Exploiting some reading comprehension strategies to enhance reading skill of 11th form students

The ways to exploit reading comprehension strategies to enhance students’ reading skill.. Researchers believe that teaching productive reading strategies motivate students to read and fa

TABLE OF CONTENT

TABLE OF CONTENT……… 1

PART I: INTRODUCTION……… 2

1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study……… 2

2 Objectives and scope of the study……… 2

PART II: DEVELOPMENT……… 3

1 Literature Review ……… 3

1.1 Reading comprehension……… 3

1.2 Reading strategies……… 3

1.3 The importance reading strategies……… 5

2 Current situation of learning reading skill……… 6

3 The ways to exploit reading comprehension strategies to enhance students’ reading skill 6

3.1 Teaching process……… 6

3.2 Pre – test……… 10

3.3 Post – test……… 11

4 Results and discussion……… 11

4.1 Results……… 11

4.2 Discussion……… 12

5 Teaching implications……… 13

PART 3: CONCLUSION……… 14

REFERENCES ……… ……… 15

PART I : INTRODUCTION

1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study

Teaching a foreign language in general and English in particular requires great knowledge, experiences and efforts

According to Carrell (1984:1), “for many students, reading is by far the most important of the four macro skills, particularly in English as a second or a foreign language” Reading is an essential part of language instruction at every level because it supports learning in many ways Firstly, reading material is a language input Students given a variety of materials to read have many opportunities to absorb vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure and discourse structure Secondly, reading for content information in the language classroom provides students with both authentic reading material and an authentic purpose for reading Finally, reading helps students broaden their knowledge of the lifestyles and worldviews of the people whose language they are studying

Researchers believe that teaching productive reading strategies motivate students to read and facilitate reading comprehension (Anderson, 2003; Eskey, 2002; Grabe, 2004) It also appears that good students apply a variety of reading strategies to their learning Therefore, the importance of teaching reading strategies

is to not also facilitate students’ reading process but help student enrich their vocabulary and grammar as well

What is more, in the context of the upper secondary school, reading is even more important than other three skills of speaking, listening, and writing The reason is that students have to take the examinations, which are grammar- and reading- based However, the students’ reading proficiency is not satisfactory

Thus, this study is conducted to apply some reading comprehension strategies to the eleventh form students (the only class that the researcher is incharge of this school year) Although almost all students have learnt English since grade six, many of them do not know or use appropriate reading strategies yet As a result, they can become easily frustrated when they do not understand what they are reading, and they become demotivated

For the above-mentioned factors, the researcher attempted to conduct a study

named “Exploiting some reading comprehesion strategies to enhance reading

skills of 11 th form students”

2.Objectives and scope of the study

Firstly, the research is carried out to exploit some reading comprehension strategies to the 11th form students Then, the results will reveal some suggestions to enhance students’ reading skill

Secondly, high school students have to be taught all four skills including reading, speaking, listening, and writing However, it is because of the large size of the class and test – oriented that English lesson focuses more on reading Thus, this

research only put the emphasis on reading strategies of the 11th form students of the school year 2016– 2017

PART II : DEVELOPMENT

1 Literature Review

1.1.Reading comprehension

In teaching reading, it is necessary for both teachers and students to have a deep understanding about the definition of reading comprehension

Reading comprehension can be understood as the ability to obtain the information as required in the reading text as efficiently as possible Different scholars offered various points of view on the definition of reading comprehension

Roe, Stoodt and Burns (1987:2) proposed that “reading comprehension is reconstruction, interpretation and evaluation of what author of written content means by using knowledge gained from life experience”

Ur (1996:148), on the other hands, stated that effective reading comprehension is a process with the elements as follow:

• a clear purpose in mind

• an enhanced motivation

• appropriate reading comprehension strategies based on the purposes and motivation

• good prediction

• sufficient background information and vocabulary

• close attention to the significant bits

• fairly high speed From these opinions, what comes up as a common point is that reading comprehension is not only simply understanding what is written, but also is what stimulates students to remember from their experiences That knowledge is then used to get meaning out of printed page, but in the mind of the readers, which included facts, emotion, belief and critical evaluation It can be concluded that reading comprehension is the process of understanding what is conveyed in the text That means, the readers (or the learners), as they read, can recognize the graphic forms of the reading text and understand what is implied behind these forms

1.2.Reading strategies

1.2.1 Definitions

Much attention has been paid to the study of reading strategies and there are

a number of definitions of reading strategies

According to Cohen (1986), reading strategies refer to those mental processes that readers consciously choose to use in accomplishing reading tasks Supporting this idea, Brantmeier (2002) defined reading strategies as the comprehension processes that readers use in order to make sense of what they read

Oxford, Levine & Crookall, (1989) indicated that reading strategy is reading technique and study skill which makes reading more effective and facilitate learning They also elaborated that reading strategies is a process used by the learners to improve reading comprehension and overcome comprehension failures

In short, although many different definitions were given, what can be come

up with is that all the above mentioned definition supported each other What is more, reading strategies can be defined as the ways show readers how to manage their interaction with the written text to comprehend and learn new information from the reading texts effectively

1.2.2 Classifications

Oxford (1990) identified six components of reading strategies as follows:

• Prediction

• Skimming

• Scanning

• Inferring

• Guessing the meaning of new words

• Self – monitoring

There are other scholars who support Oxford’s classification of reading strategies such as Grellet (1986), Kristin, Leah, & Soro (2009) and Smith (1994) Each of the strategies is as below:

• Prediction

Prediction refers to the technique of using the readers’ prior knowledge to guess the meaning or the message of the text from the topics, pictures, key words,

or constructions It is one of the most effective factors that motivate students to read and understand the meaning of the context (Oxford, 1990)

• Skimming

Skimming refers to the technique of reading passages quickly in order to get its gist In skimming, readers do not look for specific information but only for general information (Grellet, 1986)

• Scanning

Scanning is quite similar to skimming in that both of them require a quick glance of a text The difference is that in skimming, readers try to get the general or main information of the text but in scanning, the readers would like to obtain specific information In scanning technique, readers are looking to find particular information – the answer to his/her questions

• Inferring

Inferring refers to activities of reading between the lines which means that readers need to know how to get the message from the words and sentences in a text So, inferring is defined as the interaction between words in a sentence/phrase

or between sentences or phrases (Kristin, Leah, & Soro, 2009)

• Guessing the meaning of new words

Guessing the meaning of new words helps readers to read and understand text quickly because difficult words usually create problems for students and are obstacles in reading comprehension (Smith, 1994)

• Self-monitoring

This strategy allows readers to regulate their reading Awareness of using this strategy helps learners to solve their problems in reading

On the other hand , Anderson (1999) divided reading strategies into six sub types including (1) A activate prior knowledge, (2) C cultivate vocabulary, (3) T teach for comprehension, (4) I increase reading rate, (5) V verify reading strategies, (6) E evaluate progress

In conclusion, different scholars classified reading strategies using different terms, and not in all contexts can learners apply all the above mentioned reading strategies They rather base on the purposes of reading to utilize one/ some/ or all of them to read

This study adopted Oxford’s classification of reading strategies

1.3 The importance reading strategies

Hence, the importance of reading strategies should be aware of

Reading strategies are important as they help readers to reach their reading goals and achieve good results in reading (Block, 1986) As such, students or readers who do not use any strategies in reading usually face difficulties in reading comprehension

Regarding the importance of reading strategies, readers often encounter problems in reading the text and have difficulties in understanding the meaning of the context but reading strategies help them in learning foreign language and reading comprehension In fact, students will be able to relate newly acquired information to their prior knowledge in context areas which is an essential part of reading comprehension skill

According to Dehnad (2005), reading strategy provides learning opportunities, facilitates learning and recalling of information as well as strengthening the reading comprehension ability of language learners Learners need to be explicitly taught how to properly use reading strategies to monitor their reading comprehension Through the employment of reading strategy such as meta-cognitive instruction in English class, EFL learners will be able to improve their reading comprehension and experience a higher level of competency which will further motivate them to read on a regular basis (Block, 1992)

Chamot (2005) stated that students have their own preference of strategy, but

in order to become motivated and selective strategy users, EFL learners should self monitor their reading strategy In other words, EFL learners need to consciously know what and when to apply appropriate reading strategy when comprehension fails

All in all, it can not be denied that reading strategies are of great importance towards second language learners Hence, students should be exposed to multiple

reading strategies as well as the appropriate use of those strategies for better results.

In addition, students should be taught to become more aware of their own reading behavior and the processes involved in reading to employ the reading strategies effectively

2. Current situation of learning reading skill

This school year, I am in charge of only one 11th from class including 12 boys and 32 girls

After a few reading lessons, I observed students’s performances, wote down students’ mistakes, difficulties, strengths and weaknesses to understand the situation of how my students can apply reading comprehension strategies while learning reading, and the problems are as below:

It can be seen that although students have learnt English for many years, they come from different schools with different teaching methods Therefore, their levels and proficiency also vary Additionally, in such context of large class size and short period of time, not all students can achieve the goals, understand and remember the information of the reading texts Besides, there remained some students who started reading at the beginning and went word by word, stopped to look up every unknown vocabulary item Additionally, many of the students had obstacles regarding grammatical structures in reading comprehension lessons That

is to say, many of them do not know or use appropriate reading strategies yet

From the problems above, I decided to teach reading skill with the use of reading comprehension strategies as well as apply pre – test and post- test to figure out the effectiveness after applying reading comprehension strategies to reading lessons

3. The ways to exploit reading comprehension strategies to enhance

students’ reading skill.

3.1.Teaching process

The study adopted Oxford’s classification of reading strategies including prediction, skimming, scanning, inferring, guessing the meaning of new words, and self- monitoring These strategies can be applied throughout three stages of reading lessons

Below are some of reading tasks extracted from my reading lessons with the use of reading comprehension strategies in order to enhance students’ reading skill

• Prediction

Prediction means using knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions

about content and vocabulary and check comprehension; using knowledge of the text type and purpose to make predictions about discourse structure; using knowledge about the author to make predictions about writing style, vocabulary, and content To use this strategy, I got Ss to preview the headings and illustration to

get the main idea of the text before reading Also, I asked Ss to relate prior knowldege to the information of the text they are reading

• Skimming

Skimming is a process of speed reading for getting general meaning: quickly getting the gist or overview of a passage or book

With this strategy, I could apply to some kinds of tasks like complete the summary,

or matching the headings to the paragraphs

Unit 15: The Space Conquest Task 2: Match the headings to the paragraphs

Time: 7 minutes

Method: individual work – pair work and whole class

- I instructed Ss to read the first paragraph carefully and try to sum up, in the Ss’ own words, what it is about Then Ss should search through the list of headings provided in the task to find the most suitable answer and m ake sure the heading chosen sums up the entire paragraph and not just one idea within it

- Then I called on some Ss to give their answers and asks other Ss – to say whether they agree or disagree Then, I gave feedback and the correct Answers:

Paragraph 1: B Paragraph 2: D Paragraph 3: E

Paragraph 4: C Paragraph 5: A

• Scanning

Scanning is a process of looking through a text very rapidly for specific information

When applying scanning strategy, students are enabled to deeply understand the content of the reading passage Some kinds of reading tasks such as answer the questions, choose the best answer, scanning to find the reference, and decide whether the statements are True (T) or False (F), etc are often acquired by using this strategy

Unit 6: Competitions Task 2: Answer the following questions

Time: 8 minutes

Method: individual work – pair work and whole class

- T asked Ss to read the 6 questions carefully to understand them and underline the key words to decide what information they need to find in the text Then T got the Ss to go back to the passage and locate the key words, read around the key words carefully to find the answer

- T asked Ss to check their answers with their partners, and calls on some Ss

to tell and explain their answers

Unit 8: Celebrations Task 2: Decide whether the statements are true (T) or false (F)

Time: 6 minutes

Method: Individual work – Pair work and whole class

- T instructed the Ss to read through the statements to get an idea about the topic, and then read the statements carefully, underline the key words to understand the main point

- T asked Ss to search for the section of the text dealing with the idea or fact and read it carefully to decide whether the statements are true or false

• Inferring

Inferring means finding clues and add those clues to what have been known or read based on prior knowledge To apply this strategy, I asksed Ss to use their knowledge of grammar or vocabulary to help understand difficult parts in reading texts

• Guessing the meaning of new words

Guessing is using prior knowledge of the subject and the ideas in the text as clues to the meanings of unknown words, instead of stopping to look them up Some types of tasks requiring this strategy are guessing the meaning of the words

in context, finding the synonyms/ antonyms, matching the words with their definitions, and gap – filling, etc

With this strategy, the teachers should ask students to work individually or in pairs, scan the passage; locate the new words/ phrases Then students read the sentences holding the words/ phrases carefully and base on the context to guess their meaning

Unit 9: The Post Office Task 1: Circle the letter (A, B, C, or D) before the word that has the opposite meaning to the italicised word.

Time: 7 minutes

Method: individual work – pair work and whole class

T got Ss to locate the words in italic in the passage Then T asked Ss to read around these words so that they can guess their meanings

For example, the word “speedy’ in line 3 in the paragraph about Express Money Transfer is the same meaning as “quick” Ss can get the meaning of “speedy” thanks to such words as “express” and“quick”

However, I noticed that some of the words in this Task are hard to guess because the context is not helpful enough Therefore, I gave Ss more instruction and guide, for example, teaching them to combine different methods to deal with difficult words For example, for the word “spacious” occurring in line 2 of the first paragraph, I guided Ss so that they see that this word may have a positive meaning because it is used to advertise Thanh Ba post office Advertisements often contain positive words

Looking at all the four options in the answer to Q1, Ss could see that A, B, and D all have a positive meaning, so the answer should be C Also, “spacious” is

related to “space”, so it may mean “having a lot of space” “Cramped” means

“narrow”, so it should be the answer

– T got Ss to do the task individually, then discuss the answers in pairs, and finally T checks the answers with the whole class

Answer:

1 C 2 B 3 D 4 C

Unit 16: The Wonders of the World Task 1: The words in the box all appear in the passage Fill in each blank with a suitable word.

Time: 7 minutes

Method: individual work – pair work and whole class

- T asked Ss to read through the words in the box The words mysterious, wonder and tomb are quite familiar with Ss, so T asked them to work out the

meaning of the rest three words However, it is possible that Ss may just be able to

guess the meaning of chamber in context, based on the surrounding words and sentences T have to explain the meaning of spiral (xoáy trôn ốc) and ramp (bờ dốc)

- T asked Ss to read through the sentences provided in the task to identify the part of speech of the word to fill in each blank For example, in sentence 1, 2, 3 and

4 the word to fill in should be a noun; in sentence 5 and 6 the word should be an adjective

- T asked Ss to read the first sentence carefully to understand the meaning roughly Read the words in the box to choose the most suitable one to fill in the blank, paying attention to their right form and continue with the rest of the sentences

– T asked Ss to work individually to do the task T goes around to help Ss when necessary

– T asked Ss to exchange their answers with other Ss and asks Ss for their answers and tells them to explain their choices

Answer:

1 tomb 2 wonder 3 ramp 4 chamber 5 mysterious 6 spiral

• Self – mornitoring

It is checking comprehension during reading T can apply this strategy to all three stages of reading lesson including before you read, while you read, and after you read At the first stage, T asks Ss to choose the reading strategies according to their reading purposes At the second stage, T gets Ss to read the comprehension questions to decide important information that should be noted What is more, Ss need to skip the words that are not essential for comprehending the texts while reading Then, at the last stage, Ss are supposed to check if their answers to the questions are correct or not after reading Also, they need to summarize the main ideas of the texts after reading

For instance, the T gets Ss to work in pairs/groups to use mindmap to summarize the reading passage

3.2.Pre - test

As mentioned above, after some first reading lessons, I took notice of

students’ lack of appropriate reading strategies Thus, I decided to give the students onepre – test to see how good their performances are This test comprises of

questions that requires students to apply all strategies they have learned to fulfill it

At first, the students were not given any intructions or guide, so they had to

do the test on their own After that, I checked with the whole class, gave remaks and carefully instructed them how to deal with each kind of question of the test

- Factual questions: (Questions 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7,10) Students need to read the question carefully, underline the key words Then they have to scan the passage to locate the information based on the key words, pay attention to synonyms and antonyms Next they have to read the information around the key words to find the answer With this type of question, correct answer is the one with exact information

- Negative factual questions: Students have to do all the steps as dealing with factual questions but they should bear in mind that negative factual questions do not hold the exact information or the information is not given in the passage Thus they have to eliminate three wrong answers and test the correct one

- Vocabulary questions: (question 8) With this type of question, students have to find synonyms or antonyms of one word/phrase in order to test students’ ability of guessing words in context The words can be totally new one or the old one with new meaning What students have to do is to skim the questions and four answers and then scan the passage to find the word Then they have to read the sentence holding the word, basing on the context to guess the meaning of the word They also can translate quickly the sentence and replace four answers to choose the mostmeaningful and logic word, pay attention to synonyms and antonyms

- Reference questions (question 9): with this type of question, students must scan the passage to find the pronoun, then find the noun(s) before the pronoun, bear

in mind grammar and logic meaning It is noted that 80% answer is subject of the stament, clause, etc before the pronoun

- Inference questions: students need to read the questions carefully, underline the key words, scan the passage and eliminate the answers based on key words

- Finding main idea: (question 4) Students need to skim the passage from the beginning to the end to have the overview of the reading text, and focus on the first and last sentence of the passage Then they have to read the 4 answers, underline the key words and locate the answer in the reading text The correct answer is the one summarizing exactly the content of the passage It is noted that this kind of question should be done after all other questions are answered

(Appendix 1)