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THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES LE THI QUYNH YEN THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES ON STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE IN ENGLISH READING SKILLS AT BACH DANG HIGH S

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

LE THI QUYNH YEN

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES ON STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE IN ENGLISH READING SKILLS

AT BACH DANG HIGH SCHOOL

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M.A THESIS (APPLICATION ORIENTATION)

Dr Nguyen Thi Mai Huong

Dr Nguyen Thi Que

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

This is to certify that the thesis entitled “The Effectiveness of Communicative Activities on Students’ Performance in English Reading Skills

at Bach Dang high school” has been written by me and the work in it has not

previously been submitted for a degree In addition, I also certify that all information sources and literature have been indicated in the thesis

Thai Nguyen, June 2019

Le Thi Quynh Yen

Approved by SUPERVISORS

Supervisor 1: Dr Nguyen Thi Mai Huong

Supervisor 2: Dr Nguyen Thi Que

DEDICATION

To my parents who taught me to be more patient,

My siblings,

My husband, Nguyen Huu Tuyen

My son, Nguyen Hai Tung

My son, Nguyen Thai Son

And my friends For their endless support And being my constant sources of inspiration

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

During the process of carrying out this study, I have received a large amount

of contribution and support from many people

First, I would like to express the deepest gratitude to my supervisors, Dr Nguyen Thi Mai Huong and Dr Nguyen Thi Que, for their invaluable encouragement and useful advice during the whole process of this master thesis Without his help, this paper could not have been completed

Next, I am thankful to all my lecturers as well as staff at School of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University for their great supports and suggestions

Also, I am grateful to the teachers of English and the students at Bach Dang high school for their immense help and participation

Finally, my special thanks go to my beloved family and friends for their love, care and support during my MA course, especially on the completion of this thesis

Thai Nguyen, July 2019

ABSTRACT

The goal of this study attempted to test for the effectiveness of Communicative activities in teaching English reading for the course book English grade 11 by MOET The respondents of the study were 30 matched pair students who were studying at grade 11 at Bach Dang high school, Quang Yen district, Quang Ninh Province during their second semester of the academic school year 2018-2019 The experiment was conducted in 8 class-hours for the class within two months The t-test for dependent or correlated samples was applied to determine the significance

of the differences between the means of the control group and experimental group The result proved that Communicative Approach is more effective in improving students’ competence in English than the traditional method As a consequence, it is recommended that teachers of English take into serious consideration all the conditions to apply these innovative approaches as well as combine harmoniously different methods in their teaching so that they could facilitate the students’ learning

to reach their utmost acquisition of the language

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE ……… i

APPROVAL SHEET……… ii

DEDICATION ……… iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENT ……… iv

ABSTRACT ……… v

TABLE OF CONTENTS ……… vi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS viii

LIST OF TABLES ……… ix

LIST OF FIGURES ……… x

LIST OF APPENDICES… ……… xi

Chapter Page 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Introduction……… …… …… ……… 1

1.2 Aims of the study ……….……… 2

1.3 Scope of the study…….……… 3

1.4 Significance of the study………… ……… 3

1.5 Definition of terms.……….… 3

1.6 Outline of the study……….… 4

2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND STUDIES 6 2.1 Communicative Language Teaching Approach……… 6

2.2 Communicative Competence… ……… 8

2.3 Methodology Framework of Communicative Activities 9

2.4 Groupwork as a Communicative Activity in teaching Reading… 10 2.5 Roles of Teachers and Students in CLT….……….……… 13

2.6 Studies on CLT and Teaching Reading Comprehension……… 15

2.7 Concluding remarks……… 17

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 18 3.1.Research Design.… ……….……… 18

3.2 Participants……… 18

3.3 Data Collection Instrument.……… 19

3.4 Data Collection Procedure ……… 19

3.5 Data Analytical Method……… 20

4 PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA 22 4.1 Comparison of Data of the Pre-test Scores of the Control and Experimental Groups… ……… 22

4.2 Comparison of Data of the Post-test Scores of the Control and Experimental Groups……… 25

4.3 Comparison of Data of the Pre-test and Post-test Scores of the Control Group (Using the Traditional Method)……… 28

4.4 Comparison of Data of the Pre-test and Post-test Scores of the Experimental Group (using the Communicative Language Teaching) 31

4.5 Comparison of the Mean Gain Scores of the two groups……… 34

5 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS 38 5.1 Summary……….….….……… 38

5.2 Findings… ……….….……… 39

5.3 Conclusions……… 40

5.4 Recommendations……… ………… 41

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Abbreviation Full word

MOET: Ministry of Education and Training CLT: Communicative Language Teaching NFLP: The National Foreign Language Project EFL: English Foreign Language

LIST OF TABLES

Page

Table 2 Comparison of Pre-test Scores of the Control and Experimental

LIST OF FIGURES

Page Figure 1 Framework of communicative activities in teaching 10

Figure 2 Distribution of the Pre-test Scores of the Control and

LIST OF APPENDICES

Page

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1 Introduction

Due to the growing effect of globalization, the international communication in English isbecoming widespread To meet the challenges of this modern trend, most

of the non-Englishspeaking countries around the world are becoming more receptive

to English language Same scenario prevails in most of the Asian countries and certainly in Vietnam To cater this requirement of making our students literate in regional and international communication, the demand for communicative competence in English is increasing day by day

In Vietnam, the Prime Minister issued Decision No 1400/QĐ-TTgon approving the 10-year National Plan for “Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages

in the National Education System, Period 2008 to 2020” In 2010, Vietnamese Ministry of Education launched “The National Foreign Language Project 2020”

(NFLP 2020) with the goal of "comprehensively renovating the teaching and learning English within the national education system; … so that by the year 2020, most Vietnamese youth whoever graduate from vocational schools, colleges and universities will have been able to use a foreign language confidently in their daily communication, their study and work in an integrated, multi-cultural and multi- lingual environment, making foreign languages a comparative advantage of development for Vietnamese people , serving the cause of industrialization and modernization for the country” (MOET, 2010) As a result, changes and innovations

in English teaching and learning have never become more prominent in all educational institutions with the hope to make a break through in language education across the country

Of all remarkable approaches in language teaching, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Approach is one of the method of choice CLT refers to the beliefs

and theories of the language teaching, which emphasize that the goal of language

teaching is communicative competence (Richard& Roger, 1985) Moreover, as a

learner-centered approach, CLT is claimed to make language learning more relevant, interesting, enjoyable and effective Therefore, the application of this method in teaching - learning process is expected to enhance students’ achievement in English

Bach Dang high school where the researcher is working is located in a mountainous area of Quang Ninh province As an observator, English is not a strong skill but frightening subject to study just for tests for many students here That is the reason why students find little motivation to study and use English inside and outside the classrooms

The above situations and observations, together with the researcher’s own interest in finding out whether CLT is really effective and enhances students’ performance in reading English at her teaching context, a study on “The Effectiveness of Communicative Activities on Students’ Performance in English

Reading Skills at Bach Dang high school” is expected to be the topic of her study

2 Aims of the study

The main purpose of this study is to test for the effectiveness of Communicative Activities on the reading achievement of the grade 11 students at Bach Dang high school Specifically, the study aims to apply different activities in Communicative Approach in the teaching of selected textbook contents to see whether CLT really enhances students’ achievement in reading comprehension at a high school in QuangNinh province

More specifically, the study aims to seek the answer for the following research question:

To what extent does the use of Communicative Activities improve grade 11 students’ performance in English reading skills?

3 Scope of the study

This study mainly concentrates on investigating the effectiveness of CLT in teaching English reading to high school students in order to see whether there is any improvement in reading after the experimental period

The participants joined in this research are a group of 30 students of grade 11

at Bach Dang high school, Quang Ninh province They were administered with a test before and a post-test after the experimental teaching period to see if there was

pre-any improvement in their reading performance

4 Significance of the study

The current study is believed to make important contributions in some ways

First of all, the research results would help teachers and educators of English to

recognize how communicative language teaching affect their reading classes and then adjust their teaching so as to meet the students’ needs It can also provide teachers with possible suggestions to improve the use of communicative language activities in their classrooms

Secondly, through the communicative activities in the classes, it is hoped that

students will be more interested in learning reading and become more confident

when communicating and reading in English

Finally, administrators will also be beneficial from the results and

suggestions when knowing important roles of communicative activities in improving students’ competence in language skills, so that appropriate policies should be given

to support English language teaching and learning at their institutions

5 Definitions of terms

The following terms are defined for better understanding of the study:

Methods of Teaching: It refers to the traditional method in teaching the control

group and CLT used in the experimental group

Traditional Method: It refers to method of teaching in which students learn reading skills

by translating sentences from English to Vietnamese before doing any reading tasks

Communicative Teaching Approach: It refers to method of teaching in which students

learn and practice the English language through the interaction with one another and the instructor and through the use of the language for communication purposes

Effectiveness: It refers to a change or changed state occurring to the students as a

direct result of the CLT method

Experimental Group: This refers to thirty students belonging to a group who are

subjected to communicative activities

Traditional Group: This refers to thirty students belonging to a group who are

subjected to traditional method of learning reading skills

Students’ Achievement It refers to the standard performance in English reading

comprehension It is determined by the mean score of the respondents in reading English Such scores can be gathered from the achievement test

Pre-test This is a test given to both groups before teaching the lessons which give

focuses on reading tasks, i.e matching, True/False This is to diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of the students in the subject matter

Post-test This is a test given to both groups at the end of teaching the lessons to

determine the achievement level of the students

Mean Score This refers to the difference in scores obtained by the students in the

pre-test and post-test

6 Outline of the thesis

As required, the paper will have such main parts as follows:

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION, presents statement of the problem and

rationale for the study, aims, scope, definition of terms, significance, and outline of the study

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW, clarifies theoretical background and

related studies relevant for the research

Chapter 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY, elicits information related to research questions, research methods, data collection procedure and data analysis

Chapter 4: PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

OF DATA is the main part of the study and will be divided into two subsections,

correspondent to the research question First, the extent to which communicative activities influence students’ reading ability is reported Subsequently, students and teachers’ opinions and attitudes towards the use of this method is displayed

Chapter 5: SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS,

summarizes essential findings, provides some linguistic and pedagogical implications, and gives suggestions for further studies

Besides, there should be REFERENCES and APPENDICES if any at the

end of the research

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter is to present an overview of the theoretical background, which consists of three main parts The first part deals with the communicative teaching approach in general and an overview of communicative competence The second part discusses the framework of communicative teaching and the communicative reading teaching in Vietnamese education context and their application in reading classes Finally, related previous studies are considered to figure out how communicative activities have been utilized to teach reading

2.1 Communicative Language Teaching Approach

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is the most influential language teaching methodology in the present world Speaking about CLT characteristics (Richards, 2006), emphasis that people learn one language when they use it to do things, rather than by studying its functions, we have a lot of different examples where students learned a second foreign language because of their needs for that kind

of language In every CLT activity, communicative intent is always emphasized This approach appeared during the 1970s and its main principles at that time were the following ones:

- Make real communication the focus of language learning

- Provide opportunities for learners to experiment and try out what they

know

- Be tolerant of learners’ errors as they indicate that the learner is building up his or her communicative competence

- Provide opportunities for learners to develop both accuracy and fluency

- Link the different skills such as speaking, reading, and listening together, since they usually occur so in the real world

- Let students induce or discover grammar rules

(Richards, 2006, p 13)

According to the recent study of Richards and Rodgers (2001), CLT method is considered the best as approach rather than a method “It refers to a diverse set of principles that reflect a communicative view of language and language learning and that can be used to support a wide variety of classroom procedures.” (p.73) In addition, Freeman (2000, p 23), further affirms that “Communicative Language Teaching method aims broadly to apply the theoretical perspective of the Communicative Approach by making communicative competence the goal of language teaching and by acknowledging the interpendence of language and communication”

Ahmad (2013) has concluded that “communicative approach is better than the traditional method (GTM) in teaching English at the higher secondary level in Pakistan The experimental study included in this research proved the fact that, if provided with suitable conditions, Pakistani learners can increase their communicative ability Ozsevic (2010) in his use of Communicative Language Teaching Method has concluded that “The results show that Turkish EFL teachers, whilst aware of the achievements, observe many difficulties in implementing CLT in their classrooms These difficulties stem from four directions, namely, the teacher, the students, the educational system, and CLT itself The results suggest that despite showing keen interest in change and being eager to identify with CLT, Turkish teachers are not rather optimistic about the complete adoption of CLT, and thus feel that only by overcoming the difficulties from those four sources, and by establishing more favorable conditions for the implementation of CLT can teachers truly benefit from CLT in their English classrooms.”

Incommunicative class, students use the language a great deal through communicative activities, (e g., games, role play, group work etc.) According to Zaman (2008), there are four basic aspects of CLT

1 An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language

2 The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation For example, newspaper, magazine etc., are authentic texts

3 An enhancement of the learners’ own personal experiences as important contributing elements to classroom learning

4 An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activation outside the classroom

In sum, the researcher agrees with Brown (2007) when he gives his definition of CLT as “an approach to language teaching methodology that emphasizes authenticity, interaction, student-centered learning, task based activities, and communication for the real world, meaningful purposes”

2.2 Communicative Competence

Canale and Swain (1980) referred communicative competence as the interaction between grammatical competences or the knowledge of the rules of grammar and sociolinguistic competence or knowledge of the rules of use They identified grammatical, sociolinguistic and discourse competence as part of communicative competence

Sociolinguistic competence is crucial in interpreting utterances for their `social meaning’ Discourse competence relates to the learners’ ability to combine grammatical forms and meaning in an appropriate order for discourse needs Discourse competence highlights that learners must also be aware of the discourse patterns of the language they are learning (Canale, 1980) Savigone (1997), cited by Aleixo (2003), characterizes communicative competence as having the following elements:

- Communicative competence is a dynamic rather than a static concept It depends on the negotiation of meaning between two or more than two persons who share same symbolic system

- Communicative competence applies to both written and spoken language, as well as to many other symbolic systems

- Communicative competence is context specific Communication takes place

in an infinite variety of situations and success in a particular role depends on one’s understanding of the context and prior experience of a similar kind

- Communicative competence is relative, not absolute, and depends on the cooperation of all the participants

- There is a difference between having the knowledge necessary to produce sentence of a language and applying this knowledge It is a difference between what a person knows, which is linguistic competence is and how he uses this knowledge in actual speech production and comprehension, which is his linguistic performance Communicative Language Teaching always gives importance on proper performance

2.3 Methodological Framework of Communicative Activities

There are two kinds of communicative activities They are: communicative activities and communicative activities Through pre-communicative activities, the teacher isolates specific elements of knowledge or skills which compose communicative ability, and provides the learners with opportunities to practice them separately The learners exercise some parts of skills rather then practicing the total skills The learners learn different structures of target language through the pre-communicative activities

pre-In communicative activities, the learners have to activate and integrate their pre-communicative knowledge and skills in order to use them for the communication

of meaning Then they practice the total skills of communication In functional communicative activities, the learners are placed in a situation where they must perform a task by communication as best they can; with whatever resources they have available The criterion for success is practical: how effectively the task is performed In social interaction activities, on the other hand, the learners are also encouraged to take account of the social context in which communication takes place They are required to go beyond what is necessary for simply ‘getting the meaning across’, in order to develop greater social acceptability in the language they

use This methodological framework can be represented diagrammatically as follows:

Figure 1: Framework of communicative activities in teaching (Littlewood, 1981) 2.4 Groupwork as a Communicative Activity in Teaching Reading

As Richards and Rodgers (2001) stress, communicative learning activities arethose which promote learning through communication itself; therefore, the range

of instructional practices that may be employed in CLT is bounded only by the creativity of curriculum designers and classroom instructors in developing authentic communicative tasks Breen (1987) described these as structured activities which

“have the overall purpose of facilitating language learning - from the simple and brief exercise type, to more complex and lengthy activities such as group problem solving or simulations and decision making” (p 23)

Littlewood (2002, p 1) has stated that one of the characteristic features of CLT is that it pays systematic attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language, combining these into a more communicative view Furthermore, Nunan (1991, p 297) has described five characteristics of CLT:

1 An emphasis on learning to communicate through interactions in the target language;

2 The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation;

Quasi-Functional communicative activities

Social interaction activities

3 The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language, but also on the learning process itself;

4 An enhancement of the learner’s own personal experiences as an important contributing elements in classroom learning;

5 An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activation outside the classroom

Group work is considered as a communicative activity since the focus is not

on the use of any particular grammatical form or speech function The point is to experience the relationship between language use and task fulfillment Therefore, the delivery-lecture, readings, explanations, tasks expected of the students and so on, must be adjusted to the students Motivation is generally high, provided the tasks are challenging and promoting discussion Students participate more actively, partly because it is less threatening than participating in front of the whole class and partly because it is more obvious that everyone’s contribution counts And the discussion helps students to see how to read thoughtfully Group discussions are popular

“because the participants were expressing their own ideas rather than performing in a hypothetical situation” Gao (2008, p.16) Through discussion, the students can learn the processes of critical thinking that good readers use Group work is ideal, because

in small groups (maximum five members), even the weaker students should be active and learning

In addition, groupwork is one way of work where brainstorming can be applied successfully A task which is too difficult for an individual todo, can be easy

to do successfully in a group Cottrell (1999, p 12) has said that groupwork is where groups of students work in the same room or at the same event on a common problem that necessitates agroup approach If the group is managed in a totally autocratic manner, there may be little opportunity for interaction relating to the work however if there is functioning within the group, the process can be evolved so that all members of the group learn together Even if the problem can be decided by a single person, there are two main benefits in involving more students to carry out the decision First, the motivational aspect of participating in the decision will clearly

enhance its implementation Second, there may well be factors which implementers understand better than the single person who supposedly can decide alone In the teaching-learning of reading, the study encompasses the following steps in group-work activities; first, the teacher puts the students into pair groups Second, the teacher thenasks the student pairs to work together to answer the questions from thereading texts shared out to them by the teacher Third, therepresentative student from each group gives the answers orally and also writes them down on the white board

Regarding advantages of groupwork in teaching reading, Harmer (2007, p 166) has stated that there are some advantages ofgroup work as follows:

1) Like pair work, it dramatically increases the number of talking opportunities for each individual student

2) Unlike pair work, because there are more than two people in the group, personal relationships are usually less problematic; there is also a greater chance of different opinions and more varied contributions than in pair work

3) It encourages broader skills of cooperation and negotiation than pair work, and yet

is more private than work in front of the whole class

4) It promotes learner autonomy by allowing students to make their own decisions in the group without being told what to do by the teacher

5) Although we do not wish any individuals in groups to be completely passive, nevertheless, some students can choose their level of participation more readily than

in whole of class or pair work situations

Furthermore, Brown (2001, p 177) has also stated that theadvantages of group work include:

1) Group work generates interactive language

2) Group work offers an embracing affective climate

3) Group work promotes learners responsibility and autonomy

4) Group work is a step toward individualizing instructions

However, when using groupwork in teaching reading, we have also keep in mind the disadvantages of groupwork which were also mentioned by Harmer (2007, p 166):

1) It is likely to be noisy (though not necessarily as loud as pair work can be) Some teachers’ feel that they lose control, and the wholeclass feeling which has been instantly built up may dissipate when the class is split into smaller entities

2) Not all students enjoy it since they would prefer to be the focus of the teacher’s attention rather than working with their peers Sometimes a student may find themselves in an uncongenial group and wish they could be somewhere else

3) Individuals may fall into group roles that become fossilized, so that some are passive whereas others may dominate

4) Groups can take longer to organize than pairs, beginning and ending group wok activities, especially where people move around the class, can take time and be chaotic

2.5 Roles of Teachers and Students in Communicative Language Teaching

According to Zaman (2008), in communicative language teaching a teacher has two main roles:

- The first is to facilitate the communication process between all participants in the classroom and between these participants and the various activities and text

- The second role is to act as an independent participant within the learning teaching group

The teacher may take on the role of a participant in a given exercise, or even act as a co-learner herself, as students express themselves during the course of a communicative task (Nunan, 1989, p 89) When errors occur, the teacher may note them without comment so as not to disrupt the low of the activity, instead addressing the issues that appear to cause dificulties at a later time (Larsen-Freeman & Anderson, 2011) As Richards and Rodgers (2001) suggest, teachers who lack specialized training may ind classroom development to be challenging in such a learning environment, as they strive to ind a balance between providing structure to the learning process while still maintaining a natural low of communication

2.5.2 Roles of students

When it comes to the role of students in a communicative approach to language, it is important to bear in mind that, as teachers we can no longer be considered only as teachers, just the same happens with students, since both teachers and students are responsible for learning

Within the framework of a communicative approach, students are the focal pointof classroom activity, assuming primary responsibility for their own learning Asit is assumed that using a language is the most efective way to learn it (Richards,2006), students are encouraged to work together to negotiate meaning in order to accomplish a given communicative task; thus, learning activities are highly interactive and may take place in smaller groups or with an entire class In this context, learners are responsible for choosing which forms of the language they use

to convey their messages, rather than following a prescribed lexis (Belchamber, 2007)

Ozsevik (2010) further affirms that, in the CLT classroom, the whole environment is student-centred, and it does not depend on the teachers all the time, waiting for instructions, correction, permits, words of approval, evaluation and praise.Instead, the students take a fairly positive role They do not ignore each other butcommunicate with one another They appreciate the contributions from eachother; they all also cooperate and learn from each other in the best way possible The student can be a provider of feedback to others As for the expression and negotiation, the student adopts a dual function of being, first, a teacher for other potential students and, secondly, to inform a teacher in reference to its own process learning In the latter role, the student can offer the teacher and otherstudents, a new source that can help the process of teaching-learning group asa whole Breen and Candlin (1980) summarize this idea by arguing that: “a communicative methodology would allow both the teacher and the learner to be interdependent participants in a communicative process of learning and teaching.” (Breen and Candlin, 1980, p.101)

2.6 Studies on Communicative Language Teaching and Teaching Reading Comprehension

According to Ellis (1994), teaching in a foreign language setting gives rise to conflicts Clashes between expectation and assumption are the main barrier in adapting CLT in EFL context

Ellis (1994) investigated the appropriateness of the communicative approach

in Vietnam It was found that one of the basic problems in implementing CLT in Vietnam was the teachers’ deep-rooted tradition They like to follow grammar translation method According to Vietnamese teachers, it is not necessary to have the knowledge of target language culture They think that CLT is not culturally fit for Vietnam and it is basically an ESL methodology This study demonstrated that there

is a basic conflict between Western and Vietnamese pedagogical beliefs Based on

the findings of the study, Ellis concluded that CLT approach in its original form is notsuitable for Vietnamese conditions Although there is a strong demand for communicativecompetence in English in Vietnam, it is not matched by adequate teacher training, communicative language materials and suitable learning environment

Mustafa (2009) identified the real position of communicative approach to teach English in Indonesia He argued that the communicative approach in Indonesia had failed to help thestudents He added that the enabling condition for successful CLT application is not always easy to create in Indonesian education system The teachers’ lack of confidence in using the targetlanguage in classes, time constraint which limit students’ social communication in the classroom,large classroom etc are obstacles in implementing CLT Emphasize on written exam, absence of good and authentic learning materials, teachers’ emphasis on form (not the content), absence of visible social use of the language outside classroom etc are also obstacles in adaptation of CLT in Indonesia

According to Gao (2008), communicative activities fall into four broad categories: (a) the conduct of the English Reading class; (b) topics arising from and relevant to the students’ personal life; (c) substantive topics which are educationally

or professionally significant; (d) communicative classroom exercises, i.e small- scale activities that enable students to practice characteristic features of English discourse, especially “pair work”, “group discussion”, “role play” are frequently used In her study, she found that implementing communicative activities in comfortable reading classroom will provide more opportunities for subconscious assimilation, and open more channels of communication to the target community at a personal level of contact Not only teachers but also students will benefit a lot from such activities

In contrast with the results of Gao (2008), Tazin and Tazim (2014) examined the CLT Approach in developing English Reading skills in tertiary levels in Bangladesh The results showed that CLT has not resulted in the expected outcomes

for improvement in English communicative competence CLT has failed to deliver in the country because it could not be implemented effectively It can be undoubtedly said that the CLT approach in terms of developing all four language skills especially

in the case of the English reading skill is not suitable for students of all levels in Bangladesh (Chaudhury, 2009) Though there is some practice of CLT in tertiary levels, it is not resulting in expected outcomes as there is little application of it in the secondary and intermediate levels

Recently, Tegegne (2018) conducted a research to find the effectiveness of CLT on students’ English reading comprehension Results indicate that the reading comprehension skills score of the experimental group improved significantly and to

an extent greater than the control group due to the treatment Hence, he strongly recommends that instructors should employ communicative language instruction at University level for teaching EFL reading lessons

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter focuses on presenting the following sections: research questions, research participants, research design, data collection instruments, data collection procedure, and data analysis

3.1 Research Design

This study employed the experimental two-group design where by two comparable groups of 30 students each studying at grade 11 in Bach Dang high school were matched in age, gender and English proficiency The experimental group was exposed to CLT (small group discussion) while the control group will be taught using the conventional method of translation The two groups were evaluated at the beginning (pre-test) and at the end (post-test) of the research period to find out if there is any significant difference of two methods on the achievement of the students The difference between mean gain scores of the two groups was then computed and tested for significance

3.2 Participants

The participants of the present study were not randomly chosen based on the fact that the researcher has no right to choose which classes to teach It is fixed by the board of principals The participants of the study were two classes of 30 and 30 students of grade 11 which the researcher was teaching at Bach Dang high school, Quang Ninh province The coursebook is English 11 published by MOET Every week, they learned three periods of English, distributed for all skills and language points

The students who are participants in this study were all from mountainous areawith many difficulties in learning English Though they had been learning English for at least 5 years before the experimental teaching, they could not master it

Their English level was quite low, ranging from beginning to elementary based on their score in the first semester’s final exams

3.3 Data collection instrument

3.3.1 Pre-test

Pre-test was given before giving treatment in this research The pre-test wasdone to get the reading comprehension score of the students before doing treatment The pre-test was conducted on February 28th, 2019 The test comprised 6 reading paragraphs followed by 40 questions including: 1) multiple-choice; 2) matching and, 3) True/False; 4) Order; 5) Summary.Total time requirement for the test is about 60 minutes The text for the test is from student’s English course-book for grade 11 which published by MOET

3.3.2 Post-test

Post-test was given after the researcher used communicative activities to teach reading in 8 weeks of the second semester in academic year 2018-2019 It was conducted to get reading comprehension score ofstudents after doing the treatment The post-test wasconducted on May 29th, 2019 The post-test comprised also 60 questions, in the form of multiple choice items, matching, ordering, true/false and summary To guarantee reliability and a moderate difficulty, and to see if the two tests are parallel ones, a pretest was administrated to 30 randomly selected grade 11 students in another class which the researcher also taught (none of the students involved in this present study was included), then the post-test was administered right after the treatment

3.4 Data collection procedure

In order to implement the research, the writer primarily asked for permission from authorities concerned to conduct the investigation and to administer the research instrument to the subject

At the beginning of semester 2, school year 2018 – 2019, the pre-test was given before giving treatment to determine the students reading ability After giving

a pre-test, the researcher gave the treatment to the students The treatment was mainly applying group work activities in teaching reading comprehension This treatment was conducted for 8 meetings for the class within two months The students were taught with the help of Communicative Language Teaching Method which included the six steps in class room teaching using English grade 11 Course books These Six Steps are:

- Reading Aloud

- Vocabulary (native & target language)

- Problem Solving Activities

in learning reading comprehension

3.5 Data analytical method

In this study, the researcher used statistical data analysis technique to know the difference between the students’ scores before and after being taught by using communicative activities in teaching reading comprehension There are many kinds

of the formula of data analysis technique in quantitative research, i.e.: t-test is used to test for significant difference and to analyze experiment data which use pretest and posttest Therefore, the researcher used T-test for dependent/ independent variables and Paired two samples t-test for Means in Excel to compute the statistical data By using the paired t-test, the researcher expected that any significant differences in the one group pretest and post-test as merely the effect of the treatment

The data obtained from questionnaires were calculated The researcher then used charts and tables to visualize the results

Table 1: Statistical Treatment of the data

 Significance of the difference between

the pre-test and the post test scores of

the two groups

 Significance of the difference in the

pre-test and post pre-test scores between the two

groups

 Significance of the difference in mean

gain scores between the pre-test and the

post-test of the two groups

1 T test for correlated or dependent samples

2 T- test for independent samples

3 T test for mean difference

CHAPTER IV PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA

This chapter includes the different tables and figures which present the data of the findings in this study with their respective interpretations The data were analyzed and interpreted, so that conclusions and recommendations could be drawn from the study

4.1 Comparison of Data of the Pre-test Scores of the Control and Experimental Groups

Table 2 and Figure 2 show the distribution of the pre-test scores of the control and experimental groups In the control group, the highest score was 29 which was obtained by student 24 and the lowest score was 13 which was obtained by student

28 Meanwhile, in the experimental group, the highest score was 26 which was gained by student 5 and the lowest score was 14 which was obtained by students 4 and 29

Table 2: Comparison of Pre-test Scores of the Control and Experimental Groups

of significance This result clearly indicates that there was no significant difference

in the pre-test scores of both control and experimental groups This confirms that the experimental and control groups were equivalent in terms of language learning on the cognitive level The result also further implies that the students in the control and experimental groups have the same cognitive level in terms of their knowledge of the subject matters taught to them

Distribution of Pre-test score of Control and Experimental groups

Control Group Pre-test scores Experimental Group Pre-test scores

Table 3: T-test Results of the Pre-test Scores of the Control and Experimental Groups

Scores

Mean Difference

computed

36 which was gained by student 7 and the lowest score was 20 which was obtained

Table 5 also reveals the results of the t-test computation of the difference of the post-test mean scores between the control and experimental groups The t-test showed that the computed t-value is equal to 4.99 which is evidently higher than its tabulated t-value which is equal to 1.69 with 29 degrees of freedom

Distribution of the post-test of the Control and Experimental group

Control group Post-test scores Post-test scores

Therefore, with 95% confidence, it can be implied that the mean score of students in the post-test score using communicative activities is higher than that of those using the Traditional Method at alpha = 0.05 This result clearly indicates that there is a significant difference in the post-test scores of both control and experimental groups The level of scores in the post-test reveals that the experimental group as being aroused and highly motivated by the communicative language teaching approach performed far better than the control group

Table 5: T-test Results of the Post-test Scores of the Control and Experimental Groups

Scores

Mean Difference

computed

13 has now increased to 15 The result shows that using the traditional method, the students have acquired learning based

Table 6: Comparison of the Pre-test and Post Test Scores of the Control Group

Pair No

Control Group

Pre-test scores Post-test scores