an investigation into reading comprehension strategies reported by english major freshmen at nong lam university

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to investigate university students’ perceived use of strategies to read academic materials in English as Foreign Language EFL context across differ

AN INVESTIGATION INTO READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES REPORTED BY ENGLISH MAJOR FRESHMEN

AT NONG LAM UNIVERSITY

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT

OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS (TESOL)

By

NGUYEN MINH TRANG

Supervised by

Dr BUI THI THUC QUYEN

HO CHI MINH CITY, 2017

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I declare this thesis entitled “AN INVESTIGATION INTO READING

COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES REPORTED BY ENGLISH MAJOR FRESHMEN AT NONG LAM UNIVERSITY” is the result of my own work

except as cited in the reference

The thesis has not been accepted for any degree and it is not currently submitted in candidature of any other degree

Ho Chi Minh City, 2017

Nguyen Minh Trang

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Bui Thi Thuc Quyen I am very grateful for her help, suggestions, advice, and sympathies Without her patience and valuable help, I could have not finished this thesis on schedule

I gratefully acknowledge to all teachers and students from Faculty of Foreign Language and Pedagogy at Nong Lam University who facilitated my data collection, so I could successfully collect the data

Finally, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to my parents for their great support and help Without their encouragement and devotion, I would have not been able to complete the thesis

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to investigate university students’ perceived use

of strategies to read academic materials in English as Foreign Language (EFL) context across different levels of proficiency Besides, it was designed to analyze whether the use of reading strategies among EFL first-year student differed according to their gender and different lengths of English learning In order to fulfill the research aims, both quantitative method and qualitative method were implemented for data collection Quantitative data were collected from the results of

a reading comprehension test and the questionnaire administered to 120 freshmen majoring in English at Nong Lam University Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 students selected from the participants to collect qualitative data While the data from the reading test and the questionnaire were gathered and analyzed by SPSS statistical package version 22, the semi-structured interview data were recorded, transcribed and then analyzed by the method of content analysis

The results indicated that the participants reported to employ strategies on reading at medium level of frequency and there was not any significant correlation between students’ awareness of strategies and their reading scores However, some differences in utilizing reading strategies between successful and unsuccessful readers were revealed in this study Furthermore, this study indicated that the students’ reading strategy use was not significantly affected by their gender or length of learning English These findings have offered detailed insight into issues related to freshmen’s reading comprehension and reading strategy use at Nong Lam University They are hoped to be helpful for teachers and learners of EFL at this university and other similar contexts Finally, based on the limitations of this study, directions are provided for future research

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES vii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS viii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Problem statement 1

1.2 Research aims 2

1.3 Research questions 2

1.4 Research significance 3

1.5 Working definition of key terms 3

1.6 Thesis structure 4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Reading comprehension in EFL context 6

2.2 EFL reading strategies 8

2.3 Classification of reading strategies in EFL context 10

2.4 Reading strategies for better reading comprehension performance 13

2.5 Successful and less successful EFL readers 15

2.6 Previous related studies 17

2.6.1 Studies on students’ frequency use of reading strategies in EFL context 17 2.6.2 Studies on reading strategy use between successful and unsuccessful readers 19

2.6.3 Studies on reading strategy use between male and female students 22

2.6.4 Studies on the relationship between reading strategy use and length of English learning 23

2.7 Chapter summary 24

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 25

3.1 Research design 25

3.2 Research questions 25

3.3 Research context 26

3.4 Participants 26

3.5 The reading course 27

3.6 Instruments 27

3.6.1 The reading test 28

3.6.2 The Questionnaire 29

3.6.3 Pilot of the study 31

3.6.4 Reliability and validity of the questionnaire 32

3.6.5 The semi-structured interviews 32

3.7 Data collection procedures 34

3.8 Data analysis 35

3.8.1 Questionnaire data 36

3.8.2 Interview data 37

3.9 Chapter summary 37

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 38

4.1 Test of reliability 38

4.2 Results of students’ questionnaire 39

4.2.1 Students’ frequency of use of reading strategies 40

4.2.2 Relationship between reading strategy awareness and reading competence 45

4.2.3 Relationship between perceived use of reading strategies and gender 49

4.2.4 Relationship between reading strategy awareness and length of learning English 51

4.3 Findings of students’ interviews 55

4.4 Discussion of findings 59

4.5 Chapter summary 64

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 65

5.1 Summary of major findings 65

5.2 Implications 67

5.3 Limitations and recommendations 68

5.4 Chapter summary 69

REFERENCES 70

APPENDIX A 79

APPENDIX B 91

APPENDIX C 95

APPENDIX D 99

APPENDIX E 100

APPENDIX F 101

LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1 Cronbach’s Alpha of the questionnaire 39

Table 4.2 Five-point Likert scale 39

Table 4.3 Three levels of strategy usage 40

Table 4.4 Means of Reported Strategy Used 40

Table 4.5 Descriptive Statistics of EFL students’ perceived use of reading strategies 41

Table 4.6 Preferences of Reading Strategy by the participants 42

Table 4.7 Descriptive statistics of the reading comprehension test score 45

Table 4.8 Descriptive statistics for reading strategies of three groups 46

Table 4.9 One-way ANOVA of overall reading strategy use among three groups 46

Table 4.10 Strategies used by successful and unsuccessful readers 47

Table 4.11 Descriptive statistics for reading strategy use according to gender 50

Table 4.12 Independent sample t-test for reading strategy used by gender 50

Table 4.13 Descriptive Statistic of participants’ length of learning English 51

Table 4.14 Correlation between reading strategy awareness and length of English learning 52

Table 4.15 Profile of the participants 55

Table 4.16 Strategies used to tackling reading problems 57

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter is designed to offer an introduction including the statement of problems, research aims, research significance, and working definition of key terms

of this study Finally, the structure of the thesis is provided in this chapter

1.1 Problem statement

Reading is considered to be the primary skill in learning English as Foreign Language (EFL), and it can be explained as a process in which learners use their experience, knowledge and attitude to comprehend the text (Adiguzel & Gurses, 2013) It is widely known that reading can improve other skills such as writing or speaking, and it also enhances the process to acquire information from several sources (Yilmaz, 2012) Lee (2012) considers English reading as “a fundamental form of language inputs, and a psycholinguistic process for active reconstruction of

a message from written language” (p 310) Although most of EFL learners do not have to speak English in their daily lives, they need to read a great deal of materials written in English so as to obtain “the wealth of information” (Eskey, 2005, cited in Zhou, 2011, p.46) In Vietnam, especially in universities, every English major student has to take at least a course on reading comprehension as one of the compulsory subjects Moreover, reading comprehension is an essential part in almost every EFL exam such as National High School Examination, IELTS (International English Language Testing System), TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), and so forth

On the other hand, comprehending a reading text is not an easy task, especially in foreign language Many researchers assert that learners of EFL are “ill-equipped to handle the academic reading demands” (Maasum & Maarof, 2012, p 1250) Pang (2008) points out that EFL learners’ proficiency in reading is influenced by many factors, such as word recognition, familiarity with the reading topics or structure, and so forth Additionally, many research studies conducted

have proved that learners who are successful in reading comprehension are the ones who “are active and use a variety of strategies as they read (Keene & Zimmermann,

1997, cited in Scharlach, 2008) Cantrell and Carter (2009; cited in Raftari, Seyyedi

& Ismail, 2012) also agree that successful reading associates most with

“understanding about the kinds of reading strategies” Hence, reading strategies and use of these strategies also play a very important role in processing the reading text (Pang, 2008) However, “there could be some differences in frequency and choices

of the strategies among countries” (Kasimi, 2012, p 170), and the strategies that are frequently employed and the differences in the way successful readers and less successful readers apply have not been extensively researched in the context of Vietnam In addition, at Nong Lam University, although every first year student of English Department reported that they had been taught the awareness of strategies

on reading comprehension in English, most of them admitted that they were not able to monitor these strategies or employ the most suitable ones when encountering difficulties in reading From the two concerns above, the current study is conducted

to investigate the reading strategies employed among first year students at Nong Lam University and how successful and less successful readers have applied such strategies when perform the tasks of reading academic materials in English

1.3 Research questions

In order to achieve these aims mentioned above, the current study addresses the following research questions:

1) What is the frequency of use of reading strategies reported by English major freshmen at Nong Lam University?

2) What are the differences in the employment of reading strategies of successful and unsuccessful readers? To what extent do the participants’ gender and the lengths of time devoted to their English learning affect their reading strategy use?

1.4 Research significance

This study gives an in-depth understanding of first-year students’ use of strategies on reading at Nong Lam University It first helps the teachers of EFL reading know which strategies freshmen tend to utilize in their reading process Secondly, from this finding, teachers can examine how effectively the students have employed these strategies when comprehending a reading text in English Thirdly, the students are provided with the knowledge as well as skills in employing reading strategies successfully Finally, the current study is hoped to be a reference for those who are concerned about EFL reading comprehension and reading strategies at universities in Vietnam

1.5 Working definition of key terms

Key terms of this study were defined as follows:

Academic reading: is explained as “purposeful and critical reading of a range

of lengthy academic texts for completing the study of specific major subject areas” (Sengupta, 2002, cited in Hoang, 2016, p 8) In the current study, academic reading refers to reading academic or school-related materials

English as a Foreign Language (EFL): English is considered a foreign language when it is “for learners in whose community English is not the usual language of communication” (Thornbury, 2006, p 74) He also states that “the distinction between a foreign language and a second language is not always clear in

practice” (p 74) In the current study, EFL refers to English that students learn as an academic subject, and they may not use to it communicate in their daily life

EFL context: In this study it refers to the situation in which English is used as

a foreign language

used to support the learning process” (p 127), such as “coursebooks, workbooks- visual aids, charts, board games, Cuisenaire rods, audio and video materials, as well

as the software that is run by computers, data projectors and interactive whiteboards” (p 127) In this study, materials refer to the printed or written documents

Reading comprehension: It is defined as “an activity aimed to understand the messages of a particular text” (Williams, 1998, cited in Cahyono & Widiati, 2006,

p 37) In the current study, reading comprehension refers to the ability to fully understand the reading materials

Reading strategies: Cohen (1990, cited in Zare & Othman, 2013, p 188) defines reading strategies as “mental processes that readers consciously select to use

to complete reading tasks successfully” In this study, reading strategies refer to actions or techniques the students select to overcome reading comprehension difficulties and fulfill the reading tasks

The students: In the current study, this term refers to first-year students majoring in English at Nong Lam University participated in the current study

1.6 Thesis structure

This thesis is comprised of five chapters

Chapter 1 offers an introduction of the study including the statement of problem, the research aims, research questions, research significance, working definition of key terms and the structure of this thesis

Chapter 2 provides a review on theoretical and empirical literature beginning with the concept of reading comprehension and its feature A summary of related previous studies will be presented at the last section of this chapter

Chapter 3 describes the context, the participants, and the main instruments, presents the procedure and the methods to collect and analyze data from the main instruments of this study

Chapter 4 presents the results from data analysis of the questionnaire and the findings from semi-structured interviews, a discussion on the results is subsequently provided in this chapter

Chapter 5 summarizes the major findings in chapter 4, addresses theoretical and practical implications, demonstrates limitations of the study, and gives future research direction

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter aims to review theories of reading comprehension, reading strategies and other issues relating to them in EFL context It also provides a summary of previous studies conducted with university students on their use of reading strategies when reading academic materials in English

2.1 Reading comprehension in EFL context

A great number of researchers insist on the important role of reading to master

a foreign language K T-C Chen and S C-L Chen (2015) indicate that reading is

an essential part in a foreign language learning because reading is one of the “means

of data collection” (Mirzapour & Mozaheb, 2015, p 389) and “a means of communicating information between the writer and the reader” (Budiharso, 2014, p 190) Through reading activities and reading materials, the learners learn about a variety of vocabulary items as well as grammar points (Naidu et al., 2013) Therefore, they can “receive valuable linguistic input to build up language proficiency” (Erten & Razi, 2003; cited in Kasimi, 2012, p 160) Moreover, as Budiharso (2014) states, reading can be seen as “a kind of dialogue between the reader and the text” (p 191) and from the written text, the reader can understand what the writer wants to express

Reading is more than a process of looking at or saying the printed or written words and symbols Reading has been considered as “a complex cognitive activity that is crucial for adequate functioning and for obtaining information in current society and requires an integration of memory and meaning construction” (Alfassi,

2004, cited in Zare & Othman, 2013, p 187) According to Budiharso (2014), reading can be understood as a process of discovering and understanding the meaning of what the writer has represented on the printed material Zare and Othman (2013) also define reading as “an active process in which readers shift between sources of information, elaborate meaning and strategies, monitor their

comprehension, and use the social context to reflect their response” (p 187) Moreover, many researchers agree that reading is a process that requires the readers

to operate or interact with the written text in order to comprehend the texts and obtain the implied idea or the information from the author (Raftari et al., 2012; Karbalaei & Golshan, 2010) It can be concluded that reading is a process of both understanding and interacting with the written language in order to follow the ideas from the writer (Budiharso, 2014)

Therefore, readers are expected to participate in the complex cognitive activity which requires many skills and processes so as to achieve the main goal for reading that is comprehension (Kazemi et al., 2013) Comprehension is defined as “the ability to go beyond the words, to understand the ideas in a text and the relationships that exist between those ideas” (Kazemi et al., 2013, p 2333) In other words, comprehension is a process of “making a sense out of text” (McNell, 1992; cited in Budiharso, 2014, p 191) and “understanding the representation” (Carnine et al., 1990; cited in Budiharso, 2014, p 191) From the definition of reading and comprehension, reading comprehension can be defined as “a process where readers interact with the texts to construct meaning” (Hoang, 2016, p 9) and it is considered not only as the level of understanding a text or a message (Rayner et al., 2001) but also “the result of the interaction among the reader, the text and the context in which reading takes place” (Pei, 2014, p 1147)

Many researchers have so far expressed different views on factors that contribute to reading comprehension Hou (2013) points out the four factors of reader’s decoding ability, reader’s social and cultural background, the text’s level of readability, teachers’ instruction, and classroom environment Meanwhile, Shang (2015) takes several factors that enhance reading comprehension into consideration which are “vocabulary, prior/background knowledge, textual clues, intrinsic motivation or interest, as well as strategic behaviours for monitoring” (p 294) Last but not least, Hoang (2016), after extensively investigating previous studies, lists a variety of factors including reader’s competence of foreign language grammar,

sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and strategy use (Scarcella & Oxford, 1992, cited in Hoang, 2016); additionally, the factors of reader’s purpose or motivation, vocabulary, knowledge of text types, concentration while reading are also added to the list Hoang (2016) also stresses that although there are different factors that influence reading comprehension, the utilization of strategy is believed to play a crucial role in the reading process

To sum up, reading is a crucial skill that every EFL learner has to master and reading comprehension is an essential goal for them to achieve in order to response correctly to the written texts, interact with the author through the texts and access the sources of information in academic context (Karbalaei & Golshan, 2010) Besides, Kung (2013) insists that reading is “a complex language skill” (p 194) and

if learners wish to develop it, they should not follow just one certain way when they read a text Instead, learners need to engage in a complex process which involves getting information from the written text and making sense of it by employing different strategies (Kasimi, 2012)

2.2 EFL reading strategies

As mentioned above, reading comprehension is not easy for EFL learners to master Martinez (2008) finds out that many university students of EFL cannot satisfy the reading demands because they do not know what to read, why to read, how to read and “often show low level of reading strategy knowledge” (Dreyer, 1998; Van Wyk, 2001, cited in Martínez, 2008, p 166) Moreover, Amiryousefi, Dastjerdi and Tavakoli (2012) point out one of the factors that leads to EFL students’ difficulties in reading comprehension is the “lack of appropriate reading strategies” (p 1172) In addition, Zare and Othman (2013) conclude that “research studies on second/foreign language reading have consistently confirmed the importance of reading strategies on developing language learners’ reading comprehension” (p 187), and comprehension cannot happen successfully without

readers’ awareness of strategies (Zare & Othman, 2013) because “strategies are a reader’s resource for understanding” (Block, 1986, cited in Ebrahimi, 2012, p 101)

A large number of researchers have defined the term strategy According to Karbalaei and Golshan (2010), strategy is the way people think and act to deal with

a task Kung (2013) also agrees that strategy is “the result of consciously working” (p 194) in order to achieve a certain goal In language learning, Oxford and Crookall (1989) (cited in Mirzapour & Mozaheb, 2015) define strategies as

“learning techniques, behaviors, problem-solving or study skills which make learning more effective and efficient” (p 389) Besides, Amiryousefi et al (2012) define strategy as “conscious and subconscious mental processes” which the learners employ to “plan what to do” and “control the flow of data” in language acquisition (p 1174) In other words, strategy can be understood as “learning techniques, activities and problems solving skills that enhance learning” (Omar,

2014, p 13)

Recent research studies have made an attempt to define and describe reading strategies as well as confirm the importance of reading strategies in EFL context According to Amiryousefi et al (2012), “reading strategies are a set of mental operations that are employed by the readers to comprehend the text or to solve their comprehension problems” (p 1174) or reading strategies can be simply explained

as “techniques and methods readers use to make their reading successful” (Baker & Boonkit, 2004; cited in Zare & Othman, 2013, p 188) In EFL context, K T-C Chen and S C-L Chen (2015) define reading strategies as “conscious processes, ones in which readers understand the use of EFL reading strategies as they read the text” (p 158) Mirzapour and Mozaheb (2015) claim that reading strategies are “the processes used by students to increase their comprehension or overcome comprehension failure” (p 390) Saengpakdeejit and Intaraprasert (2014) refer reading strategies to “any sets of learning processes, learning techniques, or learning behavior” (p 2599) which EFL students employ to comprehend the reading materials in academic context and improve their reading comprehension skills both

inside and outside the classroom EFL reading strategies can be also described as

“what readers reveal in the ways they manage interactions with the text and how they use strategies to achieve effective reading comprehension” (Carrell et al., 1998; cited in K T-C Chen & S C-L Chen, 2015, p 158) In other words, reading strategies is any action readers take to conceive of a task, understand the reading material, and resolve reading problems in order to enhance comprehension (Lee, 2012)

In conclusion, although there are many definitions and descriptions of EFL reading strategies, it is widely assumed that reading strategies indicate the way readers plan to accomplish a reading task, how they comprehend the written text and how they overcome comprehension problems (Derakhshan & Nazari, 2015) Moreover, after investigating a number of researches, Naidu et al (2013) suggest that EFL learners should develop reading strategies if they want to succeed in reading comprehension To put it another way, “reading strategies are considered as one of the features of cognitive psychology which are essential for a successful comprehension” (Zare & Othman, 2013, p 188)

2.3 Classification of reading strategies in EFL context

Many studies show that researchers have identified and clarified EFL reading strategies into various types (K T-C Chen & S C-L Chen, 2015; Raftari et al., 2012) According to Kung (2013), “the types of reading strategies could be classified by their reading process, characters, and functions” (p 194)

In terms of process, reading strategies are divided into three processes: reading, while-reading, and post-reading In the pre-reading stage, from the title of the reading material, readers probably will have the cues to predict the content as well as be interested in reading the text In the while-reading stage, readers skim for main ideas, focus on the key points in order to comprehend the text Lastly, reviewing the main points or summarizing the contents in the post reading stage

pre-help readers consider if they have fully understood the reading material (Gagné, 1985; Vacca, 1981; Vacca & Vacca, 1986; cited in Kung, 2013)

Yukselir (2014) and K T-C Chen and S C-L Chen (2015) divide EFL reading strategies into two categories: cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies when regarding their characters

Cognitive strategy can be understood as mental process in which learners operate and deal with the tasks in a skillful way in order to complete the task by themselves (Chamot & Kupper, 1989; as cited in Shang, 2010) Learners employ cognitive strategies so as to “construct associations between new and existing knowledge” and “operate on incoming information to enhance learning” (Yukselir,

2014, p.67) In other words, cognitive strategies are interested in “readers’ use of prior knowledge and various strategies in their efforts to construct meaning in the comprehension process” (Pang, 2008; cited in Ebrahimi, 2012, p 102) According

to Shang (2010) and Yukselir (2014), the important cognitive strategies include translating into the first language, reading aloud, underlining the texts, paragraphing

or summarizing the material, note-taking the important ideas, visualizing new knowledge, deduction, using keyword, contextualization, relating new information

to prior background knowledge, predicting outcomes or guessing new information base on available information Cognitive strategies are considered “as the actions and procedures readers use while working with the text” (Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001; cited in Ebrahimi, 2012, p 102) in order to comprehend the reading content (Kung, 2013)

On the other hand, metacognitive strategies are described as “higher thinking skills that help readers achieve awareness of whether they understand a reading text

or not” (Yukselir, 2014, p 68) Shang (2010) states that the use of metacognitive strategies has an important influence on learning achievement, and she also investigates many studies to explore how other researchers categorize metacognitive strategies It can be inferred from her investigation that metacognitive strategies are

generally divided into three types: planning, monitoring and regulating or evaluating Meanwhile, Bishop et al (2005, as cited in Yukselir, 2014) suggest a list

of metacognitive strategies which involves using a variety of senses to visualize and predict the main points of the texts, associating readers’ background with the information the reading text, analyzing text structure, applying lexical and grammatical knowledge to understanding a sentence, exploring inferences to recognize the cause and effect relationship, asking and answering questions, paying attention to the introduction and conclusion of the text to obtain the main points, evaluating, summarizing and synthesizing To conclude, metacognitive strategies help a reader “allocate significant attention to controlling, monitoring, and evaluating the reading process” (Karbalaei & Golshan, 2010, p 67)

Referring to functions, Carrell (1989, cited in Kung, 2013, p 194) categorizes reading strategies into repair, effective, and confident strategies When the readers’ language ability are not strong enough, repair strategy which refers to “using the context or the meaning of the sentence to solve their vocabulary problem” (p 194) helps them to understand the contents of the reading text Meanwhile, effective strategy helps readers succeed in their reading Some examples of effective strategies are “asking someone, taking notes, highlighting, and summarizing, etc.” (p 194) Finally, confident strategy decreases readers’ fearfulness and increases

“their interest to read, including reviewing the article, predicting the contents, and overview the table of contents” (p 194) Kung (2013) states that “these strategies could help readers to get new information and combine their own knowledge to promote the understanding and memorizing of contents” (p 194)

Following Goodman (1970, cited in K T-C Chen & S C-L Chen, 2015) EFL reading strategies are divided into bottom-up and top-down processes Goodman (1986, cited in Omar, 2014) explains that the bottom-up model is a process of decoding the text “which involves identifying letters, words, phrases and then sentences in order to get the meaning” (p 14) This model requires readers to employ the strategies such as “scanning, breaking the lexical items into their

constituent elements, using the knowledge of punctuation etc.” (Amiryousefi et al.,

2012, p 1174) in order to understand the meaning of words or phrases in the reading text Meanwhile, the top-down model is a process of relating “what is being read to readers background knowledge” to comprehend the text (Janzen, 2003, cited

in Zare and Othman, 2013, p 188) Top-down model involves strategies such as

“skimming, connecting or relating the information presented in different sentences

or parts of the text, bringing background knowledge to the text, etc.” (Amiryousefi

et al., 2012, p 1174) which readers make use of to fully understand the reading text Therefore, Amiryousefi et al (2012) conclude that bottom-up strategies are at word-level while top-down strategies are at world-level and these two models “must work

in concert with each other”

It can be concluded that EFL strategies on reading has been categorized into various types (K T-C Chen & S C-L Chen, 2015) However, they have been generally accepted to play an important role in students’ reading performance, and it

is suggested that students should be trained to actively monitor their reading process (Shang, 2010)

2.4 Reading strategies for better reading comprehension performance

A large number of researchers have made an attempt to provide strategies that help to enhance reading comprehension Hosenfeld (1984; cited in Ratna S, 2014), Ratna S (2014), Derakhshan and Nazari (2015) suggest a variety of “good strategies” that are: considering the reading purpose, making use of the title to predict the contents, skimming to get the main points of the reading text, scanning for specific details of the text, relating information from the text to reader’s prior knowledge, note-taking, guessing the meaning of a word from context and grammatical categories, summarizing, paraphrasing, understanding a paragraph by reading the first line, skipping unknown and unimportant words, considering text organization, reading the text again to deal with comprehension breakdown, focusing on reading for meaning, evaluating guesses’ validity, keeping reading,

acknowledging the word’s origin, considering unfamiliar words, preferring meaningful reading material, not objecting to guess, exploiting illustrations such as drawings or pictures, utilizing glosses, only using dictionaries as the last recourse, basing on predictions, and making use of the context Ratna S (2014) believes that these strategies can improve learners’ reading comprehension skill Another helpful strategy is paraphrasing which is considered as “an active learning strategy that can help readers to remember important points by restating with their own words” (Pressley, 2000, cited in Ratna S, 2014, p 3)

Meanwhile, according to Naidu et al (2013), skimming, scanning and mapping are suggested as useful reading strategies for EFL learners Brown (2001, cited in Naidu et al., 2013, p 58) states that “skimming means looking through a text at a glance to get the gist of it” and “skimming helps learners to predict the purpose and identify the main idea of the text” Nunan (1999, cited in et al., 2013) mentions that scanning means reading the text quickly in order to get specific information and scanning “makes reading more understandable to learners as the extracted information is clearly spelled out” (p 58) The other strategy is mapping Mapping “can be presented in many ways: diagrams, ideas and concepts of a term” and it is “the process of identifying information and collate the pieces of information to understand the text” (Naidu et al 2013, p 58) Naidu et al (2013) also emphasis that learners can make use of these strategies and relate them to their own knowledge during the reading process

Although there are a variety of helpful reading strategies (Naidu et al (2013), many researchers mention that “strategies themselves are not inherently good or bad, but they have the potential to be used effectively or ineffectively in different contexts” (Zhang, 2009, p 39) Therefore, Carrell (1998, cited in Yukselir, 2014) and Farrell (2001, cited in Yukselir, 2014) suggest “factors which make a strategy effective” which are: “(a) who is employing it, (b) how consciously it is employed, (c) what kind of text is being read, (d) when it is being employed, and (e) why it is being used” (p 68)

2.5 Successful and less successful EFL readers

According to Sheorey and Mokhtari (2001, cited in Karbalaei & Golshan, 2010), successful and unsuccessful readers can be distinguished by the combination

of their awareness and their actual use of reading strategies in the reading comprehension process

Block (1986, cited in Omar, 2014) states that successful readers are distinguished from less successful readers by these four characteristics: “(1) integration, (2) recognition of aspects of the text structure, (3) use of general knowledge, personal experiences, and associations, (4) response in an extensive as opposed to a reflexive mode” (p 17) First of all, a successful reader can consciously integrate information in the text during the reading process in order to fully comprehend the reading material (Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001, cited in Karbalaei & Golshan, 2010; Omar, 2014; Block, 1986, cited in Raftari et al., 2012) Secondly, they are able to be aware and make use of the structure of the text as a clue such as utilizing the glosses, summaries, introductions, conclusions or basing

on the title to make predictions (Block, 1986, cited in Raftari et al., 2012; Oxford,

1990, cited in Shang 2010; Derakhshan & Nazari, 2015) Thirdly, successful readers are capable of relating what they have already known to the new information in the reading text and make use of the context clues to accomplish the tasks (Block, 1986, cited in Raftari et al, 2012; Derakhshan & Nazari, 2015) Last but not least, successful readers recognize what the author wants to convey in the text and focus

on the author’s information rather than their own thoughts and feelings Block (1986) concludes that readers who are able to integrate information, recognize text structure, and pay attention to the writer’s message succeed in developing their reading skills

Additionally, learners who succeed in reading comprehension are said to be able to recognize some parts of the text that are more important than the others to pay more attention when reading (Arabsolghar & Elkins, 2001, as cited in Kazemi

et al., 2013; Yukselir, 2014) According to Ghavamnia et al (2013), successful readers read through the text quickly and focus on the key points; they know how to relate each section of the text to the others, skip unimportant information, pay attention to the keywords and try to make use of what they have fully comprehended It is clearly that successful readers apply a variety of strategies and they know how to select the most appropriate strategies to accomplish the reading tasks (Omar, 2014)

On the contrary, less successful readers are said not to be well aware of employing reading strategies Hosenfeld (1977, cited in Raftari et al., 2012) states that unsuccessful foreign language reader fails to understand fully the meaning of the whole sentence, focuses on short phrases, pays equal attention to both important and unimportant words, and easily gives up when encounters problems Ghavamnia

et al (2013) add that less successful readers try to read word by word, sentence by sentence rather than comprehending the meaning of the whole text (Ghavamnia et al., 2013) Besides, Ghavamnia and his partners (2013) find that unsuccessful readers are not aware of the main ideas and structure of the text as well as “make use of the text structure to organize the main ideas” (p 374); they also lack prior knowledge and do not know how to link their personal experience with the new information in the reading text; additionally, they have “difficulties in drawing inferences to achieve in-depth understanding of the texts” (p 374); lastly, unsuccessful readers do not have enough metacognitive ability to overcome problems and monitor their reading process In conclusion, unsuccessful readers less utilize useful reading strategies and they are unable to monitor their reading activities during comprehension process effectively (Sheorey and Mokhtari, 2001, cited in Karbalaei & Golshan, 2010; Mehrdad et al., 2012)

Furthermore, many studies have shown that the successful readers and the less successful readers can also be identified by their actual use of reading strategies (Sheorey & Mokhatari, 2001, as cited in Karbalaei & Golshan, 2010) Studies on EFL reading consistently emphasize the importance of reading strategies, however,

“the effectiveness of the use of those strategies does not rely on the strategy itself” (Kern, 1989, as cited in Yukselir, 2014) Yukselir (2014) explains that one strategy can benefit a particular reader but may not be useful for another reader, or some strategies are suitable for a specific text but may not always be effective in other texts In addition, “there are indeed differences between successful readers and less successful readers in terms of strategy use” (Omar, 2014, p 22) Researchers reveal that successful language readers do not only apply a wide variety of reading strategies but also know how and why to make use of such strategies effectively On the other hand, although less successful readers have knowledge of reading strategies, they cannot select the appropriate strategies or associate one strategy with others to have a better understanding of the text (Yukselir, 2014)

It can be concluded that successful readers possess a wide knowledge of reading strategies as well as “actively make use of related reading strategies as much as possible” (p 11), whereas less successful readers are still struggling to be aware of these reading strategies and consciously make use of them (Do & Vo, 2015)

2.6 Previous related studies

2.6.1 Studies on students’ frequency use of reading strategies in EFL context

Shang (2010) conducted a study in order to investigate what was the most frequent use of reading strategies reported by first-year students from I-Shou University in Taiwan where English is used as a foreign language There were 53 freshmen majoring in English participated in this study The result from a reading strategy questionnaire consisting of 44 items showed that students were generally aware of employing strategies, especially metacognitive strategies in their EFL reading process

A study was carried out in 2013 by Zare in order to explore the overall frequency of students’ reading strategy use A reading strategy inventory comprised

of 15 items was served as one of the main instruments to collect data 80 Iranian EFL learners including 42 male and 38 were randomly selected from two language institutes in Shiraz, Iran to participate in this study The findings revealed that the participants employed strategies while reading at a medium level

Yukselir (2014) investigated into the reading strategy use of EFL students from School of Foreign Languages at Osmaniye Korkut Ata University in Turkey Sixty five first-year EFL students who were at pre-intermediate level participated in this study They were asked to complete the “Reading Strategy Questionnaire” which was comprised of 35 items by Oxford et al (2004) The result indicated that there was a high frequency of use of reading strategies reported by the participants This study also showed fourteen strategies that were most frequently employed were: reading through from the first to the last paragraph, basing on the title to predict the contents, making an effort to decode every word in the text, adjusting reading speed to the difficulty of the reading text, translating, keeping reading in spite of difficulty, using reading context to guess unknown words, using personal knowledge to guess unknown words, visualizing the text contents, paying attention

to the text type, skimming and then scanning, linking information of the text to prior knowledge, working out the main points, focusing on each paragraph’s beginning and ending Meanwhile, four strategies that were least frequently employed by the students were: skipping unfamiliar vocabulary items, skipping sentences that were not comprehended, following the printed lines with finger or pen while reading, dividing the sentence grammatically with slashes

A study conducted by Lien (2014) to explore the reading strategy awareness of English major students There were 411 Taiwanese students studying English as a foreign language in a Northern university in Taiwan participated in the study The results from two questionnaires which were “the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI), and the semi-structured background questionnaire” (p 2501) indicated that “the EFL tertiary students’ overall reading strategy was at medium level” (p 2503)

Above all, there have been many studies investigating students’ frequency of use of reading strategies in the world so far In light with these studies, the current study attempts to gain an in-depth understanding about undergraduate students’ perceived use of EFL reading strategies in Vietnam

2.6.2 Studies on reading strategy use between successful and unsuccessful readers

It is widely known that there are a number of studies on the differences among different language proficient level learners in term of using reading strategies in EFL context, and they reveal that there is a positive relationship between employing reading strategies and reading comprehension performance (Yukselir, 2014; Genc, 2011; K T-C Chen & S C-L Chen, 2015)

A study carried out by Nguyen (2010) with 254 second-year students at An Giang University, Vietnam to investigate their use of reading strategies The results from a proficiency reading test, a 50-item questionnaire adapted from Oxford (1990), and interviews showed that both the successful and less successful students employed various strategies while reading While the successful students reported to employ the strategies of skimming, guessing, re-reading, and translating, the less successful ones made use of English-Vietnamese dictionaries, re-read the text and translated into Vietnamese to comprehend the reading test

Nguyen and Trinh conducted a study in 2011 to investigate the relationship between students’ metacognitive reading strategy use and their reading achievement

in the context of Vietnam 84 grade 11 students in a high school in the Mekong Delta were randomly chosen to participate in this study Results from a reading comprehension test and a thirty-item questionnaire on metacognitive reading strategies showed that there was a pretty positive correlation between students’ use

of these reading strategies and their reading comprehension Moreover, the successful readers reported to use more reading strategies than the less successful ones

Kazemi et al (2013) came to a conclusion after reviewing many studies on strategic instruction in EFL context that “the development of reading comprehension for EFL students is highly dependent of learning what strategies are, how, when, and where to use particular strategies, as well as how to evaluate their use” (p 2339) and there was a “close relationship among comprehension, cognitive strategies and metacognition” (p 2339)

Naidu et al (2013) carried out a study to explore the most frequently used strategies employed by EFL university students of advanced level There were 20 EFL students who are described as successful language learners in a private university participated in this study, and a four-point Likert scale questionnaire consisting of 11 items on reading strategies was served as the main tool to gather data According to the results from the questionnaire, five most frequently employed strategies were drafting, skimming to get the main ideas, reading the text several times, focusing on structure and organization of the text, and making prediction The researchers also added that these students were willing to overcome the difficulties in their reading process and these strategies helped them to comprehend better

Saengpakdeejit and Intaraprasert conducted a study on reading strategies in Foreign Language Academic Reading in 2014 A number of 39 EFL students who enrolled in ESP and EAP courses from four universities in Thailand participated in this study The semi-structured interviews were the main instrument for data collection The findings from those interviews showed that the participant employed

a number of reading strategies in order to comprehend the reading texts, and they were able to monitor their reading English academic materials process Saengpakdeejit and Intaraprasert (2014) also concluded that reading strategies had played an important role in EFL students’ reading comprehension Besides, the finding revealed that skilled readers employed a variety of reading strategies such as contextualization or elaboration while less skilled readers mainly depended on dictionaries

A study undertaken by Saengpakdeejit (2014) aimed to find the relationship between students’ frequent use of strategies and their reading proficiency There were 549 full time third-year students studying at Khon Kaen University in Thailand took part in the study, and the main instruments for data collection were an English Reading Proficiency Test and the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) The results from both the reading test and the questionnaire reflected that readers with high proficiency employed more strategies than those of moderate and low proficiency

The results from a descriptive research conducted by Ratna S with 76 EFL first-year students studying at STKIP Garut University in Indonesia in 2014 showed that four strategies used most frequently during the students’ reading process were: predicting the text content basing on the title, making use of the context to decode a word, depending on a dictionary to deal with important points, and decoding a sentence by paying attention to other sentences in the paragraph The participants were required to response to a self-report questionnaire and Thinking-Aloud Protocols (TAPs) were administered to 15 students from the total population Findings from the study also revealed that the students who succeeded in accomplishing the reading comprehension test reported that they employed six following reading strategies: deduction, summarizing, using context for decoding, elaboration, depending on grammatical category to guess the meaning, and decoding a sentence by paying attention to other sentences in the paragraph

A study was conducted by Do and Vo (2015) to investigate the reading strategies used by EFL students at Dong Thap University in Vietnam A 22-item questionnaire concerning reading strategy use was administered to 107 first year students and 96 third-year students majoring in English From the results, it was stated that all the participants took part in the study employed a wide range of reading comprehension strategies Moreover, strategies of skimming, scanning, highlighting, translating, resourcing, assistance-seeking and cooperating were reported to be highly used by first-year students, whereas, third-year students

employed most of the strategies except for highlighting, translating and resourcing because “proficient readers read faster with appropriately mental treatment and independently” (p 18) as the researchers explained

It can be inferred from many previous studies that there is “a positive correlation between the students’ reading ability and their awareness and use of reading strategies while reading academic texts” (Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001, as cited in Raftari et al., 2012) In addition, Anderson (1991, as cited in Raftari et al., 2012) states that “successful second language reading comprehension is not simply

a matter of knowing what strategy to use, but the reader must also know how to use

it successfully and how to orchestrate its use with other strategies” (p 25) However, there is still a limitation of studies conducted in Vietnam “where EFL learning/teaching is still on its way to development and refinement” (Do & Vo,

2015, p 13) to investigate the differences in employing reading strategies among Vietnamese students of EFL Therefore, this study is undertaken to gain more crucial insight and contribute more ideas to the relevant research studies in the context of Vietnam

2.6.3 Studies on reading strategy use between male and female students

Karizak and Khojasteh (2016) carried out a study with 4 male and 4 female students in Iran to explore the differences in using reading strategies between males and females The students took part in this study were studying English as a foreign language at a language institution called Zabansara Think-aloud technique was the main instrument for the researcher to collect data The result from this study indicated that “males used more strategies than females” (p 11)

On the other hand, the result from a study conducted by Arrastia1et al (2016) with 160 first and fourth year students of English at a university in Egypt was completely contradictory A self-report survey was used to investigate the frequent reading strategies used by 73 males and 87 females of the whole participants The

researchers concluded that “females reported using strategies significantly more than males” after conducting a t-test to analyze the data

Notwithstanding the conclusions from those two studies, Abusaeedi and Khabir (2017) reached a different one Their study included 44 male and 72 female EFL Iranian students from the departments of foreign languages of Kerman universities Two questionnaires were administered to the participants as the main instruments The results from an Independent Sample T-test revealed that there was

no significant difference between males and females in terms of reading strategy use

To conclude, because of these contradictory conclusions about the influence of gender on reading strategy use, the current study aims to discover more precise answers in the context of Vietnam

2.6.4 Studies on the relationship between reading strategy use and length

of English learning

A study based on questionnaire conducted by Munsakorn in 2012 concerned the awareness of reading strategies among EFL learners of different lengths of learning English Results from the questionnaire administered to 380 first year students studying at Bangkok University indicated that “the number of years spent studying English affects the reading strategy usage of students” (p 823) To go into details, all the students experiencing English less than 8 years, 8-12 years, and more than 12 years were highly aware of reading strategies However, students had spent less than 8 years and more than 12 years learning English reported to use reading strategies more frequently that those having 8-12 years of learning English Due to this conflicting finding, the current study is aimed to have a closer look at the effect

of students’ lengths of learning English on their awareness of reading strategies in the context of Vietnam

It can be assumed from previous studies that many researchers in the world made an attempt to investigate the employment of reading strategies of EFL

learners from different levels of proficiency Besides, the correlation of their

reading strategy use with their reading achievement, gender, and lengths of learning

English were also taken into consideration The results showed that the participants

were generally aware of reading strategies and there was a positive correlation

between their reading strategy awareness and reading comprehension competence

In comparison, the influences of learners’ gender and lengths of English learning on

their use of reading strategies are still need further examining

The present study has some differences in comparison with previous related

studies First of all, it is conducted to investigate differences in utilizing strategies

when reading in English among EFL freshmen by employing a combination of

instruments for data collection Additionally, this study focuses on first-year

students whose major is English at Nong Lam University and in the context of

Vietnam

2.7 Chapter summary

This chapter has reviewed the literature of theoretical and empirical studies

concerning EFL reading comprehension It presents the definition of reading,

reading comprehension, and reading strategy Classification of reading strategies,

successful and less successful readers are also mentioned and discussed Finally,

previous studies related to issues raised in the current are study also provided

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

The previous chapter has presented the theoretical background of the current study, this chapter will provide a description of research design, research questions, participants and instruments of this study, as well as the procedure for collecting and analyzing data in order to achieve the research aims

“overcome the different weaknesses inherent in all methods” (Dawson, 2002, p.34)

A reading comprehension test, a students’ questionnaire and semi-structured interviews are used as the main tools in order to fulfill the research objectives

3.2 Research questions

This study aimed at investigating English major first-year students’ reading strategies and the use of such strategies in EFL context between successful and less successful readers, males and females, as well as students of different lengths of learning English The study was conducted to find the answers to these research questions:

1) What is the frequency of use of reading strategies reported by English major freshmen at Nong Lam University?

2) What are the differences in the employment of reading strategies of successful and unsuccessful readers? To what extent do the participants’ gender and the lengths of time devoted to their English learning affect their reading strategy use?

3.3 Research context

The present study was conducted at the Faculty of Foreign Language and Pedagogy of Nong Lam University, Ho Chi Minh City in the summer of 2016 Faculty of Foreign Language and Pedagogy was established in 2001 and enrolls about 120 – 150 students every year It provides students with a four-year instruction under the credit system After earning all the required credits, students must pass a graduation exam consisting of specialized exams, theories of language and a test of listening, reading, and writing in the form of IELTS

3.4 Participants

To address the four research questions, a total number of 120 first-year students majoring in English from five classes participated in this study The sample for this study was selected according to convenience sampling method Zare and Othman (2013) define convenience sampling as “a non-probability sampling technique where subjects are selected because of their convenient accessibility and proximity to the researcher” (p 189) In other words, convenience sampling is a type of nonprobability sampling and it is easy to use because a group of willing participants has already been formed (Griffee, 2012) There were approximately

150 freshmen who had full-time academic study in the five classes of Faculty of Foreign Language and Pedagogy However, on the day of survey, some of them were absent, and seven questionnaire copies were not fully completed As a result, there were 120 valid questionnaire used for data analysis in this study There were some reasons why first-year students were chosen for this research First of all,

reading comprehension was one of the compulsory courses in their first year at Nong Lam University At the time of data collection, they had finished their second reading course and they had to pass the final Reading 2 test to take the next reading course – the Academic Reading Therefore, all the participants were quite familiar with the reading test format and had awareness of reading strategies Second, the findings of this study were expected to help both teachers and students become more aware of strategies in reading academic texts in order to improve their reading competence and after that they could succeed in other reading courses

All of the participants were native speakers of Vietnamese and learning English as a foreign language Of the 120 students, ranging in age from 18-20 years old, were 21 males and 99 females From the questionnaire, most of the participants

in this study had had at least seven years of learning English (four years in lower secondary school and three years in higher secondary school) before they enrolled

in college and were classified as pre-intermediate level

3.5 The reading course

Reading comprehension is a compulsory course for those students who major

in English All the participants in five classes had taken at least two reading courses

so far, each course lasted for 10 weeks and three periods per week During the second course, the book Active Skills for Reading 3 Second Edition (Anderson, 2007) was used as the textbook for all the students The course book had 12 units covering 12 topics After each three units, there was a review unit to help students review what they had studied so far and practice other reading strategies The present study was carried out at the end of the second term after all the participants had finished the last unit of the book

3.6 Instruments

Three instruments were employed to gather the data First of all, the results from the reading test were used in order to categorize all the participants into successful and less successful readers Secondly, the questionnaire was used to

assess the students’ frequency of employing reading strategies The third instrument was the semi-structured interviews which could provide in-depth information on the students’ use of strategies in the reading process

3.6.1 The reading test

The reading comprehension test aimed at measuring the level of the participants’ reading proficiency The test were carefully designed and scored by other Nong Lam EFL teachers in the Department of English This test was a kind of final achievement test Harmer (2007) states that at the end of a term, achievement tests “are designed to measure learners’ language and skill progress in relation to the syllabus they have been following” and they “contain item types which the students are familiar with” (p 380) Thus, the students were all familiar with the format of this reading test To succeed in performing the comprehension tasks, students had to employ many reading strategies, such as skimming for general ideas, scanning for specific information, guessing unknown words, using title to predict the text content, relating background knowledge to the text, and so forth The reading comprehension test used for this present study lasted for 60 minutes and it consisted of three academic passages and 33 comprehension questions Students were expected to read the three passages and do the tasks following them, then write their answers on the separate answer sheets

The first passage, which was an expository editorial with 852 words in length, was followed by two tasks In the first task, students were asked to solve six multiple choice questions (question 1 to question 6) by choosing the most appropriate option to complete each statement about the first passage Seven questions (question 7 to question 13) in the second task required students to match each cause in List A with its effect in List B

There were three tasks followed the second passage This passage was a narrative article which had 849 words in length and divided into six sections from A

to H From question 14 to 18, students were asked to match each section with its

correct heading from a given list of nine headings Task two (question 19 to 24) required students to read and decide whether each of the given statement reflected the information in the Reading passage Task three was comprised of three multiple questions (question 25 to question 27) To complete this task, students had to choose the correct answer to each of the given questions

The third passage which had 274 words in length was a kind of directive texts and it was followed by one task of six questions Questions from 28 to 33 required students to use no more than three words to complete each of the six sentences about the passage

All of the students were allowed 60 minutes to use appropriate reading strategies to comprehend the three passages, finish six tasks following the reading text

3.6.2 The Questionnaire

A questionnaire is defined as “a data-collection instrument that asks respondents for demographic information, opinion or questions of fact” (Griffee,

2012, p 67) In other words, questionnaire is “a form of interview on paper” and it

“is prepared and distributed for the purpose of securing responses” (Singh, 2006, p 191) Many researchers are of the opinion that questionnaires are “one of the most common methods of collecting data on attitudes and opinions from a large group of participants” and they “allow researchers to gather information that learners are able

to report about themselves” (Mackey & Grass, 2005, p 92) Besides, “in addition to being more economical and practical than individual interviews, questionnaires can

in many cases elicit longitudinal information from learners in a short period of time” and they “can also elicit comparable information from a number of respondents” (Mackey & Grass, 2005, p 94) Walliman (2011) is also under the impression that “questionnaire is a very flexible tool, that has the advantages of having a structured format, is easy and convenient for respondents, and is cheap and

quick to administer” (p 97) For these reasons, questionnaire was the main instrument employed in the present study

All the participants were asked to complete a questionnaire about the strategies they had employed to comprehend reading materials in English This questionnaire was composed of two sections: the first section was about the participant’s personal information, whereas the second section was the survey questions In section one, the participants were enquired about their personal information, including gender, student’s code, telephone number, years of studying English, high school’s name and address, and the previous semester reading score

In section two, they were required to respond to the questions about their reading strategy awareness while reading academic materials in English

The Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) which was developed by Mokhtari and Sheory (2002) was used to assess participants’ awareness of reading strategies The SORS was described as a tool to measure how students in upper secondary schools, colleges or universities employed strategies while reading academic materials in English (Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002) Besides, it was widely administered by many researchers in different EFL contexts (Rastegar et al., 2017) such as Spain (Martínez, 2008), Thailand (Saengpakdeejit, 2014), and Iran (Rastegar et al., 2017) All things considered, this questionnaire was used as one of the main instruments to collect data in the present study

This questionnaire used a 5-point Likert scale from “never or almost never” to

“always or almost always” to highlight the frequency of strategies employed by the participants while reading academic text Likert scale that is “a very popular rating scale for measuring ordinal data in social science research” was designed by Rensis Likert (Bhatacherjee, 2012, p 47) This scale allows the respondents to “indicate their extent of agreement or disagreement on a five or seven-point scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” (Bhatacherjee, 2012, p 47) In addition, it comprised a total number of 30 items categorized into three kinds of

strategies: global reading strategies, problem solving reading strategies, and support reading strategies (Mokhtari & Sheory, 2002)

Before this questionnaire was used, it was piloted to fit the research context and avoid misunderstanding due to the language barriers As a result, two new items were added according to the pilot study and to be more suitable for the current context They were “Reading in phrases (3-5 words) makes my reading comprehension more effective” and “I make use of keywords to read more effectively” Moreover, the questionnaire was translated into participants’ mother tongue – Vietnamese – and examined by the supervisor of the researcher to make sure that all the participants clearly understood every item on the questionnaire In other words, the reading strategy questionnaire used for the present study was a Vietnamese version and it consisted of 32 close-ended items without any open-ended questions The participants were allowed about 10 to 12 minutes to complete the questionnaire (Mokhtari & Sheory, 2002)

3.6.3 Pilot of the study

A pilot study is defined as a “common practice to pre-test the questionnaire on

a small number of people before it is used in earnest” (Walliman, 2011, p 98) Therefore, the pilot study is considered to be an essential means of discovering any problems in the materials and method before carrying out the main study (Mackey

& Grass, 2005) Moreover, the pilot study is conducted to “confirm the appropriateness of the instruments and to determine the time they needed to complete them” (Amiryousef et al., 2012, p 1175) Lee (2012) also agrees that a pilot study is conducted before an official study so as to “ascertain the appropriateness of the data collection instruments, and administration procedures” (p 313)

Therefore, a pilot study with Vietnamese version of the questionnaire was administered to a group of 10 students that were not included in the sampling and comparable with the main subjects before the main study This pilot study helped