in the post- reading stage withseveral activities A two- fold purpose is involved here, namely: students need

Well-to (1) recycle what they have obtained from the text and (2) go beyond thetext and enter the real world, equipped with the newly obtained information

5 What students gain from post-reading activities.

At least six principles in foreign language teaching learning by Brown(2007: 62-81) can be fulfilled From recycling some language components indifferent ways through different language skills, automaticity is certainly onits way Meaningful learning is carried out because at a post- reading stagestudents relate new information with their own life and experiences Eachstudent is asked to respond to parts of the text she or he has read Becausestudents are active in responding to the texts they have been, and the teacherputs himself in the background, students are empowered and to a certainextent, in control of the activities This may lead to students autonomy.Willingness to communicate, which involve students willingness to take risksand being self-confident, is gained because they are supposed to be well-prepared to do the post-activities When students are given different tasks,they have good opportunities to use the language, orally as well as written.This puts them in a position where they can develop their interlanguage.Finally, post-reading activities are not interested in the right versus wronganswers to comprehension questions anymore Students do not have to provethey understand the vocabulary and grammar of the text, anymore Therefore,students are not only taught to achieve linguistic competence but alsodiscourse and strategic competence, so communicative competence is alsotaken care of We can conclude that from post-reading activities, thestudents are developing themselves to achieve automaticity, meaningfullearning, autonomy, willingness to communicate, interlanguage, and com-municative competence

6 Interactive post-reading activities

Reading comprehension should not be alienated from the other skills(Harmer, 2007: 267) In reality, for example, we tend to talk about what wehave read, especially when the content is actual, interesting, un- expected,

or simply strange and unbelievable

Therefore, we may link reading and writing, for example, bysummarizing, note- making, mentioning what has been read in a letter We

might link reading and listening by comparing what we have heard to reading

a news report, comparing the song we heard from the radio to the song lyricdown- loaded from the internet Still, we might link reading and speaking bydiscussing what we have learned from a reading passage and retelling stories.There are many activities that will refine, enrich, and increase interest inthe as signed topic of a text However, the primary goal of the post readingphase is to further develop and clarify interpretations of the text, and to helpstudents remember what they have individually created in their minds fromthe text Good post-reading ac tivities should be able to get the students torecycle some aspects from their whilst- reading activities; to go beyond thetext; to share opinions, ideas, feelings; and to give reasons to communicate.There are various kinds of interactive post-reading activities that related

to other language skills The following activities are mostly taken fromBamford and Day (2004) and, after some adaptation, are proven to haveworked well in my classes

6.1 Interactive Post-reading Activities Focusing on Listening

6.2 Interactive Post-Reading Activities Focusing on Writing

6.3 Interactive Post-reading Activities Focusing on Speaking

6.4 Other Interactive Post-reading Activities

II POST-READING ACTIVITIES FOCUSING ON SPEAKING

1 Post-reading activities focusing on speaking.

Students are likely to understand more when they discuss with each otherwhat they have learned, so they must have special opportunities to orallydiscuss their opinions, feelings, and conclusions, from their reading activity.Some of the ways to do this include the following activities

1.1.TV reporters

Students can pretend to be television reporters with two minutes to sum

up the highlights of the story They work in small groups to decide on thehighlights which are written as news prompt on a laptop or a large piece ofpaper put on a stand

1.2.Main ideas list

Students list the five (or more) main ideas of the text beginning with themost important to the least (not following the order in the text) This can bedone in a Round Robin type of activity, in which each student is a group of 4-

5 students takes turn saying one main idea

1.3.Teacher-absent student

A student becomes the teacher and explains what was covered in classwith a student who was absent This is a good and meaningful activitybecause the students are trained to decide important aspects of a lesson Theactivity may become really entertaining when the teacher plays a role of areal teacher the class know

1.4 Debate

The students can take specific sides of a topic and debate an issue.Depending on the levels of students, the activity can range from the studentsjust mentioning likes and dislike to a real debate activity

1.5.Hot Seat

One student becomes the writer of a text or a character in a text,answering the class’ questions The questions can be creative, whose answersare not found in the text Here, there is aspect of unpredictability, which isone important characteristics of real communication Funny answers areexpected, and these are the interesting parts of the activity

1.6.Vanishing cloze

This activity helps the students memorize a poem by doing a clozeprocedure orally The teacher adds the blanks until no more words are left.Although it is a teacher-centered activity, the teacher can assign the students

to work in groups of four and at different point of the process the teacher andcall out students in different group to recite a certain part of the poem Togive equal chance to the students, this activity can be done in a NumberedHeads Together format

1.7.Team Review

Students review material already studied and share their knowledgewith other students This can be done in groups, where students move to othergroups to socialize their knowledge

1.8 Story Reading

This activity is meant for reading with an audience such as younglearners The reader of a text (usually a short fable, folk tale, fairy tale, orprocedure text) has to be well-prepared in terms of pronunciation, intonation,key or new vocabulary, when to pause and give comments, show pictures ormake use of media, or ask questions

1.9 Retelling (a strory)

In this activity, the story teller has to really know the story He or shehas to prepare the story and rehearse again and again so as not to make anylanguage mistakes when doing the actually story telling To help the teller tocommunicate his or her story as well as the audience to understand the story,some media such as puppets, cut-outs, realia, or animation on LCD, can beused

1.10 Interactive cross-word puzzle

The purpose of this activity is to recycle vocabulary items learnedfrom some reading texts The students work in pair in an information gapactivity, in which each member has a different set partially completed cross-word puzzle without clues The pair take turns asking each other so that theycan have the completed cross-word puzzle Because no clues are provided,

the student who has the answers should construct the clues to be guessed bythe other student in the pair.

1.11 Role-play

Role-play activities allow students to act out concepts For example, in a

computer technology class, after students read about the functions of thevarious computer components, the teacher could select students to act out theroles of the CPU, the monitor, the modem, and the printer

1.12 Quiz Questions

  After students read a chapter or section of a chapter in the course

textbook, ask them to develop questions for a quiz (This can also be done

with other reading materials.) This activity forces them to analyze theinformation in the chapter and decide on the most important concepts toremember

Formulating questions can also helpthem to organize the concepts into logicalchunks of information for easier retrieval Working in groups on this activity

is helpful for further discussion of concepts

Students can then present their questions to the class and see who cananswer them correctly The students trying to answer the questions may offersuggestions on how to write a question more clearly so that it can be easilyunderstood Teachers might also offer suggestions for revision of questions.Other SEA Site modules, for example, "WH-Questions" and "Passive Voice"can be useful for teachers in providing guidance in using structures that will

be more easily understood by students

2 Demonstration of activities usually used in teaching English 12 at Le Loi high school.

2.1 Tv reporter:

Examples : Unit 2 – Cultural diversity- Part A: Reading After you read

Work in groups Talk about “ What are the differences between a

traditional Vietnamese family and a modern Vietnamese family ?”

Teacher: Asks students to work in groups of 4 to talk about thedifferences between a traditional Vietnamese family and a modernVietnamese family.

+ Devides the role of each student in every group (One of themwill be the Tv reporter, the other will be the interviees)

+ Helps students to prepare the questions (wh-questions) related

to the family

Students: Prepare the questions related to the family

1 How many people are there in the family?