Developing students' reading proficiency through extensive reading in an IELTS prepation course - A case of the 3rd year English majors at Hanoi University of I

LIST OF TABLES Tables: Table 1: Question types and reading skills in the pretest and posttest Table 2: Topics for The extensive reading program Table 3: An overview of the extensive re

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

Table of contents iv

List of Abbreviations vii

List of figures, charts and tables viii

Part I INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Significance of the study 2

4 Research questions 3

5 Scope of the study 3

6 Methods of the study 3

7 Design of the study 4

Part II DEVELOPMENT 5

Chapter I: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Definition of reading comprehension in a Second Language 5

1.2 Intensive Reading and Extensive Reading 6

1.2.1 Intensive Reading 6

1.2.2 Extensive Reading 7

1.3 IELTS reading test 10

1.3.1 IELTS tests 10

1.3.2 IELTS reading module 11

1.3.2.1 IELTS reading tasks 11

1.3.2.2 IELTS reading skills 12

1.3.2.2.1 Scanning 13

1.3.2.2.2 Skimming 14

1.3.2.2.3 Making inferences 14

1.4 Extensive Reading and IELTS reading test 15

1.5 Reading Proficiency 16

Chapter II: METHODOLOGY 17

2.1 Rationale for using experimental method 17

2.2 Variables 17

2.3 Participants 17

2.4 Pretest and Posttest……… 18

2.5 The extensive reading program……… 19

2.5.1 Reading materials……… 20

2.5.2 Syllabus and activities……… 21

2.6 Procedures……… 24

Chapter III: FINDINGS……… 25

3.1 Comparison of experimental and control groups’ reading proficiency after the extensive

reading program……… 25

3.1.1 The results of experimental and control groups in the pre-test and post – test 25 3.1.2 Mean gains of experimental and control groups … ………… 26

3.2 Surveyed students’ opinions on extensive reading for pre-IELTS course 27

3.2.1 The students’ difficulties in reading IELTS reading texts 27

3.2.2 Experimental subjects’ attitudes towards extensive reading in the pre-IELTS course 28

3.2.3 Students’ suggestions for the extensive reading in pre-IELTS course 29

Chapter IV: IMPLICATIONS 31

4.1 Research implications 31

4.2 Suggestions on the implementation of extensive reading in pre-IELTS class 32

4.2.1 Grouping and instructing 33

4.2.2 Preparations and Presentation procedures……… 35

Part III CONCLUSIONS 37

1 Conclusions 37

2 Limitations of the study 37

3 Recommendation for further research 38 REFERENCES 39 APPENDICES I Appendix 1: The pretest I Appendix 2: The post test……… VIII Appendix 3: Answer to the pretest and Answer to the posttest……… …… XIV Appendix 4: The students’ results in the pre-test, post – test and gain….……….XV Appendix 5: The post- program questionnaire……… XVI Appendix 5: Sample Reading……… …XVII Appendix 6: Sample

Report… ……… XVIII

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

HaUI: Hanoi University of Industry

IELTS:International English Language Testing System

LIST OF TABLES

Tables:

Table 1: Question types and reading skills in the pretest and posttest

Table 2: Topics for The extensive reading program

Table 3: An overview of the extensive reading program for third year English majors at

HaUI Table 4: Descriptive statistics for the pre-test and post-test scores of experimental and

control groups

Table 5: Mean gains of experimental and control groups

Table 6: Experimental students’ difficulties in reading IELTS reading texts

Table 7: Experimental students’ attitudes to extensive reading in the pre-IELTS course

Table 8: Students’ suggestions for the extensive reading in pre-IELTS course

Part I – INTRODUCTION

1.Rationale

There is a number of reasons why we read and this will often influence what we read and how we read it We might read for pleasure, some may read for information update while others do for reading skill enhancement In other words, there might be multiple reasons why someone might read a text But working out the purpose is a key factor when it comes

to teaching reading

From the point of view of reading teachers for English majors, we ourselves are fully aware of the essential role that reading plays in the students‟ performances as well as objectives they necessarily set for the subject It is generally believed that reading has been considered as a skill which helps students to enhance their vocabulary, their knowledge of phonetics, grammar, pragmatics, it is also a very effective means of providing real life information to students Nonetheless, there is now a great deal of evidence that if students wish to master their reading and meet the requirements of the work when they finish their university, they are expected to become the experts of reading strategies, who know which one is suitable to explore a certain type of reading text As well, it would be very important that they know how to find reading sources to open their mind in exotic fields, how to self work and, by no means less essentially, to co-work with their friends to be engaged in problem solving given in the reading texts Equally important, students are thought to make presentation to express their critical thinking to share with their friends after reading the texts

As a matter of fact, there is little doubt that in case students want to realize their expectations to be the own boss of their reading skill, they cannot extremely be independent on available adopted materials and intensive reading in the classroom Rather, they had better engage in a „journey‟ to find sources of reading to get to know reading texts

in a variety of genres and take part in extensive reading

Some of the evidence is, unfortunately, generally showing that English majors in HaUI seem to be still not very active in their learning reading though IELTS exam, in which reading tests are included, has been utilized to assess the achievement by the

students As can be seen, in the IELTS tests the materials are extracted from articles in magazines or books Nonetheless, reading an English magazines or newspaper or seeking

an article for home reading is apparently strange and irregular to them, regrettably even the third year students Moreover, many of them are really passive in their learning process proven by the fact that they only focus on trying to understand texts in the given book For some lessons, majority of the students are not (well)-prepared of what appears in the text book, which certainly lay great difficulties and psychological pressure on the teachers to lecture while the only reason is their lack of interests and motivation and of course their chronic laziness Consequently, a question raised here is what we should do now to inspire

in students the interests and motivation and innovative involvement and to demand greater student responsibility in active reading to develop their reading proficiency and to prepare for their IELTS reading tests On the basis of those evidences, we have come up with an idea that IELTS reading tasks as an extensive reading activities in class should be introduced to students with the aim to arousing their active attitudes towards reading as reading as well as bettering their ability when dealing with the skill in the IELTS tests

2 Aims of the study

The study gears its objectives to:

 Assist students be more open-minded and get used to a variety of social fields (such

as, transportation, environment, crimes, etc) via a wide range of reading texts (for example, magazine articles etc )

 Orient, guide and develop in the students the methods and the skills of searching extensive reading sources, especially IELTS materials outside class

 Examine the effect of the extensive reading program on the students‟ reading proficiency

3 Significance of the study

The study is likely to lay foundation for experimental research on extensive reading

at Hanoi University of Industry The author searches for a more effective way to improve students‟ proficiency The study is expected to contribute to establishing and introducing a new extensive reading program

4 Research questions:

The study aims at answering the following research questions:

1 Does the experimental group of students get higher IELTS reading scores after the introduction of extensive reading in an IELTS preparation course than the control group of students (the students without treatment)?

2 How should extensive reading be implemented in the class so that the highest gains could be achieved by the students?

5 Scope of the study

For the feasibility of the study and the possibility of experiments, the target learners the study aims at are third year English majors whose accumulation of vocabulary, grammar and real life experience has been much improved throughout the years at the University Furthermore, they have been introduced and accustomed to basic reading skills (skimming, scanning, etc) and to group work and class presentation, which are vital for the implementation of extensive reading activities

It is spontaneously necessary to emphasize here that extensive reading in our study is not the activity which replaces all the activity of reading in the class Instead, it plays the part as an extra activity for mastering students‟ reading ability

6 Methods of the study

Experimental research for the implementation of the study, the following methods are employed: First, experimental research has been conducted so that pretest and posttest are given to students to obtain their gains for comparison Also, the figures like Mean and Standard Deviation are worked out to confirm the author‟s research

As well, a questionnaire has been designed to perceive the surveyed students‟

opinion‟s on difficulties they have to face, their attitudes towards extensive reading in the

pre-IELTS course and their suggestions for more effective extensive reading in pre-IELTS course

7 Design of the study

The study consists of three parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion as follows:

Part I (Introduction) shows an overview of the study in which the rationale for the

research, the aims of the study, the significance of the study, the research questions, the scope of the study, the methods of the study as well as the design of the study were briefly presented

Part II (Development) includes four chapters Chapter one deals with literature

review relevant to the study including theoretical notions of reading and extensive reading This chapter serves as the basic foundations for the study Chapter two presents the methodological framework for the study It covers the rationale for using experimental method, instruments, and participants, procedures which includes pre-testing, post-testing, and the extensive reading program Chapter three, which is the most important chapter of the study, presents major findings Chapter four presents discussions and some recommendations on the application of the extensive reading program

Part III (Conclusion) comes up with the summary of the study, conclusions drawn

from the results of the study, some limitation of the study, and suggestions for further study

Part II – DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I – LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Definition of reading comprehension in a Second Language

Reading is generally considered as a simple, passive process that involves reading words in a linear fashion and getting the meaning out of a text Reading, however, is actually a more complex process than simply decoding the written words in a text It is the active creation of meaning in an interactive process between information in a text and the knowledge of the reader (Bråten, 1997)

Similarly, according to Harris, R (2000) reading means understanding the message

which is not “something given in advance or given at all but something created by interaction between writers and readers as participants in a particular communicative situation” As can be seen from the definition, reading comprehension is a process of

negotiating understanding between the reader and the writer The reader, through his reading process, receives information from the author via the text, and then, tries to understand the hidden message of the writer

Moreover, Smith, F (1997) defined reading comprehension as a purposeful process

in which the reader‟s predetermined questions are answered Indeed, sometimes readers do not need to understand everything they read, but some particular selective information

“Reading is asking questions of printed text And reading with comprehension becomes a matter of getting your questions answered”

This holds true for those who look a new word up in a dictionary because they do not read every single word but find the predetermined word, or those who skim through a newspaper to find pieces of news which are interesting to them

A close examination at more definition below reveals various points of view on reading comprehension

“Reading is a psycholinguistic guessing game It involves an interaction between thought and language Efficient reading does not result from precise perception and identification of all elements, but from skill in selecting the fewest, most productive cues necessary to produce guesses which are right the first time The ability to anticipate that

which has not been seen, of course, is vital in reading, just as the ability to anticipate what has not yet been heard is vital in listening.” Goodman, K.S (1967)

As far as we are concerned, reading involves many complex skills in order for the reader to succeed in understanding the text For example, proficient readers recognize the purpose for reading, approach the reading with that purpose in mind, use strategies that have proven successful to them in the past when reading similar texts for similar purposes, monitor their comprehension of the text in light of the purpose for reading, and if needed adjust their strategy use Proficient readers know when unknown words will interfere with achieving their purpose for reading, and when they will not When unknown words arise and their meaning is needed for comprehension, proficient readers have a number of word attack strategies available to them that will allow them to decipher the meaning of the words to the extent that they are needed to achieve the purpose for reading Reading is also

a complex process in that proficient readers give to the text as much as they take They make meaning from the text by using their own prior knowledge and experiences Proficient readers are constantly making predictions while reading They are continuously anticipating what will come next Their prior knowledge and experiences with texts as well

as with the world around them allow them to do this It is this continuous interaction with the text that allows readers to make sense of what they are reading

1.2 Intensive Reading and Extensive Reading

1.2.1 Intensive Reading

According to Nuttall, C (2000:38), intensive reading “involves approaching the text under, guidance of a teacher or a task which forces the students to focus on the text” In the view of Brown (1990:297), intensive reading “is usually a classroom-oriented activity in which students focus on the linguistic or semantic details of a passage” Therefore, it can

be seen that intensive reading is not a natural reading process outside the classroom

Grellet, F (1981:4) states that “intensive reading means reading short text to extract specific information This is an accuracy activity involving reading for detailed” The objective of intensive reading is to achieve a full understanding of the text not only of what

it means but also of how the meaning is produced Through intensive reading, the reader must arrive at a profound and detailed understanding of logical arguments, the rhetorical arrangement, the pattern of the text, the attitude and purposes of the writer and his

linguistic means to achieve his purposes Within intensive reading, two procedures are identified, that is skills-based teaching and text-based teaching; the focus of which is on skills/ text as its name implies In other words, intensive reading offers students either opportunities to practice a particular skill such as skimming, scanning, or making inference from the text (skills-based teaching) or opportunities to focus on linguistic/semantic aspects of a text (text-based teaching)

Intensive reading has confronted a great deal of dissenting points of view Alderson and Urquhart argue that:

Such a pedagogic – of focusing on the language of a text – may be justified as a language lesson, but it may very well be counterproductive as a reading lesson Often what is known as “intensive reading” is actually not reading at all: the lesson consists

of a series of language points, using texts as points of departure Reading texts, in other words, are sources of language exercises, rather than reading exercises

up exercises and tasks For the same reason, there is minimum use of dictionaries Above all, the reading should be enjoyable, which is one reason why students should choose their own material as far as possible Extensive reading, as partly mentioned above, "is intended

to develop good reading habits, to build up knowledge of vocabulary and structure, and to encourage a liking for reading" (Richards and Schmidt, 2002: 193-194)

Clearly, the precise nature of extensive reading will vary with students motivation and institutional resources, but an ideal characterization might include the following (from Day &Bamford (1998, p 7-8):

1 A variety of materials on a wide range of topics is available so as to encourage

reading for different reasons and in different ways

2 Students select what they want to read and have the freedom to stop reading

material that fails to interest them

3 The purposes of reading are usually related to pleasure, information and general

understanding The purposes are determined by the nature of the material and the

interests of the student

4 Reading is its own reward There are few or no follow-up exercises after reading

5 Reading materials are well within the linguistic competence of the students in

terms of vocabulary and grammar Dictionaries are rarely used while reading because the constant stopping to look up words makes fluent reading difficult

6 Reading is individual and silent, at the student's own pace, and, outside class, done

when and where the student chooses

7 Reading speed is usually faster rather than slower as students read books and

other material they find easily understandable

8 Teachers orient students to the goals of the program, explain the methodology,

keep track of what each student reads, and guide students in getting the most out of

the program

9 The teacher is a role model of a reader for the students an active member of the

classroom reading community, demonstrating what it means to be a reader and the rewards of being a reader

10 Students read as much as possible, during class time but also engaging in

individual, independent at home, ideally of self-selected materials

There is little doubt that extensive reading, specifically self-selected reading, can provide very effective platforms for promoting reading improvement and development from elementary levels upwards Although they do require a significant investment in time, energy and resources on the part of those charged with managing the materials and

naturally, it is not necessarily the entire answer to the teaching of reading, the benefits in terms of language and skills development for the participating learners far outweigh the modest sacrifices required

Theory on Extensive Reading (ER)

In recent years, an impressive body of evidence has appeared supporting ER as a means of improving not only students‟ reading level but also their general proficiency

Krashen (1982) in his comprehensible input theory argues that students can acquire

language on their own provided a) they receive enough exposure to comprehensible language and b) it is done in a relaxed, stress-free atmosphere ER satisfies both these conditions since, by definition, it involves reading large amounts of easy material at home, with little or no follow-up work or testing Krashen (1982) further held that the unconscious process of language acquisition, such as occurs when reading for pleasure, is more successful and longer lasting than conscious learning In particular, through experiencing language in context, ER is a very effective way of reinforcing, confirming and deepening knowledge of vocabulary, expressions and structures, and of developing an implicit understanding of when and how words are used (see Nation, 1997, and Coady,

1997, cited in Mutoh, Bamford and Helgesen 1998) In addition, as each student chooses a book within their own capability range, weaker students need not feel embarrassed about not keeping up with more advanced ones, as can happen with a class reader that all students have to follow Students are therefore less likely to get frustrated and demotivated,

so the overall effect on their attitude will be beneficial Motivation is thus stimulated by combining the pleasure of “a good read” (something most people can relate to), with the satisfaction of accomplishing a meaningful task in the target language, while still at a relatively low level of fluency Furthermore, by choosing the books themselves, students can follow their own interests, thus reducing teacher control and encouraging learning to occur outside class It is also a widely held belief among supporters of ER that, by eliminating follow-up testing and exhorting students to aim for general understanding rather than detailed comprehension, they gradually learn to read without word-by-word decoding at the sentence level, though this is by no means an easy transformation for all students, having learned to read by painstaking decoding Carrell (1998) states that the goal

is to turn “learning to read into reading to learn.” More research into exactly how this happens would be useful Day and Bamford (interviewed by Donnes, 1999) offer this

simple summary of the theory behind extensive reading: “Students who read large quantities of easy, interesting material will become better readers and will enjoy the experience.” In other words, “students learn to read by reading.”

Research into the effect of extensive reading on second language acquisition

A considerable amount of research has been undertaken to examine whether extensive reading has beneficial results Gains in various aspects of learners' abilities, such

as general linguistic proficiency, reading, writing, vocabulary, and spelling, have been investigated (e.g., Cho and Krashen, 1994; Elley and Mangubhai, 1983; Grabe and Stoller, 1997; Hafiz and Tudor, 1989; Hafiz and Tudor, 1990; Hayashi, 1999; Hedgcock and Atkinson, 1993 Positive effects of extensive reading on learners' affects, such as motivation and attitude, have been reported (e.g., Cho and Krashen, 1994; Constantino, 1994; Hayashi, 1999 Extensive Reading is often taken to be synonymous with graded readers While there is no reason why it should be limited exclusively to such material, these simplified texts do have a number of benefits (see Day and Bamford 1999, Waring 1997) They can, for instance, offer access to a wide range of material at an appropriate level, present language in context rather than in isolated chunks and, in some cases, promote intercultural awareness by providing insight into other cultures.Since ER involves reading easy texts requiring little or no dictionary consultation, it is perhaps contradictory

to suggest that students can make huge vocabulary gains In fact, Nation (1997), Bamford (in Donnes, 1999) and Waring (2001) all concur that students can only hope to make small, incidental gains in vocabulary knowledge from ER For his part, Grabe (1986, quoted in Mutoh, Bamford and Helgesen 1998) called ER a “major way to round out a reading program”, and argues that: “students need to read extensively Longer concentrated periods

of silent reading build vocabulary and structural awareness, develop automaticity, enhance background knowledge, improve comprehension skills and promote confidence and

(UCLES), and the British Council and IDP Education Australia This test is important for students who wish to gain entry to universities or training programs in English speaking countries With the increase of the number of students aspiring to study abroad, IELTS candidature is gradually rising In our country, candidates who seek preparatory training for IELTS in private coaching and training centers are mostly students and they prepare and sit generally for the academic module and not for the general module The British Council administers over 500,000 examinations overseas on behalf of British Examination Boards IELTS has four modules: listening module, speaking module, reading module and writing module Students often find the reading section of IELTS a challenging task

1.3.2 IELTS reading module

1.3.2.1 IELTS reading task

The aim of reading is comprehension Reading is defined in The Oxford Companion

to the English Language as “The process of extracting meaning from written or printed

language…” (Ed McArthur,Tom,1992:847)

The meaning of a text does not rest in the reader, nor does it rest in the text The reader‟s background knowledge integrates with the text to create the meaning According

to Anderson, N (2003), the text, the reader, fluency and strategies combined together define the act of reading

The students in the Reading test gets only 60 minutes to read, comprehend the articles and answer the accompanying questions There are three reading passages, which may include pictures, graphs, tables or diagrams The reading passages are of different length, from approximately 500 to 1000 words The total for the three passages is between

1500 and 2500 words Each reading passage has several questions of different types, which may be printed either before or after the passage

The three texts are placed in a sequence of heightened difficulty from passages 1 through 3 A candidate may have to answer any of the following question types:

Multiple choice questions, gap-filling exercises, matching paragraph headings with paragraphs in the reading passage, short answers to open questions, Yes/No/Not given statements and the completion of-sentences-summaries, diagrams, tables, flow charts, notes (McCarter, Easton and Ash, 2003:26)

The Reading Module in the test contains a combination of some of the listed types, but the combination changes from test to test The types of skills the Reading Module assesses include:

Identifying the gist of a passage, finding detailed factual information in a passage, identifying relationships between ideas or information items, such as: cause and effect, order of events, comparison, making inferences, distinguishing between fact, assumption

or opinion, understanding text organization and summarizing information

It is apparent that the different types of questions used by IELTS to assess the skill

of the candidates are new and thus difficult to the students Our examination system does not familiarize the students with the reading techniques such as skimming, scanning, inference etc As a result, students do not feel confident enough to take the examination where there is no one to help them Most of the students take help from privately run coaching and training centers offering courses ranging from three to four months Some of these coaching centers train substantial number of students and frequently claim to follow the most efficient and successful methods of training „Mentors Education‟, for example, is one of the leading coaching centers training around 1000 IELTS examinees each year (Information provided by Mentors on January 7th2008)

1.3.2.2 IELTS reading skills

Firstly, it is important to note that the term reading skills and reading strategies are often used interchangeably though the latter sometimes refers to mental activities that enable students to succeed in reading process

Reading skills, according to Doff (1988:61) are “information –processing techniques that are automatic, whether at the level of recognizing grapheme-phoneme correspondence

or summarizing a story Skills are applied to a text unconsciously for many reasons including expertise, repeated practice, and compliance with directions, luck, and native use.” Reading skills are often employed more frequently and effectively by proficient readers than poor ones Nuttal has proposed a list of reading skills, some of which are hereunder:

Prediction, skimming, canning, recognizing implications and making inferences, recognizing text organization, guessing the meaning of words based on structured and

contextual clues, understanding syntax and recognizing and interpreting cohesive devices

Nuttal (1996:48-120)

Besides, William (1984:79) points out seven reading skills as follows:

Deducting the meaning of unfamiliar lexical items, recognizing indicators in discourse, extracting salient points to summarize, using basic reference skills, skimming to get general information, scanning to locate specifically required information and transferring information to diagrammatical display

However, according to Wallace (1993), reading skills are ways of reading which should be employed flexibly and selectively, depending on the text-type, and the context and purpose of reading

In IELTS reading module, it is obvious that 60 minute time does not allow and require candidates to read every single word and understand thoroughly all three passages

of about 1500-2500 words Instead, the test is designed to measure their abilities to employ reading skills to answer given question items Therefore, it is vital for them to use reading skills to survive the reading test Below are three main reading skills that IELTS experts suggest using to survive the test: Scanning, skimming, and making inferences

1.3.2.2.1 Scanning

When students face a new text they tend to read word by word This way of reading affects the general understanding of the passage and the time taken to finish the reading can be too long for the final results The students can end up reading every word very well but in the long run the idea of what they have read is lost To avoid this loss of time and effort a reader can use Scanning to help him or her Scanning consists on running your eyes down the text, searching for important or key words, as well as the most outstanding facts Scanning can be a preliminary step in reading because with it you can locate new terms, look them up in a dictionary or a glossary and save time when you actually begin to read The process of Scanning cannot take more than a couple of minutes After that

decision over which terms are the most important and which part of the reading deserves more attention should be made Also, it is important to note that this is only a

comprehension technique designed to help get into the reading, in order to interpret the authors intentions and ideas it is important to read the whole text and the analysis of it must be done with a little bit more detail

1.3.2.2.2 Skimming

Skimming is a technique suitable for scientific texts as well as for general texts This

is defined as the search of main ideas using only the first and last paragraphs to obtain a general view of the text When working with scientific texts applying this technique can be easier since this type of literature usually contains topic headings, abstracts or summaries that might come in handy for the reader Another advantage of a scientific text is that they are usually written in block of information grouped in paragraphs In this case the best alternative is to read the first sentence of each paragraph It is important to note that this technique is used not as a short cut to reading the whole text It does not mean that students can simply read the first and last paragraphs and that they can understand everything This technique is used to help get an idea of what you are about to read Skimming is like

having a map before entering a city It is less likely that students get lost if you have

previous information

1.3.2.2.3 Making inferences

Most of the time we are faced with reading something just then, at that precise

moment In the real world it is unlikely that our students can be well-prepared to read a text all the time In many cases they simply do not have the time to use a dictionary or to apply

a given technique It is only the reader and the text This is when understanding context can come in handy Context can be defined as the elements that surround a term and help clarify its meaning The first thing to do when taking advantage of context is recognizing the grammatical category of the word we are trying to understand of define Is it an adverb,

an adjective, a verb or a noun? English grammar can give us some tips to know exactly what kind of word we are dealing with, for example:

* If the word ends in ly and is located after a verb it is likely that it is an adverb

* If the word is before a noun and is not pluralized it can be an adjective

* If the word is after a personal pronoun or a noun it might be a verb

* If the word has a definite or indefinite article or it is pluralized it is possible to be a noun

1.4 Extensive Reading and IELTS reading test

Just understanding each word of what is written may not be sufficient Kaplan (1966) has claimed that –Each language and each culture has a paragraph order unique to

itself, and … part of the learning of a particular language is the mastery of its logical system (Kaplan, 1966 : 12)

It is generally assumed by students that they need to understand all the sentences and paragraphs However, we can, in fact often understand a text adequately without grasping every part of it This is generally known as extensive reading Students have to be encouraged to develop this skill This is one of the major differences between a general English course and a course in IELTS In English courses, we concentrate on intensive reading The aim is to arrive at an understanding, not only of what the text means but of how the meaning is produced Most of the teachers interviewed suggested that extensive reading should be in conjunction with the training courses for IELTS It familiarizes the students with all the aspects of the language at the same time According to Nuttall (1989)-

An Extensive reading program is the single most effective way of improving vocabulary It

is relatively easy to organize, enjoyable for the students and extremely cost-effective ( Nuttall, 1989 : 12) Moreover, IELTS reading Tests often includes a variety of social issues Extensive reading that involves the reading of large amounts of longer, easy material helps students familiar with topics and enhance their background knowledge Candidates sometimes find the idea strange that some parts of a text may be ignored

or skipped, but efficient reading, and specially the techniques of scanning and skimming, requires it

The term „scanning‟ is used here to mean glancing rapidly through a text either to search for a specific piece of information (e.g a name, a date) or to get an initial impression of whether the text is suitable for a given purpose (whether a book on gardening deals with a particular plant disease) The teachers have to familiarize the students with the art of scanning within the limited time allotted for the course As the teachers mostly work part time and are not language teaching professionals, they lack the skill and capacity to instruct the students to scan the reading material properly

„Skimming‟ is the skill of glancing rapidly through a text to determine its gist, for example in order to decide whether a research paper is relevant to our own work (not just

to determine its field, which we can find out by scanning) or to keep ourselves superficially informed about matters that are not of great importance to us Much of newspaper reading

is skimming Coaching centers do not stress on extensive reading which is the best way of developing skills of skimming

Coaching classes cannot accommodate sessions dedicated to teach skimming Teachers complained that the duration of the IELTS courses offered in our country are too short to sufficiently prepare the students to get a reasonable grade as their basic knowledge

of English is rather poor

One of the most important techniques in teaching reading is learning through inference This is the best way of dealing with new and unknown words It is found that not enough emphasis is given on learning through inference In many cases, the students are encouraged to learn the meaning of certain words they are going to encounter in their exercises There is no system at all where the student himself is encouraged to learn by inference

1.5 Reading Proficiency

It is not easy to develop a clear definition of proficiency Most schools use grade equivalents or passing certain tests Those numbers or scores relate only to academic benchmarks and norms Scientifically, Gough and Tumner (1986) proposed that reading

consists of two primary components: decoding, or word recognition, and language

comprehension, both of which are necessary for reading proficiency Students do not

become proficient readers unless both components are fully developed In other words, readers who cannot decipher the words on a page in a fluent and accurate manner will struggle to comprehend the meaning of the text On the other hand, without proficient language comprehension skills, even readers who recognize the words may not necessarily understand their meaning Word recognition skills are intrinsic to reading, reflecting the need to decipher print, whereas language comprehension pervades all areas of literacy Reading comprehension skills can be taught (Adams et al 1997), but word recognition skills are essential for the student to become proficient Hence, in the simple view, reading proficiency is the product of word recognition and language comprehension skills; some of the controversy among reading professionals is not whether both sets of skills must be mastered but how students master these skills and how explicitly these skills must be taught

CHAPTER II – METHODOLOGY

2.1 Rationale for using experimental method

The research method plays such an important role in conducting a study that it determines the reliability and validity of the study

As mentioned earlier, this study is an attempt to test the effect of an extensive reading program on an IELTS reading proficiency, and to investigate the cause-and-effect relationship between them Therefore, an experimental research method is the most suitable and justified in the way that this method can be used not only to uncover relationships between variables but also to establish a causal relationship between them

It is by virtue of the experimental method itself, which allows for the control of potential sources of differences (or variance), that the following can be said: One factor is related to another in such a way that changes in that factor are causually related to another in such a way that changes in that factor are causually related to changes in the other So, it’s not just a relationship where two variables share something in common (as is the case with a correlational relationship); it’s much more They share something, but one directly affects the other (Salkind, 2006, p 217)

In other words, an experimental method can provide a tremendous amount of power and control over the understanding of the causal relationship between variables

2.2 Variables

The study, as mentioned earlier, is an attempt to establish the cause-and-effect relationship between extensive reading and reading comprehension demonstrated through IELTS reading performance Thus, variables should be discussed in detail Herein, the treatment and the outcome are measured respectively by the use of extensive reading program and IELTS reading test score Put it in another way, the study is designed to examine the relationship between the independent variable (the employment of extensive reading program) and the dependent variable (IELTS reading test score)

2.3 Participants

The subjects included 2 groups of the third year English majors in Hanoi University

of Industry They were selected on a basis of cluster sampling This method of sampling

brought about some advantages given the conditions under which the study was carried out On the one hand, since students come from a wide residential and family background, and grouped homogeneously, the high degree of representatives is ensured This contributes to the validity and generalizability of the study On the other hand, as students were grouped already, the removal of any individual from one group to another was impossible Thus, cluster sampling proves to be time-saving, and convenient

As a result of cluster sampling, the sample groups are the same in size, which numbered 30, and 30 In total, it is estimated that there are 60 participants in this study Females outnumber male students slightly (25 males and 35 females) and the difference in gender is not worth mentioning

2.4 Pretest and Posttest

The pretest and posttest used in this study were those taken from IELTS Practice Test Books by Cambridge University Press The pretest and posttest which were modified from different IELTS reading tests have the same level of difficulty so that the researcher can measure exactly the difference that may have been caused by the treatment The tests, modified from reading tests in the e-book IELTS help now, therefore, follow the format of IELTS reading paper There were a variety of tasks including multiple choice tasks, short answer questions, note or sentence completion tasks, completing a table or summary, labeling a diagram, classification and matching tasks In detail, both the pretest and posttest included 3 passages of about 800 words for each

Table 1:Question types and reading skills test in the pretest and posttest

tested

1 Multiple choice

questions

Use the information in the text to match the

statements (1 – 8) with the animals (A – D)

Write the appropriate letter (A – D) in boxes

1 – 8 on your answer sheet Write:

A if the statement refers to cheetahs at the Breeding Centre

B if the statement refers to leopards at the Breeding Centre

C if the statement refers to both cheetahs and leopards at the Breeding Centre

D If the statement refers to neither cheetahs nor leopards at the Breeding Centre

Skimming for general impression

or gist Scanning for specific information

Understanding the relationships between words and paragraph

2 Completing a

summary Complete the summary below Choose your answers from the box below the

summary and write them in boxes 9 – 12 on

your answer sheet

NB There are more words than spaces, so you will not use them at all

Scanning for specific information

Summarizing Identifying parts of speech

Paraphrasing Sequencing

3 Matching

paragraph headings

with paragraphs in

the reading passage

The reading passage on Insomnia has 7

paragraphs (A – G)

From the list of headings below choose the

most suitable headings for paragraphs B – G

Write the appropriate number (i – xi) in boxes

14 – 19 on your answer sheet

NB There are more headings than paragraphs,

so you will not use them all

Skimming for general ideas Making inferences

4.Yes/No/Not

given statements

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer of the reading passage on Insomnia?

In Boxes 20 - 27 write:

YES if the statement agrees with the writer

NO if the statement doesn’t agree with the

writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the

writer thinks about this

Recognizing opinions and viewpoints Recognizing main ideas

Interpreting information Making inferences

The pretest and posttest were administered to both two groups of participants before the treatment and after the treatment All the administrations were under surveillance of the researcher to make sure that no answer copying and other cheats may occur The time allowance for each administration was 40 minutes including time for transferring answers

to an answer sheet All these answer sheets were, then, collected for clerical marking Each score was the total number of correct answers; therefore, the maximum score that a student may get would be 40 without transferring to IELTS band score which seemed unnecessary

2.5 The extensive reading program

This experiment was conducted in 12 weeks In the first week, students took a test The last week was spent on revision and posttest During the period of 10 weeks, students underwent the treatment Both groups followed the syllabus designed for IELTS reading preparation during 10 weeks The main course book was Focus on academic skills

pre-for IELTS by Morgan Terry and Judith Wilson (2002) syllabus, the experimental groups received instructions on how to work on extensive reading program

2.5.1 Reading materials

At the beginning of the term, students of experimental group were assigned to groups of 3 There were, in total, 10 groups in the class After that, students were provided with 10 common topics in daily life which may occur in IELTS reading tests, that is:

Table 2: Topics for The extensive reading program

These 10 topics were equivalent with 10 reading passages in the course book

Every week, students were asked to search reading materials related to the topic of the week regardless the source, the length and the types of the materials Preferably, the length of the reading text would be ranged from 400 words to 1500 words To promote the nature of extensive reading, students were allowed to find any types of text, depending on their personal preferences Thus, reading materials found by students would be short stories, extracts from novels, plays, articles, pieces of news, etc from numerous sources such as the Internet, books in the university library, newspapers, and magazines Some useful and reliable web links on the Internet suggested, such as:

There was no limitation to reading entries but each students were expected to hand in

at least one every week Of course, students were encouraged to work on as many reading materials as possible Furthermore, after finding suitable reading entry/entries based on the topic, students were required to write a report called written report in which the length of the text, reading time, a short summary, and their personal perception of the text were shown In other words, they had to answer some basic questions:

1 What is the title, and the author of the text?

2 How many words are there in your text?

3 How long did you spend reading your text?

4 Please give a summary of the text, including: context (place, and time) people mentioned in the text and what happened between them

5 Please give a vocabulary list (about 5- 15 words) that you have come crossed in the text After reading the entry, check new words up in a dictionary and give the meanings

of these words

The written report sample was given to students at the beginning of the experiment During 10 weeks, students were supposed to hand in at least one report per week This would help the researcher monitor what students had done at home, and set/ make criteria for analysis Moreover, the activity of writing report would motivate students by offering them chances to express their opinions on some issues, and sharing ideas with each other

2.5.2 Syllabus and activities

As a matter of fact, the participants of this study were supposed to follow a reading syllabus given by the English Department that was based on intensive reading The course book chosen was Focus on Academic Skills for IELTS by Cambridge University Press The reading program lasted 12 weeks including the first week for the pre-test and orientation and the last week for revision and the post-test Each weekly period involved one reading passage from the course book, dealing with some certain question types and reading skills accordingly The control group experienced no treatment of extensive reading program but followed the syllabus normally, devoting total time in class to the tasks in the course books and other supplementary intensive reading materials given by the teacher On the contrary, the experimental class spent one 45-minute period following the

course book and another period for extensive reading program, including discussion, presentation, and peer-check

Table 3: An overview of the extensive reading program for third-year English majors

at HUI

Week

In class (90 ms) Out-of-class

activities Intensive Reading (45ms) Extensive Reading (45 ms)

Topic Question type

Instruction Topic Activities

1 Childhood obesity

goes global True/False/Not Given Summary (with bank) Health/ Food and Diet - giving reading entries

-warming up (presenter) -reading the text

- Making presentations -Discussing and asking new words

- discussing the theme, the main ideas of the reading:

(Identifying the title, and name

of the author of the text

-summarizing the text including:

context (place, and time) people mentioned in the text and what happened between them)

- Giving feedbacks on friends‟

presentations (both students and teachers)

-Reading intensively and doing tasks in course book -Reading extensively (prepare both oral and written presentation) -Writing reflections of what they have achieved in the class

2 Light years ahead Sentence completion

(with bank) Matching

Environment

3 Clocking culture Matching headings

Multiple choice Summary (no bank)

Culture and language

4 Fighting the dust Sentence completion

(no bank) Multiple choice with multiple answers

Arts, music and

Science

6 The knowledge

society

Multiple choice Yes/ No/ Not Given

Education

7 Bidging the digital

divide

Sentence completion (no bank)

Classification Multiple choice

10 Getting the picture

from DNA Short-answer questions Multiple choice

Flow chart completion

Crime and law

The group chosen to make the presentation was informed four days in advance During this time, they were encouraged to regularly contact with the teachers for personal consultation The problems for consultation here were probably of the texts

„appropriateness, of any words, expressions or contents which were beyond their understanding Also, they were given suggestions for their oral or written presentation The reading selected by that group was mass-photocopied to distribute to other students when the extensive reading class started Some activities (about 2-3 minutes) for pre-reading were carried out by the presentation group to warm up and to draw attention of the class Students were allowed to read the reading within no more than 15 minutes After 15 minutes of skimming, students in the class and those in the presentation group worked together to discuss the theme, the main ideas of the reading: (Identifying the title, and name of the author of the text, summarizing the text including: context (place, and time) people mentioned in the text and what happened between them), analyzing data and diagram, completing the text using the information in the text, etc.) were offered to consolidate the students‟ comprehension of the reading text During the time, words related

to the theme of the reading, new words occurring in their reading entries would be understood through guessing or predicting in the context and the explanation given by the

presentation group The presentations might be based on the written report, including the

main ideas, and their own perception and reflection on the text The presenter had to answer questions raised by the teacher and friends The teacher, then, gave feedbacks on both written reports and oral presentations on its strengths and shortcomings so that the next groups could draw lessons and do better After each presentation, all of the class was required to write a reflection of what they had gained and a collection of reflection would

be submitted to teacher the following week The teacher gave marks and returned the reflection after 1 week so that students received immediate feedbacks Thus, they might feel motivated to continue with the next reflections Marks (accounting for 20% of final marks) were based on 3 parts: presentation, written report, and reflection Marks were included in attendance requirement in order to encourage students to work on projects Reading and reflections by the groups who did not make the presentation would be collected to the teachers to correct Then the corrections would be put back to the students

so that they know what they had done correctly and what they had failed to do What‟s more, it was compulsory that all of the students in the class had to submit their readings

even when they did not make presentation The punishment for those who did not hand in the task was terminating their rights to make presentation or canceling their results if they had already presented

2.6 Procedures

The chronological steps of the study are summarized as follows:

 Study the literature to form theoretical background for the study;

 Work out the methodological framework of the study;

 Administer the pretest for both groups: experimental and control groups;

 Apply extensive reading training on the experimental group;

 Administer the posttest for all the groups;

 Distribute a questionnaire to the experimental groups to gather their opinions of the program;

 Collect all the data for analysis;

 Yield conclusions, implications and suggestions for further study based on findings

CHAPTER III – FINDINGS

It is common knowledge that in order to measure the progress after adopting extensive reading for the students in the class, we have to base on the results gained from both the pre-test and post- test To that point, in this chapter, the author of the study aims at analyzing the data collected from both pre-test and post-test by the experimental group and control group To make the findings more persuasive, the surveyed students‟ opinion‟s on

difficulties they have to face, their attitudes towards extensive reading in the pre-IELTS

course and their suggestions for more effective extensive reading in pre-IELTS course are discussed hereafter

3.1 Comparison of experimental and control groups’ reading proficiency after the extensive reading program

In terms of comparing the improvement of both groups in reading proficiency, the test has been calculated by the way that all the tests were marked and scores were recorded The gain by each subject of the experimental research was worked out by subtracting the pretest score from the post test score After that the mean (M) and standard deviation (SD) of each group‟s gains were found for comparison

t-3.1.1 The results of experimental and control groups in the pre-test and post – test

There is a doubt that whether there is a remarkable difference between the reading proficiency scores in the post test gained by the experimental group who participated in the extensive reading and those gained by the control group who were not involved in the program

Table 4: Descriptive statistics for the pre-test and post – test scores of experimental and control groups

Descriptive

statistics

Experimental group (N*=30) Pretest Posttest

Control group (N=30) Pretest Posttest Mean 15,77 21,03 16,37 18,20 Low 9 15 8 9 High 21 27 26 27 Range 12 12 18 18 Standard deviation 3,43 3,64 4,51 4,37

(N= number of cases)

As can be seen from the table above, in the both groups the means for the pretest and posttest scores are quite close to one another, showing a high level of central tendency of the score Concurrently, these indexes fall nearly in the middle of their equivalent ranges of sores These findings indicate that the first assumption that requires the equal variances seems to have been violated since the values of the standard deviation for the experimental group are both higher level of homogeneity of scores for the former group However, since both groups were equal in size, this violation would have little effect on the results

Both the control and experimental groups after the experiment have made progress

in reading performance as indicated by the higher means for the posttest scores than their paired pretest scores: in experimental group (15,77 compared to 21,03) and in control group ( 16,37 compared to 18,20)

The comparison of the scores of the pre-test and post-test obtained by the two groups indicates that the experimental group made greater improvement than the control group in the post-test (21,03 compared to 18,20) although, reading performance in the control group in the pre-test seems the higher results than that obtained by the experimental group (15,77 compared to 16,37) Therefore, it could be assumed that extensive reading has put high effect on the students‟ reading proficiency, that is, students who were opposed

to extensive reading have more possibility of making more progress in their reading proficiency than the students who were not Nevertheless, a conclusion which is made on such an observation would be unconvincing because those figures cannot represent the whole situation This assumption needs to be validated with further statistics calculations about the comparison of the mean gains made by the two groups, which is presented in the following section

3.1.2 Mean gains of experimental and control groups

Tablle 5: Mean gains of experimental and control groups

higher than that in control group (5,30 compared to 1,77).The standard deviation in the experimental group is higher than that in the control group (1,56 compared to 0,94) so the gains made by experimental groups seems to be more heterogeneous And the differences between gains made by the two groups proved to be significant (t= 10, 6553, df= 58, p<0.05) Surely, the equality of level in experimental group seems to be higher than that in the control group

Consequently, the results have confirmed that the extensive reading has great effect

on the students‟ reading proficiency in pre-IELTS course

3.2 Students’ opinions on extensive reading for pre-IELTS course

Together with the analysis of mean (M), standard deviation (SD), obtained value (t), the author of the study would like to present here some data from the experimental students for their attitudes towards the problems they have faced with, their thinking of extensive program by the teacher and also their suggestions for more effective extensive reading in a pre-IELTS course

3.2.1 Students’ difficulties in reading IELTS reading texts

Table 6: Experimental students’ difficulties in reading IELTS reading texts:

A The language of the readings is academic and specialized 26

87%

1 3%

3 10%

B The tasks are various and difficult to deal with 28

93%

0 0%

2 7%

90%

1 3%

2 7%

100%

0 0%

0 0%

E There are many terms in a reading which demands good

background knowledge

26 87%

2 6%

2 7%

F The reading requires you a lot of skills to deal with 27

90%

1 3%

2 7%

In the table above, the common difficulties students have coped with are listed As can be seen, 87% of the students thought that the language in the IELTS readings is academic in the way the writers express themselves, specialized in the expertise terms of the issue discussed by the reading texts Many students stated that it often takes them long time and so many times of reading to understand the implication by the writer In addition, the tasks types are numerous, from heading matching, summary completion, Yes/No/ Not given to diagram completion Moreover, the tasks are by no means easy to deal with unless the readers have good background knowledge Understandably, up to 90% of the students shared the same opinion that they sometimes have no idea of the topic in IELTS readings, such as the topics on mechanic, chemistry, production process Besides, all students complained that the reading texts are too long to cover and consequently, a big number of the students (90%) claimed that they need to possess a variety of reading skills to cope successfully with the IELTS readings

Obviously, IELTS readings are really the challenges for students, which can be seen via the length, the complication, the academic content and the level of difficulty in terms of language of the texts and the requirements of the tasks Clearly, students are actually in need of a thorough preparation for the course, thus extensive reading apparently proves to be the workable way

3.2.2 Experimental subjects’ attitudes towards extensive reading in the pre-IELTS course Table 7: Experimental students’ attitudes to extensive reading in the pre-IELTS course

A Extensive reading really works in arousing my interest,

motivation and innovation to reading

24 80%

1 3%

5 17%

B Extensive reading really helps me to enrich my

vocabulary of various fields in life

25 83%

2 7%

3 10%

C Through reading outside the class I have known the ways

to search the reading source, which seemed to be difficult

and unfamiliar for me before

23 77%

2 7%

5 17%

D My background knowledge have been enhanced so much

after extensive reading

27 90%

1 3%

2 7%