Tenth graders problems and stratrgies in doing inferential reading tasks in english = những khó khăn và chiến lược làm bài đọc hiểu môn tiếng anh dạng suy luận của học sinh lớp 10

ABSTRACT This study aimed to find out tenth graders‟ difficulties in making inference in reading and examine tenth graders‟ strategies in doing inferential reading tasks The population o

QUY NHON UNIVERSITY

DANG THANH HANG

TENTH GRADERS’ PROBLEMS AND STRATEGIES

IN DOING INFERENTIAL READING TASKS IN

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I hereby acknowledge that this study is mine The data and findings discussed

in the thesis are true, used with permission from associates and have not been published elsewhere

Signature:

Name: Dang Thanh Hang Date:

I would like to extend my special thanks to all the staff, especially the teaching staff at An Nhon No.3 High School where I have studied for providing me with knowledge, research skills and facilities

My special thanks also go to the students who have participated in this project Without their assistance, I would not have been able to collect valuable data for the project

Finally, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my family, whose continuous encouragement, support, and love helped me pass through insurmountable difficulties during my research

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to find out tenth graders‟ difficulties in making inference in reading and examine tenth graders‟ strategies in doing inferential reading tasks The population of this study included 120 tenth graders In collecting the research data, I used questionnaires and interviews The questionnaires consisted of 9 problems and questionnaire which consisted of

11 strategies Research data were collected both quantitatively and qualitatively The result showed that the students‟ overall difficulty in making inference in reading inferiential reading belonged to “moderate” category It could be seen that students‟ biggest difficulty was on inferences about the author‟s attitude Last but not least, if students use suitably stragies, theit results will be improved

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF CONVENTIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS v

LIST OF TABLES vii

LIST OF FIGURES viii

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Aims of the study 3

1.3 Research questions 3

1.4 Scope of the study 3

1.5 Significance 3

1.6 Organization of the thesis 4

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Inferential reading 6

2.1.1 Reading skills and inferential reading as a reading skill 6

2.1.2 Types of inferences 10

2.1.3 Skills and factors involved inferences 14

2.2 The comprehension process 16

2.3 Strategies to enhance reading comprehension 17

2.4 Factors affecting reading comprehension 18

2.5 Previous relevant studies 20

2.6 Summary 22

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 24

3.1 Participants 24

3.2 Data collection instruments 25

3.2.1 Questionnaire 25

3.2.2 Interview 26

3.3 Data collection procedure 26

3.4 Data analysis 28

3.4.1 Quantitative analysis 28

3.4.2 Qualitative analysis 29

3.5.Summary 30 CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 31

4.1 Results 31

4.1.1 Results for research question 1 31

4.1.2.Results for research question 2 33

4.1.3.Interview data 41

4.2 Discussion 43

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION 47

5.1 Conclusions on what difficultities students face when doing inferential reading 47

5.2 Conculsions on what strategies should be used 48

5.3 Implication 49

5.4 Limitations of the study 51

5.5 Suggestions for further studies 52

REFERENCE 53

APPENDIX 57

Example: 59

LIST OF CONVENTIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS

DRTA: Directed Reading Thinking Activity

EFL: English as a Foreign Language

SPSS: Statistical Package for the Social Sciences

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 Interview 29

Table 4.1 Tenth graders‟ problems in doing inferential reading tasks 32

Table 4.2 Tenth graders‟ strategies in doing inferential reading tasks 34

Table 4.3 The detail description of item S1 35

Table 4.4 The detail description of item S2 35

Table 4.5 The detail description of item S3 36

Table 4.6 The detail description of item S4 36

Table 4.7 The detail description of item S5 37

Table 4.8 The detail description of item S6 37

Table 4.9 The detail description of item S7 38

Table 4.10 The detail description of item S8 39

Table 4.11 The detail description of item S9 39

Table 4.12 The detail description of item S10 40

Table 4.13 The detail description of item S11 40

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1: Types of inferences 13 Figure 2.2: A tetrahedral model of studies on inference generation in reading ( based on Jenkin, 1979) 14

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

This initial part states rationale for the study, the aims and objectives and the scope of the whole paper Above all, it is in this part that the research questions are identified to work as clear guidelines for the whole research

1.1 Rationale

Reading is regarded as a natural action in people's daily lives because they must read a variety of items in order to comprehend what occurs in their environments Reading, on the other hand, according to Nuttal (1982), is a complex activity that entails, on the one hand, identifying and decoding letters and words and, on the other hand, comprehending and grasping the functional meaning of a text For many years, teachers have utilized the reading activity

to measure simply literal comprehension rather than teaching skills to help children comprehend what they read beyond decoding words and phrases (Harvey

& Goudvis, 2000) Due to the various reasons, the results obtained from class observations during students' reading activities and other teacher perceptions about their reading comprehension processes confirmed the above, indicating that they had difficulties and poor results when reading texts in English

In reading, the students‟ prior knowledge is really important in supporting the students‟ understanding in reading the text A variety of strategies to interact with the text as well as use their English knowledge are emphasized (Peregoy & Boyle, 2001, cited in Kopitski, 2007) It means the more prior knowledge of the reading content and the language knowledge (such as grammatical structure and vocabulary) the students have, the more they understand the text However, understanding school books is difficult due to the fact that they are usually academic or nonfiction Not only the apparent but also the implicit messages of the text are questioned

Inference making is a fundamental component of being fluent in reading It is one of the components that must be considered in reading,

especially when the texts encourage the readers to find out beyond information and when it is supported by text comprehension The greater the students' ability to comprehend the text, the more inferences they can make

As a result, the more fluent they are in reading, the more success they will have with the reading process

Bearing this in mind, I decided to develop this study Through research methods, data collection methods and data analysis, I want to explore the problems that my students, the 10th graders are facing These are students who have just experienced a level-up exams and are also the students who have just entered a new learning environment, so it is essential to find out their problems and come up with useful strategies The findings could be applied to my own teaching practices for better learning outcomes for my students to develop their inferential reading skills

Furthermore, the study aimed to offer suggestions and recommendations for making positive change in teaching at high schools This critical element was expected to help my colleagues in my high schools or teachers from other high schools, where the context is similar to the one described in the present study, to

be able to make changes in their teaching practices

Last but not least, this research and the materials enabled me to think of myself as a more active participant in the language learning process, rather than merely a replicant actor This, I believe, was an opportunity for me to reflect on my strengths and limitations, as well as seek ways to enhance my teaching practices in order to encourage students to have a more positive and willing attitude in the language classroom Despite the fact that much research has been done on reading, this study may contribute to the field of reading strategies by emphasizing the importance of developing appropriate materials

to provide direct instruction of the strategies in order to help students improve their reading practices in the language classroom

1.2 Aims of the study

The study aims to find out tenth graders‟ problems and strategies in doing inferential reading exercises

The objectives of the study:

- To explore tenth graders‟ problems in doing inferential reading tasks

- To examine tenth graders‟ strategies in doing inferential reading tasks

1.3 Research questions

In order to achieve the above objectives, the following overarching research question have been formulated as follows:

1 What are tenth graders‟ problems in doing inferential reading tasks?

2 What are tenth graders‟ strategies in doing inferential reading tasks?

1.4 Scope of the study

This study took place at An Nhon No.3 High School, a public school in Binh Dinh Province The school offers education from tenth grade to twelveth grade Participants are 120 tenth grade students who have just experienced a level-

up exam in the morning shift The primary objective of the school is to educate ethical citizens and always put the quality of education as the top goa

The focus of the study lies in finding out tenth graders‟difficulties in doing inferential reading exercises and strategies students use to develop inferential reading skill As students take English at school just three hours per week, there is little time to develop those skills deeply and improve their language learning process The tenthth graders of school become the research sample, because they have just entered the learning environment and it is also the first stage of schooling, so it is necessary to detect difficulties so that teachers can have directions to promptly change teaching methods and develop skills for students improve the quality of learning

1.5 Significance

The research serves as a reference source for teachers, students, and

others who are interested in this topic once it is completed It is also anticipated to make recommendations for further research

This research is expected to give beneficial contribution to teaching and learning English, not only for English teachers, but also for students, and other researchers For English teachers, hopefully, by knowing the students‟ problems it can give important information to improve their skill in teaching reading Furthermore, it is expected that they can develop any teaching methods which are very beneficial to assist students‟ comprehension in reading the text

Teachers and students, in particular, would be aware of their current status in terms of teaching and developing inferential reading abilities in order

to make appropriate adjustments The research is expected to improve students' attitudes toward inferential reading and drive them to read inferentially as a result of the critical comments, as well as teachers' teaching strategies for inferential reading

1.6 Organization of the thesis

This paper has five main chapters The first chapter is the introduction, where the rationale, objectives, the significance as well as the scope of the study are raised The second one is Literature Review, in which key theoretical basis, some common challengies of students in doing inferential reading tasks and previous findings concerning strategies, and inferential reading skills are discussed The next chapter is Methodology which is believed to be an important one It describes the methods used to collect data, including research instruments (questionnaire and interview with students ) It also provides the data analysis methods, the steps that I took in analyzing the collected data

The fourth chapter in this part (i.e results and discussion) presents the results and discussion of the findings The final part is the conclusion In this

part, the summary of this study, limitations and recommendations for further studies are presented

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter provides insights into the theoretical issues and studies prior to the present study The chapter begins with basic concepts concerning the research issues It includes a review of studies that have been conducted related to the topic of this study

2.1 Inferential reading

To high school learners, simple comprehension of a text is not enough

To be high-level readers, students need to be able to infer meaning that goes beyond what the text explicitly tells them Inferences are the conclusions that are drawn based on what one already knows and judgments readers make based on given information This skill helps students make connections between their personal experiences and their comprehension of a text Rather than stopping students during the reading process to comment on specific points, inference focuses on their thinking and how new information reshapes their prior knowledge, which consists of 4 types “syntactical” knowledge,

“semantic” knowledge, “orthographic” knowledge and “lexical” knowledge (Rumelhart, 2004)

2.1.1 Reading skills and inferential reading as a reading skill

Reading skills

2.1.1.1.

Reading comprehension is a complex skill since it needs readers (students) to combine many reading strategies to understand the text All readers need to relate their English language knowledge, world of knowledge and understanding of print to understand text (Peregoy & Boyle, 2001) in Kopitski, 2007 It is the ability to draw meaning from the text It is more complex than the word reading as it involves a broader range of cognitive processes and thus it is viewed as the “essence of reading” (Durkin, 1993, cited in Li, 2012:1)

In comprehending a reading text, readers should consider literal comprehensionand inferential comprehension Both of them are very important for them to make them easier to understand the text In literal comprehension (e.g., textbase), readers only need a relatively shallow understanding of what the text states While in inferential comprehension, (e.g., situation model) readers need a deep understanding of what the text states (Li, 2012: 5-6)

In other words, it is obvious that reading comprehension is the activity

of understanding texts not only shallowly but also deeply Activities of understanding reading texts need thinking process

Reading, according to the literacy definition, plays an essential role in people's lives, and Smith (1971: 35) claims that "reading is the most natural activity in the universe." This indicates that even if people never read written material such as books or newspapers, they must read a lot in order to understand what is going on around them on a daily basis People are more likely to read printed things such as adverts, drug labels, traffic signs, and anything else that provides them with information As a result, reading must

be seen as a crucial component of people's daily lives because it enables them

to acquire and interpret knowledge and information required to comprehend their surroundings

Reading must be viewed as a dynamic and participatory process in which people employ their language and cognitive knowledge to make sense

of a written passage, according to the above In this regard, Goodman (1996) asserts that reading is an active activity in which the reader establishes a relationship with the text based on his or her own understandings and experiences in order to make sense of the information offered Readers are able to make meaning of the print because of these interactions between new and old information

Furthermore, Aebersold and Field (1997: 50) stated that "reading is what happens when people look at a text and give meaning to the written symbols

in a general sense” As a result, reading cannot be reduced to a basic process

of decoding letters and words Reading, on the other hand, is a making process in which the reader interacts with the text This interaction occurs when a reader connects information from the text with prior knowledge; it is a dialogue between language and cognition that allows the reader to develop a personal understanding of the text

meaning-To summarize, when reading a text, readers' language knowledge helps them

to recognize printed words and sentences, while their world knowledge allows them to comprehend these words and phrases (Goodman, 1996) As a result, reading is an active process in which readers relate information from the text

to what they already know, rather than a passive skill Readers who are proficient make sense of the print and hunt for meaning; they do not decode each letter or word; instead, they take the text and apply it to what they already know The process of reading, then, is a constructive and interactive one in which readers learn to recognize, understand, and comprehend the message of a written text

Inferential reading as a reading skill

2.1.1.2.

As students develop inferential reading skills, they learn to understand the intonation of characters' words and relationships to one another, provide explanations for ideas that are presented in the text, recognize the author's view of the world including the author's biases and offer conclusions from facts presented in the text In teaching reading comprehension in a reader‟s workshop Keene and Zimmerman (1997) state that differently proficient readers who infer are able to draw conclusions from text, make reasonable predictions while and after reading, use the combination of background knowledge and explicitly

stated information from the text to answer questions they have as they read It

is clear that proficient readers easily create new background knowledge for themselves, discriminate and critically analyze text and authors, and engage in conversation and/or other analytical responses to what they read while struggling readers have difficulty with some or all of these comprehension skills Chikalanga (1993) shows the performance on different types of interference questions of two groups of Zambian secondary school at grade 8 and grade 10; that is, grade 10 students performed significantly better than grade 8 students

Inference is increasingly recognized as an essential component of the process of reading comprehension According to the psycholinguistic models

of reading comprehension (i.e., schema-theoretic view of reading), inferences are important in integrating the text with the knowledge base (Spiro, 1980; Sanford et al.,1981)

In addition, Chikalanga (1993) shows that inference is defined as the cognitive or mental process of reader goes through to obtain the implicit meaning of a written text on the basis of two sources of information, the propositional content of the text (i.e., information explicitly stated) and prior knowledge of the reader as cued by test items Some previous work has revealed (Paris and Lindauer, 1976; Paris and Upton, 1976; Omanson et al., 1978) the ability to infer improves with age

An inference is an event or conclusion reached based on information contained in a text or story, but not stated explicitly (Trabasso & Magliano, 1996) Making inferences is as central to story comprehension as understanding causal relationships and recognizing importance of story events (van den Broek, et al., 2005; van den Broek, 1989; van Kleeck, 2008)

Generally, inference is a cognitive process used to construct meaning Inference in reading comprehension is a constructive thinking process

because the reader expands knowledge by proposing and evaluating competing hypotheses about the meaning of the text in an attempt to progressively refine understanding The importance of inference in understanding even the simplest text has been pointed out by Thorndike (1917) Inference makes it possible for a reader to comprehend the information that the author presents (Goetz, 1977) and is an integral part of the comprehension of and memory for text (Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Bransford & McCarrell, 1974; Harris & Monaco, 1978; Kintsch, 1988)

Inference making, which is one of the aspects that have to be considered in reading, especially when the texts ask the readers to find out the beyond information, and when it is supported by the text comprehension, is a key

component to be fluent in reading (Davoudi, 2005) The more the students are

able to comprehend the text, the more they can make inference Thus, the more fluent they are in reading and the more success the reading process will

be obtained

When students are able to make inference, reading is felt to be easier,

no matter how long the text is In making inference, the students have to read

between the lines (Preszler, 2006: 4) They have to understand the text

implicitly – finding out themeaning beyond the text

It comes as no surprise that readers' background knowledge has also been shown to be an integral factor in the comprehension of text through inference Pearson, Hansen, and Gordon (1979) find that background knowledge has a facilitating effect on inferential comprehension

2.1.2 Types of inferences

According to Li (2012: 5-6), there are two main types of inferences One type consists of coherence inferences which connect different pieces of information from within the text, and the other type consists of elaborative inferences which connect information from the text with prior knowledge

(Barnes, Denis, & Haefele- Kalvaitis, 1996; Cain, Oakhill, Barnes, & Bryant, 2001; McNamara & Magliano, 2009)

Moreover, in Preszler (2006: 13) explains that the author Kylene Beers in

When Kids Can’t Read, What Teachers Can Do identifies 13 types of inference:

1 Recognize pronoun antecedents

2 Use context clues to figure out the meanings of unknown words

3 Understand the grammatical role of unknown words

4 Recognize character tone

5 Identify the beliefs, personalities, and motivations of characters

6 Understand character relationships

7 Provide setting details

8 Provide explanations for events and ideas in the text

9 Offer details or their own explanations of events in the text

10 Understand the author‟s point of view

11 Recognize the author‟s bias

12 Relate the text to events in their own lives

13 Construct conclusions based from the facts in the text

Kispal (2008) indicates that different researchers such as Pressly and Afflerbach (1995), Graesser et al (1994), Cain and Oakhill (1999) have identified many different kinds of inferences; however, there is no general consensus in the literature about the number of types of inference, or how they should be named In the review of this study I pay more attention to Pressley and Afflerbach‟s (1995) study about types of inferences because of the frequency of these types that students met in the tests Pressley and Afflerbach describe their list of inferences as those of which readers were consciously aware and which they were able to describe in their own words

In fact, they list nine types of inferences as a catalogue of processes (confirming, concluding and relating) as follows:

1 Referential

2 Filling in deleted information,

3 Inferring meanings of words,

4 Inferring connotations of words or sentences,

5 Relating text to prior knowledge,

6 Inferences about the author,

7 Characters or state of world as depicted in text,

8 Confirming or disconfirming previous inferences,

9 Drawing conclusion

According to the function, inferential types can be categorized below:

1 Backward inferences connect the statement that currently is being read (the focal statement) to events or states that have occurred earlier

2 Connecting inferences connect the focal statement most directly to information that was processed recently

3 Reinstatements connect the focal statement to information from the text that its reinstated from long-term memory (Gernsbacher, 1990)

4 Backward elaborations draw heavily on the reader‟s general background knowledge in connecting the focal statement

5 Forward elaborations anticipate information that is yet to be described

in the text It predicts the occurrence of novel events or indicate future relevance of information that is being read presently

6 Orthogonal elaborations concern the activation of information that is implied by and coexistent with the information in the focal statement

7 Associative inferences activate information that is associated with a focal statement

All types of inferences categorized highlighting the function are presented by Vanden Broek (1990) as shown in Figure 2.1:

Figure 2.1: Types of inferences

Although the various types of inference differ in their primary source of information, they are not independent First, all inferences are constrained by focal statement, by the reader‟s representation of the prior text, and reader's background knowledge Second, the various types of inferences may interact The interactions between 4 clusters of variables (i.e orienting tasks, subjects, criterial tasks, and materials) may have unique effect on the observed inferential process like in Figure 2.2 showed:

Figure 2.2: A tetrahedral model of studies on inference generation in reading ( based

on Jenkin, 1979)

2.1.3 Skills and factors involved inferences

Language and Reading Research Consortium (LARRC) & Muijselaar (2018) believe that it is necessary to consider how inferences depend on vocabulary and background knowledge, factors that may influence inference-making performance

Skills involved inferences

2.1.3.1.

Phillips (1988) conducts a study with 40 low-proficiency and 40 high- proficiency readers to find out the differences in strategy use are studied with

reading proficiency and background knowledge varied The quantitative analyses show that an interaction between proficiency and text familiarity determined frequency of strategy use The strategies most frequently associate with high- proficiency and high-background knowledge readers are shifting focus when an impasse is reached

According to Day (2013), inference is one of the skills that belongs to reading comprehension (literal comprehension, reorganization, inference, prediction, evaluation, personal response) He indicates that “inference requires students to combine their literal understanding with their own knowledge Students need to take information from the reading and relate it to what they know in order to make an inference” (p.37)

Factors involved inferences

2.1.3.2.

Besides, the study of Schunk & Ertmer (2000) shows that improved inferential comprehension requires the following: awareness of, exposure to, and practice with inferential reading comprehension questions; activation of prior knowledge prior to and appropriate application of while answering inferential questions; appropriate interpretation of background information provided in the text; and self-regulated learning via active use of inferential comprehension strategies

Especially, Horiba (2000) highlight that readers‟ goals are another factor that influences how readers generate inference because readers adjust cognitive processes and strategies in accordance with their reason for reading Linderholm & Broek (2002) support this idea by indicating the fact that reading for an academic reason definitely requires a different kind of processing and different strategies than reading for pleasure

It is also noted that several of previous studies have shown the role of language skills, particularly vocabulary knowledge, in supporting inference generation (e.g., Hatami & Tavakoli, 2012; Nassaji, 2006; Prior et al., 2014)

The data from Calvo‟s study (2004) demonstrate the significance of the prior vocabulary knowledge of the participants as a determinant in their abilities for inference generation

2.2 The comprehension process

Reading comprehension is a psychological process which occurs in the mind The mental process is invisible This invisibility makes it difficult for the researcher to provide a concrete and clear definition Kintsch (1998) describes comprehension as occurring "when and if the elements that enter into the process achieve a stable state in which the majority of elements are meaningfully related to one another and other elements that do not fit the pattern of the majority are suppressed" (p 4) In common sense terms, the mental elements can be readers' prior knowledge, concepts, images or emotions With the schematic processing perspective held by Johnston (1983), reading comprehension can be defined as follows:

Reading comprehension is considered to be a complex behavior which involves conscious and unconscious use of various strategies, including problem-solving strategies, to build a model of the meaning which the writer

is assumed to have intended The model is constructed using schematic knowledge structures and the various cue systems which the writer has given (e.g., words, syntax macrostructures, social information) to generate hypotheses which are tested using various logical and pragmatic strategies Most

of this model must be inferred, since text can never be fully explicit and, in general, very little of it is explicit because even the appropriate intentional and extensional meanings of words must be inferred from their context (p 17)

For Johnston (1983), reading comprehension can mean the reader's comprehension of the text results from using different strategies consciously and unconsciously and is evoked by various knowledge sources Johnston (1983) discusses using strategies to comprehend the text and he emphasizes

examining the process of comprehension Another view of reading comprehension focusing on the result rather than the process can also be added for this current study The result of reading comprehension may show what the reader understands from a text, what he/she fails to understand from

a text, and how he/she transacts with the text

Gunderson (1995) differentiates three levels of comprehension including "literal or detail, inferential, and critical and evaluative, sometimes called applicative" (p 27) Gunderson (1995) provides explanations for the three levels of comprehension: literal-level comprehension requires little more than memory work and the remembering of details from the text; inferential-level comprehension involves "readers in thinking about what they've read and coming to conclusions that go beyond the information given in the text" (p 31); at critical and evaluative level comprehension, readers are able to

"evaluate whether a text is valid and expresses opinion rather than fact, as well as apply the knowledge gained from the text in other situations" (p 28) This study, following Gunderson's (1995) suggestion, avoids focusing on literal-level comprehension as the end goal of the study but rather intends to set up

an EFL reading program which may "excite students and nurture their ability to use language in creative and meaningful ways" (Gunderson, 1995: 43)

2.3 Strategies to enhance reading comprehension

According to Lerner (2006) the National Reading Panel of 2000 recognize several strategies that had a solid scientific basis of instruction for improving reading comprehension including: Comprehension monitoring: Students learn how to be aware of their understanding of the material

Cooperative thinking: Students learn reading strategies together

Use of graphic and semantic organizers, including story maps: Students make

graphic representations of the materials to assist their comprehension

Question answering: Students answer questions posed by the teacher and

receive immediate feedback

Question generation: Students ask themselves questions about various aspects

of the story

Story structure: Students are taught how to use the structure of the story

as a means of helping them recall story content in order to answer questions about what they have read

Summarization: Students are taught to integrate ideas and to generate ideas

and to generalize from the text information

Williams (1998) emphasizes a “Themes Instruction Program”, which consists of a series of twelve 40 minutes lessons and each lesson is organized around a single story and is composed of five parts namely: pre-reading discussion on the purpose of the lesson and the topic of the story that will be read, reading the story, discussion of important story information using organized (schema) questions as a guide, identification of a theme for the story, stating it in general terms so that it is relevant to a variety of stories and situations and finally practice in applying the generalized theme to real-life experiences

2.4 Factors affecting reading comprehension

A study by Palincsar and Brown (1984) show that "reading comprehension is the product of three main factors" (p 118) The three factors include first, reader-friendly or reader considerate texts; second, the interaction of the reader's prior knowledge and text content; and third, reading strategies which reveal the way readers manage their interaction with written texts and how these strategies are related to text comprehension (Palincsar & Brown, 1984)

Comprehension can be enhanced to the extent that the texts are well written, that is, they follow a structure which is familiar to the reader and their syntax, style, clarity of presentation, and coherence reach an acceptable level

in terms of the reader's mother language Such texts have been called

reader-friendly or readerconsiderate (Anderson & Armbruster, 1984) Comprehension can also be influenced by the extent of overlap between the reader's prior knowledge and the content of the text Research demonstrates the impact of schematic constructive processes on text comprehension A number of studies suggest that text comprehension is dependent upon prior knowledge (Anderson & Pitchert, 1978; Anderson, Reynolds, Schallert, & Goetz, 1977; Bransford & Johnson, 1973; Dooling & Lacharnn, 1971; Fass & Schumacher, 1981) Voss and his colleges (Chiesi, Spilich, & Voss, 1979) provide a clear example of this in their research that describes how previously acquired knowledge influences college students' acquisition of new domain-related information In their research, the performance of individuals with high baseball (HK) or low baseball (LK) knowledge is compared Chiesi, Spilich and Voss (1979) indicate HK recognition performance is superior to

LK, and that HK individuals need less information to make recognition judgments than LK individuals Moreover, to enhance comprehension and overcome comprehension failures, some reading researchers focus on reading strategies In Casanave's (1988) study of comprehension monitoring strategies, Cananave describes how successful readers employ effective strategies while reading; they usually propose a question, and elaborate their own knowledge and the content of the text Casanave (1988) also makes a distinction between routine and repair (non- routine) monitoring strategies- the task of routine monitoring strategies may include "predicting, checking understanding for consistency, and checking for overall understanding" (p 290) whereas repair (non-routine) strategies may include "evaluating what the problem is, deciding how to resolve it, implementing the strategy as a result

of the decision made, and checking the results" (p 290) Other recognize strategies may include these identified in Zvetina's study (1987) for building and activating appropriate background knowledge, and those described by

Block (1986) for recognizing text structure The well-practiced decoding and comprehension skills of expert readers permit those readers to proceed relatively automatically, until a triggering event alerts them to a comprehension failure but when a comprehension failure is detected, readers must slow down and allot extra processing to the problem area (Spilich,Vesonder, Chiesi, & Voss, 1979) To fully understand how a student learns from texts, the reading instructor cannot ignore any of these three main factors which Palincsar and Brown (1984) propose However, in this paper, the researcher has chosen to concentrate most extensively on how the reader's prior knowledge may influence EFL students' reading comprehension

2.5 Previous relevant studies

The first is the study conducted by Cain, et al (2001) In this study they investigate the relation between young children‟s comprehension skill and inference making ability by using a procedure that controlls individual differences in general knowledge (Barnes & Dennis, 1998; Barnes, Dennis, & HaefeleKalvaitis, 1996) A multi episode story is read to the children and their ability to make two types of inference is assessed: coherence inferences, which are essential for adequate comprehension of the text, and elaborative inferences, which enhance the text representation but which are not crucial to understanding There is a strong relation between comprehension skill and inference-making ability even when knowledge is equally available to all participants Subsidiary analyses of the source of inference failures reveal different underlying sources of difficulty for good and poor comprehenders

The second study s carried out by Attaprechakul (2013) The goal of this study is to look into the inference processes that are required to read journal papers successfully Eighty-eight graduate students participate in this study, reading a set of materials on education and economic growth and answering comprehension questions Twenty-four of the participants

additionally agree to participate in a more in-depth interview The kids are found to rely on bottom- up processing the majority of the time They skimmed over some of the more challenging sections, such as technical information and graphic illustrations To improve their comprehension, they sought assistance from pals They are effective in comprehending the thesis statement, the substance of the section, and the meanings of the tested terms and clauses in general However, they are less able to infer the underlying argument, the tone of the article, and the attitudes of others toward the research findings A substantial number of students also fail to utilize information from section headings and the organization of research articles to guide their reading tasks

The third study is conducted by Arianti (2013) This study looks into the importance and effectiveness of employing the DRTA technique to teach narrative text inference It is a one-group pre-test post-test design with a pre- experimental design The class is Grade XI IPA 1, with a total of thirty-four students The data is acquired by providing each of the 34 students 30 multiple choice items, which are then analyzed using the t-test and effect size calculation The findings show that teaching utilizing the DRTA technique greatly improves students' capacity to make narrative text-based inferences It has a high level of efficacy

The fourth study is conducted by Azizmohammadi (2013) Two rather homogeneous groups of EFL learners (N=46) in Arak University are chosen for this study They are learning English as a second language After taking a reading comprehension test to ensure that their differences in reading comprehension were not significant, they are randomly assigned to two sections of a short-story course, one serving as the experimental group and the other as the control group, both studying the same short stories and both being taught by the researcher as their course instructor The researchers discover

that in a memory test two weeks later, learners who can draw inferences considerably outperformed the other learners in a reading comprehension exam using T-test and ANOVA

The fifth study is conducted by Cain (2015) It looked into the inference procedures that are required to read journal articles successfully Eighty-eight graduate students participate in this study, reading a set of materials on education and economic growth and answering comprehension questions This is a two-part research involving 4- to 6-year-olds The first goal is to see how early higher-level comprehension skills are supported

by lower-level comprehension skills (receptive vocabulary and grammar) and verbal memory (inference and literal story comprehension) The second goal is to see if these abilities may predict eventual reading comprehension Eighty-two children complete assessments of nonverbal ability, receptive vocabulary and grammar, verbal short-term memory, and inferential and literal comprehension of a picture book narrative Vocabulary is a unique predictor of concurrent narrative comprehension Longitudinally, inference skills, literal comprehension and grammar made independent contributions to reading comprehension one year later The influence of vocabulary on reading comprehension is mediated through both inference and literal comprehension The results show that inference skills are critical to the construction of text representations in the earliest stages of reading comprehension development

2.6 Summary

In summary, inferential reading strategies and factors affect reading comprehension are two main items discussed in literature review According Johnston (1983), reading comprehension mean the reader's comprehension of the text results from using different strategies consciously and unconsciously and is evoked by various knowledge sources So the result of reading comprehension may show what the reader understands from a text, what

he/she fails to understand from a text, and how he/she transacts with the text Besides, Difficulties in doing the exercises are inevitable, so it is necessary to consider the factors affecting on the results of students‟ performance

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

This study adopted both the quantitative and qualitative research approaches According to Christenson and Johnson (2008), the qualitative research approach relies on the collection of non-numerical data, while for Gay et al (2009) it is the collection, analysis, and interpretation of comprehensive narrative and visual data to gain insight into a particular phenomenon of interest Best and Khan (2006) describe the quantitative approach as the collection and analysis of numerical data describe, explain, predict, or control phenomena of interest With a view to identifying a

„problematic‟situation or issue that the participants consider worth looking into more deeply and systematically, and to find suitable strategies for students to improve their reading skill, the teacher becomes an „investigator‟

or „explorer‟ of his or her personal teaching context To investigate the reading strategies reported using by tenth graders and what problems they are facing, two questionnaires were utilized The data collected from the questionnaire were subjected to SPSS version 20 Besides, in order to gain insights into the tenth graders‟ reported data with regard to strategies that attracted students‟ interests and their challengies in doing inferential reading exercises, qualitative data were collected through interviews The interviewees were chosen randomly to ensure the reliability of the study

3.1 Participants

For this study, students of grade 10 were selected Those students were chosen from An Nhon No.3 High School a public school in Binh Dinh Province Participants were 120 tenth grade students who had just experienced graduation examination in which English was one of the compulsory subject

Clustering sampling was used to choose the students Three classes of pupils were chosen at random from a total of 11 classes This strategy was

chosen because it was easy to use and fair It was also supposed to aid in improving the validity and dependability of data from a sampling standpoint

In addition, as the researcher conducting the study, I gained permission to do the survey in the school

During the survey, these students were asked to fill a questionnaire to get the information about individual characteristics and strategies students applied in their inferential reading identify, which types of references students thinks difficult, and six of them were invited to answer a semi – structured interview to get more information to make all the things in the questionnaire

to be clearer After 8-week treatment, six students were chosen randomly by drawing lots from the questionnaire they had done

3.2 Data collection instruments

To meet the objectives of the study, both qualitative and quantitative approaches were exploited Student survey questionnaire was the main research tools semi-structured interviews with the participants

3.2.1 Questionnaire

After considering the benefits and drawbacks of several instruments used in language learning strategy research, I opted to use a questionnaire to gather data for this study Questionnaire has some strong points, notably its

“efficiency in terms of researcher time, researcher efforts and financial

resources” (Hoang & Nguyen, 2006, p10) The questionnaire given to

students was written in two languages (i.e., two versions): one in English and the other in Vietnamese, so that students could comprehend it better

There are two questionnaires in this study:

- The first one was designed to identify which types of references students think difficult

- The second questionnaire was designed to includes statements related to strategies used in inferiential reading tasks The aim is to identify which strategies

students use in doing inferential reading tasks and which is effective

For each questionnaire statement, 5-alternative choices adapted from Vagias & Wade (2006) were provided Participants were asked to select one from among the options

3.2.2 Interview

Interviews were individually conducted with 10 students I decided to conduct these interviews because they were expected to help establish and maintain a close relationship with the participants and to help clarify more about the information the participants provide through their answers in the questionnaire Particularly, interviews helped to gain data to answer the

questions “What problems do students face while doing inferential English

reading tasks?” and “ What strategies students apply while doing inferentiral reading English tasks?”

However, unlike the questionnaires, only open-ended questions were included and all interviews are semi-constructed, since it was believed that semi- constructed interviews provide the interviewer with a great deal of flexibility while offering the interviewees adequate power and control over the course of the interview

Most importantly, those interviews also helped to collect further information compare to the answers the students had answered in the questionnaires The students had a chance to express their attitudes towards inferential reading, talking about the way they did their inferential reading exercises, the problems they face when doing those exercises

3.3 Data collection procedure

The data gathering procedure for this study was divided into six phases:

Phase 1: I hold conversations with the participants about the prior teaching

and learning methods in reading skills in general and inferential reading in particular In English lessons, they discussed in groups or pairs the strategies