A study on students difficulties in extensive reading in class k43a EFL = nghiên cứu những khó khăn của sinh viên của lớp k43a sư phạm tiếng anh trong việc sử dụng đọc mở rộng

HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY 2 FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE TRINH THI THANH HUONG A STUDY ON STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN EXTENSIVE READING IN CLASS K43A EFL NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN CỦA

HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY 2 FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE

TRINH THI THANH HUONG

A STUDY ON STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES

IN EXTENSIVE READING IN CLASS K43A EFL

(NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN CỦA SINH VIÊN CỦA LỚP

K43A SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH TRONG VIỆC SỬ DỤNG ĐỌC MỞ RỘNG)

Major: English Language Teaching

HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY 2 FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE

TRINH THI THANH HUONG

A STUDY ON STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES

IN EXTENSIVE READING IN CLASS K43A EFL

(NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN CỦA SINH VIÊN CỦA LỚP

K43A SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH TRONG VIỆC SỬ DỤNG ĐỌC MỞ RỘNG)

Major: English Language Teaching

Main Supervisor: TRAN THI NGAN

Co – Supervisor: DO THI THANH DUNG

Hanoi, 2019

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

A STUDY ON STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES

IN EXTENSIVE READING IN CLASS K43A EFL

(NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN CỦA SINH VIÊN CỦA LỚP

K43A SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH TRONG VIỆC SỬ DỤNG ĐỌC MỞ RỘNG)

I certify that no part in this study has not been copied by me from any other person‘s report without acknowledgment and this work is written by my best under the instruction from my supervisor

Date of submission: May, 2019

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This research was supported by Mrs Ngan, Mrs Dung, Mrs Thao and Mrs Huong, the lecturers of FFL at Hanoi Pedagogical University 2 I would like to express my sincere appreciation to them This research could not have been completed without the wise guidance and hearty support from my supervisors and teachers I have the knowledge and courage to employ statistics

in my study

I would like to thank Miss Hoa, my friend, for sharing her opinion to make my study better and giving comments that greatly improved the manuscript

I am also thankful to Hang, Trinh, Phuong, my sincere friends, for enlightening me on critical analysis of participant’s views It is truly fortunate of

me to have experienced not only their academic but also their help

I would like to take this opportunity to express gratitude to my parents for the unceasing encouragement, support and attention

Also, I would like to express my gratitude to 25 students who participated voluntarily in this study

And, I also place on record, my sense of gratitude to one and all, who directly or indirectly, have given me their hand in this study

TABLE OF CONTENT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENT

ABSTRACT 1

ABBREVIATIONS 2

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 3

CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1 The Definition of Extensive Reading: 5

2.2 The Distinction between IR and ER 6

2.3 Effects of Extensive Reading 8

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 10

3.1 Participants 10

3.2 Instruments 10

3.3 Procedures 11

3.4 Description of intervention 12

CHAPTER 4 ANALYSIS OF THE DATA AND DISCUSSION 13

4.1 Evaluation of the results of Questionnaire for Students 13

4.2 Evaluation of the results of Interview Questions for the Teacher 18

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION 20

5.1 Extensive Reading: A Key to Improvement 20

5.2 Challenges of the application Extensive reading in learning English 21

5.3 Suggestions for EFL Pedagogy 22

CHAPTER 6 IMPLICATION………24

6.1 Limitations of the research………24

6.2 Directions for Future Research 25

APPENDIX 27

REFERENCES 32

ABSTRACT

It is an utter necessity to become fluent, self-sufficient and independent English readers with highly skilled reading comprehension abilities There is no point to doubt that extensive reading can be the best strategy to attain this There are a huge number of previous studies conducted to evaluate the impact of applying Extensive reading in learning language in EFL class However, the purpose of this study is to find out and identify the difficulties that the learners have to face with when applying Extensive reading in learning English The intervention was conducted in the same language as the students’ core reading instruction (English) Twenty - five the second - grade students from the class K43A EFL at Hanoi Pedagogical University 2 were invited to participate in this study They, under the guideline of the lecturer, applied Extensive reading in studying English 3 months ago The researcher investigated their obstacles and challenges when experiencing this application during class The study pointed out that there are at least six problems that make learners difficult in using Extensive reading Besides, the number of students in class is also a reason causing out of control for teachers to ensure the quality of this application project It is hoped that the findings will be the suggestions for enhancing the experiences of students who use Extensive Reading as part of their L2 learning

if applied

Key words: Extensive reading, challenges, difficulties, learning language

ABBREVIATIONS

HPU2: Hanoi Pedagogical University 2

*: A cloze test (also cloze deletion test) is an exercise, test, or assessment

consisting of a portion of language with certain items, words, or signs removed (cloze text), where the participant is asked to replace the missing language item Cloze tests require the ability to understand context and vocabulary in order to identify the correct language or part

of speech that belongs in the deleted passages This exercise is commonly administered for the assessment of native and second language learning and instruction

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 The rationale and significance of the study

In reality, for a student studying English as a foreign language, it can be seen that there are few opportunities to approach English input outside of the classroom due to the teachers of traditional teaching methods Most of the teachers in their language classrooms apply the intensive reading (IR): careful reading of shorter and more difficult foreign language texts In fact, this technique is appropriate for serving for tests As the result, many teachers admitted failing to make the students acquire their target language To overcome this problem, a number of teachers, in recent years, have used extensive reading (ER) as an effective technique for improving students’ foreign language acquisition in their classes Extensive reading is generally understood: read a large amount of materials for the purpose of getting an overall understanding, read for enjoyment

Extensive reading is considered to be successful program that can help students learn the foreign language In Extensive reading, thanks to reading a lot

of books, journals and research papers that contain comprehensible inputs, readers get more anxieties for the meaning of the text rather than the meaning of individual words and sentences There have been a number of previous researches that carried out in order to study applying ER to language acquisition Nuttall (1982) noted that “the best way to improve your knowledge of a foreign language is to go and live among its speakers and the next best way is to read extensively in it” Reading these kind of materials can enrich the students’ cultural background by making interaction with the target culture Also, according to Yamashita (2015), it has now been well-established that ER has a positive impact on cognitive and affective domains of reading in L2 In addition, many experts have claimed that extensive reading holds the key to improving learners’ reading ability, vocabulary acquisition, grammar and other skills A further benefit of extensive reading is students’ positive attitudes toward reading might increase As Sweet (2000) pointed out that an “effective reading

instruction can develop engaged readers who are knowledgeable, strategic, socially interactive, and motivated”

Some lecturers of Faculty of Foreign Languages (FFL) at Hanoi Pedagogical University 2 have applied this technique in their major classes Therefore, this study is carried out in order to find out the students’ difficulties toward the application of ER in learning English at HPU2 It can be no doubt that the application of English learning has great effects for learners; however ,students could face with many difficulties and certain challenges in the process

of applying this method Therefore, this study was conducted to find those difficulties and challenges, and solutions were proposed to deal with them It is hoped that the findings and suggestions herein will provide ideas for enhancing the experiences of students who use Extensive Reading as part of their L2 learning if applied

1.2 The aims of the study:

The purpose of the present study is to gather and evaluate the students’ viewpoints and difficulties in applying Extensive reading in learning English language In addition, the results of this study can give a suggestion for learners

in using ER technique in the language acquisition process if applied in the future

1.3 The Questions of the study

The present study took a different approach by investigating EFL learners’ difficulties and challenges of this application for learning while the previous studies on extensive reading mainly were focused on its effects on learners’ development Specifically, the research questions were addressed as follows:

1 What difficulties student encounter when applying Extensive Reading in learning English?

2 What are the factors that associated with those difficulties?

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 The Definition of Extensive Reading:

Palmer (1927, as cited in Smith, 2003, p 454), the originator of the term defined that extensive reading means “rapid reading” People, who apply this language approach, are able to read texts written in the foreign language with understanding and without looking up the dictionary frequently Palmer considered the frequent use of a dictionary for learning a language as a vicious linguistic practice Also, Williams (1984, p 10) explained extensive reading as the relatively rapid reading of long texts Besides, West (1955, p 189) referred

to the purpose of reading extensively: “to confer greater facility in the use of the vocabulary already gained, to give the child a sense of achievement and a taste

of the pleasure to be derived from his accomplishment” In Longman Dictionary

of Language teaching and Applied Linguistics, Extensive reading is defined as a skill that is “intended to develop good reading habits, to build up knowledge of vocabulary and structure, and to encourage a liking for reading” (Richards, Platt,

&Platt, 1992, p 133) Susser and Robb (1990) gave the definition of extensive reading using criteria Extensive reading means reading a large quantity of material or long texts; reading for global or general understanding; and reading with the intention of obtaining pleasure from the text, which is important for language learning Hedge (2000: 2002) stated extensive reading with the special characteristics:

• Reading large quantities of material such as short stories and novel, newspaper and magazine articles, or professional reading

• Reading consistently over time on a frequent and regular basis

• Reading longer texts (more than a few paragraphs in length) of the types listed in the first point above

• Reading for general meaning, primarily for pleasure, curiosity, or

professional interest

• Reading longer texts during class time but also engaging in individual, independent reading at home, ideally in self-selected material

In summary, ER is considered as an approach to the second language acquisition When reading extensively, students are allowed to choose the books depending on their interests, and being at their own level of difficulty On the other word, students learn to read by actually reading rather than examining texts by studying the vocabulary, and grammar According to Davis (1995), ER programs should be “without the pressures of testing or marks.” Moreover, the immediate aims of ER tend to be directly impacted on increasing the fluency and speed of reading In this way, students are encouraged to read for comforting themselves and are able to become better readers

2.2 The Distinction between IR and ER

In foreign language teaching, there are two approaches of reading formed: Intensive Reading and Extensive Reading Both of them are language improvement methods and work as the ways to connect to L1 and L2 Language students read the variety of understandable writings for joy, an action which ought to be proceeded over a practical period This is a moderate procedure as in regular language learning and it looks like the "entire language approach" (Goodman 1967: 128) The two methodologies affirm that language is a characteristic marvel and that proficiency is advanced through common, deliberate language work These two methods use, as their establishment, current help students to learn about language advancement as a useful, which means arranged procedure in which language is seen as a legitimate and characteristic genuine experience In conclusion, the two methods work learning language as occurring through practical perusing and composing circumstances Firstly, IR approach deals with short texts under a teacher‘s guidance for detailed understanding The Intensive reading technique is reading for a high degree of comprehension and achievement for over a long period

of time Sometimes, this approach is also called as sub-skills approach, which divides reading skill into several sub-skills Munby (1978) pointed nineteen detailed skills such as: recognizing the script language, deducing the meaning, use

of unfamiliar lexical items, etc As a result, this approach is applied for testing a lot However, dividing language skill into too many details not only is unlike reading in the mother tongue, but also destroys the nature of language Secondly, Extensive reading deals with relatively long

texts Pleasure, information and general understanding are the purposes of extensive reading Having a balanced approach between these two is the most essential element in any foreign language reading program So what are the differences between intensive and extensive reading? Schorhbuker (2008, p 2) noted that: there are several differences between these two reading approaches Waring (2006) proposes the difference between intensive and extensive reading approaches in a visual way based on Welch‘s model (1998) (Table 1.1.)

First of all, pay attention to the peculiarities of intensive reading and then examine those of extensive reading

language

them)

questions

Table 2.1 Intensive and Extensive reading approaches

It is informative to bring into the comparison between Intensive Reading and Extensive Reading In reality, teachers should apply both IR and ER method

in teaching, because the relationship between these methods is complementary

to each other IR, the type of reading most often found in foreign language learning programs, is a technique used to provide new words, and to be appropriate for serving for tests In intensive reading, students work with much shorter texts, materials under the guidance of the teacher in shorter terms than in extensive reading All of the students in a class have the same material despite of having different levels The aim of intensive reading is to help students construct detailed meaning of the text; to develop reading skills, such as identifying general and specific ideas and recognizing text signals, analyzing the language

in short texts; and enhancing their knowledge of vocabulary and grammar Meanwhile, when teachers apply ER to students in foreign language class, it can not only enhance the background knowledge deeply, consolidate the academic one, but also raise their enjoyment of reading which leads to reading fluency In extensive reading approach, students are involved in group discussion where critical readers and learners are more likely to happen; students engage in daily discussions about what they read in class or even at their home Each student will have a different material depending on their interest and level Subsequently, students can share the result of their discussion in a classroom by narrating the book, and presenting the events or the information they got

2.3 Effects of Extensive Reading

According to several recent researches’ results, it can be pointed out that extensive reading is effective in reading comprehension, improving EFL learners’ reading speed, increasing acquisition of vocabulary, and fostering positive viewpoints of pleasure reading in English Tanaka (2007) explored the effect of extensive reading on roughly 114 students (50% students are applied to use extensive reading, and 50% are done to use intensive reading) in their first

year of a public high school in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan The materials he used

in his study were 38 short passages whose topics related to the students’ interests The percentage of unknown vocabulary in each page was carefully controlled not over 5% Students who had read in extensive reading, got higher results in not only comprehension but also reading speed than those who had done with intensive reading Moreover, Lao and Krashen (2000), like Bell (2001), also found that extensive reading accelerated reading speed besides increasing vocabulary and interest in pleasure reading They together conducted extensive reading with the freshmen at a Hong Kong university Five authentic novels were assigned in six experimental classes The results of this application was compared with two control groups having spoken, writing, listening, and reading in the traditional English class Their findings illustrated that the students exhibited an increase in reading speed and vocabulary acquisition over

a semester (14 weeks) The improvement of reading speed was equivalent to an improve from 235 to 327 words per minute Last but not least, Mason and Krashen (1997) performed three successive extensive reading experiments with various groups of college students in Japan The findings indicated that extensive reading can increase EFL learners’ performance in English as measured by pre- and post cloze tests *

In the context, there are many studies that have been done on applying ER for the ESL However, there has not been many researches investigating to the EFL to evaluate its effectiveness in the language acquisition Moreover, previous studies have not focused on exploiting the factors affecting the success

of applying this method in EFL The researcher believes that the implementation

of this research is necessary to initially find out the factors that influence the success of the project applying Extensive reading in English classes

To sum up, these studies convey the notion that as long as an extensive reading program is conducted by following the implementation guidelines well, EFL learners are likely to benefit from it Among the guidelines are the principles of providing learners with reading materials that they can comprehend with ease and are interested in reading

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

3.1 Participants

25 university students of K43 English Teaching Languge at Hanoi Pedagogical University 2 were involved in the study They are now the second– year students who are being applied a lot of advanced methodologies in learning teaching methods as well as academic knowledge Also, one lecturer in the Faculty of Foreign Language was invited to attend in this study In the second semester of 2018-2019 term, this group was applied extensive reading in learning English during 12 studying weeks From the results of conducting this method in Mrs Huong’s class, this recent study had a survey to identify the challenge which the students faced with

3.2 Instruments

In this study, to get an insight to students’ difficulties toward the application Extensive Reading, Interview and Questionnaire are going to be used for both teachers and students In order to collect data about the students’ difficulties of Extensive Reading, a questionnaire will be designed for students

It will help the students get an opportunity to express their opinions about ER in terms of challenges ang obstacles In reality, the results of this study have to be

in validity, thanks for the second methods Going with using the questionnaire as

a tool, interview method will help the researcher have more authentic documents and basis, and get more ideas from the teacher

Questionnaire (Appendix A) and Printed Reading Questionnaire (Appendix B),

were implemented to gain insight into individual participants’ experiences and difficulties in applying ER in learning English language This questionnaire asked students in Class K43A EFL to tick and rank the factors that lead to the

difficulties of applying Extensive Reading in learning English

Interview Questions: (Appendix C) The second instrument was used in

this study in order to have deep insight into the teachers’ difficulties in applying

will be gathered through her voices In reality, the results of this study could be

in validity Going with using the questionnaire as a tool, interview method will help the researcher have more authentic documents and basis, and get more ideas from stakeholders As a result, the students’ weakness, challenges as well

as the teaher’s obstacles in applying this method in class were shown more

clearly The questions in this study were accepted from an earlier study by two teachers Mrs Nguyen Thi Dieu Ha and Mr Pham Hoang Long Bien, from

Hanoi National University

3.3 Procedures

class, the teacher introduced either the extensive reading of graded readers or Internet extensive reading to respective groups The introduction included the purpose of the extensive reading program, students’ expected amount of reading per week and related assignments, and a suggested list of graded readers for the group of linear text and Web sites of narrative stories for the group of multimodal text Then students were given the informed consent form to read, ask questions about, ask them to be participants After eleven weeks, the researcher gave participants a questionnaire to survey their problems, and challenges during the process of applying Extensive Reading in learning English

3.4 Description of intervention

The extensive reading activity took place in class once per week, and students were expected to continue doing extensive reading in their free time A typical in-class procedure included guidance, individual reading activity, and brief sharing First, an instructor gave guidance provided by the researcher via PowerPoint presentations After the presentation of supportive guidance, other students were given time to engage themselves in their individual extensive reading activity Finally, the instructor invited one to three students to share with the whole class what they had just read After 3 months, the researcher came back and collected data based on questions for students and an interview for teachers so that the author could find out the difficulties that learners had to face with during the process of applying Extensive reading in class

CHAPTER 4 ANALYSIS OF THE DATA AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Evaluation of the results of Questionnaire for Students

As a result of the evaluation of questionnaire for participants, we found that despite bringing many benefits to English learners, the application of extensive reading in the process of English language acquisition has many difficulties and challenges for stakeholders The current study was designed to examine What factors make students difficult during the process of applying extensive reading in class of K43 EFL class at Hanoi Pedagogical 2 Six factors were predicted and tested The fingdings show that the success of the application

of extensive reading is formed by at least six elements

and I have to look up them in the dictionary

2 I look up the new words in the dictionary,

clearly

3 I feel depressed when wasting a lot of time

finishing an extensive reading material

4 Teachers choose the materials I like and

they are suitable for my level

5 Teachers give me explanation whenever I

my materials

6 Teachers help me with my processing

0% 24% 20% 40% 16% reading an extensive reading material

7 I myself choose the appreciate materials

0% 12% 32% 56% 0% that are on my level with

8 All students in class are interested in my

about the materials

9 Discussing the content of the materials I

4% 16% 32% 48% 0% read with my friends is effective

10 I understand the content of the materials

students

Table 4.1 Percentages of students’ problems during applying ER in class

The figures in Table 1 provide insight into the students’ opinion about the difficulties they encounter in the reading process Nearly half of the participants, about 48% of students, find it difficult to read long readings with a lot of academic words They spend a lot of time finishing an extensive text The reason why is that they have to look up the meaning of the vocabulary Even if they could get all these meanings, they still cannot translate and understand the meaning of that passage clearly Repeating like that makes them feel frustrated and lose interest in reading the material As a result, The discussion about the content of the reading with the group members, and even the presentation of PowerPoint are considered as their challenge A number of people who feel less confident when giving the presentation in front of the class about the content that they have read, reach to 16% Meanwhile, more than 48%, nearly half of the participants realized that discussions with other students in the class were effective for them to read the material On comparing to the figure 36 % of the participants who are chosen reading materials by the teacher, the researcher