An investigation into reading strategies for doing reading comprehension tests employed by grade 10 english major students at hung yen city high school

N I E’ E EN I hereby certify that the minor thesis, “An investigation into reading strategies for doing reading comprehension tests employed by Grade 10 English major students at Hung Ye

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES



HOÀNG ĐỨC HẠNH

AN INVESTIGATION INTO READING STRATEGIES FOR DOING READING COMPREHENSION TESTS EMPLOYED BY GRADE 10 ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUNG YEN CITY HIGH SCHOOL

NGHI N Ứ HI N Đ Đ P NG HI À ÀI

HI Đ HI H INH H I 10 CHUYÊN ANH

NG NG H PH H NG HÀNH PH H NG Y N

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 60140111

HANOI – 2016

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES



HOÀNG ĐỨC HẠNH

AN INVESTIGATION INTO READING STRATEGIES FOR DOING READING COMPREHENSION TESTS EMPLOYED BY GRADE 10 ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUNG YEN CITY HIGH SCHOOL

NGHI N Ứ HI N Đ Đ P NG HI À ÀI

HI Đ HI H INH H I 10 CHUYÊN ANH

NG NG H PH H NG HÀNH PH H NG Y N

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology

Code : 60140111

SUPERVISOR: Assoc.Prof.Dr NGUYỄN VĂN ĐỘ

HANOI – 2016

N I E’ E EN

I hereby certify that the minor thesis, “An investigation into reading strategies for doing reading comprehension tests employed by Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School”, submitted in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, is my own work

This thesis has not been submitted for any degree to any other universities

or institutes

Candidate‟s signature:

Dated: October 13th, 2016

HOÀNG ĐỨC HẠNH

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc Prof

Dr Nguyễn Văn Độ, who helped, supported me when I conducted this study Without his helpful comments, valuable advice and significant assistance, this study could not have been completed

I would like to thank all lecturers in the Department of Post-Graduate, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University for their meaningful and interesting lectures

I am grateful to Ms Bui Nhu Hoa and her students in class 10D2 who were always willing to join this study and provide it with valuable data

I am indebted to Mr Le Hai Doan, Mr Nguyen Duc Ta, Ms Tran Minh Chi, Ms Doan Mai Hoai Anh, as well as a lot of friends, relatives who constantly encouraged and tried their best to make conditions for me to complete this thesis

Last but not least, my special thanks must go to my Mum, my Family and

my Love for their kindest care for me and my thesis

They are my strengths to overcome all difficulties and complete this thesis

ABSTRACT

This study reports on an evaluation of the strategies which are used in reading comprehension tests by some English major students Both quantitative and qualitative data analyses are employed in the study Forty-eight students in Grade

10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School took a three-text reading comprehension test, followed by a 30-item questionnaire of metacognitive and cognitive reading strategies taken in a test; then, two high-proficiency, and two low-proficiency students were invited for an interview for further information of their actual thoughts on the reading comprehension skill and their present status of strategies use as reading test-takers

The results suggest that (1) metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies were used with medium frequency by the students; (2) the high-proficiency students reported a higher use of both strategies than the low-proficiency students Then, the discussion and recommendation of strategies for better performance are also presented

The researcher believes that this study can be considered as a useful source

of reference for not only students but also teachers who share the same concern

LIST OF ABREVIATIONS

ESL : English as a second language

EFL : English as a foreign language

L2 : Second language

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

TABLES

Table 1 Reading strategies: definition and classification (O‟Malley & Chamot,

1990)

Table 2 Background information of the participants

Table 3 The detailed categories of strategies in Part 2 of the questionnaire

Table 4 Two major classes of reading strategies

Table 5 Descriptive statistic of eighteen sub-strategies of reading strategies

Table 6 Frequency distribution of metacognitive and cognitive reading strategies Table 7 Difference between two groups of students in metacognitive strategies

use

Table 8 Differences between two groups of students in cognitive strategies use Table 9 List of strategies need to be improved by the high-proficiency group Table 10 List of strategies need to be improved by the low-proficiency group Table 11 List of strategies should be paid attention by the low-proficiency group

FIGURES

Figure 1 The definition of reading by Anderson (2008)

Figure 2 The importance of reading comprehension compared to Ss‟ purpose Figure 3 The students‟ evaluation of difficult levels

Figure 4 The evaluation of some factors influencing reading comprehension

performance

Figure 5 CALLA instructional framework

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CANDIDATE‟S STATEMENT i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS II ABSTRACT III LIST OF ABREVIATIONS IV LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES V PART I – INTRODUCTION 1

1. Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 3

4 Significance of the research 3

5 Methods of the study 3

6 Design of the study 3

PART II – DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Reading and Reading comprehension 5

1.1.1 What is reading 5

1.1.2 What is reading comprehension 6

1.2 Strategies, reading strategies and classifications of reading strategies 7

1.2.1 What are strategies 7

1.2.2 What are reading strategies 7

1.2.3 Classifications of reading strategies 8

1.3 Previous studies on strategies for reading comprehension tests in Vietnam and in other countries 12

1.3.1 Previous studies on strategies for reading comprehension tests in Vietnam ……….12

1.3.2 Previous studies on reading strategies for reading comprehension tests

for reading comprehension tests in other countries 13

1.4 Summary 14

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 16

2.1 Research questions 16

2.2 Participants and settings of the study 16

2.2.1 Participants 16

2.2.2 Settings of the study 18

2.3 Instruments 18

2.3.1 A three-text reading comprehension test 18

2.3.2 A questionnaire 19

2.3.3 An interview 20

2.4 Data collection procedure 21

2.4 Summary 21

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 22

3.1 Findings 22

3.1.1 The questionnaire 22

3.1.2 The interview with the students 31

3.2 Discussion about the research questions 32

3.2.1 To what extent are reading strategies for doing reading comprehension tests used by Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School? ……… 32

3.2.2 To what extent do the high-proficiency students and low-proficiency students differ in terms of employing reading strategies in reading comprehension tests? 33

3.3 Summary 34

PART III – CONCLUSION 35

1 Conclusion 35

2 Recommendations 36

2.1 Strategies that each group of students need to improve 36

2.2 Reading strategies training 38

3 Limitations and suggestions for further research 41

3.1 Limitations ……… 41

3.2 Suggestions for further research 41

REFERENCES 43

APPENDIX 1: Reading comprehension tests……… I APPENDI 2: Questionnaire……… VII APPENDI 3: Interview……… XVII APPENDIX 4: Transcription of the interviewer‟s response……… ………… XVIII

PART I – INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Thanks to its worldwide popularity and importance, English has been at the top among the most popular foreign languages taught in schools of numerous countries all over the world The Vietnamese education system is not an exception where English has been a compulsory subject from primary schools, secondary schools, high schools, to universities, and even higher education in most sixty three provinces nationwide

In Vietnam‟s context, English is taught and learned in a non-native environment; therefore reading skill has been considered as the most vital one to be mastered, as a key of getting knowledge as well as a means of further study

Reading comprehension tests in English are familiar with students during their school life, especially those at high schools because most national standardized tests still keep the grammar- and reading-based format, and reading comprehension accounts for a large part in important national examinations including graduation and university entrance ones

High school students whose major subject is English in general long for having good results in English tests, therefore they always desire to pass reading comprehension tests with flying colors It is also true for Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School However, their results of the reading comprehension tests, or their performance in these tests still do not meet the expectation of both students and teachers

In search of a remedy for the situation, strategies used by students in the reading comprehension tests have been taken into great consideration by the researcher According to Zhang (2011), “the strategies used during tests should be looked at when researchers are attempting to explain variation in a specific language test performance because they (the strategies) are directly related to test score variation.” (p.136)

In contrast to numerous research conducted on investigating reading and the strategies applied for reading comprehension with the works of Cohen (1991), Hosenfeld (1984), Carrell (1999), the investigations into what students are actually doing during the reading comprehension tests, that is, the strategies used under test-taking environment, are not so popular, especially in Vietnam context In other words, strategies in reading comprehension tests are still open for Vietnamese educators and/or researchers

In addition, the researcher has taught high school students for several years, and been aware of difficulties of students while doing reading comprehension tests Especially for students whose major is English, it is by far important for them to fully master the strategies for passing reading comprehension tests with the highest scores Therefore, the researcher intends to explore the current strategies use of Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School employing for doing English reading comprehension tests, as well as finds out the differences among the strategies used by students of higher reading ability and those of lower reading ability, namely, high and low proficiency students Based on the findings and searching, the researcher will make some recommendations to improve the students‟ reading comprehension results

For all reasons mentioned above, the researcher decides to work on a study

in the name of “An investigation into reading strategies for doing reading comprehension tests employed by Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School”

2 Aims of the study

The present study attempts to study the current status of reading strategies use for doing reading comprehension tests among Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School To be more specific, this study is expected to achieve the two primary aims:

(i) To investigate the reading strategies employed by the students of Grade 10

English major at Hung Yen City High School for doing reading comprehension tests; and

(ii) To investigate the difference in terms of strategies use between the two

groups of the high- and low- proficiency students;

3 Scope of the study

Strategies employed by the reading test-takers are such a broad topic that the researcher cannot discuss all the related aspects Therefore, within the framework of a minor thesis, this study focuses on the metacognitive and cognitive reading strategies employed for doing reading comprehension tests by Grade 10

English major students at Hung Yen City High School

4 Significance of the research

The research was carried out with the hope that the results of the study will provide deeper insights into the nature of what the students are actually doing while taking their English reading comprehension tests This may lead to suggestions for improving their results of reading comprehension tests as well as making it less difficult for the students when taking this kind of tests in their ongoing study

5 Methods of the study

This study was conducted as a descriptive study that utilized both quantitative and qualitative approaches The quantitative analysis was employed through the process of data collected from a written questionnaire In addition, the qualitative approach was used to deal with the data collected from a structured interview to examine the differences between the high and low proficiency students

in their reading strategies The combination of these data collection methods would

help the researcher achieve the aims of the study

6 Design of the study

This study has three main parts: Introduction, Development, and

Conclusion

PART I – INTRODUCTION: briefly states the rationale of the study, the aims,

the scope, the significance, the method and the design of the study

PART II – DEVELOPMENT: contains three chapters:

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW: provides a review of literature on

reading, reading comprehension, strategies, cognitive and metacognitive strategies; and a review on previous studies on reading strategies for reading comprehension tests in reading comprehension tests will come at the end of this chapter

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY: contains the core part of the study including

the context of the study, the methodology, the collection and the analysis of the data for the research

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS & DISCUSSION: mentions the findings and

implications, the author‟s recommendations and suggestions for helping students have better reading comprehension results

PART III – CONCLUSION: gives a summary of the main issues that have been

discussed so far in the study and suggestions for further research

PART II – DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews theories related to reading and reading comprehension, strategies, reading strategies and classifications of reading strategies It also summarizes some studies on reading strategies for reading comprehension tests that have been conducted so far All of these serve as a basis for an investigation into reading strategies which is carried out and presented in the next chapter

1.1 Reading and Reading comprehension

1.1.1 What is reading

Reading is an essential skill for learners of English In fact, for most learners it is the most important skill to master to ensure success in learning Anderson (2004) said that “with strengthened reading skills, second/foreign language learners of English tend to make greater progress in other areas of language learning.” (p.11)

Therefore, it is essential to understand what reading really is

In 2008, the researcher wrote in his book:

“Reading can be defined simply as making meaning from print Four key elements combine in the process of making meaning from print: the reader, the

text, reading strategies, and fluency Reading is a process of readers combining

information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning.”(p.10)

Figure 1 The definition of reading by Anderson (2008)

The reader The text

Strategies Fluency

Reading

In addition to this view, Rubin and Thompson (1994, cited in Dao, 2007) offered another definition which regarded reading as an “information-seeking process” in which readers actively connect the information in the text to what they have already known

Mikulecky (2008) stated that “reading is a conscious and unconscious thinking process The reader applies many strategies to reconstruct the meaning that the author is assumed to have intended The reader does this by comparing information in the text to his or her background knowledge and prior experience.” (p.10)

The definitions of reading account for a wide range which are from simple

to complicated ones To the researcher‟s view point, shortly, the nature of reading appears to be not a single process; it combines all necessary interactions among the text, the reader, the author, the strategies and the reader‟s background knowledge

1.1.2 What is reading comprehension

Grabe (1991) claimed “comprehension is the primary purpose for reading” (p.277) Whereas, reading comprehension can be simply understood as the ability

to get the required information from the text as efficiently as possible

McNamara (2007) stated:

“They (some readers) may understand each word separately, but linking them together into meaningful ideas often doesn’t happen as it should These readers can decode the words, but have not developed sufficient skills to comprehend the underlying, deeper meaning of the sentences, the paragraphs, and the entire text

Comprehension refers to the ability to go beyond the words, to understand the ideas and the relationships between ideas conveyed in a text.” (p.1)

It is obvious from this opinion that reading comprehension is not easy; it is really challenging, instead

Swam (1975, p.1, cited in Le (2008)) shared his point that when a student is claimed to be “good at comprehension”, it equally means that he can read accurately and efficiently, so as to get the “maximum information” a text with the

“minimum of understanding.”

To sum up, reading comprehension is much more than just pronouncing words correctly or simply knowing what the author intends It is a process in which the readers (as they read) can recognize the form and understand the relation between the writing and the meaning

1.2 Strategies, reading strategies and classifications of reading strategies 1.2.1 What are strategies

The word “strategy” is defined simply in the Merriam Webster Online

Dictionary as 1 a careful plan or method for achieving a particular goal usually over a long period of time, 2 the skill of making or carrying out plans to achieve a goal

In the language learning context, Anderson (2004) regarded strategies as the

“conscious actions” taken by learners to improve their language learning According

to this researcher, strategies are not a separate action, they are “a process of orchestrating more than one action” to accomplish an L2 – second language – reader in their selection and use

Oxford (1990) suggested a widely accepted definition of language learning strategies She claimed “Learning strategies are specific actions taken by the learner

to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective

and more transferable to new situations” (p.5)

Students who were better in their language performance generally reported higher levels of overall strategy use and frequent use of a greater number of strategy categories (Green & Oxford, 1995, p.265, cited in Song, 2005)

Therefore, when a student succeeds in applying strategies in their learning, he/she is likely to have more advantages than others who do not hold any strategies

1.2.2 What are reading strategies

In a review of the developments in second language reading research, Grabe (1991) pointed out that the crucial importance of the reading skill in academic contexts had led to considerable research on reading in a second language And reading strategies are also of interest for what they reveal about the way the

readers manage their interaction with written text and how these strategies are related to text comprehension

Carrell (1998) defined reading strategies as “actions that readers actively select and control to achieve desired goals or objectives” (p.1)

This researcher also agreed with Paris, Waslk, and Turner (1991, cited in Carrell):

“…strategies are actions selected deliberately to achieve particular goals An emerging skill can become a strategy when it is used intentionally Likewise, a strategy can "go underground" [in the sense of Vygotsky, 1978] and become a skill Indeed strategies are more efficient and developmentally advanced when they become generated and applied automatically as skills.” (p.611)

Whilst, reading strategies can be understood as the special thoughts or behaviors that individuals use to help them to comprehend, learn and retain new information from the reading text These strategies are both observable and unobservable and individually different

The definitions, though worded differently, come to a common point that the reading strategies are taken consciously by the readers to make a text‟s meaning understood

1.2.3 Classifications of reading strategies

Second language researchers have spent much time studying language learning strategies Cohen (1990), O‟Malley and Chamot (1990), and Oxford (1990) have provided different classifications of learning strategies The reading strategies which will be studied in this paper are based on O‟Malley and Chamot‟s learning strategies Thus, O‟Malley and Chamot‟s (1990) classification will be focused on

Regarding Cohen‟s (1990), this researcher considered the purposes of using strategies, and classified second language learner strategies into two types: language learning strategies (i.e strategies used to learn a language) and language use strategies (i.e strategies are adopted by learners in order to use a language)

Whereas, Oxford (1990) proposed that the language learning strategies can

be divided into direct and indirect groups Among them, memory strategies, cognitive strategies and compensation strategies are classified into direct strategies, whereas metacognitive strategies, affective strategies and social strategies belong to indirect strategies

For O‟Malley and Chamot (1990), they thought that learning strategies are mental and social processes, so they divided the learning strategies into three main branches, namely, metacognitive, cognitive and social-affective language

In this study, only metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies are evaluated, social-affective strategies will be neglected because the latter is not as closely related to reading comprehension performance as the former ones

1.2.3.1 Metacognitive strategies

Metacognitive strategies are “higher order executive skills that may entail planning or, monitoring, or evaluating the success of a learning activity” (Oxford,

1990, p.44) The metacognitive learning strategies identified into seven categories

by O‟Malley and Chamot (1990, p.119) and all of them are applicable to a variety

The table below encompasses the 2 main types of strategies with their categories as well as the definition of the sub-categories

sub-Table 1 Reading strategies: definition and classification (O’ alley & hamot, 1990)

Directed attention Deciding in advance to attend in general to a

learning task and to ignore irrelevant distracters

Functional planning

Planning for and rehearsing linguistic components necessary to carry out an upcoming task

Selective attention

Deciding in advance to attend to specific aspects

of input, often by scanning for key words, concepts and/or linguistic markers

Self-management

Understanding the conditions that help one learn and arranging for the presence of those conditions

Monitoring

Self-monitoring

Checking one‟s comprehension during listening

or reading or checking the accuracy and/or appropriateness of one‟s oral or written production while it is taking place

Evaluation

Self-evaluation Checking the outcomes of one‟s own language

against a standard after it has been completed

B.COGNITIVE STRATEGIES

Resourcing Using target language reference materials such

as dictionaries, encyclopedias, or textbooks

understand or remember new information

Auditory representation Planning back in one‟s mind the sound of a

word, phrase or longer language sequence

Key word method

Remembering a new word in the second language by:

(1) identifying a familiar word in the first language that sounds like or otherwise resembles the new word, and

(2) generating easily recalled images of some relationship with the first language homonym and the new word in the second language

Elaboration

Relating new information to prior knowledge, relating different parts of new information to each other, or making meaningful personal associations with the new information

Transfer Using previous linguistic knowledge or prior

skills to assist comprehension or production

Inferencing

Using available information to guess meanings

of new items, predict outcomes or fill in missing information

Note taking

Writing down key words or concepts in abbreviated verbal, graphic or numerical form while listening or reading

Summarizing

Making a mental, oral or written summary of new information gained through listening or reading

Recombination

Constructing a meaningful sentence or larger language sequence by combining known elements in a new way

Translation

Using the first language as a base for understanding and/or producing the second language

1.3 Previous studies on strategies for reading comprehension tests in Vietnam and in other countries

1.3.1 Previous studies on strategies for reading comprehension tests in Vietnam

As far as the researcher‟s concern, the research on strategies in general and reading strategies in particular are quite popular, especially research served as the means to complete thesis dissertation Some of the notable research can be listed

including A study on English reading strategies employed by second year bridge

and road students university of transport and communications (Nguyen, Thi Thu

Ha, 2006) in which the researcher tried to figure out the strategies employed by the

22 students to deal with reading in English, or Reading strategies to improve reading comprehension of students at Thai Nguyen college of economics and technology (Nguyen, Thi Lap, 2010) with 30 respondents who were first year non-

English majors, this research aimed to solve the difficulties faced by the students to achieve better results in reading comprehension

It is obvious that the strategies for doing reading comprehension tests have not been paid sufficient attention by the Vietnamese researchers During the time of

doing literature review for this study, only one study of The strategies used in multiple-choice tests by EFL high school students (Nguyen, Thanh Duc et al., 2012)

was found out and then processed thoroughly by the researcher This one was implemented with the help of 131 high-school students from Vinh Long City The students or respondents involving in answering a 30-item questionnaire related to the metacognitive strategies, the cognitive strategies and compensation strategies The result showed that the metacognitive strategies as well as cognitive strategies were used in an above-average level, whereas the compensation ones were highly used And another conclusion drawn was that the more frequently the students used the strategies, especially metacognitive strategies, the higher their scores were

1.3.2 Previous studies on reading strategies for reading comprehension tests for reading comprehension tests in other countries

In contrast to a modest number of studies on reading strategies for reading comprehension tests in Vietnamese context, this aspect of research has received worldwide attention some decades ago

There have been a number of studies related to strategies in language testing since 1990 such as Anderson, Bachman, Perkins, and Cohen (1991), Block (1992), Purpura (1997), Purpura (1998), Phakiti (2003), Zhang (2006), and Zhang (2011)

Moreover, the foreign researchers even carried out studies on strategies used by test-takers on various different purposes consisting of test validation purposes, test-wiseness to validate tests, language proficiency evaluation, and strategy instruction for performance on high-skates standardized tests After comparing the scope of this thesis, the researcher would like to review in more details of the research on language proficiency related to strategies used by test-takers

Purpura (1997) had a total of 1,382 test-takers from 17 language centers in Spain, Turkey, and the Czech Republic answer an 80-item cognitive and metacognitive strategy questionnaire, then take a 70-item standardized language test Purpura used structured modeling to examine the relationship between strategy use and second language test performance (SLTP) with high- and low- proficiency test takers The results indicated that cognitive strategies (i.e comprehension, memory and retrieval strategies) are directly and positively related to test performance Metacognitive strategies (i.e assessing the situation, monitoring, self-evaluation and self-testing) are significantly correlated with each other Besides, Purpura also found that successful and unsuccessful performers invoke strategies differently

Phakiti (2003), through the use of an 85-item, multiple-choice EFL reading achievement test, followed by a cognitive and metacognitive questionnaire on how students thought while completing the test, and an interview, investigated the relationship between 384 Thai learners‟ cognitive and metacognitive strategy use and their reading test performance The test-takers completed the test first and immediately after the test completion, they answered the questionnaire on the degree of their strategy use during the test taking Then eight students (four highly successful and four unsuccessful) were invited for an interview The result suggested that (1) the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies had a positive relationship to the reading test performance; (2) the underlying factor in the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies could be metacognitive competence; and (3) highly successful students reported significantly higher metacognitive strategy use than moderate successful students who in turn reported higher use of these strategies than unsuccessful students

1.4 Summary

This chapter has reviewed related theories on reading and reading comprehension, strategies, reading strategies and classifications of reading strategies Some of the main points can be summarized below

The first main point is that the classification of learning strategies is also a complex work done by a considerable number of researchers Of these schemes, O‟Malley and Chamot's has been most useful and generally accepted to date In O‟Malley and Chamot's framework, three major types including metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective strategies are distinguished in accordance with the information processing model, on which their research is based Such a detailed and sufficient classification of learning strategies is presented in table 1 and is going to

be adopted for the investigation of reading strategies for this study

The second main point of this chapter covers the important theories related to reading and an overview of studies on reading strategies of successful and unsuccessful learners, as well as studies on metacognitive, or cognitive reading strategies

The next chapter is the study on reading strategies used by the EBR students, which has been conducted in the light of the theories discussed above

This study seeks the answer to the following question:

1 To what extent are reading strategies for doing reading comprehension tests used by Grade 10 English major students at Hung Yen City High School?

2 To what extent do the high-proficiency students and low-proficiency students differ in terms of employing reading strategies in reading comprehension tests?

2.2 Participants and settings of the study

2.2.1 Participants

Participants in this study were 49 students in class 10D2, one of three English major classes in Hung Yen City High School They are 34 female students and 15 male students in total All of them are Vietnamese, and have learned English for at least 7 years The number of 49 students was invited to take a reading comprehension test of 3 passages with 25 questions These passages were collected from the English bank tests of the school as regards the familiarity of the test format

to the students After that, the number of 49 students was invited to respond to the questionnaire but only 48 responses were valid The 48 participants were divided into three proficiency groups (high, intermediate, and low) according to their scores

in the reading comprehension test The classification of the scores of the students are done based on Regulation of evaluating, grading junior high students and high school students (enclosed with the Decision No 40/2006/QD-BGDDT dated on October 05, 2016, by Minister of Ministry of Education and Training) The scores

of the high proficiency group range from 8.0 to 10, those of the intermediate from 6.0 to 7.9, and those of the low-proficiency group from 0 to 5.9

Table 2 summarizes the background information about the participants such

as the genders, ages, number of years learning English and their English proficiency

Table 2 Background information of the participants

The students are now studying the first semester in the class the major of which is English Therefore, English and some related subjects in their future examinations, especially the university entrance examination like Maths, Literature, and/or Physics play a very important role in their study at the school

There are some reasons for choosing these students as the participants of this study Firstly, the training quality of these students is of great concern to the teachers at Hung Yen City High School The findings of the study would provide essential information for teachers and students to improve in the reading comprehension results of the students in the school tests and in other important tests like the university entrance test in the future Secondly, they are suitable participants for the study because they are the freshmen in their new level of study; they have left secondary schools to enter this high school, their study will last 3 more years before one of the most important tests namely the university entrance test In addition, the strategies cannot be learned in one or two days, it takes a process to master the strategies Thus, an investigation into the students‟ proficiency, their use of strategies, as well as the evaluation of their current strategies use should be carried out Last but not the least, my previous English teacher is directly teaching them, it is a good chance for me to ask for help to carry out all the steps of the research process

High Medium Low (8.0-10) (6.0-7.9) (0-5.9)

Male Female 6 years 8 years 9 years

2.2.2 Settings of the study

The location of the study was at Hung Yen City High School, located at the center of the city, in Hung Yen Province It was founded 56 years ago and is for the students mainly coming from families residing in Hung Yen

This study was conducted from mid-September to the mid-October, 2015 when the students have studied for one month and a half and nearly finished 4 units

in the textbook English 10 of Ministry of Education and Training

2.3 Instruments

The present study includes one test, one questionnaire and one interview to collect data on the reading strategies for reading comprehension tests Firstly, a reading comprehension test was given to the students to identify their reading proficiency Then, a questionnaire was completed to identify their reading strategies for reading comprehension tests at the current time At last, some of the students were invited to a brief interview to help the researcher gain more insights into the reading strategies for reading comprehension tests

The description of the research instruments will be in the following part

2.3.1 A three-text reading comprehension test

There was a three-text reading comprehension test utilized by the researcher

as a means to determine the level of the students It was a proficiency test The first text was a type of Cloze-test with 15 questions, the second and the third texts were two tests of information fill-in type with 5 questions for each Each question was accompanied with four suggested answers marked A, B, C, D The total score for this reading comprehension test was 10 points, with 0.4 points for each question

Students did these tests within the time of 30 minutes

All topics of the passages were related to three themes that the students had learned, including Famous Explorer (Unit 2), School talks (Unit 3), Special education (Unit 4)

2.3.2 A questionnaire

A questionnaire (see Appendix B) was used to collect data for this study The usefulness of Likert-scale questionnaires is supported by many linguistic researchers (O‟Malley & Chamot, 1990; Oxford, 1996; Purpura, 1999; Phakiti, 2003) This 5-scale questionnaire was adopted from the questionnaire published by Phakiti (2003)

The questionnaire was given in Vietnamese to avoid any language problems when measuring the students‟ cognitive and metacognitive strategy use The questionnaire used in this study allowed learners to mark strategy use on a 5-point Likert scale: 1 (Never), 2 (Rarely), 3(Sometimes), 4(Often), 5(Always)

The length of time needed to complete the questionnaire ranged approximately 10-15 minutes

The questionnaire has two main parts Part 1 included some unnumbered items regarding students‟ background information, including age, gender, the number of years the student has learned English so far Then, six next items investigated students‟ attitude regarding the importance of reading compared to their own English study, the difficulty of reading comprehension tests, and judgement of the factors contributing to good comprehension results After that, in Part 2, there are thirty questions asking students about their own frequency of employing the strategies, which were categorized into 2 types: metacognitive strategies (16 questions) and cognitive strategies (14 questions)

The interview was conducted in Vietnamese with two different groups of high-proficiency students (two students) and low-proficiency students (two students) in order to identify their current status of reading proficiency and check if there were any differences among them The interview has truly provided a lot of valuable information about the reading status of the subjects

Generally, the three sources for data collection will hopefully provide the useful information about the strategies used in the reading comprehension test helping the findings more easily to be figured out

2.4 Data collection procedure

Step 1: In mid-September, the students were given one reading comprehension test

The test scores were collected and then categorized into high-, medium-, proficiency students of English

low-Step 2: After taking the test, students were asked to complete a questionnaire that

included 34 questions related to their reading strategies while doing a reading comprehension test

Step 3: In early October, four students of two levels (two high-proficiency and two

low-proficiency ones) met the researcher to implement a small interview

Step 5: Both qualitative and quantitative analyses about the data were performed

The first analysis was about the students‟ most and least used reading strategies in order to gain a general idea of their reading process For further comparison in efficiency study, the 48 students were ranked according to the total score of the first test Eight students on the top of the list and fourteen from the bottom were chosen for this study, with one group (Group A) representing high-proficiency students and another one (Group B) low-proficiency students including fourteen students In the second part, a detailed comparison of strategies used by group A and group B was conducted with the purpose of finding out the differences between the use of reading strategy and the students‟ reading proficiency Tables were given to show the differences in the total number and the specific strategies employed by high-proficiency students and low-proficiency students Finally, the data collected via the interview were all transcribed and evaluated based on the mentioned strategies

2.4 Summary

This chapter has described in detail the research question and the participants and settings of the study as well as the methodology employed to collect data for the study

In the next chapter, the findings from all sources of data will be indicated

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, the findings implied from the data collected via the reading test, the questionnaire, and the interview revealed

3.1 Findings

3.1.1 The questionnaire

3.1.1.1 he students’ evaluation of reading comprehension

3.1.1.1.1 Students’ attitudes to reading comprehension

Question 1 asks the students how important reading comprehension is for their purpose of learning English

Figure 2 The importance of reading comprehension compared to s’ purpose

As can be shown from the chart, half of the students (50%) consider reading comprehension as an important part in their English learning The students who think reading comprehension rather important are more than double of the ones finding reading comprehension very important with nearly 35.4% and 14.6%, respectively There is no single student underestimating the importance of this skill

Not important

Rather important Important

Very important

3.1.1.1.2 tudents’ evaluation of the difficult levels of reading comprehension tests

Question 2 asks the student their evaluation of the difficult levels of reading comprehension tests

Figure 3 The students’ evaluation of difficult levels

It is clear from the pie chart that none of the students evaluate reading comprehension tests as a completely easy task to complete Only six percent (6%)

of them thinks the kind of tests are not difficult; approximately, there is five percent (5%) regarding this test as very difficult The majority of the students agree that reading comprehension tests are rather difficult and difficult with 40% and 50%, respectively

3.1.1.1.3 tudents’ evaluation of the importance of some factors accompanying with reading comprehension tests

Question 3, 4, 5, 6 asks the student their evaluation of the importance of some factors accompanying with reading comprehension tests

1 0%

2 6%

3 40%

4 50%

5 4%

1 2 3 4 5

Not difficult at all

Not difficult Rather difficult Difficult

Very difficult

Figure 4 The evaluation of some factors influencing reading comprehension

performance

None of the students undervalue any factors Most of the students think that acquiring a good range of vocabulary, effective reading strategies for reading comprehension tests, and sturdy knowledge of grammar is very important when they want to achieve high scores in reading comprehension tests Having good knowledge of the text‟s content is also important, however, it is not considered as important as the others by the students

3.1.1.2 The current situation of the use of reading strategies for doing reading comprehension tests

One of the aims of this study is to investigate the frequency of reading strategies used by Grade 10 English major students in their English reading SPSS 20.0 will be used to process the data from the cognitive and metacognitive strategies questionnaire According to the 30 questionnaires, the frequency of metacognitive and cognitive reading strategies use and the frequency of their subcategories are

presented in the following tables

Not important

at all

Not important

Rather important

Important

Very important

3.1.1.2.1 The two major kinds of reading strategies

This table describes the statistics about two major classes of reading strategies

(N = number of students; M = mean)

Table 4 Two major classes of reading strategies

According to Oxford‟s (1990) frequency scale, variable scores between 3.5 and 5.0 are regarded as high in frequency, and scores between 2.5 and 3.4 are viewed as medium Those variables that score between 1.0 and 2.4 are considered

as low

Thus, the average of both kinds of reading strategies are 3.32 and 3.24, so their frequency in use is Medium The data also reveals that the metacognitive strategy use (M=3.32) is slightly more frequent than cognitive strategy use (M=3.24)

In order to investigate the differences in using different subcategories of the metacognitive and cognitive reading strategies by the participants, the following table about the frequency of using the eighteen subcategories of reading strategies is displayed

Metacognitive

Advanced organizers 3.29 Medium

Selective attention 3.40 Medium Functional planning 3.19 Medium

Table 5 Descriptive statistic of eighteen sub-strategies of reading strategies

As can be seen from the table, the frequency of strategies use fluctuates

between 2.85 (of self-monitoring) as the lowest and 4.04 (of auditory representing)

as the highest, which can be inferred that the students are able to use various strategies in their reading comprehension tests

The most frequently used strategies are auditory representing and repetition, both of which are representatives of cognitive strategies, with the mean

of 4.04 and 3.88, respectively Transference is a highly used strategy with the mean

of 3.44 Whereas, the cognitive ones with the lowest frequency are note taking (2.94) and summarizing (2.88) The rest of cognitive strategies are above 3.0 and have pretty different range of frequency, which are between 3.04 (inferencing) and 3.40 (translation)

For metacognitive strategies, the most frequently used metacognitive

strategies are self-management and selective attention with the mean of 3.58 and

3.40, respectively Besides, it is worth noting that, except the highest (3.58) and the lowest (2.85), the other five metacognitive strategies have the approximate level of

frequency, ranging from 3.19 (functional planning) to 3.39 (self-attention)

To conclude, despite the slight discrepancy of using levels between cognitive and metacognitive strategies, they appear to be quite common strategies which are used by students for completing their reading comprehension tests

3.1.1.2.2 Differences between high-proficiency and low-proficiency students

in reading strategy use

The main aim of this study is to investigate the differences between proficiency and low-proficiency students in metacognitive and cognitive reading strategy use The tables below will display the discrepancy in detail

high-3.1.1.2.2.1 Overall differences between the two groups of students

Strategies High-proficiency students Low-proficiency students

(M= Mean; N = Number of students)

Table 6 Frequency distribution of metacognitive and cognitive reading strategies

As shown in Table 5, the mean scores of both metacognitive and cognitive reading strategy use of high-proficiency students is higher than that of low-proficiency students

For metacognitive strategies, the more successful students are adopting those strategies with the mean of 3.49 which belongs to high frequency use The researcher understands that these students often use those strategies to overcome challenging reading comprehension strategies Whereas, the low-proficiency students use those strategies less frequently when their mean is just 3.29