The strategies to do reading comprehension exercises of english majored juniors at tay do university

this study was conducted to find out: l The strategies the students often use when doing reading comprehension and 2 Whether they use the reading strategies effectively in rlealing with

StudentName: TRAN THI THANH HIT,NCode: 1157010016

I consider myself very lucky and honored to have so many wonderful people

to lead me to completion of this research.

First of all, I would like to express my most heartfelt gratitude to my

supervisors Huynh Thi My Duyen, M.Ed who took time out to guide and to

complete my thesis She helped me out of problem and gave me good orientation as

well as encouragement In addition, she gave me precious feedback and

constructive comment which helped me has a right way to overcome difficulties and complete my thesis better.

Next, I would like to demonstratq my thanks to the students of English 7 who

completed the questionnaire and the test in my study.

Finally, I want to send my special love to my parents for their continuous

encouragement as well as my close friends for their supports during the time of

work

COMMENTS

I

, Reading strategies are

believed to be necessary for doing readingexercises and gqtting reading comprehension However, the strategies should be

chosen suitably to deal with different exercises this study was conducted to find

out: (l) The strategies the students often use when doing reading comprehension

and (2) Whether they use the reading strategies effectively in rlealing with these

kinds of exercise Thirty four English Majored Juniors at Tay Do University werechosen as the sample A test of some types of reading comprehension exercises and

a questionnaire were used as an instrument in this study The descriptive statistics

shows that skimming, scanning and guessing from the context were the most

commonly used strategies in doing reading comprehension exercises whereasinferring strategy was the least frequently used one Moreover, they use readingstrategies effectively and suitable when doing exercises Besides, they also have some difficulties irr dealing with mixture exercises which require them to combinestrategies together to get good results In addition, this research results help toindicate some implications for teaching and studying in dealing with types of

reading comprehension exercises.

TABLE OF'CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Chapter 3: RESLIARCH METHODOLOGY

Chapter 5: IMPLICATIONS, LIMITATIONS, SUGGESTIONS f'OR

FURTHER RESEARCH AI\ID CONCLUSIONS

REFERENC.ES

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LIST OX'TABLES AND FIGURES

LIST OT'TABLES

Table 3.1: The descripion ofthe questionnaire 18

Table 3.2: The procedure of the researcii 19

Table 4.1 The mean score of the reading test 20

Table 4.2 The students' score when doing reading test 20

Table 4.3 The students' mean scores when doing exercises 21

Table 4.4 The scores of the True / False exercise 21

Table 4.5 The scores of Multiple - choice exercise 23

Table4.6ThescoresofMatchingexercise 25

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4.1 The students' rate in doing True / False exercise 22

Figure 4.2 The students' rate in doing Multiple - choice exercise 24

Figure 4.3 The students' rate in doing Matching exercise 26

Figure 4.4 The students' interest in learning reading , 28

Figure 4.5 The students' attitude toward reading comprehension exercises in the textbook 28

Figure 4.6 Kinds of exercises that the students often did r, Figure 4.7 The frequency of the students' using strategies 3l Figure 4.8 The rate of some common strategies that the sfudents often used to do reading comprehension exercises 3 1 Figure 4.9 The strategies that the students used more often r 32

Figure 4.10 The students' shategies for True / False exercise , 33

Figure 4.11 The students' strategies for Multiple - choice exercise 34

Figure 4.12 The students' shategies for Matching exercise 35

Figure 4.13 The tlpe of exercise that students often had the most diffrcult 36

vl

THE STRATEGIES TO DO

READING COMPREHENSION EXERCISES

AT TAY DO UNTVERSITY

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

Chapter I Introduction describes in details the rationale of the research Next, the

research aims and significance of the research are stated The final part is theorganization of the research.

1.1 Rationale

Nowadays, English is considered the most necessary and common language spoken ever5rwhere ln fact, "English has an imporrant role in the fields of medicine,

education and engineering" (Sozdinler, 2008, p.l) So leaming English has become

rapidly increasing in response to the need of the present information time In effect,English becomes a,compulsory subject at schools.

Studying English, the students have to learn many different skills such as

Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing Among them, reading skill is not lessimportant than the others According to Cochran (1993, pl), Reading has played a

crucial role in the overall development of a language skill and even academic success for decades" tn addition, reading could help students to expand their

knowledge of the language of cultures and the world Atierua e002, pl) considers

that "It is difficult to approach listening and speaking if the readers do not learn

reading skill" Besides, through reading, students can learn how to think in the target language, they can learn how to use vocabulary effectively and they feel more

comfortable with written language (Mikulecky, 1986) From the above matters,

reading skill should

schools.

much attention to and should be taught carefully at

However, "Reading is not an easy skill" (Narvaez, 2002,p.158) In addition,

according to Grabe ahd Stoller (2001, p.192), "Reading is a complex skill',

Therefore, most students have some problems in the reading process, which iesults

in the low level of comprehension Indeed, "The ultimate goal of reading a textinvolves comprehension" (Anderson, 2003, p.68) Therefore, it is essential to

develop reading skill and especially to improve reading comprehension Metsalaand Ihri (1998) believe that "Reading comprehension involves integral interactionbetween text and reader" (cited in Khatib and Fat'hi, 2001, p.l9a) Moreover,

"Reading comprehension results from interactive variables that operatesimultaneous rather than sequentially" (Hawkins, lggl, p.170) In other words,reading comprehension is understanding what is conveyed in the texts It does not

mean that the students need to understand every word but they should capture the

required information in the texts Therefore, doing reading comprehension exercises can be one of the v{ays for students to gain better comprehension and for teachers to

check their students' comprehension.

:

In order to help students learn reading as well as do reading comprehension exercises effectively, it is worth equipping them with useful strategies (Hismanoglu,

2000) In fact, using strategies in doing reading comprehension exercises is

important because it could help students to capture the required information in an

efficient manner Ben - David (2002, p.l) states that "Readers often encounter

problem in reading texts and have diffrculties in understand meaning of the contextbut reading strategies help them in learning foreign language and readingcomprehension" Moreover, Dufly (1993,93) says that "Reading strategies refer tothe plan for readers to solve problem encountered in constructing meaning fromtext" Similarly, Pearson (1972, p.125) states "Reading strategies provide learning

opportunities; facilitate learning and recalling of information as well as

strengthening the reading comprehension ability of language learners',.

Qe paid

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However, some students do not know how to get good result on readingcomprehension as well as what strategies are used when doing kinds of reading

comprehension exercises ln fact, according to Chamot (2005, p.25), "Students havetheir own preference of shategies, but in order to become mctivated and select

'strategies to use, English foreign language leamers should self - monitor their

reading strategies" Therefore, students should know multiple reading strategies as

well as the appropriate use of those shategies for better results However,sometimes students lack basic strategies or they do not know what strategies and

when to apply them to do various exercises From that, reading process and doingexercises will take much of the students' time and require motivation to read.

Similar to other students, perhaps the students at Tay Do University in Can

Tho city may also face some of the above problems Even English Majored Juniorswho often do reading comprehension exercises may also need good reading

strategies As my observation, some students complain about their difficulties when

leaming reading a-s well as doing reading comprehension exercises Actually, some state that they are not confident in their reading ability, and their reading scores are

still low Therefore, I wonder whether English Majored Juniors have difficulties inusing strategies to deal with reading comprehension exercises and how they can overcome these difficulties Therefore, I conduct a study to explore The strategies

to do reading comprehension exercises of English majored juniors at Tay DoUniversity"

1.2 Aims and signilicance of the research

1.2.1 Aims of the research

This research aims to find out what strategies English Majored Juniors at Tay

Do University often use when doing reading comprehension exercises Moreover,

the research is conducted with the aim to investigate whether English MajoredJuniors at Tay Do University know how to apply strategies to do readingcomprehension exercises effectively From that, some suitable solutions can be

found to help them do reading exercises well to get higher result:in learning reading

i

as well as improve their comprehension.

1,2.2 Significance of the research

This research is intended to receive an overview of{he strategies English

Majored Juniors in Tay Do University often use when doing reading exercises Theresults might be significant to both teachers and students First, the findings of thisresearch may help for teachers to know what strategies their students often use

when doing reading exercises as well as their problems After that, they will find

out suitable strategies for their students to do reading exercises effectively

In addition, this research also helps English Majored Juniors in Tay DoUniversity to recognize the important of using reading comprehension strategies

and their problems when learning reading as well as the difficulties they often meet

when using strategies to do reading comprehension exercises Through the research,

students could know how to use reading strategies suitably for dealing with various

types of exercises.

1.3 Organization of the thesis

The research consists of 5 chapters The initial chapter of the study is

Introduction It also consists of Literature review in chapter 2 Moreover, Research

methodology is stated in chapter 3 After data collection, research results are

reported and discussed in chapter 4 Finally, chapter 5 shows implications,

limitations, suggestions for further research and conclusions.

Chapter I presents the rationale, aims and significance of the research This

section also presents the organization of the research.

Chapter 2 states the literature review It introduces the definitions of reading,

reading comprehension and reading strategies, and kinds of reading strategies, as

well as its effects on reading comprehension It also presents types of different

exercises in reading comprehension and the summary of literature review

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I

' Chapter 3 focuses on the research methodology This chapter includes

research questions and hypotheses, research design and participants of study In

addition, it also presents the instruments and the procedure of the research.

Chapter 4 analyzes and discusses the results of data from the test and the questionnaire From that, the results are reckoned up from them.

Chapter 5 summarizes the findings of the study.' It also states the

implications, the limitations of the research, the suggestions for further research and

conclusions.

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

Chapter 2 reviews sotte concepts relevant to the topic of the current study The first part shows the deJinitions' of reading and reading comprehension Moreoter,

deJinitions of strategl and kinds of.strategies are stated in the next part of thischapter Some reading comprehension exercises are alsd reviewed in this chapter.

The final part is the summary of the literature review

2.1 Reading and reading comprehension

2.1.1 Delinition of reading

"Reading has been the subject of research for over a century" (Cheng, 1985,

p.5) It means that reading has drawn researchers' attention and interest as well As

the result, reading has been defined in different ways according t,r various points of

view [n general, according to Williams (1990), reading concerns body parts such as

eyes and brain The definition shows that "Reading is a process whereby on looks at

and understands what has been written" (Citied in McCarthy, 2002 So the speed ofreading depends on the readers Sharing the same ideas, Aebersold and Field (1997,

p.15) claim that "Reading is what happens when people look at a text and assign

meaning to the written symbols in that text The text and the reader are the two

physical entities necessary for the reading process to start"

2.1.2 Definition of reading comprehension

ln order to make sense of the term "reading comprehension", students need

to recogrize the relationship between "Reading" and "Comprehension" According

to Anderson (2003, p.68), "The goal ofreading is comprehension" ln fact, readingcomprehension is said to be the degree of understanding what is read Grabe and

Stoller (2002, p.l 1) argue that "Reading comprehension is defined as the ability to

understand information in the text and interpret it appropriately" In addition,

Grellet (1981, p.3) considers reading comprehension as "Understanding a written

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text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible"

(Cited in Dinh, 2008, p.5) Reading comprehension is a necessary factor forimproving students' success in extracting useful knowledge from text (Mayer,

2002).

2.2 Some strategies in reading comprehension

2.2.1 D efinition of reading strategy

According to D' Arcangelo (2002, p 12-14), "Reading strategies are the

tools which allow readers to be more actively involved while reading" Moreover,

Barnett (1998) indicates, "Reading strategies are the mental operations involved

when readers approach a text effectively to make sense of what they read" (Citied in

Pani, 2004, p.355) Furthermore, Pressley (1989, p.159-160) states "Readingstrategies are conscious, instantiates and flexible plans that readers apply and adapt

to a variety of texts and tasks" Besides, Rigney (1978) believes 'oReading strategies

are of interest for what they reveal about the way readers image their interaction

with written text and how these strategies are related to text ccmprehension" In

fact, not all strategies are of equal effectiveness due to the different types of reading

texts and tasks and reading strategies used by each reader In general, readingstrategies play an important role in the reading process.

In summary, reading comprehension strategies indicate how readers interact

with the text and how their choice of strategies influences their comprehension ofthe text Indeed, there are many strategies and the following section will focus on

some important strategies in detail They are skimming, scanning, guessing themeaning from context, inference and reference.

2.2.2 Some reading strategies

Skimming

Skimming is an important strategy to do reading comprehension exercises.

Students skim to get the purpose of the passage, the main topic, some of supporting

details and general overview of the content quickly According to Greenwood

( 1981, p.92) "The reader goes through particular passage such as newspaper articlemerely to get the gist" Moreover, Nuttall (1982, p.36) explains " By skimming, we

mean glancing rapidly through a text to determine whether a research paper isrelevant to our own work or to order to keep ourselves superficially informed about matters that are not of great importance to us"

Furthermore, Chamot (1987, p.74) indicates that "Skimming is the readingtechnique that is used to get a quick gist of a section or chapter, The reader is not

interested in all the detail, getting the gist is enough Skimmers run their eyes down

the page or screen looking for pointers that sum up the contexts." In addition,

Grellet (1986) writes "Skimming refers to the technique of reading passage quickly

in order to get its gist In skimming, readers do not look for specific information but

only for general information" In fact, when skimming, students look through the

reading text quickly in other to get its gist or know how it is organized Therefore,

skimming is a more thorough activity which requires an overall view of the text and

impiies a definite reading competence.

In briei by using this strategy, students can save time when doing some

exercises in form of question types (such as Multiple choice, Wh word question, ) Actually, skimming strategy is useful for dealing with exercises which require

the readers look for the main idea of the reading passage.

Scanning

Similarly to skimming, scanning is a necessary technique in reading.

According to Douglas (2001, p.308), "Scanning is quickly searching for some

particular piece or piece of information in a text" Sharing the same idea with

Douglas, Brow (2001, p308) emphasizes "Scanning is a quickly searching for some

particular piece of information in a text Scanning exercises may ask students tolook for names or dates, to find a definition of a key ooncept, or to list a oertain

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number of supporting details The pu{pose of scanning is to extract specificinformation withoui reading through the whole text".

Moreover, according to Grellet (1986), "Beaders need to move their eyes

quickly across the passages for particular words or phrases" In short, this strategy requires studenls read the text with very high speed By using scanning strategy, the students can find the detail for the questions quickty without reading all the words

in a reading text and can do True/False exercises more easily.

Guessing the meaningfrom conlext ;

Guessing the meaning from the context is one of the important strategies for

learning reading comprehension stbject It can help students predict the nerv words

without having to use dictionaries According to Hocking (1993), guessing the wordmeaning is also a useful advice for students when they face unfamiliar words.

Fuhhermore, Smith (1964, p.3) says that "Guessing the meanrng of nelr wordshelps readers to read and understand text quickly because difficult words usuallycreate problems for students and are obstacles in reading comprehension" Guessingthe meaning helps students to save time, learn more about the texts, improvevocabulary and do exercises effectively

In fact, Smith (1964) also states "The best way to find the meaning of the

new words is to draw inferences from the context rather than rrsing a dictionary".Basing on the context, students can understand the text quickly and do exercises

effectively Moreover, in reading comprehension, there are some kinds of guessing such as guessing the topic, pictures, questions and the meaning 'rf unknown words

from the context Therefore, Nation and Coady (1988, p.10a) suggest five

techniques for guessing from context:

l Finding the part of speech of the unknown word

2 Looking at the immediate context of the unknown word and simpliffing thiscontext ifnecessary

3 Looking at the wider context of the unknown word This means

the relationship between the clauses containing the unknown

surrounding clauses and sentence.

4 Guessing the meaning of the unknown word

5 Checking that the guess is correct.

looking atword and

:

In addition, some of the factors which can help students ba.se on to guess the meaning from the context are also mentioned in Appendix 3 So guessing strategy isuseful strategy for doing Matching exercise better.

2.3 Types of reading comprehension exercises

2.3.1 Multiple - choice

I

According to Pearson and Johnson (1972, p.154), "Multiple-choice questions

are based on other forms of questions" In addition, according to Teny (1980,

p.156), "Multiple-choice questions are a method of assessment that asks students to

select one choice from a given list They typically have three parts: a stem, the

correct answer - called the key, and several wrong answers,'called distracters.Multiplerchoice questions are most widely used for measuring knowledge,

comprehension, and application of leaming outcomes" Sharing the same idea withTerry, on the website htto://peoole.uwec.edu, it can be seen that "Multiple choice

exams ask a sfudent to recogrize a correct anslver among a set of options thatinclude 3 or 4 wrong answers (called distracters ), rather than asking the student to

produce a correct answer entirely from hislher own mind"

Generally, according to Pearson and Johnson (1972, p.154), students might

be able to check the text to see if any of the choices are specifically discussed, and

then make a decision As with true or false questions, developing good

multiple-choice questions requires careful thought, and this may best with students with lowproficiency in the target language One of the four, obviously, is the desired answer;

the others should be seemingly plausible responses So students have a25%o chance

ofbeing correct even by wild guessing.

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ln fact, multiple - choice is one of the difficult reading comprehension exercises In order to do this exercise effectively, students should choose somesuitable strategies The following tips can help students answer multiple-choice

questions Firstly, students should reail the question before looking at the options

as well as come up with the answer.in their head before looking at the possible

options After that, the students mbve to the reading text and skim the textquickly In the reading process, if students recogrize information which is related

to the questions, they should take notes and come back to the'suggested options to

choose the correct option Finally, students should review the correct ans.,vers as

well as the reading text to remember the necessary contexts (website

hnp://cte.illinois.edu4

2.3.3 True / False

.This exercise requires the students use information from the text tb decide

whether the statements are True or False Therefore, they should read the statements

in exercises carefully to make right decisions According to Hartmann and Kern(2007), True / False questions ask students to "Write T on the lines before the statements that are True according to the reading Write F on the lines before the

statements that are False" According to Pearson and Johnson (1972, pJ5$,

"sfudents have a 50%o chance ofguessing the correct answer".

In fact, Trueffalse question is one of the difficult reading comprehension

exercises Therefore, students need suitable strategies to deal with it Rozakis (2003,

p.162) suggests the following tips to do this exercise effectively Firstly, students

should read the statements carefully and underline important phrases and wordproviding hints about the answer Then, they scan the reading text to identiff

phrases or words relating to the statements After that, they compare each statement

with information in the reading text However, during the reading process, there are

some notes that can probably help students exclude the wrong statements quickly

Mundsack et al (2003, p.100) add that the correct answers rarely have the words

"always" or "never" Moreover, for a sentence to be true, all of its parts must be

true If even one small part is false, the entire statement is false The longer a sentence is the more likely it is to be false.

2.2.4 Matching

According to Hartmann and Kern (2OOT: matching is believed to be

"Reading the pqmpound words in column A below Students draw line between thetwo words of each compound word Then they match the compound words withdefinition in column B" In fact, matching items requires students match the series

of stems There are many kinds of matching exercises such as matching definitions

- terms, examples - terms, problems - principles, description -principles, history

events - dates, statements - postulates and application - postulates.

On the website: http://www.collegeatlas.org/, it is explained that "Teachers

frequently use matching questions to deterniine whether students understand

definitions, know important dates, and can match historical figures with events".

This website also mentions some tips to do matching exercises The strategies ofguessing meaning from the context are useful for doing this kind of exercise

effectively, and should be used step by step Specifically, the students should read

the questions before looking at the reading text Then, they move to the reading text

and underline the words which have appeared in the question After that, students

should answer the question they know flrrst as well as move onto the difficultquestion later Finally, students come back to the text to check the answers again.

2.3 Summary of the literature review

In summary, the definitions of reading, reading comprehe:nsion and reading

strategy are mentioned in this chapter Moreover, some reading strategies and types

of reading comprehension exercises are also discussed carefully in this section.

In this study, reading is considered to concern body parts such as eyes and

brain when people look at a text and assign meaning to the written symbols in that

text Besides, reading comprehension is defined as the ability to un<ierstand

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' information in the text and interpret it appropriately and reading strategies are the

tools whibh allow readers to be more actively involved in the reading process.

In addition, this part reviews some strategies in reading comprehension such

as skimming, scanning and guessing meaning from the context Furthermore, types

of reading comprehension exercises (Multiple - choice, True/False and Matching)

are mentioned in this chapter Besides, there are some tips that can help students to

do exercises quickly and effectively

Chapter 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter includes research questions and lrypotheses The next part shows

research design, participants and instruments clearly The procedure of theresearch is also stated in the final part of this chapter.

3.1 Research questions and hypotheses

3.1.1 Research questions

To achieve the aims of the study, this research sought for the answers tothese following questions :

1 What strategies do English Majored Juniors at Tay Do lhniversity often

use when doing kinds of reading comprehension exercises?

2 Do the English Maiored Juniors use the reading strategies ffictively indealing with these kinds of exer.cises?

3.1.2 Hypotheses

According to the literature review and the research questions, it is

hypothesized that English Majored Juniors in Tay Do University often use

strategies when doing kinds of reading comprehension exercises (such as skimming

strategy is useful for dealing with multiple - choice exercise, scanning is also useful

for doing True / False as well as guessing meaning from the context is used to do

matching exercises) Moreover, English Majored Juniors use strategies suitably and

effectively which helps them deal with reading exercises easily.

3.2 Research design

This research is a survey which was conducted to answer the research

questions and test the hypotheses shown in the previous section It follows a

descriptive design In this research, a test and a questionnaire were employed to

investigate the use of reading strategies of English Majored Juniors at Tay DoUniversity when doing reading comprehension exercises To perform the research,

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34 students of class English 7 were chosen as a sample group The research was conducted within 16 weeks.

The participants in this study were 34 English Majored Juniors at Tay Do

Universrty There were,7 males (20.6%) and27 females (79.4%) Their ages ranged

from 20 to 22 They all speak Vietnamese as their first language and English is considered as their second language They have been studying English for 10 years.

In addition, they have used the same reading.textbooks such as Interaction 1,

Interaction 2 andMosaic l.

3.4 Research instruments

A reading test and a questionnaire are two instruments used in this research.

The questionnaire is used to get data from the participants' using strategies to do

reading comprehension exercises Moreover, the test consists of some texts which

are related to kinds of different exercises in reading I collected them from some

TOEFL books This test was used to examine whether English Majored Juniors

often used strategies when doing reading comprehension exercises and whether theyuses these strategies yet effectively and suitably

The following section will focus on the instruments in details

3.4.1 Test

Reosonfor choosing the test

The test was employed in this research for some reasons Firstly, the test

could serye as a tool to check the students' ability in learning reading Moreover,

doing the test, students could recognize what strategies they often applied on

different exercises In addition, students also knew whether they used reading

strategies effectively

Description of the re$ i

Pearsofl and Hamm (2005) consider that most assessments of reading

comprehension have required students read (silently and without assistance) many

short passages and answer a variety of questions of different exercises They

incldde multiple-choice exercise, true I false exercise, gap - fill exercise andmatching,exercises (see Appendix 1) The test consisted of 3 reading texts withtittles "Civil 'war", "Changes in town" and "Music banks" takerr from the TOEFLtextbook The test requlred students choose suitable strategies to complete the exercises The maximum score for the reading test was 14, so each correct answer

had I mark and wrong answer had 0 mark The students had 30 minutes to do the reading test.

The first part is in form of "Multiple-choice" exercise (finding the main idea for

passage) There are 4 questions about the matters relevant to Labor This part

requires about 10 minutes to be completed To answer the questions, studentsshould find suitable information in the text and skimming is a suitable strategy inthis case Therefore, this exercise was used to check the students' ability in usingskimming strategy to do multiple choice exercise.

' The next part has "True / False" exercise There are 5 questions about Ctarkson

City in this part The students had to use information from the text to define the true

or false sentences Scanning is one of the useful strategies to do this exercise So,

this exercise was used to test how the students dealt with this exercise as well as

whether the students applied scanning strategy effectively to recognize detail

information related to the questions quickly

The final part is "matching" exercise There are five words on the left and theirfive definitions on the right The students had to match them This exercise requires guessing meaning from the context and was used to test how the students used this

strategy to do matching exercise.

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3.4.2 Questionnaire

)

' Reasonsforchoosing questionnaire

Questionnaire was used as one of the main instrunlents of this research for

some reasons Firstly, questionnaire can help to collept the amount of data from the large number of participants in a short time Moreover,:answering the questionnaire,

the sfudents can have more time to consider their responses carefully without any

interference Therefore, the questionnaire result might be more reliable Finally, the questionnaire with close-ended questions is easy for analysis.

Descriptions of the questionnaire

The questionnaire consists of two parts Part one is a6out the students'

background with six questions, in which the participants are requested to provide

information about their name, gender, age and a number of years studying English.These pieces of information are needed to establish the profiles of the students

participating in the study.

Part2 of the questionnaire serves a different purpose The students' attitudetoward learning English, reading and reading comprehension in general and readingcomprehension exercises in particular should be taken into consideration in this

research This part includes 16 close - ended questions in form of multiple -'choice

and I opene - ended question These close - ended questions are classified into five

categories Questions I and 2 are about the students' attitude toward learning

English Questions 3, 4, 5,7 and 8 ask about the students' attitude when studyingreading and reading comprehension Questions 6, 9 and 10 aim to ask about kinds

of exercises the students often do and Epes of strategies they often use Questions

11,12,13 and 14 arc about the strategies the students choose to do exercises such as

matching, question type, reordering, true / false, filling in the blank exercises.Question 15 about the kinds of exercise the students find the most difficult

The final part has an open - ended question to get the students' additionalideas or their suggestions about ways to do reading comprehension exercises better.

The questionnaire was delivered after the break time because in this period,the students had fresh mind to answer these questions The questionnaire was given

to the students in the second - term of their third - year at tire university The

students had about 10 minutes to complete the questionnaire The detail questionscan be seen in Appendix l This following table shows the clusters of the questionnaire:

t Table 3.1: The description of the questionnoire

3.4 The procedure of the research

The research was conducted in 16 weeks The specific information is shown

in the following table:

I and2 The students' attitude toward learning English

3,4,5,7 and 8

The students' attitude when studying reading and reading

comprehension as well as reading comprehension exercises

6,9 and l0 The kinds of exercises students often do and types of

strategies they often use

ll,12, l3 and l4 The strategies that students choose to do exercises

15 The students' attitude toward doing exercises

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- Set an outline for the research

- Search for documents related to the topic

- Write the introduction and the literature reviewi' w6-wg - - Design and edit the test and the questionnaire

Administer the test to the participants

- Deliver the questionnaire

w9 - w10 - Analyze the data from the test and the

questionnaire

wll -w 16

- Report the results and make discussions

- Write the conclusions, limitations anddirections for further research

- Edit the thesis a

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Chapter 4: RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

t.

This ch,apter aims to report and the discuss data collected from the test and the

ques.tionnaire They will be reported under the form of desuiptive statistics, tables and charts Moreover, this chapter also shows the discussions in each part

4.1 The data collected from the test

The test was scored in the way that was stated in chapter 3 Besides, the test was performed in week 7 andthis test was delivered to 34 students of class English

7 atTay Do University The mean scores are shown in the following table

Table 4.1 The mean score of the reading test

The reading test was designed to indentiff how the students' did readingcomprehension exercises and whether they used reading strategies to do exercises

effectively The maximum score of the rLading text is 14 The highest score tfrut tfr.student got was 12 and the lowest score was l There was one student who got only 1

correct answer In contrast, there was only a student (2.94%) rrvho got 12 marks Table 4.1 indicates the total mean score of the test (M: 6.5) is below the averageT.It

indicates that the students' reading ability was not good Approximately, 61.76% students (21 students) got a score lower than the average score (7 marks) and only

38.24% (13 students) had a score higher than average score This presents that most

of the students might not apply strategies effectively It is presented in the following

The details of the kinds of exercises are shown in the table below:

Table 4.3.The students' mean scores when doing exercises

Or perhaps, in doing the other kinds of exercises, the students had difficulties which

related to lack of vocabularies, strategies, or meaning of the words from the context The details of these exercises will be shown clearly in following parts.

The score of the True / False exercise in the reading test

In the reading test, there are 5 questions (question 5, 6,7 , 8, and 9) in form of

True / False exercise The scores of the True / False exercise are presented in Table4.3

Table 4.4 The scores of the True / tr'alse exercise

0.56

0.85

0.82 0.68

The table shows that the total mean score of the True / False exercise is 0.65.

It means that the students' ability was rather good at this exercise As presented inTable 4.3, most of the mean scores of these questions are higher than the average

mean score (M : 0.5) This presents that &e students knew how to solve this

exercise as well as applied sfategies effectively And then the following figure will

show about the mean score of each question and the number of students who hadcorrect answers in this category

Fl

r

9

Figure 4.1 The students' rate in doing True / Felse exencise

On the whole, most of the students had a good result in this exercise ln fact,

Figure 4.1 proclaimed that in question 6,29 students (85.29o/o\ had correct answers (Mq6 = 0.85); 28 students (82.35%) got correct answets in question 7 Gvfq, : Al82);

23 students (67.65%) and 19 students (55.88%) had conect ansvref,s in questions I

and 5 (MaE: 0.68 and Mq5:0.56) However, question 9 only 11 stndents (32.35%)got correct ans\ilers (Mqe : 0.32) To do this exercise, the students should usescanning stratery because this statery is the most appropriate for this type ofexercise It could help students recognize information which related to statements.

Besides, they should combine some other strategies to do exercise e{fectively For

example, in questions 5,6,7 and 8, sfudents needed to use only scanning stratery to

recognize the correct answer and they did not need to combine wi& other strategies.

I

22

I

When they read the passage, they could see the answers immediately Nevertheless, there was a little difference in question 9 The students had probler'n in this question.

Maybe, they did not understand the statefnent or the statement was not referred in

the passage Indeed, question 9 rbqirired.students combine many strategies to find

out the correct aqswer To this question, students should combine scanning strategy

with skimming and inferring strategies They ought to skim the text quickly to

remember some important sentences or paragraphs Then they should scan these sentences carefully to infer and find out the correct answer According to the result

of this exercise, the students' ability was rather good However, they often had the

high score with the basic questions which required them use only a strategy

(scanning strategy) and they students had difficulty with only a complex question because they did not know how to combine suitable strategies together In short,

scanning strategy is most commonly recommended for this exercise However,other strategies should be also used to have good results Therefore, if the students

know to use strategies suitably and effectively, True / False exercise is not a

difficult exercise.

The score of the Multiple - choice exercise ;n the reading test

There are 4 questions of multiple - choice form (questions.l, 2,3 and4) The

result shows that the students did not have good result In fact, the total mean score

is 0.45, which is lower than the average level (M : 0.5) Table 4.3 will show this

clearly

Table 4.5 The scores of Multiple - choice exercise

0.i 8

0.71

0.59 0.32

Mean rotu 0.45