Establishing and training reading strategies to students of english in binh duong teachers training college

Assumed that learning strategies can be taught and applied for specific language skill areas, reading strategies can also be taught to enable readers to comprehend texts better.. Being a

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HOCHIMINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

ESTABLISHING AND TRAINING READING

STRATEGIES TO STUDENTS OF ENGLISH IN BINH DUONG TEACHER'S

TRAINING COLLEGE

A Thesis submitted in partial fuinilment of the requirements for

the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL)

Submitted by TAO THITHUY KHE

Supervisor: NGUYEN HUYNH DAT, Ed M in TESOL

CERTIFICATE OF ORGIGINALITY

I certify my authorship of the thesis entitled

ESTABLISHING AND TRAINING READING STRATEGIES

TO STUDENTS OF ENGLISH IN BINH DUONG

TEACHER'S TRAINING COLLEGE

in terms of the statement of Requirements for Theses in Master's Programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee

Ho Chi Minh City, October 2006

Tao Thi Thuy Khe

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, Tao Thi Thuy Khe, being the candidate for the

degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University

relating to the retention and use of Master's Theses deposited in the

Library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis

deposited in the library should be accessible for purposes of study and

research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the

Library for the care, loan or reproduction of theses

Ho Chi Minh City, October 2006

Tao Thi Thuy Khe

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Mr,

Nguyin Huynh Dat, Ed M in TESOL, who did provide me with constant

guidance during my hours' labour on the thesis with many insightful,

constructive and valuable comments

My special thanks are also given to my family including my husband and my

daughter, my friends who did give me great encouragement, care and love

during the time of completing the thesis

Ill

ABSTRACT

Researches on learning strategies have pointed out that the appropriate

use of learning strategies can result in improved L2 proficiency overall or in

specific language skill areas (Oxford, cited in Richards & Renandya 2002:

126) Assumed that learning strategies can be taught and applied for specific

language skill areas, reading strategies can also be taught to enable readers

to comprehend texts better Despite the fact that research on reading strategy

training has assumed that reading strategies can be taught it only mentioned

general principles and instructions which prove not complete and

satisfactory Therefore, the question to put out for reading teachers is that

how reading strategies can be taught and introduced into the classroom

This research was carried out to fulfill two purposes The first was to

survey students "reading strategy use" at Binh Duong Teacher's Training

College (BBTTC) and the second was to seek ways to train and develop

reading strategies to students of this college On relating to the main

objectives of the research, the research consisted of two main parts The first

was a survey to seek evidences to prove that students in BBTTC were not

aware of and did not use reading strategies The second part was an

appUcation of a reading curriculum that focused on teaching and training

reading strategies The survey proved that students were actually conscious

of and did use reading strategies but the frequency as well as of the variety

of the strategies they used were not high and large The application proved

that reading strategies can be incorporated successfully into an ongoing

reading classroom

List of figures viii

List of tables ix List of abbreviations x

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY 1

1.1 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 1

1.7 THE SCOPE OF THE STUDY 9

1.8 THE ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY 9

CHAPTER 2: THEORIES RELATED TO THE STUDY 11

2.1 TEXT AND TEXT INTERPRETATION 11

2.1.1 The need of interpreting texts H

2.1.2 The role of language knowledge in text interpretation 14

2.1.3 The role of schematic knowledge in text interpretation 19

2.2 THE ROLE OF READING STRATEGIES IN EFFECTIVE READING .23

2.2.1 What are learning strategies? 23

2.2.2 What are meant by "reading strategies 24

2.2.3 Can reading strategies be trained? 26

2.2.4 Needed strategies for effective reading 28

CHAPTER 3: THE METHODOLOGY OF THE RESEARCH 37

3.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 37

3.2 RESEARCH DESIGN 38

3.3 METHODOLOGY USED IN THE SURVEY 38

3.4 METHODOLOGY USED IN THE APPLICATION 42

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDING 47

4.1 SURVEY ANALYSIS 47

4.1.1 Data analysis on pre-reading strategy use 48

4.1.2 Data analysis on while-reading strategy use 52

4.1.3 Data analysis on post reading strategy use 59

4.1.4 Survey Findings 64

4.2 APPLICATION ANALYSIS 66

4.2.1Verbal Analysis on Class observation 67

4.2.2 Statistic analysis on Test scores 69

CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION 74

5.1 RECOMMENDATIONS 74

5.2 CONCLUSION 88

BIBLIOGRAPHY I

Appendix 1: QUESTIONNAIRE LIST V

Appendix 2: A COPY OF READING PRE-TEST IX

Appendix3: A COPY OF READING POST- TEST XIII

vu

LIST OF FIGURES

Chapter 4

Figure 4.1: Classification of pretest scores 73

Figure 4.2: Classification of post test scores 73

LIST OF TABLES Chapter 2

Table 2.0: A typology of reading strategies 29

Chapter 4

Table 4.1: Responses to Pre-reading strategies use 51

Table 4.2: Responses to While -reading strategies use 57

Table 4.3: Responses to Post -reading strategies use 63

Table 4.4: Comparison of pretest and post test scores of the English

Class 17 70 Table 4.5: Classification of pretest and post test scores 71

IX

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY

This introduction chapter presents an overview of the research It consists of

the following sections: the significance of the study, the methodology underlying

the study, the hypotheses, the aim of the study, the research questions, the

research method, the scope of the study, and the organization of the study

1.1 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

In common with the development of our nation's economy and with the

cultural interaction between other countries and Vietnam, learning languages

has been booming all over the country, not only in urban areas but also in rural

places Binh Duong is a developing town which is 30 kilometers far from Ho Chi

Minh City In common with the development of the country's economy, it has

attracted hundreds of foreign investments Learning languages, especially

English has become an obligation for almost anyone working intellectually these

days For the last two decades, with the aim of improving language learning and

teaching, a lot of efforts and investments have been made in the methodology

Learning a language is no more researching to understand about it but is learning to use it for communication That's why developing four skills: reading,

writing, hstening and speaking has become a great interest to both learners and

teachers In fact, a lot of changes and progresses have been made in the ways of

teaching and learning In languages centers, colleges and universities of large

cities language is taught communicatively and students are exposed to rather

good language environment However, the situation is not the same throughout

the country In small towns, the way of teaching and learning still creates a lot of

discussions

Being a teacher at Binh Duong Teacher's training College and at several

language centers in the town, I notice that the need to develop reading skill for

students and learners in this town is actually essential but I also simuUaneously

realize that the quahty of teaching and learning reading skill in this town is still

not very effective With the experiences of nearly 15 years teaching and with

the observation on my colleagues' classes in the town, I see that despite of being

at pre-intermediate and even intermediate levels many learners seem to be very passive in learning reading skill In classes of reading comprehension what they

do is just writing vocabularies into their notebooks and answering the questions

that the teacher read from textbooks The process sounds not only passive but

also dependent on teachers It can be guessed that this way of learning must be

born from a similar way of teaching In fact the process of teaching in this town

is rather traditional What the teachers do is just explaining new words in the

reading texts and asking students questions provided in textbook Even the way

to explain words creates discussions Such a way of teaching reading is not

creative at all and thus, doesn't either train or develop the learner's reading

skill As a result the learners do not have the opportunity to train the habit as

well as the abihty of reading Enghsh documents independently There must

have been several reasons to explain this situation of teaching and learning but

it is obvious that the problem that teachers in my town face is related to the

question of methodology

Binh Duong teacher's training college is the place in the town where teachers

of English are trained Graduating from here the students will become teachers

of English teaching in all secondary schools and Enghsh centers of the town For

the students of Enghsh in this college reading skill has both short- term and long

-term importance This is because of the following reasons Firstly, to be

students they have to read a great number of English documents in which there's

a lot of information needed to be solved Secondly, to be future teachers they

need reading skill to continue their further study and research in language

teaching in order to develop and improve their own teaching carrier But above

all, once these students are good readers it is more likely that they can later help

their own pupils and students to read well Because of these reasons, the need of

training and improving reading skill at Binh Duong teacher's training college is

really significant

Although a variety of research findings place the emphasis on the

significance of many factors improving reading comprehension such as the need

of discourse analysis, the need for a large stock of vocabulary, the value of

extensive reading, the reader's background knowledge, the understanding of

links between words, sentences and the reality images in the mind of writers

when they use them, etc These issues have been identified very important in

teaching and learning reading, however, still prove not sufficient enough for

good comprehension A critical point of view for effective reading is that the

abihty to use appropriate reading strategies and to know when to use them and

in what combinations is an important factor of good comprehension It has been

reahzed by strategy approach supporters that students who are aware and know

to use reading strategies appropriately are always better readers But a difficult

question to put out is that whether students can learn reading strategies And if

they can learn how can teacher incorporate reading strategies into classroom?

And how can students learn to use these strategies appropriately? How do they

know when and where to use them and which combinations of strategies to use?

Of course teachers are considered the ones who are responsible for helping their

students use possible strategies available to them during the process of reading

Therefore teaching students to use reading strategies is now reahzed as an

important job that teachers have to think of as their duties However, there is a

fact that training students to use reading strategy is a really difficult and takes

both teachers and students much time But once it can be done it will have a

great influence on the way of learning reading of students in my college In fact

it will have a profound influence on improving the ways and methodology of

language learning and teaching in my college particularly and in the scope of all

my home -town generally

1.2 METHODOLOGY:

As it is mentioned above, there is a variety of approaches and viewpoints

underlying the learning and teaching pedagogy such as discourse analysis

approach, situational approach, communicative approach, student-centered

approach, etc However, the supporters of these approaches always support on

the teaching and learning based on the performance of only one single method

or approach This tendency proves to have many shortcomings To make the

teaching and learning more flexible, a set of approaches should be combined

The followings are the approaches and viewpoints that have guided the

methodology throughout my research These are also the theoretical foundations

on which issues and problems raised by the research will be solved

Strategy-based approach: strategic reader means better reader

Task-based approach: readers increase and sharpen their

comprehension when they perform tasks related to the content and

language of reading texts

Schema theory: activating reader's background knowledge plays an

important role in reading comprehension

Communicative approach: apart from text comprehension, teaching

reading should help create interesting forms of communicative activities

1.3 HYPOTHESES

Researches on learning strategies have pointed out that the appropriate use

of learning strategies can resuU in improved L2 proficiency overall or in specific

language skill areas (Oxford, cited in Richards & Renandya 2002: 126) In the

hght of this statement, it can be assumed that the appropriate use of reading

strategies can also resuh in better comprehension In fact, it has been identified

that readers who are able to use a variety of strategies appropriately in order to

discover text meaning are always better readers Yet, with the observation I

have when I teach in class, and the understanding about the students'

background, I have an impression that students at BDTTC seemingly have no

awareness of reading strategies and it is likely that they don't often use reading

strategies effectively This is due to the following reasons

Firstly, students at BDTTC aire usually the ones who have just left

high-school, as a result, they have not been approached to any learning language

environment before except for their learning experiences at high school In fact,

they all have the similar learning background And as what have been

mentioned in the part 1.1, the teaching style and the learning methodology that

most students in the town are accustomed to is mainly traditional translation

method What they do in Enghsh class is just hstening to teachers, writing down

whatever teachers write on board and accepting everything teachers say as the

truth It is obviously certain that students' learning at BDTTC is unavoidably

influenced by this "negative" way of learning

Secondly, although students at BBTTC all have high school level, their

Enghsh is not as good as other students throughout the countries because of

some reasons Firstly they are usually the ones who have not succeeded in

passing the exam to the National university and come to BDTTC for their

second choice Secondly, many of them are from rural areas of the town where

there are very few experienced and well-qualified English teachers

Thirdly, though I do not have evidence I still have the belief that the

problems my students face is related to the learning methods not the learning

itself This behef is reinforced because in my reading class I often hear my

students discussing and complaining to each other like this: "How can we learn

English better?" or "I learn very hard but I do not get better" or "I listen to

cassette every night but my hstening is still bad." I also hear them encouraging

and advising each other like this: "try harder" "learn 10 vocabularies a day" but

they don't even know the basic requirements such as reading the instructions

carefully before reading any given text This proves to me that the problems my

students face must be related to the ways and the methodology of their learning

With such understanding about students' characteristics I have the basic

assumption towards their learning as follows:

• Students are not aware of reading strategies

• Students do not use reading strategies appropriately

• Teachers focus more on content than on training skills when they teach

reading

I do believe that the unawareness and the shortage of the reading strategies

are factors that hinder students' comprehension while reading

1.4 THE AIM OF THE STUDY

With the situation as well as the hypotheses towards the teaching and

learning in the town and at BDTTC mentioned above, the need to teach students

strategies as well as methods to learn independently is definitely certain

Therefore the aim of my research is targeted at the followings:

• Investigating whether students in Binh Duong teacher's training College

have an understanding of what reading strategies are

• Discovering whether students are able to use reading strategies

appropriately and which strategies they often use

• Proposing some effective ways to estabhsh and train reading strategies in

reading classroom

• Developing the self-assessment as well as the habit of reading by

themselves to the students, making reading more independent,

interesting, and pleasurable to students

2 Do they often use reading strategies frequently in their reading?

3 Can reading strategies be incorporated in reading classroom?

1.6 RESEARCH METHOD

In order to seek for the answers for the three questions raised by the research

(see Research Questions), the research consists of two main parts The first is a

survey to investigate students' awareness and students' use of reading

strategies The second is the application of a reading curriculum that focuses

on estabhshing and training reading strategies

The research method used in the first part - the survey is mainly quantitative

method combined with quahtative methods Specifically, the survey is mainly

based on a questionnaire hst of 25 questions designed to find out which reading

behaviours, skills and strategies that students often use in their own process of

reading In addition to questionnaire list, class observation and interviews with

students wiU contribute to make data analysis more rehable

The research method used in the second part - the application is mainly

qualitative method, supported by quantitative method Specifically, the

application will be evaluated by two main methods The first is the observation

towards students' changes and progress after the application The second is the

statistic description of test findings Briefly, method used in the first part of the

research is mainly quantitative method and in the second part is mainly

qualitative method

What mentioned in this part is only an overview of research methods used

throughout the research More details and descriptions will be repeated in

chapter 3

1.7 THE SCOPE OF THE STUDY

1.7.1 Delimitation

Research on teaching and learning reading methodology in L2 has provided

a number of theories towards developing and improving reading skill but the

study confines itself only to one aspect: that is improving reading skill through

forming and training reading strategies As a result, the research will confine

itself mainly to two main points:

1 Investigating whether students of Enghsh in BDTTC are aware of reading

strategy use or not The population of the study is confined to the first and

the second year students of BDTTC

2 From the results obtained from the investigation, an apphcation of a

strategy-training focused reading course would be carried out to the

second year students of BDTTC

Through the application, the research hopes to seek and suggest ways to train

and establish reading strategies to students so that they can use them in their

own reading and then they can improve their reading ability as well as form the

habit of reading independently in their later carrier

1.7.2 Limitation

As it is mentioned, the study is narrowed in the scope of Binh Duong

teacher's training college, so the findings of the study will be applied only in this

the scope of this town This study therefore will not be very generalizable to all

area of the countries

1.8 THE ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY

The study consists of five chapters Chapter one presents an introducfion to

the study consisting of: the significance of the study, the methodology, the

hypotheses, the aim of the study, the research questions, the research method,

the scope of the study and the organization of the study Chapter two presents an

overview of the literature relevant to the study Chapter three describes the

methodology that is used to carry out the research Chapter four discusses the

data analysis and its findings Chapter five withdraws and presents

recommendations and conclusions for the research

CHAPTER TWO: THEORIES RELATED TO THE STUDY

In Chapter 1, the introduction to the study has been presented In this chapter

the theories related to the study will be reviewed and presented into two

separate sections

Section 1 presents three main issues: 1) The significance of text interpretation

in understanding deeply what texts mean, 2 ) The role of language knowledge in

text interpretation which will discuss the necessity and the importance of

understanding language features like cohesive devices, discourse signals and

vocabulary in text decoding and 3) The role of schematic knowledge in text

interpretation which will then discuss about the contribution of important

elements like general world knowledge, text type knowledge, sociocultural

knowledge and content knowledge in discovering text meaning

Section 2 describes the role of reading strategies in effective reading There

are four main points in this section 1) What are learning strategies? 2) What are

meant by "reading strategies? 3) Can reading strategies be trained? 4)

Significant strategies for effective reading

2.1 TEXT AND TEXT INTERPRETATION

2.1.1 The need for interpreting texts

According to Andrew Goatly (2000: 3) there are three levels at which the

reader understands and analyses what he reads At the first level, the reader

decodes the surface forms of the text The phrase "the surface form of the text"

is meant the physical forms which the writing and their meanings are displayed

11

on page This stage of decoding solves the question: "What does the text

mean?" The stage of decoding mainly depends on linguistic signals of grammar

and semantic

However, reading is far more complex than that: the reader has to interpret

what are printed on page and make sense of them Therefore, reader has to

move to the second level That is the level of interpretation At this level the

reader has to interpret what he has decoded in the first level, working out the

attention and the attitude that the writer wants to assume through the meaning of

the text This stage solves the question: "What does the writer mean by this

text" The stage of interpretation depends upon the knowledge of pragmatics

and the mental activities such as guessing, making inferences and so forth And

finally, the third level is explanation which is often ignored This level shows

why texts are shown or written the way they are It asks the question "What

social and ideological forces determine text meanings?" This level of

ideological explanation relies on the synthesizing process of level one and level

two: text description and text interpretation

In the light of this viewpoint about the three stages in reading, to fully

understand and interpret the meaning of a sentence or an utterance, Andrew

Goatly suggested that reader has to do at least three things First reader has to

recognize propositions that are assumed rather than expressed Then he must

decide what attitude the writer has towards the proposition expressed or

assumed And finally he has to guess what inferences the writer intended him to

make on the basis of the proposition To illustrate this, let's see the following

example borrowed from Wilson and Sperber (cited in Goatly 2000: 129)

"Imagine the following scenario Mary is sitting in the

living room reading the newspaper John, who has been

cooking dinner, comes in and puts two plates of food on

the table and says: " Your food will get cold\

Andrew Goatly interpreted the utterance as follows First of all, reader or

hearer can clearly see a certain presupposition in the utterance: an assumption

which is stated that the food is, at the time warm or hot Secondly, reader has to

decide on the speaker's attitude to this proposition because it is clear that the

purpose of the speaker is not merely to inform that the food is hot or warm but

he wants to say something else Thirdly, reader has to guess what John intended

by uttering the sentence In other words, reader has to guess what John is

implying, what inference he wants Mary to draw By saying "Your food will

get cold" John may be communicating that

He wants Mary to eat the food at once when it is still hot

With the above concrete example we can strongly state that it is a mistake

to think that we can understand the meaning of a linguistic message solely on

the basis of the words or structures of that sentence This is true in another case

when we read a perfectly grammatical sentence that we can derive its hteral

meaning but we still find it impossible to understand This is simply because we

lack of information and context of the whole discourse The above example

shows that meanings can not simply be read off the text but that inferences and

attitude have to be recognized to make sense of it In other words, the process of

text interpretation is significantly essential for understanding deeply what texts

mean

13

2.1.2 The role of language knowledge in text interpretation

Hedge (2000:192-193) classifies at least three types of language knowledge

that are of importance in helping readers to decode text meaning They consist

of cohesive devices, discourse signals and vocabulary

2.1.2.1 Cohesive devices

Halhday (cited in Yule 1983: 192) has the view that the primary determinant

of whether a cluster of sentences does or does not constitute a text depends

mainly on cohesive devices within and between these sentences In other words,

cohesive devices play a determining role in making and turning a set of

sentences into a meaningful text Cohesive devices can perform such a role

because they combine sentences together, creating links across sentences

boundaries and chaining together items that are related This gives a feeling that

a text binds and hangs together and that it makes sense and is not just a jumble

of sentences With such a role, cohesive devices are seen as clues and signals to

show how the text should be read Good readers are always able to recognize

easily the function of cohesive devices and how they work in a text and thus are

able to understand the functional relationships of the sentences On contrary,

readers who have no abihty or deficiency in this area may find it difficult to

reahze the relafionships of sentences and this causes them to miss important

links and as a resuU, they will have difficulty to interpret the text and thus the

process of decoding text may be hard for these readers Reading pedagogy has

identified decoding cohesive devices as an essential part of reading

comprehension Halhday has discussed four types of cohesive devices under the

headings like reference, substitution, ellipsis and lexical relationship (cited in

Yule 1983; 192)

Reference items or referents are defined as linguistic forms that refer to

things, people, entity or anything else in the text instead of being interpreted

semantically in their own rights For example in the sentence "Paul bought a

pear and he ate /?" the terms "he, it" are called reference items for "he' refers to

Paul and "it" refers to pear Widdowson (cited in Nunan 1999:134 ) states that a

major task for someone reading a piece of discourse is to keep track of the various things and events that are referred to within the discourse For example,

when readers read a text especially a story for example it is these reference

items that help readers identify who and what is being referred Reference that

requires readers to look back in the text to identify is called anaphoric

reference "He and it" in the above sentence is one example of anaphoric

Cataphoric is the opposite of anaphoric Readers have to read on and look

forward in the text to interpret cataphoric referents When "backward and

forward" reading do not supply enough information there is a possibihty of

referring "outward" from text to identify the reference This case we have

exophoric reference To identify exophoric reference readers have to look into

the immediate context of the text But sometimes the referent is not in the

context itself but is assumed by writer as a part of shared world in term of

knowledge or experience In this case, to identify and interpret exophoric

reference readers have to bring their knowledge about world into text For

example, on reading the sentence "She was stuck in the M 25"any reader of

Enghsh knows the M25 is a motorway around London famous for having

frequent traffic jam In reading, exercises which involves the tasks of identifying

references hke the pronouns he, she, it in are very common and simple

However, other items such as demonstratives: "this, that, it" may be more

troublesome because these words usually refer to longer stretches of text Since

15

reference decoding allows readers to follow the stream of the text and make

sense of it Mc Carthy (1991: 36) confirms that reference decoding is the basis of

effective reading Teachers of Enghsh especially teachers of reading should

take into account this aspect of language in their teaching

In addition to reference decoding, the ability to master and decode the uses of

substitution, ellipsis and lexical relationships in texts is also considered as a

guide to comprehend texts According to Mc Carthy (1991: 43), ''Ellipsis is the

omission of elements normally required by the grammar which the writer

assumes are obvious from the context and therefore need not be raised"

Substitution is the replacement of one word for another term serving the same

function Lexical relationship is the term used to refer to vocabulary items that

are likely to appear in the same text because of topic association and so forth It

is the repetition of related words that creates lexical cohesion within the text By

making readers aware of substitution, elhpsis, lexical cohesion, teachers can

guide them to the crucial points of text comprehension

Briefly speaking, reference, substitution, ellipsis and lexical relationships are

obviously important devices constructing cohesion within text Therefore, they

can be viewed as signals that a particular writer has chosen in order to structure

the text in view of communicative goal for producing the text These devices

facihtate the interpretation of the text by the reader since they help them to

segment the text (Mc Carhy 1991: 126) As described, cohesion rehes heavily on

grammatical and lexical devices, it relates to reader's linguisdc competence

Teachers of language especially teachers of reading skill need to take this

aspect of language into their teaching

2.1.2.2 Discourse signals

In addition to cohesive devices, readers may also rely on various kinds of

discourse signals to get through texts One of these may be connectives or

conjunctions (Hedge, 2000: 193)

Conjunctions are seen as signals to show how text should be read because

they display the sequencing of text segments and show the relationships between them (Mc Carthy 1991: 155) According to Mc Carthy a conjunction

does not set off a search for backward or forward for its referent, but it does

presuppose a textual sequence and signals a relationship between segments of

the text With such a role conjunctions are viewed as factors in textual

coherence, showing how a text is constructed As it is so, one level of text

interpretation which readers need to be involved when they process texts is

recognizing and interpreting the conjunctions within textual segments in order to

make sense of the relationships between them

Since conjunctions can signal the relations between segments within text it

can be said that they can organize and manage quite extended stretches of

discourse Therefore, they are seen as discourse signals that show readers how

texts should be interpreted Effective readers know how to take advantages of

these signals in their process of interpreting So it is advisable for teachers to

mention this to their students

According to Hedge (2000:193) besides conjunctions other certain words

also organize discourse Look at the sentence for instance "There are two ways

of dealing with this problem" Here problem refers to a situation previously

described and ways signals that the writer is going to discuss alternative modes

of treatments To interpret what "problem" refers to readers have to look back

the context of the text and to find out which "ways" readers have to maintain

and focus their attention to the next stretches of the text It can be seen that

these two words function as signposts in the test showing readers where to go In

other words these two words serve as a guide for readers to interpret text In

English a number of such words work in the same way, for example, incident,

event, episode, situation, issue, question and matter Readers of English need to

be aware of how such words work in texts And guiding readers to recognize and

interpret such words in text is considered as a part of teaching reading for

teacher

2.1.2.3 Vocabulary

Vocabulary is obviously a core component that provides much basis for how

well readers process with texts To understand the point made by the writer

readers must be able to recognize at least some of key words and their exact

meanings Hedge ( 2000: 193) states that vocabulary is a component of reading

ability with which language learners often experience difficulty Without an

extensive vocabulary stock readers may be discouraged on reading texts of

unfamihar topics One major strategy in reading skill is vocabulary strategy that

encourages readers to infer and guess word meanings from contextual clues and

background knowledge And one of important skills teacher can develop in EFL

readers is the abihty to distinguish between words that can be guessed from

context and words that need to be looked up in dictionary (Celce 2000:133) To

explain words immediately, teachers make students loose opportunity to guess

the meaning of the words Furthermore, the ability to guess words will increase

the decoding speed and thus it saves time With such a significant role

vocabulary strategy will be mentioned in the next part

To sum up, the role of language knowledge in reading process is not

deniable for it enables readers to recognize and decode quickly and accurately

words, grammatical structures and other hnguistic features It is the language

knowledge that provides access to meaning However, in addition to language

knowledge schematic knowledge has also been proved to have an important role

in interpreting process and could not be forgotten in learning and teaching reading skill Schematic knowledge, once combined with language knowledge

will speed up and make the interpreting process more effective So, what is

schematic knowledge and how much does its role contribute in the process of

text interpretation?

2.1.3 The role of schematic knowledge in text interpretation

Schema theory has been uncritically accepted as an important element

effecting learning process especially reading process In fact, there have been

many approvals towards the value of schema theory in teaching and learning

reading Steffenson suggests that reading methodology needs to pay attention to

activating knowledge before reading (cited in Hedge 2000: 192) David Nunan

(1999:132) states that: "Discourse comprehension requires more than knowledge

of words and granmiatical structures used by the writer or speaker It also

requires the hstener or reader to relate the content of the text to their knowledge

of the world, that is, to entities, states, of affairs, and so on that exist in the world

outside the text"

Schematic knowledge is the term used to refer to prior knowledge that

readers aheady possess on various aspects like: general world knowledge,

sociocultural and contextual knowledge, text topic and text genre knowledge It

also includes content knowledge as well as readers 'experience in reading In

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making sense of a given text, readers are suggested to caU up and match up their

own schematic knowledge to that of the writer Readers have to bring the

knowledge that they know and experience about the world to the text they read

So far researchers on schema theory haven't worked out exactly how many

types of schematic knowledge that actually exist But at least there are some

specific types that have been identified and accepted to have great impact on

understanding reading texts The following types are the ones that are

frequently mentioned

General world and topic knowledge: General knowledge covers the whole

range of knowledge of the world, from everyday matters such as the fact that

poisonous snakes are harmful or snow is cold or guns can kill, to knowledge

about very specialized topics like history, culture, physics, politics, sports, and

music of any given place If readers somewhat master these very specialized

kinds of knowledge, on reading a specific text on any particular topic they can

relate lexical items of the text to the knowledge that they already know about

the topic to construct the meaning of the text

Text type knowledge: experienced readers know that newspaper articles

are structured differently from a personal note; they also know that an academic

text uses language differently from that of a novel The knowledge that readers

bring to a text about structure, vocabulary, mood, grammar, level of complexity

and level of formality constitute their text genre knowledge Knowledge of text

genre allows readers to adjust their reading expectations and skills to the text at

hand Readers who are famihar with one particular text type may find h easy to

process with it but may find it hard to comprehend other text types George

Jacobs (George Jacobs & Willy Renandya 1999: 26) pointed out that some

education programs especially for young learners have been criticized for

using only narrative texts When students from such programs try to read other

text types such as expository, their comprehension drops because they lack the

necessary schema about the characteristics of that text type

Sociocultural knowledge: it is the background of home, community, school,

and culture that have played the largest roles in giving readers a knowledge

base for sociocultural knowledge In other words, it is all sorts of social

experiences that have shaped the readers' sociocultural knowledge

Sociocultural knowledge provides readers with a foundation, a basis for

comparison on reading process For example readers of a text about wedding

can relate and compare it both to specific wedding they have attended and the

general pattern of wedding in their own culture Researchers on schema theory

support the hypothesis that "readers would comprehend the text about their own

cuUures more accurately than other text" (Jo Ann Aebersold & Mary Lee Field

1997: 32)

Content knowledge: most readers would have some difficulty reading an

article, written by a doctor for doctors while readers who are doctors will find

these kinds of medical documents easy to understand because the content of

these articles are what they are famihar with and even aheady possess So, in

this case the key to these readers is not reading ability but schema Schema

theory argues that such readers, equipped with a basic understanding of the

vocabulary in the text usually fit the text into knowledge that they already

possess, then check back when new or unexpected informafion appears

In the hght of schema theory it can be argued that the kinds of meaning readers

gain from text are largely determined by the schema knowledge reader bring to

text from their social life and experience In other words, readers' social

identities and readers' experiences do influence their interaction with text With

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21

such a view, different groups of readers may see the text differently because

they bring different schemas to text If we assume reading as an interactive

process, we can see that it is a three-way interaction process between the

meaning in the mind of the writer, the language the writer uses to convey that

meaning in the text, and the meaning in the mind of one particular reader (the

meaning a particular reader brings to the text) Of course, usually these

meanings are related and good writers and good readers strive for the closest

possible fit between these meanings

To sum up schematic knowledge has a significant importance in text

interpretation because of many reasons Firstly it complements language

knowledge, helping readers to decode its meaning quicker Secondly, it allows

readers to relate incoming information to already known information Thirdly it

allows readers to predict the continuation of both spoken and written discourse

Readers wiU understand more of a text if they have appropriate schema

knowledge That is why teachers are advised to choose the reading texts which

are accessible to learners so that they know enough about it to be able to apply

their background knowledge to the construction of the text meaning and

similarly, readers are also encouraged to think ahead, hypothesize, predict By

doing this, readers might construct some hypotheses about the text and

accordingly have expectations as to what might come next Good readers

constantly relate and match their prior knowledge with information presented in

text in order to process text better In addition to this, the way students learned

to read and their experience in reading also affect their degree of success in

understanding a particularly difficult text Therefore, good teachers are

supposed to know as much as they can about their students' background

2.2 THE ROLE OF READING STRATEGIES IN EFFECTIVE READING 2.2.1 What are learning strategies?

Learning strategies is closely related to learning style "Learning style refers

to any individual's preferred ways of going about learning It is generally

considered that one's learning style will result from personality variables,

including psychological and cognitive make- up, social -cultural background,

and educational experience" (David Nunanl998: 168) Therefore when learners

are allowed to learn in their favorite way, unpressured by learning environment

or other factors, learners often use strategies that directly reflect their preferred

learning styles

According to David Nunan (1998:168) learning strategies are the mental

processes which learners employ to learn and use the target language However,

he argues that in most classrooms, learners are unaware of the strategies

underlying the language tasks in which they are engaged while most LI and L2

researchers have agreed that effective learners often use metacognitive

strategies such as organizing, evaluating, and planning their learning Successful

learners also actively associate new information with existing information in

long-term memory It is the use of well-chosen strategies that distinguish experts

from novices in many learning area Rebecca Oxfords, one of the leading

teachers and researchers in the language learning strategies field, argues that

strategies are important for two reasons Firstly, strategies "are tools for active,

self directed involvement, which is essential for developing communicative

competence'* Secondly, learners who have developed appropriate learning

strategies have greater self-confidence and learn more effective (cited in David

Nunanl999: 172) For the teacher the issue to the question is whether it is

possible to help learners acquire and develop strategies that will enhance their

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learning in and outside the classroom or not And though our knowledge of

learning strategy and strategy training is still not complete, the research to date

suggests the following implications

• Strategy training should form an integral part of regular classroom event

• Strategy instruction should be embedded in meaningful communicative

contexts

• Students should be taught how to identify and analyze their preferred

learning strategies by means of diaries, learning journals, interviews, and

surveys

• Teachers should provide explicit explanation and modehng of strategy

use and provide ample opportunities for practice

• Strategy training takes time It may take months or even years to be able

to use learning strategies effectively

2.2.2 What are meant by "reading strategies?

In the light of definition about learning strategies, reading strategies have

been identified and accepted by both teachers and researchers as the mental

activities that readers use to construct meaning from a text Even though each

reader has different ways of processing texts, successful readers share much in

common, and derive more or less the same meaning from the same text as the

teacher or researcher does (Jo Ann Aebersold & Mary Lee Field 1997:16)

Similarly, Duffy defines reading strategies as "plans for solving problems

encountered in constructing meaning" (cited in Richards & Renandya 2002:

287) According to most of researchers reading strategies are ranged from

simple techniques such as guessing an unknown word in context, to more

comprehensive actions such as connecting what is being read to the reader's

background knowledge Good readers are the ones who can make use of the

combination of variety of these teclmiques simultaneously to discover meaning

when they read a particular text Most of researchers suppose that during

reading, good and efficient readers *minds repeatedly engage in variety of

processes seemingly simultaneously The successful readers tend to select from

a range of strategies For example, they skipped inessential words, guess from

context, read in broad phrase, look back or ahead to link one part of the text to

another, and when they are unsuccessful in decoding the meaning of a

paragraph or get puzzled by its content they do not give up but search for clues

in the context or change the way to reread the text In other words, during the

process of reading good readers combine and alternate various kinds of

strategies all at once unconsciously For example they use pre reading

information and top-down strategy to make some prediction about the text and

they use bottom-up strategy to start processing text at sentence level As they

aheady process the information that each new sentence or paragraph gives

them, they check to see if that information fits with what they aheady know

about the topic Again they use bottom-up and top-down strategies They also

predict what information they are going to read They read on and repeat such

processes until they come to the end of the text Readers who process texts this

way are unconsciously and automatically employing different kinds of mental

processes that are often regarded as reading strategies

According to Wallace (1996: 58) readers can be trained to use these reading

strategies and one starting point for development of strategy-based approaches

is to consider what good readers do particularly when they are confronted with

textual difficulties such as unknown words By looking at what good readers do

with texts, less successful readers might be helped For example, less skilled

readers need to understand and learn these processes The teacher's job is to

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make these processes conscious for students so that if they are not aheady doing

these things as they read they can begin consciously to practice them and

develop their ability to read more effectively

2.2.3 Can reading strategies be trained?

One question to put out is how these reading strategies can be taught and

introduced in classroom Should they be taught as something separate from their

lessons or should they be incorporated with the reading lessons? To help reading

strategy teaching work successfully Janzen (cited in Richards & Renandya 2002:

288) suggests that strategy training should have the following characteristics:

1 Strategies should be integrated into the ongoing process of reading

lessons Students are learning strategies while they are engaged in their

regular reading for a variety of purposes

2 Strategies should be taught through direct explanation, teacher modehng,

activities, and feed back

3 Strategies are constantly recycled over new texts and tasks Students

encounter individual strategies and groups of strategies time and time

again In this way, students better understand the usefulness of strategies

and there is a transfer of training from one type of text or task to another

4 Strategies are taught over a long period of time

Janzen also describes carefully how strategy training can be successfully

implemented in classroom She said that while she teaches reading she

organizes her activities in such a way to enable students not only to be aware

and understand what and how useful reading strategies are but also be able to

use these strategies where relevant Gradually, students will take on more

responsibilifies for using appropriate strategies independently The following

activities are the five classroom processes that help to develop reading

strategies towards students suggested by Janzen (cited in Richards & Renandya

2002: 289- 290)

1 General strategy discussion: teachers explain why learning and practicing

strategies are important and the class discusses Teachers and students

are also advised to discuss and share their own reading styles For

example, teachers may ask students what they typically do when they are

confronted with textual difficulty Such talks must be embedded while

students are reading texts and should be recurred to ensure that students

are aware of the value of what they are doing and to ensure that they are

connecting their progress in reading with the use of strategies

2 Teacher modeling: teachers can teach students strategies through their

modeling of expert reading For example while reading teachers

themselves can perform several strategies or ask students to use these

strategies by asking questions, making predictions, checking those

predictions and summarizing or paraphrasing In addition, teachers need

to explain why using these strategies are helpful By observing what

teachers do and how teachers process the texts consciously students can

be helped a lot

3 Student reading: students should be encouraged to read and think as

teachers do from the very beginning though this will take time for them to

be famihar with

4 Analysis of strategies used: teachers and students might profit from

analyzing what strategies they have used to process texts Teachers can

then elicit suggestions from students what strategies might be helpful in

solving comprehension problem and encourage the use of strategies

which are observed and analyzed to be the most effective,

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5 Explanation / discussion of individual strategies on regular basis: this is

somewhat overlapped with the 1^* process in which idenfification,

explanation and feedback of strategy use are repeated again and again,

showing students how to use the strategies

2.2.4 Needed strategies for effective reading

There has been a rather long list of strategies which has been proved

to have effective use on reading identified and accepted by researchers

The following hst is the one identified by Anderson et al.l991; Bamett

1989; Clark 1979

Recognize words quickly

Use text features (subheadings, transitions, etc.)

Use titles to infer what information might follow

Use world knowledge

Analyze unfamiliar words

Identify the grammatical functions of words

Read for meaning, concentrate on constructing meaning

Guess about the meaning of the text

Evaluate guesses and try new guesses if necessary

Monitor comprehension

Keep the purpose for reading the text in mind

Adjust strategies to the purpose for reading

Identify or infer main ideas

Tolerate ambiguity in a text (at least temporarily)

Paraphrase

Use context to build meaning and aid comprehension