Solustions to teacher’s difficulties in teaching reading skills to grade 10th student at quang xuong 3 high school, thanh hoa province

In this situation, the teachers need to take a serious look at the teachingand learning of English in general and the teaching and learning of the readingskills in particular so as to su

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO THANH HÓA

TRƯỜNG THPT QUẢNG XƯƠNG III

SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

TÊN ĐỀ TÀI SOLUTIONS TO TEACHERS’ DIFFICULTIES IN

STUDENTS AT QUANG XUONG II HIGH SCHOOL,

THANH HOA PROVINCE

Người thực hiện: Ngô Thị Khuyên

Chức vụ: Giáo viên

Đơn vị công tác: Trường THPT Quảng Xương III Sáng kiến thuộc lĩnh vực (môn): Tiếng Anh

THANH HOÁ 2016

Table of content

2.1 The Current Situation of Teaching and Learning the Textbook

at Quang Xuong 3 High School

6

4.1 Improving Students’ Reading Interest and Motivation and

making Reading Lessons Funny

13

4.2 Promoting Students with a Variety of Reading Strategies 14

4.3 Varying Reading Activities 14

PART IV: CONCLUSION 19

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the Study

English has experienced its popularity in Vietnam over the last fewdecades The demand for English even gets stronger when Vietnam fosters itsinternational relations English, in parallel with the knowledge of some otherfields, turns out to be a key to the door into the bustling world That is whyEnglish is now widely taught in almost all education institutions, at every level

At Quang Xuong 3 High School, where the author works, all of theEnglish teachers have the same problems They have to confront some majorobstacles in reading, such as: students’ habits of word-by-word reading,excessive focus on details rather than main ideas, poor vocabulary and limitedbackground knowledge, etc If those difficulties are not found out and nosolutions to overcome are given, it is certain that reading lessons can not besuccessful and it even becomes worse

In this situation, the teachers need to take a serious look at the teachingand learning of English in general and the teaching and learning of the readingskills in particular so as to suggest suitable techniques to enable the teaching andlearning of the reading comprehension at high school to be more effective.Being a teacher of English at Quang Xuong 3 High School, the researcherwishes to give a hand in promoting reading skills for her tenth-form students

This matter of fact has offered her a chance to conduct a study on “ Solutions to teachers’ difficulties in teaching reading skills to grade 10 th students at Quang Xuong 3 High School” It is hoped that this study may offer the English

teachers at schools in general and the English teachers at Quang Xuong 3 highschool in particular the ways to teach reading skills more effectively

2 Aims of the Study

The specific objectives of the study are:

● To investigate the Grade 10th students’ attitude towards speaking skills in theirEnglish learning

● To examine the activities and techniques applied by the teachers atQuang Xuong 3 high school

● To identify the teachers’ major difficulties in teaching reading skills andexamine the causes

● To offer possible solutions to the difficulties

were not at the same level So, the classes must be picked by random sampling.The 2 classes chosen were: 10D2, 10D4.

4 Scope and Significance of the Study

This study is limited to:

- the 10th form students at Quang Xuong 3 High School;

- the teachers of English at Quang Xuong 3 High School; and

- reading comprehension in the textbook “Tieng Anh 10”

The findings and suggested solutions most appropriately applied to theteachers of English as well as 10th grade students at Quang Xuong 3 HighSchool That is, the teachers and the students will be able to find ways toimprove their process of teaching and learning reading skills

5 Method of the Study

The study was designed to use a number of methods to achieve its aims.Firstly, classroom observation was carried out to investigate the reality ofdifficulties the teachers confronted in their teaching reading skills Then, twotypes of survey questionnaire were conducted with informants of teachers ofEnglish and students randomly selected from 2 classes at Quang Xuong 3 HighSchool In addition to questionnaire, informal interviews with the informants werealso employed

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter is aimed at providing a theoretical background to this study.The review of issues most relevant to the focus of the study will be included:concepts of reading and reading comprehension, reading process, readingdifficulties for foreigner learners

1.1 The Nature of Reading

Reading comprehension

According to Grellet (1981: 3): “Reading comprehension orunderstanding a written text means extracting the required information from it asefficiently as possible.” The author means that reading comprehension is anactivity which aims at decoding the meaning of word combination in the text inthe most efficient way

1.2 Teaching Reading Comprehension

1.2.1 Relationship between Reading and Other Skills

In the process of teaching and learning English, it is very crucial forlearners to realize the integration of language That is the possibilities of otheraspects of foreign program Therefore, reading skill is closely related to writing,listening and speaking skills Understanding relations will help learners succeed

1.2.2 The Roles of the Teacher and the Students in a Reading Lesson

1.2.2.1 The Roles of the Teacher

So far there have been various approaches to teaching reading, such as thetraditional approach, process-based approach and task-based approach (Pham,

2005 cited in Hoang et al., 1005: 517) In all these approaches, apart from theevident roles of learners in the process of reading comprehension, the roles ofteachers in an EFL reading lesson are also significant and worth mentioning.Discussing the roles of the teacher in teaching reading, Richard and Amato(1988) emphasize:

“The first role is to facilitate communicative process between allparticipants in the classroom, and between these participants and thevarious activities and text The second role is to act interdependent withinthe learning teaching group.”

Being concerned with the roles of the teacher in teaching reading, Harmer(2001: 213) gives an opinion that the teacher needs to create interest in the topicand task He also needs to work as an organizer, observer, feedback organizer andprompter

▪ An observer

▪ A feedback organizer

▪ A prompter

In general, the teacher must be aware of what they need to do in a readinglesson Playing their roles well will certainly helps the teacher lead successfulreading lessons.

1.2.2.2 The Role of the Students

In communicative language teaching, the learners are regarded as thecentre of the lesson It is true in every reading lesson During the reading processthe students play the roles of an active and creative listener and as well asreader

1.2.3 The Three Stages of a Reading Lesson

Although the role of reading activities in teaching reading is madeapparent, how they are organized and sequenced in a lesson varies amongdifferent approaches to language teaching In the light of recent and widelyaccepted communicative approach, it is a common practice that a reading lessonincludes three stages: pre-, while- and post-reading (William, 1984; Dubin andBycina, 1991 cited in To et al., 2006: 158) (Hoang et al., 2005)

1.3 Difficulties in Teaching Reading

As being mentioned above, no one can deny the important role of readingskill However, it is uneasy for a language learner to be successful in learningreading because there are many factors affecting the success such as reader’sreading habits, attitude, motivation, exposure to the target language, textualcharacteristics, the way reading skill is taught and the teacher’s classroomtechniques or learning environment, etc Jolly (1978), Coady (1979) and othersgrouped those factors into three types: reading skill problem, language problem, andcultural background knowledge

1.3.1 Reading Skill Problems

According to Jolly (1987), Coady (1979) and others, one’s first languagereading ability plays a more important role in reading success than his level of

the target language does, because foreign language reading requires thetransference of old skills, not the learning of new ones They believe that if thereader has a poor reading ability in his mother tongue, then, he can not read well in aforeign language.

Students’ limited reading skills create many problems, such as readingslowly, failing to understand and summarize main ideas of the reading text,unable to guess or predict the meaning of the words or phrases used in thatcontext, etc Therefore, such students find it hard to be successful in theirreading They cannot understand the text thoroughly and those are the reasons whythey do not want to keep on reading

1.3.2 Language Problems

Yorio (1971: 108) argues that reading problems of FL learners are duelargely to the imperfect knowledge of the target language and to mother tongueinference in the reading process Therefore, learners with limited knowledge ofthe target language might have considerable difficulties when reading in thetarget language

1.3.3 Cultural Background Knowledge

Apart from language problems and reading skill problems, culturalbackground knowledge can also affect students’ ability as culture plays a centralrole for many topics And that comprehension of a culturally unfamiliar text ismore difficult than comprehension of a culturally familiar text, because readers,facing up with unfamiliar context, may mistranslate or misinterpret the textaccording to their own cultural experience

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 2.1 The Current Situation of Teaching and Learning the Textbook at Quang Xuong 3 High School

2.1.1 Introduction to Quang Xuong 3 High School and its Students

Quang Xuong 3 High School is located in Sam Son town, Thanh Hoaprovince This shool has been in operation for 33 years The school issurrounded by villages Like other high schools, its duty is to train students fromthe 10th form to the 12th form

The students at Quang Xuong 3 High School are approximately 16-18years old Lots of them come from comparatively poor families so their learningcondition is low Their parents can hardly afford to pay extra expenses for theirchildren’s schooling such as a dictionary, a cassette player or even some Englishreference booksMoreover, most of the students have low English level

In addition, their lack of awareness on the importance of English as well

as motivation makes them not interest in English As a result, most of them donot have the habit of learning independently and tend to depend on the textbooks and onthe teacher for knowledge

2.1.2 An Overview of the Textbook “Tieng Anh 10”

2.1.2.1Contents of the Textbook

The textbook “Tieng anh 10” is designed under a theme-based approachwith 16 units Each unit is about a theme There are five parts in each unitarranged as follows: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing, and LanguageFocus

Reading is the beginning part of each unit The aim of this is that throughreading and through developing reading skills such as skimming, scanning, etc.the students are provided with language input

2.1.2.2 Characteristics of Reading Passages and Reading Tasks in the Textbook

Characteristics of Reading Passages

A reading passage in the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” has 190-230 words inlength Each passage is closely related to the theme of the unit It is divided intosmall paragraphs Some passages are long and rather difficult for the students tounderstand, as there are a lot of difficult new words and grammatical structures

It takes time to elicit them

Characteristics of reading tasks

In each unit, three kinds of tasks are designed Each task has its own aim

- Task 1 helps the students to understand words or phrases in the passage

- Task 2 helps the students to comprehend the content of the passage

- Task 3 helps the students to have an overall understanding of the passage

2.1.3 Teachers and Methods of teaching

Our school has got nine English teachers, aged from 33 to 42 As far asthe methodology is concerned, the teachers are aware of the new trend inteaching method nowadays: Learner-centered approach They try to give theirstudents independence in studying by asking them to work through the text ordiscuss subject matters in groups or in pairs after giving them some instructions.However, not all of the teachers can do that and the amount of time spent insuch activities is not much Furthermore, most of the 10th form students can not

do these themselves Therefore, the teachers often employ the traditional method

of teaching in reading lessons Most of the time, the teachers play the key role inthe classroom, being the main speakers working through the text

2.2 Research Instruments

Three measurement instruments were developed for data collection: (1)classroom observation, (2) questionnaire, (3) interview Those appear in theappendixes

2.2.1 Questionnaire

These two types of questionnaire included both closed and open-endedquestions Questionnaire for teachers was written in English, while the one forstudents was written in Vietnamese to make sure that the students properlyunderstood the questions

Questionnaire designed for teachers aimed at seeking information of workexperience, teachers’ attitudes towards the reading sections in the textbookEnglish 10, and the problems they confronted with in the process of teachingreading skills

Questionnaire for students tended to survey on their perception about theimportance of reading skills in learning English as a compulsory subject atschool, their evaluation of their current speaking competence, and difficulties theyencountered in learning reading skills

2.2.2 Class Observation

The researcher carried out classroom observations by visiting 3 classes inreading periods and recording all activities occurred in each class: the teacher’spresentation on the reading lessons, the teacher’s questions and explanations, thestudents’ performance in English The observation checklists for reading class weremade The checklists included five criteria:

All the interviews were conducted in Vietnamese in order for theparticipants to fully articulate their views without being constrained by the use

of a second language They were then fully transcribed, translated and analyzed

by the researcher to uncover the emerging themes

2.3 Data Collection Procedure

Data collecting methods used for the study comprised surveyquestionnaire, classroom observations, and interviews

Classroom observations were conducted for one lesson for each class inthree weeks for three teachers Because the teachers were not comfortable withtheir lessons being video- or audio- recorded, the researcher took extensive fieldnotes of all the observed events in the classroom Each teacher was interviewedonce on the last day of classroom observation

Then, based on the classroom observations, the questionnaire wasdesigned for the students and teachers

It is noted that in order to make it easy in analyzing data, 82 students ofthe tenth form were surveyed In stead of randomly selecting the individual, theresearcher randomly selected the classes for investigation

Totally 85 copies of the questionnaire were delivered to students and 5teachers and all of the copies were returned and respectively used for analysis