Luận văn an investigation into reading strategies for doing reading comprehension tests employed by grade 10 english major students at hung yen city high school

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, IIANOL UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES wow HOANG DUC HANH AN INVESTIGATION INTO READING STRATEGIES FO

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, IIANOL

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

wow

HOANG DUC HANH

AN INVESTIGATION INTO READING STRATEGIES FOR DOING

READING COMPREHENSION TESTS EMPLOYED BY GRADE 10

ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUNG YEN CITY HIGH SCHOOL

NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC ĐỌC ĐƯỢC ÁP DỤNG KHILÀM BÀI

'THỊ ĐỌC HIỂU CUA HOC SINH KHOI £0 CHUYEN ANH

TRUGNG TRUNG HOC PHO THONG TILANI PHO DUNG YEN

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 60140111

TIANOI — 2016

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOL

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

wow

NOANG DUC ITANIT

AN INVESTIGATION INTO READING STRATEGIES FOR DOING

READING COMPREHENSION TESTS EMPLOYED BY GRADE 10

ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUNG YEN CITY HIGH SCHOOL

NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC ĐỌC ĐƯỢC ÁP DỤNG KHILÀM BÀI

'THỊ ĐỌC HIỂU CỦA HỌC SLNH KHÔI 1Ú CHUYỀN ANH

TRUGNG TRUNG HOC PHO THONG TILANII PHO GUNG YEN

MLA M

‘OR PROGRAMME THESIS

Ficld : English Teaching Mcthadology Code : 60140111

SUPERVISOR: Assoc.Prof.Dr NGUYEN VAN DO

HANOI -— 2016

CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT

T hereby certify that the minor thasis, “Am investigation into reading strategies for doing reading comprehension tests employed by Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High Schoof”, submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, is my own werk

‘This thesis has not been submitted for any degree to any other universities

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Twould like lo express my since!

gralilude lo my supervisor, Assoc Prof

Dr Nguyén Vin Dé, who helped, supported me when | conducted this study

Without his helpful comments, valuable advice and significant assistance, this study

could not have been completed

1 would like to thank all lecturers in the Department of Post-Graduate,

Lniversity of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University for

their meaningful and meresling leclures

Lam grateful to Ms Bui Nhu Lloa and her students in class 102 who were

always willing to join this study and provide it with valuable data

Tam indebled to Mr, Le Hat Doan, Mr Nguyen Due Ta, Ms Tran Minh

Chi, Ms Doan Mai Hoai Anh, as well as a lot of friends, relatives who constantly

encouraged and tried their best to make conditions for me to complete this thesis

Tast bul not least, my special thanks must go to my Mum, my Family and

my Love for their kindest care for me and my thesis

They are my strengths lo overcome all difficulties and complete this thesis

ik

ABSTRACT

This study reports on an evaluation of the stralogics which are used in reading comprehension tests by some English major students Both quantitative and qualitative data analyses are employed in the study Forty-eight students in Grade

10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School took a three-text reading,

comprehension test, followed by a 30-item questionnaire of metacognitive and cognitive reading strategies taken in a test; then, two high-proficiency, and two low-

proficiency students were mviled for an interview for further information of their

actual thoughts on the reading comprehension skill and their present status of strategies use as reading test-takers

The

esulis suggesl that (1) melacognilive strate

and cognilive strategies

were used with mediun frequency by the students; (2) the lugh-proficiency students reported a higher use of both strategies than the low-proficiency students Then, the discussion and recommendation of strategies for beller performance are also presented

The researcher believes thal this study can be considered as a useful source

of reference for not only students but also teachers who share the same concem

1H

LIST OF ABREVIATIONS

ESL, : English as a second language

KEL — ; English as a foreign language

L2 :Secondlanguage

iv

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Reading strategies: definition and classification (O’Malley & Chamot,

1990)

Background information of the participants

‘The detailed categories of strategies in Part 2 of the questionnaire Two major classes of reading strategies

Descriptive slalistic of eighteen sub-stralegies of reading strategies

Lrequency distribution of metacognitive and cognitive reading strategies

Difference between two groups of students in metacognitive strategies

use

Differences between two groups of students in cognitive strategies use

List of strategies need to be improved by the high-proficiency group Table 10 List of strategies need lo be improved by the low-proficieney group

‘Table 11 List of strategies should be paid attention by the low-proficiency group

FIGURES

Figure 1 The definition of reading by Anderson (2008)

Kigure 2 ‘The importance of reading comprehension compared to Ss’ purpose

Figure 3 The students’ evaluation of difficult levels

Figure 4 The evaluation of some factors influencing reading comprehension

Figure 5

performance

CALLA instructional framework

1 Rationale of the study

Aims of the study

Soope of the study

tạ

Significance of the rescarch

Methods of the study

Design of the study

1.2 Stralegias, roading slrategics and classificalions of reading strategies

1.2.2 What are reading simtegies

1.2.3 Classifications of reading strategios

1.3 Previous sludies on strategies for reading comprehension testis in Vielnam and

1.3.3 Previous studies on reading strategics for reading comprehension tests

for reading comprehension tests in other countries

3.2 Discussion about the research questions

3.2.1 To whal extent are reading strategies for doing reading comprehension

tests used by Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High

APPENDI 2: Quastionnaire icon nh re cesses teeter oe WL

APPENDIX 4: Transcription of the interviewer's response

vi

PART T- INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Thanks to its worldwide popularity and importance, English has boon at the top among the most popular foreign languages taught in schools of numerous countries all over the world The Vietnamese education system is not an exception where English has been a compulsory subject from primary schools, secondary schools, high schools, to universities, and even higher education in most sixty three provinces nationwide

En Vielram”s context, English is taught and leaned in a nonenalive environment; therefore reading skill has been considered as the most vital one to be mastered, as a key of getling knowledge as well as a means of further study

Reading comprehension tests in English are tamiliar with students during their school life, especially those at high schools because most national standardized losis still keop the grammar- and reading-based formal, and reading comprehension accounts for a large part in important national examinations including, graduation and university entrance ones

High school students whose major subject is English in general Jong for having good results in English tests, therefore they always desire to pass reading comprehension tests with flying colors It is also true for Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yon City High School However, their results of the reading comprehension tests, or their performance in these tests still do not meet the expectation of both students and teachers

Tn search of a remedy for the situation, strategies used by students in the reading comprehension tests have been taken into great consideration by the researcher According to Zhang (2011), “the strategies used during tests should be looked al when researchers are atlemplmg to explain variation in a spovifie language test performance because they (the strategies) are directly related to test score variation.” (p.136)

In contrast to numerous rescarch conducted on investigating reading and the strategies applied for reading comprehension with the works of Cohen (1991),

Hosenleld (1984), Carrell (1999), the mvesligalions info whal students are aclually

doing during the reading comprehension tests, that is, the strategies used under test- taking environment, are not so popular, especially in Vietnam context In other

words, strategies in reading comprehension tests are still open for Vietnamese

educators and/or researchers

In addition, the researcher has taught high school students for several years,

and been aware of difficulties of students while doing reacing comprehension lests

Lispecially for students whose major is linglish, it is by far important for them to fully master the strategies for passing reading, comprehension tests with the highest scores Therefore, the rescarcher intends to explore the current strategies use of Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School employing for

doing English reading comprehension tests, as well as finds out the differences

among the stralegics used by students of higher reading ability and those of lewer reading ability, namely, high and low proficiency students Based on the findings

and searching, the researcher will make some recornmendalions to improve the

students’ reading comprehension results

For all reasons mentioned above, the researcher decides to work on a study

in the name of “ds investigation into reading strategies for doing reading

comprehension tests emplayed hy Grade 10 English major students ut Hung Yen

City High School”

2 Aims of the study

The present study alfempls to study the curren slalus of reading sirategics use

for doing reading comprehension tests among Grade 10 English major students at

Hung Yen City High School To be more specific, this study is expected to achieve

the Iwo primary aims

ta

(i) To investigate the reading strategics employed by the students of Grade 10

Lnglish major at Llung Yen City Ligh School for doing reading

and

comprehension lasts;

Gi) Yo investigate the difference in terms of strategies use between the two

groups of the high- and low- proficiency students,

3 Scope of the study

Strategies employed by the reading test-takers are such a broad topic that

the researcher cannot discuss all the related aspects Therefore, within the

framework of a minor thesis, this study focuses on the metacognitive and cognitive

teading strategies employed for domg reading comprehension tests by Grade 10 English major students at Hmg Yen City High School

4 Significance of the research

The research was carried oul with the hope that the resulis of the slady will

provide deeper insights into the nature of what the students are actually doing while

taking their Fnglish reading comprehension tests This may lead to suggestions for

improving their results of reading comprchension tests as well as making it loss difficult for the students when taking this kind of tests in their ongoing study

5 Methods of the study

Tlus study was conducted as a descriptive study that utilized both quantitative and qualitative approaches ‘he quantitative analysis was employed through the process of data collected from a written questionnaire In addition, the quahtalive approach was used lo deal with the dala collected from a structured interview to examine the differences between the high and low proficiency students

in their reading strategies The combination of these data collection methods would

help the researcher achieve the aims of the study

6 Design of the study

This study has three main parts: Introduction, Development, and

Conelusion.

PART I - INTRODUCTION: bricfly states the rationale of the study, the aims,

the scope, the significance, the method and the design of the study

PART TI— DEVELOPMENT: contams three chapters:

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW: provides a review of literature on

reading, reading comprehension, strategies, cognitive and metacognitive strategies;

and a review on previous studies on reading strategies for reading comprehension

tests in reading comprehension tests will come at the end of this chapter

CIIAPTER 2: METIIODOLOGY: contains the core part of the study including

the context of the study, the methodology, the collection and the analysis of the data

for the research

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS & DISCUSSION: mentions the findings and

implications, the aulhor’s recommendations and suggestions for helping siuderta have better reading comprehension results

PART HI - CONCLUSION: gives a summary of the main issues that have been

discussed so far in the study and suggestions for further research,

PART Il— DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews theories related to reading and reading comprehension, strategies, reading strategies and classifications of reading strategies It also summarizes some studies on reading strategies for reading comprehension tests that

have been conducted so far All of these serve as a basis for an investigation into

reading strategies which is carried out and presented in the next chapter

1.1 Reading and Reading comprehension

1,11 What is reading

Reading is an essential skill for learners of English In fact, for most leamers it is the most important skill to master to ensure success in learning Anderson (2004) said that “with strengthened reading skills, second/foreign

language learners of English tend to make greater progress in other areas of

language learning,” (p.11)

Therefore, it is essential to understand what reading really is

In 2008, the researcher wrote in his book:

“Reading can be defined simply as making meaning from print, Four key

elements combine in the process of making meaning from print: the reader, the

text, reading strategies, and fluency Reading is a process of readers combining

information from a text and their own background knowledge to build

meaning, "(p.10)

Figure 1 The definition of reading by Anderson (2008)

w

In addition to this view, Rubin and Thompson (1994, cited in Dao, 2007)

offered another definition which regarded reading as an “information-seeking

process” in which readers actively connect the information in the Lext to whal they

have already known

Mikulecky (2008) stated that “reading is a conscious and unconscious thinking process The reader applies many strategies to reconstruct the meaning that the author is assumed to have intended ‘he reader does this by comparing information in the text to his ar her background knowledge and priar experience.”

(p.10)

‘The definitions of reading account for a wide range which are from simple

ta complicated ones To the researcher’s view point, shortly, the nature of reading

appears lo be nol a single process; il combines all necessary interactions arnong the

text, the reader, the author, the strategies and the reader's background knowledge

1.1.2 What is reading comprehension

Grabe (1991) claimed “comprehension is the primary purpose for reading”

(p.277) Whereas, reading comprehension can be simply understood as the ability

to gel the required information from the text as efficieutly as possible

MeNamara (2007) stated:

“They (some readers) may understand each word separately, but linking them

together into meaningful ideas often does’! happen uy it should These readers

can decode the words, but have not developed sufficient skills to comprehend the

snderlying, deeper meaning of the sentences, the paragraphs, and the entire text

Comprehension refers to the ability tv go beyond the words, to understand the ideas and the relationships between ideas conveyed in a text.” (p.1)

It is obvious from this opinion that reading comprehension is not easy; it is

really challenging, instead

Swam (1975, p.1, cited m Le (2008)) shared his point that when a student is

claimed to be “good at comprehension”, it equally means that he can read

accurately and efficiently, so as to gel the “maximum milormation” a text with the

“minimum of understanding,”

To sum up, reading comprehension is much more than just pronouncing words correctly or simply knowing what the author intends It is a process in which the readers (as they read) can recognive the form and understand the relation between the writing and the meaning

1.2 Strategies, rcading strategies and classifications of reading strategies

1.2.1 What are strategies

The word “strategy” is defied simply in the Merriam Webster Online

Dictionary as 1 a careful plan or method for achieving a particular goal usually

over a long period of time, 2 the stall of making or carrying out plans to achieve a

goal

In the language learning context, Anderson (2004) regarded strategies as the

“conscious actions” taken by leamers to improve their language learning According

to this researcher, strategics are nol a scparale aclion, they are “a process of

orchestrating more than one action” to accomplish an L2 second language

teader in their selection and use

Oxford (1990) suggested a widely accepted definition of language learning strategies She claimed “Learning strategies are specific actions taken by the leamer

to make leaming easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective and more transferable to new situations” (p.5)

Students who were better in their language performance generally reported

higher levels of overall strategy use and frequent use of a greater number of strategy

categories (Green & Oxford, 1995, p.265, cited in Song, 2005)

Therefore, when a student succeeds in applying strategies in their learning,

heishe is likely to have more advantages than others who do not hold any strategies

1.2.2 What are reading strategies

In a review of the developments in second language reading research,

Grabe (1991) potted out that the crucial importance of the reading skill in

academic contexts had led to considerable rescarch on reading in a second language

And reading strategies are also of interest for what they reveal about the way the

~

readers manage their interaction with written text and how these strategies are related to text comprehension

Carrell (1998) delmed readmg stralegies as “aclions thai readers act

select and control te achieve desired goals or objectives” (p.1)

This researcher also agreed with Paris, Waslk, and Tumer (1991, cited in

Carrell):

“strategies are actions selected deliberately to achieve particular goals An

emerging skill can become a struleyy when it iy used inlentionally Likewise, a strategy can "go underground” fin the sense of Vugoisky, 1978] and become a

skill Indeed swaregies are more efficient and developmentally advanced when they hecome generated and applied automatically as stalls.” (p.611)

Whilst, reading strategies can be understood as the special thoughis or behaviors that individuals use to help thom to comprehend, lear and retain new

information from the reading text These strategies are both observable and unobservable and individually difforent

The definitions, though worded differently, come to a common point that

the reading strategies are taken consciously by the readers to make a text's meaning

understood

1.2.3 Classifications of reading strategies

Second language researchers have spent much time studymg language

learning strategies Cohen (1990), O’Malley and Chamot (1990), and Oxford (1990)

have provided different classifications of learning strategies Che reading strategies which will be studied in this paper are based on O’Malley and Chamot’s leaming

strategies Thus, O’Malley and Chamot’s (1990) classification will be focused on

Regarding Cohen’s (1990), this researcher considered the purposes of using strategies, and classified second language learner strategies into two types: language learming stralegics (ic strategies used Lo learn a language) and language use strategies (Le strategies are adopted by leamers in order to use a language).

Whereas, Oxford (1990) proposed that the language Icarning stratogics can

be divided into direct and indirect groups Among them, memory strategies, cognilive stralcgies and compensalion stralegies are

sified into direct stutegics, whereas metacognitive strategies, affective strategies and social strategies belong to indirect strategies

For Q’Malley and Chamot (1990), they thought that learning strategies are

mental and social processes, so they divided the learning strategies into three main branches, namely, metacognitive, cognitive and social-affective language

Tn this study, only metacognitive strategies and cognitive stralegies are

evaluated, social-affective strategies will be neglected because the latter is not as closely related to reading comprehension performance as the former ones

1.2.3.1 Melacagnilive strategies

Motacognitive strategics are “higher order executive skills that may ontail planning or, monitoring, or evaluating the success of a learning activity” (Oxford,

1990, p44) The metacognitive learning stratogios identified ilo seven calogories

by ©’Malley and Chamot (1990, p.119) and all of them are applicable to a variety

of learning tasks

1.2.3.2 Cognitive strategies

Cognitive strategies are “more directly related to individual learning tasks and entail direct manipulation or transformation of the learning material” (Oxford,

1990, p8) According to O'Malley and Chamot (1990, p.119), the cognitive

leaming strategies are identified in fourteen categories However, those cognitive strategies may be limited in application to the specific type of task in the leaming

achivily,

The table below encompasses the 2 main types of strategies with thew sub-

categories as well as the definition of the sub-categories

Directed attention

Functional planning

Selective attention

Deciding in advance to attend in general to a leaming task and to ignore irrelevant distracters Planing for and rehearsing linguistic

components te

ary (o carry oul an upcoming

task

Deciding in advance to attend to specific aspects

of input, often by scanning for key wards, concepts and/or linguistic markers

Monitoring

Self-monitoring

Checking one’s comprehension during listening

or reading or checking the accuracy and/or appropriateness of one’s oral or written production while it is taking place

Evaluation

Self-evaluation

Checking the outcomes of one’s own language

against a standard after it has been completed

B.COGNITIVE STRATEGIES

Resourcing Using target language reference materials such

Imagery

Applying rules to understand or produce the second language or making up rules based on language analysis

Using visual images (either mental or actual) to understand or remember new information

Auditory representation

Key word method

Planning back im one’s roind the sound of a

word, phrase or longer language sequence Remembering a new word in the second language by:

(1) identifying ø familiar word in the first language that sounds like or otherwise resembles the new word, and

(2) generating easily recalled images of some relationship with the first language homonym and the new word in the second language

Elaboration

Relating new information to prior Imowledge, relating different parts of new information to each other, or making meaningful personal associations with the new information

Transfer

Inferencing

Using previous linguistic knowledge or pnor skills to assist comprehension or production

Using available information to guess meanings

of new items, predict outcomes or fill in missing,

information

Wnling down key words or concepls in

Note taking abbreviated verbal, graphic or numerical form

while listening or reading

Making a menial, oral or written summary of Summarizing new information gained through listening ot

reading, Constructing a meaningful sentence or larger Recombination language sequence by combining Imown

elements in a new way

Using the [irst language as a basco for

‘Translation understanding and/or producing the second

La, 2006) in which the researcher tried to figure out the strategies employed by the

22 students to deal with reading in English or Reading strategies to improve reading comprehension of students at Thai Nguyen college of economics and technology (Nguyen, Thi Lap, 2010) with 30 respondents who were first year non- English majors, this research aimed to solve the difficulties faced by the students to

avhicve beltor resulis in reading oomprehension

It is obvious that the strategies for doing reading comprehension tests have not been paid sufficient attention by the Vietnamese researchers During the time of doing lilorature review for this study, only one study of The strategies used in

multiple-choice tests by EEL high school students (Nguyen, ‘thanh Duc et al., 2012)

was found out and then processed thoroughly by the researcher This one was

implemented with the help of 131 high-school students from Vinh Long City The

students or respondents involving in answering a 30-item questionnaire related to the metacognitive strategies, the cognitive strategies and compensation strategies

The resull showed that the metacognitive siralegies as well as cogrnlive siralemies

were used in an above-average level, whereas the compensation ones were highly

used And another conclusion drawn was that the more frequently the students used

the slrategics, especially metacogrilive strategies, Ihe Inigher their scores were

1.3.2 Previous studies on reading strategics for reading comprehension tests for reading comprehension tests in other countries

Tn contrast lo a modest number of studies on reading strategies far reading comprehension tests in Vietnamese context, this aspect of research has received

worldwide altention some decades ago

There have been a number of studics related to stratogics in language

testing since 1990 such as Anderson, Bachman, Perkins, and Cohen (1991), lock

(1992), Purpura (1997), Purpura (1998), Phakiti (2003), Zhang (2006), and Zhang

(2011)

Moreover, the foreign researchers even carried om studies on strategies

used by test-takers on various different purposes consisting of test validation

purposes, test-wiseness to validate tests, language proficiency evaluation, and strategy instruction for performance on high-skates standardized tests After

comparing the scope of this thesis, the researcher would like to review in more

details of the research on language proficiency related to strategios used by test-

takers.

Purpura (1997) had a total of 1,382 test-takers trom 17 language centers in

Spain, ‘lurkey, and the Czech Republic answer an 80-item cognitive and inelacognilive strategy questionnaire, Uien take a 70-itern standardized language test Purpura used structured modeling to examine the relationship between strategy use and second language test performance (SLTP) with high- and low- proficiency

test takers The results indicated that cognitive strategies (ie comprehension,

memory and retrieval strategies) are directly and positively related to test performance Metacopnitive strategies (Le assessing the situation, monitoring, self-

evaluation and sel{-esting) are significantly correlaled with each other Resides,

Purpura also found that successful and unsuccessful performers invoke strategies differently

Phakili (2003), through the use of an 85-tem, multiple-choice EFT reading

achievement test, followed by a cognitive and metacognitive questionnaire on how

students thought while completing the test, and an interview, investigated the

relationship bolween 384 Thai learners’ cognitive and melacognitive siralogy use and their reading, test performance ‘Ihe test-takers completed the test first and

immediately afler the test completion, they answered the questionnaire on Lhe

degree of their strategy usc during the test taking Thon eight students (four highly

successful and four unsuccessful) were invited for an imterview The result

suggested that (1) the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies had a positive relationship to the reading test performance; (2) the underlying factor in the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies could be metacognitive competence; and (3)

highly successful students reported significantly higher metacognitive strategy use

than moderate successful students who in turn reported higher use of these strategies than unsuccessful students

The first main point is that the classification of Icarning stratogics is also a

complex work done by a considerable number of researchers OF these schemes,

O°Malley and Chamot's has been most useful and generally accepted to date In O'Malley and Chamot's framework, three major types including metacognitive, cognitive and socialaffective strategies are distinguished in accordance with the information processing model, on which their research is based Such a detailed and sufficient classification of leaming strategies is presented in table I and is going to

be adopted for the investigation of reading strategies for this study

The second main point of this chapter covers the important theories related to

reading and an overview of studies on reading strategies of successful and unsuccesslul Icarners, as well as slucies on metacognitive, or cognitive reading

strategies,

The next chaptor is the study on reading strategics used by the FBR students,

which has been conducted im the light of the theories discussed above.

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

This chapler provides the information about the Tescarch question and a description of the participants and settings of the study as well as the methodology employed to collect data for the study

2.1 Research questions

‘This study seeks the answer to the following question:

1 To what extent are reading strategies for doing reading comprehension

tests used by Grade 10 English mayor students at Hung Yen City High School?

2 To what extent do the high-proficiency students and low-proficiency students differ in terms of employing reading strategies in reading comprehension

Participants im this sludy were 49 sluidenis im class 101D2, one of three

English major classes in Hung Yen City High School They are 34 female students

and 15 male students in total All of them are Vietnamese, and have leamed Unglish

for at least 7 years The number of 49 students was invited to take a reading comprehension test of 3 passages with 25 questions hese passages were collected

from the English bank tests of the school as regards the familiarity of the test format

to the students After that, the number of 49 students was invited to respond to the questionnaire but only 48 responses were valid ‘the 48 participants were divided into three proficiency groups (high, intermediate, and low) according ta their scores

im the reading comprehension test The classificalion of the scores of the students

arc done based on Regulation of evaluating, grading junior high students and high

school students (enclosed with the Decision No 10/2006/QD-BGDDT dated on October 05, 2016, by Minster of Mimstry of Education and Trang} The scores:

of the high proficiency group range from 8.0 to 10, those of the intermediate from

6.0 ta 7.9, and those of the low-proficiency group from 0 ta 5.9

16

Table 2 summarizes the background information about the participants such

as the genders, ages, number of years leaming Lnglish and their Linglish

‘Table 2 Background information of the participants

The students are now sludymg Lhe first semester in the class ihe major of

which is English Therefore, English and some related subjects in their future

examinations, especially the university entrance examination like Maths, Literature,

and/or Physics play a very important role in their study at the school

There are some reasons for choosing these students as the participants of this study Virstly, the training quality of these students is of great concer to the

teachers at Hung Yen City High School The findings of the study would provide

essential information for teachers and students to improve in the reading comprehension results of the students in the school tests and in other important tests

like the university entrance test in the future Secondly, they are suitable

participants Lor the study because they arg the freshmen in their new level of study, they have left secondary schools to enter this high school, their study will last 3

more years before one of the most important tesis namely lhe universily entrance

test In addition, the strategics cannot be leamed in one or two days, it takes a

process to master the strategies Thus an investigation into the students’

proficieney, their use of” stralogics, as well as the evaluation of their current

strategies use should be carried out Last but not the least, my previous Hnglish teacher is directly teaching them, it is a goad chance for me to ask for help to carry

out all the stops of the rescarch process,

2.2.2 Settings of the study

‘The location of the study was at [lumg Yen City Ligh School, located at the conler of Ihe city, in Hung Yen Province I was founded 56 years ago and is for the students mainly coming from families residing in Hung Yen

This study was conducted from mid-September to the mid-October, 2015

when the students have studied for one month and a half and nearly finished 4 units

in the textbook English LO of Ministry of Education and ‘raining

2.3 Instruments

The present study includes one tesl, one questionnaire and one interview Lo

collect data on the reading strategies for reading comprehension tests Wirstly, a reading comprehension test was given to the students to identify their reading prolicincy Thon, a questionnaire was completed to identify their readiryy stralegics for reading comprehension tests at the current time At last, some of the students

were invited to a brief interview to help the researcher gain more insights into the

readmg stralogivs for reading comprehension tests

‘The description of the research instruments will be in the following, part

2.3.1 A three-text reading comprehension test

There was a throc-toxt reading comprehension test utilized by the researcher

as a means to determine the level of the students It was a proficiency test ‘The first text was a type of Cloze-test with 15 questions, the second and the third texts were two tests of information fill-in type with 5 questions for each Hach question was accompanied with four suggested answers marked A, B, C, D The total score for

this reading comprehension test was 10 points, with 0.4 points for each question

Students did these tests within the time of 30 minutes

All topics of the passages were related to three themes that the students had learned, including Famous Explorer (Unit 2), School talks (Unit 3), Special

education (Unit 4).

2.3.2 A questionnaire

A questionnaire (see Appendix 13) was used to collect data for this study Tho usefulness of Likert-scale questionnaires is supported by many linguistic

researchers (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990; Oxford, 1996, Purpura, 1999; Phakiti,

2003) This S-scale questionnaire was adopted from the questionnaire published by

Phakiti (2003)

‘The questionnaire was given in Vietnamese to avoid any language problems when measuring the students’ cognitive and metacognitive strategy use The

questiormaire used in this study allowed leamers 10 mark slrategy use on a 5-point

Likert scale: 1 (Never), 2 (Rarely), 3(Sometimes), 4(Often), 5(Always)

The length of tume needed to complete the questionnaire ranged approximately 10-15 minutos

‘The questionnaire has two main parts Part 1 included some unnumbered

items regarding students’ background information, including age, gender, the

tumber of years the student has learned English so far Then six next dems

investigated students’ attitude regarding the importance of reading compared to

their own English study, the difficully of reading comprehension tesis, and

judgement of the factors contributing to good comprehension results, After that, in Part 2, there are thirty questions asking students about their own frequency of employing the strategies, which were categorized into 2 types: metacognitive

strategies (16 questions) and cognitive strategies (14 questions)

The interview was conducted in Viemamese with two different groups of high-proficicncy students (two students) and low-proficioncy students (two students) in order to identify their current status of reading proficiency and check if there were any differences among them The interview has truly provided a lot of aluable information about the reading stalus of the subjects

Generally, the three sources for data collection will hopefully provide the

useful information about the strategies used in the reading comprehension test helping the findings more easily to be figured out

2.4 Dats collection procedure

Step 1: In mid-September, the students were given one reading comprehension test

Tho lost scores were collecled and (hen calcgorizcd into high-, modium-, low-

proficiency students of Hnglish

Step 2: After taking the test, students were asked to complete a questionnaire that

included 34 questions related to their reading strategies while doing a reading

comprehension test

Step 3: In early October, four students of two levels (two high-proficiency and two

low-proficiency ones) mel the researcher to implement a small interview

Step 5: Both qualitative and quantitative analyses about the data were performed The first analysis was about the students’ most and least used reading strategies in order to gain a general idea of their reading process For further comparison in efficiency study, the 48 students were ranked according to the total score of the first

test Eight students on the top of the list and fourteen from the bottom were chosen

for this study, with one group (Group A) representing high-proficiency sldents and another one (Group B) low-proficiency students including fourteen students In the

second part, a detailed comparison of strategies used by group A and group B was

conducted with the purpose of finding out the differonces between the use of reading strategy and the students’ reading proficiency ‘Tables were given to show the differences in the total number and the specific strategies employed by high- proficiency students and low-proficiency students Finally, the data collected via the

interview were all transcribed and evaluated based on the mentioned strategies

2.4 Summary

This chapter has deseribed in detail the re

carch question and (he participants and

settings of the study as well as the methodology employed to collect data for the study

Tw the next chapter, the findings from all sources of data will be indicated.

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION,

In this chapter, the findings implied from the data collected via the reading

test, the questionnaire, and the interview revealed

3.1 — Findings

3.11 The questionnaire

3.1.1.1 The students’ evaluation of reading comprehension

3.1.1.1.1 Students’ attitudes to reading comprehension

Question 1 asks the students how important reading comprehension is for

As can be shown from the chart, half of the students (50%) consider reading

comprehension as an important part in their English learning The students who

think reading comprehension rather important are more than double of the ones

finding reading comprehension very important with nearly 35.4% and 14.6%, respectively There is no single student underestimating the importance of this skill

22

3.1.1.1.2 Students’ evaluation of the difficult levels of reading comprehension tests

Question 2 asks the student their evaluation of the difficult levels of reading comprehension tests

5 |1]|2 4% 0% | 6%

a1 Not difficult at

=? all

3 "3 Not difficult 40%

Difficult

Figure 3 The students’ evaluation of difficult levels

It is clear from the pie chart that none of the students evaluate reading

comprehension tests as a completely easy task to complete Only six percent (6%)

of them thinks the kind of tests are not difficult; approximately, there is five percent (5%) regarding this test as very difficult The majority of the students agree that reading comprehension tests are rather difficult and difficult with 40% and 50%,

important — important — Important important

Figure 4 The evaluation of some factors influencing reading comprehension

performance None of the students undervalue any factors Most of the students think that

acquiring a good range of vocabulary, effective reading strategies for reading

comprehension tests, and sturdy knowledge of grammar is very important when

they want to achieve high scores in reading comprehension tests Having good knowledge of the text’s content is also important, however, it is not considered as

important as the others by the students

3.1.1.2 The current situation of the use of reading strategies for doing reading

comprehension tests

One of the aims of this study is to vestigate the frequency of reading strategies used by Grade 10 English major students in their English reading SPSS

20.0 will be used to process the data from the cognitive and metacognitive strategies

questionnaire According to the 30 questionnaires, the frequency of metacognitive

and cognitive reading strategies use and the frequency of their subcategories are

presented in the following tables.

3.1.1.2.1 The two major kinds of reading strategies

‘This table describes the statistics about two major classes of reading

(N — number of students; M — mean)

Table 4 ‘'wo major classes of reading strategies

According lo Oxford’s (1990) frequency scale, variable scores between 3.5

and 5.0 are regarded as high in frequency, and scores between 2.5 and 3.4 are

viewed as medium Those variables that score between 1.0 and 2.4 are considered

as low

‘Thus, the average of both kinds of reading strategies are 3.32 and 3.24, sơ their frequency in use is Medium The data also reveals that the metacognitive strategy use (M-3.32) is slightly more frequent than cognitive stratogy use

(M=3.24)

In order to investigate the differences in using different subcategories of the metacognitive and cognitive reading strategies by the participants, the following table about the frequency of using the eighteen subcategories of reading strategies is

displayed

Metacognitive “7 inctional planning 319 Medium

Table 5 Descriptive statistic of eighteen sub-strategies of reading strategies

As can be scon from the table, the frequency of strategies usc fluctuates between 2.85 (of self-monitoring) as the lowest and 1.04 (of auditory representing)

as the highesl, which can be inferred thal the students are able to use various strategies in their reading, comprehension tests

The most frequently used strategies are auditory representing and repetition, both of which arc roprescutatives of cognitive siralegics, with the mean

of 4.04 and 3.88, respectively Transference is a highly used strategy with the mean

of 3.44 Whereas, the cognitive ones with the lowest frequency are nate taking (2.94) and sumunarizing (2.88) The rest of cognitive strategies are above 3.0 and have pretty different range of frequency, which are between 3.04 (inferencing) and

3 40 (transtation)

For mclacogmiive strategies, the most [requenlly used metacognilive

strategies are self-management and selective attention with the mean of 3.58 and

3.40, respectively Besides, it is worth noting that, except the highest (3.58) and the lowest (2.85), the other five metacognitive strategies have the approximate level of frequency, ranging from 3.19 (fienctional planning) to 3.39 (self-uttention)

To conclude, despite the slight discrepancy of using levels between

cognitive and metacognitive strategies, they appear to be quite common strategies

which are used by students for completing their reading comprehension tests

3.1.1.2.2 Differences between high-proficiency and low-proficivacy students

in reading strategy use

The main aim of this study is to investigate the differences between high- proficiency and low-proficiency students in molacognitive and cognitive reading

strategy use The tables below will display the discrepancy in detail

3.1.1.2.2.1, Overall differences between the two groups of students

High-proficiency sfudens Low-proficiency students Strategies

(M= Mean; N = Number of studenis)

Table 6 Frequency distribution of metacognitive and cognitive reading strategics

As shown in Table 5, ihe mean scores of bath metacognitive and eognilive readmg strategy use of high-proficiency students is higher than that of low-

proficiency students

For melacognilive strategies, the more successful students are adopting

those strategies with the mean of 3.49 which belongs to high frequency use Ihe

researcher understands that these students often use those strategies ta overcome

challonging rcadmg comprehension strategies Whereas, the low-proficioncy

students use those strategies less frequently when their mean is just 3.29

kg 3