000080690 AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE AWARENESS OF READING STRATEGY USE AMONG STUDENTS IN THE FOUNDATION STUDIES DEPARTMENT AT HANOI UNIVERSITY (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ NHẬN THỨC SỬ DỤNG CHIẾN LƯỢC ĐỌC CỦA SINH VIÊN KHOA CƠ SỞ, TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC HÀ NỘI

000080690 AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE AWARENESS OF READING STRATEGY USE AMONG STUDENTS IN THE FOUNDATION STUDIES DEPARTMENT AT HANOI UNIVERSITY (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ NHẬN THỨC SỬ DỤNG CHIẾN LƯỢC ĐỌC CỦA SINH VIÊN KHOA CƠ SỞ, TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC HÀ NỘI

‘Hanoi University

000080690

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI UNIVERSITY

TRAN THU HUONG

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE AWARENESS OF

READING STRATEGY USE AMONG STUDENTS IN THE FOUNDATION STUDIES DEPARTMENT AT HANOI

UNIVERSITY

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT

OF REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEGREE

OF MASTER IN TESOL

SUPERVISOR: NGUYEN THAT HA, MEd

THU VIEN DAI HOC HA NOI HANOI UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

PN wutu — VỞ6 2©

Ha Noi, April 2012

CHAPTER l: NTRODDUC TH ÓNN cao

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

1.2 AIMS OF THE STUDY

1.3 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

1.4 ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 READING

2.1.1 Definitions of reading

2.1.2 The role of reading

2.2, READING STRATEGIES

2.2.1, The importance of reading strategies

2.2.2 Classification of Reading Strategies

2.2.3 The Survey of Reading Strategies by Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002)

2.2.3.1 The Original SORS

2.2.3.2 Why SORS is developed

2.2.3.3 SORS Categories of Strategie:

2.3 THE AWARENESS OF READING STRATEGY USE

2.3.1 Definition of awareness of reading strategy use

2.3.2 The role of the awareness of reading strategy use

2.3.4, Previous studies on the awareness of reading strategy use

3.2.1.1 The changes to the original SORS

3.2.2.2 The revised SORS

3.2.2 Interviews

3.3 PARTICIPANTS

3.3.1 Participants for SORS questionnaire

3.3.2 Participants for the Interviews

4.1.1 Students’ use of reading comprehension strategies

4.1.1.1 The frequency of overall strategy use

4.1.1.2 The frequency of individual strategy use

4.1.1.3 Summary

4.1.2 Strategy use between high reading ability and low reading ability students

4.1.2.1 Difference in the use overall strategies “

4.1.2.2 Difference in the use of individual strategies

4.1.2.3 Summary

4.1.3 Students’ use of reading strategies and their achievements

4.1.3.1 Students’ use of overall strategies and their achievement:

4.1.3.2 Students’ use of individual strategies and their achievements

4.3.3 Summary

4.2 INTERVIEW DATA -

4.2.1 Difference in the use of reading strategies

4.2.2 Students’ use of reading strategies and their achievements

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

5.1 DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my most sincere appreciation to my supervisor, Nguyen Thai

Ha, MEd for her encouragement and guidance throughout the research Without her well-designed plan and meticulous review of the drafts, this thesis would have been impossible

Secondly, | wish to thank the administrators of Post-graduate Department of Hanoi University for giving me the best environment to fulfill my thesis

Thirdly, I would like to give my special thanks to the teachers and students in FSD at Hanoi University who have kindly helped and supported me to administer the

questionnaires and to conduct the interviews as well as to collect data for this study

My kindest words also go to Nguyen Quoc Hung, MBA for his invaluable guidance and thoughtful advice on statistics analysis, as well as the wholeheartedness in his support to

me Without him, much work of this research could have never been complete

Last but never the least, I am deeply indebted to all the support and encouragement that

my family has so lovingly offered me

ABSTRACT

This study aims to investigate the awareness of reading strategy use (the readers’

knowledge of strategies for processing texts, the ability to monitor comprehension, and the ability to adjust strategies as needed) among students in the Foundation Studies Department (FSD) at Hanoi University (HANU) during reading process Specially, the

researcher attempts to (1) explore if students are aware of the strategies in reading

comprehension (2) identify the differences in reading strategy use between high reading

ability students (HRA) and low reading ability (LRA) students (3) find out the relationship between students’ awareness of reading strategy use and their reading ability

The participants of the study were 42 students who were selected from 160 students in 6 classes in FSD at HANU By the time of the study, they had just finished their mid-term test of the first semester They were selected and divided into two groups of high reading ability and low reading ability students on the basis of their average scores of the mid-term test and their English teachers’ evaluations

The data for the study was mainly collected from the Survey of Reading Strategies

(SORS) which was adapted from Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002) and interview The data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 15.0 The findings of the study indicated that all the participants in this study were active ESL reading strategy readers and they can be aware of reading strategy use at moderate level This was evidenced by their frequency of strategy use while reading academic

materials Furthermore, there emerged some variations between HRA students and LRA

students in reading strategy use The HRA students used a wide range of strategies at

higher rate than their LRA peers in terms of categories of strategies and individual strategies More important, the study found out a positive correlation between students’

awareness of strategy use and their reading ability This was implied that the more students can be aware of strategics they use the more they are successful in understanding and monitoring their reading comprehension In other words, students” awareness of strategy use plays a key role in reading process The study also suggests

implications for reading strategy instruction for students in FSD at Hanoi University

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

HANU: Hanoi University

FSD: Foundation Studies Department

GLOB: Global Reading Strategies

PROB: Problem Reading Strategies

SUP: Support Strategies

SORS: Survey of Reading Strategies

EFL: English as a Foreign Language

ESL: English as a Second Language

HRA: High reading ability

LRA: low reading ability

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 The coding criteria of the interview

Table 2 Frequency of overall strategy use

Table 3 Frequency of individual strategy use

Table 4 Top five strategies

Table 5 Difference in the use of overall strategies (questionnaire data)

Table 6 Difference in the use of individual strategies (questionnaire data)

Table 7 Students’ use of overall strategies and their achievements (questionnaire data) Table 8 Students’ use of individual strategies and achievements (questionnaire data) Table 9 Difference of overall strategy use (interview data)

Table 10 Difference in the use of individual strategies (interview data)

Table 11 Students’ use of overall strategies and their achievements (interview data) Table 12 Students’ use of individual strategies and their achievements (interview data)

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the background to the study, states the aims of the study and lists the research questions The significance of the study is also discussed

1.1 Background to the study

Compared with other language skills, reading is considered as the most important skill for many students learning English as a second or foreign language (Carrell, 1989) However, it is not an easy skill to learn Theoretically, reading is considered as a complex process and is conceptualized as an interactive cognitive process in which

readers interact with the text using their prior knowledge, cultural background and

strategies (Alderson, 1984; Adams, 1990; Silberstein, 1994)

Many studies so far have found that successful readers use more strategics and more frequently to deal with the text in the reading process than unsuecessfil readers do (e.g., Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2001; Lau & Chan, 2003; Lau, 2006; Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995 and Zhang, 2001) The study by Lau is an example In an attempt to explore the

differences in strategy use between Chinese good and poor readers, Lau (2006)

conducted a study with 8 students (4 poor anid 4 good students) in a university in Hong Kong using think-aloud method as the main data collection instrument The results of the study showed that in general, good readers tended to use more reading strategies than did poor readers during their reading process They also showed better ability to monitor their comprehension than did poor readers Especially, the finding from students’ think-aloud protocol revealed that good readers were more skillful in using the

strategies to facilitate their text while poor readers tended to simply read the texts word

by word without using any strategy Therefore, it is possible to say that reading

strategies play an important role in reading comprehension and when students’

knowledge about reading strategies and strategy use is developed, they will become

better readers (e.g., Carrell, et al, 1989; Carrell, Pharis & Liberto, 1989; Farrell, 2001;

Zhang, 2008; Anastasiou & Griva, 2009)

Research on awareness of strategy use has also discovered that once students are more

aware of reading strategies they have used they can be more able to monitor their

reading comprehension, adjust their frequency of strategies and distinguish what strategies to use in what situation (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990; Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995; Zhang, 2001, Anatasious & Griva, 2009) For example, in his study (see more details in 2.3.2), Barnett (1988) found out that there was a linear relationship between

the awareness of strategy use and reading comprehension Students who are more aware

of strategies in reading’ performed better than students who are lower aware of strategies The awareness of reading strategy use is thus considered as one of the most important roles in reading comprehension for ESL students (Barnett, 1988; Carrell,

1989; O’Malley & Chamot, 1990; Anderson, 1991)

At Hanoi University there are multi-disciplinary faculties such as Business Administration, Banking, Finance, Accounting, Computer Science, Tourism and International Studies in which students are instructed their majors in English That is why, in order to be able to study the major subjects in English students are required to gain the basic English language level The Foundation Studies Department is responsible for providing these students English language training

FSD now offers 3 English language training courses to students ranging from General English Training (GET), Basic English Language courses (BEL) to Academic English

and English for Specific Purposes (EAP and ESP courses) GET is designed for students

who have little or no prior English Meanwhile, BEL is designed for students of intermediate levels Students joining in different courses are equipped integrated skills

of Listening, Reading, Speaking, Writing and Vocabulary & Grammar

For reading sessions only, as the researcher witnessed observing some classes, most of English reading lessons usually go through pre-, while- and post-reading procedures in which students are required to do various kinds of comprehension exercises and these tasks implicitly require the use of a number of EFL reading strategies However,

problems arise Students complain that they do not see improvement in their reading ability Neither do they know what strategies to use Teachers complain that students

just cannot use their learned strategies to cope with new reading tasks It can be assumed that students in FSD may have low awareness of reading strategy use This may be due to the implicit intructions of reading strategy use provided by teachers These observations in this study were also found in other research such as the ones by Lau (2006), Malcolm (2009) and Zhang & Wu (2009)

As Cohen (1998) and Marco (2001) put it, only when teachers know what strategies

students are using and how they are using them in different contexts can they better

understand the sources of students’ problems with reading strategies and can they make the decision to instruct students strategies effectively

In addition, many studies on the awareness of strategy use until now have been carried

out (e.g., Hassan, 2003; Zhang & Wu, 2009; Anatasious & Griva, 2009 and Malcom,

2009), however, these studies have been conducted in contexts other than Vietnam and

no research in this field has been found in the Foundation Studies Department (FSD) at

Hanoi University (HANU) As Chamot (2005) and Zhang (2008) pointed out the

contexts may have strong influence on learners’ choice of language learning strategies

For all the reasons above, the researcher is encouraged to undertake a study entitled “An

investigation into the awareness of reading strategy use among students in Foundation Studies Department at Hanoi University” with the aim at exploring how students at FSD are aware of reading strategy use and examining whether students’ awareness of reading strategy use affect their reading comprehension

1.2 Aims of the study

As stated previously, this study is to investigate the awareness of reading strategy use among students in the Foundation Studies Department in Harioi University Especially,

it is aimed at answering the questions as follow:

1 How often do the students use the reported strategies in reading academic

materials?

2 Are there any differences in reading strategy use between students of high

reading ability and students of low reading ability?

3 To some extent, is there a relationship between students’ awareness of strategy use and their reading ability?

1.3 The significance of the study

The study was carried out with the hope to assess students’ awareness of reading strategy use and to examine whether the students’ awareness of strategy use affect their

reading comprehension The findings from this study were also expected to help English

teachers in FSD better understand the sources of students’ problems with reading

strategies and can be able to adjust teaching procedures accordingly More importantly,

it is expected to generate some practical implications for EFL reading-strategy

instruction in FSD in particular and in other similar contexts in general

1.4 Organization of the thesis

The thesis consists of five chapters Chapter 1, Introduction, presents the background to the study, states the aims of the study and lists the research questions The significance

of the study is also discussed Chapter 2, Literature Review, provides the theoretical

basis which underpins the study This chapter contains three sections: reading, reading strategies and the awareness of reading strategy use Chapter 3, Methodology, focuses

on the methods used to gather and analyze data First, research questions are addressed

Then, instruments for data collection, participants and procedures are described The

chapter ends with analyzing data Chapter 4, Results, reports the findings from the Survey of Reading Strategies that responded by 42 students in FSD, differences in the

use of reading strategies between two groups of students and the correlation between

students’ awareness of reading strategy use and reading comprehension Also, the results

from interviews with 10 selected students were also used to validate the results from

questionnaires Chapter 5, Discussion and Implications, discusses major: findings, provides implications for reading strategies training for students in FSD

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter discusses the theory and research that lay the underpinnings for this study The first section provides an overview of reading in terms of the definition and its role

in learning English as a foreign language The second section discusses reading strategies including the importance of reading strategies, the classification of reading strategies and the Survey of Reading Strategies by Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002) The final section concerns a discussion of the importance of the awareness of reading strategies and concludes with a review of previous studies on the awareness of reading strategies

2.1 Reading

Much research so far has indicated that reading is one of the most important skills which ESL learners should obtain as it helps to build vocabulary and leads to lifelong learning and improvement in second language skills (Li & Wilhelm, 2008) The deeper understanding of reading theories and their role in learning a foreign language has been essential backgrounds for the present study That is why the two sub-sections below

present definitions of reading by different researchers and the role of reading in learning

English as a foreign language

2.1.1 Definitions of reading

Reading is a complex process including a combination of perceptual, psycholinguistic

and cognitive abilities (Adams, 1990; National Institute of Child Health and Human

Development [NICHHD], 2000) Alderson (1984) and Silberstein (1994, p.12) propose that reading is conceptualized as an interactive cognitive process in which readers

interact with the text using their prior knowledge, cultural background and appropriate

strategies

Walker (1996) defines reading as an active process (not a product) in which readers

shift between sources of information, elaborate meaning and strategies, check their

interpretation, and use the social context to focus their response

Other authors define reading as the act of decoding the words to construct the author’s

basic message, the act of making inferences and understanding the author’s implied message and the judging of the significance of the author’s message (Manzo and

2.1.2 The role of reading

The importance of reading for second language acquisition has been widely acknowledged by such researchers as Day & Bamford (1998, 2002) and Grabe (2004)

In discussion of the importance of reading Carrell (1989) stated that “For many students, reading is by far the most important of the four skills in a second language, particularly in English as a second or foreign language.” (p 1)

The importance of reading can be identified through the goals of reading Sweet & Snow (2002) indicate that the main goal of reading is to extract and construct meaning from the text Whereas, after observing the ways people read, Do Thi Hong Hoa (2007) found out some other main purposes of reading such as reading to learn the language, reading for content information and reading for cultural knowledge and awareness For the purpose of language learning, Do Thi Hong Hoa (2007) indicates that by providing learners with opportunities to access a variety of materials to read then learners can absorb vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and discourse structure as

well By this way, learners can gain a more complete picture of the ways in which the

elements of the language work together to convey ‘meaning

For the purpose of reading for content information, she states that in their native language, learners usually read with the aim of obtaining information about a subject they are studying, and this purpose can be useful in the language learning classroom as well She also indicates that reading for content information in the language classroom gives learners both authentic reading material and an authentic purpose for reading

For the last purpose - reading for cultural knowledge and awareness, she observes that

by reading everyday materials which are designed for native speakers, learners can get more insight into the lifestyles and worldviews of the people whose language they are studying And, when learners have access to newspapers, magazines, and internet, they are exposed to culture in all its variety, and monolithic cultural stereotypes begin to

break down

Different from Do Thi Hong Hoa (2007), in considering the relationship and the impact

of reading on other language skills such as writing, listening and speaking, Harmer

(1998) and Sewjee (2008) agree that reading texts provides good models for writing and provides opportunities to study language vocabulary, grammar, punctuation and the way sentences, paragraphs and texts are constructed And, may be reading has more important part to play than speaking and listening for a learner as without reading

he/she cannot achieve his/her goals While reading, learners can acquire a lot of

information which can help to be a better speaker or writer

In brief, with such important roles, it should be more emphasized on teaching reading to ESL learners Moreover, it is said that reading is important, however, the use of strategies in reading process is considered as more importantly and is regarded as being conducive to successful reading comprehension (Alderson, 1984; Bernhardt, 2005; Hudson, 2007) This therefore leads to the discussions of reading strategies in the next section of the study

2.2 Reading Strategies

As stated above this section discusses the importance of reading strategies in learning a foreign language and some classifications of reading strategies

2.2.1 The importance of reading strategies

As mentioned in the above section, reading is an active and also a complex process.: In reading, readers have been found to employ a wide range of strategies, while they are engaged in comprehending text (Paris, Wasik, & Turner, 1991), since reading

comprehension “involves conscious and unconscious use of various “strategies”

(Johnston, 1983)

Lau (2006) indicates that during the reading process students have to face various

difficulties, in which the problem of inefficient strategy use has been considered to be the major

According to Cohen (1990), reading strategies are “those mental processes that readers

consciously choose to use in accomplishing reading tasks” While, Garner (1987) and Afflerbach, Pearson, & Paris (2008) defined them as specific, deliberate, goal-directed mental processes or behaviours, which control and modify the reader’s efforts to decode

a text, understand words and construct the meaning of a text

In discussion of the importance of reading strategies, McNamara (2007) stated that:

“There is a great deal of evidence for the importance of reading

strategies One source of evidence is that successful readers know when

and how to use deliberate strategies to repair comprehension One

implication from that finding is that teaching reading strategies to

struggling readers may be a key toward helping them to improve

comprehension” (p 12)

Sharing the same idea with McNamara, researchers like Anastasiou & Griva (2009),

Carrell, et al (1989), Carrell, Pharis & Liberto (1989), Farrell (2001) and Zhang (2008)

agree that once students’ knowledge about reading strategies and strategy use is developed, they will become better readers

Hence, using reading strategies is very essential, it indicates how readers conceive a task, what they do to make meaning from texts, and what they do when comprehension

breaks down (Macaro and Erler, 2008; Zhang, 2001)

From the above definitions and the evaluations by researchers, it can be seen that reading strategies play a very important role in reading comprehension And, in order to understand more about reading strategies the detailed information about classification of reading strategies will be presented in the following sub-section

2.2.2 Classification of Reading Strategies

This section provides an overview of classification of reading strategies produced by the

following researchers: Naiman et al (1978); Rubin (1981); Oxford (1990); O'Malley & Chamot (1990) and Pressley & Afflerbach (1995)

On the basis of interviews with 34 good language learners, Naiman et al (1978) proposed a classification scheme of five major categories of learning strategies: (1) an active task approach, (2) realization of language as a system, (3) realization of language

as a means of communication and interaction, (4) management of affective demands,

and (5) monitoring of second language performance Naiman et al hoped that their

classification with strategies employed by good learners can be transferred to poor learners Yet, Gass & Selinker (1994) pointed out that “ studies which do not include poor learners cannot be used to say that poor learners do the same thing that so-called good learners do” (p 266) Moreover, as claimed by O’Malley & Chamot (1990) this scheme seems to be a lack of second language acquisition or cognition theory as a foundation in their model This scheme by Naiman et al (1978) is therefore not congruent with the present study which tends to investigate the awareness of reading strategy use of both good and poor readers

Rubin (1981) has yielded a classification scheme that based on data collected from the observation of a small group of students and self-reports from a few of them She subsumed all strategies under two primary categories The first primary category consisting of six strategies that directly contribute to language learning, includes: (1) clarification/verification, (2) monitoring, (3) memorization, (4) guessing/inductive reasoning, (5) deductive reasoning, and (6) practice The second primary category containing strategies that indirectly affect language learning, includes creating opportunities for practice, and using production tricks such as communication strategies As pointed out by Lan (2005), Rubin’s model makes contribution to outlining the important strategies used by successful language learners However, Lan (2005) also found out a certain limitation of Rubin’ model that it is theoretically unsustainable and

not particularly useful for practitioners

Unlike these two researchers, Oxford (1990) provides a model that comprises an exhaustive list of strategies (62 strategies) which is divided into two major classes:

Direct and Indirect Each class consists of three groups: direct strategies include memory, cognitive and compensation ones while indirect strategies include

metacognitive, affective, and social ones Compared with the two above-mentioned

classification schemes, Oxford’s as stated by Ellis (1994) is more comprehensive and

detailed It covers both social and affective strategies which are classified in great detail Skehan (1991) indicates that Oxford’s classification model is considered as a better tool

for other researchers to classify and code learning strategies systematically However, although Oxford’s classification model seems to be more consistent with the learner strategy use, it is not based on theory (O° Malley & Chamot, 1990)

On the basis of a study conducted with ESL young adult learners, O’Malley & Chamot (1990) proposed a strategy classification which depends on the level or type of thinking process including: metacognitive, cognitive and social affective _ strategies Metacognitive strategies are further classified into seven sub-strategies: planning, directed attention, selective attention, self-management, self-monitoring, problem identification, self-evaluation Whereas, cognitive strategies include eleven sub- strategies: repetition, resourcing, grouping, note taking, deduction/induction,

substitution, elaboration, summarization, translation, transfer and inferencing And,

social-affective strategies involve some strategies such as: cooperation; questioning for classification and self-talk (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990, p.45-46) Tokesahi (2003) assessed that O’Malley & Chamot provided a robust and consistent classification scheme and importantly it has been based on cognitive theories However, Hsiao & Oxford (2002) in comparing the classification by O’Malley & Chamot (1990) with the one by Oxford (1990) has found a great overlaps between the two strategy systems The cognitive strategies of O’Malley & Chamot is consistent with the combination of Oxford’s memory and cognitive strategies In addition, Poole (2010) did not appreciate the appearance of the category of social affective strategies in O’Malley & Chamot’ s model Previously, Rubin (1981) had addressed that “not all L2 learning strategy systems have included affective strategies” (p.117)

Another classification of reading strategies was proposed by Pressley & Afflerbach (1995) In 1995, the two researchers conducted a comprehensive research synthesis of

reading research for decades that examined expert readers’ verbal reports They found out some general tendencies that accomplished readers usually do to deal with the text

such as “to overview the text as a way to begin understanding it” or “to use strategies

in coming to terms with text” From that basis they identified and designed a theoretical model of Constructively Responsive Reading (CRR) in which they grouped three

general types of reading strategies namely Identifying and Learning Text Content,

Monitoring and Evaluation Accordingly, strategies for Identifying and Learning Text

Content are meaning-making processes, including paraphrasing, elaborating,

literal/inferential reasoning, and analysis and synthesis involved in the processing of

text content Monitoring strategies are metacognitive processes to detect comprehension problems and apply strategies based on the perception of the text, the context, and the self Evaluation strategies are critical processes to judge both internal and external features of text, including validity of text content, credibility and trustworthiness of text information, and author reputation and source information Pressley & Afflerbach’s (1995) model was considered as an effective tool for researchers to classify and code

and it

ích syntheses,

reading strategies as it was built upon comprehensive

maintained the explanatory power in detailing complexity of reading strategy use in different contexts (Wolf & Goldman, 2005)

The above review of classifications by a number of researchers shows different opinions

about classifications of strategies and many researchers on strategies have so far used such classifications as the theoretical basis to develop strategy items in their questionnaires Oxford’s (1990) classification was an example Based on the classification scheme of 62 strategies, Oxford (1990) designed The Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) which comprised 50 strategies with the aim at investigating students’ use of learning strategies SILL was then adapted successfully by not only researchers in Vietnam (e.g., Le Xuan Anh, 2001; Tran Thu Thao, 2009) but also researchers outside Vietnam (e.g., Noguchi, 1991; Hashemi, 2011)

Whereas, on the basis of Pressley & Afflerbach’s (1995) model, in 2000, Mokhtari and Reichard co-worked together to propose Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) consisting of 30 items with the aim at examining the awareness of reading strategies among native English students MARSI then was modified and developed into the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) by Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002) to make it more appropriate for the use of non-native English students Until now, SORS has been considered as the unique, yet effective tool for researchers in this field and has also been adapted successfully by a number of research (e.g., Lee & Liao, 2007; Sheorey & Baboczky, 2008; Zhang & Wu, 2009; Malcom, 2009 and Poole, 2009) For example, Lee & Liao (2007) in an attempt to examine the differences in the self-reported use of reading strategies by Taiwanese non-English major EFL college freshmen when reading English expository texts adapted SORS as the main instrument

to collect data The two authors admitted that SORS was really an effective tool as it

was not only a better tool for assessing the relationship between students’ awareness of reading strategies and their ability but also make significant contribution to raise

11

students awareness of strategy use In addition, SORS contains a comprehensive

categories of strategies which includes even strategies that are unique to students that the existing instruments do not take into account such as “translating from English to native language” (Lee & Liao, 2007; Poole, 2009)

Thus, SORS seemed more relevant to the present study which tended to investigate the awareness of reading strategy use among ESL students in FSD at HANU The following sub-section presents details about SORS by Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002)

2.2.3 The Survey of Reading Strategies by Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002)

As stated above the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) by Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002) was developed to measure ESL students’ awareness of reading strategies In order to understand deeply about SORS, the following presents the original SORS, the

reasons for developing SORS and its categories of strategies

2.2.3.1 The Original SORS

With the aim at assessing non-native English students’ awareness of reading strategy use, SORS was designed with 30 items measuring three broad categories of reading

strategies: global strategies (GLOB), problem-solving strategies (PROB) and support

strategies (SUP) Among these categories, GLOB contains 13 items that help students monitor and manage their reading intentionally such as “Deciding what to read or ignore”, “noting text characteristics” or “guessing what the material is about” PROB

are those that assist students to solve problems when the text becomes difficult to read,

consisting of 8 items such as “re-reading for better understanding” and “going back

when losing concentration” The final category is SUP that provides students with support mechanisms to sustain the responses to reading It involves the use of taking notes, underlining or circling information

A five-point Likert scale was used following each item to indicate the frequency of using strategy ranging from 1 “I never or almost never do this” to 5 “I always or almost always do this”

In addition, to ensure the reliability of the three categories of SORS, the internal consistency reliability coefficients as determined by Cronbach’ alpha were used After

analizing the reliability coefficients for three categories were as follow: GLOB (a = 92); PROB (a = 79) and SUP (a = 87) The reliability for the overall category was a = 93 These reliability coefficients of SORS indicates a reasonablely dependable measure

of students’ awareness of reading strategies

So far, many researchers have used SORS as the main instruments in their studies and

they have also made some comments on SORS as follow:

Lee & Liao (2007) when examining 163 Taiwan college students’ awareness of reading strategy use, decided to use SORS as the main instrument to collect data The reason for

using SORS was explained that SORS contained broader and comprehensive categories

of strategies which were grouped reasonably and therefore, it helped better examine and

increase students’ awareness of strategy use That’s why Lee and Liao concluded that SORS was an effective tool for investigating ESL students’ awareness of reading

strategy use

Poole (2009) in an effort to assess the awareness of reading strategy use among female and male students in a university also adapted SORS to collect data Poole indicated that

compared to other instruments, for example, think-aloud process was one way students

and teachers become aware of strategy use, however, SORS enabled both teachers and bilingual students who had differing strategy use than-monolingual students to become

more reflective Thus, SORS is more appropriate for assessing ESL students’ awareness

of reading strategies (Poole, 2009)

Zhang & Wu (2009) evaluated SORS as not only an effective tool for collecting data but also a helpful instrument which assisted students to be more aware of reading strategies they employed They admitted that SORS was really a strong instrument support the positive link between students’ awareness of reading strategies and their reading comprehension Zhang and Wu also suggested that SORS was a better instruction that teachers should use to instruct students reading strategies (Zhang & Wu,

2.2.3.2 Why SORS is developed?

In 2002, Mokhtari and Sheorey in an effort to find a tool for assessing ESL students’ awareness of reading strategies developed SORS which was initially based on the

Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory by Mokhtari & Reichard (2002) According to Alderson (2005) SORS was considered as a necessary, dependable and reliable measure of ESL students’ metacognition and reading strategies The

impetus for Mokhtari and Sheorey to develop SORS was as follow:

Firstly, it was the need to have a tool that can be able to assist teachers in helping

students increase their awareness of reading strategies Mokhtari and Sheorey were

motivated to develop SORS The two researchers hope that SORS will help students be

more aware of strategies they used and become more thoughtful, constructively

responsive and strategic readers while reading academic materials

Second, it was generated from the fact that many researchers have demonstrated that there was a relationship between students’ awareness of reading strategies and their

ability and the importance of the awareness of reading strategy use ‘to reading

comprehension (see more details in 2.3.2), SORS was developed to examine that

relationship In deed, SORS proves to be an effective instrument in this field (Poole,

2005)

Third, until now we couldn’t find any published instruments that are specifically

designed to assess ESL students’ awareness of reading strategy use while reading for

academic purposes, thus, SORS was developed to meet that demand

Finally, SORS contains a more comprehensive list of strategies than other instruments Even though many researchers agreed that a number of reading strategies can be

transferable from one language to another (e.g., Carrell, 1991), the existing instruments

do not take into account some of the strategies that are unique to students such as

“translating” or “using both languages” when reading to maximize understanding

(Zhang, 2001) For example, the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning by Oxford (1989) and Carrell’s (1989) questionnaire which were known as the better tool for investigating students’ conceptualization of reading strategies did not contain that types

of strategies However, SORS compensates for the lack of such instruments

Consequently, SORS seems to be more appropriate for ESL students and can measure

comprehensively students’ awareness of strategies than other existing instruments (Alderson, 2005)

The reasons why SORS is developed further indicate that it is a potential tool for researchers to explore ESL students’ awareness of reading strategy use It also a better tool to assist teachers in helping students be aware of strategy use and become strategic readers Especially, SORS contains in it comprehensive categories of strategies that are

necessary for assessing comprehensively students’ awareness of reading strategies The comprehensiveness of SORS’s strategies are discussed in details in the following part

2.2.3.3 SORS Categories of Strategies

The SORS categories of strategies were developed on the basis of the MASRI

categories of strategies by Mokhtari & Reichard (2002) MARSI categories of strategies contain three categories of reading strategies (see Appendix 1) namely: global strategies (13 items), problem strategies (8 items) and support strategies (9 items) These categories were built upon the Theory of Constructive Responsive Reading by Pressley

& Afflerbach (1995) which was considered as a firm theoretical underpinning for researchers to develop tools for assessing students’ awareness of reading strategies

Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002) then adapted the classification of strategies in MARSI

when the two researchers attempted to develop SORS However, they made some changes to the items of strategies by adding two key strategies that have been usually employed by ESL students such as “translating from one language to another” and

“thinking in the native and target language while reading” and removing two items namely “summarizing information read” and “discussing what one reads with others” They also refined the wording of some items to make them more comprehensible to ESL students All these changes have contributed to make the classification of

categories of strategies by Mokhtari & Reichard (2002) more comprehensive and

consistent with ESL students (Lee & Liao, 2007; Lawrence, 2007) The following concerned about the strategies under three categories of SORS

Global Reading Strategies contains 13 items (see Appendix 1) and represents a set of strategies that relating to a whole analysis of text such as deciding what to read and what to ignore; thinking about what I know to help me understand what [ read” and having a purpose in mind when reading These strategies can be considered as

intentional and careful planed reading strategies by which the students use with the aim

at monitoring and managing their reading such as having a purpose in mind; previewing the text as to its length and organization, or using typographical aids and tables and figures (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002, p.252; Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002, p.6)

Problem Solving Strategies consists of 8 items (Appendix 1) that were thought of strategies for solving problems when reading task becomes difficult Strategies relating

to this purpose include rereading to increase the understanding, adjusting reading speed

when the materials’ becomes difficult or easy These strategies provide students with action plans that allow them to navigate the text skillfully Such strategies are localized, focused problem-solving or repair strategies used when problems develop in

understanding information Examples of these strategies include checking one’s understanding on encountering conflicting information or guessing the meaning of unknown words (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002, p.252; Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002, p.6) Support Strategies includes 9 items (see Appendix 2) involving the use of taking notes, and other practical strategies that might be described as functional or support strategies such as underlining or circling information in the text to better remember and summarizing the important information in the text These strategies provide students

with support mechanism aiming at sustaining responses to reading (¢.g., using reference materials such as dictionaries and other support systems) (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002,

p.252-253; Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002, p.6)

Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002) indicated that the categories of strategies in their SORS

were to some extent equivalent to the categories classified by O’Malley & Chamot

(1990) Accordingly, global strategics are consistent with the category of metacognitive strategies, problem strategies were in accordant with the category of cognitive strategies and support strategies were tantamount to the category of social/affective strategies

Therefore, the names of categories can be’ interchangeable However, according to

Lawrence (2007) the categories of strategies by Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002) were

classified more detailed and more comprehensive than those by O’Malley & Chamot (1990) Especially, the wording of each statement in each category is more

understandable and clearer to ESL students SORS is thus reaffirmed to be consistent to

the present study which intends to investigate ESL students’ awareness of reading

strategy use

In addition, Lee & Liao (2007) addressed that the given categories of strategies enable students to develop a better awareness of their reading strategies while reading

academic materials, And, the more students can be aware of strategies and use them

flexibly the more they can be able to monitor their reading comprehension (O’Malley &

Chamot, 1990; O’Neil, 1992; Pressley, 2000 and Veenman, Kok, & Blöte, 2005) Hence, the following section concerns about the discussion of the awareness’ of

strategies and its role in reading

2.3 The awareness of reading strategy use

This section reviews the previous studies in terms of definition of awareness, the role of

the awareness of reading strategy use and ends with the review of previous studies on the awareness of reading strategy use The previous studies were reviewed with regard

to their the strength and limitations, the subject selection, the contexts, the data collections as well as the results to find out the gaps and some suggestions for the current study

2.3.1 Definition of awareness of reading strategy use

Awereness in term of language learning was often known as metacognitive awareness

Recently, a number of current studies have increasingly focused on the research of

metacognitive awareness This is because of its importance in learning foreign language

in general and in reading in particular (see more details in 2.3.2 for the importance of awareness of reading strategy use)

Metacognitive awareness, or metacognition, was first defined by Flavell (1979) as one’s ability to understand, control, and manipulate his own cognitive process to maximize

Similarly, Auerbach & Paxton (1997) defined such awareness as readers’ “knowledge

of strategies for processing texts, the ability to monitor comprehension, and the ability

to adjust strategies as needed” (p.240 - 41) This concept has offered great insights as to how learners manage their cognitive activities to achieve comprehension before, during, and after reading (Wenden, 1998)

Share the same idea with authors above, a number of researchers such as Carrell et al.,

(1998); Forrest-Pressley & Waller (1984) and Sheorey & Mokhtari (2001) defined metacognitive awareness as readers’ conscious awareness of strategic reading processes,

of the reading-strategy repertoires, and of their actual utilization of the strategies to maximize text comprehension They therefore concluded that readers with stronger metacognitive awareness display hints to interpret a reading task based on context requirements They select reading strategies in relation to reading purposes, task demands, and their own cognitive style They monitor the process of comprehension, evaluate the effects of the selected strategies, and adjust strategies when needed (Cohen,

1998; Hudson, 2007; Paris, Lipson, & Wixson, 1994; Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995;

Zhang, 2008)

In short, considering some definitions by a number of researchers provides an overview

of the awareness of reading strategy use However, in order to understand more about

awareness and how important role it can play in reading, the following sub-section demonstrates the role of awareness of reading strategy use in learning English as a foreign language

2.3.2 The role of the awareness of reading strategy use

Over the last decade, numerous studies have been conducted in order to investigate the

awareness of using strategies in reading And, there is consensus that awareness and

monitoring of one’s comprehension process are critical ‘aspects of skilled reading, because successful reading comprehension is “not simply a matter of knowing what strategy to use, but the reader must also know how to use it successfully” (Anderson,

1991, p 19) This is why the following of this sub-section reviews the results of previous studies on the awareness of strategy use in order to see it's importance to students in learning reading

In assessing students’ awareness of strategies, researchers like Barnett (1988); Carrell (1989); O’Malley & Chamot (1990); Anderson (1991) and Pressley & Afflerbach

(1995) indicated that the awareness especially metacognitive awareness is crucial to

proficient reading

Barnett (1988), for example, investigated the effects of the awareness of strategy use on

reading comprehension The subjects were 278 university students enrolled in a French course To collect the data for the study, Barnnet first required students to complete a

prior knowledge questionnaire and read an unfamiliar passage Then they were asked to

write a recall composition on the passage Next, they read another unfamiliar passage

and completed a test which assessed their ability in using contextual information The test required the students to select the most appropriate phrase, sentence or paragraph to continue the passage The students then completed a questionnaire on their perceived strategy use Findings of the study seemed to indicate that there was a linear relationship between the awareness of strategy use and reading comprehension Students who used better strategies in reading performed better than students who did not use effective strategies

Carrell (1989) carried out a study to investigate the relationship between metacognitive

awareness and reading comprehension in L1 and L2 The study involved students from

two language backgrounds Spanish L1 and English LI university students The Spanish L1 students were learning ESL while the English students were learning Spanish as a foreign language To measure the students’ reading ability in L1 and L2, they answered two sets of multiple choice reading comprehension questions for each language Then they completed a metacognitive questionnaire about reading in both languages The metacognitive questionnaire comprised four sections: self-confidence, repair strategies, effective reading strategies, and finally, reading difficulties Although students among

different groups showed their different choice of strategies, the results indicated that

proficient students are more aware of the characteristics of the text and the strategies

they use while reading and therefore they are better at monitoring their understanding

than less proficient students In addition, thanks to the awareness of the difficulties that proficient students encounter they can adjust their reading such as speeding up or slowing down to get some background information about the text Finally, the study came to conclusion that the awareness of reading strategy use seemed to be related to reading ability and also be an important component in reading comprehension

O'Malley & Chamot (1990) suggested that good readers are more able to monitor their comprehension than poor readers and they are more aware of the strategies they use and they use them more flexibly than poor readers Good readers adjust their strategies to the type of text they are reading and to the purpose for which they are reading They distinguish between important information and details as they read, they use context

more efficiently and are able to relate new information with information already stated,

as well as to notice inconsistencies in the text and employ strategies to make these

inconsistencies understandable (O’ Neil, 1992; Paris, Wasik, & Turner, 1991)

Anderson (1991) concluded from his study that both advanced and low L2 readers may

use the same kind of strategies, but the more proficient readers tend to use a higher

number of different strategies and are able to orchestrate their use more effectively Studies conducted later have supported the findings of Anderson (1991) (e.g., Yang,

2002; Zhang, 2001, 2002; Zhang et al., 2008) and also further confirmed the role of

awareness in successful L2 reading

Pressley and Afflerbach (1995) after examining 38 published studies that used think- aloud protocols to explore native speakers’ strategy use, discovered that efficient readers are constructively responsive readers, who are able to use strategies more

effectively and flexibly than inefficient readers The finding of the study establishes a

direct relationship between the awareness of reading strategy use and reading proficiency

It can be concluded that there is a positive correlation between the awareness of reading strategy use and reading comprehension and researchers who conducted studies above agreed that the awareness of reading strategy is a contributor to ESL students’ reading comprehension They indicated that students at a higher awareness of reading strategy use can be easier to understand what strategies to use and thus they can be more able to control and adjust their reading comprehension than students at low awareness of reading strategy use The awareness of reading strategy use, indeed, plays very important role in reading comprehension This therefore encourages the researcher to investigate the awareness of reading strategy use among students in FSD at HANU The following section discusses about the previous studies on the awareness of reading

strategy use

2.3.4 Previous studies on the awareness of reading strategy use

This sub-section reviews prior research on reading strategies awareness by Hassan (2003); Zhang & Wu (2009); Anastasiou & Griva (2009) and Malcolm (2009)

A study by Hassan (2003) was undertaken to investigate the relationship between metacognitive strategy awareness and reading ability in L1 and L2 The study involved

40 students from a secondary school in Malaysia A metacognitive awareness questionnaire by Carrell (1989) was adapted to investigate the — students’

conceptualization of reading and also Pearson’s r correlation was employed to find out

if there is a statistically significant relationship between reading ability and

metacognitive awareness for L1 and L2 Along with Pearson’s correlation test the simple linear regression was run to investigate if metacognitive awareness influences

reading ability This test is considered to be the line of best fit since it provides more

information and is able to identify relationship between dependent and independent

variable more precise than a correlation The findings from Pearson’s correlation and simplé linear regression test show that there is a significant relationship between metacognitive awareness and reading ability for both the L1 and L2 If students are aware of the array of strategies that they can use, they can learn to select the appropriate

strategies that can help them in obtaining meaning from the text they are reading

Zhang & Wu (2009) attempted to assess students’ metacognitive awareness of broader strategies They conducted a research with 249 students at different levels (high, intermediate and low) at a senior high school in China Students were invited to respond

to a questionnaire adapted from the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) by Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002) that comprises 30 items measuring three broad categories of reading strategies: global strategies, problem-solving strategies and support strategies The findings of the research revealed that students who were conscious of their cognitive

process during reading and were able to utilize a wide range of reading strategies

especially global strategies were found to be correlated with higher English achievements And, also Zhang & Wu came to conclusion that readers with strong awareness of reading strategy use may display hints to interpret a reading task

Malcolm (2009) carried out a study with the aim to investigate the awareness and the differences in using reading strategies among students of specialized fields such as

21

medicine but expected to achieve high standard of English reading proficiency Therefore, the subjects of the study are 160 students from a variety of countries in the Arab Gulf region with the majority from Bahrain, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia or

Kuwait All of them studied at a medical university in Bahrain and were divided into

two groups including 108 students in the first year and 52 students in year four In order

to assess the students’ awareness of reading strategy and the differences in using academic reading strategies among students the study adapted the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) by Shoerey & Mokhari (2001) which consists of 30 individual strategies of three groups (metacognitive, cognitive and support) The results of the study revealed that there are some differences in using strategies in reading between students in year one and students in year four For example, students in year one tend to use cognitive strategies such as re-reading or using prior knowledge more than students

in year four who like to use metacognitive strategies such as using text features or skimming However, the study asserted that although the differences of using reading

strategies were found in two groups, the most important that the students can be aware

of using strategies in reading And, increased awareness of reading strategy use may be

a characteristic of academically advanced students in general, whether reading in L1 or L2 (Malcom, 2009)

Another research on students’ awareness of reading strategies is the one by Anastasiou

& Griva (2009) The two researchers carried out a study with thirty six students from a primary school in Northern Greece in order to explore students’ awareness of reading strategies and to identify possible differences between poor and good readers, in terms

of frequency and efficiency The reading strategies that the study focused on are metacognitive and cognitive strategies Thirty six students including eighteen poor readers (10 boys and 8 girls) and cighteen good readers (10 boys and 8 girls) were invited to a retrospective interview after they had finished a reading test The findings of the study showed that there is a difference in metacognitive strategy use between readers of varying reading levels Good readers are more aware of the strategies they

use and more able to monitor their comprehension than less efficient readers are More

important, the study revealed moderate intercorrelations among cognitive strategy awareness, metacognitive strategy awareness and reading comprehension In addition,

the regression analyses of the study showed that cognitive strategy awareness,

metacognitive strategy awareness explained 7.7% and 8.1% each of the variance in

reading comprehension while reading accuracy and reading fluency explained 35% of

the variance Thus, the two researchers come to conclusion that both cognitive and

metacognitive strategy awareness can be considered to play a unique role in reading comprehension of that primary school students

In summary, a detailed literature review of previous studies on the awareness of reading

strategy use has been provided The following comments focus on issues relating to

subject selection, contexts, data collection methods and results

With respect to subject selection, some generalizations can be made First, it can be seen

that most of studies have been conducted with students at primary or secondary levels but tertiary level except for the research by Malcom (2009) Second, they are from different languages (L1 & L2) as the studies by Hassan (2003) and Malcom (2009) Third, they were grouped under poor and good reade s the study by Anastasiou & Griva (2009) or under low-, intermediate-, high-proficiency students (e.g., Zhang &

Wu, 2009)

In term of the contexts of study, the researcher found out that most of the studies so far

have been conducted in contexts other than Vietnam and according to Chamot (2005), Cohen (1998) and Zhang (2008) the contexts of the learning situation may have a strong influence on learners’ choice of language learning strategies Therefore, the present study attempts to fill the gap by investigating the awareness of reading strategy used by students from a university in Vietnam aiming at exploring how students are aware of reading strategies and whether students’ awareness of strategy can affect their reading comprehension

As to data collection techniques, students’ awareness of reading strategy use in the previous studies was examined through a variety of techniques such as: interviews or questionnaires The following therefore discusses about the strength and limitations of

that techniques

In Hassan’s (2003) study, the questionnaire by Carrell (1989) was adapted as the main instrument to collect data Although Hassan (2003) commented that Carrell’s questionnaire was very comprehensive, he admitted that some strategies in the questionnaire were not familiar with students and may also be difficult to remember This was explained by Chamot (2004) that students may not remember the strategies

23

they have used in the past, may claim to use strategies they do not use, or may not understand some strategy descriptions in the questionnaire items A general strategy questionnaire like the one by Carrell (1989) would, thus, not be consistent with the

present study

Zhang & Wu (2009) used interview to investigate students’ awareness of reading

strategy use in their study Compared to other verbal reports such as think-aloud report, interview provides more generalizable information than does the concurrent think-aloud technique corresponding more to the awareness concept (Wesche, & Paribakht, 2000) Moreover, this method has a number of strengths, one of which is that the interviews, as off-line reports do not interfere with the normal process of reading, as the online think- aloud reports do (Morrison, 1996; Camps, 2003) Second, “it allows questioning to be guided as you want it and you can clarify points that need to be made clearer much more easily than in something like a questionnaire” (Frey & Oishi, 1995, p 3) Another advantage and also the very important strength of interview is that it is better tool to explore learners’ awareness as it get closer than other tools to what learners actually do

(Leow, 2000)

As can be seen from the above review of previous studies, the Survey of Reading

Strategies was employed successfully by Zhang & Wu (2009) and Malcom (2009) and

the findings from SORS in two studies were also consistent with each other

Researchers highly appreciated SORS in attempts to investigate the awareness of reading strategy use for the following reasons Firstly, it has been so far a unique

instrument measuring ESL students’ awareness of reading strategies In fact, there are several instruments aiming at measuring native English speakers’ awareness of reading processes, however, we could not found any published instruments that are specifically designed to assess ESL students’ awareness of reading strategies while reading for

academic purposes Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002) SORS, thus, has been considered as an

effective instrument for ESL students up to now Secondly, it presented as a simple, yet effective tool for not only measuring students’ awareness but also for analyzing data (Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002) Compared to other instruments, the data collected from think-aloud and retrospective interview as the case of Anastasiou & Griva (2009) for example are difficult in analyzing because of the amount of data and the interpretation

of that data may be subjective (Lazaraton, 1995), while SORS is quite easy for analyzing and especially it even can be scored by students themselves (Mokhtari &

Sheorey, 2002) Thirdly, SORS is also the strong research supporting the positive link between students’ awareness of their own reading process and strategies and their reading performance (Carrel, 1991; Alderson, 1991) Compared to the questionnaire by Carrell (1989), the strategy items in SORS are familiar and quite easy to understand to most of students (Lawrence, 2007) In addition, it not only enables students to develop a better awareness of their reading strategies but also helps teachers assess such

awareness It therefore makes both teachers and students become more reflective

(Lawrence, 2007; Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002)

With regard to findings, it can be generalized from previous studies as follow:

To begin with, most of the studies have revealed the significant differences in strategy use among different groups of students ranging from low proficiency students and high proficiency students Accordingly, students at high proficiency level are more aware of strategies and can be able to adjust and monitor the strategies they use during reading process than students at low proficiency level For example, Anastasious & Griva (2009) found that good readers reported that they employ strategies more frequently than poor readers and they can understand how to use them in different contexts such as when they lose concentration they use “paying attention” and “repetition” or when the

text became difficult they use “problem identification” to detect the hint information to

resolve them

Next, all of the prior research has found some interesting findings, however, some of them have not assessed students’ awareness of comprehensive categories of strategies

The studies by Hassan (2003) and Anastasious & Griva (2009) were examples In his

study, Hassan only examined students’ awareness of metacognitive strategies but cognitive strategies Anastasiou and Griva although made up for the lack of Hassan

(2003) by examining both metacognitive and cognitive strategies, ignored support

strategies According to Sheila (1999) it should be evaluated the students’ awareness of broader strategies since the most effective outcomes are received by students when they actively combine such strategies together

What is more, all studies although have found the significant differences in strategy use among students, have not assessed the relationship between students’ awareness of strategy use and their reading comprehension For example, the studies by Malcom

25

(2009) and Zhang & Wu (2009) have ended up with investigating students’ awareness

of reading strategy use without assessing the relationship between the awareness of reading strategies and reading comprehension While the research by Hassan (2003) and Anastasious & Griva (2009) to some extent have found that there might be a relation between students’ awareness of reading strategy use and their reading comprehension, however, they have not indicated the nature of that relationship (Poole, 2010)

To sum up, the review of prior studies in terms of subject selection, contexts, data

“collection and findings revealed some gaps of those studies that encouraged the

researcher to conduct the current study to fill up with First, the current study tries to investigate the awareness of broader strategies among students in a university in

Vietnam, that is, the students from FSD at HANU Second, the study also tries to assess

whether students’ awareness of strategy use affect their reading comprehension Third,

as to data collection, the discussion of the advantages of the interview and the Survey of Reading Strategies by Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002) has provided the suggestion for the researcher to combine the two techniques to collect data for the present study

2.4 Summary

‘This chapter has addressed some major issues in terms of the definition of reading, the role of reading in learning English as a foreign language, reading strategies and the importance of reading strategies, the awareness of reading strategies and the importance of the awareness of reading strategies in reading process Regarding reading, first the importance of reading and reading strategies in learning English as a foreign language have been found in order to lay the foundation for the researcher to conduct the present study Second, in term of reading strategies, some classification schemes of reading strategies have been discussed Especially, the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) by Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002) which was mainly built upon Pressley & Afflerbach’ s (1995) classification was selected to use for assessing students’ awareness of reading strategies Third, the importance of the awareness of

reading strategies has also been found Many researchers have proved that there is a

significant relation between the awareness of reading strategies and reading comprehension, however, it needs to conduct more study to further understand about the nature of this relation Finally, previous studies on the awareness of reading strategies have been briefly reviewed with an attempt to seek the most appropriate method for collecting data in the present research and to assist the researcher to compare and

contrast her research results with those in the literature review In the next chapter,

research questions, instruments, subjects, procedures and data analysis will be

presented

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents the issues of methodology including five sections Section 3.1 addresses research questions that the present study aims to examine Section 3.2 describes the instruments for data collection Section 3.3 provides information about the participants of this study Section 3.4 is a description of the procedures that data were collected The chapter concludes with data analysis which provides information about

the applied calculating methods to analyze data collected in this study

3.1, Research questions

As stated in chapter I, the main purpose of the current study was to explore the awareness of strategy use among students in FSD at HANU Furthermore, the study also aims at identifying the relationship between students’ awareness of strategies and their

reading comprehension To achive these aims three specific questions were addressed

1 How often do the students use the reported strategies in reading academic materials?

2 Are there any differences in reading strategy use between students of high reading ability and students of low reading ability?

3 To some extent, is there a relationship between students’ awareness of strategy use and their reading ability?

use across different learners and to establish relationships between various learners’

factors and learners’ strategy use (Oxford and BurryStock, 1995; McDonough, 1999; Hsiao and Oxford, 2002) In addition, according to Dérnyei (2007) the utilization of the questionnaire helps to get information from a lot of people, ensure the anonymity of

respondents that may encourage them to response more Therefore, the researcher

decided to use questionnaire as the main instrument in this study

The questionnaire for collecting data in this study was adapted from the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) by Mokhtari & Shoerey (2002) (see Appendix 1 for the original SORS) The reasons for adapting SORS were presented in item 2.2.2 in the

Literature Review The following section discusses changes to the original SORS and

the descriptions of the revised SORS

3.2.1.1 The changes to the original SORS

Some changes were made to the original SORS to make it more appropriate to the participants of the current study as follow:

First, item 5 and item 14 were deleted because they were considered ambiguous and repetitive of item 25 This change resulted in a reduction of the original number of items from 30 to 28 This means that the final questionnaire consists of 28 items with 13 items

falling into the GLOB, 7 items into PROB, and 8 items into SUP category (see

Appendix 2)

Second, the wording of some items was modified so that they would be easier for students to understand Item 3 and item 21 are examples (“I think about what I know to help me understand what I read” was replaced by “I use my prior knowledge to help me

understand what I read”; “I critically analyze and evaluate the information presented in

the text” was replaced by “I critically analyze and evaluate the information presented in

the text rather than passively accept everything”)

3.2.2.2 The revised SORS

As stated in the above section, after making some changes the revised SORS (see Appendix 2) includes 28 items with 13 items under the GLOB category, 7 items under the PROB category and 8 items under SUP category `

The Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient was used to check the reliability of the revised SORS After analyzing, the internal reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha) for three strategy categories of the revised SORS were as follow: GLOB was a = 734, PROB was o = 740 and SUP was a = 748; the overall reliability coefficient was a =

.855 This internal consistency of the revised SORS was proven to be acceptable and

ensured the general reliability of the study (see Glass & Hopkins, 1996)

3.2.2 Interviews

Beside the questionnaire, an interview with a group of selected ‘students was also

conducted This is done following the idea by Macaro (2001) that “Interview language learners about the way that they use strategies can be very productive and an excellent way of completing a questionnaire” (p.56) Moreover, in the current study, the interview was used with the aim at validating the questionnaire results of research question 2 and

3:

The interview included ten open-ended questions (see Appendix 3) in which the first seven questions (question 1 to question 7) were adapted from Anastasious & Griva’s (2009) and the last three questions (question 8 to question 10) were designed by the

researcher, The students were asked to comment on their reading processes and

strategies they employed

3.3 Participants

The aim of the study is to investigate students’ awareness of reading strategy use To

collect data, the SORS questionnaire was used as the main instrument, then the results

were checked by interviews Therefore, the participants of the study were also selected two times

3.3.1 Participants for SORS questionnaire

‘The participants attending the questionnaire survey were 42 students selected from 160 students in six classes in FSD at HANU

FSD is one of the new departments at HANU Every year it welcomes more than 500 students from 6 multi-disciplinary faculties and provides them proper training courses to

help them achieve basic English language before they start studying their majors Most

of students have to spend one year including three semesters studying at FSD for achieving basic English level Each semester lasts about 12 to 14 weeks with the first and second semester focusing on English language in general and English language at basic level and the third semester emphasizing on academic English In each semester, students are required to take two tests including the mid-term test and the final test

Therefore, students have to deal with a total of six tests to complete their course in FSD

By the time of the study, FSD had 24 classes including 18 classes for studénts who specialized in the area of social sciences and 6 classes for students majoring in the area

of natural sciences Those students were trained English language separately according

to their main areas Students who participated in the questionnaire survey of this study were students in 6 classes training for students in the area of natural sciences

When this study was carried out students had just finished their mid-term test of the first semester They were selected and were also divided into two groups of “high reading ability” and “low reading ability” according to their average scores of the mid-term test The baselines for “high reading ability” were mark 7 upwards and “low reading ability” were mark 4 downwards (see Appendix 5 for further information about students’ scores

of the mid-term test Their names in it were changed) Furthermore, the verification of

student’s reading ability was also based on teachers’ assessments Consequently, there were 20 high reading ability students (12.5%) and 22 low reading ability students (13.8%) among 160 students

3.3.2 Participants for the Interviews

After students completed answering the questionnaires, the researcher continued

choosing 10 students among 42 students with 5 students who had lowest scores and 5 students who gained highest scores in the mid-term test for the interviews (see Appendix 6 for details) The selection of those 10 students was also based on the

references of teachers’ assessments Students’ names in it were changed and coded as well)