Những giải pháp cơ bản để thực hiện kế hoạch phát triển kinh tế xã hội 5 năm (2001-2005) tỉnh Yên Bái

Những giải pháp cơ bản để thực hiện kế hoạch phát triển kinh tế xã hội 5 năm (2001-2005) tỉnh Yên Bái

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES

nguyen thi huyen

INTO the reality of teaching reading to the second -year students at national

Economics university

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree

of Master of Arts in Tesol.

SUPERVISOR : Nguyen thai ha, MA

Hanoi October, 2006

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I certify that the thesis entitled “An investigation into reading strategies oflearners in reading classes at The Military Political Academy” and submitted inpartial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL)

is the result of my own work, except where otherwise acknowledged, and that thisminor thesis or any part of the same has not been submitted for a higher degree toany other university or institution

The Hanoi University of Foreign Studies approved the research proceduresreported in this thesis

Signed :

Dated :

TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I TABLE OF CONTENTS II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS IV ABSTRACT V LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS VI LIST OF TABLES VII

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 B ACKGROUND TO THE THESIS 1

1.2 T HE AIMS OF THE STUDY 3

1.3 R ESEARCH QUESTIONS 3

1.4 O UTLINE OF THE THESIS 3

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 D EFINITION OF READING 5

2.2 L ANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES 7

2.2.1 Reading strategies 7

2.2.2 Definition of language learning strategies 8

2.2.3 Characteristics of language learning strategies 9

2.2.4 Classification of language learning strategies 10

2.3 F ACTORS INFLUENCING READING STRATEGIES CHOICE OF LANGUAGE LEARNERS 11

2.3.1 Proficiency 12

2.3.2 Motivation 13

2.4 R EADING IN SECOND AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE 15

2.5 P REVIOUS STUDIES ON READING STRATEGIES 16

2.6 C ONCLUSION 19

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY 20

3.1 R ESEARCH QUESTIONS 20

3.2 D ESCRIPTION OF VARIABLES 20

3.3 T HE SETTING OF THE STUDY 20

3.4 D ATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS 21

3.4.1 Test 22

3.4.2 Questionnaire 24

3.5 A NALYZING DATA 26

3.5.1 Coding scheme for the use of reading strategies in students’ reading comprehension 26

3.5.2 Coding scheme for the use of reading strategies while doing reading tasks 27

3.5.3 Coding Scheme for factors influencing MPA learners’ reading strategy choice 27

3.6 C ONCLUSION 28

CHAPTER IV: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 29

4.1 W HAT READING STRATEGIES ARE USED BY DIFFERENT LEARNER GROUPS AT THE MPA IN THEIR READING COMPREHENSION ? 29

4.2 W HAT READING STRATEGIES DO THE EFFECTIVE AND INEFFECTIVE LEARNERS USE WHILE THEY ARE DOING READING TASKS ? 31

4.3 W HAT FACTORS INFLUENCE LEARNERS ’ LEARNING STRATEGY CHOICE ? 44

4.4 D ISCUSSION 47

4.5 S UMMARY 49

CHAPTER V: IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION 50

5.1 F INDINGS 50

5.2 I MPLICATION OF THE STUDY TO STRATEGY TRAINING 51

5.2.1 Enhancing learners’ awareness of the use of reading strategies 51

5.2.2 Teacher and students’ role in activities of strategy training 52

5.3 L IMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 54

5.4 S UGGESTION FOR FURTHER STUDIES 55

5.5 C ONCLUSION 55

REFERENCES 58

APPENDIX 1 66

APPENDIX 2.1 68

APPENDIX 2.2 75

APPENDIX 3 82

Appendix 4 83

My special words of thanks also go to the Management Board of the Graduate Department of the Hanoi University of Foreign studies for theirconsideration and enthusiasm in helping me to pursue the course.

Post-My particular thanks go to Ms Nguyen Thai Ha, M.A (TESOLT), a seniorlecture at Hanoi University of Foreign Studies, the Deputy Dean of post graduateDepartment for her useful advice, criticism and support while the research wasbeing done

I would also like to thank my collueges at Military Political Academy and mystudents in the two classes of BT4A, BT4B for their participation and support Finally, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my husband and mychildren for their love, great encouragement and support to me to fulfill thisthesis

This study is an investigation into reading strategies of different groups oflearners in reading classes at the Military Political Academy It purposes to findout the reading strategies used by different groups of MPA learners in theirreading comprehension, especially while they do reading tasks, and look at thefactors influencing their reading strategy choice The participants of this studywere forty-eight students at varied levels of English proficiency An experimentalmethod was chosen as the methodological approach underpinning this study Test, questionnaire and interview were used to gather data, which then analysed.The findings indicate first, learners at the Military Political Academy used sixgroups of reading strategies that offered by Oxfords (1990) at different degrees intheir reading comprehension Among them, metacognitive strategies rank first,next come social strategies Second, the effective and ineffective learners’ uses ofreading strategies vary across the six reading strategy groups The former tended

to use metacognitive, social and cognitive strategies at higher degree than didineffective ones while they do reading tasks Final, MPA learners are moststrongly motivated by instrumental motivation although they were alsoinfluenced by integrative and intrinsic motivation and they are not fully aware ofthe use of reading strategies despite the fact that they used some kinds of readingstrategies in their reading As for the implications of the study, some suggestionsare recommended for strategy training to MPA learners such enhance thelearners’ conception of the use of reading strategies in their learning readingcomprehension and implication for classroom learning and teaching

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EFL : English as a foreign language

ESL : English as a second language

SIIL : Strategy inventory for language learning

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 : Summary of the analysis of the SILL

Table 4.1 : A Comparison of the use of RSs between effective and ineffective

learners across six groups of RSs

Table 4.2.1 : The reading strategies used by two groups of sample at the

pre-reading stage

Table 4.2.2 :The reading strategies used by two groups of sample at the

while-readingTable 4.2.3 : The reading strategies used by two groups of sample at the post-

reading stage

Table 4.3 : Summary of the analysis of informants’ reasons for learning

English

CHAPTER i: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the thesis

English is one of the most important of Vietnam’s foreign languages It is usednot only by Vietnamese to communicate with native speakers of English but also

as an important international language in communicating with people from native English countries Although English functions as a foreign language,Vietnamese who are likely to be in contact with foreigners in various areas, forexample, education, politics, tourism, industry, business and in general socialcontexts, need considerable proficiency in English In fact, many peoplenowadays realize that a command of English has become essential for their futureoccupations, since it is a pre-requisite for success in both the public and privatesectors

non-Of the four macro skills in language (listening, speaking, reading and writing),there has been growing and justified concern about reading in Vietnam Thisconcern is due to the increasing amount of printed English material in the society.Various sources of modern knowledge and technology needed in developing thecountry at large are usually reported in English Proficient readers in English arehigh demand

In connection with the matters, in recent years, together with the increasing needsfor English learning at colleges or universities in the Army in general and at theMPA in particular, great efforts have been made to improve the quality of theteaching reading To meet the demand of the state military, every year, the MPAtrains about one thousand political officers at different levels, who are not onlyexpected to be competent at their specialties but also have good knowledge offoreign language Every year, about a thousand officers at different levels,hundreds of potential teachers and many post-graduate students of different socialsciences and humanities are trained here Foreign language is a compulsorysubject at the MPA, because it is very important and necessary for the learners’future work After the course, they will have to read different materials written inEnglish such as academic texts from their specialist subjects, newspapers, reports,the world’s military information, politics and economics, etc, from a number ofdifferent sources

In teaching and learning English as a foreign language at the MPA, reading hasalways received a great deal of attention Teaching English at the MPA provides

the students with the abilities to understand the written materials and tocommunicate in English Furthermore, English is taught and learnt in a non -native environment That is why reading is not only an important means to gainknowledge but also a means by which further study takes place

According to Carrell (1988:1), “if we consider the study of English as a foreignlanguage around the world - the situation in which most English learners findsthemselves - reading is the main reason why students learn the language” This isparticularly true to the students of the English Department at the MPA It iscrucial for them to acquire the ability to read English efficiently and effectively

However, students at the MPA do not seem to be good at reading In the past, atthe MPA, English teachers focused only on the teaching of grammatical rules,ignoring how sentences were used in the performance of communicative acts Inteaching reading, teachers paid too much attention to the explanation of languagepoints, but failed to help students analyze the connection between sentences, or tofind out the main ideas of a text Consequently, what the students gained was just

a little knowledge about language As the result, the students had no ability tounderstand the text as a whole

Most learners complain that there are too many new words and complicatedsentences throughout the whole English reading texts However, reading does notonly involve the understanding of what words or sentences mean on the surface,but it also involve the logic and value relations between sentences

Some other learners think that it is difficult to understand the English textbecause of lacking background knowledge And some students say their readingskills are very poor only because they do not know how to get the meaning ofsome new words which appear in the texts In this sense, they even cannotunderstand “skills” very well The notion of “skills” in learners’ minds is limited

All the above show that learners focus too much on the texts, while they ignoretheir own abilities to infer the meaning Actually, reading is a cognitive process

“whereby the meaning of a text is recreated or reconstructed by the reader” (Shi,2000: 28) Therefore, it is necessary to arouse learners’ awareness of their ownways to read and help learners get some ideas of how to read From theexperiences in learning and teaching English as a foreign language, theresearcher finds it necessary to study learning strategies, which can help MPAlearners, especially in learning reading comprehension

1.2 The aims of the study

The aim of the study is to examine what reading strategies are used by the thirdyear students at MPA in their learning reading comprehension and look at thefactors affecting their reading strategies choice And the research aims to arousethe awareness of the learners’ own way to read and to get some new ideas toimprove their reading skills

1.3 Research questions

The research was carried out to answer the following questions:

1 What reading strategies are used by different learner groups at the MPA intheir reading comprehension?

2 What reading strategies do the effective and ineffective learners use whilethey are doing reading tasks?

3 What factors influence the learners’ reading strategy choice?

1.4 Outline of the thesis

This thesis is divided into five chapters below

Chapter I, the Introduction, states the research problem, the aims and the outline

of the thesis

Chapter II, Literature Review, presents briefly some general theories related toreading and reading strategies, terminological definitions, classification systemsand major characteristics of learning strategies This is followed by a discussion

of factors affecting the reading strategy choice of the learners at the MPA

Chapter III discusses the methodology and the procedures by which the study hadbeen carried out such as selections of samples, instruments for data gathering,and methods of data analysis

In Chapter IV analyses the results obtained from the investigation The datacollected are quantitatively and qualitatively analysed The differences in the use

of reading strategies in students’ learning reading comprehension between thetwo learner groups and the factors influencing their reading strategy choice arecompared and analyzed

In Chapter V, the conclusion mentions some applications of the study for strategytraining to students at the MPA, the limitation of the work, and makessuggestions for further studies, and conclusion.

CHAPTER ii: LITERATURE REVIEW

In the field of second language acquisition, language learning strategies areattracting a great number of language teachers and researchers’ consideration.Language learning strategies investigations attempt to identify, describe andclassify specific language learning strategies used by second or foreign languagelearners to facilitate their own learning (Oxford, 1985b) This chapter will begin

by reviewing important background theory on reading model and readingstrategies as a basis for the present research and relevant literature related tolearning strategies, which contain terminological definitions, classificationsystems and major characteristics of language learning This is followed by adiscussion of factors affecting the language learning strategy choice of languagelearners such as motivation and personality traits Finally, it provides an overview

of previous studies that involved language learning strategies used for improvingreading competence This review is done with the purpose of providing atheoretical foundation for an investigation into reading strategies used by students

at the Military Political Academy, especially the strategies that help them toimprove their reading competence

2.1 Definition of reading

Reading has been defined in various ways Smith (1982) stated that “reading is animprecise, hypothesis-driven process, and the reader contributed more than didthe visual symbols on page” Goodman (1985: 815) mentioned that “there is anessential interaction between language and thought in reading The writerencodes thought as language and the reader decodes language to thought” Thereader’s thought and behavior play an important role in reading

Later Grabe (1991: 37) argued that “reading is flexible, the reader employs arange of strategies to read efficiently” Recently, there has been a shift inattention from a focus on the product of reading to emphasis on determining thestrategies that readers use in reading context In the present study, the argument

is that reading strategies play an important role in the whole reading process

With regard to reading processes, three general descriptions of reading:

bottom-up, top-down, or interactive, have been developed over years

Bottom-up models have not been favored by second language researchers, butthey provide some insights into the second language reading research In bottom-

up reading models, the reader begins with the written text, and constructsmeaning from the letters, words and phrases “Following an information-processing approach to comprehension, bottom-up models analyze reading as aprocess in which small chunks of text are absorbed, analyzed, and graduallyadded to the next chunks until they become meaningful” (Barnett, 1989: 13).

Goodman (1982) and Smith (1982) challenged this view, and argued that readingwas a top-down models, the reader uses his or her expectations and previousunderstanding to guess about text content Although top-down models have givenway to interactive models, they have made a great contribution to secondlanguage reading theory

Interactive models of reading were developed over time According to Anderson

& Pearson’s (1984), the interactive model was namely a schema- theoretic model:

Readers may compensate for insufficient knowledge in a particular area,such as word recognition of syntactic knowledge (bottom-up skills), byrelying heavily on other knowledge sources, such as topic recognition or use

of genre or content schemata ( top- down skills) in order to comprehendtexts (Stanovich, 1980: 35)

The schema-theoretic model focuses on “how the reader’ schemata, or knowledgealready stored in memory, function in the process of interpreting new informationand allowing it to enter and become a part of the knowledge store” (Carrell, 1988:10) Background knowledge really plays an integral role in readingcomprehension

2.2 Language learning strategies

2.2.1 Reading strategies

Strategy derives from the ancient Greek word “strategia ” and means generalship

or art of war In general, strategy means a plan, step, or conscious action toward

the achievement of an object (Oxford, 1990: 8) Nowadays, the term strategy is used widely in language learning teaching and learning methodology to refer to

procedures used in learning, thinking, etc which serve as a way of reaching agoal In language learning, strategies are those conscious or unconsciousprocesses which language learners make use of in learning and using a language(Richards, 2000: 445)

Second language reading is a process of how the mind functions during readingrather than the product of reading The focus on individual readers’ abilities tocope with specific texts and textual elements makes readers’ strategies integral to

a study of the second language reading process Readers use strategies in varyingways to activate appropriate schemata, to guess meaning of unknown words, tofollow unfamiliar syntax, to decide what to glean from the text An explicitdefinition of the term “reading strategy” is provided by Olshavsky as “apurposeful means of comprehending the author’s message” (1977: 656) Blockstated that “reading strategies indicate how readers conceive a task, what textualcues they attend to, how they make sense of what they read, and what they dowhen they do not understand”

In fact, the interest in reading strategies is part of a wider interest in languagelearning strategies, especially in L2 contexts So as to understand more aboutreading strategies and language learning strategies, relevant literature of languagelearning strategies will be presented in the next section

2.2.2 Definition of language learning strategies

In her study, Tarone (1981) described language learning strategies as a part oflearner strategies that refer to what the learner does to learn and to adjust his / herown learning of second or foreign language such as steps, plans, any sets ofpreparations, even employing their customs to facilitate the selecting, storage,retrieval and use of information

In another her research, Tarone (1981) proposed that it is possible to dividelearner strategies into three types: learning strategies, communicative andproduction strategies Although all these strategies can contribute directly orindirectly to the language learning process, the former relates to second languagelearning, the later two involve using second language learning In other word,while learning strategies are the means by which the learner deals with the secondlanguage input in order to develop linguistic knowledge, communication andproduction strategies pertain to output, because these strategies allow the learner

to employ second language knowledge they have already acquired efficiently,clearly with minimum effort, and communicate meaning for which they lack theessential linguistic knowledge (Ellis, 1986; Brown, 1994)

O’Malley and Chamot (1993:1) depicted learning strategies as “the specialthought or behaviors that individuals use to help them comprehend, learn, or

techniques, approaches or deliberate actions that students take in order tofacilitate the learning and recall of both linguistic and content area information.These authors have also extended the sphere of description of learning strategies,which may include:

focusing on selected aspects of new information, analyzing andmonitoring information during acquisition, organizing or elaborating on newinformation during the encoding process, evaluating the learning when it iscompleted, or assuring oneself that the learning will be successful in order toallay anxiety (O’Malley and Chamot, 1993: 43)

Similarly, this view is also advocated by Oxford (1990) She has expanded thisdefinition by saying that learning strategies are specific actions taken by thelearner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, moreeffective and transferable to new situations Perhaps, the best way to understandwhat is meant by learning strategies is to look at major characteristics oflanguage learning strategies

2.2.3 Characteristics of language learning strategies

Researchers of learner strategies have confirmed that language learning strategiesmay play a significant role in their language learning process (e.g Oxford, 1990;Wenden and Rubin, 1987) Studies show that strategies contribute to stimulatinglearners’ development of communicative competence in general and thosestrategies themselves may work in specific ways to foster aspect of thatcompetence For instance, social strategies help learners increase interaction anddevelop a more empathetic understanding to attain communicative competence.Such strategies consist of cooperative learning with others, asking questions andbecoming culturally aware and may powerfully enhance learners’ discourse andsociolinguistic competence and encourage greater amounts of authenticcommunication (Oxford, 1990)

Wenden and Rubin (1987) found that adult learners who use effective strategiesare better able to make their own opportunities for practice in using the languageinside and outside the classroom In addition, learning strategies also allowlearners to become more self - directed and to have a better understanding of andcontrol of their own learning process so that they can learn inside and outside theclassroom and accomplish their goals in language learning process

O’Malley and Chamot (1993) suggested that less successful learners can usesuccessful strategies consciously to accelerate their own learning and canpromote the use of learning strategies in practice The role of language teachers

in classroom are also expanded ranging from identifying students’ learningstrategies, conducting on learning strategies to helping learners become moreindependent in their learning process

2.2.4 Classification of language learning strategies

In studies of language learning, overall strategies that appear to contribute tolearning have been identified largely from teachers and students’ reports,interviews and classroom observations in language learning contexts Then thesestrategies are classified according to different functions of specific strategygroups

The classification scheme proposed by Oxford (1990), for example is bothcomprehensive and practical Language learning strategies are distinguished intotwo major classes, direct and indirect strategies These two classes are subdividedinto six strategy groups such as memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive,affective and social

Oxford (1970: 37) also pointed out in her study that the first major strategy class

is learning strategies that directly refer to the purpose of learning language andare called direct strategies They all require mental processing of the language,but in different ways and different purposes This type is subdivided into threegroups: memory strategies, cognitive strategies and compensation strategies Thefirst group contains memory strategies that enable language learners to store andretrieve new information needed for communication The second group ofcognitive strategies facilitates learners “understanding and production of newlanguage by many different means.” The third group of compensation strategieshelps learners to overcome their knowledge limitations in language use

The second major strategy class is all learning strategies that “support andmanage language learning without directly involving the target language”,Oxford (1990:135) called indirect learning strategies They are separated intothree groups: metacognitive strategies, affective strategies and social strategies,which are discussed below Firstly, metacognitive strategies are actions, whichprovide a way for learners to co-ordinate their own learning process In otherword, these strategies helps learners overcome puzzlement in their language

inexplicable social customs and other newness” Oxford (1990: 136) Secondly,affective strategies are actions that assist learners regulate their motivation,attitude, as well as significantly influence their learning success or failure Lastly,social strategies are actions helping to create and maintain languagecommunication between and among people Moreover, Oxford (1990) maintainsthat the six strategy groups above fall into smaller LS sets, which cover somespecific strategies that can be applied to develop language skills

Oxford (1990:14) also claims that there is an interrelationship between direct andindirect strategies and among the six strategy groups They not only support oneanother but also each strategy group is able to connect with and aid any otherstrategy group to help learners achieve more success in their own languagelearning

2.3 Factors influencing reading strategies choice of language learners

Based on the observation and analysis of her different data types, oxford (1990)

as well as other scholars (Wenden and Rubin, 1987) contended that the use ofdifferent strategies in language learning is influenced by a variety of factors.Those given by them were items such as degree of awareness, proficiency,attitudes, stage of learning, task requirement, teacher expectation, age, sex,nationality, general learning style, personality traits, motivation level, andpurpose for learning the language

At this point, I will discuss only some of those factors that have beendemonstrated to most affect language adult learners’ learning strategies choice:proficiency and motivation

aloud procedure to identify relations between certain types of reading strategiesand successful or unsuccessful readers The proficient reader, for example, keptthe meaning of the passage in mind while reading, read in broad phrases, skippedinconsequential or less important words, and had a positive - concept as a reader.The non-proficient reader on the other hand, lost meaning of the sentences whendecoded, read in short phrases, seldom skipped word as unimportant, and had anegative self-concept It is generally agreed that “strategic reading is not only amatter of knowing which strategies to use, but in addition, the reader must knowhow to apply strategies successfully This may be one factor contributing to therelationship between proficient level and reading strategies uses by readers”(Anderson, 1991, p.25).

Olshavsky’s (1977) study was designed to identify reader strategies and to relatetheir usage to three factors: interest, proficiency and writing styles A 2x2x2design was used with two types of reader interest, high and low; two types ofreader proficiency, good and poor; and two types of writing styles, abstract andconcreate The subjects included fifteen boys and nine girls enrolled in a tenthgrade English class Each subject was asked to read a short story and to stop atvarious points in order to answer questions At predetermined stopping points inthe story, they were asked to talk about what happened in the story and aboutwhat they were doing and think as they read Olshavsky’s (1977) study showedthat readers do use strategies This study seemed to indicate that a readeridentifies problem and applies strategies to sole those problems Although thetypes of strategies do not change with the situation, the frequency of use ofstrategies does change In conclusion, most strategies were applied when readerswere interested in material, with readers that were proficient, and when they werefaced with abstract material

2.3.2 Motivation

Language learning motivation is considered as to be the function that most affectsnot only language learners’ success or failure, but also the frequency of learners’language strategies use (Oxford,1990) Harmer (1991:3) calls language learningmotivation “some kind of internal drive that encourages somebody to pursue acourse of action.” He observed that when the student perceives a goal that issomething s/he desires to accomplish and if that goal is sufficiently attractive,s/he will be strongly motivated to do whatever is necessary to reach that goal andwill succeed in whatever the circumstances even in unfavourable conditions

It is obvious that students study a language because they have an idea ofsomething that they have wish to achieve However, a question that has arousedconsiderable interest is whether they have the same kind of motivation

To answer this, Harmer (1991) divided language learning motivation into twotypes: the extrinsic concerning with factors outside the classroom, and theintrinsic, relating to activities in the classroom In their study of extrinsicmotivation, Wenden and Rubin (1987) distinguished between integrative andinstrumental orientations of the learners The students who have instrumentalmotivation need the second language as means to attain a particular goal such asbetter jobs, position or status, etc Motivation in this case is the reflection of anexternal need, not of what the learners want The students who have integrativemotivation wish to integrate themselves into the culture of the target languagegroup or desire to know as much as possible about the target culture

A number of studies, nevertheless (e.g Spolsky,1969) indicate that integrativemotivation is a more significant influence on language proficiency thaninstrumental motivation, but other studies (Lukami,1972) show that instrumentalmotivation sometimes results in better language learning than does integrativemotivation It is suggested that the two types of motivation are not necessarilymutually exclusive and most situations involve a mixture of both types ofmotivation O’Malley and Chamot’s (1993:19) empirical research findingsenlarge this definition of second language learning motivation in which, ataxonomy based on an interaction between two motivational characteristics,internal and external

Their model of motivation is subdivided into seven aspects such as 1) interests insecond language rely on existing attitudes, experience, and backgroundknowledge on the learner’s part; 2) awareness of relevance; 3) expectancy ofsuccess or failure; 4) perception of rewards; 5) decision to choose; 6) payattention to and engage in second language learning, persistent learning behavior;7) maintain of a high activity level

Research reported by Oxford and Shearin (1994) has also offered another angle

on a broad class theory of language learning motivation According to themmotivation involves learner’s needs that are influenced by the elements ofpsychological security Learners’ needs may regress if their requirements forpsychological security are unsatisfied These authors pointed out that somesecond language students feel the need to achieve, but others feel the need to

avoid failure and they argued that “students must believe that doing the specifiedtask will produce a positive result and that these results are personally valuable”(p.18).

Stear and Porter (1975) have also revealed that satisfaction of students with a highneed for achievement is positively correlated with their language proficiencywhereas, satisfaction of students with low achievement desires is negativelycorrelated with their language proficiency Oxford and Shearin (1994: 22) foundthat language learning motivation is affected by social cognition factors such asstudents’ self-efficacy and attribution for success or failure as well A plausiblesuggestion, these researchers propose is that motivation goal must be clear,challenging, and reachable, and that there must be feedback on goal achievement,supported by a master learning mode in which all students are encouraged toreach intrinsically goals which might be more motivating for many students than

a norm-referenced mode or a setting in which all rewards are external

2.4 Reading in second and foreign language

Reading is one of the most important skills in language learning Especially,second or foreign language learning has aroused much attention among manyresearchers for many years All the researchers have been working on how to readand how to help readers make reading easier to achieve According to Grabe’s(1991) view, reading involves fours factors: knowledge of the language, ability toremember the previous cues, and ability to make the necessary associationsbetween the different cues that have been selected Far from being a “passive”skill, reading is, in fact, an active process in which readers relate information inthe text to what they already know Knowledge of the language allows readers toidentify the printed words and sentences Knowledge of the world allows them tocomprehend these words and sentences Good readers read for meaning They donot decode each letter or each word Instead, they take in chunks of the text andrelate it to what they know In fact, reading involves a variety of skills, andmastering reading skills can lead to the least time-consuming and the most cost-effective reading According to schema theory (Goodman, 1985), the mainreading skills are listed bellow:

a Word-attack skills consist of:

- Morphological information: attention should be paid to free and boundmorphemes (prefixes, suffixes, derivational and inflectional morphemes, roots,and word formation, clipping, abbreviation)

- Structural clues: structural clues establish not exactly the meaning but atleast the type (grammatical category) of word represented by the new item

- Inference (or guessing the meaning of unfamiliar words) from thecontext active, receptive, and throw-away vocabulary Inference of meaning fromcontext will give students a powerful aid to comprehension

- Learning to ignore difficult words

- Learning to use a dictionary: any students reading for a serious studypurpose will need to be able to look up key word

b Text-attack skills:

- Understanding sentence syntax: when a sentence is not understoodalthough the vocabulary is known, it is often because it is long and difficult tounravel syntactically Syntactic complexity coupled with unfamiliar vocabularydoubles the problems There are numbers of reasons why a sentence may bedifficult to unravel syntactically; five of them are as follows: complex noungroups, nominalization, co-ordination, subordination, and participial andprepositional phrases as modifiers

2.5 Previous studies on reading strategies

One of the principal concerns of language learning strategy theorists is notidentification, description and classification of learning strategies used by second

or foreign language learners for global language skills, but also for particularlanguage learning tasks Especially to help language learners develop theiracademic reading skills

Unlike the form of spoken language in which a speaker’s speech is oftenexpressed by incomplete and sometimes ungrammatical utterances, and byfrequent false starts and repetition, in the reading language, no such assumptionscan usually be made Because reading is a mechanical process that “eyes receivethe message and the brain then has to work out the significant of the message”

(Harmer, 1991: 153).That means Harmer not only focuses on two actionsdominated by the eyes and the brain but also the speed of the process “ a readingtext moves at a speed of the reader”, which means that the reader who decideshow fast he wants to read the text In addition, while reading readers not onlywant to know how to read, to master the symbols, the sound, the language, thegrammar etc., used in the text but also to understand the ideas, the informationexpressed in that text or to develop the ability of reconstructing its content in ownwords For these reasons in a number of recent reading studies, researchers haveattempted to identify the different kinds of strategies and cognitive activities thatlearners carry out when reading and the effectiveness of the reading strategiesthey employ In other words , instead of focusing on the ability to read the text orproducts, reading researchers became much more concerned with the process thatinclude the strategies their students used to go through in reading passage.

Olshavsky (1977) observed a short story reading of twenty - four 10th gradestudents of native English background The purpose of the study was to identifytheir reading strategies He used readers’ verbal protocols as an observationprocedure The students were told to verbalize their reading behaviour during thereading This behaviour was audio-taped Then the readers’ protocols weretranscribed and analyzed in order to infer their strategies This study identifiedten strategies which were then classified into three main categories These can besummarized as follows:

1 Word-related strategies: these comprise using context to define a word,synonym substitution and stating failure to understand a word

2 Clause-related strategies: these comprise re-reading, inference, addition ofinformation, personal identification, hypotheses and stating failure tounderstand a clause

3 Story-related strategies: these comprise strategies to “using informationabout the story”

The use of strategies at each of these levels is seen to contribute to understandingthe whole text

Further study conducted by Harmer (1991) has attempted to reveal the readingstrategies of ESL students The sample in the study consisted of eighty-twostudents randomly selected from Hispanic ESL students in the 3rd, 4thand 5th

grades The students were assigned to read a text for comprehension andanswered comprehension questions at the end of the passage Performance on thequestions was used to classify good and poor readers Afterwards, the studentswere asked to fill in a Reading Strategies Questionnaire about what they did whenthey read the text.

It was found that seven types of reading strategies could be considered negativelyrelated to students’ reading achievement These were: thinking about somethingelse while reading, writing down every word, skipping the parts that are hard tounderstand in the story, looking up words in the dictionary, reading as fast as youcan, saying every word over and over, saying the main idea over and over Sevenstrategies considered to be positively related to students’ reading achievementwere: summarizing in writing, underlining important parts of the story, self-generated questions, checking through the story to see if you remember all of it,asking questions about the parts of the story you don’t understand, taking notesand imagining or picturing the story in your mind

These finding are limited in how much they reveal of actual ESL students’reading strategies because the research methodology used was not an observationprocedure It was large- scale research survey questionnaire However, the study

is useful for this thesis because it showed what strategies poor and good ESLstudents thought they used when they read ESL text This might also reflect theteaching approaches by which they were taught

2.6 Conclusion

Reading strategies play an importance role in reading comprehension Theyreflect what readers do to achieve successful reading In this chapter, I havelooked at important background theory on reading strategies and the readingprocess, in which bottom-up and top-down approaches are emphasized The mainsection mentioned is language learning strategies, which include terminologicaldefinitions, classification systems and major characteristics of language learningstrategies Moreover, the use of different reading strategies in language learning

is influenced by a variety of factors such as proficiency and motivation This isfollowed by a discussion of essential goal of the approaches to teaching academicreading Finally, this chapter gives an overview of previous studies that involvedreading strategies used for improving reading skills in particular I have seen thatlearners at MPA may have different points of view about reading strategies, andthey may possibly use combine different strategies for their specific readingtasks Competence readers seem to produce a good reading product because they

may use reading strategies more appropriately in reading comprehension In otherword, their successful strategies used in pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading stages give them better control of the content of the reading texts Thisliterature review has served as the theoretical basis of the study, which will bepresented in the next chapter

CHAPTER iii: METHODOLOGY

The study aims to examine the reading strategies used by the learners at the MPA

in their reading comprehension The purpose of the study is to raise the learners’awareness of their ways to read and to encourage lecturers at the MPA inteaching appropriate strategies for better reading comprehension The majorresearch questions raised in this study are as follows:

3.1 Research questions

1 What reading strategies are used by different learner groups at the MPA

in their reading comprehension?

2 What reading strategies do the effective and ineffective learners usewhile they are doing reading tasks?

3 What factors influence the learners’ reading strategies choice?

3.2 Description of variables

There are two variables observed in this study

The dependent variable: reading strategies preferred (chosen) by the students,which is measured by the questionnaire and interviews

The independent variable: students’ reading proficiency, which is measured bytest

3.3 The setting of the study

The study was conducted at the Military Political Academy (MPA) Thequestionnaire was distributed to the students and collected at the Academy duringthe survey The interviews were carried out in small groups with two or threesubjects at a time; each interview usually took place during students’ free timeand lasted about fifteen minutes

This study was conducted at MPA with the subjects of two classes BT4A andBT4B, therefore the researcher would like to give a detailed description ofEnglish course of these students The course is divided into two stages: GeneralEnglish (GE) in 240 lesson periods and ESP in 60 lesson periods

The first stage is from term one to term three During the first stage (including ofthe first two years), the students study GN and the four language skills in 240lesson periods The textbooks used for them are Headway Pre- Intermediate andIntermediate (John & Soar, 1993) and Cause and Effect (Ackert, 1986)

The second stage is only term four The students study ESP in 60 lesson periods.The textbook used for them is Command English (Arnold & Sacco, 1998) At theend of each semester, the students have to take a test

As usual, only one teacher is in charge of a class, and he or she is responsible forteaching English of this class from the beginning to the end of the course,therefore the teacher herself has more opportunities to understand clearly herstudents

3.4 Data collection instruments

This section describes the data collection instruments that were used in the study According to Oxford (1990), there are different data collection instruments thatcan be used to collect data for an investigating language learning strategies suchas: questionnaire, tests, checklist, interview, observation

In this study, test, questionnaire and interview have been chosen as the maininstruments Of these three methods, questionnaire was the main instrument.Seliger and Shohamy (1995:172) define questionnaire as an attractive mean ofcollecting data on phenomenon, which are not easily observed such as attitudes,motivation and awareness of subjects-informants towards learning English andreading strategies use for improving their academic reading skills in particular.These authors show that the questionnaires have a number of advantages Firstly,they are self-administered and can be given to large groups of subjects exactly atthe same time; therefore the data are more uniform and standard Secondly, whenanonymity is assured, subjects tend to share information of a sensitive naturemore easily and thirdly, since they are usually given to all subjects of the research

at exactly the same time, the data are more accurate That is the reason whyquestionnaire was the main instrument used in this study and it was judged to bethe best way to determine the reading strategy use in our own context

According to Dudley- Evans (1998), interviews are useful in investigation as theycan provide in-depth and valuable information There are three types ofinterviews:

The informal conversational interview (the unstructured interview): in thisinterview there is no set of questions but the questions arise more or lessspontaneously

The standardized open-ended interview (the structured interview): in thisinterview, the exact wording and order of questions to be asked is determined inadvance

The interview guide (semi-structured): in this type of interview the interviewercan specify a range of questions to be coved in advance, but they can alsoformulate the wording of the questions as well as the order of the questions as theinterview progress

Test is also a good data collection instrument to get information from thestudents

The test is taken from “IELTS Practice Now” (Carol Gibson, Wanda Rusek andAnne Swan, 1996)

This test consists of 3 sections with 40 questions

Section I has a short text of about 350 words The question types in section I are:(1) write the answer in the space provided, (2) True (T), False (F), insufficientevidence (IE), (3) matching heading with paragraphs, (4) selecting the best titlefor the entire passage (Section 1 includes 15 questions to answer)

Section II has a long text of about 500 words The question types in section II are:(1) choosing the best theme of the entire passage, (2) completing the sentences,(3) choosing the most suitable opposite meaning of the word (Section 2 consistof13 questions to answer)

Section III has a longer text of about 700 words with more difficult language andstructure The question types in section III are: (1) choosing the best answer, (2)completing the sentences by adding one word from the passage for each space,(3) short answer (only two words).

The reading test is objectively marked As mentioned above, the test is used notonly to check the students’ reading proficiency but it is also used to divide thestudents into effective and ineffective reader groups

All the readers who had an average of 7 marks are considered effective readers.Ineffective readers are the ones who had an average of under 7 marks Basing onthe results of the reading test, twenty three subjects with a 7 point average on thetest and twenty five subjects of under 7 marks on their test were selected anddivided into effective and ineffective reader groups and these two learners groupsparticipated in my study

3.4.2 Questionnaire

The purpose of the questionnaire in this study was to obtain the informants’background information and to investigate (or determine) the reading strategyuses in students’ reading context

To achieve the purpose mentioned above, the questionnaire used in this study wasadapted from Oxford (1990) It consists of two parts

The first part included six questions, aimed at obtaining the informants’background information such as age, gender, motivation and awareness towardlearning English and reading strategy use for improving their reading skills Inthis part, there were six items that related to subjects language learningmotivation (question 5) (Appendix 2.1)

The second part, the sheet of Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL),was designed on the basis of “The SILL for Speakers of Other Language LearningEnglish” proposed by Oxford (1990) It is a list of 50 specific learning strategies(LSs) categorized into six groups corresponding to six main LSs groups, whichwere presented in the previous chapter The table 3.1 below summaries theanalysis of the SILL

Table 3.1 Summary of the Analysis of the SILL

Learning Strategies (LSs) Specific LSs in

Beside the SILL sheet, there were worksheets for the informants to answer andscore while completing the questionnaire In addition, the Profile of the Results

on the SILL was used to decode the average score on each part of the SILL Theinformants’ background questionnaire, the SILL and the Profile of Results on theSILL are shown in Appendix 2.1 (p.64)

The background questionnaire and the SILL were translated into Vietnamese andpre-tested on a group of 10 learners at the intermediate levels of Englishproficiency at the MPA The purpose of the pilot test was to find out if thequestion items and the instructions were understandable and whether thequestionnaires could be completed within the expected time

3.4.3 Interview

In this study, the interview was used with the aims to get further informationconcerning informants’ reading experiences, which were not stated in the SILLquestionnaire The interview questions were prepared in advanced and studentswere asked the same questions such as to describe any reading strategies or tricksthey used in their reading They were also asked to provide information about theother factors that influenced their reading strategy choice

The interviews were conducted in small groups with two or three subjects at atime; each interview usually took place during students’ free time and lastedfifteen minutes or longer

All interviews were designed as a conversation with one another and carried out

in Vietnamese to enable the subjects to perform easily and freely

in keeping with their nature, characteristics and functions For example:

Memory Creating mental linkages Placing new words into a context. I use new English words in a sentence so

I can remember them.The reading strategy groups were coded as A (memory strategy), B (cognitivestrategy), C (compensation strategy), D (metacognitive strategy), E (affectivestrategy) and F (social strategy)

The frequencies showing how often a reading strategy to be used by differentgroups of subjects- informants were calculated by counting the number ofresponses to the questionnaire items according to a rating on five- point scalessuggested by Oxford (1990): always used (4.5-5), usually used (3.5-4.4),sometime used (2.5-3.4), generally not used (1.5-2.4), and never use (0.0-1.4) Inaddition, Oxford (1990) worked out a three-point scale for showing the degree of

LS use: high use (5.0-3.5), medium use (3.4-2.5) and low use (2.4-0.0) Thisframework can provide a categorization basis for analyzing strategies follow threestages of reading: pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading

3.5.2 Coding scheme for the use of reading strategies while doing

reading tasks

Students’ reactions in reading tasks and interviews were an important part in thisanalysis, because they reflected the categories of reading strategies used bylearners while they are doing reading tasks These tasks included readingpassages and instructions, which appropriate to subjects’ level of Englishproficiency and most of them come from their reading books Cause and Effect(Ackert, 1986)

Basing on this, the researcher used the strategy definition that was developed byOxford (1990) to identify specific reading strategies performed by the students intheir reading tasks and interviews Then those reading strategies were identifiedand coded in terms of classification system, which offered by Oxford (1990) forreading skills

For example, repeating was classified as cognitive strategy in Oxford’s (1990:71)classification system The strategy of repeating might mean reading a passagemore than once to understand it more completely A profitable technique is toread a passage several times, each time for different purposes: for example, to getthe main ideas, to predict, to read for detail, to write down question and so on

Students’ reactions in their reading tasks and the interviews were also classified atthree stages of reading from generally not used (1), sometime used (2), to usuallyused (3) in which high use (3.0-2.5), medium use (2.4-1.5) and low use (1.4-0.0).These reading strategies were analysed at each stage of reading The analysisresult of these strategies will be presented in the next chapter

3.5.3 Coding Scheme for factors influencing MPA learners’ reading strategy choice

The factors affecting students’ reading strategy choice such as proficiency andmotivation toward the use of learning strategies in their reading comprehension ingeneral and while they doing reading tasks in particular, were obtained from thequestionnaire The items that deal with the subjects, learning motivation werecoded in term of classification system of learning motivations In this study fouritems of extrinsic motivation were coded as Einterl = interested in language,Einterc = interested in English culture, Eintert = travel, Einstrua = advancement,while two other one of intrinsic motivation were coded as Instrh = having friendsspeaking English, and Instrio = other

In addition, informal talks with students to gain more information about their ownexperiences, motivation toward reading strategies used in reading that were notexpressed in the formal interviews The analysis results of these documentshelped me with in-depth understanding about the potential difficulties andinfluence of other factors on the implementation of reading strategies to improvethe students’ reading skill

3.6 Conclusion

In this chapter, I have attempted to describe and explain the methodology used in

this study First, the decision on the research questions and the choice of anexperiment as the method of the study Then the research procedures includingthe setting of the study, the data collection instruments and the data gatheringprocedures used for analyzing reading strategies used by the learners in theirreading comprehension, and the factors affecting their reading strategy choicewere described The interpretation of the results of analyses these data will bediscussed in next chapter The suggestions of the study about the use of readingstrategies in learning and teaching English reading comprehension in this oneparticular context at the MPA also will be provided in chapter 5

CHAPTER iv: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter describes and interprets the results of the study The discussionshows some findings in relation to the literature reviewed in chapter 2 Thediscussions are carried out to provide answers to the three major researchquestions presented earlier in chapter 3

4.1 What reading strategies are used by different learner groups at the MPA in their reading comprehension?

Table 4.1 A Comparison of the Uses of RSs Between Different Learner Groups Across Six Groups of RSs

Usually used (4.4-3.5)

Sometime used (3.4-2.5)

Generally not used (2.4-1.5)

Never used (1.4-0.0) Mean Std.D F-value P

A1 23 0 0.00 3 13.04 16 69.57 4 17.39 0 0.00 2.98 397

8.625 005 A2 25 0 0.00 0 0.00 17 68.00 8 32.00 0 0.00 2.73 470

A1+A2 48 0 3 33 12 0 2.98 470

B1 23 0 0.00 9 39.13 14 60.87 0 0.00 0 0.00 3.40 382

6.509 014 B2 25 0 0.00 4 16.00 18 72.00 3 12.00 0 0.00 3.09 478

B1+B2 48 0 13 32 3 0 3.38 462

C1 23 0 0.00 9 39.13 12 52.17 1 4.35 1 4.35 3.15 520

.501 483 C2 25 0 0.00 7 28.00 14 56.00 4 16.00 0 0.00 3.03 762

C1+C2 48 0 16 26 3 1 3.22 644

D1 23 4 17.39 12 52.17 7 30.43 0.00 0 0.00 3.72 576

4.818 033 D2 25 1 4.00 8 32.00 16 64.00 0.00 0 0.00 3.40 529

D1+D2 48 5 20 23 0 0 3.71 578

E1 23 0 0.00 8 34.78 11 47.83 2 8.70 2 8.70 2.89 535

.006 940 E2 25 1 4.00 6 24.00 14 56.00 3 12.00 1 4.00 2.98 660

E1+E2 48 1 14 25 5 3 3.06 591

F1 23 1 4.35 17 73.91 4 17.39 1 4.35 0 0.00 3.81 620

4.945 030 F2 25 0 0.00 8 32.00 14 56.00 3 12.00 0 0.00 3.12 712

F1+F2 48 0 25 18 4 0 3.60 695

TOS1 23 0 0.00 10 43.48 13 56.52 0 0.00 0 0.00 3.42 309

6.020 018 TOS2 25 0 0.00 4 16.00 18 72.00 3 12.00 0 0.00 3.09 342

Key words: 1 = effective readers; 2 = ineffective readers; A (the memory strategy), B (the cognitive strategy); C (the compensation strategy); D (the metacognitive strategy); E (the affective strategy) and F (social strategy) TOS = total summary of reading strategies groups N = number students.

Table 4.1 presents the use frequency of each category of reading strategiesapplied by different group of students at the MPA in their learning readingcomprehension In each group, the reading strategies use of effective andineffective learners was compared The number of members in each group wasnot equal because this group category was based on the score of their reading testresult before carrying out this study

From the subjects’ responses to the SILL questionnaire, the result of descriptivestatistic in table 4.1 indicated the use frequency of each category of readingstrategies used by students at the MPA in their reading comprehension

First, group A (memory strategies) did not receive much attention from bothgroups of students The statistical data in the table shows that students in thisstudy are not aware of the importance of memory in solving reading tasks Thenumbers of effective students usually use these strategies only three, account for13.04 % On the contrary, none of students from the ineffective group uses it (M

= 2,98 v M = 2.73) Second, strategy groups B (cognitive strategies) and E(affective strategies) were usually used by the two learner groups at a mediumdegree (M = 3.40 v M = 3.09) It proved that a great number of military learners

at the MPA in this study do not know how to use mental processes to operatetheir missing knowledge and manage their emotion in their own learning Third,group C (compensation strategies) From the table we can see that nine effectivelearners, account for 39.13 % usually use compensation strategies to help them toovercome knowledge limitation in their reading comprehension However, thenumbers of effective and ineffective learners usually use these strategies atvarying degree of frequency (39.13 % versus 28.00 %)

Fourth, group D (metacognitive strategies) is reported to be applied usefully byboth groups in their reading comprehension (M = 3.72 v M = 3.40) It is clearthat effective learners tended to use it more than ineffective ones (52.17 % versus

32 %) This means that learners are aware of the use of these strategies and theyoften use metacognitive strategies to organize their study and prefer to be self-directed in learning Finally, group F (social strategies) is the most often strategygroup used The finding was given to social strategies with the choice of 73.91 %

of successful learners usually use them versus that of 32.00 % of unsuccessfullearners

In short, the result shown in table 4.1 revealed that reading strategies used by thesubjects is moderate overall (M = 3.39) and no strategy group is reported as

The results in Table 4.2 show that at three stages of the reading process, bothgroups of informants have used all six categories of RSs: memory, cognitive,compensation, metacognitve, affective and social strategies at differentfrequencies

Table 4.2 The Groups of Rreading Strategies Used by Two Learner Groups at Three Stages of Rreading.

by cognitive strategies (M = 2.121 v M = 1.977), and social strategies (M = 2.058

v M = 1.923), next came the use groups of strategies such as affective strategies(M = 1.942 v M= 1.782), memory strategies (M = 1.946 v M = 1.786) andcompensation strategies (M = 1.942 v M = 1.782) All these strategies categoriesaveraged in the “sometime used” range Moreover, at pre- reading and post-reading stages the rank of these strategies groups did not change, although theirdegree of use increased slightly

Concretely, differences in using individual strategy types were also found inTable 4.2.1 below between effective and ineffective learners at the pre- readingstage

Table 4.2.1 below shows reading strategies used by both groups of learners at the pre-reading stage.

There are six strategies categorized in memory strategies which can be applied inreading comprehension As can be seen from table 4.2.1 using key words,structure reviewing and placing new words into a context strategies usuallyreceived remarkable difference in the choice between effective and ineffectivereaders (73.9 %, 69.5 % and 65.2 % comparing with 56.5 %, 52.1 % and 52.1 %respectively) As can be seen from the table, effective learners tended to usegrouping strategy much more than ineffective ones (56.5 % versus 44.0 %) 43.4

% of effective learners usually chose semantic mapping strategy, meanwhile only36.0 % ineffective learners did that There is also one difference in the choice ofassociating/ elaborating strategies between effective and ineffective learners.Effective learners were more likely to associate and elaborate the new wordsmore than ineffective ones (43 4 % versus 48.0 %)

Table 4.2.1 also reveals the most differences in the choice of cognitive strategiesbetween successful and unsuccessful learners Of cognitive strategies at pre-reading stage, translating and transferring usually received the most differenceuse from ineffective learners and effective learners (76.0 % versus 52.1 % and72.0 % versus 47.8 %, respectively) Another great difference can be seen in theuse of highlighting strategy between effective and ineffective readers Effectivereaders tended to highlight important words much more often than ineffectivereaders Taking notes and summarizing were used the most often by effectivelearners (78.26%)

As can be seen from table, among cognitive strategies effective learners gavetheir strongest preference in identifying the purpose of a language task strategy.About 82.6% used this strategy and it should be done before reading task Botheffective and ineffective learners were reported to use planning and organizingfor a language task strategy with nearly the same degree of frequency (73.9 %versus 72.0 %)

Moreover, effective and ineffective learner groups choose social strategies to askthe questions, cooperate with proficient users and develop cultural understanding(47.8 % versus 40.0 %, 21,7 % versus 20.0%, and 43,4% versus 12.0 %).Compensation strategies had the least choice by both effective and ineffectivegroups The numbers of effective readers tended to use linguistic clues to identifythe new words or expression in their reading much more than ineffective ones(34.7% versus 24.0 %)

Table 4.2.1: The reading strategies used by two groups of learners at the reading stage

pre-No Categories and Strategies Groups Total N Never Sometime Usually