How to motivate in service students of english at haiphong foreign language center, haiphong university to learn reading

thạc sỹ, luận văn, ngoại ngữ, tiếng anh, khóa luận, chuyên đề

Vietnam national university, Hanoi

Department of postgraduate studies

Hai phong, 20o7

Abstract

In an attempt to investigate the interests of the in - service students of English atHaiphong Foreign Language Center, Haiphong University in reading materials and togive some suggestions for meeting these needs to increase the students’ motivation, themain purposes of the research were to find out : (1) kinds of motivation possessed by the

in – service students of English at HFLC, HPU in learning reading , (2) an examination

of the teaching methods used by the teachers of reading to motivate their learners inreading activities, (3) giving some recommendations to improve the reading materials forthe in – service students of English at HFLC The subjects of the study were 101 in -

service students from six classes of K21 (A, B, C, D, E, G) and 8 teachers of reading.These teachers and students were invited to answer a survey questionnaire The result ofthe research shows that while among the in - service students in HFLC, HPU, integrativemotivation is less important than instrumental motivation Besides, the search reveals thatthe teachers take very important role in motivating students They can motivate learners

by giving more chance to work in pairs or groups, and use teaching aids Finally, besidesthe tasks and activities from the textbooks, the teachers should supply the students withother suitable ones so that the students will not feel boring Furthermore, the teachersshould find supplementary materials about topics which are interested by the learners

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest thanks to Dr Pham Dang Binh, mysupervisor for his invaluable advice, generous assistance and continual encouragement in thecompletion of this study

I would avail myself of this opportunity to express my thankfulness to my friends, mycolleagues for their material support, encouragement as well as their constructive commentsand criticism

I also wish to thank the in – service students of K21 and especially a group of eight teachers

of English from Haiphong Foreign Language Center, Haiphong University for theirwholehearted cooperation with and suggestion for completion of the survey questionnaires inparticular and the thesis in general

Last but not least, my sincere thanks would go to my family who have constantly supported,inspired and encouraged me during the time I carried out this study

Table of content

Abstract PageAcknowledgements

Table of contents

Chapter I : Introduction

Chapter Ii: Literature review

2.1.2 Classification of motivation in second language learning 72.1.3 Characteristics of a motivated learners 7

2.1.4 Strategies to encourage students’ motivation 8

2.2 An overview on the nature of reading 11

2.3.1 The roles of motivation in reading 14

2.3.2 Factors affecting students’ motivation in reading 14

2.3.2.2 The reading materials 16

Chapter IIi: The study

Chapter IV: Conclusion

4.1 Summary of the findings and discussion 27

Appendices

A questionnaire completed by the students 35

A questionnaire completed by the teachers 38

Chapter one : Introduction

I Rationale

The English language has gained significance since Vietnam started its open – doorpolicy Especially, Vietnam has joined World Trade Organization in November 2006 sothe demand for learning English even gets stronger More and more big companies frommany countries in the world and large multinational corporations are seeking chance to

do business in Vietnam The Vietnamese will go abroad more often with differentpurposes As a result, having a good command of English has become necessity of alllearners of English in Vietnam and teaching and learning English is getting popular day

by day across the country to meet the growing demands

In teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Vietnam nowadays, besidesgrammar, the requirement of four practical language skills: reading, speaking, reading,writing has been concerned In the context of Vietnam, reading is perhaps the mostimportant skill, which Vietnamese learners of English will be working with after leavingtheir colleges or universities It is said that for many students, reading is by far the mostimportant of the four skills in a second language, particularly in English as a second orforeign language” This also true to the in - service students at Haiphong ForeignLanguage Center (HFLC), Haiphong University (HPU) It is necessary for them to readeffectively and efficiently in English because they will be offered a lot of interestinginformation as well as a variety of language expressions and structures which are veryuseful for developing other skills However, most of the students experience the lack ofmotivation for English reading lessons and therefore their reading is inefficient In fact, it

is said that one of the key factors to the success (or not) of learning English in generaland learning reading is motivation, but it is a challenging task to motivate students in areading lesson

With this in mind, the researcher hopes to give a hand to get students motivated inreading, therefore the writer has chosen the research topic :

“How to motivate the in - service students of English at Haiphong Foreign Language Center, Haiphong University to learn Reading ”

II Aims of the study

The purposes of the study are to investigate students’ interests in reading materials and togive some suggestions for meeting these needs to increase the students’ motivation

The specific aims are :

(1) To have better insight into motivation and the kinds of motivation possessed by the in– service students of English at HFLC, HPU in learning reading

(2) To examine the teaching methods used by the teachers of reading to motivate theirlearners in reading activities

(3) To give some recommendations to improve the reading materials for the in – servicestudents of English at HFLC

III The research questions

The study was intended to answer the following questions :

(1) What is the motivation of the in - service students of English at HFLC, HPU whenthey learn reading ?

(2) What have the teachers done to motivate their students to learn reading?

In seeking answers to these research questions, I look into the following issues :

1 What is the attitude of the in - service students towards reading ?

2 What are the students’ opinions ?

3 What activities, teaching aids and techniques do teachers use to stimulate learners ?

IV Methods of the study

In the study, the quantitative research method is used with the aim of obtaininginformation on student’s motivation when they learn reading In addition to, theactivities, teaching aids and techniques which teachers have used to stimulate students tolearn reading will be found

V Scope of the study

To enhance the students’ motivation in reading, the teachers have to take intoconsideration several factors such as learners, reading materials and teaching andlearning environment However, due to the limit of time, the researcher will pay moreattention to the teachers’ role in making full use of the reading materials and designingreading text - based activities

VI Design of the study

This minor thesis is divided into four chapters:

Apart from the first chapter, ‘Introduction’, the research includes three otherchapters :

- Chapter two reviews some linguistic concepts most relevant to the researchtopic such as definitions of motivation, types of motivation, characteristics of

a motivated learners, strategies to encourage the students’ motivation, anddefinitions of reading, types of reading, motivation in learning reading

- Chapter three presents the context, description of instruments, data collectedand analyses of the results

- Chapter four shows major findings, gives implications and offersrecommendations on teaching reading

Chapter Two : Literature Review

In this chapter, some of the most important issues in the theories of motivation for teachinglanguage in general and teaching reading in particular will be taken into consideration Twomain features will be discussed namely, an overview of motivation and an overview of nature

Zoltan Dornyei (2001: 7) stated “ Motivation explains why people decide to do something,how hard they are going to pursue it and how long they are willing to sustain the activities”.Gardner (1985) remarks : “ motivation involves four aspects, a goal, effortful behaviour, adesire to attain the goal and favourable attitudes towards the activity in question”

Motivation in second language learning is a complex phenomenon which can be defined interms of two factors : Learners’ communicative needs and their attitudes towards the secondlanguage community If the learners need to speak the second languages in a wide range ofsocial situations or to fulfill professional ambitions, they will perceive the communicativevalue of the second language and will therefore be motivated to acquire proficiency in it.Likewise, if learners have favourable attitudes towards the speakers of the languages, they willdesire more contact with them

2.1.2 Classification of motivation in second language learning

- “Intergrative motivation” : According to Gardner, R and Lambert, W (1972), intergrative motivation refers to language learning for personal growth and cultural enrichment Besides,

Finegan (1999 : 568) stated “intergrative motivation typically underlines successful acquisition

of a wide range of registers and a native – like pronunciation”

- “ Instrumental motivation ” : Gardner, R and Lambert, W (1972) also pointed that

instrumental motivation refers language learning for more immediate or practical goal That

means learners study to pass an examination, to get a better job, or to get a place at university

or some other reasons

Besides, the mentioned basic types of motivation, there are some others kinds such as global,situational, task, resultative, intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation

From Brown’s point of view (1981):

- Global motivation consists of general orientation to the global of an L2learning

- Situational motivation is different according to the situation in which learningtakes place Thus the motivation in classroom setting differs from that innaturalistic learning

- Task motivation is the motivation learners get when they are performingsome particular tasks in learning performance

- Resultative motivation : Ellis (1994 ) pointed out : “It is likely that therelationship between motivation and achievement is an interactive one Ahigh level of motivation does stimulate learning, but perceived success inachieving L2 goals can help to maintain existing motivation and even createnew types” When learners succeed in learning, they may be more orsometimes less motivated to learn

- Intrinsic motivation : According to Edward Deci (1975 : 23), intrinsicallymotivated activities are ones for which there is no apparent reward except theactivity itself People seem to engage in the activities for their own sake and

not because they lead to an extrinsic reward …Intrinsically rewardingconsequences, namely, feelings of competence and self – determination.

- Extrinsic motivation: extrinsically motivated behaviors, on the other hand, arecarried out in anticipation of a reward from outside and beyond the self.Typical extrinsic rewards are money, prizes, grades, and even certain types ofpositive feedback

Among these types of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations have animportant part to play in classroom motivation and many researchers have provedthat intrinsic is superior to extrinsic

2.1.3 Characteristics of a motivated learners

A motivated learner here means the one who participates willingly and actively inlearning activities in class According to Naiman et al (1978), the most successfulstudents are not necessarily those from whom a language comes easily Incontrast, they are simply the ones showing certain typical characteristicsassociated clearly with motivation Here are the following features :

- Positive task orientation : the learner is ready to deal with tasks and challenges,

and has confidence in his or her success

- Ego - involvement : the learner has a need to achieve, to overcome difficulties

and succeed in what he or she sets out to do

- High aspirations : the learner goes for demanding challenges and high

proficiency

- Goal orientation : the learner is very aware of the goals of learning, and directs

his or her effort towards achieving them

- Perseverance : the learner consistently invests a high level of effort in learning,

and is not discouraged by setbacks or apparently lack of progress

- Tolerance of ambiguity : the learner is not frustrated by a temporary lack of

understanding, he or she thinks it will come later

2.1.4 General strategies to motivate students in language teaching.

When learners are motivated, they will study much better As a result, the teachers aresupposed to undertake strategies to enhance students’ motivation Here are some strategiessuggested by different researchers:

Capitalize on students’ existing needs According to McMillan & Forsyth (1991), students

learn best when incentives for learning in a classroom satisfy their own motives for enrolling

in the course Some of the needs your students may bring to the classroom are the need tolearn something in order to complete a particular task or activity, the need to seek newexperience, the need to perfect skills, the need to overcome challenges, the need to becomecompetent, the need to succeed and do well, the need to feel involved and to interact withother people Satisfying such needs is rewarding in itself, and such rewards sustain learningmore effectively than finishing the grades Design assignments, in – class activities, anddiscussion questions to address these kinds of needs

Make students active participants in learning From Lucas (1990) Students learn by doing,

making, writing, designing, creating, solving Passivity dampens students’ motivation andcuriosity That is why the teacher needs to pose questions He or she ought not to tell thestudents something when you can ask them In general the teacher needs to encourage thestudents to suggest approaches to a problem or to guess the results of an experiment Smallgroup work is strongly advised

Ask students to analyze what makes their classes more or less “motivating” Sass (1989)

asks his classes to recall two recent class periods, one in which they were highly motivatedand one in which their motivation was low Each student makes a list of specific aspects of thetwo classes that influenced his or her level of motivation, and students then meet in smallgroups to reach consensus on characteristics that contribute to high and low motivation Inover twenty courses, Sass reports, the same eight characteristics emerge as major contributors

to student motivation :

 Instructor’s enthusiasm

 Relevance of the material

 Organization of the course

 Appropriate difficulty level of the material

 Active involvement of students

 Variety

 Rapport between teacher and students

 Use of appropriate, concrete, and understandable examples

Incorporating instructional behaviors that motivate students The teacher ought to

hold high but realistic expectations for your students Research has shown that a teacher’sexpectations have a powerful effect on a student’s performance If you act as though youexpected your students to be motivated, hardworking, and interested in the course, they aremore likely to be so Set realistic expectations for students when you make assignments,give presentations, conduct discussions, and grade examinations “Realistic” in thiscontext means that your standards are high enough to motivate students to do their bestwork but not so high that students will inevitably be frustrated in trying to meet thoseexpectations To develop the drive to achieve, students need to be provided with earlyopportunities for success

Help students set achievable goals for themselves Failure to attain unrealistic goals can

disappoint and frustrate students The teacher should encourage students to focus on theircontinued improvement, not just on their grade on any one test or assignment They musthelp students evaluate their progress by encouraging them to critique their own work,analyze their strengths, and work on their weaknesses For example, consider askingstudents to submit self – evaluation forms with one or two assignments

Tell students what they need to do to succeed in your course The teacher ought not to

let your students struggle to figure out what is expected of them He or she must reassurestudents succeed The teacher ought to say something to the effect that “If you can handlethe examples on these problem sheets, you can pass the exam People who have troublewith these examples can ask me for extra help” Or instead of saying, “You’re waybehind,” tell the student, “Here is one way you could go about learning the material Howcan I help you ?”

Strengthen students’ self – motivation Avoid messages that reinforce your power as an

instructor or that emphasize extrinsic rewards Instead of saying, “I require”, “you must”,

or “you should,” stress “I think you will find …” or “I will be interested in your reaction.”Avoid creating intense competition among students Competition produces anxiety, whichcan interfere with learning Reduce students’ tendencies to compare themselves to oneanother Bligh (1971) reports that students are more favourable to the teaching methodwhen they work cooperatively in groups rather than compete individuals Refrain frompublic criticisms of students’ performance and from comments or activities that pitstudents against each other

Be enthusiastic about your subject An instructor’s enthusiasm is a crucial factor in

student motivation If you become bored or apathetic, student will too Typically, aninstructor’s enthusiasm comes from confidence, excitement about the content, and genuinepleasure in teaching If you find yourself uninterested in the material, think back to whatattracted you to the field and bring those aspects of the subject matter to the life for yourstudents Or challenge yourself to devise the most exciting way topresent the material,however dull the material itself may seem to you

Increase the difficulty of the material as the semester progresses Give studentsopportunities to succeed at the beginning of the semester Once students feel they cansucceed, you can gradually increase the difficulty level If assignments and exams include

easier and harder questions, every student will have a chance to experience success as well

as challenge

Vary your teaching methods Variety reawakens students’ involvement in the course and

their motivation Break the routines by incorporating a variety of brainstorming,discussion, demonstrations, case studies, audiovisual presentations, guest speakers, orsmall group work

Give students feedback as quickly as possible Return tests and papers promptly, andreward success publicly and immediately Give students some indication of how well theyhave done and how to improve Rewards can be as simple as saying a student’s response isgood, with an indication of why it is good, or mentioning the names of the contributor

2.2 An overview of nature of reading

2.2.1 Definitions of Reading

Most of us think of reading as a simple, passive process that involves reading words in a linearfashion and internalizing their meaning one at a time But reading is actually a very complexprocess that requires a great deal of active participation on the part of the reader There aremany definitions of reading from experts in the field

According to Frank Smith (1997), reading is asking questions of printed text And reading withcomprehension becomes a matter of getting your questions answered

From Goodman’s point of view, reading is a psycholinguistic guessing game It involves aninteraction between thought and language Efficient reading does not result from preciseperception and identification of all elements, but from skill in selecting the fewest, mostproductive cues necessary to produce guesses which are right the first time The ability toanticipate that which has not been seen, of course, is vital in reading, just as the ability toanticipate what has not been heard is vital in listening

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, reading is a process of retrieving and comprehendingsome form of stored information or ideas These ideas are usually some sort of representation

of language, such as symbols to be examined by sight, or by touch (for example Braille) Othertypes of reading may not be text – based, such as music notation or pictograms By analogy,

in computer science, reading is acquiring of data from some sort of computer storage

As we can see , all the authors share the same idea that reading means comprehending writtenlanguage and it involves a variety of skills

is uncommon activity outside classroom

There are two contradictory opinions about reading aloud While Nuttal (1996) sees readingaloud as an important aid for beginners to improve their pronunciation, Greenword (1985)criticizes the overemphasis on the purpose of “teaching pronunciation” of reading aloud He isafraid that students may be unable to focus adequately on the text’s meaning when theyconcentrate too hard on producing the words

Silent reading is the method we normally use with our native language,and on the whole thequickest and most efficient (Lewis, 1985 : 110) As a result, silent reading is used more often

in real life and in classroom

really reading it Scanning should be restricted to specific kinds of texts as an access skill –finding the entry on volcanoes for example or as a re – reading skill to find a passage to quote

2.3 Motivation in learning reading

2.3.1 The role of motivation in reading

It is said that reader’s motivation has an effect not only on the product of comprehension butalso upon the process of understanding Motivation is of great importance when we arereading If we show no interest in the text, it means that we do not want to read then thereading activity will become a pressure to ourselves and even the reading process may nothappen at all In reality, most of what we read such as books, magazines, advertisements, etcare what we really want to read

In the case, we are motivated to read we will start reading the text prepared to satisfy ourdesire to find a number of questions and specific information or ideas we are interested in.Then motivated readers find themselves eager to explore the text and to confirm theirexpectation as efficiently as they can It is undeniable that the more they read, the better theygain

A great deal of studies of poor first and second language readers have consistently shown thatpoor readers lack motivation to read or to spend time improving their ability to read This is, ofcourse, as likely to be the effect of poor reading as the cause of it, but once established, poormotivation doubles compounds the problem The dilemma for the language teacher is thus toimprove the reader's motivation

It is suggested that students should be encouraged to choose the topics they wish to read about

as well as to spend sometime getting ready before starting reading To put it bluntly, thereading teachers should arouse their students’ interest and curiosity in the text, encourage theirexpectation and stimulate them when dealing with reading activities However, the student’smotivation is aroused and maintained by not only the teacher but also other factors

2.3.2 Factors affecting students motivation in reading ’

There are many factors such as the students, the teachers, the reading texts and success whichaffect the motivation of students in learning reading However, I mention here only two veryimportant motivational factors

Firstly, the teacher’s personality and attitude towards the students play a prime role inaffecting both student motivation and progress Many educational researchers admit that theteacher with warm, empathetic, sensitive, enthusiastic and humorous characteristics would bemore likely successful in teaching than the ones without those characteristics Those teachers,who are enthusiastic in teaching have a positive attitude to the subject and the students, would

be capable of keeping students interested in reading The teacher can raise the students’ lovefor reading by their rapport with the students, their personality themselves because they are theones of students’ respect and can affect them a great deal

Secondly, the teacher’s language ability, methods of teaching and assessing are also morecrucial to the student motivation to read The teacher’s ability to design and give interestinglesson with a well – planned series of teaching techniques and activities can involve thestudents in the text and then motivate them to read

Finally, the way the teacher assesses and evaluates the students’ progress also influences theirmotivation in learning the subject The teacher should not compare the performance of a

student to that of the others but encourage and create a supportive environment for them to putmore effort It is advisable to evaluate their progress with themselves in order to make themmore self – confident and motivated.

2.3.2.2 The reading materials

The reading materials play an important role to students’ motivation in reading in terms of itslevel of challenge, its topic and content If the students are assigned to read the text beyondtheir language proficiency level, they become overwhelmed The students would also befrustrated and tired when encountering with a great deal of unknown words, complex sentencestructures and so on In the case the topic of the text is not interesting and irrelevant to theirexperience and knowledge they may stop reading because they can not understand themeaning of the text enough to satisfy their expectations, need or interests It is a challenge forthe teacher to select the text or exploit the texts in the ways that improves students’ interestsand motivation in reading

In general, if students enjoy what they read, the reading comprehension is the best achieved.Although it is said that “literature is caught, not taught”, the text must satisfy some criteria thatcatch up with the readers’ interests with some relevance to their situation and context In terms

of linguistic items, the vocabulary in the reading text must be of appropriate level with suitabledensity of idioms The complexity of grammar must not be too great Besides, the background

of the text must be within the students’ imaginative grasp

Chapter Three: The study

This chapter discusses the contextual conditions that determine the study of motivation Theauthor begins with the description of the situation where the study was conducted andinformants involved in the study After that, the research method followed by the datacollection procedures and scheme for data interpretation are mentioned

3.1 The context

The study was conducted at Haiphong Foreign Language Center (HFLC), which wasestablished in 1976 HFLC has become a reliable address for those who are eager to learnforeign languages such as English, French, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German.Since 2000 HFLC has officially been a member of Haiphong University (HPU) With this newposition the Center continues to upgrade teaching and learning facilities In HFLC, English hasbeen taught with different levels : elementary (A level), pre - intermediate (B level),intermediate (C level) and upper - intermediate (tertiary level) My research only focuses ontertiary level

After finishing C level, the students can take an entrance exam to attend the advanced in service course during two years and a half The teaching of English for this course is dividedtwo stages, which last in one year each For the first stage (3 terms), the students study fourlanguage skills : reading, speaking, listening and writing In the second stage, they have tolearn grammar, phonetics, lexicology, semantics, and other subjects in English such asdiscourse analysis, translation, English literature

-Three reading materials are chosen to teach for students : New Progress to Certificate by LeoJones, Cambridge - University Press for the first term, First Certificate Master class by SimonHaines, Barbara Stewart, Oxford University Press for the second term and finally, DevelopingReading skills (Intermediate 1) by Linda Markstein Louise Hirsawa The first two bookscombine four skills together in a unit Approaching to the third phrase, the students have theirown textbooks only for developing reading skills The material has been selected so as toimprove the students' reading ability

The students study four periods of reading a week and always at weekends The students aretrained to improve such reading strategies as: skimming for gist, scanning for specificinformation, drawing conclusion, making inferences and restatements, writing summaries The