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Pre-reading stage and its importance to reading comprehension.. Second, my school is about 20 kilometres from the centre of Bac Ninh city and is a typical rural school where there are di

Ministry of Education and training

Hanoi University of Education

Faculty of English

A STUDY ON CLASSROOM ACTIVITY

AND ITS APPLICATION

INSTRUCTOR : Nguyen Mai Huong, M A

STUDENT : Ngo Thi Hue

GROUP: : 2

Academic Year: 2007- 2008

Hanoi, August- 2008

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

During the process of writing this assignment, I have been fourtunate to receive support and assistance from a variety of people

First and foremost, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my instructor, Nguyen Mai Huong, M.A for her expertise in scholarly instruction, valuable

guidance and intellectual support to my study.Without her advice and instruction I can’t complete this assignment

My special thanks also come to the grade 7 student at Huong Mac secondary school, Tu Son – Bac Ninh who have actively participated in doing the serveys and respond to my interviews

Finally, I owe a great debt of gratitude and appreciation to my family, my

relatives especially my husband who encouraged and help me to carry out this assignment

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

I.1 Rationale

I.2.Characteristics of teaching and learning situation at Huong Mac I secondary school

CHAPTERII: IMPLEMENTATION

A Theoretical background

I Overview of reading:

I.1 What is reading

I.2 The importance of reading

I.3 Reading procedure

I.3.1 Pre-reading stage

I.3.2 While- reading stage

I.3.3 Post- reading stage

II Overview of pre-reading stage

II.1 Pre-reading stage and its importance to reading comprehension

II.2 Funtions of pre-reading stage in reading comprehension

III Types of interaction activities in a reading lesson at pre- reading stage IV.Activities at the pre-reading stage

B Procedures of the study

I Methodology of the study

I.1 The subjects of the research

I.2 Methods of the research

C Data analysis

D Findings and recommendations

I Findings

I.1 Students

I.2 Teaching and learning conditions

II Recommendations

II.1 How to use the activity : T /F prediction

II.2.Adjustment to suit the teaching and learning condition

CHAPTER III: CONCLUSIONS

III.1 Summary

III.2 Limittation of the st

CHAPTER I : INTRODUCTION.

I.1 Rational :

The rapid development of the ralationship between Vietnam and countries all over the world has resulted in a great demand for English language learning

throughout the country The need is , nowadays, ever greater because there is a considerable number of peoplewho want to use English effectively for many

surposes- academic students, professional success and international

communication Having recognized the importance of English, the ministry of Education and training ( MOET) has recently decided that English is a compulsory subject in secondary schools One example is the coming into use of the new text book, which requires the teachers to alter their teaching methods Thus, there is a tendency for them now to focus more on Communicative approach instead of the Grammar and Translation However , at present, English language teaching in Vietnamese secondary schools especially in the rural area, is still far from satis-faction Changes are said to be modest in the real teaching and learning English at schools The fact that students are afraid of learning English and fail to actully use the language or find it difficult to understand its use in daily life communication is undeniable

As far as we know , reading plays an important role but pre-reading stage is not less important The lack of pre-reading activities may lead to the ss’ low motivation and interest in reading classes Among varieties of pre-reading activities it is the teacher’s role to choose the most appropriate one to use Each activity has its

characteristics It may be suitable with these studnets but unsuitable with others ,in these schools but not in others Hense the writer decide to choose one activity ( T/F prediction ) for her pre-reading stage and she wants to make it suitable with her Grade 7 students, at Huong Mac I secondary school in Bac Ninh

I.2 Characteristics of teaching and learning situation at Huong Mac I secondary school

The reasons for choosing Huong Mac I secondary school to be the research setting are: First, I have been teaching at Huong Mac I for many years Thus , I had more chances to get to know about the teaching and learning condition here

Second, my school is about 20 kilometres from the centre of Bac Ninh city and is a typical rural school where there are difficulties both teachers and students have to face up with like lack of essential conditions supplyingfor learning and teaching New English 6 text book, especially its reading skill

This paper hopefully will make a small contribution to make Huong Mac I secondary school teachers’ and students aware of their own situation of teaching and learning reading in general and carry out the pre-reading stage in particular The writer’s expectation is to discuss and find out the best way to conduct T/F prediction activity when teaching reading comprehension at grade 7 more

effectively

CHAPTER II : IMPLEMENTATION

A Theoretical background :

I : Overview of reading:

I.1.What is reading ?

Reading is common habit in human life and one of four main skills of a foreign language learner However , it is impossible to find a definition or

explaination of reading which is acceptable to everyone There have been

numerous definition of reading and each of them reflects an individual opinion of reading

William, E ( 1984:2) states in a simple defition of reading : “It is a process whereby one looks at and understands what has been written”

Being the same as William’s view is Harmer’s ( 1989: 153) He started that reading is ( An excercise dominated by eyes and the brain The eyes receive

message and the brain then has to work out the significance of these massage ” Another definition is “ Reading is a receptive language precess in that it starts with a linguistic surface presentation encoded by a writer and ends with meaning which the reader contructs there is thus an essential interaction between language

to thought” ( Arrell ( 1988: 12) )

From the above definition , it can come to nuderstand that reading is an

interative constructive process in which readers comprehend , interpret , and

respond to text according towhat they already know

I.2 The importance of reading:

In daily life, research takes an undoubtedly important role First and

Foremost, the ability to read provides people with opportunities to get access to education In out literate society, it is hard to imagine any skilled work that does not require the ability to read More over, further education depends on quality and quality of reading as all important Study skills require quick , efficient and

imaginative reading Reading also enhances general knowledge The more we read the more background and crosscultural knowledge we acquire and the more books

we find possible to understand

In mastering a foreign language , reading is one of the four basic language skills that any students has to acquire Concerning the roles of reading in a

language learning course , William , E ( 1996: 10) points out the following

suggested answers to the question: “ why should teachers want learner to read a foreign language ?”

 So that learners can have further practice of language that they have already met through listening and speaking

 So that learners can learn how to make sense of text, in order to extract the information they need from them

 So that learners can find enjoyment through reading

 So that learners can relax from time to time in the classroom

To sum up,reading ability will be developed best in association with

writing ,listening and speaking activities Even in those courses that may be

labeled “reading” your goals will be best achieved by capitalizing on the

interrelationship of skills , especially the reading- writing connection Therefore , students who enjoy reading in the foreign language may become motivated to learn that language in general , which is a boost for any teacher

I.3 Reading procedure :

According to CLT approach , a reading lesson has three stages including pre-reading , while-pre-reading , and post-pre-reading This approach is considered to be both scientific and art Being scientific shown is that reading procedure is divided into clear stages , so designing activities becomes more easily , and being art and

creative are that teachers are able to apply suitale reading techniques depending on conditions of each class or types of learners to teach reading most effectively in each stage Each stage obviously has its own aims and consist of specific activities However , these stages are inter-related to each other and exploiting the lesson in their inter-relationship would help make the lesson as effective as it can be

I.3.1 : Pre-reading stage :

Pre-reading stage is carried out before students begin reading the text It involves preraring studnets for what they are about to read, also it plays a decisive role in the while process of teaching reading lesson According to William ( 1984:

37 ) , The aims of this stage are :

- to introduce and arouse interest in the topic

- to motivate learners by giving a reason for reading

- to provide some language preparation for the text

To achieve these above purposes , Doff (1988:59) gave some general following activities :

- Giving a brief introduction to the text

- Presenting new vocabulary

- Revising grammatical structures

- Giving guiding questions

- Open prediction

- Pre-question

- Net work

- Ordering

- Ordering picture

I.3.2 : While-reading stage :

It is the main part of reading lesson its aims are :

- to help understanding of the writer’s purpose

- to help understanding of the text structure

- to help clarify text content

( Williams , 1986 :5 )

This stage is used mainly for silent reading there are a munber of activities , depending on the requirements of reading of the reading lesson , used at this stage Grelllet ( 1981: 5) mentioned some activities like :

- Skimming for main ideas

- Scanning to locate specially required imformation

- Understanding relation between parts of the text thruogh lexical

cohesion devices

- Multiple choice

- Gap fill

- Anwer given

- Grids

- Maching

- Comprehension question

- Recognizing indicators in discourse ,etc

I.3.3 : Post-reading stage :

It is the stage after finishing all the required activities at the while reading stage At this stage , activities can be carried out to gain some aims that Williams mentioned :

- to consolidate or reflect upon has been read

- to relate the text to the learner’s own knowledge , interest or views The activities at this stage can be :

- Discussing question

- Pole-playing

- Gap-filling

- Brainstorming personal ideas on the theme of the text

- Summarizing the text

- Arranging the events in order

These activitiesare implemented after students have thoroughly

understanding of the text The more comprehensively they get , the better they perform

Overall , reading is an interactive-contructive process so the three-part frame work mentioned above will help teacher to conduct a reading lesson well , it means that, being aware these stages , teacher can not only deal with students’ motivation problems but also with language problems and the selection or construction of reading activities and related exercises

II Overview of the pre-reading stage :

Generally, no one reads because they have to but because they want to We usually read with a purpose ,such as finding out something or checking or clarifying more information ,or even reading for pleasure Further more , we do not normally read with completely empty mind At least , we have some ideas of what we are going to read about , of things we want to know or we may predict or expect to find out some things

II.1 : Pre-reading stage and its importance to reading comprehension ?

We have understood that reading is an interactive- contructive process in which readers comprehend, interpret, and respond to text according to what they already know ,so “ pre-reading, thinking in advance about a topic before read , helps you prepare for the words on the page” ( Wiener, 1991 :61 ) Moreover , “ all language use in real life occurs in situation which allows the language user to reply heavily on anticipation and context It is correspondingly artificially difficult to ask

ss to read an unseentext with no preparation.” ( Lewi , 1985: 98 ) For example , pre-reading activities such as title discussion and vocabulary training have been shown to effective in decreasing oral reading errors and ncreasing reading rate and comprehension across a range of reading levels The benefical effects that pre-reading activities designed to enrich the relevant experiential context of the learner may have on both decoding and reading comprehension has been a focus on

empirical endeavour for over 55 years ( Smith ,1963 ) The general purpose of such activities is to either activate appropriate knowledge structures or to provide

knowledge that the reader may lack The writers have reported that lack of

understanding of context , or culturally loaded background knowledge assumed by the author , often makes comprehension difficult for the ESL reader ( Jonhson,

1981 ) , Hudson ( 1982 ) , Taglieberetal ( 1988) and Tudor (1988) have all

demonstrated benefits that the provision of context as a pre-reading instructional activity can have on comprehension- particularly with low and medium proficiency ESL students This can be stated more simply through Winer’s saying ( 1991) : “If you consider the topic before hand , you will find the writer’s ideas a little more familiar than if you jumped into the reading without prior thought.”

Is short, pre-reading activities are most important at lower levels of language proficiency and at earlier stages of reading instruction As students become more

proficient at using reading strategies , teachers will be able to reduce the amount of guided pre-reading and allow students to do these activities themselves

II.2 : Functions of pre-reading stage in reading comprehension

To understand the function of pre-reading stage , let’s take consideration into some following diagram stated by Sandra Siberstein

For students Reading/ thinking activities before reading

Reading begins

Skim the text , using information from teacher about the task/ purpose

From ideas what the text is about how it is organized

Use these ideas to activate prior knowledge of content and organizational patterns More than recall or rewiew

Scanning files and selecting relevant

information and deciding if information

is related

If More inferences

Then

Using inferences fromactivating PRIOR Stop/ Start

KNOWLEDGE to make prediction about Read/ Take notes

meaning and organizational partner of text Outline

and best strategy to use Read first/ gp back to notes

Form the above diagram, it gives a conclusion that “Pre-reading ,as an aspect

of comprehension instruction , involves preparingstudents for what they are about to read When teacher and students engage in meaningful pre-reading instruction , students develop clear purpose for learningand theie comprehension

is enhanced Pre-reading includes : “ drawing out or providing prior knowledge about content and process ,motivating students and teaching important

vocabulary” ( Conley , 195: 174)

“Pre-reading activities include presenting some of the new words which will appear in the text , giving a brief instruduction to the text , or giving or

twoguiding question for studenrs to think about as thye read” ( Doff , 1990 :

59 )

From these above opinions , the main funtions of pre-reading stage reading :

- Sparking interest and motivating students to read

- Assessing ,building , or activating students’ prior topical and lingistic knowledge

- Setting purpose for reading

Thus, recorgnizing pre-reading functions, teacher can define the suitable activities to gain the objectives of the reading lesson

II.3 Types of interaction activities in a reading lesson at pre-reading stage .

There have been many alternative pre-reading activities to encourage students

to read effectively According to Doff ( 1988:59) , there are some general

communicative activitiesas follows :

- Presenting some new vocabulary :

It is not necessary to give all the new words in a text before the students read it They can guess the meaning of many words from the text Only words which would make it difficult to understand the text need to presented before-hand ; other words can be dealt with after the text was read

- Introducing the text :

This has two purposes:

*To help students in their reading , by giving them some ideas of what to expect

*To increase their interest and so to make them want to read the text One way to introduce the text is to give a simple sentence “ We are going

to read about ; The text tells us about ”

This could be in English or in the students’ own language

A more interesting way would be to have a short discussion to start studnet thinking about the topic

The teacher should not say too much when introducing a text , or they will

“give away” that it has to way , and kill the students’ interest

- Giving guiding questions

Before students read the text , the teacher can give one or two guiding questions ( either orally or writen on the board ) for students to think about as they read The purposes of questions are :

*To give the studnets a reason to read ,by giving them something to look for as they read the text

*To lead ( or guide) the students towards the main point of the text,so that after the first reading they should have a good general idea of what it is about The guiding questions should be concernedwith the general meaning or with the most important points of the text so that after the first reading they should have a general idea of what it is about They should be fairly easy to answer and not too long

To conclude , this chapter has dealt with the theoretical background related to the topic of the assignment First is overview of reading including the nature of reading , reading comprehension , problems in teaching and learning reading as well as reading procedure Then comes the overview of pre-reading stage and its activities which is the topic of this research This chapter also looks into schemata theory in reading comprehension , especially in the pre-reading stage The writer hopes that from the studying these theories , she will find answer for her assignment paper most effectively

II.4 Activities :

There are many activities used at the pre-reading stage such as : open

prediction , T/F pre-diction , pre-question , network , ordering picture and ordering etc

1 Open pre-diction :

The teacher astablishes a context and introduces the topic of a reading text The ss are required to guess what they are going to read The T ( Ss) writes their gueses on the board The Ss are asked to read the text to check if things they guess are correct or not

2 T/F pre-diction :

The T writes 5-10 statements about the main points of a reading text , half of the statements are true and the other half are false The Ss are asked to work in pairs and decide if the statements are true or false The T writes the ss’ guesses on the board The ss are asked to readthe reading text to check their answers

3 Pre-question :

The T writes a few questions on the board These questions should focus on the main ideas of the reading text The T give the ss a few minutes to think about the questions Ss are asked to reading and answer the questions It doesn’t matter

of Ss can’t guess correctly

3 Net work :

This can be used for ss to brainstorm The T writes the network on the board Ss are required to work individually to find ideas related to the topic of the

network and then compare their answers in pair or group , then cllects the ideas from the ss

4 Ordering :

The teacher prepares some simple pictures to describe a story or a text , and sticks them on the board randomly Ss work in groups to rearrange the pictures and think of the story based on the picture order This activity is also used for while reading stage to check the ideas Ss have read about

5 Ordering :

The T writes about 6-8 statements on the main points of a reading text but the statements are jumbled The ss are asked to work in pairs or group to predict the order of the statements This activity is also used for while reading stage to check the ideas Ss have about The T writes Ss’ guess on the board ( 1 or 2 group only )

From above pre-reading activities , the writer choose T/F prediction activity for her study at grade 7 Huong Mac I secondary school

The writer wants to show her lesson plan at the pre-reading stage

lesson plan

Unit 1 : Back to school

Section A : Friends

Grade : 7

A Objective :

1.Competences :- revision of the simple present tense

-revision of comparision

2 Language : -vocabulary: adjectives

-structure : about superlative comparision

S1 + be + short adj-er than S2

S1 + be + more long adj + than A2

3 Skills: reading

B Method : Integrated mainly communicative approach

C Teaching aids : textbooks , chalk , baord , wallpicture

D Procedure :

T s activites ’ Ss activities’

* Warm up:

T asks ss to tell about her/his summer Ss listen and answer T's

holiday before starting new school year by questions

giving some questions :

ex: 1 What do you do during your summer