(SKKN HAY NHẤT) hiệu quả của việc sử dụng các truyện ngắn nhằm giúp phát triển kỹ năng đọc hiểu của học sinh THPT

From the point of view: students only read what they are interested in, the researcher come to the study of using short story in teaching reading.. 1.2 Aims of the study The study is to

SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

ĐỀ TÀI:

" HIỆU QUẢ CỦA VIỆC SỬ DỤNG CÁC TRUYỆN NGẮN NHẰM

GIÚP PHÁT TRIỂN KỸ NĂNG ĐỌC HIỂU CỦA HỌC SINH

THPT"

Part 1: Introduction

1 Reason for choosing the topic

It is assumed that the more students read, the better readers they become Therefore,

establishing students’ habits of reading is very necessary, especially in second language

learning

Being aware of the importance of learning reading skill, authors of new English 10

have chosen interesting topics for reading lessons with the aim to promote students in

reading and improve their reading comprehension However some of them are not

familiar with students' genre and reading in the text book only is not enough to enhance

students' interest in reading and reading comprehension Thonis, (1970) suggested:

Comprehension skills depend upon two major factors: the background of

experiences, from which concepts have been acquired, and the speed, accuracy, and

richness of meanings which students bring to word recognition The advancement of

skill in understanding what is read receives major emphasis during the intermediate

and high school years As students become more efficient readers, the written

language which they meet in books becomes a source for larger vocabularies, for

increased knowledge, and for deeper comprehension of themselves and the world

around them

Thus beside the reading texts in the text book students need to read more outside

class room to enrich their vocabulary as well as their background knowledge That means

students must read extensively

So many studies and researches have been conducted to find out ways to improve

reading effectiveness Recently, there have been a lot of researches about the effect of

extensive reading in improving students’ reading comprehension Colin Davis (1995:335)

suggested that any classroom will be the poorer for the lack of an extensive reading

program and will be “unable to promote its students’ language development in all aspects

as effectively as if such a program were present” He also claimed that such a program

will make students more positive about reading, improve their overall comprehension

skills, and give them a wider passive and active vocabulary Myuskens (1983) affirmed

that "with students at the beginning and intermediate levels, instructors can use literacy

text for language practice, reading comprehension and possible aesthetic appreciation”

Strong (1996) also stated that “extensive reading of literature can encourage students to

develop positive attitudes toward reading”

However, At My Hao high school, the teaching and learning reading are mostly

based on text book Therefore, the students seem not to be interested in reading lessons

Most of them feel reading is difficult and boring even they are afraid of reading Thus,

after reading a text they often don’t understand much about its content or they

misunderstand author’s ideas When studying in a reading lesson, students often

experience the lack of background knowledge as well as vocabulary about the topics they

are reading Other important reasons are their lack of motivation and time In the word of

foreign language, the most popular expression might be “practice makes perfect” That is

the reason why the teachers have to find ways to enhance students read more and to

improve their reading comprehension

From the point of view: students only read what they are interested in, the researcher

come to the study of using short story in teaching reading Because among literature

materials, short story seems to be the most suitable with high school students of all

Students at this age are curious and they like reading short stories Collie and Slater

(1991: 196) list the advantages of using short stories for language teachers: short stories

are practical as their length is long enough to cover entirely in one or two class sessions;

they are not complicated for students to work with on their own; they have a variety of

choice for different interests and tastes; and they can be used with all levels (beginner to

advanced), all ages (young learners to adults) and all classes (summer courses to evening

classes) Moreover short stories don’t take much time Students can read them at the

break, before going to bed, on the bus or when they are waiting for someone

With the above reasons I decided to do an action reaseach on using short stories as a

sort of extra reading materials with the aim to motivate students in reading and improving

their reading ability

1.2 Aims of the study

The study is to find down if the using short stories in teaching reading helps

motivate students at My Hao high school in reading and improving their reading ability

The overall purpose of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of the using short

story reading activities (as extra reading activities) at My Hao high school Thus survey

questionnaires and class observations are used to investigate the teachers and the students'

attitude towards the using short stories in teaching and learning reading as well as to

examine the students' preferences for students' reading activities applied by the

researcher

The results of the study show that both teachers and students are fully aware of the

sheer importance of short story reading activities to the students' comprehension Among

them, summarizing the story in spoken or written form appears to be the most interesting

activities After this activity, the students not only comprehend deeply the short story but

they also practice speaking and writing skills Secondly, the students find it easier to

comprehend the story by filling in relating problems or themes in the story to their real

life

2 Aim of the study

The study is to find down if the using short stories in teaching reading helps

motivate students at My Hao high school in reading and improving their reading abilities

3 Research questions

This action research aims at answering the following research questions:

1 What are the students' problems and causes of the problems in reading lessons?

2 What are students' attitude and preferences for the using short stories in teaching

reading?

a How do they find the short story reading activities that teacher applied?

b What benefits do they think the short story reading activities bring them?

c What short story reading activities do they like most to comprehend the story more effectively?

3 Does the using short stories in teaching reading help students improve their reading

comprehension?

4 Scope of the study

The research aims at applying the using short stories in teaching reading to grade 10

students at My Hao high school The subjects of the study are 50 students of class 10A3

(school year: 2011-2012) at My Hao high school including 22 males and 28 females The

age of those 50 students ranges from 16 to 17 Hopefully, the findings of the study may

be applied in teaching reading to students at My Hao high school and other high schools

in Vietnam

5 Methods of the study

 Methodology:

I designed this action research since it is the problem in my own class and I would

like to improve my students' reading skill It is a practical action because its purpose is to

research a specific school situation with a view toward improving practice reading, to

focus on a small-scale research project, to focus narrowly on a specific problem and to be

undertaken by an individual teacher within a high school

 Data collection instruments:

To answer the research questions of the study, the data are collected through

questionnaires, interviews, observations, and tests

6 Significance of the study

As mentioned above, learning reading is very important to students Therefore, to

raise students’ interest in reading and help them comprehend the text better, the applying

extra reading activities in teaching reading are very necessary

The aim of this study is to find out whether the using short stories in teaching

reading motivates students in reading and improves their reading comprehension

PART 2: development Chapter 1: Literature review

1.The importance of learning reading comprehension skills

Reading comprehension is what allows the readers to interact with the text in a meaningful way It’s the bridge from passive reading to active reading, from letters and

words to characters and contexts Reading comprehension is the crucial link to effective

reading - a strong factor in our educational and professional lives For many reasons,

reading comprehension also unlocks the door to a lifetime of reading recreation and

enjoyment Reading comprehension skills increase the pleasure and effectiveness of

reading In short, building reading comprehension skills require a long term strategy in

which all the reading skill areas (phonics, fluency, and vocabulary) will contribute to

success Thus, teachers should find out what skill areas that their students are bad at and

help them improve those ones

2 Motivation

If students are going to develop good reading skills, they’ll want to read People are more motivated to read if they are interested in the topic Research confirms that students'

motivation is a key factor in successful reading Harmer, J (2003;44) defined "motivation

is some kind of internal drive that encourages somebody to pursue a course of action."

Students' interest in reading is vital to the motivation and reading assignment (Collins, Decker, 1996.53) If a student is intrinsically motivated, the students desire to

read the materials because they are interested in it Another strategy that is used to

promote intrinsic motivation is to find topics that students are interested in learning more

about and have the students research it (Guthrie, Solomon, 1997;43) The students want

to read the material because they are so determined to learn more about the subject; they

will also want to work hard at it because they picked it out (Hunt, Lyman, 1997;21)

Beside intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation is not less important In this study, extrinsic motivation is considered as teacher's role in enhancing students to read as well

as sustaining students' interest in reading Harmer (2003) said that "clearly a major factor

in the continuance of a student's motivation is the teacher." The teachers are the people

who know best about their students, they will know how to enhance their students'

interest in reading and when to provide help to them The teachers are also students'

friends who share their difficulties in learning and from those difficulties they will find

the most suitable method of teaching to increase and direct their students' motivation

Thus, to make our students want to read, besides giving them interesting lessons with pleasant learning environment and various activities we need to provide them

materials that they are interested in or let them choose their own materials to read

3 Motivation in leaning reading short stories

3.1 Short stories and their benefits to high school students

When students are let to read materials that they are interested in they will want to

read more Wells C (1980;78) stated that “If reading has been pleasurable because the

students have been able to identify successfully (emotionally and intellectually) with the

text, and to organize the material, then the students will want to read more This desire

will set off a chain reaction which will lead to more reading, and the more the student

reads, the better he will read.”

To high school students, short stories seem to be the most suitable materials for extra

reading activities Erkaya (2005;75) said "short stories usually have a beginning, middle

and an end, they encourage students at all levels of language proficiency to continue

reading them until the end to find out how the conflicts is resolved” He also stated that "

short stories, for example, help students to learn the four skills listening, speaking,

reading, writing more effectively because of the motivational benefit embedded in the

stories and with short stories, instructors can teach literacy, culture, and higher-order

thinking benefit." Accordingly, what Hirvela and Boyle (1988;66) report is not

surprising: they examine students' attitudes towards four genres of literary texts (short

stories, novels, poetries and dramas) and state that their Hong Kong Chinese students

indicated short stories as the genre that is less feared and the second most enjoyed (43%;

the novel is the most enjoyed with 44%), since short stories are easy to finish and definite

to understand

In addition, short stories are the best path to improve your overall reading

comprehension Short stories are easy, not time consuming, and the plots are relatively

simple, with limited locations and characters In about an hour or so, you should be able

to read a short story, and then sit down and analyze the story from beginning to end You

should be able to identify the characters, what the story’s plot is about, and analyze the

plot from different angles This will teach you to see a system from different angles

“Thus short stories - they are simply, easy and fun But they can really improve your

reading comprehension”(Keith Johnson, 2008;77)

In conclusion, the answer to the question of why short stories are the most suitable

literary form to use in English classes lines in Edgar Allan Poe's definition of short

stories He defined it "as a narrative that can be read at one sitting of from one-half hour

to two hours, and that is limited to 'a certain unique or single effect', to which every detail

is subordinate" (Abrams, 1970;88) Since it is short, and aims at giving a single effect,

there is usually one plot, a few characters; there is no detailed description of setting So, it

is easy for the students to follow the story line of the work

3.2 Choosing the suitable short stories for high school students.

As it is mentioned above, of literacy genres, short stories seem to be the most

suitable one to use in crowded class due to its shortness However, there is no strict rule

to determine the length of short stories; as well as very short stories, there are longer

ones Therefore, it is the duty of the teacher to choose a story short enough to handle with

course hours "The shortness of the text is important for the students because they will

see that they can read, understand and finish something in English, and it will give the

students a feeling of achievement and self - confidence" (Zerrin Eren, 2004.98) To high

school students with the pre-intermediate language level the teacher can choose short

stories which have from two hundreds words to three hundred words in length

Beside the length of the work, there are some other important criteria that must be

considered while choosing the text Hill (1994;45) points out the basic criteria to be kept

in mind while choosing a literary text as follows:

- The need and abilities of the students

- The linguistic and stylistic level of the text

- The amount of background information required for a true

- Appreciation of the materials

In addition, the vocabulary and sentence structure of the short stories to be studied

must be suitable to the level of the students The short stories with archaic, slang, foreign

words, and allusions, having sentences imitating the speech of a particular locality or

ignorant people or foreigners must be avoided Similarly, very long sentences are difficult

for students to understand As students will not understand these sentences and words,

they will get bored and not read the work Therefore, before giving the short story, the

teacher should decide the readability of the text

Moreover, High school students are at teenage age, thus, the short stories for teenagers are important sources for teacher Sandra Lee McKay (2001: 322) and Wilga

Rivers (1968: 230) point out that students read and enjoy a text if the subject matter of

the text is relevant to their life experience and interests There are short stories written for

teenagers, although they are written for native speakers, "one way or another, they are

directly relevant to the life experience, thoughts, emotions, and dreams of young people"

(Rongqvist and Sell 1995: 44)

3.3 How to use short stories in teaching reading

Short stories studied must be assigned to the students previously

Each student's reading and understanding speed is not the same, and the course hours

are limited in high schools If the students read the chosen text beforehand, they will

understand the surface meaning or at least, have an ideal about the subject matter of the

story For the best use of the allocated time, the students must read the text before the class

meeting Before reading the text in class, the teacher should give very brief information

about the writer in order that the students can see the writer in the context of his/her time

 Using a graphic organizer or story map Following the reading of the text, the teacher may use a graphic organizer so that the

students can comprehend the story better A graphic organizer is "a visual aid that

displays the chunks of information to be studied" (Crandall, Jaramollo, Olsen and Peyton,

(2002: 2) Crandall et al (2002: 2) explain the advantages of using graphic organizers as

follows:

Graphic organizers can help teachers clarify their instructional goals Teachers can ask themselves what they want their students to learn and how they can display this

information graphically to help their students connect their ideas

A story map in particular will help students understand the components of the story

Crandall et al (2002;5) describe a story map as follows: "A story map is one example of

a graphic organizer A story map breaks down the components of a story- characters,

setting, and dialogue in a series of events or conflicts leading to resolution-into chunks of

text that can help students organize and comprehend the events of the story" Using a

story map, we can encourage our students to infer meaning from the text, and is able to

develop students' reading and speaking skills

Below is a model of a story map:

Adapted from the story map by Crandall et al (2002, p 2-3)

Beside the using story map, we can provide the students other activities to

comprehend the story The following activities are suggested by Joanne Collie and

Stephen Slater (1993;9)

Asking and answering questions relating problems or themes in the story to real life of the students This activity can be applied for pair work, group work or teacher and whole class

Doing multiple choice or true/false exercises that focus on new vocabulary and reading comprehension about the story

Title

ers

Event 1

Event 3 Event 2

Resolution

Theme of the story

Reordering the events of the story.

Summarizing the story in spoken or written form

Compare, note point of similarity and differences of content of the two stories with the same topic

Provide title for the story

Chapter 2: Research methodology

1 What is action research?

Action research is now becoming increasingly popular in language education It is a

process in which some decisions about the teachers' future practice result from problem

identification and analysis on daily practice

Action research is advantageous in many ways Glanz (1991.7) points out that, in the

first place, it is feasible because the research is done by the practitioner (the researcher) in

his/her own practical context and situation Although it is done in reasonable time, action

research brings immediate benefits to teaching practice In addition, he states that action

research directly affects a teacher' practice and enable him /her to renew the classrooms

and promote instructional improvement Finally, all the stages of action research are

implemented in a strict order which allows educators to systematically address to topics

and issues that affect teaching and learning in the classroom

With the above important reasons, an action research was selected to fulfill the

study

2 The setting and the participants

2.1 The setting of the study

The study was carried out at My Hao high school where the researcher has been

teaching English for eight years

2.2 The subjects of the study

The subjects of the study are 50 students of class 10A3 at My Hao high school

(school year: 2011-2012) including 22 males and 28 females The age of those 50

students ranges from 15 to 16 They all have learnt English for at least four years at

secondary school therefore, on average, they have a pre-intermediate level of English

language proficiency They have already studied reading skill for one term at My Hao

high school, and have finished eight units of the text book English 10 (Hoang Van Van

et al, 2007.9) In the second term they continue with the reading texts in this text book