(SKKN 2022) a study on communicative activities in teaching reading to 10th graders at tho xuan 5 high school

In real teaching in high school, not many teachers use communicative activities in English classes, especially in reading lessons.. Thus, I carry out a study on the communicative activit

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the study

Language is the most important means for people to communicate to each other Nowadays, with the non-stop development of society and the tendency of integration among the countries over the world, English becomes an official and effective international communicative language English is widely used in many fields of life such as science, technology, education, etc As a result, more and more people are studying English with the hope that they can meet the requirements of society in general and of their jobs in particular

In education, especially, for High school grade, English now is a compulsory subject not only in teaching and learning but also in many important examinations It is, therefore, comprehensible why nowadays students learning English with a great concern They not only study English because it is compulsory but also because they are interested in English and they are aware well of the importance of English for their job in the future

As a matter of fact, it is not easy to master a foreign language at all Learning English is not an exception It requires many sub-skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing Being a receptive skill, reading also has some certain requirements to the students, not just a process of understanding grammar structures mechanically In fact, many students are very good at grammar and vocabulary but they cannot finish the reading tasks successfully

Of course, there are many ways to teach reading skill, however, the given question is that which way is the most effective for the students Nowadays, we are trying to teach English in a communicative way Communicative activities, therefore, are becoming an essential part in language learning In real teaching in high school, not many teachers use communicative activities in English classes, especially in reading lessons They only teach students reading skills through mechanical drills in the textbook Thus, I carry out a study on the communicative activities in English reading classes to somewhat help students to improve their reading skill in particular and their language competence in general

For the reasons above, I decide to choose the topic “A study on Communicative Activities in teaching reading to 10th graders at Tho Xuan 5 high school” as the solution to improve reading skill

1.2 Purpose of the study and research questions

The purpose of the study are as follows:

- To provide some basic knowledge ranging from Communicative Activities to Reading Skill

- To make an investigation into the real situation of using communicative activities in teaching and learning English reading skill at Tho Xuan 5 High school

- To provide some suggested communicative activities to partly improve reading skills for the 10th form students

To fully achieve these aims, the study has to answer the following questions:

1 What are the students’ attitudes towards the communicative activities

in teaching English reading lessons?

2 What kinds of Communicative Activities can be applied in English reading classes to improve reading skill for the grade 10th students?

1.3 Scope of the study

Although there are many ways to motivate students to learn English, it is impractical to cover them all in this paper Due to the limited time and length of

a minor thesis, I choose to focus my research on communicative activities in teaching reading at Tho Xuan 5 High school The student focus group is comprised of 45 students of grade 10 at this school

1.4 Methods of the study

The instrument to collect the data used in this study is the questionnaire that has been delivered to 45 students in grade 10th at Tho Xuan 5 High school

The researcher chose this method because it has some advantages According to Gillham (2000), the advantage of using questionnaires is that there

is less pressure for an immediate response Instead, the respondents can complete the questionnaire at a relaxing pace when it suits them; they are not “under pressure interview bias” First, the responses are gathered in a standardized way,

so questionnaires are quite objective Second, it is relatively quick to collect the information using a questionnaire Finally, potential information can be collected from a large portion of a group by using questionnaire

In this study, the questionnaires are delivered to students to investigate their attitude towards the communicative activities applied in English reading lessons, the real situation of using communicative in English reading lessons Questionnaires are also delivered to teachers to investigate the communicative activities that they use in teaching reading English lessons

The questionnaire for teachers has 14 questions aim at getting exactly information of teaching reading at Tho Xuan 5 High school

The questionnaire for students has 10 questions aims at getting exactly information of learning reading at Tho Xuan 5 High school

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT

This chapter review the literature related to the study Firstly, it gives communicative activities in language teaching and learning process and characteristics of communicative activities And finally, it gives definition of reading, principles for teaching reading in a CLT classroom and types of

communicative activities in reading classes

2.1 Literature Review

2.1.1 Communicative activities

2.1.1.1 Communicative activities in language teaching and learning process

In the language classrooms, both teachers and students try their best to control over the language that students use by organizing it into manageable portions to be developed though communicative activities Then, what are communicative activities?

The definition of communicative activities was discussed by Klipple (1991) when he revealed that the term “communicative activities is used to refer to any operation which is used to consolidate language already taught or acquired and which occurs during the free stage of a lesson or students can produce meaningful and authentic utterances without the controlling influence of the teacher or the course” It means that every time a learner uses a language that they are learning, say English, either productively or receptively, he or she involves in these kinds of activities

In a nutshell, communicative activities are those that involve learners in using the language for communicative rather than display purposes that focus on fluency rather than accuracy and which involve learners in pair or group work as

a setting for that communication

2.1.1.2 Characteristic of communicative activities

Communicative activities are designed to encourage the purposeful and meaningful interaction between students in a language lesson It is, therefore, important for teachers to be fully aware of their characteristics so that they can use them effectively

Harmer (1991) lists 6 distinctive characteristics of communicative activities when they are contrasted with non-communicative ones They are presented as follows

Non-communicative activities Communicative activities

1 The students have no desire to

communicate

2 They have no communicative

purposes

3 The emphasis is on the form of the

language, not its content

4 Only one language item will be the

focus of attention

5 The teacher will often intervene to

correct mistakes, nominate students

and ensure accuracy

6 The materials will be specially

designed focus on a restricted amount

of language

1 The students should have communicative desire

2 They have communicative purposes

3 The attention should be centered on the content not the language form

4 They will have to deal with a variety of language

5 The teacher should not intervene

6 No materials control

In summary, it is of great importance to distinguish the characteristics of these two kinds so that teachers and students of a language can make the best use

of communicative activities in the process of learning and teaching

2.1.2 Reading skill

2.1.2.1 Definition of reading

Reading is one of the four major basic skills in learning any foreign language “Reading is the process of constructing meaning through the dynamic interaction among the reader’s existing knowledge, the information suggested by the text being read and the context of the reading situation” (Cited from http://www.michiganreading.org)

According to Nunan (1991), reading is basically a matter of decoding series

of written symbols into the aural equivalent He also explains that “the reader processes each letter as it is encountered These letters are matched with the phonemes of the language, which it is assumed the reader already knows…” (P 64) Nunan emphasizes the decoding skills when reading

However, Goodman (1967) has another approach to reading He called reading a “psycholinguistic” guessing game, the reader make use of the 3 cueing systems: the semantic, the syntactic and the graphophonic

In order to develop reading, we need to put reading in social context Learners are socialized into reading and the motivation for learning to read not

only or even primarily for enjoyment or information, but because the aspiring reader wants to gain access to a “community of reader” (Walace: 1988)

Through the concepts of reading, we can conclude that reading is decoding every letters in text, adding three cueing systems and putting text in social context We can understand all information that exists in text and adding our knowledge about life, society, cultural: consequently, we can predict what the text intend Thus, it is necessary tor the students learning how to read in an effective way

2.1.2.2 Types of communicative activities in reading classes

Littlewood (1981) divides communicative activities into functional communication activities and social interaction activities For the functional communication activities, the main purpose is that learners should use the language they know in order to get meaning across as effectively as possible Success is measured primarily according to whether they cope with communicative demands of the immediate situation Some examples of these activities are questions and answers, interviews based on a text, information-gap activities, role-play, etc

In addition, the social interaction activities place emphasis on social as well

as functional aspects of communication Learners must not only aim to convey meanings effectively but also pay greater attention to the social contexts in which the interactions take place Success is now measured not only in terms of the functional effectiveness of the language but also in terms of the acceptability

of the forms that are used In the early stages of learning, acceptability may mean little more than a reasonable degree of accuracy in pronunciation and grammar Later, it will increasingly come to include producing language appropriate to specific kind of social situations because of the limitation of the classroom; simulation and role-playing are now important techniques for creating a wider variety of social situations and relationships

Basing on medium of communication, communicative activities can also be classified into two types: oral and written communicative activities according to Nguyen Thi Van Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong (2007)

For the first type of communicative activities, there are various sub-types of activity which help to promote oral communication in the classroom such as Reaching a consensus, Relaying instructions, Communication games, Problem solving, Interpersonal exchange, Story construction and stimulation and Role play

For the second one, there are also various sub-types which help promote written communication in the classroom such as Relaying instructions, Exchange letters, Writing games, Fluency writing, Story construction and Writing report, and Advertisements

In summary, this chapter shows us the aims, characteristics and the teacher and learner roles in CLT; the communicative activities in language teaching and learning process and characteristics of communicative activities Especially, it gives definition of reading, principles for teaching reading in a CLT classroom and types of communicative activities in reading classes There are researchers giving criteria for the aspects of CLT in the process of teaching reading and they also show their ideas and evaluation for these aspects In addition, whether those ideas are right or wrong, we will investigate them in the next parts

2.2 Research context

2.2.1 Real situation of Teaching and Learning English at Tho Xuan 5 High School

Tho Xuan 5 High School was founded in 2003 in a mountainous area Most of the students in Tho Xuan 5 High School have quite poor learning conditions The students here do not have much time for learning, especially for learning English There is only a small number of students paying attention to learning English It is easy to understand why teaching English seems more difficult and complicating for these students than those from the other high schools

As a matter of fact, a successful class is the one in which students play the center role and communicative competence is the goal of teaching Therefore, it

is actually necessary for the teacher to monitor the class in such a way that students have as many chances as possible to communicate with each other when fulfilling a task Using communicative activities is one of the most effective ways They help students to become more active and more confident when they express their understanding about the reading text Through communicative activities the students also understand the lesson better In fact, communicative activities are available, however, how and in what way to apply those activities

in real teaching and learning English is still a question for many teachers

The teaching practice at Tho Xuan 5 High School has made me realize that teaching and learning English quite boring; students sometimes not motivated in learning the lessons I has also had a chance to observe English reading classes taught by all of six teachers in Tho Xuan 5 High School It is obvious that each teacher has their own ways to teach English reading and guide students to solve reading tasks in the textbook Nowadays, we are trying to teach English following Communicative Approach However, the fact is that many teachers still use the traditional method of teaching They mainly focus on grammatical structures and vocabulary They guide students how to use English grammar to do exercises in the textbook Some teachers also teach their students how to translate a piece of English language into Vietnamese one

For reading skill in particular, some teachers often use only the textbook again and again They teach students by asking them to follow the mechanical drills in the textbook Therefore, most of the students have no intrinsic motivation in learning English reading As a result, English reading skills of students at Tho Xuan 5 High School is not good There are also some teachers providing extra communicative activities in reading classes In such classes, the students are able to complete successfully the reading tasks and understand the reading passage better In addition, the students feel more interested in reading lessons and have more motivation in their English learning as well Therefore, the result of English learning will be higher

I have also had the opportunity to check the effectiveness of applying reading communicative activities in teaching reading when I give the lessons to the students I have seen that by using communicative activities, the students have had more motivation in joining the lessons and they have also understood the text more thoroughly

To sum up, using communicative activities in English reading classes brings many benefits for students in learning English Therefore, it should be widespread applied in teaching and learning English Consequently, the students will not only improve their reading skills but also other language skills will be better day by day

2.2.2 Participants

2.2.2.1 The students

The number of students participating in this study is 45 They are in grade

10th of Tho Xuan 5 High school during the school year 2021 – 2022

2.2.2.2 The teachers

In this study, the researcher investigates 5 teachers who are teaching at English faculty in Tho Xuan 5 High school

2.2.3 Materials

Our school’s 10th Grade English Language textbook “Tieng Anh 10” (Van, Hoang Van et al, 2006) It is a traditional textbook structured with a priority towards theme based or topic based learning models The textbook has desirable aims of providing students with a foundational knowledge of numerous fields, a favorable attitude towards the English Language, and the four skills generally recognized as building proficiency in language study: Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing

In order to achieve these objectives, the content of the book is designed to utilize themes with which all students will be familiar Included are topics related to the student’s social lives, to sports, to work, and to leisure activities

universal experiences For each topic, related vocabulary and word studies are presented communicatively There are 6 themes: “You and me”, “Education”,

“Community”, “Recreation”, “Nature and Environment”, and “People and places” The book contains sixteen units, with each unit presenting five lessons with four different skills and a language focus Reading is the first unit in each lesson, guiding students to key words and phrases of the related topic which then become “building blocks” that enable them to learn additional skills

Some tasks in the text book are difficult while some others are not really challenging This disparity requires teachers to creatively motivate students by adapting exercises to their interest levels Being effective at this adaptive skill is what sets teachers apart (average from excellent) worldwide

2.2.4 Some communicative activities applied in the research

As mentioned above, communicative activities are various and can be applied in teaching all four language skills Thus, within this study, I only suggest some communicative activities in English reading classes to the 10th form students I hope that these activities will help students understand the text most effectively and partly improve their reading skills

2.2.4.1 Out of ten

* Types of activity: pair or group work

* Aims: This activity aims at checking students’ understanding about the content

of the text and improving students’ interaction in the class as well

* Instruction:

The teacher asks the students to write the numbers from 1 to 10 after each

sentence in the text Number “1” means “I understood almost nothing in this sentence”, number “10” means “I understood everything in this sentence” The

numbers from 2-9 are arranged following the degree of the students’ understanding from the lower degree to the higher one

Let the students work in pairs or groups Students show their scores to each other and then the students with the higher score will help the lower one understand more

* Application:

Almost of units in the textbook can apply this type of activity for the post-reading part After finishing post-reading tasks in while-post-reading, the teacher can ask the students to move around class to ask each other about whatever they do not understand in the text

2.2.4.2 Finding Synonyms

* Types of activity: pair work or group work

* Aims: This kind of activity can help students enrich their vocabulary and from that they can understand the text better

* Instruction:

Asking the students to find 5-6 favorite words from the text (they should

be important words in the text) and then discuss in groups to find the synonyms

of these words Each student has their own words Thus, after exchanging the ideas in groups, students can enrich their vocabulary Moreover, because the students know more words in the text, their understanding about the text is also improved

* Application:

The teacher can apply this type of activity independently or combine it with matching tasks in while-reading After first reading, the teacher asks the students to work in groups to discuss about the synonyms of their favorite words Through this activity, the students can do matching tasks more easily Many units in the new textbook can use this kind of activity such as:

Unit 3: People’ Background (Task 1)

Unit 4: Special Education (Task 1)

Unit 7: The Mass Media (Task 1)

Unit 10: Conservation (Task 1)

2.2.4.3 Get it wrong

* Types of activity: pair work or group work

* Aims: This activity is for detailed checking of the text for specific information

or summarizing the reading text

* Instruction:

The teacher prepares a summary passage (including some deliberate mistakes) of the text, copies it into many pieces as the hand-outs and delivers them to each pair or group of students After that, the teacher asks the students to discuss to cross out the mistakes and substitute the correct information

* Application:

“Get it wrong” activity can be used for both while-reading and

post-reading parts In some lessons, the teacher can combine this activity with True/ False tasks to conduct a summary passage including both right and wrong information The following units can apply this kind of activity:

* Unit 3: People’s Background (Task 2)

* Unit 7: The Mass Media (Task 2)

* Unit 10: Conservation (Task 2)

* Unit 14: The World Cup (Task 3)

2.2.4.4 Students Interview

* Types of activity: pair work or group work

* Aims: This activity can help students improve their scanning skill by asking and answering questions to get information about the text

* Instruction:

Students should come up with a variety of questions relating to the passage and go around class to interview other students about the information they need

* Application:

This type of activity can be applied in while-reading and post-reading as well For while-reading, the teacher can combine it with the task “Answering the questions” Students can use both the given questions in the task and their own questions to interview each other For post-reading, this activity can be used for free talking Students can move around the class and ask any question relating to the passage to help them understand the text thoroughly Almost every unit in the textbook can apply this kind of activity

2.2.4.5 Completing Network

* Types of activity: group work or whole class

* Aims: Improving students’ vocabulary and checking their understanding about the text by finding out related information basing on a key word

* Instruction:

The teacher gives a key word on the board and then asks students to find out as much as possible the words relating that key word (the key word is about the main point of the passage)

* Application:

The teacher can use this activity for pre-reading or post-reading part in almost every unit in the textbook For example, in unit 16 “Historical Places”, the teacher can check students’ understanding about the passage by asking them

to complete the network below:

Suggested answers:

Population

Van Mieu – Quoc Tu Giam

Historical and cutural site Buit in 1070

Ly

dynasty