Self study activities to improve reading skills of students at sam son ethnic pre university

46 4.2.3 The comparison between the average score of the pre and post reading tests of both groups in reading comprehension skill ………..………..48 4.2.4 The comparison between students’ impr

Nguyen Thi Kim Anh, Ph.D

SELF-STUDY ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE READING SKILL

OF STUDENTS AT SAM SON ETHNIC

PRE-UNIVERSITY

is my own work

Nghe An, 2017

Le Thi Huyen

valuable criticism as well as her kindly encouragement and correction help me a lot for the completion of my dissertation

Secondly, I would like to thank the teachers at the Foreign Languages Departments of Vinh University who have given me useful advice and suggestions for accomplishment

of the study

Thirdly, my sincere thanks also go to my colleagues and students at Sam Son Ethnic Pre-University, who provided me with inspiration for the research topic and helped me with the research data

Lastly, I am in debt to my beloved family and friends who are always by my side with their constant help and spiritual support during my thesis process

main ideas, guessing vocabulary from context, and making inferences The results of the questionnaires show students’ awareness and assessment of English reading comprehension skill, their difficulties in learning reading skill and their desire to improve it Additionally, the study applied self-study activities and sub-skills to enhance students’ learning autonomy in reading skill

There were 60 students participating in the study They were non-English majors at the beginning level in grade A and C The instrument used was survey questionnaires and three tests including a general test and two reading tests A pre-test and a post-test for reading comprehension were administered and students’ scores in the experimental group were compared with those in the control group The result revealed that the effectives of applying self-study activities in reading comprehension are clearly shown in the experimental group

It is hoped that the result of this study will help students and teachers at Sam Son Ethnic pre-university learn and teach reading skills in general, reading comprehension in particular more effectively

TABLE OF CONTENTS ……… iv

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES……… viii

ABBREVIATIONS……… ix

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ……… 1

1.1 Rationale ……….…… 1

1.2 Aims of the study ……… 3

1.3 Scope of the study ……… 3

1.4 Method of the study ……… 4

1.5 Organization of the study ……… …… 4

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW……….6

2.1 The definitions of reading ……… 6

2.2 Models of reading process ……… 7

2.2.1 Bottom-up model ……… 7

2.2.2 Top-down model ……… 9

2.2.3 Interactive model ……… 10

2.3 Reading comprehension ……… 11

2.3.1 The definitions of reading comprehension ……… 11

2.3.2 Factors involve reading comprehension ……… 13

2.3.3 Some sub – skills of reading comprehension…… ……….14

2.3.3.1 Reading for specific information.……….14

2.3.3.2 Finding the main ideas ……… 15

2.3.3.3 Guessing vocabulary from the context ………16

2.3.4.4 Types of questions in making inferences ……….21

2.4 The self – study activities 21

2.4.1 The self – study or learner autonomy ……….21

2.4.2 Roles of learner autonomy ……… 22

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY……… 25

3.1 Research setting ……… …… 25

3.1.1 An overview of Sam Son Ethnic Pre-university ……… 25

3.1.2 The teachers of English ……….25

3.1.3 The students ……….…… …… 25

3.1.4 The textbook ……… 26

3.1.5 The teaching and learning conditions ……… ………26

3.2 The study ……….………27

3.2.1 Research questions ……… ………27

3.2.2 Participants ……… …… 27

3.2.3 Instruments ……….……… 28

3.2.3.1 Survey questionnaires ……….…… 28

3.2.3.2 Tests ……… 29

3.2.4 Procedure ……… 31

CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION……….33

4.1 The findings from questionnaire ……….33

4.1.1 Students’ awareness of English reading comprehension skill ……… 33

4.1.2 Students’ assessment of their reading comprehension skill………35

4.1.3 Students’ difficulties in learning reading skill ……… 37

4.1.4 Students’ desire to improve reading skill ………39

4.2 The findings of the tests ……… 42

4.2.1 The general English test ……….……… … 43

4.2.2 The results of students’ scores after conducting self-study activities in reading comprehension ……….…… 46

4.2.3 The comparison between the average score of the pre and post reading tests of both groups in reading comprehension skill ……… ……… 48

4.2.4 The comparison between students’ improvement of sub-skills in the pre and post reading tests of both groups in reading comprehension skill ……….51

4.2.4.1 Reading for specific information ……… 52

4.2.4.2 Finding the main ideas ……… ……… 53

4.2.4.3 Guessing vocabulary from the context ………54

4.2.4.4 Making reference ………55

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION……….57

5.1 Conclusion ………57

5.2 Limitations ……… 58

5.3 Suggestions for further research ……… 58

REFERENCES ……….… 60

APPENDICES ……….i

APPENDIX A: ……… ……….………… i

APPENDIX B: ………iv

APPENDIX C: ……… ……… vii

APPENDIX D: ……….……… x

APPENDIX E: ……… ……….xiv

APPENDIX F: ……… ……….xviii

APPENDIX G: ……….………xxviii APPENDIX H: ……… xxx APPENDIX I: ……… xxxii

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1: Questions in tests for reading sub-skills Table 2: Students’ difficulties in learning the reading skill Table 3: Students’ desire to improve the reading skill Table 4: The experimental and control group’s score in general English test Table 5: The average total scores and standard deviations of general English test in the experimental group and the control group

Table 6: Scores of all participants for both groups Table 7: Means and standard deviations of students’ scores in the pre-test and the post-

test of both groups Table 8: Students’ correct answers of reading for specific information Table 9: Students’ correct answers of finding the main idea

Table 10: Students’ correct answers of guessing vocabulary from the context Table 11: Students’ correct answers of making reference

Figure 1: The important of reading skill Figure 2: Learning the reading comprehension in English Figure 3: Students’ assessment of their four sub-skills in reading comprehension Figure 4: Progress chart of participant A5/ fluctuated increase

Figure 5: Progress chart of participant A28/ gradual increase Figure 6: Progress chart of participant A20/ plateau increase Figure 7: The pre and post- tests mean’s score for both groups

ABBREVIATIONS

SSEP: Sam Son Ethnic Pre-university N: Number of students

%: percentage

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale

Nowadays, English has played a prominent role in the world where most people use it as a means of communication with the world in the trend of globalization In Vietnam, English is considered as the compulsory foreign language to be taught in the schools, from Junior High Schools up to Universities In teaching and learning English, the curriculum as the guidance of English teachers involves reading, writing, speaking and listening And every skill needs to be practised intensively A language teacher needs to be aware of the necessity of a well-balanced usage of all four language skills

in the language classes Learners of English, naturally and obviously, want to become the masters of all the four skills to communicate in English successfully Among these four skills, reading plays an important role in widening the students’ background knowledge about different cultures all over the world and useful information in the society Many experts and methodologists have come to understand that reading skill is necessary not only at schools but also afterwards It helps students as readers develop their language ability as well as give them other benefits to avoid cultural and language bias Thus, the more students recognize the importance of reading skill, the more self-study activities to improve reading skill they should take part in effectively

Learning in an active and creative way is considered as an important element of the teaching process This issue has been interested in and determined to be one of the innovation-oriented teaching methods in schools The orientation of education has shown the essential role of self-studying of students in their learning process Self-study activities have every intention of improving students’ independent thinking and problem - solving in learning process To achieve the most effective self-study, students should be provided useful techniques and various activities to have an opportunity to update, supplement and enrich their knowledge

Sam Son Ethnic Pre-university (SSEP) is the place that has a duty of training the ethnic students, providing them with supplementary courses so that they can become eligible for university admission Targeted students here must be ethnic people who live in remote areas such as the mountainous areas, high zones, and who attended the university entrance examination but failed to be accepted SSEP enrolls students at a certain score range and prepare them for university study Therefore, all students here are ethnic minority people coming from 7 provinces in the north of the middle area in Vietnam: Ninh Binh, Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien Hue Self-study skills of the minority of ethnic students are quite limited However, all students live together in the hostel of the school which has been considered as a convenient self-study enviroment Many clear and strict rules have been applied in organising self-study activities of students at the dormitory It is also the typical characteristic of the ethnic pre-universities Moreover, the amount of time for self-studying accounts for most of boarding time The average time for daily self-studying of each students is from five hours to six hours Thus, self-study of students will be actually effective if they can be provided suitable and useful activities In these special schools, it is necessary for all the teachers to conduct students self-study activities which might enhance students’ performance of leaner autonomy in reviewing their knowledge and improving skills in the learning process

Like all universities and colleges in the whole country, academic training curricular in SSEP has made English as a compulsory major subject Difficulties in training ethnic students but the poor conditions for teaching and learning together with the weakness of basic common knowledge of the learners seem to multiply Over the past six years of teaching in SSEP, the researcher recognizes that most of the students are weak on reading comprehension skill Their reading process consists of translating, looking up the new words, then translating the tasks in the texts, and after that doing the tasks It always takes them a lot of time to read one text in reading parts of the

textbook KnowHow which was designed in communicative approach However, the researcher has recognized that students have many difficulties in reading skill, such as the great number of new words/ phrases and structures, lack of background knowledge and reading techniques Many students are not interested, become afraid and do not have enough efforts to learn and practice this skill In addition, the students have not known about sub-skills in reading skill or really understood the purpose of reading comprehension In fact, there are not sufficient material resources which are suitable to students’ beginning level to practice by themselves For the above-mentioned factors,

the researcher attempted to conduct a study entitled “self-study activities to improve reading skill of students at Sam Son Ethnic Pre-university” that can apply some self-

study activities in order to measure students’ improvement in reading skill in English learning process

1.2 Aims of the study

The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of self-study activities practiced by ethnic minority students at SSEP in studying English reading skill The study aims to investigate students’ reading comprehension skill Furthermore, the researcher wants to gain deeper insight into the benefit of using self-study activities in reading comprehension This study is conducted with hope to provide teachers and students with activities needed to satisfy students’ self-study styles Also, the researcher intend to pedagogical implications and suggestions to help students to develop their reading skill through different sub-skills

1.3 Scope of the study

The study only focuses on some self-study activities to improve reading skill for students of grade A, B and C at SSEP Furthermore, it should be taken into consideration that they are non- English majors at beginning level and not experienced

in applying sub-skills in English reading skill However, all reading sub-skills are too broad for a study of this size Therefore, the study only provides sub – skills of reading

comprehension as reading for specific information, finding the main ideas, guessing vocabulary from the context and making inferences Moreover, some self-activities can

be applied to practice these sub-skills in order to motivate students in reading lessons

as well as help them to become good and effective readers

1.4 Method of the study

To achieve the aims mentioned, the main method used in the study is experimental method Groups of grade A, B, C students at SSEP were involved in experimental process The study is to see how self-study activities improve students’ reading comprehension In addition, the researcher used the assistance of a quantitative instrument which is a set of survey questionnaires for students with the hope to find out their attitudes towards reading skills, their difficulties in learning reading lessons and their comments and desire for self-study activities Data were collected through the survey questionnaires and experimental process All the comments, remarks, recommendations and conclusions provided in the thesis were based on the data analysis

1.5 Organization of the thesis

The thesis consists of five chapters:

Chapter 1: Introduction includes rationale of the study, the aims, scope,

methods, and organization of the study

Chapter 2: Literature Review

In this chapter, all the theoretical issues related to the topic of the study are presented This part will also provide description, summary, and critical evaluation of each work quoted

The findings of the data analysis process are preceded in this part The findings and discussions are based on describing the analysis of the data

Chapter 5: Conclusion

This part summarizes the main points based on the results of the study This part will also introduce some suggested solutions to improve the English self-study of students Further research is also recommended in this chapter

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, theoretical background relative to the topic and surveys of articles, books and other resources relevant to a particular the study topic will be presented This part will also provide description, summary, and critical evaluation of each work quoted

2.1 The definitions of reading

Reading has been defined differently by linguists, psychologists, educators and second language researchers, but an exact definition of reading really causes much confusion Different authors define the term in different ways Each definition only can

reflect some aspect of reading

According to Anderson (2003:68), reading is “a fluent process of readers combining information from a text and their own background knowledge to build

meaning The goal of reading is comprehension.”

Hamer (1989:190) offered another definition of reading, which is “an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain The eyes receive message and the brain then has

to work out the significance of the message.” It means that he considers reading a mechanical process and focuses on two actions that dominated by the eyes and the brain of the process Sharing this opinion, Williams (1984:2) stated that reading is “a process whereby one looks at and understands what has been written… The reader does not necessarily need to look at everything in a given piece of writing The reader

is not simply a passive object, fed with letters, words and sentences, but is actively working on the text and is able to arrive at understanding without looking at every letter and word.”

Otherwise, some people think that reading consists of two elements: the reader and the text In any mature act of reading there is also an interaction between the reader

and the writer True reading, thus, involves the reader, the text, and the interaction between the reader and the text

According to Smith (1985: 102), he defines “reading is understanding the author’s thought” It means that the readers “read the author’s mind not the author’s words.” If the readers only understand the printed words in the text without understanding the author’s mind, their reading is useless Because the meanings of a word depend much on the context in which it occurs, the readers should not understand the word in isolation Moreover, Carell Devine and Eskey (1988:13) claim that

“reading is a process in that it starts with linguistic surface representation encoded by a writer and ends with meaning, which reader constructs Thus, there is an essential interaction between language and thought in reading The writer encodes thought in language and the reader decodes language to thought” In these definitions, we can see clearly the interrelationship between the writer, the reader and the text

In brief, each person can have a different definition of reading and we cannot tell which is better because each of them focuses on one important matter of reading However, we find that there is a close relationship between reading and understanding and reading is a selective process and characterized as an active process of comprehending Therefore, being a language teacher, we must understand the nature of reading thoroughly to help our students read effectively

2.2 Models of reading process

Reading is a complex process As can be seen, the reader and the text are two essential components of the reading process Up to now, there have been a great number of discussions and arguments among methodologists about this interaction in reading process According to Nuttall (2005), reading process is shown such some ways as bottom-up approach, top-down approach and the interaction of top-down and bottom-up approach

2.2.1 Bottom-up model

Bottom-up models have been long known, and as for Cambourne (1979), it became the basic of a large number of reading schemes In bottom-up models, the reader begins with the written text (the bottom), and constructs meaning from letters, words, phrases, and sentences found within and then processes the text in a linear fashion In the process of meaning interpretation, the language is translated from one form of symbolic representation to another (Nunan, 1991) Clearly, these are text-driven models so the readers play a relatively passive role as she/he builds comprehension by moving eyes from letters to letters, words by words, phrases to phrases, and sentences to sentences to identify their exact meanings It means that the readers process texts by first recognizing lower-level units and then repeatedly synthesizing lower-level units into more complex units

It can be understood from the bottom-up models that learn to read through their ability to sound out letters Only when the learner has the decoding skills can the learner move on to the meaning of the words The emphasis of this process is on the printed text and what the reader receives from this, rather than the knowledge that the reader brings to this text (Lipson & Wixson, 1991)

The bottom-up model reveals several shortcomings in describing the actual reading process It does not give a full account of the process of reading, as it gives no account of a reader’s prior knowledge In fact, readers look at the text through the lens

of expectations from prior knowledge of the subject area The reader then adjusts the lens based on outcomes of the reading, and in so doing, confirms or denies expectations (Smith, 1978) For bottom-up model, comprehension results in a relatively shallow understanding of what the text stated directly As a result, this process underestimated the contribution of the readers Also, the weakness of the bottom-up model is that it emphasizes a single-direction in which implies that no higher level information ever modifies or changes lower level analysis In some cases, readers are

able to identify a word correctly only by employing higher level semantic and syntactic processing

In short, the bottom-up models tend to be linear as it starts with the printed stimuli and proceed to higher – level stages, one step after another The basic for bottom-up processing is linguistic knowledge of the readers However, everything has two sides Samuels and Kamil (1988:301), in which the shortcomings of these models are stated, says the lack of feedback makes it “difficult to account for sentence-context effects and the role of prior knowledge of text topic as facilitating variables in word recognition and comprehension”

2.2.2 Top-down model

The second model is top-down models, in which the reading process moves

from the top, the higher level of mental stages down to the text itself Top-down

processing emphasizes the importance of the reader’s background knowledge, or the schemata This theory argues that when reading a text, a reader has his own knowledge, expectations, and questions, which he matches with the text The top-down reading model suggests that processing of a text begins in the mind of a reader with a meaning-driven processes of prediction or assumption ideas about the meaning of a text based

on one’s prior knowledge The reader has the use of the printed text only to confirm and/or generate new hypotheses (Lipson & Wixson, 1991) If the bottom-up model emphasizes on one direction, part to whole processing of text, the top-down reading process contends that reading is driven by meaning and proceeds from whole to part According to Nuttall (2005:16), this process helps readers see the overall purpose of the text as well as enables them to predict the writer’s purpose Goodman (1982, cited in Alderson, 2000:17) calls reading “a psycholinguistic guessing game” in which the reader has an active role In this view, the reader reconstructs meaning from written language by using the graphonic, syntactic and semantic systems of the language, but he/she merely uses cues from the three levels of language to predict

meaning, and most important, confirms those predictions by relating them to his/her past experiences and knowledge of the language This means that together with the letters before readers’ eyes, readers possess both important types of information which are available at the same time: meaning and grammatical or sentences sense Thus, what readers bring to the text separately in terms of both their prior knowledge of the topic and their knowledge about the language assists them in predicting what the upcoming words will be

Apparently, the strong points of top-down models outnumber those of the bottom- up as the reader – the center of the reading process proves his active role However, these models are still revealed certain shortcomings by some researchers because they sometimes fail to distinguish adequately between beginning readers and fluent readers Moreover, a purely top – down concept of the reading process makes little sense for a reader who can be stymied by a text containing a large amount of unfamiliar vocabulary Besides, in top-down models, the generation of hypotheses would actually be more time- consuming than decoding (Stanovich, 1980)

2.2.3 Interactive model

The third type is interactive models of the reading process This type derives from the perceived deficiencies of both bottom – up and top – down models Hayes (1991: 7) proposes “in interactive models, different processes are thought to be responsible for providing information that is shared with other processes The information obtained from each type of processing is combined to determine the most appropriate interpretation of the printed pages” The Hayes’ view is understood that if the reader wants to gain reading comprehension as much as possible, he/she has to apply different processes (bottom-up or top-down models) at the same time in order to catch information from the text Therefore, in interactive models, both the reader and the text play important roles in reading

According to Eskey (1988: 94), in the interaction between bottom-up and down processing in reading, each source of information contributes to a comprehensive reconstruction of the meaning of the text From this view, good readers are those who have both ability of good decoding and interpreting of texts, their decoding skills becoming more automatic but no less important as their reading skill develops Eskey also believes that to achieve both fluency and accuracy in reading, developing readers must work at perfecting both their bottom-up recognition skills and their top-down interpretation strategies In other word, good reading as well as fluent and accurate reading can result only from a constant interaction between these two processes

top-The interactive model emphasizes both the identification skills, which are represented in the bottom-down model, and the global interpretation skills, which come from the knowledge of the top-down model of making predictions and inferences It seems that the interactive model is the best one that can truly reflect the reading process Therefore, only when the language teacher develops students’ abilities to approach a text both top-down and bottom-up is the reading skill of students to be improved as Brown (2001) states: “a combination of top-down and bottom-up processing, or what has come to be called interactive reading, is almost always a primary ingredient in successful teaching methodology because both processes are important”

In sum up, the popularity of interactive models shows that interactive models can maximize the strengths and minimizes the weaknesses of the separate use of either bottom- up or top- down models However, when dealing with a text, which best models depend on the purpose of reading

2.3 Reading comprehension 2.3.1 The definitions of reading comprehension

In teaching reading, it is necessary for both teachers and students to have a deep understanding about the definition of reading comprehension

Reading comprehension can be understood as the ability to obtain the information as required in the reading text as efficiently as possible Different scholars offered various points of view on the definition of reading comprehension

Grellet (1981: 3) states: “reading comprehension or understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as effectively as possible” In this sense, reading comprehension simply means reading and understanding It should be noted that reading comprehension is composed of two equally important components Decoding- the ability to translate text into speech- is only part of the process reading comprehension The other part is language comprehension- the ability to understand spoken language The readers, as they read, receive information from the writer via words, sentences and paragraphs and so on, and make an attempt to understand his/her feelings

According to Richard, Thomas and Jere (1987: 143), reading comprehension is

a mental process that in the final analysis, only the readers fully understand Comprehension is what stimulates readers to remember the past experience That knowledge is, then, used in trying to get meaning out of print Meaning does not reside

on the printed page but rather in the meaning of the reader

Ur (1996:148), on the other hands, stated that effective reading comprehension is a process with the elements such as a clear purpose in mind, an enhanced motivation, appropriate reading comprehension strategies based on the purposes and motivation, good prediction, sufficient background information and vocabulary, close attention to the significant bits, and fairly high speed

From these opinions, what comes up as a common point is that reading comprehension is not only simply understanding what is written, but also is what stimulates students to remember from their experiences That knowledge is then used

to get meaning out of printed page, but in the mind of the readers, which included facts, emotion, belief and critical evaluation It can be concluded that reading comprehension

is the process of understanding what is conveyed in the text That means, the readers (or the learners), as they read, can recognize the graphic forms of the reading text and understand what is implied behind these forms

2.3.2 Factors involving reading comprehension

There are various factors affecting reading that both teachers and students have

to take into consideration According to Aebersold and Field (1997:23), there are some factors involved in reading comprehension They are cognitive development and cognitive style orientation at the time of beginning the second language/foreign language study; language proficiency in the first language; metacognitive knowledge

of the first language structure, grammar, and syntax; language proficiency in a the second language/foreign language - Degree of difference between the first language and the second language/foreign language (writing systems, rhetorical structures, appropriate strategies); and cultural orientation Clearly, cultural orientation includes attitudes toward text and purpose for reading, types of reading skills and strategies used

in the first language, types of reading skills and strategies used or appropriate in the second language/foreign language, beliefs about the reading process (use of inference, memorization, nature of comprehension), knowledge of text types in the first language (formal schemata), background knowledge (content schemata)

Among the factors mentioned above, language proficiency in the second language and background knowledge are likely to be two factors affecting reading comprehension the most because when reading, readers bring their background knowledge into reading texts to comprehend them, and if their language competence is good enough, it is much easier for them to understand and acquire the second language they are learning Therefore, to help students read texts or documents in the classroom

to the fullest, it is advisable for teachers to identify what level of language proficiency their students are at, and how much they understand the required reading texts so that they could give their students suitable texts to read Besides, teachers should be aware

of the rest factors affecting reading skills to help their students to the maximum Specifically, teachers should motivate their students by providing them with as many sub-skills in reading comprehension as possible and know to focus them on suitable ones when practicing, and try to decrease the difference between their native language and the target one

2.3.3 Some sub – skills of reading comprehension

It can be seen that there are various sub-skills of reading comprehension by different authors However, in the scope of this study, such sub-skills of reading comprehension as reading for specific information, finding the main ideas, guessing vocabulary from the context, and making inferences are considered basic reading skills

to understand the author’s thought Therefore, the study would focus on the four reading sub-skills

2.3.3.1 Reading for specific information

Reading for specific information is the way we read the passage and only pay attention to the relevant parts or information needed We do not need to take care of all printed words on the page We are suggested to skip unnecessary information or irrelevant parts in the passage With respect to reading for specific information, readers are advised to run their eyes very quickly and only stop reading when they find the information wanted Hence, the reading sub-skill is close to scanning In other words, scanning is reading strategies for locating specific information Brown (1994: 293) refers to reading for specific information as the way of “quickly searching for some particular pieces of information in a text” Grellet (1981: 19) also claims that when locating specific information, we do not even follow the linearity of the passage to do

so, the way we should do is to “let our eyes wander over the text until we find what we are looking for” Clearly, the skill has strong relationship with scanning If a reader does not recognize this relationship, he/she will take a lot of time to deal with the task

on locating specific information

It is also realized that reading for specific information requires readers to understand the text at their literal comprehension level, which is the lowest reading comprehension level Readers only find a piece of information already in the text and then give answers Therefore, the tasks focused on the skill are considered to be easier

than others by students

2.3.3.2 Finding the main ideas

Finding the main ideas requires readers to gain their reading comprehension at both literal and inferential level If the main information is directly stated in the paragraph or in the passage, readers only understand the text at their literal reading comprehension level, if not, they have to infer the main ideas and readers must gain

their reading comprehension at inferential level

Finding the main ideas is the ability to find the most important thing an author is trying to say It is perhaps the most important of all reading comprehension skills Harris (1962: 240-241) expresses “without it, the reader gets lost in a mass of detail”

As a result, he/she will become confused about the principal topic which is discussed Therefore, grasping main points from the text is crucial for mastering content information

Finding the main ideas in a passage is more complicated than that in a paragraph because readers have to find the main ideas of different paragraphs and then to synthesize them into an organic whole The main idea of a paragraph or a passage refers to the central points or thought being expressed in the paragraph or in the passage In order to grasp the main idea, a reader should ask himself/herself the question “what is this paragraph or this passage about?” If he/she answers this question

perfectly, he/she will succeed in recognizing the main idea

In a paragraph, the main idea usually lies in the first or in the last sentence, and the main idea of the text is usually in the introductory or in the concluding paragraph

On occasion, the main ideas of paragraphs are not stated explicitly but have to be

inferred In this case, readers should decide what the topic is and determine the main ideas from the details Burns, Roe & Ross (1988: 215) recommend that the most important thing in finding the main ideas is recognizing the topic sentence They

suggest a list as followings:

1 A topic sentence often states the main ideas of the paragraph

2 The topic sentence is often, though not always, the first sentence in the paragraph; sometimes it appears at the end or in the middle

3 Not all paragraphs have topic sentences

4 The main idea is supported by all the details in a well-written paragraph

5 When the main idea is not directly stated, readers can determine it by

discovering the topic to which all of the stated details are related

Finding the main ideas is related closely to skimming because “skimming gives readers the advantage of being able to predict the purpose of the passage, the main topic or message, and possibly some of the developing or supporting ideas This gives them “head start” as they embark on more focused reading” (Brown 1994: 293) It means that, in skimming, readers have to find the general and overall ideas of the

whole text in order to catch the gist of it

In short, when dealing with finding the main ideas, it is suggested to recognize the topic(s) first, and then distinguish the important ideas from supporting details The term “topic” regards to the subject while the term “main idea” is the “key concept” being expressed or is the most important information in a piece of discourse Supporting details are less important information which tells how, what, when, where,

why, how much or how many, etc, to support more information to the main idea 2.3.3.3 Guessing vocabulary from the context

It cannot be denied that vocabulary plays an essential role in reading Wilkin (1972: 110) states its role in reading comprehension that “without grammar, very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing conveyed” Widdowson (1978: 3) also

shares the same view when he claims that “the knowledge of English words is one of the basic factors for the mastery of the language” Vocabulary is, in fact, an essential component in reading comprehension Studies by different investigators show that knowledge of word meaning is the most important single factor that accounts for variability in reading comprehension Hence, the more number of vocabulary a reader knows, the better he/she can gain reading comprehension However, it is the fact that

no readers can know all English words while dealing with reading materials In the case they deal with unfamiliar words, they are suggested to make a guess at the meaning of the words they do not know rather than look them up in a dictionary When readers guess meaning of an unknown word, they must gain their reading comprehension at inferential level

In order to guess meaning of an unknown word, we should put it in its context The context is the setting- the sentence and paragraph- in which a word appears The meaning of a word in context is its meaning in the particular sentence and paragraph in which it is used A single English word can give many different meanings Its precise meaning always depends on the context it is used

Contextual clues are used to make a good guess at the word’s meaning Learning how to use context clues to figure out the meaning of unknown words is an essential reading strategy and vocabulary-builder

Types of context clues:

In order to guess or infer meaning of an unknown word from context, readers must have clues Nation (1983) suggests some clues as follows

The first clues are structural ones that are used to determine the type of grammatical category of the new word They consist of morphology, synonyms and antonyms, hyponyms, restatement, definitions, reference words, punctuation, and alternatives The second clues are inference ones that require a higher level of analytical skill and practice than the previous type For these types of clues the same method of practice

can be used- recognizing elements and obtaining meaning from the elements They comprise summary clue, comparison and contrast, cause and result, and cohesion

2.3.3.4 Making inferences

An inference is making meaning out of an idea suggested in a text that is not stated directly by the writer It is sometimes called “reading between the lines” Making inference in reading is a crucial skill that must be mastered for a reader to have real comprehension Making inferences helps readers recognize the author’s purpose to see whether the author offers any personal messages without actually stating them When inferring, on one side, readers use clues from the text to figure out something that the author does not tell them, another side, they draw upon prior knowledge to make judgments about upcoming events in the passage From that they can draw a logical conclusion about what might happen next Hence, reading for inference involves reading the text and recalling prior experience Once readers make inferences from the text, it means they gain their reading comprehension at inferential level

Types of Inference:

There are different types of inference one can draw from written discourse They are explained below in terms of bridging inference, contextual inference and structural inference

The first type is the bridging inference which is drawn to establish coherence

between a present piece of information and a preceding piece of information Here, we have to infer the relationship or link between these two pieces of information

The second type is the contextual inference which is drawn to infer the implied idea or suggestion in a text It concerns expectations about what events will take place

in the world described by the text, not about what events will actually be stated explicitly in the text In order to infer the implied idea, the reader has to use several types of information in the text

The third type is the structural inference which refers to the reader using his implicit knowledge of text structures to facilitate his comprehension of texts Text structure refers to how the ideas in the text are organized by the writer

Grellet (1981: 14) also mentioned that “inferring means making use of syntactic, logical and cultural clues to discover the meaning of unknown elements” Nuttall (1996: 73-75) shared that “this kind of activity requires us to make use of schemata”

To sum up, in this chapter, the relevant literature review to the purpose of the thesis is presented It starts with definitions of reading and reading comprehension, reading process, context and the role of context, schema theory, reading comprehension levels, and reading comprehension skills

2.3.4 Types of questions in reading comprehension

There are various types of questions in reading comprehension However, in this scope of this research, four types of questions based on four main sub-skills in reading comprehension are focused on, such as types of questions in: reading for specific information, finding the main ideas, guessing vocabulary from the context, making inferences

2.3.4.1 Types of questions in reading for specific information

There are two types of common questions in reading for detail information Firstly, factual questions require students to identify important information and facts in the passage Locating a piece of information in the passage is important to solve fact questions

Typical questions met in the test are:

- According to the passage, why/when/where/what/how did….?

- According to the information in paragraph 1, what did…….?

- Which of the following is true, according to the author?

- The author mention ………as an example of……… ?

- According to the passage, which of the following is true about……?

Secondly, negative factual questions include the expressions “NOT “or

“EXCEPT” This means students need to recognize incorrect or not mentioned information in the passage The three answer choices are true and one is false Students are supposed to find the false one

Typical questions met in the test are:

- All of the following are mentioned in the passage EXCEPT……

- According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true?

- The author mentions all of the following in the passage EXCEPT……

- In the passage, the author does NOT mention……

- According to the information in paragraph 2, which of the following is NOT true?

2.3.4.2 Types of questions in finding the main ideas

This type of question asks students to choose the correct sentence that indicates correctly the main idea of the whole passage of the main one of each paragraph

Typical questions met in the test are:

- What is the topic of this passage?

- What is the main idea expressed in the passage?

- Which title best reflects the main idea of the passage?

- What is the paragraph/ passage mainly about?

- Which of the following statements best summarizes the main idea of the passage?

2.3.4.3 Types of questions in guessing vocabulary from the context

This type of question measures students’ word power, but they also evaluate an essential reading comprehension skill, which is students’ ability to determine the meaning of a word from its context The sentences that surround the word offer important clues about its meaning:

Typical questions met in the test are:

- Which of the following could best substitute/ replace for the word….?

- The expression “… ” in line … could best be replaced by……?

- The word “……” in line ….is closest in meaning to which of the following?

2.3.4.4 Types of questions in making inferences

This type of question requires students to perceive ideas suggested in a passage, draw conclusions, or determine logical implications based on information given in a passage The correct answer is not directly stated but suggested in a passage

Making an inference involves using what readers know to make a guess about what they do not know, or reading between the lines Readers who make inferences use the clues in the text along with their own experiences to help them figure out what is not directly said, making the text personal and memorable

Typical questions met in the test are:

- Which of the following can be inferred from paragraph …./ the passage?

- Based on the information in paragraph…./ the passage, which of the following can be inferred?

- It is implied in the passage/ paragraph… that

- According to the passage/ paragraph… …which statement do you think the author would most probably agree?

- It can be concluded from the information in paragraph……that……

- In the (second, last…) paragraph, the author suggests that……

2.4 The self – study activities

With an increasing number of new technologies and an expanding global population, self-studying is on the rise Education is no longer confined to just the classroom, and some would argue that the classroom model is outdated and does not

meet the intellectual needs of individuals in such an interconnected society

2.4.1 The self – study or learner autonomy

Self studying, which involves studying without direct supervision or attendance

in a classroom, is a valuable way to learn, and is quickly growing in popularity among parents and students By complementing formal education with home study, students can see a drastic improvement to grades, material understanding, and confidence Thus, many students study at home to supplement their class-based learning Self-studying is

a useful tool to enhance any learning experience, and when mastered, students can achieve the benefits In higher education, some argue that it is especially important for students to be assigned projects and material suitable for self-learning, so that they may exercise and develop intellectual independence and explore subject matter they

personally find interesting

Learner autonomy has been an important focus of educational practices and

research for more than three decades The word autonomy is derived from auto-nomos,

a Greek word (Voltz, 2008), auto meaning “self” and nomos meaning “rule or law” Auto-nomos refers to a state where one gives oneself his/ her own law Although this

concept originates from politics (Boud, 1981), it can be used in many fields, including philosophy, medicine, and psychology to indicate a capacity that allows a person or organization to be able to justify reasons for doing things (Dearden, 1972) In education, this capacity is often used for schools, teachers, and learners, referred to as school autonomy, teacher autonomy, and learner autonomy, respectively While the first two are related to education policies and teachers’ professional development, the

third, which is the focus of this research, is about students’ learning attributes

2.4.2 Roles of learner autonomy

Over the past two decades, students centeredness has been popularly claimed and identified to be an effective learning trend in both Western and non-Western contexts More power is removed from the teachers’ domain of authoritative knowledge (Rivers, 2011) Courses are designed for particular groups of learners instead of attempting to make one for all Therefore, students are given more

opportunities, responsibilities, and power to deal with their learning activities To effectively benefit from this process, students need to be capable of taking control over all the activities provided to them during each learning process If they are appropriately supported to develop this capacity, defined as learner autonomy, they can take better advantage of the benefits which the modern approach offers However, if students are not provided with this support, this may, in turn, lead to a failure of the

whole approach

The orientation towards learner autonomy development is also in line with the privatization, commercialization, and public participation trends of educational services such as those in Vietnam Different from centralized training systems whose institutions are totally subsidized or funded by a national body of authorities in many countries such as Vietnam, schools are considered as knowledge producers Therefore,

to produce a more competitive product, schools need to offer students more personalized choices and freedom for individual development Students are also respected for their personal learning styles and preferences, opportunities for content and material negotiations as well as socio-economic and cultural values Such customized training programs, in return, expect students to exercise their autonomy capacity to effectively engage in these opportunities in order to develop valuable skills for the contemporary labor market

Furthermore, with the rapid development of internet technology and their increasing uses in foreign language programs these days, students may encounter certain technical problems with need to be overcome in order to take part in the learning environment It has been shown that, for instance, learner autonomy can help students to face the challenge of technical difficulties (Rubin, 1975) In addition, resources on the Internet are very rich, scattered, and are constantly expanding Students need to be able to plan in order to engage in effective learning Research has shown that those who can plan their learning activities better in this interactive

environment tend to engage more actively in these learning processes and produce better learning outcomes (Dam, 1990) Better planners also potentially engage in a higher degree of review and reflection on their learning processes

Learner autonomy capacity is especially important for knowledge construction and sustainable learning in today’s globalized world As information becomes more abundant and accessible, the abilities to synthesize and negotiate with others’ knowledge to produce our knowledge becomes more crucial process in learning process, critical and creative in thinking, and flexible in learning methods (Benson, 2005) Therefore, learning-to-learn skills have been strongly encouraged in different education systems to obtain a better quality labor force Students’ success is judged by their capacity to instruct and train themselves, not by their responsiveness to teachers’ instructions (Benson, 2007)

CHAPTER 3

METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research setting 3.1.1 An overview of Sam Son Ethnic Pre-university

Sam Son Ethnic Pre-university (SSEP), the research site, is situated in Sam Son town, which is 16 kilometers from Thanh Hoa city The school was founded in July,

2003 With 17 years of establishment and development, SSEP is becoming a common house for ethnic students coming from remote areas of provinces in the north of the middle area in Viet Nam In the school year 2016-2017, the school has 21 classes with nearly 600 students assigned into 4 groups: A, B, C and D Beside the basic subjects in their curriculum, the students here have to learn informatics and English For English,

it is taught 3 periods per week for the students of groups A, B, C and 9 periods per week for the students of group D The teaching staff consists of over 100 teachers, of whom three fourth are young and creative whereas the others are experienced and enthusiastic

3.1.2 The teachers of English

The English teaching staff at SSEP consists of 12 tenure teachers (11 females and 1 male) at the age from 22 to 40 They graduated from different universities in Vietnam Four of them got the Master Degree and the rest got the Bachelor Degrees Their experience in teaching English varies from 4 to 12 years They are helpful, enthusiastic and willing to make some renovations in teaching methodology However, the age of the teachers also reveals that they are young, have little experience of teaching and usually face up with many difficulties in teaching process, especially, in a special school like Sam Son ethnic pre-university

3.1.3 The students

All the students at SSEP come from remote areas so they live in the hostel of the school Their English proficiency is low and of mixed levels Most of them started learning English at secondary or high schools Especially, the students of the Muong, Thai, Katu, Tho, Dao ethnic groups, etc, usually use their 1st languages to communicate and exchange their ideas in English classes They also have to use Vietnamese in classes or at public places so they obviously have to learn two languages at the same time, and even their Vietnamese is not very good That is the reason why most of the students are not good at English, and all of them find it difficult to learn it, so many of them choose to neglect English For them, English is simply an obligatory subject They learn it in a test-oriented way Their tests often focus on grammar, reading skill and writing skill Thus, it can be said that English reading comprehension skills are very important to the majority of students However, they are likely to be passive in learning and have low improvement to study English reading comprehension skills

3.1.4 The textbook

The textbook used to teach at SSEP is KnowHow by Therese Naber - Angela Blackwell with Michelle Johnstone, published by Oxford University Press, 2003 The book is designed in communicative approach It consists of 16 units with different

topics relating to real life such as you and me, people and places, fun and games, nature and environment, our lives, recreation, community, etc Each unit is divided into

many sections providing students with grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and four communicative skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing There is a revision unit after every four units This helps students to review theories and practice more exercises The textbook, in general, has proved to be relevant and appropriate to the current context of teaching and learning English at SSEP However, the textbook in many cases can pose big challenges for both the teachers and the students because of students’ low English proficiency and teachers’ lack of experience in teaching English

3.1.5 The teaching and learning conditions

Teaching facilities also play an important part in teaching English and may affect the learning process positively or negatively Besides that, English is also considered to

be one of the main subjects at SSEP but the conditions for English teaching and learning here are not very good The main teaching aids used are boards and textbooks The whole English group is provided with three cassette-players The teachers here have to use their own computers since there are only two rooms equipped with projectors in the poor condition There is a library with English grammar books, magazines, newspapers; however, the materials for practicing reading comprehension skills are not available It is obviously that the teaching and learning conditions are poorly equipped This certainly has considerable negative effects on English teaching and learning process in general, and particularly on learning reading comprehension skills

3.2 The study 3.2.1 Research questions

The aim of the study is to investigate students’ improvement with English study activities at SSEP so it is implemented to answer a question below:

self-To what extent do the self-study activities facilitate reading comprehension?

3.2.2 Participants

The participants of this study are 60 students from 2 classes (K14A1, K14C1) which are selected randomly of groups A, B, and C Both classes are at the same school and each class consists of 30 students They consist of both of genders, 39 male students and 21 female students and their age varies from 18 to 21 years old Most of participants come from the rural and remote areas, where they have no good opportunities for studying English Basically, they are at beginner level of English and they are varied in terms of proficiency due to their different English language background, some have had about 7 years of English language learning experience, some have learnt English for 3 years The reason for the researcher’s option is that the

number of 3 groups A, B, C accounts for over 85% of the total students of the school, and the training quality of these students is always of great concern to both the authority and teachers at Sam Son ethnic pre-university so the researcher hopes that the findings concluded from this study will provide useful information for both the teachers and the students in this school to improve teaching and learning English speaking skills and hence contribute to enhance the overall training quality of these students Meanwhile, the number of group D is 4 classes (approximately 15%) For these students, the teachers are asked to consolidate their grammar instead of practicing and developing some certain language skills such as listening and speaking Therefore,

the researcher did not include group D in this study

The participants were divided into two groups One group was the control group which did not conduct self-study activities in reading comprehension Self-study activities had been used in the experimental group The treatment finished the course in

ten weeks with a set of self-study activities in reading skill every week

3.2.3 Instruments

In this study, the researcher employed two main instruments as below: survey

questionnaires, and tests including the general test, pre-test and post-test

To ensure the reliability of the questionnaires for the respondents, the researcher conducted the survey questionnaire in Vietnamese Two questionnaires were

administered to the students at the school, including the questionnaire before the pilot activities and the questionnaire after the pilot activities

The questionnaire before the pilot activities includes 5 questions to explore students’ perception towards the importance of the reading skill (questions 1), students’ thought about learning reading comprehension (question 2), students’ assessment of their reading comprehension ability (question 3), students’ opinion about teaching and learning the reading comprehension skill in their school (questions 4), and students’ expectation

about factors affecting English reading lessons (question 5) (See appendix A & B)

3.2.3.2 Tests

Testing has a very close relationship with the teaching learning process The effect of testing on teaching and learning is necessary A test is considered a tool to assess reading process because it measures how much has been understood

The first test for two groups is a general test which focuses on grammar, vocabulary and reading comprehension skill It lasts forty-five minutes Sixty students were chosen, but there were only 30 students who took part in the experiment All the participants who took the general test had similar levels and knowledge They learn

English as a second language (See appendix C)

In addition, two reading tests are used to measure the students’ competence in reading comprehension skills The pre-test was conducted to selected students before they carried out self-study activities in reading comprehension skills After they finished practicing those self-study activities, the students were asked to do the post-test at the end of the course to compare the results

Both of tests comprised reading passages which were designed in order to test four students reading sub-skills: reading for specific information, finding the main ideas, guessing vocabulary from context, and making inferences In order to be clearly seen, the following table illustrates questions on four reading sub-skills in both tests

Reading

sub-skills

Reading for specific information

Finding the main ideas

Guessing vocabulary from context

Making inferences

Pre-test

Question 1 Question 2 Question 6 Question 7

Question 9 Question 3

Question 5 Question 8

Question 4 Question 10

Post-test

Question 1 Question 3 Question 6 Question 7

Question 2 Question 10

Question 4 Question 9

Question 5 Question 8

Table 1: Questions in tests for reading sub-skills

Test 1 consists of two reading passages and ten questions Of ten designed questions, six are designed to test on reading for specific information (questions 1, 2, 6,

7, 8), one is used to test on finding the main ideas (question 9, 3), one is for testing on guessing vocabulary from context (question 5, 8), and two are used to test on making

on making inferences (questions 5, 8)

Both of the pre-test and post-test were written in sets of questions for the purpose

of the study The tests were marked with the numbers of correct answers in comparison

to the numbers of total questions in the tests (See appendix D & E)