A survey on current reading strategies of english for specific purpose (ESP) students at a vocational college

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HUYỀN A SURVEY ON CURRENT READING STRATEGIES OF ENGLIS

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ HUYỀN

A SURVEY ON CURRENT READING STRATEGIES

OF ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES (ESP) STUDENTS

AT A VOCATIONAL COLLEGE

Khảo sát các chiến lược đọc tiếng Anh chuyên ngành hiện nay của các học

viên tại một trường Cao đẳng nghề

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Major : English teaching methodology Code : 8140231.01

HANOI – 2018

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ HUYỀN

A SURVEY ON CURRENT READING STRATEGIES

OF ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES (ESP) STUDENTS

AT A VOCATIONAL COLLEGE

Khảo sát các chiến lược đọc tiếng Anh chuyên ngành hiện nay của các học

viên tại một trường Cao đẳng nghề

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Major : English teaching methodology Code : 8140231.01

Supervisor : Trần Thanh Nhàn, PhD

HANOI –2018

i

DECLARATION

I declare that this thesis is a presentation of my original research work While any of the content presented is the result of input or data from a related collaborative research program, the literature and acknowledgement of collaborative research and discussions

The work was done under the guidance of Doctor Tran Thanh Nhan, as appointed by Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, University of Languages and

International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A completed study would not be done without any assistance Therefore,

I would gratefully express my acknowledgement to the following individuals who have provided me with their support and motivation during the time of conducting this research as a requirement of completing my Degree of Master

I would first like to thank my thesis supervisor, Doctor Tran Thanh Nhan Her kindly support and continuous advice went through the process of the completion of my thesis Her encouragement and comments had significantly enriched and improved my work Without her motivation and instructions, the thesis would have been impossible to be done effectively During the actual implementation of the project, my research has received immense contribution from all relevant students So far, I would like

to thank to the groups who took charge in the process of data collection and data entry for this research I would also express my thankfulness to the Rector of Viglacera Vocational College who actively supported me and my colleagues who gave me very valuable comments on this thesis

Finally, I would dedicate my very profound gratitude to my parents for their providing me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout my years of study and through the process of researching and writing this thesis This accomplishment would not have been possible without them

Researcher

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1

LIST OF TABLES 3

ABSTRACT 4

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 5

1.1 Background 5

1.2 Problem statement and research contribution 7

1.3 Research questions 8

1.4 Research objectives 8

1.5 Research scope 9

1.6 Research methodology 9

1.7 Thesis structure 9

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 10

2.1 Definitions 10

2.1.1 Definition of reading 10

2.2.2 Definition of reading comprehension 10

2.2 Reading process 11

2.3 Reading strategies 12

2.4 English for specific purposes 14

2.5 Existing literature of reading strategies 15

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 19

3.1 Research design 19

3.1.1 Philosophy 19

3.1.2 Approach 19

3.1.3 Method 20

3.2 Data collection methods 20

3.2.1 Sample selection 20

3.2.2 Data collection process 20

3.2 Data analysis method 21

CHAPTER 4: ANALYSES AND FINDINGS 22

4.1 Descriptive statistics of the respondents 22

4.2 Results and Analyses 24

4.2.1 Reading strategy use of vocational students 24

4.2.2 Differences in reading strategies use by gender 26

4.2.3 Differences in reading strategies use by reading proficiency level 32

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION & RECOMMENDATION 38

5.1 Conclusion 38

5.2 Recommendation 39

5.3 Limitations of the research 40

REFERENCES 41

APPENDICES 45

LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1: Descriptive statistics of the respondents 22 Table 4.2: Frequency of using reading strategies 24 Table 4.3: Reading strategies of female and male students 26 Table 4.4: Reading strategies of female and male students ranked by

frequency 30 Table 4.5: Reading strategies of students with different reading proficiency levels 32 Table 4.6: Reading strategies of students with different reading proficiency levels ranked by frequency 36

A survey on current reading strategies of English for Specific Purpose

(ESP) students at a Vocational College

ABSTRACT

This study is a survey on English for Specific Purposes reading comprehension perceived by 120 students at a Vocational College It dedicates to the existing literature by discovering reading strategies of vocational students, identifying strategies needed to enhance students‟ reading comprehension as well as appropriate approach for students to improve their reading skills and achieve good knowledge The aim of the study is to point out which strategies the students majoring in building materials at the vocational college need to improve to attain the maximum out of the text they read and differences between “good” and “poor” readers, male and female ones

A twenty-item questionnaire with five-point Likert scales was used to collect data Descriptive statistics used to analyze the data were frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation Based on the statistical data, the overall results point out the differences between female and male students,

“good” and “poor” readers in terms of their reading strategies Hence, the study suggests several recommendations for the students as well as the English teachers at the Vocational College

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

This chapter first and foremost provides background information about the research topic and stylized facts about students reading both academically and occupationally Subsequently, it identifies practical and theoretical problems as well as defines research questions and research objectives The research scope and methodologies to address the research questions are then clarified Lastly, the chapter wraps up with a demonstration of the thesis structure

Among all vocational colleges in Vietnam, Viglacera Vocational College (VVC) is considered as the most well-known vocational institution in the industry of construction materials production It is an education unity of Viglacera Corporation Established in 1998, Viglacera Vocational College has been the first and only college in Vietnam providing intensive vocational training in the industry of construction materials production VVC and Proskill UK have signed a cooperation agreement in vocational training with

the aim to propel VVC to become a leading Vietnamese vocational college in the field of construction materials It can be seen clearly that VVC has been putting efforts in building vocational training programs in compliance with international standards VVC focuses on training the workers of forty subsidiaries in the Viglacera Corporation These students have to simultaneously meet the requirements of studying at the college and working

at the sites They have to work on shifts (three shifts per day) to maintain the working lines and to ensure the effective production Therefore, they face ample difficulties in learning as well as doing exercises In class, most of them complain that they are too exhausted to absorb new knowledge, and they want to have interesting easy lessons, which pose a real challenge for the teachers to facilitate their learning

At VVC, English is considered an international language as it has become increasingly popular as a teaching language in Vietnam‟s education Especially, together with the rapid pace of globalization, it has grown to be an official medium of instruction for many universities More specifically, English is a key to “gain access to the required knowledge that is available, either exclusively or most readily, in English” (Mumby, 1981) In other words, it serves other different specific purposes, which results in significant changes in almost all walks of life and the continuing increase of international communication in these various fields That trend leads to the coming into being of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Being aware of the importance

of ESP, teachers at Viglacera Vocational College (VVC) pay more attention

to teaching ESP than GE for their students This ESP course aims at providing students with background knowledge and a system of terms related to building materials

However, vocabulary and grammar cause various problems for the

students at VVC while they conduct reading activities Many of them find it challenging when they have to embrace a large amount of specialized vocabulary and complicated grammar structures Even when they get accustomed to specialized vocabulary, they still encounter problems with understanding general ideas and specific details The root causes for these obstacles can originate from their study methods, their learning attitudes, the curriculum, and the teaching methods It is assumed that the students can overcome these problems related to vocabulary and grammar by changing their study methods, particularly reading strategies

Reading strategies play a crucial roles in the process of learning and utilizing the language as Carrell (1984) states that “for many students, reading

is by far the most important out of the four macro-skills, particularly in English as a second foreign language” The students at VVC indeed need to improve their reading skills which help them make extensive use of academic materials written in English and increase their professional knowledge in their specific or specialized fields

1.2 Problem statement and research contribution

The ability to read English academic materials is deemed to be one of the most essential skills which university students of both English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) need to develop (Levine et al 2000) Reading comprehension has become the heart of reading and its significant not only to academic learning but also to professional success (Durkin, 1993) Nevertheless, numerous students are not well-prepared for reading requirements that are stressed on them When these students are strongly pressed to read academic materials in English, they are more likely to choose ineffective and inefficient reading strategies leading to poor results (Wood et al 1998)

Despite the importance of English reading, previous studies have

shown little interest in the topic of reading strategies among vocational college students in Vietnam Many students including those at Viglacera Vocational College have been struggling with reading academic materials entirely written in English The program at this college was originally well designed with attempts to reach the global standards, hence the students are required to prepare themselves to acquire all the knowledge from this program to be certified This raises the demand for a study about their in-class reading behaviors in order to find out how they are handling with ESP texts and what strategies they are currently using to read English materials

This study makes an important contribution to the existing literature by discovering reading behaviors and reading strategies of vocational students, identifying strategies needed to enhance their reading comprehension as well

as proposing an appropriate approach for them to improve their reading skills and achieve successful academic results

1.3 Research question

The study aims to find answers for the following questions:

● Which strategies do students majoring in building materials at Viglacera Vocational College use to read ESP texts?

● Are there any differences between good and poor readers, male and female readers in terms of their reading strategy use?

1.6 Research methodology

In this study, the author conducts a survey to collect information related

to reading strategies of students in the vocational college Afterwards, she uses SPSS software to analyse their reading behaviors

1.7 Thesis structure

Chapter 1 introduces the research background, identifies the practical and theoretical problems, clarifies the research questions, research objectives, research scope and methodology, as well as describes the research structure Chapter 2 presents the literature review which is relevant to the research topic in order to have the basic knowledge including theories and empirical studies, then illustrates the theoretical framework to support the research Chapter 3 demonstrates the research design, the method of data

collection and data analysis, and research limitations

Chapter 4 shows the result of measurement and regression models,

conducts comprehensive analyses and discusses important findings

Chapter 5 draws some conclusions and suggests some recommendations related to reading strategies for students at vocational colleges

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter, firstly, presents important definitions related to the topic reading and reading comprehension Subsequently, it analyses the reading process and several common reading strategies Additionally, this chapter highlights special features of English for specific purposes and ends with the existing literature of reading strategies

2.1 Definitions

2.1.1 Definition of reading

Reading is one of the four skills that students should learn and care of

At college, students have always many different reading materials to read, such as: textbooks, articles, stories and so on Reading is more beneficial to them during their study because it enables them to acquire many things about the knowledge of language and understanding different subject areas Scientists have different opinions about the definition of reading Goodman (1971) defines reading as a process in which readers re-organise in the most possible way the messages that the authors decode in visual performance In the meantime, Harmer (1989) describes that reading is a mechanical process

in which the eyes receive information and the brain works to find out the meaning of the message Similarly, Smith also states that reading is a process

to understand thoughts of the authors Generally, from different perspectives, researchers have strived to identify the basics of reading, among which, readers, reading process or conveyed messages are strongly emphasized

2.2.2 Definition of reading comprehension

Reading comprehension plays an essential role in teaching and learning languages According to researchers‟ viewpoints, reading comprehension is the ability to obtain information from the texts or documents accurately and

effectively There are three dominant factors influencing reading comprehension, namely texts, foundation knowledge of readers, and related context

Swan (1975) affirms that those people who have good reading ability can obtain the most information from the texts with their own limited knowledge On the other hand, Grellet (1981) points out that reading comprehension or understanding a text means decompressing necessary information in the most effective way Although researchers have various points of views, all of them propose that reading comprehension is the process

in which readers can realize visual images of the texts and understand implications behind them

2.2 Reading process

According to many other psychologists, there are two reading processes for comprehension, known as bottom-up and top-down process In the bottom-up process, the students start to read documents from the smallest units of language such as letters, words, phrases, sentences, and try to understand the meaning of these units before combining them into paragraphs

or the whole texts This is a method to contemplate details, which helps readers clarify ideas, determine specific locations of the details and provide answers to their questions On the other hand, the top-down process emphasizes interactions between readers and documents rather than understanding basic units of the documents such as letters, words, phrases and sentences As a result, the readers need to prove their positive roles in the reading process by utilizing their own knowledge about the reading topic, estimation and expectation towards the documents Also, it is critical that the readers should show their motivation, care and attitude to the contents of documents This is one method to get the general ideas and important

information of the documents

Some opinions appreciate the role of the top-down process in reading comprehension more than the bottom-up one Though the top-down has a dominant impact on reading comprehension, it does not necessarily mean the bottom-up is not valuable As a matter of fact, readers have to combine these two processes so as to ensure accuracy and timeliness of information

2.3 Reading strategies

Learners need to achieve comprehension in reading through applying appropriate and effective reading strategies In other words, the appropriate use of reading strategies will always facilitate the ability of getting meaningful reading easily Reading strategies include, for example, prediction, skimming, scanning, inferring, guessing the meaning of new words, and self monitoring which will enable the learners to achieve comprehension in reading successfully without facing any problems The current explosion of research in second language reading has begun to focus

on readers' strategies Reading strategies are of interest for what they reveal about the way readers manage their interaction with written text and how these strategies are related to text comprehension Research in second language reading suggests that learners use a variety of strategies to assist them with the acquisition, storage, and retrieval of information (Rigney, 1978) Strategies are defined as learning techniques, behaviors, problem-solving or study skills which make learning more effective and efficient (Oxford and Crookall, 1989) Furthermore, reading strategies may involve evaluating content, finding an association between the text and previous knowledge or experience, asking and answering questions relevant to the text, identifying key words, using grammatical analysis to determine the various components of the sentences, skipping, rereading, paraphrasing and

summarizing (Almasi, 2012)

Reading strategies demonstrate how the readers perceive a task, what textual signals they tend to realize, how well they understand what they read, and what they do when they do not actually understand (Block, 1986) Reading strategies can be simple, such as reviewing difficult sections and inferring the meaning of unknown vocabulary Rather, reading strategies can also be comprehensive, such as summarizing and connecting what is written

in the documents to the knowledge of the readers (Janzen, 1996) The existing literature has evidenced that reading strategies can be instructed to students, and when these reading strategies are provided, reading skills of students are improved (Carrell, 1985; Pearson and Fielding, 1991; Brown and Palincsar, 1989) According to Brown and Palincsar (1984), the reading procedure encompasses four strategies, namely summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting

Basically, reading strategies are divided into two major categories which are cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies The cognitive strategies help the readers in constructing and understanding the meaning and implication from the texts The metacognitive strategies aid in monitoring and regulating the cognitive strategies (Devine, 1993 and Flavell, 1981) To illustrate, skimming a text to get fundamental information is a cognitive strategy, while evaluating the effectiveness of collecting information from the text is a metacognitive strategy (Devine, 1993) In the context of second language learning, a distinction can be made between strategies that make learning more effective, versus strategies that improve comprehension The former are generally referred to as learning strategies in the second language literature Oxford (1989) provides a useful classification scheme of the various strategies used by the second language learners This involves:

(1) Cognitive strategies: these are used by the learners to manipulate

language This category covers note-taking, formal study of the specific aspects of the target language, summarizing, paraphrasing, predicting, analyzing and using context clues

(2) Memory strategies: these help the reader remember information through creating mental pictures, grouping and associating

(3) Compensation strategies: involve activities such as guessing while reading, or using dictionaries

(4) Meta-cognitive strategies: these involve activities done by the learner to plan, arrange, and assess their own learning

(5) Affective strategies: these include self-encouraging behavior to reduce anxiety

(6) Social strategies: which cover cooperation with peers and asking for correction and feedback

2.4 English for specific purposes

English for Special Purposes (ESP) has been defined with the different emphasis on the variety of elements that characterize ESP by a large number

of researchers and scholars First, Pauline Robinson (1991) states that ESP is for study in specific discipline or as a school subject She also accepts that ESP courses are generally constrained by a limited time period That is, the objectives must be achieved within a short period of time, the learners must get the required level of linguistic competence Another characteristic is that ESP is taught to adults in homogenous classes in terms of their work or specialist study This is obvious when English for Occupational Purposes is considered This type of ESP is for people who are in occupation or about to take up employment Hutchinson and Walters (1987) define ESP as a language approach in which contents and method of teaching is decided depending on particular demands of learners Likewise, Strevens (1988)

shares the same view that ESP is to study English for a specific major and it is used as a foreign language From these definitions, it can be concluded that the purpose of reading ESP is to develop reading skills for the learners in the fields related to their interests

Robinson (1991) also divides ESP into two main areas: English for Academic Purposes (EPA) and English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) by a tree diagram as follow:

Diagram 1: Classification of ESP

The diagram presents a useful division of courses when they take place These distinctions are very important as they will affect the degree of

specificity that is appropriate to the course In short, studying various ways of classifying ESP will provide the teachers with an overall picture of the group

of learners they are going to work with

2.5 Existing literature of reading strategies

A number of empirical studies about reading strategies have been conducted since the late seventies Several of these studies have identified concrete relationships between certain types of reading strategies and successful and unsuccessful second language reading Other studies have

investigated individual differences in strategy usage by second language learners while they are engaged in different reading tasks In recent years, a great deal of research has been conducted on reading strategy training Such research is based on the assumption that success in reading depends mainly on appropriate use of effective strategies

Reading strategies show their importance when reading ability plays a crucial role in language learning of students Specifically, in the viewpoint of Alderson (1984), proficiency in a foreign language can be correlated intensely with reading ability in foreign language Moreover, once the students achieve

a certain level of high competence, there would be a simultaneous improvement in reading skills (Cziko, 1978 and Clarke, 1979) Nonetheless, little is known about whether good level of competence in foreign languages has influences on the use of reading strategies or whether the use of reading strategies is similar to those reading strategies used by native speakers Thus, Sheorey and Mokhtari (2001) investigate differences in the use of reading strategies between native speakers and non-native English speakers when they read academic materials The findings illustrate that both native and non-native students are aware of almost all reading strategies included in the questionnaire In the survey, both groups of students put the same level of importance to each category of reading strategies: cognitive strategies (the intentional actions the readers take when comprehension problems appear), came after by metacognitive strategies (advanced planning and comprehension managing techniques) and support strategies (the tools readers use to help the comprehension process) Sheorey and Mokhtari (2001) further evidence that native and non-native students with high reading ability concentrate on cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies more than students with low reading ability Whereas native students with high reading

ability place more importance on support reading strategies than native students with low reading ability, non-native students consider support reading strategies comparatively valuable regardless of their reading level In addition, the study also shows that female students use reading strategies more frequently than male students in the native group of students, while gender has no effects on the use of reading strategies in the non-native group

Song (1998) proposes a method for training students to use reading strategies in English as Foreign Language (EFL) university reading program This training method is based on the procedure including four consecutive reading strategies: summarizing, questioning, clarifying and predicting The study addresses the following research questions: “Do learning strategies enhance reading ability of EFL college students? How is effectiveness reading strategy training related to the reading proficiency of the students? Which types of reading comprehension questions are affected by strategy reading?” (p:41) Results show that “strategy training enhances EFL reading and that the effectiveness of training varies with the second language reading proficiency” The results also indicate that students‟ performance on certain types of reading comprehension questions is improved by the training method These findings suggest that foreign language reading methodology should include explicit and direct strategy teaching

In the study of Knight et al (1985), reading strategies are defined as processes used to enhance reading comprehension and overcome comprehension failures The study adopts reading strategies from Chou Hare and Smith (1982) to conduct the survey Those reading strategies are re-reading, selective reading, imaging, changing speeds, assimilating with personal experiences, concentrating, assimilating with passage events, noting

or searching for salient details, summarizing, predicting outcomes, generated questions, students‟ perceptions of teachers‟ expectations, and

self-rehearsal The findings indicate that English monolingual students mostly focus on the concentrating reading strategy and their least focused strategy is students‟ perceptions of teachers‟ expectations which is attempting to identify what teachers would like to know By contrast, ESL students most often use students‟ perceptions of teachers‟ expectations In the survey, the reading strategies of imaging, noting details, and predicting outcomes are not used by any bilingual students Besides, the reading strategies of concentrating and self-generated questions are used more frequently by monolingual students than by ESL students The study gives an overall conclusion that native students use substantially more reading strategies than ESL students and explains this difference by the fact that ESL students are exposed to English reading so fast that they did not have chances to develop reading strategies beforehand

There has also been a wide argument that reading strategies are not good or effective in nature, but instead reading strategies should be assessed

in terms of their effectiveness to the readers in the achievement of the reading task (Williams and Burden, 1997) Choosing an appropriate reading strategy relies upon several factors, such as the characteristics of the reading task and differences of readers including personality, attitude, the prior experience and reading proficiency

In general, the above literature review reveals that scholars and researchers in different parts of the world have shown great interest in the study of reading strategies It is hoped that this will help to identify the strategies commonly used and those which are not used by this group of learners The findings of the study will promote understanding of the reading process adopted by these learners and make clear about the solving ways for many problems while they are reading

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

This chapter commences with depicting the research design of how the researcher would undertake to answer the research questions and achieve the research objectives, including research philosophy, approach, and method Then, it demonstrates methods of data collection and data analysis Finally, research limitations are taken into account

3.1 Research design

3.1.1 Philosophy

Research philosophy is conceptualized as the improvement of the research background, research understanding and its essence (Saunders et al 2012) Research philosophy is also specified by research model It is required

to choose the appropriate philosophy for the research development On the nature and objectives of this study, the philosophy of positivism is employed

as the foundation of the research The author observes practical reading behaviors of students at a vocational college in Viet Nam Then, the data is used to analyse percentage and fequency in reading strategies of students so

as to give an overall picture of what is going on with the reading styles of vocational students

3.1.2 Approach

Research approach provides the direction which the researcher would go through to undertake the study Research approach can be classified into three main categories, namely deduction, induction, and abduction The choice of approaches depends upon the questions and objectives of a specific study This study is fundamentally based on deductive approach After reviewing theoretical and empirical literature, the author realizes important reading strategies, they are inputs for designing the survey and finding appropriate

strategies for vocational students

3.1.3 Method

In this study, the author would employ a quantitative method in order to give the right answer to the research questions which are analyzing reading strategies of students at Viglacera Vocational College Ultimately, an SPSS software is used to analyzed the data of the questionnaire

3.2 Data collection methods

3.2.1 Sample selection

The sample of the study involves 120 learners from several different construction materials classes at VVC The learners are registered in compulsory ESP courses which aim to help them pursue their study to get knowledge about their professional aspects This group of students have already learned English from four to seven years (four years at secondary school and three years at high school) plus one term of General English at the first year of college Their ages range between eighteen and thirty years, and they all speak Vietnamese as their first language

3.2.2 Data collection process

The instrument which is employed to collect primary data is questionnaire The questionnaire consists of two parts The first part is intended to provide background information about the subjects, such as gender, age, years of studying English The second part of the questionnaire aims to identify the reading strategies claimed to be commonly used by the participants while reading a ESP text This part is classified under three phases of reading: Pre-reading, While-reading, and Post-reading This questionnaire is administered at the beginning of the experiment Each question is asked for a range of answers, ordering as “always”, “usually”,

“sometimes”, “rarely” and “never” In the phase of Pre-reading, four

strategies are included to ask the respondents, which are relating the title and illustration to the text, skimming the text, reading the topic sentence, and thinking about previous knowledge In the phase of While-reading, eleven strategies are used to ask the respondents: looking up every unknown word in the dictionary, checking the dictionary only for important words, contextual guessing, using grammatical clues to guess the meaning, skipping unknown words, rereading a sentence if not understood, translating the text word-for-word, thinking aloud when reading, taking notes on important points, making guesses about what will come next based on information already given, and relating the text to the readers‟ background knowledge In the phase of Post-reading, five strategies are included to ask the respondents, namely classifying words according to meaning, classifying words according to grammatical categories, summarizing the main points in the text, rereading the text to make

up for comprehension failure, and rereading the text to remember the important points

3.2 Data analysis method

Data collected through the method is analyzed quantitatively using an SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) computer program Frequencies and percentages are calculated straight away for all Questionnaire items The results are then presented in the form of frequencies and percentages These statistics are then used to help in comparing the self- reported data generated through the Questionnaire with the actual reading process in terms of reading strategy use

The results of the analysis data is presented into three strategies: Three strategies of the Questionnaire: (1) Pre-reading strategies, (2) While-reading strategies, (3) Post-reading strategies They are all presented into frequencies and percentages

CHAPTER 4: ANALYSES AND FINDINGS

This chapter describes the analysis of data followed by a discussion of the research findings The findings relate to the research questions that guided the study Data are analyzed to identify, describe and explore features,

percentages and frequencies of the answers of the students

4.1 Descriptive statistics of the respondents

Table 4.1: Descriptive statistics of the respondents

Basic features Percentage (%)

Regarding the sample, 62.5% of the respondents are males and 37.5%

of the respondents are females, which means that more than 60% of survey answers are led by the perception of male students about reading Students at the age of 18 – 22 years old account for a higher percentage than students at the age of 23 – 30 years old, being 59.2% and 40.8% respectively Most of them show weak interests in reading making up for 67.5% of the total Only

39 out of 120 students have strong interests in reading, and this number takes

up 32.5% of the total In terms of reading proficiency, about half of the students have normal level of reading comprehension Meanwhile, there are 31% of students with good reading proficiency and 37% of poor proficiency

In this study, I would like to consider 43.3% of the students with normal reading proficiency as those of low propifiency so that the study emphasise on the differences between good and poor ones

Descriptive statistics of the respondents