the effects of reading strategy instruction on efl students’ reading strategy use and reading comprehension

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY THE EFFECTS OF READING STRATEGY INSTRUCTION ON EFL STUDENTS’ READING STRATEGY USE AND READING COMPREHENSION A thesis

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY

THE EFFECTS OF READING STRATEGY INSTRUCTION ON EFL STUDENTS’ READING STRATEGY USE AND READING

COMPREHENSION

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of Master of Arts in TESOL

Submitted by LA THI NGOC MAI

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr NGUYEN THANH TUNG

Ho Chi Minh City August 2018

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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY

-

LA THI NGOC MAI

THE EFFECTS OF READING STRATEGY INSTRUCTION ON EFL STUDENTS’ READING STRATEGY USE AND READING

COMPREHENSION

Major: TEACHING ENGLISH TO SPEAKERS OF OTHER LANGUAGES

Major code: 60140111

MASTER OF ARTS IN TESOL

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr NGUYEN THANH TUNG

Ho Chi Minh City, 2018

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I, Lã Thị Ngọc Mai, hereby declare that this thesis entitled “The effects of reading strategy instruction on EFL students’ reading strategy use and reading comprehension” is the work of my own

It is submitted to the Graduate School of HCMC Open University in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in TESOL This thesis has not been submitted anywhere before for any degrees or examinations The reference which is made of the results of other authors is duly acknowledged in the text

Ho Chi Minh City, August 2018

LA THI NGOC MAI

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In completing this thesis, I am extremely grateful to a number of people owing

to their involvement

Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation to Assoc Prof

Dr Nguyen Thanh Tung, my thesis supervisor, for his great kindness and constructive advice for this thesis

Secondly, I specially thank all of the lectures of the Master course whose lessons helped me build up a solid foundation for this study

Furthermore, I own this success to 100 students majoring in English Translation of Vocational Training Faculty at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH) for their participation and assistance in collecting data

Finally, I am eternally grateful to my family and best friends for their unconditional love, care, and encouragement throughout the process

ABSTRACT

This research is to investigate the effects of strategic reading instructions on learners’ use of reading strategies and the possible influence on reading comprehension of reading activities in the context of English as a foreign language

The research into strategy-based instructions provides a theoretical framework for this study The strategy-based instructions which were adapted from a list of reading strategies initially developed by Holschuh and Kelly (1988) were used as the treatment of the study within the constructivist approach

The experiment was conducted from February to May 2016 The setting was a ten week-reading course for 100 learners of HUTECH in 30 lesson meetings All of the participants majoring in English Translation and Interpretation were divided into two groups of the experimental and the control group to examine changes in the extent of using reading strategies and reading comprehension after the treatment

The study employed both quantitative and qualitative instruments to measure the extent to which students use strategies at two stages of the experiment – before and after the treatment The quantitative data were collected with the cognitive and metacognitive questionnaire and PET reading tests in the pre- and post-test to measure the improvement in reading scores In addition, the qualitative data were collected from the retrospective interview to discover the possible benefits of reading strategy use to reading comprehension

The findings of the study indicate that the program of reading strategy instruction made positive shifts in the participants’ use of reading strategies through raising their awareness of the effectiveness of strategies on reading comprehension Besides, strategy-based instructions affected the learners’ reading comprehension more impressively than the decoding approach did in the context of college students majoring in English Translation and Interpretation at HUTECH

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv

ABSTRACT v

TABLE OF CONTENTS vi

LIST OF FIGURES x

LIST OF TABLES xi

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background to the study 1

1.2 Statement of the problem 2

1.3 The purpose and research questions of the study 4

1.4 Significance of the study 5

1.5 Thesis outline 6

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 Reading strategies 7

2.1.1 Definitions of reading strategies 7

2.1.2 Classifications of reading strategies 8

2.1.2.1 Cognitive reading strategies 9

2.1.2.2 Metacognitive reading strategies 10

2.2 The instruction of reading strategies 11

2.2.1 Constructivist pedagogy in learning a language 11

2.2.2 Strategy-based instruction in reading a foreign language 13

2.2.3 Models of teaching reading strategies 14

2.3 Reading comprehension 17

2.3.1 Nature of reading comprehension 17

2.3.2 The factors affecting reading comprehension in EFL contexts 18

2.3.3 Effects of reading strategies on reading comprehension 19

2.4 Situations of reading strategy instruction 20

2.5 Stages of reading strategy instruction 21

2.6 Empirical studies 24

2.7 Summary 27

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 28

3.1 Research site 28

3.2 Participants 28

3.3 Methodology 31

3.3.1 Overall approach 31

3.3.2 Method 31

3.3.3 Research instruments 32

3.3.3.1 Reading comprehension tests 33

3.3.3.2 Questionnaire 36

3.3.3.3 Interview 39

3.3.4 Descriptions of reading strategy instruction 43

3.3.4.1 General training program for the experimental and control group 43

3.3.4.2 Procedure classroom for the experimental group 46

3.3.4.3 Procedure classroom for the control group 50

3.4 Analytical framework 52

3.4.1 Quantitative analysis for reading comprehension tests 52

3.4.2 Quantitative analysis for questionnaires 53

3.4.3 Qualitative analysis for interview 54

3.5 Reliability and validity 54

3.5.1 Reading comprehension tests 55

3.5.2 Questionnaire 56

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3.5.3 Interview 56

3.6 Summary 57

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS 58

4.1 Analysis of reading comprehension tests 58

4.1.1 Analysis of pre-test reading comprehension 58

4.1.2 Analysis of post-test reading comprehension 59

4.1.3 Comparing pre-test and post-test reading scores of each group 60

4.2 Analysis of questionnaires 61

4.2.1 Analysis of pre-questionnaires 61

4.2.1.1 Reliability of pre-questionnaires 61

4.2.1.2 Analysis of pre-questionnaire 62

4.2.2 Analysis of post-questionnaire 64

4.2.2.1 Reliability of post-questionnaires 64

4.2.2.2 Analysis of post-questionnaire 64

4.2.3 Comparing pre-and post-questionnaire of each group 66

4.3 Interview analysis 70

4.3.1 Interview analysis of the high achievers 70

4.3.2 Interview analysis of the low achievers 72

4.4 Summary 74

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS 75

5.1 Discussion on the students' reading comprehension 75

5.2 Discussion on the students' reading strategy use 77

5.3 Discussion on high and low achievers' strategies 78

5.4 Summary 80

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 81

6.1 Conclusions 81

6.2 Evaluation of methodology 83

6.2.1 Strengths 83

6.2.2 Weaknesses 84

6.3 Recommendations for teachers and students 85

6.4 Suggestions for further research 87

6.5 Summary 87

REFERENCES 88

APPENDICES 98

Appendix 1: Original cognitive and metacognitive strategy questionnaire 98 Appendix 2: Adjusted cognitive and metacognitive strategy questionnaire 101 Appendix 3: Questionnaire in Vietnamese version 105

Appendix 4: Pre-test of Reading Comprehension 109

Appendix 5: Post-test of Reading Comprehension 119

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LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2 1 Framework for Strategies Instruction 15

LIST OF TABLES Tables in chapter 2

Table 2 1 Principles and procedures in strategy instruction……… 16

Table 2 2 The instruction of pre-reading strategy……… 22

Table 2 3 The instruction of while-reading strategy……… 23

Table 2 4 The instruction of post-reading strategy……… 24

Tables in chapter 3 Table 3 1 Demographic characteristics of participants 30

Table 3 2 The design of instruments 33

Table 3 3 Reading components of PET tests 35

Table 3 4 Phakiti’s 2006 taxonomy of strategy questionnaire 38

Table 3 5 Taxonomy of strategy questionnaire 39

Table 3 6 A summary of reading module 43

Table 3 7 General training program for the experiment and control group 45

Table 3 8 The contents and topics of reading module 45

Table 3 9 The training of reading strategy instruction 47

Table 3 10 The EG’s sample lesson 49

Table 3 11 The CG’s sample lesson 51

Table 3 12 Participants in the interview 40

Table 3 13 Interview Questions and Foci of Questions 42

Tables in chapter 4 Table 4 1 Statistics on the pre-test reading scores of two groups 58

Table 4 2 Statistics on the post-test scores of two groups 59

Table 4 3 Statistics on the pre-and post-tests scores of CG 60

Table 4 4 Statistics on the pre-and post-tests scores of EG 60

Table 4 5 Reliability of pre-questionnaires (Cronbach’s Alpha) 61

Table 4 6 Statistics on the overall pre-questionnaire of two groups 62

Table 4 7 Statistics on the subscales pre-questionnaire of two groups 63

Table 4 8 Statistics on the overall post-questionnaire of two groups 65

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Table 4 9 Statistics on the subscales post-questionnaire of two groups 66

Table 4 10 Statistics on overall pre-and post-questionnaire of CG 67

Table 4 11 Statistics on overall pre-and post-questionnaire of EG 68

Table 4 12 Statistics on the subscales pre-and post-questionnaire of CG 68

Table 4 13 Statistics on the subscale pre-and post-questionnaire of EG 69

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents reasons and states its problem to provide an overall background to the study Thereafter, the purpose, as well as research questions, are outlined, then the significance and the scope of the study Finally, how this thesis is organized is revealed to map the route of the study

1.1 Background to the study

Among four language skills, reading is recognized as the most fundamental receptive skill because of its major role in the development of general language competence Therefore, rich amount of literature about reading skills in an academic environment has been devoted by many researchers and literacy educators (Berhardt, 2005) Accordingly, most educators and researchers demonstrated that the use of reading strategies helps readers’ success On the contrary, the students who are poor strategy users face numerous difficulties (Harris, Graham & Freeman, 1988) Previous studies showed that the absence of strategy knowledge led to non-proficiency interview learning a language (Carrell, Pharis & Liberto, 1989; Palincsar

& Brown, 1989)

Despite the initiation in first language reading strategies, many educators have evolved reading strategies for EFL learners and related pedagogy on reading instructions to tackle more communicative and authentic reading material in classroom practice and enhance reading comprehension

Although enormous reading studies discovered strong correlations between reading comprehension and the use of strategies, one cannot base on these findings in order to jump to any conclusions or generalizations about the effectiveness of these reading strategies because of the differences in learning situations and pedagogical framework for reading instructions

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Firstly, learners’ choice of language learning strategies gets influenced by the context of the learning situation and purpose (Cohen, 1998) Therefore, learners from various academic and social backgrounds may make different decisions in the way they read

As for learning context and purpose, it is worth pointing that while vast of reading research concentrates on an ESP (English for specific purposes) context, this study is in the context of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) for the reason that English is mainly considered as a foreign language in the Vietnamese context Especially, given the important role of reading comprehension in a future career as translators who are faced with the huge amount of reading materials and diverse sources of reading texts, learners majoring in English translation are expected to have

an effective and efficient reading ability not only in academic texts but also in professional situations Therefore, how efficiently they accomplish their translation tasks depends on how well they do reading comprehension as a foreign language

Secondly, the pedagogical philosophy adopted by many Vietnamese teachers hardly ever takes the teaching of strategies into considerations As a result, Vietnamese students are observed to be poor users of strategies

In studies on teaching reading strategies to EFL learners, previous findings have showed that the teachable strategies in the control can move students forward using more reading strategies and enhance their reading comprehension (Anderson, 1999) Thus, strategic reading instructions to read more successfully are chosen as a part of the reading training course

1.2 Statement of the problem

In relation to a pedagogical framework for reading instructions, despite the fact that implementation of reading strategies has been available since the early years

of the 20th century, the common current practice of teaching English in Vietnam illustrates insufficient instructions on strategic competence in reading lessons It is

agreed that teaching practices are far different from incorporating reading strategies because teachers spend time practicing only one reading skill – “silent reading” As a result of Grammar Translation Method in which translation between source and target language takes place overwhelmingly, learners focus on decoding written language with the complete absence of employing strategies (Cuu, 2012) Nguyen and Trinh (2011) observed that the context of secondary education in Vietnam showed the insufficiency of strategic skills needed to complete reading tasks since very little time

in the classroom, even not at all, is spent on instructing students reading strategies Whilst, the questions of reading comprehension are the most dominant tasks in lessons and examinations As a result, many students in secondary schools misunderstand the nature of reading and have an incomplete awareness of reading strategies and executive processes for monitoring and regulating comprehension This misconception may prevent them from using strategies for their reading process (Carrell, 1998) Besides that, Ha (2011) also observed that the student paid little attention to reading activities in class as they think that all they need to do is to learn vocabulary by heart and do more reading exercise as homework outside the classroom to become more proficient readers This means they believe they can train their reading skill at home without any teachers' lessons

Moreover, employing reading instructions focuses on social milieu requiring multi-interactions between teachers and learners, and among learners This pedagogy remains unclear in the context of traditional learning culture favoring teacher-led activities because there are few illustrations of the classroom interaction through which strategy-based reading instruction takes place Thus, the effects of this pedagogy in reading lessons have not been covered (Zhang, 2007), which leaves a research gap for examining strategies training, especially for reading L2 instructions,

in the context of Vietnamese education in general, and in the context of English translation students in specific

This was similar to the situation of teaching reading comprehension at HCMC University of Technology, the setting of this study First, the Grammar Translation

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Method was dominantly utilized to teach students how to read, even to English major students who are expected to manage the great number of reading materials from different sources This troublesome practice of teaching was observed personally by the researcher through several previous skill classes and through communications and discussions with students after regular lessons Additionally, this reality was supported through the researcher’s notice in examinations in which students were observed to spend most of their time on silent reading without any signals of employing strategies (i.e underlining, identifying key words or summarizing) After much communication with students after reading tests, the conclusion was drawn that insufficient knowledge of reading strategies could be one of the reasons for their poor performance in reading tests As a result, the researcher found the solutions to enhance the situation of reading as a translation action aiming to instruct students reading strategies for better reading comprehension

Numerous prior researchers suggested various solutions to reading comprehension in an EFL context Among those solutions, the employment of strategies on reading texts as well as instruction of the way to employ them effectively were considered as promising and practical to the majority of current EFL classrooms Abundant research has reported highly achieved readers gain a greater reading proficiency than less achieved ones do The follow-up studies on reciprocal strategy instruction have demonstrated positive effects on learners’ reading improvement through the training of reading strategy instruction they have exposed

to (Brown & Palincsar, 1982; Palincsar & Brown, 1984; Pearson & Fielding, 1991).Hence, it was determined that reading strategy instruction with some adaptations for the current situation would be examined, based on the suggestions that it would enhance students' strategy use and reading comprehension after the intervention

1.3 The purpose and research questions of the study

This study aims to investigate the impacts of reading strategies training on senior student’s use of reading strategies and reading comprehension To be more specific, it has three objectives as follows:

- To examine the extent to which reading strategies are employed in students’ reading activities after strategic instructions

- To determine whether there are any relations between the use of strategies and reading comprehension

- To decide whether there are any differences in selecting strategies between higher achievers and lower achievers

Thus, the aim of the study entails three research questions as follows

1 To what extent does the reading strategy instruction change students’ use

1.4 Significance of the study

Although the relationship of reading strategy use and reading comprehension has been proved to be positive and significant, the implementation of reading strategy instruction has not been popular in teaching and learning reading skills in the context

of Vietnam Therefore, if the study will be conducted successfully, the significance of this study can be described in the following two different aspects

Theoretically, the current study provides teachers with the insights into what reading strategies to teach and how to teach them on the basis of L2 context through the influence of reading strategy instruction on students’ reading strategy use and their reading comprehension Therefore, it is a meaningful reference for Vietnamese English teachers to select strategies and frameworks for training reading strategies within an appropriate program which is extensive and explicit instructions Additionally, it is helpful for the Vietnamese EFL readers to become more aware of

1.5 Thesis outline

This study is organized into six chapters with six focuses as follows

The current chapter, Introduction, presents the general background of the study, the research aims, research questions, and the significance of the study

Chapter 2, Literature Review, provides the theoretical background to this research

through reviewing the areas of the study In addition, the chapter provides previous related studies, which play a pivotal role in seeking research gaps to situate the study Chapter 3, Methodology, presents the design and method of this study Particularly, this chapter describes the setting, participants, research methodology, analytical framework, and other methodological concerns such as the reliability and validity of the instruments Chapters 4, Data Analysis, presents the analyses of data obtained from the quantitative (reading tests and questionnaires) and qualitative (interview) measurements Chapter 5 discusses the findings of the study based on the results of data analysis in the previous chapter In Chapter 6, Conclusion, and Recommendations, the key findings are precisely summarized Besides, this last chapter evaluates the strengths and weakness of the methodology, and then reveals the recommendations for teachers and students of English as well as suggestions for further research

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter gives a brief review of the reading strategies including the definitions and classifications of reading strategies The next part of the chapter also reviews pedagogical frameworks for training reading activities and the effects they make on reading comprehension Besides, the situations in which these strategies are employed effectively and the stages of reading strategy instruction are described clearly And the final part covers the previous studies which have been made on the same topic

2.1 Reading strategies

As the key part of the study of reading strategies instruction, every aspect of these strategies must be taken into consideration This section demonstrates detailed aspects of reading strategies including what they are, when and how to use them, as well as the potential effects on reading ability

2.1.1 Definitions of reading strategies

Carrel et al (1989) state that the term “strategies” refers deliberately to a specific action or series of actions that readers select and control to achieve a set of objectives or goals Similarly, Cohen (1990) defines reading strategies as a mental process which is chosen and employed intentionally and consciously in accomplishing a certain reading task or to contact meaning from the text Particularly, Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002) address reading strategies mean actions, procedures, techniques, or basic underlying mechanisms that readers use to monitor and manage their reading while working directly with a text In other words, strategies are conscious decisions made by readers to solve problems encountered in making sense

of what they are reading (Duffy, 1993)

Briefly, reading strategies represent for every intentional technique or tactic that is borrowed and applied by skilled readers to tackle challenges merged at

different levels of reading activities

2.1.2 Classifications of reading strategies

There are many ways to categorize reading strategies according to the rationale of reading activities

Mokhari and Sheorey (2002) base on metacognition to group reading strategies into three groups: global strategies, problem-solving strategies, support strategies Firstly, the global strategies involve pre-reading actions like previewing the text and bearing purposes in mind Secondly, the problem-solving strategies were typical by rereading the text and deciding the speed of reading Finally, the support strategies were to assist reading such as taking note during the time

Earlier, Cohen (1990) classifies reading strategies into four groups according

to purposes: supporting, paraphrasing, establishing coherence and supervising strategies The first group includes skimming, scanning, and skipping The second group refers to techniques to find synonyms or main ideas of paragraphs The third group is a set of the strategies for establishing coherence in a text like using context and organization of a passage And supervising strategies come as the last type which involve planning, self-evaluation, and questioning

Similar to this study, Chamot (1987) names cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies In particular, the group of cognitive strategies includes the

recognition, storage, retrieval, and other linguistic repertoires while the group of metacognitive strategies refers to three series of actions: foreseen preparations,

ongoing monitoring, and later evaluation of reading activities Also, Purpura (1999) labels the cognitive and metacognitive process In details, the cognitive process is described as a multidimensional set which affects directly language competence (i.e comprehending, memory and retrieval strategies) Besides, metacognitive strategies,

a unidimensional construction, are a series of assessments including setting target or planning, controlling, self-testing and evaluating

Nevertheless, it can be ambiguous to distinguish if a strategy is cognitive or metacognitive for the fact that the same strategy might be interpreted as one or the other at the same time Moreover, a strategy, which is functioned as cognition at this level of reading, can be borrowed as metacognition at another stage of reading Take summarization as an example Summarizing a text at an ongoing process can be used

to retrieve information (cognitive strategy) and also to check the accuracy after reading (metacognitive strategy) Thus, it is not completely classifiable for researchers to put their focus on either of them (Cohen, 1996) Also, it is investigated that these two categories cannot be apart as they correlate one another when metacognition leaves a dramatic, straightforward influence on cognition which decides explicitly reading comprehension (Purpura, 1999)

2.1.2.1 Cognitive reading strategies

Cognitive strategies are a set of related strategies to facilitate comprehension and improve learning a language In relation to the reading strategies, the purposes of using these strategies are to integrate new material that readers expose to with their background information and then promote the acquisition, learning, remembering and recognizing written material while reading (Özek & Civelek, 2006) Cognitive strategies comprise of linguistic elements such as using resources (e.g topics, a dictionary, lexical and grammatical clues) to recognize or guess the meaning from the context, to activate background information, to summarise with text markers, to skip the difficult parts and repeat words or phrases

Thus, in term of reading, some psychologists started to discover the rationale

of cognition that people make sense of a text, rather than text carrying meaning O'Malley and Chamot (1990) describe cognitive strategies as the direct operation of incoming information and manipulating it to promote comprehending and learning The cognitive strategies are the reading activities of relating new words to a word in memory or writing down the main idea, outlining key points or making a brief summary of the text in order to comprehend the text better Specifically, O'Malley and Chamot (1990) state that cognitive strategies are recognized as prediction,

translation, summarizing, combining existing knowledge or experience, implementing structural and lexical knowledge and context to guess the meaning from the contexts

On the other hand, Oxford (1990) classifies the cognitive processing as

"direct" strategies including comprehending (compensation), memory and retrieval strategies Particularly, comprehending strategies impact reading comprehension as they function as decoding and producing a specific language or task (e.g translation, summarizing); overcoming the disadvantages in language using (e.g making inference, prediction); or compensating knowledge gap in the real world (e.g grouping, utilizing illustrations) Memory strategies serve as tools to remember new information presented in the reading texts such as summarizing while retrieval strategies really help readers to activate schema knowledge and link them to new contexts merged from reading

Similarly, in Phakiti's L2 reading strategy questionnaire (2003, 2008), the cognitive reading strategies involve three categories: comprehending, memory, retrieval strategies In details, the comprehending category is used for understanding the text These strategies focus on identifying the gist or main ideas, translating into the target language, predicting the contents or unfamiliar wordings through surrounding clues, or drawing inferences Secondly, the memory category is tools to store information in the current memory This kind of strategy is typical of repetitions

of difficult phrases or questions and paraphrase of contents and questions Finally, retrieval category includes the actions to activate existing knowledge, for example, utilizing prior content knowledge of text genres, structures of passages, lexical and grammatical items

2.1.2.2 Metacognitive reading strategies

Baker and Brown (1984) show that high-achieved readers not only do reading but also have an awareness to control the cognitive activities that they are employing According to O'Malley and Chamot (1990), metacognitive strategies represent readers' purposeful behaviors for directing and managing cognitive processes for

better comprehension Palincsar and Brown (1984) emphasize the importance of strategic activities for readers to understand their reading In addition to their decoding fluency, how reader-friendly a text is, and how much background knowledge they have about the content of a text are also significant This intention is identified as metacognitive strategies which are a mental process of deliberating, planning, goal directing and intentional orienting to accomplish cognitive tasks (Flavell, 1971) In other words, a successful performance requires the cognitive strategies which are controlled and directed by the metacognitive strategies which are readers’ deliberate behaviors

Brown (1987) divides metacognitive strategies into three categories: planning, monitoring, and evaluating strategies Planning is identified as the action of previewing or overviewing tasks to make decisions for what is the next step, time and manner to complete (Phakiti, 2003) According to Kluwe (1982, as cited in Lawrence, 2008), they are useful for setting the necessities (i.e the allocation of time

or strategies), planning the sequence to be taken to complete the task and deciding the

tension or the speed at which the task is processed In monitoring strategies, mental

process and performance are checked, controlled, evaluated deliberately to confirm if the tasks are performed successfully Metacognitive monitoring strategies help readers to classify specific tasks, check the amount of accomplished work, assess the steps, and foresee the results Finally, the evaluation process includes checking whether tasks are accomplished, how difficult the task is and whether the products are accurate

2.2 The instruction of reading strategies

2.2.1 Constructivist pedagogy in learning a language

The view of constructivism for learning is based on the belief that knowledge cannot be simply delivered by the teacher in the front of the room to students at their desks Rather, learners construct knowledge themselves through an active, mental process of development in which learners are the builders and creators of meaning and knowledge Constructivism firstly is drawn on the work of Piaget (1977) and

Kelly (1991) Piaget (1977) claims that learning occurs when learners construct knowledge actively instead of acquiring information passively through the state of disequilibrium or imbalance when they encounter a situation which is new to their current way of thinking Similarly, Kelly (1991) proposes that learners develop mental process over the new experience

In other words, constructivist teaching is based on the belief that learning occurs as learners are actively involved in a process of meaning and knowledge construction rather than passively receiving information Learners are the makers of meaning and knowledge Constructivist teaching fosters critical thinking and creates motivated and independent learners A constructivist teacher and classroom differs from a traditional classroom in a number of ways: the learners are interactive and student-centered, and the teacher facilitates a process of learning in which students are encouraged to be responsible and autonomous

In learning English as a foreign language, Applebee (1993) suggests that rather than treating the subject of English as subject matter to be memorized, a constructivist approach treats it as a body of knowledge, skills, and strategies that must be constructed by the learner out of experiences and interactions within the social context of the classroom

The social context of the classroom is defined as a system of classrooms including the activities that teachers and students construct together, maintain and modify learners’ conception (Mehan, 1979) As a result, to change students’ learning process, it is very significant for educators to modify tasks in the classroom more congruent and compatible with their students However, in language learning, conceptual development within classroom interactions is not sufficient because language acquisition happens predominantly outside the classrooms Therefore, practicing constructivist pedagogy is the idea that how to learn is more essential than mere learning act

Accordingly, skill-oriented approaches for learners’ language development are considered as a key to benefit learners more meaningfully (Donato, 1994; Lantolf &

Pavlenko, 1995) To clarify, implementation of constructivist pedagogy is shaped on the perspective that delivering strategies and skills to learn a language is more important than learning act itself (Chamot et al., 1999; Rubin, 2001; Wenden, 2002; Zhang, 2000a) Strategy instruction refers to “highly creative, multilevel process for teaching students to optimize their learning strategies for themselves as individuals” (Oxford & Leaver, 1996, p 228)

In the connection to this study, students are taught to be autonomously strategic in approaching written texts As a result, a classroom of strategy-based instruction has the potential of approximating the goal of helping learners to improve performance through enhancing their metacognitive awareness because, through strategy-based instruction, learners are offered more options to actively engage in the sociocultural interactions in the classroom (Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000)

The following part of the literature review reports the possibility of based instruction in reading and their potential influence on reading performance in a

strategy-foreign language

2.2.2 Strategy-based instruction in reading a foreign language

The program of strategy-based instruction is reported to be constructed fully when the following factors are taken into consideration

According to Mehan (1981), language processing and reading for meaning occur at multiple levels in an interactive manner, not only processing written linguistic input at a decoding level Extensive research indicates that competent readers do not only decode linguistic input Thus, these reading strategies should be delivered in the context of interactive classrooms with learners’ participation rather than in a silent decoding activity as an automatic skill (Bernhardt, 2005; Koda, 2005; Kucer, 2005; Zhang, 2002a) A productive strategy-based training is formed when strategies are described and the usage is demonstrated by instructors and is followed

by students’ practice (Garner, 1990; Paris, 1998)

Furthermore, O’Malley et al (1985) report that the teaching of reading strategies should be delivered explicitly, which means directly and sufficiently to improve students’ performance significantly Because temporary interventions leave very pointed effects on reading improvement and metacognition cannot be enhanced Thus, it is recommended that raising awareness of using strategies on a regular basis would help to build up strategy repertoires (Cohen, 1996) Carrell (1998) proposes that the explicit factors including the amount of allocated time, the procedure of delivering instructions, students’ and teachers’ responsibilities should be distinguished and clarified dramatically

Finally, straightforward and collaborative explanations are determined to benefit learners the most (Pressley, 2005) These guidelines can be conveyed into either preliminary discussions at the beginning of the lesson or an embodied approach during the class process Weaver and Cohen (1994) also agree that strategy instruction should be combined with a language course rather than a separated offer Clearly, integrated with the teaching of language knowledge, strategy-based instruction is helpful to boost students' awareness of using them to enhance reading comprehension in classrooms, as well as continuing applications after leaving the classroom as autonomous readers to facilitate the nature of reading comprehension

Collectively, strategy-based instruction on how to read is recommended to be conducted in an interactive classroom which involves both teachers’ and students’ responsibilities and actions Additionally, the course of training should be extensive enough to ensure that using strategies become automatic and the strategies can benefit readers outside the classroom Finally, the instruction is advised to be a part

of a language curriculum rather than in a vacuum situation

2.2.3 Models of teaching reading strategies

In the same vein of explicitness, Chamot et al (2009) advocate that instructors pay attention to teachers' modeling strategic thinking of teachers, students' practice of new strategies and the assessment of the effectiveness of both sides In remit of this research, Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA) and Styles-

and Strategies-Based Instruction (SSBI) are reviewed

Firstly, CALLA, a famous L2 strategy instruction model to provide a procedure for delivering reading strategies, consists of 3 major steps: preparation and presentation, practice, and evaluation and expansion The first step involves teachers’ preparation and presentation to activate students’ awareness of strategies and their illustrations of strategies for certain tasks This initial step is followed by a stage of practice which refers to students’ actions to practice their teachers’ guidelines under teachers’ facilitation The last step, called evaluation and expansion, is a chance for students to check productivity of using strategies Later, further independent work in

a new challenge of reading such as extensive reading homework is given to students

to check independent efforts of students as autonomous readers after the lesson

Figure 2 1 Framework for Strategies Instruction

Likewise, another L2 strategy instruction model is developed by Cohen (1998), known as Styles and Strategy-Based Instruction (SSBI), which emphasizes learners’ style and strategies associated with ordinary linguistic instructions There are 5 steps in the SSBI model including preparation, awareness-raising, training, practice, and personalization The first step of preparation aims for what students know about using strategies and teachers, as a language learner, share their own

experience of using these strategies Next, the awareness-raising step develops ideas about the necessity of strategy use In this stage, teachers activate the awareness of the importance of strategies applied Then, in the training step, direct instructions will

be delivered with explanations from teachers about how and when a certain strategy can be employed The fourth step is the practice in which students practice strategies

in an actual task They will plan and monitor a reading problem themselves The final step concerns personalizing strategies Students choose their own learning preference

or style and make personal use of these strategies

These models provide frameworks for the effectiveness of teaching strategies

to L2 learners And then the use of strategies takes its turn to benefit learners’ reading comprehension

Besides, Chamot et al (1999) and Harris (2003) advise strategic teaching should involve raising learners’ metacognitive awareness Zhang (2007) also provides principles and procedures to deliver strategy instructions in which teachers’ responsibilities and steps are clearly described based on pedagogical focuses, as shown interview the Table 2.1

Table 2.1 Principles and procedures in strategy instruction

What is the strategy? An overview of the strategy is given with

typical components and characterizations

Why should the strategy be

learned?

Teachers explain the rationale of using the strategy and how the strategy aids learners’ autonomy in learning reading

How is the strategy used? Every factor of the strategy and their critical

relationships are conveyed

When should the strategy be used? A specific reading task is provided with

reference to the use of the strategy

Where should the strategy be

used?

Teachers describe the situation in which the strategy is effective in reading comprehension

How should the use of the strategy

be evaluated?

The way to assess to what extent the strategy

is used effectively is clarified as well as further recommendations for unsolved problems

2.3 Reading comprehension

2.3.1 Nature of reading comprehension

National Institute for Literacy addresses reading comprehension as the process

in which reader’s mind makes sense of the text through interactions and involvement with written language In an EFL context, Marton and Saljo (1984) describe reading comprehension with two processes of surface approach and deep approach The first process focuses on translating the linguistic signs and the other process aims to interpret author’s messages as a deep approach Likewise, Alderson (2000) agrees that readers experience two processes of lower-levels to higher-levels of constructing meaning As the first step, readers automatically interpret the passages through the decoding of word meaning, syntactic structures and parts of speech recognition at the lower-level process in which the awareness or thinking about texts is almost absent

As a result, the more automatized the readers' processing is, the more efficient reading will be That leads to Segalowits's statement (2003) that automaticity really makes a contribution to the success of reading in L2

However, this sole automatization is inadequate to produce an optimal foreign reading which requires a control process as a further step, a higher-level processing (Carrell, Gajdusek & Wise, 1998; Hacker, 1998; Kintsch, 1998) because in most

foreign reading contexts, difficulties in reading such as uncommon or unfamiliar vocabularies or syntactic structures really decide the speed and effectiveness of the reading process Thus, other tactics come to the play to tackle these challenges, which really influence reading ability

Related to the elementary debate of the study, Mayer (2005) addresses the comprehending text comprises readers' knowledge of strategies and applying it in various reading stages According to Neufeld (2005), as reading comprehension is a process of constructing a supportable understanding of a text, strategic instructions for comprehension play a key role to facilitate highly-successful reading

2.3.2 The factors affecting reading comprehension in EFL contexts

Reading in a foreign language is considered as a multidimensional process because there is a various mixture of readers’ interactions among interlanguage abilities such as discourse proficiency and background knowledge, readers’ personalities which reveal learning styles, motivations or volition and contextual factors involving text genres, time constraints, and reasons to read (Alderson, 2000)

Thus, it can be explainable that in the past decades the dimensions of reader factors (i.e., L1 literacy, language proficiency, background knowledge, and motivations) and contextual factors (i.e., text topics and contents, text types and genres, text readabilities, and verbal and non-verbal communications) have been the subjects of vast research on L2 reading nature while the present articles focus specifically on the nature of cognitive and metacognitive strategies and their relationships to English reading comprehension as a foreign language (Phakiti 2006)

Hence, it is fundamental to seek deliberately an alternative source or employ many contextual clues to deal with more complex passages At a higher level of reading, reading strategies appear to increase reading achievement because, according

to Gagné, Yekovich and Yekovich (1993), the nature of reading is related to the controlling components in their human model of information-processing which guides and monitors the events of information processing In the same way,

Goodman (1971) agrees that readers get meaning from the texts by using many factors as language clues including the graphics inputs, the knowledge of syntactic and semantic system rather than just interpret every single letter or word orders in a text

Thus, shreds of evidence suggest that comprehension must involve not only decoding fluency, vocabulary knowledge, knowledge of the ways texts are organized and of the world, but also strategies for fostering and monitoring comprehension In other words, many pieces of evidence show that linguistic knowledge may be insufficient and strategy competence should be contributed to linguistic competence for a better reading achievement (Alderson, 2000; Chamot et al., 1989, Yang, 2002)

This means that good readers are distinguished from poor readers in term of using reading techniques to make sense of the reading texts instead of processing linguistic factors merely Block (1992) suggests that L2 readers need to, intentionally, “stand back and observe themselves” when they read (p 320) In other words, skillful readers are instructed and supported to deal with reading as meaningful attempts while less successful readers are misguided and unconsciously manage a text as an exercise of decoding or word recognizing Raphael and Pearson (1985) advocate that it is teachers’ responsibility to instruct their students to monitor the process of comprehending for a further improvement in comprehension

2.3.3 Effects of reading strategies on reading comprehension

Various prior studies concluded that high achievers in reading tests differed from lower ones not only in the quantity of cognitive and metacognitive use but also

in the quality of employing it In particular, Baker and Brown (1984) state that strong readers showed a better awareness and control of the cognitive activities they process

as they read This happens since reading comprehension is decided directly by cognitive strategies while these cognitive strategies are regulated and controlled by metacognitive strategies Thus, high performers know how to employ appropriate strategies to improve text reading comprehension (Chamot et al., 1989)

On the other hand, unsuccessful readers show deficiencies in monitoring their comprehension of texts through employing metacognitive strategies (Pitts, 1983) The research into the roles of metacognitive strategies in reading comprehension demonstrates a general insufficiency in the use of metacognitive strategies among unsuccessful readers Also, little do they have awareness on the way of approaching reading texts (Alderson, 2000; Baker & Brown, 1984; Brown, 1989, Oxford, 1989 )

As a result, for the purpose of reading enhancement in EFL contexts, the benefits of reading strategy instruction have taken many considerations in recent research in reading skills In these studies, good readers have been reported to gain reading improvement by the virtue of reciprocal strategy programs they have exposed

to The studies on the differences between good and poor readers, and follow-up studies on the effects of reciprocal strategy instruction have reported positive effects

on learners’ reading improvement (Brown & Palincsar, 1982; Palincsar & Brown, 1984; Pearson & Fielding, 1991) In these studies, learners have demonstrated the improvement in reading performance by virtue of the strategy instruction program they have gone through

2.4 Situations of reading strategy instruction

Researches in previous decades mainly focused on the nature of L2 reading rather than L1 since the complexity, dynamic and multi-dimensions of reading in a second language (Alderson, 2000) Accordingly, the instructions on how to read strategically happen more frequently in the situation of teaching English as a second language (ESL) or a foreign language (EFL) The rationale for the popularity of reading strategy instruction in the setting of L2 can be attributed to these factors: readers’ incompetence in interlanguages such as not fully-developed or fragmented linguistic elements and the lack of knowledge of contextual aspects like text genres, readabilities, and contents

Particularly, reading processing involves the low-level reading which is an automatic recognition of wordings, grammatical structures and parts of speech At this level, readers are suggested to process texts with the least possible awareness In

other words, readers merely decode letters with minimal thoughts given to other factors This means when readers do decoding skills naturally, they have more mental space allotted for interpreting the gist and noticeable information on the text (Gagné, Yekovich & Yekovich, 1993) However, when reading a foreign language, it is surprisingly frequent for foreign readers to be challenged with unknown wordings, advanced structures or themes of knowledge that demand readers to employ various sources or clues to overcome difficulties For example, readers are required to deliberately consider or review alternative options to effectively comprehend the texts As a high-level reading, the metacognitive processing including the evaluating settings and monitoring the speed of comprehending is necessary to increase reading achievements As a result, in the most routine of L2 reading, automatic decoding is considered as inadequate to optimize reading achievement and instructions on how to read are dedicated dominantly for the situation of L2 reading (Carrell, Gajdusek & Wise, 1998; Hacker, 1998; Kintsch, 1998)

In addition, although the situation of reading strategy instruction has been addressed in L2 learning and reading, the next concern is whether every reader should be subjected to these guidelines In almost the same vein of the high and low reading levels, target leaners of reading strategy instruction are identified by the linguistic competence of learners Purpura (1999) concludes that the extent of using these strategies may be formulated by the linguistic abilities required for the task accomplishments This means readers need a certain degree of language knowledge before they make use of these strategies

2.5 Stages of reading strategy instruction

According to the literature of cognitive and metacognitive strategies training program, the list of strategic reading instruction by Holschuh and Kelly (1988) is reviewed to provide an insight into the literature of when, how and where to use these reading strategies Furthermore, Zhang (2007) suggests a procedure of three stages of using strategies during pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading Especially, descriptions of activities for every reading strategy are also illustrated to provide

guidelines so that the teacher would deliver them in an actual procedure

Particularly, the training of pre-reading strategies comprises the knowledge of previewing or predicting, scanning for key words, and identifying the plan In these lessons, teachers would train students to observe surrounding details to activate their existing knowledge and guess the content At the same time, the students were also trained to underline key terms and decide the plan to accomplish tasks before doing reading comprehension The Table 2.2 illustrates the strategies and the descriptions of activities that students will be trained in classrooms

Table 2 2 The instruction of pre-reading strategy

Previewing Look at layouts, titles, and pictures of the

passages

Guessing potential content

Scanning for key vocabularies or

Clarifying the goal of a task

Design the course of actions

Holschuh and Kelly (1988) also suggest the training of while-reading strategies covered the strategies to comprehend and monitor reading (e.g self-questioning, self-monitoring, summarizing, and making inferences) These strategies are delivered through the activities that teachers organized in the classroom The Table 2.3 describes clearly these strategies and activities to train students in a proper way

Table 2 3 The instruction of while-reading strategy

Self-questioning Asking how the test questions and the text

related to what I knew

Self-monitoring

Checking comprehension

Checking how much the test and time remained

Checking the progress to complete the text

Checking used strategies

Correcting mistakes

Focusing on meaning, not form

Decoding meaning, not form

Read the questions and text several times

Relating meaning to what is

already known

Connecting what is read with what is already known

Reviewing main ideas after

each ‘‘chunk’’ of reading

Summarizing main ideas either orally or in written form

Analyzing familiar affixes and

roots in strange vocabularies

Attempting to solve linguistic problems using lexical knowledge

Utilizing context to make

inferences about the meaning of

unknown words/expressions

Guessing alien linguistic items through contextual evidence

Classifying main ideas and

The instruction of post-reading strategies is also illustrated with the descriptions

of activities which are designed deliberately for evaluating or reviewing the process of reading, as shown in the Table 2.4

Table 2 4 The instruction of post-reading strategy

2.6 Empirical studies

Through on-progress assessments of reading comprehension such as data from reflective journals or think-aloud protocols for every specific reading task for a certain period of time, some L2 researchers express the effectiveness of strategy instruction on learners’ strategy use (Davis & Bistodeau, 1993; Kang, 1999; Li & Munby, 1996; Young, 1993; Vandergrift, 2003a) In the same way, National Capital Language Resource Center (NCLRC) (2000b, as cited in Oxford, 2013) reported that teachers reveal their beliefs in positive shifts in students’ use of strategies as more self-regulated learners with their own assessment after every course of strategies

Particularly, Lonranger (1997) and Pearson and Fielding (1991) described

Evaluating reading actions Deciding to what extent text is understood

Recapitulating text

meanings

Checking accuracy of the answers before submitting the test

positive relationships between instructions of reading strategies and reading competence when the results indicated that metacognitive strategies training was effective in helping readers of the experimental group made a great progress in their reading comprehension compared to those in the control groups

Zhang (2007) examined the effects of strategy-based reading instruction program on reading performance and learners' development Ninety-nine Chinese students studying in the multicultural country – Singapore – joined an experiment The experimental and control groups were designed to intervene a reading course, one with the strategy-based instruction and the other without this treatment The results showed that the teacher’s strategy-based instructional intervention evolving around participatory activities affected the changes in EFL students’ use of reading strategies and the improvement in reading comprehension Besides, the researcher compared the pre- and post-test reading scores to see the possible effects of strategy instruction on reading performance The finding revealed that although the two groups shared the same starting point before the treatment, the results indicated that the experimental group's performance was considerably improved in the post-test after two-month training course through statistical analyses

The research conducted by Lee (2007) reported a similar result Think-aloud protocol and color-coding techniques were used to measure the relationship between teaching reading strategies and learners' general use of reading strategies and the extent that students use strategies when reading a new text during and after reading strategy instruction Seventy-two Korean students from different majors were assigned to the experimental and the control groups After the experiment, the results showed the increase in awareness to use reading strategies and indicated significant positive relationships between strategic reading instruction and reading comprehension in the experimental group

Cotterall (1990) also conducted metacognitive strategy instruction on the experimental and control groups to discover possible contributions of the training program to reading scores At the end of instruction, the learners in the experimental

group scored better than those in the other group who were not subjected to any instructions Similarly, Palincsar and his colleagues (1991) assigned students into three groups of strategies instructional conditions: the first group with direct instructions involved summarizing, questioning, and clarifying strategies; the second group within reciprocal teaching added to those strategies; and the third group with collaborative problem-solving, metacognitive strategies and self-regulating of reading strategies Pre- and post-test measurements demonstrated a great improvement in reading comprehension among participants in the experimental group

Likewise, Aek Phakiti (2006) investigated the relationships of cognitive and metacognitive strategies and reading achievement tests with 384 Thai students to see effects of employing strategies in the reading process The results suggested that the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies had a positive relationship to the reading test performance Furthermore, highly successful test-takers reported a significantly stronger use of metacognitive strategies than the moderately successful and unsuccessful test-takers

In the Vietnamese context of teaching, Huynh (2013) carried out another experiment at Nguyen Khuyen High School with 96 students from the 10th grade using general training of reading strategies The findings revealed that the overall use

of reading strategy was reported at "sometimes use" level at the post-test stage compared to "hardly ever use" at commence The experimental group also witnessed

a significant progress in reading achievement while the other group did not gain a considerable effect on their reading post-test

In addition, a quasi-experiment following a pre- and post-test group design was conducted by Dang (2016) at HCMC University of Science The experimental group of 43 students was exposed to a 12-week intervention with the instruction of self-regulated reading strategies and then was compared to the control group of 49 students who obtained traditional Grammar and Translation Method The researcher found the experimental group outperformed the other group in their reading motivation for reading and their reading comprehension as well Also, during the

course, the participants reflected noticeable changes in their use of received strategies through their own report of self-evaluation

In brief, the results of the prior literature show a promising possibility of instructing reading strategies to EFL students to create their awareness of using strategies as well as their reading comprehension

2.7 Summary

The thorough review of the literature presented in this chapter provides the researcher with various theoretical backgrounds for this study In details, definitions and classifications of reading strategies have been reviewed Likewise, the pedagogical frameworks and models to instruct reading strategies, and their promising effects on reading comprehension have been described in this chapter In the last part, prior studies have been presented to situate the study In the next chapter, the research design and methodology to collect data for this study will be found

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

This chapter is to describe the site, participants, and methodology of the study Also in this chapter, instruments and analytical framework for each instrument are presented clearly Additionally, the reliability and validity of every instrument are concerned in the final part of the chapter

3.1 Research site

The study was conducted at the HUTECH where students attend a wide range

of majors, listed as the art, computer engineering, tourism, business administration, and also the major of English Translation and Interpretation A variety of programs including college or university courses, and vocational training are offered to students various options to choose from The university has two campuses, namely Dien Bien Phu Campus and Ung Van Khiem Campus The present study was conducted at Ung Van Khiem Campus Like other universities, HUTECH addresses English as a foreign language Because this study centered on reading ability in an EFL situation,

it was decided that the main research site was two classrooms which were accommodated for the major of English Translation and Interpretation of college programs According to the curriculum of the university, the college program of this major has a reading module as a compulsory subject in a series of the courses of language skills in the sixth semester

3.1 Participants

Because this study centered on the effects of reading strategy instruction on learners' reading performance in an EFL situation, the study population was considered those who were trained to be proficient readers Therefore, every class who was going to have the subject of reading skill could become participants In particular, the target population in this study was selected randomly, base on the availability of samples Creswell (2012) states the rationale of this sampling is that