THE 11TH FORM NON ENGLISH MAJORS’ LEVEL OF SATISFACTION WITH THEIR READING COMPREHENSION LESSONS AT PHAN BOI CHAU SPECIALIZED UP

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

I, Nguyen Thi My Hao, certify that this thesis is the result of my own research andthe substance of this thesis has not, wholly or in part, been submitted for a degree to anyother university or institution

Hanoi, May 2008

Nguyen Thi My Hao

First and foremost, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Mr

Le Van Canh, M.A for his invaluable comments and suggestions, generous assistance andcontinual encouragement in completion of this research

Secondly, my special thanks go to all the teachers and students of the classes I havevisited in order to gather information for my survey questionnaire and classroomobservations

My gratefulness is to my husband, who has given me so much love, patience andencouragement, who spent hours working with the computer to help me with computerentry and processing

In addition, I am in debt of my mother-in-law, who has constantly supported andencouraged me to carry out this thesis, who has shared with me all the housework so that Icould concentrate on doing research

Reading is a very important skill because together with listening, reading provideindispensable input for students However, the teaching and learning reading in manyschools in Viet nam in general and at Phan Boi Chau specialized school in particular is stillfar from satisfactory

Students’ satisfaction with the reading lessons is of great concern In fact, there aremany factors affecting the students’ satisfaction that are worth considering such asstudents’ interest, needs teachers’ activities, the topic of the text, the text type…This thesisonly aims at investigating the students’ level of satisfaction with the teachers’ readingactivities because reading activities play a key role in making students satisfy with theirreading lessons

A set of survey questionnaire and classroom observations are used to explore the

11th non- English majors’ attitudes towards the teachers’ reading activities, situation ofusing reading activities by the teachers at Phan Boi Chau school and students’ preferencesfor these activities in order to narrow the gap between teaching styles and learning styles as

a goal of learner-centredness in language education From that, some recommendationsfrom using reading activities to better the situation of teaching and learning reading at PhanBoi Chau school would be made

The findings from the study indicates that almost all the students are fully aware ofthe sheer importance of reading activities A great variety of reading activities are reported

to have been used during reading lessons Among them, activities such as giving some reading questions to think before reading, pre-teaching new vocabulary and structures,asking students to do tasks in limited time are found to be the most frequently used but notinteresting ones Using visual aids and games is rarely applied by the teachers despite thefact that they are in greatest favour by the students The students also enjoy taking part inmany other activities such as predicting, brainstorming and translating….Besides, theteachers’ characteristics also play an important role in motivating students to learn thelessons The data from the classroom observations highlight the importance of usingactivities in encouraging and satisfying the students in reading lessons

pre-Finally, the study recommends that to better the situation, the teachers should varyand apply reading activities flexibly and appropriately, focus on students’ personal factors,provide the students with a variety of extra tasks, material and activities and be helpful,enthusiastic and humorous as well.

Hopefully, the thesis can be considered a small contribution to the teaching andlearning reading at the school

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION .i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .ii

ABSTRACT .iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS .v

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS .vii

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION .1

I.1 Rationale of the study .1

I.2 Aims of the study .2

I.3 Research questions .2

I.4 Scope of the study .2

I.5 Methods of the study .3

I.6 Significance of the study .3

I.7 Design of the study .3

CHAPTER II.LITERATURE REVIEW .4

II.1 Introduction .4

II.2 Learner- centred approach 4

II.3 Learning styles: The need to narrow the gap between the teachers’ teaching styles and the students’ learning styles 6

II.3.1 Learning styles: .6

II.3.2 The need to narrow the gaps between the teacher’s teaching style and the learners’ learning styles: .7

II.4 Reading and reading activities .10

II.4.1 Definition of reading .10

II.4.2 Reading activities: .10

II.5 Conclusion .13

CHAPTER III THE STUDY .14

III.1 The setting of the study .14

III.1.1 The school .14

III.1.2 The teacher and the students: .14

III.1.3 The TIENG ANH 11 textbook .15

III.2 Subjects 16

III.3 Instruments: .16

III.4 Data analysis process .18

CHAPTER IV.DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 19

IV.1 Survey questionnaire 19

IV.1.1 Students’ attitudes towards the teacher’s reading activities 19

IV.1.2 The current situation of using reading activities in a reading lesson at Phan Boi Chau school 21

IV.1.3 Students’ preferences for reading activities .23

IV.1.4 Students’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the teacher’s ways of teaching reading 25

IV.2 Classroom observations 26

CHAPTER V.FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR USING READING ACTIVITIES .31

V 1 Findings: .31

V.1.1 The students’ attitudes towards the teacher’s reading activities .31

V.1.2 The current situation of using reading activities at Phan Boi Chau school32 V.1.3 Students’ preferences for reading activities .34

V.1.4 Students’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the teacher’s way of teaching reading .35

V.2 Recommendations for using reading activities in a reading lesson .35

V.3 Sample work .38

CHAPTER VI.CONCLUSION 40

VI.1 Summary of the study .40

VI.2 Limitations and suggestions for further study 40

REFERENCES 42 APPENDIX 1 SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE I APPENDIX 2 OBSERVATIONAL PROTOCOLS III

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

TABLES

Table 1: The frequency of using reading activities

Table 2: Students’ preferences for the reading activities used by the teachers

CHARTSChart 1: The role of teachers’ reading activities in reading lessons

Chart 2: Factors affecting the students’ satisfaction with the reading lessonsChart 3: Activities that can help to increase the students’ satisfaction

PART ACHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

I.1 Rationale of the study

One of the tenets of a learner-centered approach to language teaching is studentsatisfaction If it is true that we cannot teach the language to the students , but just createconditions for the learning to happen, it is crucial to make our students satisfied with theirlessons This is because students cannot be sufficiently motivated to learn without feelingsatisfied with what they are provided for

In teaching and learning English as a foreign language, reading has always received

a great deal of attention This is understandable because where English is learnt and taughtinis a non-English environment, so reading is not only an important means to getknowledge but also a means of further study According to Richard (1993:9), “Becoming

an effective and fluent reader in another language has a number of important benefits forthe learner” In order to motivate learners to learn and become fluent readers, it isnecessary for teachers to understand students’ degree of satisfaction with the way thereading skills are taught so that improvements can be made on the part of the teachers.Despite the need of understanding how students evaluate the lessons teachers teach, therehas yet been a single study that looks into this matter in my school

When dealing with a reading lesson, the teachers always try to their best to makethe reading lesson a success However, because of the differences between the teachers andthe students with regard to the experience in using the language and expectation as well as

to cognitive styles, teachers’ satisfaction with their teaching does not necessarily meanstudents’ satisfaction it seems that some of them are not satisfied with their learning.Actually, satisfaction is a very necessary element in learning in general and in learningreading in particular but helping students to be satisfied with their reading lessons is achallenging task There are many factors that are worth considering such as students’needs, interest, teachers’ reading activities, the topic of the text, the text type

As said above, the issue of students’ satifactionsatisfaction remains unexplored in

my school, this study was an attempt to fill the gap However, with the limitation of thetime, the author only intends to pay more attention to investigate the students’ satisfactionwith the teachers’ reading activities because reading activities play an important role in

making students satisfy with their reading lessons Suitable reading activities can enhancethe students’ interest in reading Needless to say, it is necessary for the teachers to knowwhat reading activities their students would like to take part in.

At Phan Boi Chau school, teachers have used a variety of reading activities in theclassroom Despite their great effort, the students are sometimes not satisfied with theirreading lessons and the reading lessons are said to be boring This issue has brought theauthor a desire to conduct a research study on how far the students are satisfied with theirreading lessons and to give some suggestions for using and choosing suitable readingactivities

I.2 Aims of the study

The study aims at:

- examining the 11th non-English majors’ attitudes towards the teachers’ readingactivities

- investigating the current situation of using reading activities by teachers at Phan Boi Chau school

- exploring the students’ satisfaction with the teachers’ reading activities

- giving some recommendationssuggestions for teachers to employemployingreading activities to satisfy the students by satisfy non-English to improve their readingskills

- What reading comprehension activities do students most and least prefer?

- To what extent are they satisfied with their reading comprehension lessons in general?

I.4 Scope of the study

As mentioned above, students’ satisfaction with their reading lessons depends ondifferent factors such as students’ needs, interest, teachers’ reading activities, the topic ofthe text, the next type All these factors can not be covered in this paper So, the authoronly intends to study on reading activities that may affect students’ satisfaction in learningEnglish in general and in reading comprehension in particular More specifically, theauthor only focuses on investigating reading activities employed by teachers at Phan BoiChau school and students’ preferences for these reading activities After that, somesuggestions are given for the teachers to improve their reading activities to satisfy theirstudents.

I.5 Methods of the study

In order to achieve the goal of the study, which was to investigate the studnents’degree of satisfaction with their reading comprehension lessons, a questionnaire surveywas chosen for this study In addition to the questionnaire, which was administered to thestudents, classroom observations were also made to help the researcher interpret thequestionnaire data more accurately.The study was carried out on the basis of materialcollection, survey questionnaire and class observation

For the theoretical basic, materials are collected, gathered and analyzied carefully For the practical basic, questionnaires and class observation are carried out withtarget teachers and students to collect the most reliable data for the thesis

I.6 Significance of the study

The students’ satisfaction with their teachers’ reading activities plays a veryimportant role to the reading lessons This contributes to make the lesson successful or not.The findings of the study are believed to be useful for teachers to realize the essential role

of reading activities to the students’ satisfaction with their reading lessons Moreimportantly, the recommendations for reading activities hopefully can help the teachers tosatisfy their students in reading lessons

I.7 Design of the study

The study consists of three five parts:chapters

Part AChapter I: , Introduction,- presents the rationale, aims, research questions,scope, methods, significance and the design of the study

Chapter IIPart B: Development- consists of three chapters:

Chapter I,:, Literature review, presents the learner-centred approach, the teaching

and learning style, studies on learners’ satisfaction in language education reading andreading activities

Chapter II I,:, The study, provides the setting of the study, subjects, instrumentsand data analysis process

Chapter IV:, Data analysis and discussion, analyses and discusses the datacollected from the survey questionnaire and classroom observations

Chapter IIIV,:, Major findings and suggestionsrecommendations, offers themajor findings and some suggestions recommendations for employing reading activities

Part CChapter VI:,: Conclusio n,n- summarizes the study, presents and givessome limitations during the process of doing the research and gives some suggestions forfurther study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

1II 1 Introduction

Understanding students’ satisfaction with the way we teach is part of our endeavor

to make our teaching more learner-centered This chapter reviews the relevantliterature First, I will present some major principles of the learner-centered approach tolanguage teaching Then, the issue of the gap between teachers’ teaching styles andstudents’ learning styles is briefly discussed This will be followed by the why and thehow of narrowing such a gap Finally, the definition of reading and some commonreading activities will be presented the issue of students’ statisfcationstudents’satisfaction in language learning will be discussed

I I 21 Learner- centred approach.

Recently, there has been a shift in focus from the teacher to the learner, fromexclusive focus on how to improve teaching to an inclusive concern for how individuallearners go through their learning There are two reasons for this shift The first reason isthat the goals of language learning as well as insights into language and into the process oflanguage learning have changed The second reason is that learner-centredness is not atheory about teaching, but rather a theory about learning Each individual decides what isimportant and what is relevant to construct a meaningful concept.

According to Nunan Nunan (20001988:11), learner-centred classrooms are theplaces where “key decisions about what will be taught, how it will be taught, when it will

be taught, and how it will be accessed will be made with reference to the learner”

In fact, the concept “Learner- centred approach” is not a new one in the world Itrooted from the ancentancient times based on a lot of the famous educationalist’ points ofview This was then strongly developed and applied to language teaching

In Viet Nam, this viewpoint was also paid a lot of attentionlearner-centeredness hasbeen encouraged and promoted for several years, especially in education and training along time ago In 1986, at the 6th congress of the Communist Party of Viet Nam, the policy

of DOI MOI (Renovation) was adopted New approaches to planning in all fields emerged,affecting all sectors of society Education is just one of them

The view was presented clearly in Article 35 of the 1992 Constitution of Viet Nam

as follows:

“Education and Training is the priority national policy The government develops education aiming at improving people’s knowledge, training human resources and fostering talents”.

Therefore, it’s necessary of all educationalists to be aware of the important role inchanging their attitude toward education in order to meet the demands of the renovation.The learner-centred approach is based on the principle that learning is totally determined

by the learner As teachers we can influence what we teach, but what learners learn isdetermined by the learners alone

According to Nguyen Bang and Nguyen Ba Ngoc (year and page of reference?2002:40), learner-centred instruction includes:

- techniques that focus or account for learners’ needs, styles and aims

- techniques that give some control to learners (group work, strategy training for example)

- syllabus that include the consultation and input of learners and that do not presuppose objectives in advance

- techniques that enhance a learner’s sense of competence and self-worth

- techniques that allow for learner creativity and innovation

It is clear that if the learner-centred approach is fully applied to any teaching andlearning process, the learners will be more dynamic, more active and more self-confident.They not only have good opportunies to show their performance and competence, but theyalso have the ability to develop and create what they have learnt

In the teaching and learning foreign language, this approach brings a lot ofadvantages as Tudor (1993) suggests the following ones:

- The teaching aims may be suitably set if the learners can participate in building thesubject syllabus based on their own experiences

- The study will be more effective if the teaching method is suitable to learningmethod of the learners’ interest

- The learners will be more effective if the learners feel involved in building theirown syllabus

I 23 Teaching styles and lL earning styles: The need to narrow the gap

between the teachers’ teaching styles and the students’ learning styles.

I I 23 1 Learning styles:

The first step in pursuing more learner-centred teaching is to understand students’learning styles so that every student can be well catered for An area of research which hasreceived a lot of attention in many areas of education is the issue of learning style The idea

of learning style comes from general psychology It refers to the characteristic ways inwhich individuals orientate to problem-solving Keefe (quoted in Ellis 1994:499) defines

learning style as “the characteristic cognitive, affective and physiological behaviours that serve as relatively stable indicators of how learners perceive, interact with and respond to

the learning environment…Learning style is a consistent way of functioning, that reflects underlying causes of behaviour”

According to (the teachers’ Edition (November 2001)Richard and Lockhard(quoted in Record, D 2001:27)which author?), learning styles are defined as

“predispositions to particular ways of approaching learning and are intimately related topersonality types” (Richard and Lock hard) Another definition is:“A student’s orientation

toward learning” (Numan) Mariani defines learning styles as “a learner’s overall approach

to learning his or her typical consistent way of perceiving and responding to learningtasks”.(Mariani:, quoted in Record, D 2001:27)

Although several learning style tests are available, each with lightly differentcategories, Richard and Lock hard (cited in Record, D 2001:27) classified the followinglearning styles:This is NOT the right way of citation!- quoted in Teacher’s Edition 2001)classified the following learning styles:

 Visual learners: These learners respond to new information in a visual fashionand prefer visual, pictorial, and graphic presentations of experiences They benefit mostfrom reading and learn well by seeing words in books, wordbooks, or on the blackboard.They can often learn on their own with a book, and they take note on lectures to remembernew information

 Auditory learners: These learners learn best from oral explanation and fromhearing words spoken They benefit from listening to tapes, teaching other students, andconversing with their classmates and teachers

 Kinesthetic learners: Learners of this type learn best when they are physicallyinvolved in the experience They remember new information when they actively participate

in activities, field trips, and role-plays

 Tactile learners: These learners learn best when engaged in “hand-on”activities They like to manipulate materials and to build, fix, or make things, or to putthings together

 Group learners: These learners prefer group interaction and class work withother students, and learn best when working with others Group interaction helps themlearn and understand new material better

 Individual learners: Learners of this type prefer to work on their own They arecapable of learning new information by themselves, and they remember new materialbetter if they have learned it alone.

Understanding students’ learning styles is very necessary for a number of reasons.Firstly, it is important to learner-centred language acquisition because it helps Englishforeign language teachers prepare lessons based upon their students’ learning styles and toavoid the one-size-fits-all mentality Secondly, As Paulus Brantner-Artenie, and Turton

(wrong way of citation quoted in “Teacher’s Edition 2001”) stated “ Mm aking students aware of their learning style preference increases student autonomy and motivation Knowledge of their learning styles can help students to develop strategies, which will help strengthen their weaker perceptual styles These strategies can be transferred to university classes where information is often presented through one modality” (Paulus Brantner-Artenie and Turton, quoted in Record, D 2001:29author, page, year?) In other words, if astudent is able to gauge his/her own unique learning style, he/she will be able to seek outand make the most opportunities to learn

Besides, when the teachers apply suitable teaching methods to teach their students,they will be able to understand the lessons mmore easily The more suitable and relevantthe teaching and learning styles are to the students’ interests, habits and learning ability…,the more they can get from the lesson Therefore, they are more satisfied with their lessons

At this point you need to discuss further how the issue of learners’ statifaction is related to teaching styles and learning styles

I 23 2 The need to narrow the gaps between the teacher’s teaching style and the learners’ learning styles:

Narrowing the gaps between teaching style and learning style is of greatimportance Kumaravadivelu (1991:98) states that “…the narrower the gap betweenteacher intention and learner interpretation, the greater are the chances of achieving desiredlearning outcomes”

In fact, there is always a gap between teaching and learning This is becausestudents are always different in terms of needs, purposes for learning, and ways ofobtaining knowledge Teachers also apply many ways of teaching What the teacher

teaches, in many cases, does not mean what the students learn Therefore, mismatchingbetween teaching and learning is understandable So that, in a class when such a mismatchoccurs, the students tend to be bored and inattentive, do poorly on tests, get discouragedabout the course and may conclude that they are not good at the subjects of the course andgive up (Oxford et al, 1991)

It’s necessary to narrow the gap between teaching and learning According toBrown (1994), it is when students’ learning styles are matched with appropriateapproaches in teaching that their motivation, performances, and achievements will increaseand be enhanced

There are some approaches to match teaching styles with learning styles in EastAsia settings adapted from Zhenhui (2001):

+ Diagnosing learning styles and developing self-aware EFL learners: Effectivematching between teaching style and learning style can only be achieved when teachersare, first of all, aware of their learners’ needs, capacities, potentials, and learning stylepreferences in meeting these needs Zhenhui suggests that to end this, teachers may useassessment instruments such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indications Survey (Myers and McCaulley, 1985), the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (Keirsey& Bates, 1984) and theClassroom work Style Survey (Kinsella, 1996) However, there are dangers if learningassessment, diagnosis, and prescription are misused Further, Reid (1987:102) warns:

“Both teachers and students involved in identifying and using information on learning onlearning styles should proceed with caution and be aware that no single diagnosticinstrument can solve all learning problems”

For this reason, Zhenhui further recommends using diaries as a supplemental tool

By reflecting the processes that go on inside the writers’ minds, they open up fields that arenormally not accessible to reseachers

+ Altering the Teaching Style to Create Teacher- student Style Matching: There isalways a fact that no matter what the subject matter, there will be students with multiplelearning styles and students with a variety of major, minor and negative learning styles.Don Snow (quoted in Record, D 2001:28quoted in Teacher’s Edition 2001) writes “a studymethod that may be intolerably boring, confusing, or intimidating for one student mayprove comfortable and effective for another” An effective means of accommodating these

learning styles for teachers is to change their own styles and strategies and provide avariety of activities to meet the needs of different learning styles.

It is, therefore, very necessary for teachers to recognize the differences in theirstudents’ learning styles and find out the most effective teaching methods that can matchall the students’ learning styles so that the lessons become more interesting

+ Encouraging changes in students’ behaviourbehaviour and fostering guided stylestretching: Teachers should create a variety of learning activities to cater for the rangestyles that are available in the classroom By doing this, all students have chances, more orless, to take part in activities depending on their own learning styles This can motivate andencourage students to learn much more

+ Providing activities with different groupings: It is always helpful for the teacher

to divide the students into groups by learning styles and give them activities based on theirlearning styles This should appeal to them because they will enjoy them and be successful.The teacher can also use style-varied groups for generating greatest flexibility of styles andbehaviours But before being divided into groups, students should be aware of the divisionsand understand what they are doing and why they are doing it In addition, no matter howstudents are to be grouped, teachers should make a great effort to include various learningstyles in daily lesson plan

In conclusion, bringing the gap between teachers’ and learners’ perception,narrowing the gap between teaching and learning play “an important role in enablingstudents to maximize their classroom experience” (Zhenhui: 2001) However, there areprobably as many ways to teach as there are to learn Moreover, a study method which may

be intolerably boring, confusing or intimidating for one student may prove comfortable andeffective for another It can result in the assumption that any teacher is likely to confrontmismatch between teaching and learning This gap can be narrowed only when it’snecessary to narrow the gap between the teacher’s teaching style and the learners’ learningstyles This can only be done when all students’ needs, expectation, habits….are met Tounderstand and respect each student’s learning styles, teachers are suggested to employinstruments to identify students’ learning styles and provide instructional alternatives toaddress their differences Teachers should also plan lessons to match students to diversifytheir learning style preferences For students, they should also cooperate with their teachers

in matching teaching and learning styles They should try to change their learning habits to

become more effective language learners This may lead to general improvement ofteaching and learning, which both teachers and students expect to make As a result of this,the students feel more satisfied with the lessons

Again, how this is related to learners’ satifaction? Clarify

I.3 Learners’ perceptions/satisfaction in language education

I I.4 Reading and reading activities

I 4.1 Definition of reading

There are a number of different definitions of reading:

According to Harmer (1989:153), reading is considered as a mechanical processthat “eyes receive the message and the brain has to work out the significance of themessage”

Goodman (1971:135) defines reading as “a psycholinguistic process by which thereader, a language user reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been encoded

by a writer as a graphic display”

Rumelhart (1977) points out “reading involves the reader, the text, and theinteraction between the reader and the text”

To sum up, reading requires a lot of other skills such as analyzing, obtaining,predicting, confirming….in which the reader match what they read with what the writerwrites

I I.4.2 Reading activities:

Reading activities play an important role in the process of teaching reading Theymotivate, and keep students’ interest in learning and therefore, better their understandingand improve their reading skills Reading activities are considered good if:

- The students are fond of the topic and eager to read

- The students find the reading text easier to read and understand

- The students can obtain or remember something about the reading text

- The students feel eager to read other following reading texts

In fact, a lot of researchers studied reading activities, for example Ur (19841996),Michael Lewis and Jimmie Hill (1985), Nguyen Bang & Nguyen Ba Ngoc (2001).Followings are some of suggested reading activities for teachers to apply during a readinglesson:

I I.4.2.1 Pre-reading questions

According to Michael Lewis and Jimmie Hill (1985), pre-questions help studentsunderstand the text by focussing attention on key words and ideas They are also intentedintended to indicate the basic structure of the text, and help students’ anticipation.Actually, asking students questions will make them think about the topic they are going toread By doing this, students can build their prior knowledge and at the same time, usevocabulary and structures that are connected with a particular function Above all, it makesstudents feel interested and gets them involved in the coming listening activities

I I.4.2.2 Using a class discussion

It’s necessary for the students to discussion in pairs or in groups before and afterreading For the pre-reading stage, this activity helps activate students’ backgroundknowledge and ideas and then encourages them to share with friends It also helps students

to get more involved and to concentrate on the task For the post-reading stage, it developsstudents’ skills of arguing, giving opinions about the text or related topics What’s more,this activity helps students develop speaking and listening skills

I 4.2.3 Pre-teaching new vocabulary and structures.

There is a fact that vocabularies and structures in a reading text has have a greatinfluence on the students’ understanding For them, a large number of unknown words andstructures may hinder reading, and certainly lower their motivation and confidence.Therefore, it is necessary to pre-teach new vocabulary and structures, especially thedifficult ones There are many ways of presenting new vocabulary: using games, visualaids, definition, explanation or translation Basing on particular contexts, the teacher canapply a suitable activity

I 4.2.4 Giving a simple and short introduction about the text

According Nguyen Bang & Nguyen Ba Ngoc (2001)m it is important to introducethe text before the teacher asks students to read it This serves two purposes:

- to help students in their reading, by giving them some ideas what to expect

- to increase their interest and so make them want to read text

The introduction, in fact, is not necessary long A simple and short introduction isenough for the students to know and to be ready for what they are going to read.

I I.4.2.5 Asking students to tasks in a limited time.

This activity helps students get into the habit of working effectively basing on aclear plan At first, the students may feel to be put under pressure for time They getconfused and anxious As a result, some of them cannot fulfill the task But later, they willget accustomed to this Especially for the weaker students, they will gradually know how

to set up a clear goal for doing things For the teachers, if they know how to divide suitabletime for each activity, their lessons (with more diversified activities) are surely moreinteresting

I I.4.2.6 Using games

Most of the students are in favour of this activity Understandably, the young havethe same hobby of playing games They make students more relaxed and the lessonpurposeful Besides, games arouse the students’ interest and help them remember thereading text easily

I I.4.2.7 Using visual aids

In addition to the above activities, using visual aids is also an effective activity,especially in teaching new words This activity not only helps student to remember thewords easily but also makes the lesson diversified The students are always eager toexplore to new things

I I.4.2.8 Giving feedback

Giving feedback is a necessary activity not only in reading lessons but also

in other different lessons For the students, when receiving the teacher’s feedback, they aresimply informed how well or badly they have performed For the teachers, this is one ofthe most important responsibilities By providing ongoing feedback the teacher can helptheir students evaluate their success and progress Feedback can take a number of forms:giving praise and encouragement, correcting, setting regular tests, having discussions abouthow the group as a who is doing, giving individual tutorials, etc…

I I.4.2.9 Writing a summary after reading.

This activity may be difficult but useful one It helps students develop writingskills At the same time, it is a chance for students to use their source of vocabulary andpractice grammar With this activity, the students can remember the text deeply after thelesson.

I I.4.2.10 Applying rewards and punishment policy.

This activity encourages students to learn Receiving rewards from the teachermakes them feel happy and eager to learn Punishment makes them remember theirmistakes and at the same time is a motivational tool which makes them have to try theirbest another time

To sum up, no one can deny the importance of reading activities in satisfying thestudents in reading comprehension lessons In fact, they motivate, keep the students’interest in learning, help them understand and remember the reading text better andtherefore can make them satisfy with the lessons Needless to say, it is necessary for theteachers to know and apply the reading activities their students would like to take part in.The above ones are the most common for the teachers to employ.there are numberousreading activities Basing on different reading contexts and for different purposes, teachersmay chooseuse different and suitable activities However, all of them serve the same goal:helping the students understand the reading text better and therefore can improve theirreading skill

In what way is the discussion of this related to the issue of learners’ satisfaction.? Have a CONCLUSION section: What are the major points from the literature review that is connected to your topic of investigation – learners’ satisfaction with reading lessons?

II.5 Conclusion

In this chapter, I have presented a variety of issues relevant to my topic ofinvestigation These include the learner-centred approach, learners’ learning styles and theneed to narrow the gap between teaching and learning styles to achieve more learner-centredness in language classroom and some common reading activities that help satisfythe students in reading lessons The next chapter will present The study

CHAPTER III THE STUDYIntroduction

In the chapter, the author presents the current situation of teaching and learning thereading skill at Phan Boi Chau school as well as the setting for the study The subject andinstruments are also mentioned in this chapter Then, the author analyses the datacollectedthe data analysis process will be discussed

I II.1 Situation Analysis

II.1 1 The setting of the study

I II.1.1 1 The school

The study was conducted at Phan Boi Chau specialized school, which is the onlyspecialized one in Nghe An province The school was set up in 1974 with only two classes:one class specialized in math and the other specialized in literature Today, it is widened.There are 35 classes specialized in different subjects: mathematics, informatics, physics,chemistry, biology, literature, history, geography, English, French and Russian The schoolselects all the best teachers and students from school in the province The main duty of theschool is to train and foster talents for the province and the country The size of the class inthe school is rather small Each class only has from 35 to 40 students This is a veryconvenient condition for the students to study comparing with those in other schools inprovince Such small classes reduce the noise in the class and therefore help students beeasier to concentrate in the lesson

Despite being the only specialized school in the province, it is not well-equipped.The school only has a small library which doesn’t provide enough reference books.Especially, there are no videos, no English magazines and newspaper, which is a bigdisadvantage for those who likes learning English.

I I.1 1 2 The teacher and the students:

The school now has twelve English teachers aged between 25 and 53 Seven ofthem graduated from the English department, college of foreign languages, Viet NamNational University; Five others are from the English department, Vinh University Two

of them completed their post-graduate courses Four of them are working toward M.Adegree All of the teachers are willing and enthusiastic toward their teaching However,they all meet some difficulties when teaching at the school First, the teachers do not haveenough materials, which are very necessary for both the teachers and students at aspecialized school where the requirement and the demand is bigger than at any otherschool The second difficulty is that the teachers do not have chances to contact with nativespeakers or specialists who can give very precious help and advice

Therefore, the teachers may become less active and to some extent, the students arebored with their way of teaching It’s very necessary to find out how far the students’ aresatisfied with their lessons and then give some recommendations and suggestions on theteachers’ way of teaching

The school has about 1000 students whose age ranges from fifteen to eighteen.Most students in natural scientific classes are male Many of them come from districts ofNghe An province They are good students at the secondary school and therefore areselected after an entrance exam to Phan Boi Chau school They have three periods ofEnglish each week and each period lasts only 45 minutes which is rather short Theproblem is that most of the students from districts don’t have a good command of Englishand this number of students is the majority Even some students from Vinh city are notgood at English at all Meanwhile some other students are very excellent at English.Therefore, it’s very difficult for the teachers to make a balance in teaching these classes

As a result, some of the students are not satisfied with their lessons

I II.1 1 3 The TIENG ANH 11 textbook

The TIENG ANH 11 textbook consists of 16 units organized broad topics:

friendship, personal experiences, a party, volunteer work, illiteracy, competitions, world

population, celebrations, the post office, nature in danger, sources of energy, the Asian Games, hobbies, recreation, space conquest, the wonders of the world Each unit is divided

into 5 parts: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Language Focus The teacher onlycovers one of the above five parts in each period After every three units, there is a TESTYOURSELF, which provides some exercises for the students to do in order to test howgood they are at English The reading texts in TIENG ANH 11 are various Many of themare not very difficult at all and very interesting ( Unit 1: Friendship; Unit 2: Personalexperiences; Unit 3: A party; Unit 6: Competitions; Unit 8: Celebration; Unit 12: AsianGames; Unit 13: Hobbies; Unit 14: Recreation) However, some reading texts are difficultand have too many new words, which can sometimes not be covered within a period ofonly 45 minutes They are unit 4, 5, 10, 11 and 12 focussingfocusing on such topics asvolunteer work, illiteracy, nature in danger, sources of energy and the Asian Gamesrespectively All reading texts are designed with pre-reading activities, while- readingactivities and post reading activities Most pre-reading activities are “using pictures tointroduce the topic” Post-reading activities are mainly discussion or summary Tasks inwhile-reading stage are sometimes difficult Therefore, it’s very necessary for all theteachers to organize, arrange and apply some new activities to avoid boredom in theclassroom

I I 1 2 Subjects.

The study was carried out with the participation of 150 11th form students from fourclasses 11C2, 11A1, 11A4, 11A5 which are specialized in history, mathematics, chemistryand biology respectively The students under investigation are in the second term of grade

11 They ages between 16 or 17 They come from many districts of Nghe An province andwere selected after an entrance exam in Mathematics, Literature and Specialized subject

The reason why the researcher chose these students is that the classes have beenassigned with a relatively equal proportion of good, average and poor English proficiencystudents and these classes are at different levels of English From observation andinterviews with teachers of English, the author could find a general trend that classesspecialized in Chemistry (like 11A4) were supposed to be better at English than othersbecause most of students in these classes come from Vinh city They have better learningcondition Classes specialized in history ( like 11C2) tended to learn English worse thanothers Moreover, it is convenient for the researcher to observe these students who

completed the questionnaires in their classes Hopefully, the students selected in this studycould be the representatives for the natural scientific11 non-English majors students atthPhan Boi Chau school.

I II 23 Instruments:

The research is conducted by using survey questionnaire and classroomobservation There are many reasons for the using of these two methods As for Surveyquestionnaire it is one of the most common methods of data collection It is easily designedand can help the author collect a large amount of information only within a short time.According to Wallace (2001), the questionnaire is a popular means of collecting data as itenables the researcher to collect data in field settings Furthermore, it is rather easy for theauthor to summarize, analysize and report the data because all the answers are given to thesame questions Finally, the questionnaires can consist of both close and open questions sothat the informants have chances to express their opinion individually For the abovereasons, doing the questionnaires, the researcher can investigate the students’ attitude andtheir satisfaction with the teachers’ reading activities

As for the other tool of the study, classroom observation is not less important.Wallace (2001) asserts that it is an important technique for the researcher to record what ishappening at the time that the teaching and learning of the foreign languages take place Infact, with classroom observation, the researcher can watch, follow and record all activitiesthat the teacher and the students are performing in a particular place Therefore, it is a veryuseful tool for the researcher to check the reliability of the data collected from the surveyquestionnaire As Hopkins (cited in Mr Donough, J and Mr Donough, S 1997:101)describe, “Observation is a pivotal activity with a crucial role to play in classroomresearch”

 Questionnaire:

How was the questionnaire developed? The questionnaire (with 6 questions) wasgiven to 150 students It is written in Vietnamese so that the students can understand thequestion easily without any explanation It consists of both close and open-ended questionscovering four main parts Firstly, the first two questions are designed to find out thestudents’ attitudes towards the teacher’s reading activities The next two questions focuses

on the current situation of using reading activities by teachers at Phan Boi Chau school.Question 5 is aimed at finding the students’ preferences for the teacher’s reading activities

Finally, the last question (question 6- an open question) will be analyzed to find the thingsthat the students are satisfied or dissatisfied with their teacher’s reading activities Fromthat the researcher will give some comments and suggestions for using these readingactivities to satisfy the students in reading comprehension lessons The data were generatedand analyzed by the researcher alone to avoid inconsistency or possible biases and thendisplayed in forms of tables and charts.

How the questionnaire data was analysed?

 Classroom observation:

What was the purpose of observation? The researcher came to 4 different classeswhich where she distributed the questionnaire and took notes of what was happening in thereal classroom As said above, the observation is aimed at checking the reliability of thedata gathered from the questionnaire

The reason for choosing these classes is also the same as for the subject of thestudy The observation was carried out four times for four different units in four classes.The researcher observed each lesson in 45 minutes During each period, she noted theteacher’s activities , the students’ attitudes towards these activities The four teachersobserved have been teaching English at Phan Boi Chau for at least 3 years They all havetaught these four classes since the students were in grade 10 They are different in age,teaching experience and qualification Two of them are 27 years old One of them is 30 andthe rest is 34 years old Therefore, they have different teaching experience What’s more,there are two teachers who are working towards MA degree, one has got her MA degreeand one hasn’t done yet respectively

The researcher chose 4 different units to observe: unit 4, unit 9, unit 11 and unit 12.The first one (volunteer work) is one of the longest texts in the textbook The second one(The post office) is supposed to be very boring Unit 11 is a difficult one and the last onehas too many new words and structures that may hinder the students’ understanding thetext within only 45 minutes

The researcher acted as a non-participant observer and took notes of the classroomactivities and students’ involvement in these activities These notes were then transcribedand analysed to assess reading teaching in the classroom in terms of students’ reactions tothe way they were taught reading lessons

IHow was observation carried out? And how was the data analysed?

Hopefully, with four different teachers, four different classes and four different units, the researcher can get a lot of choice for the reading activities and can get involved in various classroom settings.

II 34 Data analysis process

The data collected from different sources was divided into the following parts: (1)the students’ attitudes towards the teacher’s reading activities, (2) the current situation ofusing reading activities in reading lessons at Phan Boi Chau school, (3) the students’preferences for reading activities and (4) what the students satisfy and dissatisfy with theteacher’s way of teaching reading The above division was simply the answers to theresearch questions stated in the first part of the study The data were presented in forms oftables and charts or by quoting the responses from the informants The data were analyzeddescriptively and interpretively

CHAPTER IIIIV.

DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION.

In the chapter, the researcher is going to analyze the data collected from the surveyquestionnaire conducted on 150 11th form students and from her observation in fourclasses The analysis of the data is presented in two parts: The first one is the results of thequestionnaire and the second one is those from the class observations

IVIII 1 Survey questionnaire.

IIIIV 1.1 Students’ attitudes towards the teacher’s reading activities.

Question 1:

Chart 1: The role of teacher’s’ reading activities in reading lessons:

Very important 65%

a short discussion before reading or pre-teaching new vocabularies and structures in thereading text or they will be stimulated if such activities as using games and visual aids areapplied before, during or even after reading, etc However, a small certain numbers ofstudents (7%) think the participation in the teacher’s reading activities are not veryimportant or not important at all This may be because of the fact that these students do notlike reading skill or those activities employed by the teacher are boring and not suitable fortheir levels of language proficiency.

Question 2:

Chart 2: Factors affecting the students’ satisfaction with the reading lessons:

A: The reading texts B: Inappropriate reading activities C: Difficult reading activities D: Others

Chart 2 shows factors which may affect the students’ satisfaction whenlearning the reading lessons In fact, there are is a variety of elements that are worthconsidering Most 52% of the 11th form students are influenced by the reading texts 52%

of the studentsThey find that if the reading texts are too long or have boring and unfamiliartopics…, their preference for reading will certainly be decreased from the beginning andtherefore they will won’t satisfy with the lessons despite much great effort from bothteachers and students The next factor that is not less affective is the teacher’sinappropriate reading activities Theyre are about 49% of the students who find that thereading activities can make them more bored with or more interested in the lesson.Therefore,

Clearly, the students’ eagerness towards the reading lessons will not be enhancedunless they are asked to take part in activities that are beyond their level Only 8 out of 150( about 5%) students are not satisfied with their reading lessons because they have to dealwith difficult reading tasks These students may be much worse at English than others ofthe same grade The rest of the students (15%) blame for other reasons such as the limitedvocabulary and grammar structures, the lack of preparation for reading tasks andbackground knowledge, etc In fact, the factors affecting students’ satisfaction whendealing with reading texts will be diminished if students are equipped with some readingactivities during the lessons