skkn EXAMINING THE PARTICIPATION OF THE 12TH FORM STUDENTS DURING READING ACTIVITIES AT LUONG THE VINH HIGH SCHOOL

KINH NGHIỆM KHOA HỌC Đã trực tiếp tham gia giảng dạy: 17 năm Sáng kiến kinh nghiệm trong 5 năm gần đây: o Teaching grammar in light of communicative language teaching o Applying communi

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐỒNG NAI Đơn vị: Trường THPT chuyên Lương Thế Vinh

Mã số: SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

EXAMINING THE PARTICIPATION

OF THE 12TH FORM STUDENTS DURING READING ACTIVITIES AT LUONG THE VINH HIGH SCHOOL

Người thực hiện: HỒ THỊ THẢO TRINH Lĩnh vực nghiên cứu:

Quản lý giáo dục ¨Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn tiếng Anh RPhương pháp giáo dục ¨Lĩnh vực khác ¨

Có đính kèm:

¨ Mô hình ¨ Phần mềm ¨ Phim ảnh ¨ Giáo án điện tử

Năm học 2012 - 2013

SƠ LƯỢC LÝ LỊCH KHOA HỌC

I THÔNG TIN VỀ CÁ NHÂN

1 Họ và tên: HỒ THỊ THẢO TRINH

2 Ngày tháng năm sinh: 28 tháng 11 năm 1973

3 Chức vụ:

Đảng:

Chính quyền:

4 Đơn vị công tác: Trường THPT chuyên Lương Thế Vinh

II TRÌNH ĐỘ ĐÀO TẠO

Trình độ: Thạc sỹ

Tốt nghiệp: Victoria University

III KINH NGHIỆM KHOA HỌC

Đã trực tiếp tham gia giảng dạy: 17 năm

Sáng kiến kinh nghiệm trong 5 năm gần đây:

o Teaching grammar in light of communicative language teaching

o Applying communicative activities in english reading class

o Topic-based vocabulary teaching to students majoring in English

SỞ GD&ĐT ĐỒNG NAI CỘNG HOÀ XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM Trường THPT chuyên Lương Thế Vinh Độc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc

Biên Hoà, ngày 03 tháng 05 năm 2013 PHIẾU NHẬN XÉT ĐÁNH GIÁ SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

Năm học: 2012 – 2013 Tên chuyên đề: EXAMINING THE PARTICIPATION OF THE 12TH FORM

STUDENTS DURING READING ACTIVITIES AT LUONG THE VINH HIGH SCHOOL

Họ và tên tác giả: HỒ THỊ THẢO TRINH Tổ: Ngoại ngữ

Lĩnh vực:

Quản lý giáo dục ¨ Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn tiếng Anh ¨ Phương pháp giáo dục ¨ Lĩnh vực khác ¨

1 Tính mới

- Có giải pháp hoàn toàn mới ¨

- Có giải pháp cải tiến, đổi mới từ phương pháp đã có ¨

2 Hiệu quả

- Hoàn toàn mới và đã triển khai áp dụng trong toàn ngành có hiệu quả cao ¨

- Có tính cải tiến hoặc đổi mới từ những giải pháp đã có và đã triển khai áp dụng trong toàn ngành có hiệu quả cao ¨

- Hoàn toàn mới và đã triển khai áp dụng tại đơn vị có hiệu quả cao ¨

- Có tính cải tiến hoặc đổi mới từ những giải pháp đã có và đã triển khai áp dụng tại đơn vị có hiệu quả ¨

3 Khả năng áp dụng

- Căn cứ được các luận cứ khoa học cho việc hoạch định đường lối chính sách: Tốt ¨ Khá ¨ Đạt ¨

- Đưa ra các giải pháp khuyến nghị có khả năng ứng dụng thực tiễn dễ thực hiện

và dễ đi vào cuộc sống:

1 - INTRODUCTION

1.1 - Statements of the problems and rationale of the study

Innovations in teaching and learning English have become an important issue in the world because English is considered as the language of globalization, international communication, commerce and trade, the media and pop culture (Richards, 2002) Since the introduction of the new English textbooks for Vietnamese high schools seven years ago, teachers have seemingly become more motivated to teach English as the new curriculum focuses on all the four skills of English and highlights task-based communicative approach As for 12th form students, mastering English is very important because they will have to take part in the National Examination for the General Certificate of Secondary Education, in which English is a compulsory subject English is also one of the subjects for the Entrance Examination of some national and international universities In teaching and learning English as a foreign language, reading has always received a great deal of attention Therefore, how to teach and learn reading effectively requires many efforts from both teachers and learners Carrell (1984, p.1) states, “reading is by far the most important of the four macro skills, particularly in English as a second or a foreign language” In fact, becoming an effective and fluent reader in another language has a number of important benefits for the learner First, reading in the target language may help students consolidate the learning that has taken place Second, it may help students to increase knowledge of the target language through exposure

to new vocabulary and grammatical structures

During 8 months of teaching reading comprehension to class 12A1 ( non-English majored class ) of Luong The Vinh High School, the researcher found that her students confronted five major obstacles in reading such as: the habits of word-by-word reading; overemphasis on forms rather than meaning; excessive focus on details rather than main ideas; poor vocabulary

and limited background knowledge As an English teacher who has been teaching English for 17 years, the researcher wishes to take a serious look at the teaching and learning of English in general and the teaching and learning

of the reading skills in particular so as to suggest suitable techniques to enable the teaching and learning of reading comprehension at high schools

to be more effective This matter of fact has inspired the researcher to conduct the research into the participation of the 12th form students during reading activities in the hope that through this study, the researcher will have better teaching plans in order to improve students’ reading skills

2.1 - Definition of reading and reading comprehension

Reading is an activity with a purpose A person may read in order to gain information or verify existing knowledge, or in order to critique a writer's ideas or writing style A person may also read for enjoyment, or to enhance knowledge of the language being read The purposes for reading guide the reader's selection of texts

Ur (1996, p.38) defines "reading means reading and understanding" According to Harmer (1989, p.153), "reading is an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain The eyes receive messages and the brain then has to work out the significance of these messages"

Reading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the text, resulting in comprehension The text presents letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs that encode meaning The reader uses knowledge, skills, and strategies to determine what that meaning is Readers’ knowledge, skills, and strategies include:

ü Linguistic competence: the ability to recognize the elements of the writing system; knowledge of vocabulary; knowledge of how words are structured into sentences

ü Discourse competence: knowledge of discourse markers and how they connect parts of the text to one another

ü Sociolinguistic competence: knowledge about different types of texts and their usual structure and content

ü Strategic competence: the ability to use top-down strategies as well as knowledge of the language (a bottom-up strategy) The purpose(s) for reading and the type of text determine the specific knowledge, skills, and strategies that readers need to apply to achieve comprehension Reading comprehension is thus much more than decoding Reading comprehension happens when the reader knows which skills and strategies are appropriate for the type of text, and understands how to apply them to accomplish the reading purpose

It is obvious that reading comprehension plays an important role in teaching and learning reading a foreign language It has the nature of communication, in which reading activity acts as a means of communication between the writer and the reader

Swam (1975, p.1) proposes “a student is good at comprehension we mean that he can read accurately and efficiently so as to get the maximum information of a text with the minimum of understanding.”

Grelet (1981, p.3) considers “reading comprehension or understanding a written text means extracting the required information from

it as effectively as possible.”

Though these opinions are not exactly the same, what comes up as a common point is that reading comprehension is the process in which the readers, as they read, can recognize the graphic forms of the reading text and understand what is implied behind these forms

2.2- Kinds of reading

Nutall (2000, p.38) indicates two main types of reading: intensive and extensive reading For him, these are not just two contrasting ways of reading but an infinitive variety of interrelated and overlapping strategies Actually, both of these two types are complementary and necessary

a Intensive Reading

Nutall (2000, p.38) states that intensive reading involves approaching the text under the guidance of a teacher or a task which forces the student to focus on the text According to Brown (1990, p.297), intensive reading "is usually a classroom-oriented activity in which students focus on the linguistic or semantic details of a passage" The objective of intensive reading is to understand not only what the text means but also how the meaning is produced

b Extensive Reading

Extensive reading is generally associated with reading large quantities with the aim of getting an overall understanding of the material Lewis and Hill (1992, p.109) point out that "extensive reading means students have a general understanding of the text without necessarily understanding every word" This type of reading is suitable for students' self-learning in order to

train them to read directly and fluently in the foreign language for their own enjoyment without the aid of the teacher However, extensive reading can be best achieved only through an instructional program Extensive reading

sometimes involves skimming and scanning as strategies to gain general

sense of a text, skimming for the gist and scanning for some key details

In short, for second or foreign language learners, both intensive and extensive reading are of great importance as they act as a means to gain knowledge but also to develop learners' language skills

2.3- Reading in second language learning and teaching

In a second language classroom, reading plays a significant role in building both linguistic and background knowledge for other language skills

It is a fact that reading tasks in the classroom do not always correspond to real-life purposes As pointed out by Nuttall (1996, p.223), plenty of reading tasks merely require students to answer task questions like gap-fill or multiple choice questions Consequently, they fail to reflect how the students comprehend similar texts in the real world In fact, there exist numerous reasons for our real-life reading As far as it is concerned, Nuttall distinguishes functional texts from descriptive, discursive texts and fiction Accordingly, texts like leaflets, notices and advertisements belong to the former due to their practical purposes which are evident and typical of their genres On the contrary, when reading descriptive and discursive texts and fiction, the readers may have various aims, most typically to make decisions

or express the extent of agreement with the author’s arguments

As argued by Nuttall (1996, p.16), there are two main ways for a reader

to process a text Specifically, students may take the bottom-up approach, in which “the reader builds up a meaning by […] recognizing letters and words, working out sentence structures” Otherwise, their “intelligence and experience” may serve as a means of comprehending the text if they take

“the top-down approach” Whereas the bottom-up approach suffered from severe criticism in the past, recent studies have suggested that interactive

reading, which combines both approaches to processing a reading text, may account for efficient reading (Stanovich, 1980, cited in Nunan, 1989, p.33)

So far, there have been various approaches to teaching reading, such as the traditional approach, process-based approach and task-based approach

In all these approaches, apart from the evident roles of learners in the process

of reading comprehension, the roles of teachers in an EFL reading lesson are also significant and worth mentioning On the one hand, Nuttall (2000, p.32-33) specifies some of these roles as choosing reading texts, designing tasks, facilitating reading process and monitoring progress He thus comes to a conclusion that there is always a great deal for the teacher to do in a reading lesson On the other hand, he also reminds teacher of several pitfalls in teaching reading, in which “testing instead of teaching” and teacher’s overly dominance in processing the reading texts are among the most common mistakes

Nuttall (2000, p.33) mentions several main roles for the students in a reading lesson They are as follows:

- Taking an active part in learning: This is the first and foremost responsibility of the learner They have to be active and take charge of what they do

- Monitoring comprehension: Students need to understand how texts work and what they do when they read

- Learning text talk: It is clear that a good reader carries on a dialogue with the text Consequently, the students have to learn how to do this An effective way to promote this skill is to talk about texts in class

- Taking risks: Students have to take the risk of making mistakes because a mistake is an opportunity to learn

- Learning not to cheat oneself: Learning to read is learning to give students enormous advantages in life It may lead to better jobs, to

personal development, interest and enjoyment Students who do not want to learn to read can easily cheat but they are only cheating themselves

Reading lessons in Tiếng Anh 12 textbooks consist of three stages

“Before you read” “While you read” and “After you read” to facilitate students’ reading comprehension

This three-stage model is to minimize time consumption and maximize reading effectiveness

3.3 - Data collection instrument

For forty-five students, using questionnaires seems to be an appropriate choice Brown (2001, p 6) states that questionnaires are effective for obtaining the views of all the participants With a view to examining students’ attitudes towards class reading activities, The questionnaire was designed to get information concerning:

1. Students’ reasons for learning English

2. Students’ attitudes towards the role of reading

3. Students’ attitudes towards class reading activities

4. Students’ difficulties when learning reading at school

5. Students’ expectations towards their teachers

6. Students’ effort for improving their reading comprehension

4 - DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

4.1 - Data analysis

4.1.1 - Students’ reasons for learning English

The data obtained from the students’ questionnaire will be discussed to find out the students’ purposes of learning English

OPTIONS

RESULTS

Communicating effectively in English 20 44.4

Passing the school graduation exam 45 100

Completing a compulsory subject at school 13 28.9

Table 1: Students’ reasons for learning English (N = 45)

As shown in the above table, the main purpose of learning English of all

of the 12A1students is to pass the school graduation exam (100%) In the meanwhile, 44.4% of the students learn English with the aim of communicating, 28.9% for completing a compulsory subject, 8.9 % for studying abroad and only 2.2 % (1 student) answered that he just loved English It is interesting to discover that 55.6 % of the students showed their main reason for studying English was to meet the future job requirements They seem to know that with the rapid development and expansion of information technologies, there should be a common language for people of

all countries to exchange information and it is English that is used as means

of international communication

4.1.2 - Students’ attitudes towards the role of reading

a Students’ attention paid to the aspects of language taught at school

The survey results indicate that 100 % of the students spend most of their time on learning Grammar and vocabulary whereas 40% on reading, 35.6 % on speaking, 22.2 % on writing and only 17.7 % on listening It is not surprising to discover that students spend more time on grammar and vocabulary than other skills because their main purpose of learning English

is to pass the graduation examination

b Students’ attitude towards the importance of learning reading comprehension at school

Fascinatingly, most of the students have positive attitudes towards reading 88.9 % of them find the importance of reading and important (22.2% chose “very important” and 66.7% “important”) However, a certain number

of students (11.6 %) do not highly appreciate the important role of reading

It seems that reading is not very beneficial to them

c Students’ attitude toward the benefit of reading

In the survey, 31 students (68.9%) admit that reading can help them enrich their vocabulary Besides, reading can help 24 students (53.3%) broaden their knowledge of the world and 19 students (42.2%) improve their grammar 18 students (40%) can improve other language skills through reading This could reflect the fact that all the four skills ought to be combined in a reading lesson In other words, integrating these skills in teaching a language is very important for teachers

4.1.3 - Students’ attitudes towards class reading activities

a Students’ attitude towards pre- reading activities