Applying some effective reading strategies to improve reading comprehension skill of twelfth grade students

The importance of reading strategies………...6 2.Current situation of learning reading skill...7 3.The solutions of implementation...8 The ways to exploit reading comprehension strategies t

TABLE OF CONTENT

TABLE OF CONTENT……… 1

PART I: INTRODUCTION……… 2

1.The reason for choosing the topic……… 3

2 The purpose of study……… 3

3.The object of study 3

4 The methods of study 3

PART II:THE CONTENTS OF INITIATIVE EXPERIENCE……… 4

1.Theoretical basic of the topic……… 4

1.1 Reading comprehension……… 4

1.2 Reading strategies……… 4

1.2.1 Definitions……… 4

1.2.2 Classifications 5

1.3 The importance of reading strategies……… 6

2.Current situation of learning reading skill 7

3.The solutions of implementation 8

The ways to exploit reading comprehension strategies to improve students’s reading skill………8

3.1 Teaching process……….8

3.2 Pre-test……… 12

3.3 Post-test……… 13

4 The results of the topic……… 13

4.1.Results……… 13

4.2 Discussion……… 15

5 Teaching implication……… 15

PART III CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS……….16

REFERENCES 18

PART I : INTRODUCTION

1 The reason for choosing the topic.

We are living in a globalization world with full of opportunities as well as challenges Everyone, especially the youth has made great effort to keep face with the development storm in all aspects of social life In current intergenerational tendency, improving skills in English in general and reading skill in particular contributes to one’s success Therefore, for many teachers at high schools, teaching English requires great knowledge, experiences and efforts

According to Carrell (1984:1), “for many students, reading is by far the most important of the four macro skills, particularly in English as a second or a foreign language” Reading is an essential part of language instruction at every level because it supports learning in many ways Firstly, reading material is a language input Students given a variety of materials to read have many opportunities to absorb vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure and discourse structure Secondly, reading for content information in the language classroom provides students with both authentic reading material and an authentic purpose for reading Finally, reading helps students broaden their knowledge of the lifestyles and worldviews of the people whose language they are studying

Researchers believe that teaching productive reading strategies motivate students to read and facilitate reading comprehension (Anderson, 2003; Eskey, 2002; Grabe, 2004) It also appears that good students apply a variety of reading strategies to their learning Therefore, the importance of teaching reading strategies

is to not only facilitate students’ reading process but help student enrich their vocabulary and grammar as well

What is more, in the context of the upper secondary school, reading is even more important than other three skills of speaking, listening, and writing The reason is that students have to take the examinations, which are grammar- and reading- based However, the students’ reading proficiency is not satisfactory

Thus, this study is conducted to apply some reading comprehension strategies to the twelfth grade students (the only class that the researcher is incharge

of this school year) Although almost all students have learnt English since grade six, many of them do not know or use appropriate reading strategies yet As a result, they can become easily frustrated when they do not understand what they are reading, and they become demotivated

For the above-mentioned factors, the researcher has attempted to conduct a study

named “ Applying some efffective reading strategies to improve reading

comprehension skill of twelfth grade- students”

2 The purpose of study

I sincely hope that this topic will contribute to raise the quality of reading comprehension skills for my students Moreover, in more and more intergrative social context, I desire to share my experience of bettering reading strategies for students in English teaching process with my colleagues

3.The object of study

Firstly, the research is carried out to exploit some reading comprehension strategies to the 12th form students Then, the results will reveal some suggestions to enhance students’ reading skill

Secondly, high school students must be taught all four skills including reading, speaking, listening, and writing However, it is because of the large size of the class and test – oriented learning that English lessons focus more on reading Thus, this research only put the emphasis on reading strategies of the 12

th form students of the school year 2019– 2020

4 The methods of study

In the studying course of my own topic, I myself carry out investigation and analyse methods from the practical requirements with the learned knowledge to draw conclusions for the study, such as:

- Theoretical and experimental experience in present environment to build up the subject

- Read and study the related documents to draw good experiences to apply for

my own teaching

- Observe and collect information about students’ learning as well as their feelings, thoughts and opinions about family and profession

- Having statistics and compare the result of study of students through tests and surveys

PART II THE CONTENTS OF INITIATIVE EXPERIENCE

1 The theoretical basic of the topic.

1.1 Reading comprehension

In teaching reading skill, it is necessary for both teachers and students to have a deep understanding about the definition of reading comprehension

Reading comprehension can be understood as the ability to obtain the information as required in the reading text as efficiently as possible Different scholars offered various points of view on the definitions of reading comprehension

Roe, Stoodt and Burns (1987:2) proposed that “reading comprehension is reconstruction, interpretation and evaluation of what author of written content means by using knowledge gained from life experience”

Ur (1996:148), on the other hands, stated that effective reading comprehension is a process with the elements as follow:

 a clear purpose in mind

 an enhanced motivation

 appropriate reading comprehension strategies based on the purposes and motivation

 good prediction

 sufficient background information and vocabulary

 close attention to the significant bits

 fairly high speed From these opinions, what comes up as a common point is that reading comprehension is not only simply understanding what is written, but also is what stimulates students to remember from their experiences That knowledge is then used to get meaning out of printed page, but in the mind of the readers, which included facts, emotion, belief and critical evaluation It can be concluded that reading comprehension is the process of understanding what is conveyed in the text That means, the readers (or the learners), as they read, can recognize the graphic forms of the reading text and understand what is implied behind these forms

1.2.Reading strategies

1.2.1 Definitions

Much attention has been paid to the study of reading strategies and there are

a number of definitions of reading strategies

According to Cohen (1986), reading strategies refer to those mental processes that readers consciously choose to use in accomplishing reading tasks Supporting this idea, Brantmeier (2002) defined reading strategies as the comprehension processes that readers use in order to make sense of what they read

Oxford, Levine & Crookall, (1989) indicated that reading strategy is reading technique and study skill which makes reading more effective and facilitate learning They also elaborated that reading strategies is a process used by the learners to improve reading comprehension and overcome comprehension failures

In short, although many different definitions were given, what can be come

up with is that all the above mentioned definition supported each other What is more, reading strategies can be defined as the ways show readers how to manage their interaction with the written text to comprehend and learn new information from the reading texts effectively

1.2.2 Classifications

Oxford (1990) identified six components of reading strategies as follows:

 Prediction

 Skimming

 Scanning

 Inferring

 Guessing the meaning of new words

 Self – monitoring

There are other scholars who support Oxford’s classification of reading strategies such as Grellet (1986), Kristin, Leah, & Soro (2009) and Smith (1994) Each of the strategies is as below:

 Prediction

Prediction refers to the technique of using the readers’ prior knowledge to guess the meaning or the message of the text from the topics, pictures, key words,

or constructions It is one of the most effective factors that motivate students to read and understand the meaning of the context (Oxford, 1990)

 Skimming

Skimming refers to the technique of reading passages quickly in order to get its gist In skimming, readers do not look for specific information but only for general information (Grellet, 1986)

 Scanning

Scanning is quite similar to skimming in that both of them require a quick glance of a text The difference is that in skimming, readers try to get the general or main information of the text but in scanning, the readers would like to obtain

specific information In scanning technique, readers are looking to find particular information – the answer to his/her questions

 Inferring

Inferring refers to activities of reading between the lines which means that readers need to know how to get the message from the words and sentences in a text So, inferring is defined as the interaction between words in a sentence/phrase

or between sentences or phrases (Kristin, Leah, & Soro, 2009)

 Guessing the meaning of new words

Guessing the meaning of new words helps readers to read and understand text quickly because difficult words usually create problems for students and are obstacles in reading comprehension (Smith, 1994)

 Self-monitoring

This strategy allows readers to regulate their reading Awareness of using this strategy helps learners to solve their problems in reading

On the other hand , Anderson (1999) divided reading strategies into six sub types including (1) A activate prior knowledge, (2) C cultivate vocabulary, (3) T teach for comprehension, (4) I increase reading rate, (5) V verify reading strategies, (6) E evaluate progress

In conclusion, different scholars classified reading strategies using different terms, and not in all contexts can learners apply all the above mentioned reading strategies They rather base on the purposes of reading to utilize one/ some/ or all

of them to read

This study adopted Oxford’s classification of reading strategies

1.3 The importance of reading strategies

Hence, the importance of reading strategies should be aware of

Reading strategies are important as they help readers to reach their reading goals and achieve good results in reading (Block, 1986) As such, students or readers who do not use any strategies in reading usually face difficulties in reading comprehension

Regarding the importance of reading strategies, readers often encounter problems in reading the text and have difficulties in understanding the meaning of the context but reading strategies help them in learning foreign language and reading comprehension In fact, students will be able to relate newly acquired information to their prior knowledge in context areas which is an essential part of reading comprehension skill

According to Dehnad (2005), reading strategy provides learning opportunities, facilitates learning and recalling of information as well as

strengthening the reading comprehension ability of language learners Learners need to be explicitly taught how to properly use reading strategies to monitor their reading comprehension Through the employment of reading strategy such as meta-cognitive instruction in English class, EFL learners will be able to improve their reading comprehension and experience a higher level of competency which will further motivate them to read on a regular basis (Block, 1992)

Chamot (2005) stated that students have their own preference of strategy, but

in order to become motivated and selective strategy users, EFL learners should self monitor their reading strategy In other words, EFL learners need to consciously know what and when to apply appropriate reading strategy when comprehension fails

All in all, it can not be denied that reading strategies are of great importance towards second language learners Hence, students should be exposed to multiple reading strategies as well as the appropriate use of those strategies for better results

In addition, students should be taught to become more aware of their own reading behavior and the processes involved in reading to employ the reading strategies effectively

2 Current situation of learning reading skill

This school year, I am in charge of only one 12th from class including 12 boys and 32 girls

After a few reading lessons, I observed students’s performances, wote down students’ mistakes, difficulties, strengths and weaknesses to understand the situation of how my students can apply reading comprehension strategies while learning reading, and the problems are as below:

It can be seen that although students have learnt English for many years, they come from different schools with different teaching methods Therefore, their levels and proficiency also vary Additionally, in such context of large class size and short period of time, not all students can achieve the goals, understand and remember the information of the reading texts Besides, there remained some students who started reading at the beginning and went word by word, stopped to look up every unknown vocabulary item Additionally, many of the students had obstacles regarding grammatical structures in reading comprehension lessons That

is to say, many of them do not know or use appropriate reading strategies yet

Last but not least the GCSE today reading comprehension questions account for over 30 percent, Thus bettering the reading skill is necessary factor to raise the students’ result in this important examination

From the problems above, I decided to teach reading skill with the use of reading comprehension strategies as well as apply pre – test and post- test to figure out the effectiveness after applying reading comprehension strategies to reading lessons

3 The solutions and implementation.

The ways to exploit reading comprehension strategies to improve students’ reading skill.

3.1.Teaching process

The study adopted Oxford’s classification of reading strategies including prediction, skimming, scanning, inferring, guessing the meaning of new words, and self- monitoring These strategies can be applied throughout three stages of reading lessons

Below are some of reading tasks extracted from my reading lessons with the use of reading comprehension strategies in order to enhance students’ reading skill

 Prediction

Prediction means using knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions

about content and vocabulary and check comprehension; using knowledge of the text type and purpose to make predictions about discourse structure; using knowledge about the author to make predictions about writing style, vocabulary, and content To use this strategy, I got Ss to preview the headings and illustration to get the main idea of the text before reading Also, I asked Ss to relate prior knowldege to the information of the text they are reading

 Skimming

Skimming is a process of speed reading for getting general meaning: quickly getting the gist or overview of a passage or book

With this strategy, I could apply to some kinds of tasks like complete the summary,

or matching the headings to the paragraphs

Unit 14: International organizations After you read Fill in each space of the following paragraph with a suitable word.

Time: 7 minutes

Method: individual work – pair work and whole class

- I instructed Ss to read the whole paragraph carefully and try to sum up, in the students’ own words, what it is about Then Ss should read through the reading passage to find suitable words to fill in each space in order to complete the summary of reading passage

- Then I called on some Ss to give their answers and asks other students to say whether they agree or disagree Then, I gave feedback and the correct Answers:

1 appalled 2 lack 3 of 4 in

 Scanning

Scanning is a process of looking through a text very rapidly for specific information

When applying scanning strategy, students are enabled to deeply understand the content of the reading passage Some kinds of reading tasks such as answer the questions, choose the best answer, scanning to find the reference, and decide whether the statements are True (T) or False (F), etc are often acquired by using this strategy

Unit 3: ways of socialising Task 3: Answer the following questions

Time: 8 minutes

Method: individual work – pair work and whole class

- T asked Ss to read the 5 questions carefully to understand them and underline the key words to decide what information they need to find in the text Then T got the Ss to go back to the passage and locate the key words, read around the key words carefully to find the answer

- T asked Ss to check their answers with their partners, and calls on some Ss

to tell and explain their answers

Unit 6: future jobs Task 2: Decide whether the statements are true (T) or false (F)

Time: 6 minutes

Method: Individual work – Pair work and whole class

- T instructed the Ss to read through the statements to get an idea about the topic, and then read the statements carefully, underline the key words to understand the main point

- T asked Ss to search for the section of the text dealing with the idea or fact and read it carefully to decide whether the statements are true or false

Answer: 1 F 2 T 3 F 4 T 5 T 6 F 7.F 8.T

 Inferring

Inferring means finding clues and add those clues to what have been known or read based on prior knowledge To apply this strategy, I asksed Ss to use their knowledge of grammar or vocabulary to help understand difficult parts in reading texts

 Guessing the meaning of new words

Guessing is using prior knowledge of the subject and the ideas in the text as clues to the meanings of unknown words, instead of stopping to look them up Some types of tasks requiring this strategy are guessing the meaning of the words

in context, finding the synonyms/ antonyms, matching the words with their definitions, and gap – filling, etc

With this strategy, the teachers should ask students to work individually or in pairs, scan the passage; locate the new words/ phrases Then students read the sentences holding the words/ phrases carefully and base on the context to guess their meaning

Unit 10: Endangered species Task 1: The nouns in column A all appear in the passage match each of them with a suitable definition in column B.

Time: 7 minutes

Method: individual work – pair work and whole class

– In this type of this exercise, teacher got students to locate the words in the passage Then Teacher can guide students to read the definitions carefully and guess the meaning in the context

– Teacher asked students to start with the words which they have known well then Teacher got students to look for the synonyms of the words to make sure that they match the words with right definitions For example, The meaning of the word “ extinction” in column A is something stopping existing therefore students can choose its definition in column B easily

However, I noticed that some of the words are hard to guess the meaning because the context is not helpful enough thus I gave students more instruction, for instance, teaching them to combine different methods to deal with difficult words which helps them match correctly