Problems in learning english reading skill of english majored freshmen at tay do university

TAY DO UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE PROBLEMS IN LEARNING ENGLISH READING SKILL OF ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY Class: Bachelor of English 8B Can

TAY DO UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE

PROBLEMS IN LEARNING ENGLISH READING SKILL OF ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT

TAY DO UNIVERSITY

Class: Bachelor of English 8B

Can Tho, April 2017

Secondly, I want to show my special thanks to all lecturers in the Faculty of linguistics and literature of Tay Do University for their teaching and helping me widen knowledge of English over the past four years

I also would like to extend my special thanks to the Faculty of linguistics and literature of Tay Do University for giving me the opportunity and permission to carry out the proposal research

Finally, I want to give my wholehearted thankful words to my family for the love and support They always encouraged and motivated me during my studying process

COMMENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

COMMENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 The significance of study 1

1.3 The organization of the proposal 2

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 3

2.1 The definitions of reading 3

2.2 The importance of reading 4

2.3 Problems in reading 4

2.3.1 Lack of vocabulary 4

2.3.2 Lack of grammatical knowledge 5

2.3.3 Lack of background knowledge 5

2.3.4 Lack of reading strategies 6

2.3.5 Lack of motivation 7

2.4 Previous study 7

CHAPTER III: RESEARCH AIMS – RESEARCH QUESTION – HYPOTHESIS 9

3.1 Research aims 9

3.2 Research question 9

3.3 Hypothesis 9

CHAPTER IV: RESEARCH MOTHODOLOGY 10

4.1 Research design 10

4.2 Participants 10

4.3 Instrument: Questionnaire 10

4.4 Procedure 11

CHAPTER V: EXPECTED OUTCOMES 12

REFERENCES

APPENDIX

ABSTRACT

Reading is one of the important subjects of learning English This research aims to investigate problems in learning English reading skills of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University In this study, questionnaire is used as the instrument to collect data The participants are thirty students from English majored freshmen course 11 at Tay Do University The findings of the research will point out the reading problems of the English majored freshmen at Tay Do University These problems could be related vocabulary, grammar knowledge, background knowledge, reading strategies and motivation After all, this study is expected to help students identify the problems they have faced when they learn English reading skill

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale

Although there are thousands of languages all over the world, and each country has their own national languages in addition to a variety of local languages spoken and understood by their people in different regions However, English language is a common language to communicate In other words, English is considered as the international language because it is used popularly in several areas such as tourism, medicine, business and so on Students in Vietnam have many opportunities through learning English It is one of the necessary requirements for those who want

to get a good job or continue to study in higher education

Rajendra Naidu, principal of M.V PreUniversity College said: “Be a good reader to become a good leader” So, reading skill is also an essential part of success that students should improve better To study reading skill well, students have faced many problems in learning process Firstly, lack of vocabulary is their common problem They do not have enough vocabulary to read the English texts, documents and books Next, grammar also makes them felt embarrassed in understanding content Psychology or background knowledge are also issues that cause difficulty

to students

This study is conducted to figure out the problems of English majored freshmen

at Tay Do University in learning English reading skill

1.2 The signification of study

The study show the student’s problems when learning English reading skill Based on the problems stated in this research, students can realize their own difficulties to self-correct

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1.3 The organization of the proposal

The proposal includes five chapters:

Chapter I: Introduction

Chapter II: Literature Review

Chapter III: Research aim – Research question – Hypothesis Chapter IV: Research Methodology

Chapter V: Expected Outcome

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definitions of reading

Reading is an important skill which are both receiving information and transmitting it Through reading skill, students get most of the information required

in teaching and learning in everyday life Harmer (1989: 153) views reading from a

different perspective In his definition, “Reading is an exercise dominated by eyes

and the brain The eyes receive the message and the brain has to work out the significance of the message” When reading, eyes will work and the brain will

analyze the data of the reading to find the keyword

In addition, Williams (1986) states that “Reading is a process that reader can

see and understand the reading information The efficiency of reading should be read in a group of words and try to understand some of the sentences but not all of the information” Just understand the main meaning, you can understand the whole

paragraph to say Through students will not spend more time on a test than reading the whole thing

And Frank Smith (1982) also says that “Reading as the process of interpretation

and understanding of the contents It means the reader will try to find the answers while they read the writings of the author not only read it out but also know the meaning of every word” Reading is not to understand each word word by word, but

to understand the content that the author wants to say Find the truths and meanings

in each lesson to help students make progress

Moreover, Wikipedia defines “Reading is a complex cognitive process of

decoding symbols (to translate symbols sounds or visual representation of speech)

in order to construct or derive meaning (comprehension) It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, of sharing information and ideas Like all language,

it is a complex interaction between the text and the reader which is shaped by the

2.2 The importance of reading

Reading is probably one of the most beneficial and feasible activities that people can do It is through reading that a person is going to be able to discover new ideas, concepts, places, and people Some people even describe reading as a journey that starts as the opening of a page, and finish as the last page is turned With relaxed mind and soul, it also improves your thinking process Reading skill is the best way

to learn in school Without having the reading ability, it is difficult for the students

to do homework and need information assignment such as book, websites The first reason is that reading help to develop verbal abilities Although reading cannot be communicated, it tends to give students more words to express their emotions and

to convince others This increases the higher level of vocabulary for use in everyday life The vocabulary is essential for student’s learning English Second, reading is a chance to widen knowledge and reduce stress Books offer an outstanding wealth

of learning and at a much cheaper price than taking a course By reading, it will increase student’s concentration and provide a lot of useful information for their study

2.3 Problems in reading

2.3.1 Lack of Vocabulary

For the majority of students, vocabulary of specialized fields caused difficulties for them while reading text The vocabulary is meaningful in this

context but it does mean that it differs in different contexts Lack of vocabulary is the reason why students do not have a variety of words while reading a test Besides, the lack of vocabulary hinders a great deal in the fast and sure reading of students Therefore, vocabulary plays a very important role for students to read

better

2.3.2 Lack of grammatical knowledge

Not only the vocabulary obstruct the students reading new material but also grammar has an important and decisive role Sometimes students have difficulty in understanding and using the verbs, formats and verb phrases Thus, failure to master the grammatical characteristics of noun phrases or verb phrases causes many

obstacles for students in learning to read According to James (2005:2) “Grammar

is a study of the structure of the language and describes the way of putting words together to make meaningful sentences” Students do not often improve their

knowledge of grammar and this often results in them learning about simple structures While scientific reports use special grammatical structures, it is a problem that makes students feel confused and passive in their work

2.3.3 Lack of background knowledge

Sometimes, students meet difficulty to show their opinions because they lack general knowledge As the background or content knowledge about a subject or theme, prior knowledge is an important aspect to successful reading In second language research, there is evidence that having this prior knowledge plays a significant role in comprehension (Brantmeier, 2005; Hammadou, 1991, 2000; Johnson, 1982; Lee, 1986; Nassaji, 2003; Pulido, 2004, 2007) For example, Johnson (1982) finds that a lack of cultural familiarity in English Second Language students has a greater impact on reading comprehension of a passage on Halloween than the pre-teaching of vocabulary Lee (1986) has studied the effects of background knowledge in reading, understanding and recalling of text in second language learners and finds that the learners’ ability to recall is enhanced when they

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are presented with one of the three components of background knowledge, context, transparency, and familiarity One theory concerning why prior knowledge affects comprehension is the ability of the students to make inferences

Background knowledge which is also referred to as subject knowledge or topic familiarity of learners about the reading skill has been investigated in English literature for years The theoretical base of the background theory is the schema theory, according to which comprehension includes two elements: one the linguistic element which is responsible for decoding text and transmitting the information to the brain, and the conceptual elements which relates this information to pre-existing knowledge structure, namely the schema Based on this theoretical perspective, several studies have been conducted and indicated that English majored benefit from having background knowledge of the reading texts Studies showing the advantages of background knowledge on English reading have operationalized background knowledge in different ways As an example, a few studies investigated background knowledge based on the culture highlighted in the text and concluded that when readers could become familiar with that culture, they had a better comprehension performance (e.g., Johnson, 1982; Lee, 2007; Alptekin, 2006)

2.3.4 Lack of reading strategies

Perhaps, this is the most difficult problem of students’ reading Students are not familiar with the skills to use such as methods of reading comprehension for the main idea reading faster to find information, content from the title, subtitle, pictures illustration Therefore, students can hardly understand the content and process information related to the reading as homework or answer comprehension questions

In addition, reading is closely related to reading competence Students who

do not read in their free time often face problems during their reading assignments and thus many perform poorly in reading test For example, skimming and scanning are two equally important reading strategies Skimming is a method of rapidly

moving the eyes over text with the purpose of getting only the main ideas and a general overview of the content Scanning is very useful for finding a specific name, date, statistic, or fact without reading the entire article If students lack these skills, the reading speed will be reduced and obstruction of time

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Another the study of Yu-han Ma and Wen-ying Lin (2014) showed the overall and relative contribution of four subcomponents of vocabulary knowledge to reading comprehension The four vocabulary subcomponents were vocabulary size, word association knowledge, collocation knowledge, and morphological knowledge The participants were 124 college students from a university in Taipei, Taiwan Six instruments were employed: (1) a reading comprehension test, (2) a vocabulary size test, (3) a test on word association knowledge and collocation knowledge, (4) a test of morphological knowledge, (5) motivation attitude scale, and (6) a self-efficacy scale The results showed that the effects of vocabulary and self-efficacy have been controlled

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH AIMS – RESEARCH QUESTIONS - HYPOTHESIS

3.1 Research aim

This research aims to find out the problems in learning English reading skills

of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University The most important purpose of this study is to find difficulty in learning English reading

3.2 Research question

This study is required to answer the following research question

What are difficulties in learning English reading skill of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University?

3.3 Hypothesis

Most of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University confirms that reading is a difficult skill Although they have been learning reading in many lessons, they still have faced some problems in English reading Through the literature review and research question, it is hypothesized that the English majored freshmen are face could some problems in reading including vocabulary, grammar

knowledge, background knowledge, reading strategies and motivation

of the English majored freshmen at Tay Do University

4.2 Participants

The participants of this research are thirty English majored freshmen at Tay Do University (English 11) They are 18-22 years old and come from different areas, both rural and urban The students speak Vietnamese as their mother tongue and learn English as the second language The students will answer the questionnaire about problems that they have faced in English reading skill

4.3 Instrument

Questionnaire is used to collect the participants’ ideas about problems in English reading skills of the English majored freshmen They will give their personal opinions on the basis of available questions in the research process Therefore, questionnaire is used as the instrument in this study